Uprooted by Lynne Reid Banks

Author:Lynne Reid Banks [Lynne Reid Banks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Mummy suddenly became very busy; directing Penny Wise, which was coming along marvellously apparently, was hard work and she had to leave us two evenings a week to go to the rehearsals. Having the Hembrows next door, and with Cameron now being twelve, she thought that was safe. A lot of kids of Cameron’s age babysat for money. She found this weird, but as she said, “Kids seem to grow up quicker in Canada.” And Cameron, of course, was very grown-up for his age.

I didn’t think it was very grown-up of him to put every cent he earned towards his silly old book of battleships, though he did buy O’F some pipe tobacco for his birthday, after I told him he should. I bought O’F pipe cleaners and made him a card with a poem I’d written in it.

Dearest O’F, best of friends

Best of uncles till life ends

On this very special day

May contentment come your way

And fragrant pipe-smoke wreath your head

Promising happiness ahead.

I really liked ‘wreath your head’. Even Cameron said that was good. We gave him a tea party with a cake and candles and Mummy gave him a book as well – Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Cameron read it first and said that, second to England, Their England, it was the best book he’d ever read, except the love stuff. Before I could get hold of it to see what the love stuff was, it was too late.

Cameron could do his paperboy job during school time, because it happened early in the morning, before it was even light until spring came. He borrowed Mummy’s alarm clock and got up so early he was never around for breakfast except on Sundays.

What job could I do? I kept thinking. I asked around, and then Marylou, my desk partner, suggested the stables.

I liked horses, and I knew how to ride, and Cameron had already heard about a riding school out by the Exhibition Grounds that he said he might ride at when he’d finished paying for Jane’s Fighting Ships. (I really thought Jane must be a funny sort of woman, to write a huge book about battleships.) So, when the streets started getting clearer of ice and snow, I rode my bike out there and asked for a job.

I’d already tried getting easier jobs – like in Pinder’s serving ice cream and in a shoe shop – but they just said I was too young. Letty, the woman at the stables, didn’t say that. She asked if I’d had any experience, and I told her that once, at my convent, I’d had to muck out a stable as punishment for playing a joke on one of the nuns. She asked what the joke was, and when I told her, she laughed and said, “Well, you look like a good strong girl – I’ll give you a trial. Saturday mornings, nine till one. A dollar an hour. And in school breaks I can use you more.”

I said, “And can I ride?”

“If you pay.

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