Home life
Beryl in peril
Alice Thomas Ellis
he day after the baby and his daddy arrived, jet-lagged, from the States they were sitting with some of the rest of the family watching Wimbledon on the telly when the cameras focused on a lady who had written the name of Stefan Edberg on both cheeks — or perhaps she had per- suaded a friend to do it since it is difficult writing on your own checks. 'Omigod,' observed the baby lugubriously, she's got his name on her faces.' We were impressed by this for the child wasn't three until Sunday and cannot read. Somehow he had instantly grasped the psychological im- plications of this piece of graffito and did not approve. None of us did. It was over-enthusiastic. She was probably fore- ign.
Tennis finished, the child demanded that I read him a story and 1 realised why children's books are becoming valuable.
It's because if you let children get their hands on them before they can read they use them for other purposes — as drawing pads, missiles and things to chew — and so books for small children are scarce. We
haven't got any left except for Struwwelpe-
ter and that gives me nightmares. Janet tells me she came across one in the country the other day. It is about a peripatetic rabbit and was, for some time, the daugh- ter's favourite work of literature; and it is ironic that it should have survived since it nearly drove us mad and I'm astonished that nobody thought to surreptitiously dispose of it. As far as I remember, it more or less consists of one phrase, endlessly repeated, about this damn rabbit walking down the road, walking down the road, walking down the road.
Looking along a rather confused book- shelf I found — between a Dictionary of Everyday Gardening and Quest for Utopia — a book called Thrills and Adventures for Girls. The baby didn't care for it but once started I couldn't put it down. It has stories about Girl Guides creeping out at night to look for buried treasure (oh yeah) and an enthralling yarn about a girl who got tied to a tree by cannibals: 'The girl's sufferings were frightful but she neither murmured nor lowered her proud young head.' The odds were about a thousand to one that in real life she'd have been eaten, but as it's a story her cousin, who's just left Eton (I didn't mean to write that — eaten and Eton — but never mind) comes along and unties her and gives the Solomon Islanders a proper pasting. ' "Well done, oh well and bravely done, Big Boy!" croaked Beryl through cracked lips.' As they make their escape the boy — Fred — gives her his revolver. `I shall know,' says Beryl cheer- fully, 'what to do with the last cartridge if the worst comes to the worst', but superb markswoman though she may be she can't count and fires all six.
Things are getting very tense when Naku, a loyal cannibal, leads a band of tribesmen to the rescue and they all go home to tea. 'They'll have to be beaten, of course,' says the old Etonian of the men who tied up Beryl, `but don't lay it on too thick, Uncle.' How things change. Soon it will be illegal even to smack the baby and if I found myself with only one cartridge left I think I'd save it for the rabbit.
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