Dear Sponsor,
I am happy to write again to a new sponsor. I am very happy to write to you.
We write the letters in class, in school. Long letters or short letters, we can choose. The youngest students draw pictures for their sponsors, but I like to write.
I have seen your small country of England on the map on the classroom wall. I have seen London and Manchester which is where Manchester United are from. Everybody knows Manchester United here.
Have you seen my country on a map? It is good here. We have no problems in this area. I hope you have no problems in your area.
I am well. I am going on well with my studies. My favourite is maths and football and English. I have studied English for three years. That is how I can write to you. I like to learn a new language. Now I have three languages, my home language, Swahili, English. Next I may learn French. Many languages are spoken in my country. Are many languages spoken with you?
At our place we grow vegetables. We have goats and some hens. My father works building. At home he built from wood a new small house for the goats. They stand on the roof, jump up, jump down. I think they laugh at us.
Many books are waiting for me to read.
And so I will stop writing.
Your new friend, Joseck
Even in ordinary years, February was a month that stretched the girls’ resources to their limits.
‘Three birthdays and a boy to sponsor!’ said Naomi, sighing.
‘I’m not bothering with Phoebe’s birthday unless she takes me out of the zoo,’ Ruth replied.
‘Neither will I, then,’ agreed Naomi.
‘Neither will you what?’ asked Rachel.
‘Bother with Phoebe’s birthday unless she takes us out of the zoo.’
‘I won’t either then,’ said Rachel.
‘Are you in there, too?’
‘I got put in yesterday. She made another cage, just for me. You go and look, it’s awful.’
There were now three cages lined up on the living room windowsill. Ruth and Naomi glared through the bars of one. Another contained cardboard figures of Phoebe’s teacher and the Lollipop Lady (recognizable by her Lollipop). ‘Not Tame Yet’ read their description. In the third was Rachel, all alone and unkindly labelled, ‘The Slege Monster’.
‘See?’ said Rachel.
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing, she just hates my sledge, that’s all.’
‘Did it fall on her in the night again?’
Rachel did not answer, but rattled the bars of her cage rather moodily.
‘Well, you don’t have to do anything,’ said Naomi, ‘I didn’t. I just got put in for no reason at all.’
‘You laughed about the pushchair pushing!’ said a voice through a crack in the door. ‘You said sardines had tails. And you have been ROBBING MY TRAIN! I saw you!’
Phoebe appeared, clutching her train and a tin-opener. ‘With a knitting needle! You know you were!’
‘I was only seeing if anything would come out.’
‘Did anything?’
‘No.’
‘Lucky for you,’ said Phoebe ominously. ‘I heard you talking about my birthday.’
‘We’re not bothering about your birthday unless you let us out of the zoo,’ said Ruth.
‘I won’t.’ Phoebe continued to fish down the slot of her train with the bottle-opener bit of the tin-opener. Tiny bits of paper came up on the hook.
‘You’ll chop that ten pound note to pieces if you’re not careful,’ warned Naomi. ‘You’re probably squashing it further and further in. Let me have a go.’
Phoebe handed her train over to Naomi, who poked and poked and achieved nothing.
‘What about the vacuum cleaner?’ suggested Ruth. ‘It might suck it out.’
It did not suck it out; they tried for an hour before they gave up, at the end of which Phoebe evidently felt more kindly towards her sisters. She did not let them out of the zoo, but she fed them bits of biscuit through the bars and made them cotton wool nests. Martin came round while they were admiring them, took one look, and said rashly that Phoebe obviously had a personality problem. Phoebe tore out of the room to look for a box.
‘Now she’s gone,’ said Martin to Ruth, ‘will you come round and look at Peter and tell me if Phoebe did anything like he’s doing now?’
It did not sound a very tempting invitation, but it was another opportunity to make herself indispensable to Peter, and so Ruth agreed.
‘Did she do that?’ asked Martin, ushering Ruth into the Collingwoods’ large and gleaming kitchen.
‘Oh yes,’ said Ruth, looking in at Peter. ‘That sort of thing, anyway.’
Peter, strapped in his high chair, was covered in butter and crumbs, beating his fists as hard as he could on his blue plastic table. Under the fists were crumbs that had been crisps, and all over the floor were more crumbs, a feeding cup, evidently hurled there, his bunny rabbit plate, his shoes and his socks.
