Making Friends with Don

It was warm and peaceful where I sat in the wood. I could just hear the brook gurgling slowly and the birds cooing excitedly as they nested in the trees behind me. Then suddenly Shadow lifted his head and growled. I turned to see a boy limping along the bank—a pleasant-looking boy about my own age, with thick brown hair.

“Hi!” he called out. “Do you happen to have a tissue?”

I fished up the sleeve of my sweater and brought out a rather grubby hanky. He sat down beside me and held out his foot. It was badly cut and bleeding freely.

“Go down to the stream and hold it in cold water first,” I said, remembering my Guide's first-aid course. He obeyed, sitting on a stump and dangling his foot in the water. Then I tied it tightly with my handkerchief and we sat watching to see if the blood would seep through or not. I had had little to do with boys since I left primary school, and I was usually shy with them, but a boy in trouble was different.

“How did you do it?” I asked.

“I walking on some broken glass in the stream back there.”

“But you're not supposed to be in the stream at all. This is a pheasant reserve and it's a private estate.”

“Then what are you doing here?” he asked, smiling at me.

“Oh, I belong here,” I replied grandly. “My grandfather was head gardener at the castle for thirty years.”

“Really?” replied the boy. “But isn't it rather boring playing in this great place all alone? I mean, wouldn't it be more fun if there was someone else?”

I'd never really thought about it. “Well, yes,” I replied slowly, “I suppose it would. Do you often come here?”

“This is my first time. We've only just come to live here. I didn't come in through the gate. I came from the valley and I got under the barbed wire at the back. I belong to a natural history club at school, and I'm doing a project on wildlife in this county. These woods are the perfect place to watch and I'm very careful about pheasants. I want to dam the stream lower down, to make a pool. Then more animals would come to drink—especially early in the morning. Oh, gosh! Look at my foot!”

The handkerchief was saturated with blood. Something had to be done at once.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Down in Eastbury. But I couldn't walk as far as that. I might bleed to death!”

“Well, come up to my house, and my Gran will bandage it and phone for a taxi. We live by the main gate. It's only about ten minutes' walk.”

“Won't she mind? I'm a trespasser, remember.”

“Oh, no! She's not interested in pheasants. Grandpa is, but he's out in the greenhouse, and he's so interested in his tomatoes that he won't think to ask what you're doing. Come on!”

It took us nearly twenty minutes to reach the house, because the injured foot was very painful. Fortunately he had a knife, and we cut a stout stick for him to lean on. He limped bravely along and as we walked, we talked; and I learned quite a lot about him.

His name was Donald, but he said I could call him Don, and he was twelve years old. His father had taken over the Royal Midland Hotel just before Christmas and was doing well with it. Don was obviously tremendously proud of his father. He didn't have any brothers or sisters, and he went to boarding school, so he hadn't made any friends in the town yet. We had nearly reached home when he turned to me and said, “And what about you? What were you doing all by yourself?”

“Oh, just thinking.”

“Thinking? Do you often just sit and think? What do you think about?”

“Oh, nothing much. Here we are; this is our house.”

“What a fantastic garden! Do you live with your grandparents?”

“Yes.”

He stood for a moment looking at the garden, and I knew that he admired our cottage as much as I did. When he spoke again, it was almost wonderingly. “Do you live here always? Where are your parents?”

“I haven't … well, I haven't really got any … my mother died … that's what I was thinking about. Look, there's Grandpa working on the rockery and Gran bringing in the washing. Gran! This is Don. He's hurt his foot.”

Gran hurried across the lawn, full of kindness and concern. In no time at all, Don was sitting on a stool in the bathroom soaking his foot, and Gran was bustling around and organizing us all.

“I think that should be stitched,” she said, looking at the ugly cut. “Can we phone your father, and can he fetch you? Lucy, make a cup of tea; there's a good girl!”

“Oh yes, Dad's at home, and we've got a car,” said Don, who had stopped bleeding to death. “I'll write down the number. Tell him I'll be by the big iron gates of the estate, sitting on the garden wall waiting for him.”

So Grandpa made the phone call, and Gran bandaged up the cut, and I made tea. Don soon hobbled downstairs and ate two pieces of Gran's chocolate cake in a great hurry, because he didn't want to miss his father. Then we went out to wait on the wall in the evening sunshine.

“Thanks a lot, Lucy,” he said. “I really would have been in trouble without you and your gran. And they didn't say anything about the trespassing either.”

