It was a cell, although she said it was the “nursery”—a horrible room in the attic on what she called “the servants’ floor,” although they no longer had “proper” servants, she said. The ones they did have—Mrs. Kerrich and Thomas—never came up here anyway. They were living in “reduced circumstances,” his grandmother said, which was why there was only Mrs. Kerrich, who came in every day to cook and clean, and Thomas, who lived in a cottage at the gates of Jordan Manor and who lifted and carried and repaired and “attempted” the garden. Sunny didn’t like Thomas. He was always saying things to him like “Alroyt? Dew yew want to come and see moy woodshed, young bor?” and then laughing as if this was the greatest joke ever, showing the gaping black holes where his teeth were missing. Both Thomas and Mrs. Kerrich had peculiar accents, flat and sing-song at the same time. (“Norfolk,” Mrs. Kerrich explained.) “They’re peasants really,” his grandmother said. “Good sort of people though. More or less.”
Both Thomas and Mrs. Kerrich spent a lot of time grumbling to each other about being “at her ladyship’s beck and call,” and even more time grumbling about Sunny and the “extra work” he was causing them. They talked about him right in front of him as if he wasn’t there, sitting at the kitchen table with them, Thomas smoking his Woodbines and Mrs. Kerrich drinking tea. He felt like saying, “Where’s Mr. Manners today?” to them, which is what his mother would have said to him if he was being rude to people to their faces. In fact Mr. Manners would have been kept very busy if he had lived at Jordan Manor. Sunny would never be rude again to anyone as long as he lived if they would just let him go home.
Still, it was better in the kitchen than the rest of the house. It was the warmest room and there was always the chance of food. If he hung about the kitchen long enough Mrs. Kerrich fed him, in the same casual way she occasionally tossed a tidbit to the dogs. His grandparents were frugal in their eating habits and he was always hungry. He was a growing boy, he was supposed to eat. Even his mother said so. To make matters worse, mealtimes were accompanied by a barrage of instructions—chew with your mouth closed sit up straight use your knife and fork properly were you brought up in a barn? His table manners were “appalling,” his grandmother said, perhaps they should feed him pig swill seeing as he ate like one. “They don’t keep pigs any more,” Mrs. Kerrich said, “or she’d probably feed yew to them.” Not so much a threat as a statement of fact really.
Mrs. Kerrich sighed and said to Thomas, “Well, better get her ladyship’s ‘morning corfy,’ ” these last two words heavy with sarcasm, indicating Mrs. Kerrich’s peasant status as a proud drinker of strong, sweet tea rather than pretentious upper-class coffee. Sunny’s grandmother wasn’t a “ladyship,” she was just a regular “Mrs.” Mrs. Villiers. Mrs. Antonia Villiers. “Grandmama”—which was a word he stumbled over almost every time he tried to say it (not least because he found it hard to believe he was actually related to her). Why couldn’t he just call her Gran or Granny? He had tried it once. She had been standing at the French windows in the “drawing room,” watching Thomas, who was mowing the grass (“Incompetent!”), while Sunny was playing on the carpet with an old Meccano set of his father’s that had been “lent” reluctantly to him (“Be careful with it!”) by his grandmother when he said, “Can I have a glass of milk, Gran?” and she had whipped round and stared at him as if she had never seen him before and then she said, “I’m sorry?” a bit like his mother did only ten times nastier, like she wanted to bite you with the words. “Grandmama,” he amended hastily. “Please,” he added. (Mr. Manners nodded approval.) His grandmother just carried on staring at him until he thought one of them would turn to stone, but eventually she murmured to herself, “Can I have a glass of milk, Gran,” as if it were the most puzzling thing she’d ever heard. And then she returned to watching Thomas. (“You’d think he’d never seen a lawn before!”)
“Milk?” Mrs. Kerrich laughed. “Yew never sa’isfied, bor, that’s your trouble.” Growing boys were supposed to drink milk, Sunny knew that, everyone knew that! What was wrong with these people? And eat biscuits and bananas and bread-and-butter-and-jam and all the other things that were considered indulgences at Jordan Manor but which his real grandfather—Grandpa Ted—saw as necessary punctuation marks during the day. Sunny was accustomed to being with grown-ups who seemed to know nothing about children—Adam’s Acre, his mother’s “women’s peace group,” his class at school—but in all these places he got fed, sooner or later.
“Oh, man, yeah,” his father, Dominic, said. “It’s like living in a Dickens novel. Please, sir, can I have more? I remember. And then when you leave to go to boarding school you’ll have to eat the shit that they feed you there.” Boarding school, Sunny thought? He wasn’t going to boarding school, he was going home at the end of the summer holidays, back to the school in York that he hadn’t liked much but now was beginning to feel like a lost paradise. “Oh, don’t be so sure,” his father said. “Now she’s got her claws in you she won’t let you go.”