‘I started him off with his tea,’ said Martin. ‘Mum asked me to because she’s up in her office telephoning and in a minute she has to dash out. But look!’
‘Does she always get so much ready?’ asked Ruth, catching sight of the stack of miniature egg sandwiches, the salad and apple and cubes of cheese, still waiting on the dresser. It looked an awful lot for a two-year-old.
‘Oh no,’ said Martin, ‘only when she knows I’ll have to feed him. It takes such a lot to get any in.’
‘What does he do when you give him a sandwich?’
‘I’ll show you.’
Peter grabbed the sandwich, ripped it in half, squeezed it through his fists, chewed his knuckles, flung one handful on to the floor, hammered the rest flat on his tray, licked up the remains, and turned and dribbled them over the edge.
‘Did Phoebe do that?’ asked Martin.
‘Sometimes. Don’t tell her I said so, though.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Mum used to say, “Right then, we’ll fetch Rachel!” ’
‘What did Rachel do?’
‘Well, she ate everything.’
‘Even the screwed-up bits?’
‘Oh yes, usually.’
Martin looked at Peter’s screwed-up bits and shuddered. ‘I’m not.’
‘No, but it’s the right idea. We should take everything away, and tidy up, just as if he’d had it.’
Peter watched in horror as they cleaned the floor, wiped down his chair, washed his hands and arms and elbows and face and head (‘Good job he hasn’t got much hair,’ commented Ruth) and removed the food from sight. He opened his mouth and howled.
‘Very nice sandwiches,’ said Ruth, taking one out of the fridge and eating it. ‘Have one too.’
Martin obediently took one while Peter stared in disbelief.
‘Yum!’ said Martin.
‘Yum!’ agreed Ruth, took another, cut it in half, ate one piece herself and, put the other on Peter’s tray. Peter made a grab for it, but Ruth got there faster.
‘That’s what Rachel used to do to Phoebe.’ She put another corner of sandwich on Peter’s tray and let him get it first. He stuffed it into his mouth as if he was starving.
‘See,’ said Ruth, rather smugly, ‘only you mustn’t let him think you want him to eat it.’ She ate two more pieces herself before she let Peter grab another. ‘He watches you just like Josh does,’ she remarked, giving him a bit of cheese. ‘Good old Peter,’ she added, producing another when it was gone, ‘Have a bit more. Food tastes better when you have to fight for it!’ and she ate one of his apple slices to prove her point.
‘Try him with a whole sandwich,’ said Martin.
Ruth did, and he ate it in two starving bites while she took a pretend swig out of his mug and passed it to Martin who obligingly took one too.
‘Brilliant,’ said Martin, as Peter nearly suffocated himself draining it dry before they could get any more. Mrs Collingwood came in to the astonishing sight of a clean kitchen and her younger son clutching the last sandwich tight in both hands and glaring at Ruth as he consumed it.
‘Look what Ruth’s made him do!’ said Martin.
‘Ruth, you’re a hero!’ Mrs Collingwood exclaimed. ‘Fancy you knowing how to manage him. And he’s so clean,’ she added kissing Peter’s bald head, ‘compared to what we’re used to, I mean! You should see the state of him usually!’
‘She did,’ said Martin, ‘we cleared it up.’
‘So useful,’ continued Mrs Collingwood, unstrapping Peter and turning him loose on the kitchen floor, where he grovelled round looking for crumbs. ‘Could we ask you again sometime? Say, a pound a time, food thrown in, so to speak?’
Ruth stared at her, speechless. She had never imagined it would be so easy. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Martin watching her hopefully.
‘It would only be now and then, say once or twice a week. Martin would be here, moral support, if nothing else! Do say yes!’
‘Oh yes!’ said Ruth.
‘I’ll have a word with your mother, if you like, although I’m sure she won’t mind. Right then, Peter, bath time. Would you like to help, Ruth?’
‘No!’ said Ruth hastily, ‘I mean yes, but it’ll be tea-time at home, I’d better go. Oh no,’ she added, seeing Mrs Collingwood reach for her purse, ‘today can be a free sample!’
‘Rubbish,’ said Mrs Collingwood, gathering up Peter, ‘I have to pay you, you might never come back otherwise!’
‘I’ve got a job,’ announced Ruth happily at tea-time, ‘feeding Peter, a pound a meal!’
‘Did you ask?’ asked Mrs Conroy sternly, ‘or did they offer?’