“It's not them,” I replied, “it's the gamekeepers. They can be really nasty. But I was thinking … suppose I took you in—”

“If I said I was a friend of yours, they'd let me come, wouldn't they?” broke in Don eagerly. “I do want to dam that stream and make a big pool. How about helping me, Lucy? When my foot's better—Oh, here's my dad!”

A car drew up sharply. The driver gave a friendly hoot and jumped out.

“What on earth, Don?” he began. “Can you walk? Where's the kind lady who rescued you?”

Gran came to the gate and said it was a pleasure, but the foot ought to be stitched. Don stood grinning from ear to ear, delighted with his adventure and his dad. Grandpa joined us with a bunch of daffodils, and we all parted as good friends.

“Bye, Lucy,” called Don, hobbling to the car. “I'll be seeing you!” A few moments later they were off, and I watched his waving hand until it disappeared around the corner, then I slowly walked back into the house. Gran stood in the doorway looking very pleased with herself.

“Lucy,” she said, “I phoned Miss Bird this afternoon. I thought you might like to get away for a little holiday over Easter. She says she can fit you into a Guide camp in Derbyshire for a week. Would you like that?”

I stared at her blankly. If she'd said this to me yesterday, I would have gone crazy with excitement; but now—if I went away to camp, I would never dam the stream or watch for squirrels in the early morning with Don. And if I wasn't there, he'd never be able to say he was my friend.

“I don't know, Gran,” I answered slowly. “It's not as if they are girls from my school, is it? It was different sharing a tent with Mary. I wouldn't know any of these girls, would I?”

“I guess you'd know them pretty well by the end of the week,” retorted Gran, “but it's up to you. We don't want to get rid of you, do we, Grandpa? I just thought the holidays were a bit lonely for you here, but maybe you could ask your friends up.”

“I'm not lonely, Gran,” I answered quietly. “I'd rather stay here for Easter. It's fun, and I … well, I just don't want to go away.”

So I stayed and waited to see what would happen next, and four or five days later Don reappeared on a bike with his foot well bandaged. We were all having tea when he turned up, so he came in and joined us. He got on very well with my grandparents. He had never had any, he explained, because his dad had been an orphan and his mother had come from South Africa, and he seemed to take it for granted that he could share mine. He ate a great deal and then suggested we go to look at the stream.

It was the first of several happy mornings and evenings. This was the best time to watch wildlife, he explained, and anyhow, he had a job working for his dad during the day. He was saving up for a new bike. He was always anxious to get back by 9 A.M. and seemed to think the hotel might collapse if he was late. But we dug out a pool big enough to wade in from the streambed and dammed it, and I would often hear his bicycle bell soon after sunrise. I would dress and creep down, explaining to a sorrowful Shadow that he could not come, and then Don and I would run out and crouch in bushes to watch birds, squirrels, and rabbits. Once, on a never-to-be-forgotten early morning when we were climbing a tree and not watching at all, we suddenly saw a fox playing with her three roly-poly cubs. They tried to bite her tail but she cuffed them onto their backs, where they lay waving their little paws in the air and rolling over each other.

Don and I didn't really talk about personal things. He told me about birds and foxes and fossils, and radar, and what his dad said and did; I told him about the books I'd read. It was halfway through the holidays before Don asked the question I dreaded, the question that always came up in the end and that I had never been able to answer. Now that I could answer, it was almost worse.

We were wandering home on a quiet, grey April evening, noticing things as usual. Don was peering around through a pair of binoculars that his dad had given him for his birthday.

“I can see that thrush right up close,” he said excitedly. “I can almost count the speckles on her breast. Dad knew I wanted binoculars, and he bought me a really good pair. Lucy, what happened to your dad? Did he die too?”

Suddenly I realized that I no longer dreaded this question. I wanted to share my tangled thoughts with someone to whom I could speak quite freely without fear of hurting his feelings.

“Sit down on this log, Don,” I said, “and I'll tell you all about it.”

I told him everything, all about my past and the letter and creeping downstairs, all about Gran and Grandpa and their fears, all about the big questions that kept me awake at night, like “When he comes, what shall I do?”

“What would you do, Don, if your dad was a wicked man in prison, and yet he wanted you?” I asked finally.

And Don, tossing back his thick brown hair from his forehead, replied without hesitation. “I would find him, somehow, somewhere, and I would say to him, ‘I don't care what you've done, Dad—I'm still your boy!’”