The Brothers Lionheart

“It’s funny,” I said to Jonathan afterward. “Here in Nangiyala there’s everything I ever wished for.”

“Yes, but that’s what I told you,” said Jonathan. And it was exactly as he’d told me, while he’d sat there with me in the kitchen at home. Though now I was able to see that it was true, too, and I was pleased about that.

There are something things you never forget. Never, ever, shall I forget that first evening in the kitchen at Knights Farm, how wonderful it was and what it felt like to lie talking to Jonathan just as before. Now we were living in a kitchen again as we had always done, although it didn’t look like our kitchen at home town, that’s for sure. The kitchen at Knights Farm must be ancient, I thought, with its thick beams in the ceiling and its large open fireplace. What a fireplace; it took up half the wall and if you wanted to cook some food, you had to do it directly over the fire, just as they used to in the old days. In the middle of the floor was the sturdiest table I’ve ever seen in my life, with long, wooden benches down each side, and I reckon at least a score of people could sit there and eat at the same time without being too crowded.

“We might as well live in the kitchen as we used to,” said Jonathan. “Then Mother can have the other room when she comes.”

One room and a kitchen, that was what Knights Farm was, but we weren’t used to and didn’t need any more. All the same, it was at least twice as big as at home.

At home! I told Jonathan about the note I had left on the kitchen table for Mother.

“I wrote to her that we’d meet her in Nangiyala. Though who knows when she’ll come.”

“It may be some time,” said Jonathan. “But she’ll have a good room with space for ten sewing machines, if she wants them.”

Guess what I like! I like lying in an ancient old cupboard-bed in an ancient old kitchen, talking to Jonathan while the light from the fire flickers around the walls, and when I look out of the window, I see a branch of a cherry tree swaying in the evening breeze.