The Store Room

by Saki

The children were going, as a special surprise, to the beach at Jagworth. Nicholas was not going; he had behaved very badly. That morning, he refused to eat his bread-and-milk for the stupid reason that there was a frog in it. Older, cleverer and better people told him that there could not be a frog in his bread-and-milk. But he continued to talk nonsense, and described in great detail the colour of the frog. The problem was that there really was a frog in Nicholas' bread-and-milk. He put it there, so he knew. The adults explained to him for a very long time that it was very, very wrong to take a frog from the garden and put it into bread-and-milk. But the most important thing to Nicholas was that the older, cleverer and better people were wrong about things they were absolutely sure about.

"You said there couldn't be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk," he repeated.

So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his very uninteresting younger brother were going to Jagworth beach that afternoon and he was staying at home. His cousins’ aunt, who called herself his aunt too, hurriedly planned the Jagworth trip to show Nicholas that he must pay for his bad behaviour at the breakfast table. It was her habit, when one of the children behaved badly, to plan a surprise that the naughty child could not enjoy. If all the children were naughty, she suddenly heard of a circus in a nearby town, a circus with countless elephants, which they could not visit because they were so naughty.

They expected Nicholas to cry when the children started their trip. In fact, his girl-cousin, who hurt her knee while she was getting ready to go, did all the crying.

"She cried and cried," said Nicholas happily, as the children miserably drove away.

"She'll soon be alright," said the aunt; "It will be a wonderful afternoon for racing on that beautiful sand. They are sure to enjoy themselves!"

"Bobby won't enjoy himself and he won't race much," said Nicholas with an unpleasant laugh. "His boots are hurting him. They're too small."

"Why didn't he tell me they were hurting?" asked the aunt.

"He told you twice, but you weren't listening. You often don't listen when we tell you important things."

"You must not go into the fruit garden," said the aunt, changing the subject.

"Why not?" demanded Nicholas.

"Because you behaved badly," said the aunt.

His face changed. It was clear to his aunt that he wanted to get into the fruit garden, "only," as she said to herself, "because I’ve told him he must not."

Now the fruit garden had two doors, and when a small person like Nicholas got inside there he could disappear in the fruit bushes. The aunt had many other things to do that afternoon, but she spent an hour or two gardening, so she could watch the two doors.

Nicholas made one or two secret runs towards one or other of the two doors, but he could never for a moment escape his aunt. In fact, he had no plan to get into the fruit garden, but it was very useful for him that his aunt should believe that he wanted to. She would stay there all the afternoon watching. When she was sure that Nicholas was trying to get into the fruit garden, he went back into the house and quickly tried his new plan.

He had thought about this for a long time. When he stood on a chair in the library, he could reach a shelf where there was a fat, important-looking key. The key was as important as it looked. It locked and opened the store room, which was usually only open for aunts. Nicholas did not know much about putting keys into keyholes and turning locks, but for some days he had practised with the key of the schoolroom door. He did not believe in luck or accidents. It was hard to turn the key, but it turned. The door opened and Nicholas was in an unknown land, much more interesting than the fruit garden.

Often, so often, Nicholas had imagined what the store room was like, the room that was so carefully hidden from young eyes. It was everything he hoped.

First, it was large and there was only a little light. Second, it was a storehouse of unimagined interest. The aunt was one of those people who think that things go bad if you use them. So she put them in the dirt and cold to keep them clean and dry.

The parts of the house Nicholas knew best were empty and not very happy places, but here there were wonderful things to look at. The best was a carpet. To Nicholas it was a living story; he sat down and looked at the wonderful colours under the dirt, and saw the details of the picture on the carpet.

A man was hunting in a time long, long ago. He had just shot a deer with an arrow. It wasn’t a difficult shot because the deer was only one or two steps away from him. The thick bushes in the picture meant it was easy to get near a deer that was eating. And the two dogs that were jumping were waiting till the arrow was shot. That part of the picture was simple, although interesting, but did the hunter see, as Nicholas saw, four running wolves that were coming towards him in the wood? There could be more than four of them behind the trees. And could the man and his dogs kill the four wolves? The man had only two arrows left, and he might miss with one or both of them.

The only thing Nicholas knew about his shooting was that he could hit a large deer two steps away. Nicholas sat for many golden minutes thinking about the possibilities. He believed there were more than four wolves and that the man and his dogs had a difficult job in front of them.

He heard something. His aunt was screaming his name from the fruit garden outside. She had worried that she could not see him and decided that he had climbed over the wall into the fruit garden; she was now busy looking for him, hopelessly but with a lot of energy.

"Nicholas, Nicholas!" she screamed, "Come out of the garden now. Don’t try to hide! I can see you."

It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone had smiled in that store room.

Very soon, she stopped calling Nicholas' name and gave a scream and a cry for somebody to come quickly. Nicholas quietly left the room, locked the door, and put the key exactly where he found it. His aunt was still calling his name when he wandered into the front garden.

"Who's calling?" he asked.

"Me," came the answer from the other side of the wall; "Didn't you hear me? I was looking for you in the fruit garden, and I fell into the water tank. Luckily there's no water in it, but I can't get out. Bring the little ladder from under the tree in the fruit garden."

"I must not go into the fruit garden," said Nicholas quickly.

"I told you not to and now I’m telling you that you can," came the voice, rather angrily.

"Your voice isn’t the same as my aunt's," said Nicholas; "You may be the Devil trying to make me bad. Aunt often tells me that the Devil plays with me and that I always follow him. This time I'm not going to."

"Don't talk nonsense," said the prisoner in the tank; "go and get the ladder."

"Will there be strawberry jam for tea?" asked Nicholas.

"Of course there will be," said the aunt, secretly deciding that Nicholas could have none of it.

"Now I know that you are the Devil and not my aunt," shouted Nicholas happily; "When we asked aunt for strawberry jam yesterday she said there wasn't any. I know there are four jars of it in the cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it's there, but she doesn't, because she said there wasn't any!"

There was an unusual luxury talking to an aunt like he was talking to the Devil, but Nicholas knew that luxuries could not continue forever. He walked noisily away, and it was a servant who at last rescued the aunt from the water tank.

They had tea that evening in silence. The sea was very high when the children arrived at Jagworth, so there were no sands to play on – something the aunt forgot when she was organising the trip. Bobby's boots made him very angry and unhappy all afternoon, and the children did not enjoy themselves.

The aunt was silent as everyone who has stayed in a water tank for fifty-five minutes would be. And Nicholas was silent. He had a lot to think about.

It was possible, he believed, that the hunter could escape with his dogs while the wolves ate the deer.