Hattie Read online

  Frida Nilsson

  ILLUSTRATIONS BY STINA WIRSÉN

  Contents

  At Home with Hattie

  The Black Bus

  Linda

  The Horse

  Lost

  Snoopy Comes to Stay

  Richard Throws Up

  Ugly Haircut

  Cannon Shoes

  Advent

  The Last Day Before Christmas Break

  Christmas

  The Waffle

  Seven Years Old

  The Long Ski Tour

  The Church Childrens Hour

  The Clown

  Happy Easter

  New Pet

  Happy Summer

  Beautiful Flowers

  To Summer Paradise

  A New Year

  Hello Frida Nilsson

  AT HOME WITH HATTIE

  This is the story of Hattie. She’s six years old and about to start school at last.

  Her school is in Hardemo. That’s a tiny, tiny town in the country. The town is so far out in the middle of nowhere that hardly anyone goes there. Except for Hattie.

  She’s been waiting forever to start school, to go on the school bus, then run the last bit. She’ll never be able to bike to school because she lives far too far away. Hattie doesn’t even live in the middle of nowhere. She lives outside it.

  Hattie’s house is red and called Ängatorp, which means meadow house. Her mother is in the kitchen changing the vacuum cleaner bag. She’s tired because she’s been working all night at the hospital. And yet, Hattie thinks, she’s never too tired for cleaning. Sometimes she wonders if her mother’s lying when she says how boring it is to get out the bucket and mop. Whatever Hattie finds boring she avoids whenever she can. Brushing teeth, eating fish, changing her underwear and going to bed, for example. She particularly avoids cleaning. And she suspects that her mother secretly finds cleaning one of the loveliest things you can do.

  Her father is upstairs writing. He’s in a hurry. He has an hour before he has to jump into the blue car and zoom to the newspaper office in town to talk about his article. He’s a journalist and has sacrificed himself many times for the sake of the news.

  Once the newspaper wanted an article on how to survive in the wild without provisions. So her father went out into the forest and caught a magpie with his bare hands! Then he grilled it on an open fire and ate it up. After that he wrote in the newspaper about his experience. The magpie tasted almost like chicken.

  The wind sings in the trees around the red house, and sheep bleat in the barn. There are jabbering ducks in the duckhouse, and hens that wander about and poop in her mother’s flowerbeds. In the woodshed is a turkey keeping out of the fox’s way, and in the basement are a thousand spiders just waiting for a chance to squiggle inside Hattie’s top.

  Spades and rakes hang in the puppy shed. The puppies went to new homes ages ago; now there’s just the old mother left. Her name is Tacka and she’s black with white on her tail. She’s never bitten a single person. But if Hattie wants to put her on a leash and take her for a nice walk, she runs into the trees and hides for hours. Hattie thinks this is strange. If she was a dog, she’d want to be on the leash all day. The leash is so pretty!

  There are also two stripy outdoor cats. Havana and Stick. Havana is nice and cleans herself on Hattie’s lap in the evenings. Stick is horrible. He comes into the house when he’s hungry, and then Hattie has to run and hide in the bathroom. If there’s no food in the cat bowls, Stick tries to eat Hattie instead. He grabs onto her leg, gnawing and biting.

  “Mama, feed the cats!” cries Hattie, kicking her leg to shake Stick free. As soon as he hears the rattle of cat food in the kitchen, Stick shoots off like an arrow and Hattie can breathe out.

  But then, while Stick sleeps fat and full in front of the heater, Hattie creeps over to the bowls. She takes a few leftover cat biscuits. She creeps behind the living room curtain and eats them up. Her mother would rather she ate beef and dill stew. But Hattie loves cat food. It tastes almost like chips.

  This summer Hattie has rummaged around outside every day. In the evenings she’s been watching a great show on TV. Hattie is jealous of the main character, Lisa. She has two sisters living next door on one side and a sister and brother on the other. Hattie has no one next door. Only an old man called Alf who drives a digger.

  “I’m so booored,” she complains.

