Tom's Midnight Garden by Pearce Philippa

Author:Pearce, Philippa [Pearce, Philippa]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780192758033
Publisher: Oxford University Press Children's Books
Published: 2011-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

XVI

The Tree-House

In a letter to his brother, Tom wrote: ‘… I am glad your measles are over. I wish you were here. We are building a tree-house in the Steps of St Paul’s.’ Peter read the letter, and then burnt it, as he must burn all Tom’s correspondence now. He went sombrely out into the Longs’ little back-garden and began to put in some half-hearted work at a construction in the apple-tree.

Mrs Long, watching from the kitchen-window, called: ‘I wish Tom were home to help you.’ She spoke uneasily. She had told herself again and again that she completely trusted Gwen and Alan with the boy; and indeed she did. Nevertheless, she sensed something unusual and mysterious in the air, and it troubled her.

The Kitsons were better off than the Longs—there is all the difference, in expense, between having two children and having none at all. Tom might have been made discontented with his home by the luxury he was experiencing away from it; but he was not—Mrs Long had to admit that. Tom’s letters to his parents contained nothing but brief, dry reports of a dull life spent almost entirely in the company of his aunt and uncle. He did not seem to find any pleasure in it—not even in the meals, now. Yet he had asked more than once to be allowed to stay on.

‘There are no other children there,’ Mrs Long pointed out to her husband that evening; ‘and Tom never seems to go anywhere very special. Does he tell you more, Peter, in his letters to you? They seem long enough.’

Peter looked at the ground. ‘I think he just likes staying in that flat.’

‘Well, he’ll get out of mooning about indoors alone, when he comes home,’ said Mr Long cheerfully. ‘Won’t he, Peter?’

‘I suppose he’ll have to come home for school, anyway,’ said Peter. ‘He missed the end of the summer term because of my measles, but he’ll have to be home when school starts again.’

‘When the autumn term starts!’ cried Mrs Long in alarm. ‘Why, we must have him home before that, Peter!’ Peter looked doubtful, so Mrs Long said: ‘You surely don’t want to spend all this summer without Tom?’

‘I suppose—’ said Peter, and waited for them to ask him what he supposed.

‘Well?’

‘I suppose that, if Tom doesn’t want to come away from Aunt Gwen’s yet, I couldn’t go there too, and stay there with him …’

Mrs Long stared at her son, almost frightened; but Mr Long laughed: ‘What on earth would two boys do in a poky flat without a garden?’

‘I’d like to be there with Tom,’ said Peter, stubbornly.

‘You surely mean,’ said his father, ‘that you’d like to be here with Tom. You want him to come home.’

‘You can’t really want to go and stay with him in that flat,’ said his mother.

‘I do then!’ said Peter. ‘I do! I lie awake at night and wish I were there; and then I fall asleep and dream that I am there. I want to go—I do! I do!’

‘But why, Peter, why?’ asked his mother.

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