Bawden The Secret Passage

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-28709-3
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 178 Seiten

Lonely and forlorn after their mother's death and their sudden arrival at Aunt Mabel's seaside boarding-house, John, Mary and Ben Mallory are unimpressed with their new life in England. But there are wonderful surprises in store for them when they discover a secret way into the grand and empty house next door. Soon all sorts of unexpected events will unfold as the siblings encounter a whole host of eccentric characters and happenings. Completed in 1963, The Secret Passage is Nina Bawden's first children's novel and was written especially for her own three children after they had discovered a secret passage in the cellar of their house. It beautifully reflects her own inquisitive nature - as she herself has said: 'I was a keyhole child, fearsomely curious' - wedded to her subtly innovative ability to empathise with the child's view.

Nina Bawden is one of the most admired and engaging writers of fiction for children and has written more than fifty books. Born in 1925, she was educated at Oxford and completed her first novel the year after gaining her degree. She is the author of such classics as Carrie's War and The Peppermint Pig, and has won the Guardian Fiction Award and the Phoenix Award as well as being commended for the Carnegie Medal. Described by the Daily Telegraph as 'without question one of the very best writers for children', she divides her time between London and Nauplion in Greece.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bawden, Nina

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE WHERE’S BEN—OH, WHERE IS BEN?
WHEN JOHN AND Mary and Ben came to England to live, their Aunt Mabel thought they were the most dreadfully spoiled children she had ever known. Perhaps it was true. But if they were spoiled, it was only in the pleasantest kind of way. Their mother and father, Mr and Mrs Mallory, were kind and gentle people and their African nurse, Bella, was plump and cheerful and never too tired or too busy to play with them or tell them stories. By the time John was twelve, Mary eleven, and Ben seven years old, they had never heard anyone speak in an angry voice either to them or to anyone else. They had lived in Kenya for most of their lives. John and Mary had been born in England but they could remember almost nothing about it, although John sometimes said that he could remember what snow felt like—tingling cold as ice-cream and crunchy under your feet. Mary wondered if he was right. She knew what snow looked like because she could see it, sparkling on the high, white top of Mount Kenya. Their bungalow was built near a river at the foot of the mountain. From the garden they could see the snow-capped peaks, a range of lower, blue-coloured hills and the African village on the ridge immediately above their bungalow, a group of conical-shaped, straw huts that steamed sometimes in the damp weather as if they were on fire. It was a beautiful place to live. There were very few dangerous snakes and although there were lions and elephants and rhinos they hid deep in the forests higher up the mountains. So John and Mary and Ben were free to play wherever they liked. They ran about half-naked like the African children; Ben, who was dark-haired and dark-skinned was burned almost as black as one. Although they were made to wear shoes so they shouldn’t get jiggers in their toes, no one grumbled when they got dirty or tore their clothes. This was partly because they had servants to mend them, of course, but it was also because their mother and father were sensible as well as kind. Mr Mallory had been brought up in London in a stiff, clean house where, so he said, even the coal had been dusted and he was determined that his children should be allowed to get just as dirty as they wanted to. “Let them play in the mud,” he said. “Let them roll in it, if it makes them happy. Mud’s good for the skin.” He only made one rule. There was a tub of water kept outside the back door in which they had to wash before they came into the house. They did not go to school because there wasn’t one anywhere near the bungalow. Mrs Mallory taught the two older ones to read and write. She also taught them a little arithmetic but not much, because she had no head for figures. Ben had no lessons at all. Instead, when the others were busy, he helped his bèst friend Thomas, mind Thomas’s father’s herd of cows. All African children look after their family’s cows until they are old enough to go to school which is not until they are about ten. Thomas was eight and he had about twenty cows to look after. They were thin, boney, good-natured beasts. Thomas spent a lot of his time beating them with sticks and Ben, who was anxious to be as much like his friend as he possibly could, beat them too, but the cows did not seem to mind. They went, uncomplaining, wherever the two boys drove them, usually to a grazing place high above the village. When they found a good place, Thomas and Ben would sit down and eat the maize—or corn-on-the-cob—that Thomas’s mother had given them. It wasn’t boiled, as English people eat it, but roasted and nutty from the fire. They talked to each other in Swahili, not in English. They both wore khaki shirts and torn trousers and from a distance they both looked exactly alike. It was only when she came up close to them that Mrs Mallory could tell the difference. Thomas was darker and shinier than Ben, and his