  Her father puts his head to one side. “Little shrimp.” He ruffles her hair. Then he says that as soon as school starts she’ll never be bored. Hattie is looking forward to it so much she might burst.

  THE BLACK BUS

  One day, when Hattie is out on the lawn, a black bus comes cruising along the road. It has tinted windows and crawls past the house. Her mother is sitting on the steps planting flowers in pots. She thinks the bus is up to no good. It must be thieves looking for a house to break into!

  The bus turns around at the corner and rolls past again. “Run in and get paper and a pen,” Mama tells Hattie. “So we can write down the registration number.”

  Finally, something’s happening in the outside of nowhere. Hattie runs into the kitchen and is back in a second with paper and pen.

  “Sneak over and write it down,” whispers her mother. She is crouching on the porch, squinting at the bus.

  Hattie creeps up behind the lilac hedge. At the mailbox she ducks down in the grass and is just about to write down the numbers when the bus stops and the window rolls down! A man with brown curly hair who’s chewing tobacco sticks his head out.

  Beside the curly-haired man there’s another thief, wearing a cap and a leather jacket. Hattie feels terror run through her. She stares, panic-stricken, back at the porch.

  Her mother comes running as fast as her clogs can carry her, the sharp garden rake at the ready.

  “Are you Hattie?” asks the curly man.

  Her mother’s mouth opens.

  “Yes,” squeaks Hattie.

  The men are very pleased. They explain that they’ve been driving around for an hour looking for Hattie’s place. They’re bus drivers and they drive the bus that will take Hattie to school. Her mother looks surprised but throws the rake in the grass and puts out her hand.

  “Good, that’s great,” she says, smiling.

  Then she stands for a long time talking with the bus drivers.

  At last the curly one turns to Hattie. “What were you doing with the pen and paper, by the way?”

  Just then her mother decides they’ve talked long enough. She and Hattie must go in at once and make lunch. The men surely have to be on their way.

  Hattie stands in the kitchen and watches the bus disappear between the trees. There can’t be many days to go.

  LINDA

  It’s early in the morning. The dew is still on the grass when Hattie climbs into the back seat of the blue car. Her parents are coming to school so they can meet the teacher properly. After today, the nice bus drivers will take her. Hattie has lime green jeans and her heart is beating quick-quick. She’s starting school!

  They drive over hills and past yellow cornfields. Soon they come to Hardemo, where the small red houses sit close together. They drive past the little white church, right next to the school. It’s built of orange bricks with wide steps in front. There are lots of cars parked next to it. Flocks of children scurry in through the door.

  Hattie looks at them all.

  Some of the children look so big. Almost grown-up. They’re as tall as ladders. Some of them run over the grass to pick apples from the apple tree. Hattie wants to too, but she’d never dare join them. She’s far too little.

  Once they’re in the coat area, all the new children squash in front of a yellow door. No one looks happy. Over by the bathrooms Hattie sees a girl with a pin
k top and turned-up nose. The girl is biting her lip and staring icily at the children around her. Hattie quickly looks away.

  She’s changed her mind. She doesn’t want to go to school any more. She’d rather rummage about in the garden for the rest of her life.

  Then the teacher comes to open the door. Hattie can go in and sit at her desk. It has a sign on it. HATTIE, someone has written in big letters. She looks around. The walls look like mustard and are quite bare. The floor is shiny green. The teacher offers all the grown-ups coffee and buns. Her mother and father are laughing with the other parents away in a corner. None of the children are laughing. They sit as quiet as little ghosts.

  Hattie sneaks a look at the sign on the desk beside her. LINDA, it says. She wonders who’ll come and sit there…at the same moment the chair scrapes beside her. It’s the angry girl with the turned-up nose!

  Linda doesn’t even say hello. She just sits down and stares straight ahead. She’s cute. Someone all the mothers will like because of her blonde hair, thinks Hattie. She herself has brown hair and is more the sort that mothers don’t like because she talks the whole time, like a magpie.

  Her stomach hurts. Bullied, she thinks. Bullied right from the start. Not a single person has talked to her yet. Especially not Linda. She sits with her mouth scrunched up like a raisin, blinking her small blue eyes.