‘They offered,’ replied Ruth proudly, ‘they begged!’
‘Ask if you have to wear your own clothes,’ said Mr Conroy solemnly. ‘I’ve seen that young man with an ice cream. Shocking!’
Naomi waited until she and Ruth were alone together before she said, ‘Do you realise that you will have to feed Peter more than a hundred times to get ten pounds a month for a year? That’s once every three days! They’ll never want you so often.’
‘There’s pocket money too.’
‘There’s all the birthdays this month.’
‘Homemade for Rachel and Phoebe,’ said Ruth firmly, ‘and flowers and we’ll make a birthday cake for Mum to surprise her. She’ll like that.’
Mrs Conroy did like it, but when it came to Rachel’s birthday, she demanded explanations.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a sledge case!’
‘I’ve never seen one before. There’s no such thing!’
It was made from an ancient stripy sheet. It looked like a huge bag with straps. So that there should be no doubt as to its use, Ruth and Naomi had embroidered ‘Sledge Case’ on it in loopy chain stitch.
‘I s’pose it’s all right if it fits,’ said Rachel gracelessly.
‘Of course it fits!’ replied Ruth crossly. ‘D’you think we didn’t measure? You might be more grateful; we sewed until our fingers bled, making it!’
‘I don’t want it if it’s bled on,’ said Rachel.
‘What are you going to get me?’ asked Phoebe. ‘I don’t want a sledge case!’
‘Nothing if you’re going to be as nasty as Rachel,’ said Naomi.
‘I’m not being nasty,’ argued Rachel, ‘I’m being honest!’ Phoebe’s turn to ask, ‘What is it?’ came a few days later. ‘It’s a zoo keeper’s hat!’
‘What’s the toothbrush for?’
‘Cleaning out the cages.’
‘What’s the cardboard animals for?’
‘Putting in the zoo instead of us.’
Phoebe let the cardboard animals loose in the garden and kept her relations in the cages.
‘Ruth and Naomi have a secret,’ said Rachel, ‘a money secret!’
Phoebe was not interested. She was engrossed in writing a letter to Big Grandma.
Dear Big Grandma,
The 10 pond you give me is stuck in trane. By the slit it cannot breke it cost to much my trane.
love Phoebe
‘What does it mean?’ asked Rachel, reading over her sister’s shoulder.
‘Can’t you read?’ asked Phoebe impatiently. ‘It says my ten pounds is stuck in the train and you can only get money in by the slit and it’s no use saying I’ll have to break the train because it’s too valuable. So can she think of a way of getting it out.’
‘It doesn’t say that at all,’ argued Rachel. ‘Anyway, listen to me. Ruth and Naomi have a secret. I think it’s to do with money.’
‘They haven’t got any money,’ pointed out Phoebe, ‘that’s why they gave us such rubbish birthday presents.’
‘What are you drawing?’
‘My train.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘It’s a picture of if you look through the slit at the money I can’t reach.’
‘They’ve been asking about my Christmas money,’ continued Rachel. ‘Good job they don’t know where it is. I bet they’d steal it if they could.’
‘Where is it?’ asked Phoebe. ‘Or have you lost it?’
‘It’s in a safe place,’ Rachel said. ‘I think,’ she added uncertainly, ‘I have to keep going to check.’
Mrs Conroy had persuaded Rachel to deposit her money in a Post Office savings account. ‘A special children’s one,’ Mrs Conroy had said. ‘They’ll take care of it until you think of something you really want.’
‘I really want another huge box of chocolates. Mine’s gone already,’ Rachel had remarked, where upon Mrs Conroy had hurried her off to the Post Office without further delay. The disadvantage of the system was that Rachel did not trust the Post Office staff.
‘They’ve only given me this book,’ she said, scrutinizing her account. ‘They write in it themselves. They could write anything. How do I know they haven’t spent it?’
Already Rachel’s account book was filling up with a list of deposits and withdrawals, all for the same amount, as Rachel checked up on her money.
‘She only wants to look at it,’ Mrs Conroy explained the first time Rachel dragged her back. Nevertheless, only four days after having deposited her money, before Rachel could hold it again in her hands, a form signed by Mrs Conroy and Rachel needed to be filled in. Even then, Rachel, receiving her ten pound note, had taken one look and exclaimed,
‘That’s not mine! Mine was a new one and had a bent corner!’
