“Roman conkers,” Augustus explained further. There was a murmur of interest from the Apaches. Every autumn the playing fields of their school became the battleground for the annual Conker Wars, a particularly savage form of warfare that inevitably ended with several of the injured in Matron’s office.
Mr. Robinson had been invited to dinner by Mr. and Mrs. Swift, along with the vicar, who was the genial, slightly confused sort of vicar that was very common in the area, and Miss Slee, a forthright, rather mannish spinster whose weekend hobby was “rambling.” (“Ramblin’?” Augustus said scornfully to his parents. “How is that a hobby? You’re always sayin’ to me, ‘Stop ramblin’ on, Augustus,’ and then,” he tugged on the imaginary lapels of an imaginary barrister’s gown, “and then you say, ‘Why don’t you get a sensible hobby, Augustus?’ ”)
Also sipping the Swifts’ sherry were Mr. and Mrs. Brewster, who were new to the village, and Colonel Stewart, who was generally disagreeable to all and sundry and had a particular dislike of small boys. “A soirée,” Mrs. Brewster exclaimed, when invited. “How charming.” Mrs. Brewster cut a rather striking figure. She was tall, with a head of impressive red curls and a rather theatrical manner. She was very keen on amateur dramatics, apparently.
“Not just the Romans,” Mr. Brewster said, eyeing the near-empty sherry decanter anxiously. “Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, it’s been one invading horde after another.” The Brewsters were “new money” according to Miss Carlton, a shrew-faced elderly spinster who eyed Mr. Brewster eyeing the decanter. She was a “teetotaller,” which seemed to make her rather irritable. She had induced Augustus and the rest of his little tribe to sign a pledge that they would never partake of alcohol in exchange for a halfpenny-worth of lemon sherbets. “Fair trade,” the Apaches were agreed. “Bringing up the rear” at the soirée was the Swifts’ next-door neighbour, Mrs. Garrett.
“Previously,” Mr. Robinson said, holding forth again, “we had only been able to date ourselves back to Domesday.”
“Doom’s Day,” Augustus murmured to himself appreciatively. “Day of Doom.” He was much taken by words that seemed to hold within them the promise of almost infinite mayhem. His eavesdropping was rudely interrupted by Cook knocking him on the head with a soup spoon—her preferred weapon—and shooing him away. “That boy lurks,” he had heard her complaining to their housemaid, Mavis. “He’s a regular little spy.” Augustus felt rather gratified by this compliment. Naturally, he was going to be a spy when he grew up. As well as a pilot, a train driver, an explorer and “a collector of things.”
“What kind of things?” Mrs. Swift had asked at the breakfast table that morning, and immediately regretted the question as Augustus launched into an enthusiastic list that included mouse skeletons, gold farthings, molluscs, twine, diamonds and glass eyeballs.
“I’ve never heard of gold farthings,” Mr. Swift said.
“That’s why I’ll collect ’em. They’ll be worth a king’s ransom.”
“What if they don’t exist?” Mr. Swift said.
“Then they’ll be worth even more.”
“Did you drop him on his head when he was a baby?” Mr. Swift asked Augustus’s mother. Mrs. Swift muttered something that sounded like “I wish I had,” and added, much louder, “Do stop fiddling with the marmalade pot, Augustus.”
Go away,” Cook said to him. She was still in high dudgeon over the Charlotte Russe she had planned for “dessert,” which was what they ate when they had guests. When they didn’t have guests it was simply “pudding.” Augustus said it wasn’t his fault that he had eaten all the sponge finger biscuits. He had been going to take just one and then somehow when he looked again they had all gone! How did that happen? (How did it happen so often?) To Cook’s chagrin, the Charlotte Russe had been demoted into a more banal mousse. “What will they think?” she grumbled.
“They’ll think they’re jolly lucky,” Augustus said, under the understandable misapprehension that “mousse” was “moose,” which sounded like a more exciting item of food than the usual fare served up at the Swifts’ dining table. Indeed, “moose” was the kind of prey that the Apaches might hunt with their bows and arrows before spit-roasting it over a camp-fire. (Augustus’s own bow and arrow were currently confiscated due to an unfortunate incident.)
“There are no moose in this country,” Mr. Swift pointed out.
“How do you know,” Augustus said, “if you’ve never seen one?”
“You have the makings of a fine empiricist,” his father had told him, after a particularly challenging discussion about cricket balls and greenhouse glass. (“But if you didn’t see who threw the ball then how could you know it was me?” “Because it’s always you,” Mr. Swift said wearily.)