  At last the teacher has finished with coffee. He rushes over to the teacher’s desk and tugs his beard. “Welcome,” he says. “Now you can each tell us your name. We’ll begin at the far corner.”

  “Mathias,” says one.

  “Peter,” says the next. Then come Patrick, Richard and Nicholas. After Nicholas is Karin and then it’s Hattie’s turn. She’s nervous. Imagine if she happens to say Little Idiot instead of her proper name. She takes a breath and mumbles Hattie as fast as she can. It’s over in a second. Then it’s Linda’s turn.

  But Linda says nothing. Hattie can see that she’s shaking. Her little blue eyes are shiny and her bottom lip is trembling. Linda isn’t cross. She’s just so nervous that she can’t make a sound. Everyone waits. Linda’s ski-jump nose twitches this way and that. It’s covered in freckles.

  “Linda,” Hattie whispers at last.

  Linda gives a start. “Yes,” she rasps. “Linda.”

  Then it’s Alexander’s turn. Linda wipes the tears from her eyes and looks at Hattie. Hattie smiles. Linda smiles back. She has a crooked front tooth, white as a sugar lump.

  And before the end of the day, the teacher is forced to move Hattie and Linda apart because they can’t stop talking for a second. Linda’s no longer nervous; she’s the most fun person Hattie has ever met. Sweet as a princess, but she chatters on like a magpie. What a good friend!

  THE HORSE

  Hattie loves school. The teacher teaches them new things every day and soon the mustard walls are covered with bright pictures. As soon as it’s art time Hattie takes out her crayons and draws dogs. She writes Tacka at the top of all her drawings.

  One of the girls in the class is called Ellen. She always draws horses. She writes Crumb at the top, because that’s the name of her horse.

  Linda draws the guinea pig she has in a cage in her room at home. Finally, she writes his name: Roy.

  Today at break time Hattie and Linda sit on the railing next to the cars and look at a photo. It’s of a little fuzzy ball with eyes shining like two headlights caught in the camera flash. This is Roy. Hattie thinks Roy is the most beautiful guinea pig in the whole world.

  “Do you want to play horses?” someone suddenly asks. It’s Ellen. She always wants to play horses.

  In the playground is a shed with sand on the floor and an untidy pile of sticks. Ellen sets out all the sticks to make jumps. Then she gallops a couple of circuits to show how it’s done. She does loops and circles and, just when she’s about to crash into the wall, suddenly switches direction.

  “I’m the stallion,” she says. “Hattie can be the mare. And now we’re starting.”

  They run. Linda is the trainer and stands with a stick in her hand. If Hattie and Ellen disobey, she can hit them on the rump.

  Hattie trots nicely and gets plenty of praise.

  Ellen neighs and kicks backwards. “Trot!” shrieks Linda, but Ellen won’t obey. She races around like a tornado, kicking all the jumps to pieces with her powerful hooves. “Trot! Trot!” shouts Linda, waving the stick. “Otherwise we’ll sell you to the knackers!”

  All of a sudden, Ellen completely changes. She fixes her flashing stallion eyes directly on the trainer. Linda blinks in fear. Then there’s a threatening snort from Ellen. She stirs up the sandy floor with her feet and kicks at the shed walls. She backs away slowly, ready to charge. Hattie stands stock-still, staring at her.

  “Halt,” squeaks Linda.

  The stallion shakes its head and flings its mane about. Then it lets out a loud whinny and starts to gallop.

  “No!” says Linda, jumping out of the way. “We’re not playing any more. I’m going.”

  But the stallion doesn’t hear and pounds after Linda at full gallop. Linda throws away the stick and runs.

  “Stop it!” Hattie cries.

  Then the stallion turns and gallops at Hattie instead. Hattie rushes to Linda and grabs her arm.

  “Quick!” she cries. At the last second, they throw open the shed door and leap out. They close the door, and the stallion crashes into it. Hattie finds a stick to bolt the door.