‘So it was,’ agreed the cashier, who at that time thought Rachel quite sweet, and he replaced it with a new, bent-cornered one. After examining it carefully, Rachel and her mother filled in another form and handed it back. Since then they had filled in so many forms that a separate pile was kept for Rachel. The Post Office was only round the corner from home and recently she had taken to popping in alone on her way back from school, in order to see the cashier wave a ten pound note at her to prove that, in her brief absence, he had not spent it.
‘Catch the public young,’ the manager told his staff, ‘and you’ve got them for life.’ Whether or not they wanted Rachel for life was a different matter.
‘Everyone has money secrets,’ remarked Phoebe. ‘Ruth and Naomi, Mum and Dad, everyone. You do.’
‘How do you know?’ Rachel, alarmed, clasped the flat place on her stomach where her Post Office account book was warmly stowed between T-shirt and skin.
Phoebe finished off her letter with a lot of kisses and did not reply.
‘I hate it,’ said Rachel passionately, ‘when people have secrets. It’s not fair, it makes me ill. People ought to be made to tell me things.’
‘I showed you my letter.’
‘It was boring,’ said Rachel ungratefully. ‘Ruth and Naomi are upstairs writing boring letters too. Secret, boring letters.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They won’t let me in.’
Joseck’s letter had arrived the previous morning.
‘It’s taken weeks,’ said Ruth. ‘I ought to write back straight away, it’s been so long coming.’
‘Look,’ said Naomi, ‘it was my money you sent as well; both of us should write, and we should tell him there’s two of us, not just you.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to share.’
‘I do now,’ said Naomi. Quite suddenly, the letter from Africa had brought Joseck alive. A real person, playing football, reading books, asking questions.
‘Three languages,’ they read, astonished. ‘Manchester United! Maths! His favourite is Maths!’
‘I said he looked clever!’ said Naomi.
’Look, he’s drawn a picture,’ discovered Ruth.
Sure enough, at the bottom of the page, in faint pencil lines, a small animal stood on a small sloping roof.
‘It’s one of his goats!’ said Naomi.
‘And it’s laughing!’
Suddenly, they could not wait to write back.
Dear Joseck,
Thank you for your letter. There are two of us, not just one. Ruth and Naomi. We are sisters. We are both well and we hope you are too. It is cold and wet and dark in our country. We liked your goat. Our father makes things too. He made a sledge for the snow and he is going to make a gate.
We have read about Africa and we found your country, Kenya, on a map. We would like to go there. We would like to see the wild animals, there are not many wild animals here. Do you have sisters or brothers? What books do you read? If we write to you and you write to us, then we can visit each other by letters.
Love from Ruth and Naomi
There was a thumping on the stairs and the door opened and it was Rachel.
‘Mrs Collingwood says would Ruth stop with Peter for half an hour while she collects Martin from football?’
‘Good!’ exclaimed Ruth, jumping up. ‘Another pound!’
‘I’ll post our letter,’ said Naomi.
‘What letter?’ asked Rachel, who was lingering in the hope of discovering secrets. ‘What do you spend the money on?’
‘Private.’
‘I’ve got a secret,’ said Rachel, ‘a money secret, too! Don’t you want to know what it is?’ She was very pleased when Ruth and Naomi turned back eagerly to look at her.
‘I knew you would,’ she remarked smugly, and disappeared down into the kitchen, where Mrs Conroy was making cakes for Sunday Tea. A baking tray full of small chocolate buns stood on the table, waiting to go into the oven.
‘I’d rather have one raw,’ said Rachel, looking at them, ‘than anything in the world. Than a hundred cooked ones! When will you have time to go to the Post Office with me?’
‘Would you rather have one raw than go to the Post Office?’ asked her mother. ‘Say, for a whole month?’
‘For a week anyway.’
‘A month.’
‘Two weeks,’ said Rachel, edging towards the table.
‘Three weeks.’
‘Three weeks then,’ agreed Rachel. ‘Do you think it will be safe that long?’
‘Didn’t you read that little book the man at the Post Office gave you? All about how they look after your money?’
‘I read it in the bath.’
‘Yes?’
‘But I dropped it in before I could believe it. That’s why I have to keep checking.’
‘Well, you’ll have to wait three weeks, now you’ve eaten that cake.’
‘Six weeks if you give me another,’ offered Rachel, and was ordered out of the kitchen.