hair was woollier. If it was difficult for John and Mary to imagine what England was like, it was almost impossible for Ben. “There are toy shops,” his mother told him. “There is one big toy shop in London called Hamleys, where they sell nothing but toys. Just think of it!” It didn’t mean much to Ben. Like John and Mary he had very few toys of the kind English children play with. He had a stone called William that he painted faces on and dressed up in bits of his mother’s old dresses and a chameleon called Balthazar, who had a loosely fitting skin like a pair of baggy trousers and two bright, pin-point eyes that swivelled round to watch you when you moved, as if they were on ball-bearings. Balthazar was much better than any toy Ben could imagine, so he wasn’t very interested, even when his mother said, “You’d like to see a toy shop like that, wouldn’t you?” John and Mary knew why she was talking to Ben like that. Their father worked for the Government on an Agricultural Research station. He had got married when he was quite old and next year, when he retired, they would all have to go back to England to live. John and Mary decided that they were not looking forward to it very much. Everyone said that England was very cold and grey and that it rained there, all the time. But they didn’t think about it very much or very often. They were going to stay in Africa another year, and a year seemed an awfully long time. * It rained in Kenya too sometimes, so hard that they had to stay indoors. The rain in Kenya isn’t gentle and drizzly like English rain but more as if some giant, high above the clouds, has suddenly emptied out his bath water. One day they woke up to find the rain was coming down in torrents. The sky was dark and it was rather cold. There was no sign of the top of Mount Kenya and even the lower hills were hidden in cloud. “Never mind,” Mr Mallory said, as he got ready to go out, putting on great yellow oilskins like a fisherman, “It’ll clear up soon. By lunchtime, I should think.” But the rain didn’t clear up by lunchtime. It went on and on. Not only that day but the next and the next. At first the children were fairly philosophical about it and invented new and interesting games to play, but after four days they became bored and cross. They began to quarrel over the slightest thing. One afternoon, Ben upset some water over a painting Mary was doing of a leopard stealing fish. Mary was good at painting and she had taken a lot of trouble over this picture which she was going to give to her mother for her birthday. When the water sloshed over it, smudging the colours, she shouted at Ben and punched him in the chest. They rolled over and over on the floor, scratching and pinching, until Mrs Mallory came in and pulled them apart. She asked them what had happened and they both shouted at her until she put her hands over her ears and waited for them to stop. Finally, she said, “Ben, you should say you are sorry to Mary. But you didn’t mean to do it, did you? So Mary should say she is sorry too.” “Sorry,” Mary said, feeling rather ashamed. But Ben was still cross. He said, “Sorry,” but in a grumpy voice and when his mother had gone he hissed under his breath, “Smelly old fat.” Then he ran out of the room, shouting with laughter. Mary and John stood at the window and looked out gloomily at the road. It wasn’t a tarmac road, but made of a kind of red earth called murram which is very dusty in hot weather and turns very quickly into mud whenever it rains. Now water was pouring in thick, reddish streams down the middle of this road and the few people who went by, with big, green banana leaves held over their heads instead of umbrellas, were soaking wet and splashed with red mud all up their bare legs. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr Mallory said, when he came home for lunch. “The road down to Embu is cut. If this goes on there won’t be any food or petrol or anything coming through from the town. I’m going to try and get there with the Land Rover this afternoon to get some supplies—it looks as if we may need them.” The children cheered up a little. It was rather exciting to think of being marooned, like people on a desert island. “Can I come?” asked John. Mr Mallory shook his head. “Not this time, old chap. There won’t be any room in the Land Rover. Besides, the floods are all over the road. It’s not safe.” “I can swim,” John said indignantly. “Not in a flood,” Mr Mallory said. “No one can swim in a flood.” He spoke gravely and firmly and John saw it was no good trying to persuade him. He felt rather disgruntled, though. It would be very exciting, trying to drive through a flooded river. Grown-ups had all the fun—though his father didn’t seem to think it was going to be fun, exactly. He was very quiet all through lunch and Mrs Mallory looked pale and worried. “Must you go?” she said. Though she was helping Mr Mallory on with his oilskins, Mary thought that she would much rather hang on to him and make him stay. Mr Mallory put his arm round her and hugged her tight for a moment. “I’ve got to try,” he said. “Stores are running low. It may be the last chance for weeks.” He looked at John. “You’ll have to look after the family, old chap,” he said, and smiled. It was a very long afternoon. Mr Mallory did not come back and though Mrs Mallory tried to telephone to Embu, the lines were down and the telephone wouldn’t work. Just as the children were going to bed, one of the Agricultural officers who had gone with Mr Mallory came to the house and said...