  “When you calm down, we’ll open it,” says Linda, putting her ear against the door. The stallion replies with a kick that shakes the whole shed. Linda rubs her ear.

  “Then you’ll have to stay there,” she says. “We’ll come back in a minute and see if you’re any nicer.”

  They run back to the railing and Linda takes out the picture of Roy.

  Hattie longs to go to Linda’s house and meet Roy properly. And if only she had a guinea pig too, instead of Stick the warrior cat.

  After a couple of minutes, the school bell rings. Linda puts away the photo and they run inside. Hattie goes to her desk. Linda disappears to her place across the room.

  They’ve only had a couple of weeks of school and the teacher already looks tired. Now it’s geography, and the lesson is about southern Sweden. The teacher talks about his camping trip and shows pictures of long beaches. In every photo, the teacher’s wife is lying like a little sausage in a bikini.

  Suddenly the teacher wrinkles his nose and looks around the classroom. “Wasn’t Ellen here today?” he asks.

  The horse! They forgot to let it out! Hattie looks anxiously at Linda.

  Linda is as nervous as she was at the first roll call. Her little blue eyes are blinking in terror and soon wet pearls roll down her cheeks.

  The teacher sees what’s happening.

  “Linda!” he honks. “Do you know where Ellen has got to?”

  Linda can’t say a word. Her face is red and her pointy nose twitches as she sniffs.

  In the end Hattie puts her hand in the air.

  “Yes?” says the teacher.

  “Well…” Hattie begins, glancing over at Linda. “She may still be in the shed. She was locked in.”

  The teacher raises his eyebrows. His big beard stands out straight like the prickles on a hedgehog. “Locked in?”

  Hattie nods.

  “We were playing horses,” she whispers.

  The teacher snorts and heads for the classroom door. “No one moves till I’m back!” he cries. And then he’s gone.

  Hattie swallows a big lump that’s stuck in her throat. The whole class is in an uproar. At least the boys are. They think Hattie and Linda have done something really clever.

  The teacher comes back with the horse. By now it’s no longer wild and angry. It’s just sad, with red-rimmed eyes and steamed-up glasses. Hattie feels her heart sting. When the horse trots past she grabs hold of a hoof. “Sorry,” she says, but it pulls away and goes to its desk.

  The teacher stands at his desk. N
ow Hattie and Linda really get in trouble. “Imagine if the shed had caught on fire!” he says. “Or if you’d forgotten her for the whole night! What if Ellen was someone with a great fear of being shut in sheds? You need to think, think, and think again.” The teacher even wants them to think what might have happened if Ellen was a person with diabetes. He wants the whole class to think about that, just because his own child at home has diabetes.

  Hattie feels as if her life has ended. Now she might just as well move out to the henhouse and perch on a stick till she dies.

  LOST

  When Hattie arrives home that day things get even worse. Because the teacher has called to tell her mother about the horse. Her mother’s face is pale.

  She’d been in the living room trying out new fabric on a chair for Hattie when the telephone rang. Hattie had chosen the fabric herself, one with bananas on it. But now her mother doesn’t want to finish the chair. She wants to throw the whole thing away. “How could you lock someone in like that?” she asks. Hattie has never seen her so sad.

  Her mother leaves the room without saying any more. The chair with bananas on the cushions is half-finished on the floor. It all looks ridiculous.

  Hattie runs out into the cold afternoon. She has her jacket and boots on and a hat with tassels.

  The sun is dropping towards the horizon. Hattie steps between fir trees and disappears into the forest.

  Fallen branches crunch under her feet. Hattie walks quickly. The tassels on her hat swing from side to side and her tears drip onto the moss.

  Her mother doesn’t want to see her again, she knows that. Nor does her father. She’ll never again see Tacka or Havana, never see Stick or Linda. She decides to go far, far away so they won’t have to see her. The leaves are slippery and yellow under her boots.

  When she’s walked a long way into the forest, she sits with her back against a tree. Tears have made her cheeks stripy. Darkness comes creeping…

  And suddenly she’s completely terrified!