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The walk down Cromwell Road on wet days had been wearing on Pauline, Petrova and Posy for quite some time. They tried to inject as much amusement into it as possible, but there was only so much they could do against Nana's implacable insistence that walking the Cromwell Road was simply what was done.
One November day, however, just before they reached the V&A, Posy spotted an ice rink, skaters scattered across it, calling to each other.
'Oh, Pauline,' cried Posy, 'Wouldn't it be fun!'
Pauline had vague memories of skating with Petrova in the good days, before Gum's money had run out. 'I did love skating,' she said, wistfully.
Nana paused to let the girls watch the skaters skimming across the rink. 'Such good exercise, too,' she sighed. 'Such a pity...' but she stifled the rest of what she had been about to say.
Posy, though, had heard it. 'Couldn't we, Nana? Perhaps not today, but sometime. It looks so very glorious, to simply fly about like that,' she said, clinging her arms about and lifting herself up on one leg in imitation of the girls below.
Petrova nudged her little sister hard. 'It wasn't skates you came with, it was ballet shoes,' she said. 'And we've no money to spare for either.'
'Very true, Petrova,' said Nana. 'Come along now, girls,' she said, and pulled them away. But that night, when the girls were all in bed and she had gone downstairs to have tea and toast with Sylvia she mentioned the rink.
'Perhaps as a Christmas treat?' suggested Sylvia. 'We must be able to afford treats to the children every so often.'
A few days later, properly swathed in coats, hats, gloves and scarves, Nana escorted the Fossil girls down the Cromwell Road to the rink outside the Natural History museum. Posy, with her aggravatingly good balance and apparently natural grace, took to the ice as though she had been born to it. Pauline, who was a most responsible girl, tried to hold her small sister's hand, but Posy's enthusiasm was more than Pauline could contain. Nana watched them from the relative safety of dry land: feeling sorry as she almost always did for Petrova, left in the wake of Posy's heedless excitement and Pauline's pink-and-white prettiness.
'Pardon my forwardness,' said a voice at Nana's elbow. She turned around to see a comfortable-looking woman dressed in warm clothes and holding a cup of chocolate, 'But are those three girls your charges?'
Nana nodded. 'Have you a child here, too?' she asked, suspecting that the woman who had addressed her was also a children's nurse.
'I do,' she said. 'Two, in a matter of speaking. I'll call them over,' she said, moving towards the barriers and waving towards one corner of the rink. A slender girl with corn-coloured hair answered the wave and came gliding across the ice.
'Yes, Nana?' said the girl.
'This is Harriet Johnson,' said the woman. 'Harriet, would you send Lalla over here? But I was wondering if you'd mind helping this woman's charge. She's very new to skating, and I know, dear, that you remember how that feels.'
'Of course I do, Nana,' said Harriet. She held out her hand to the Fossil girls' Nana. 'I'm very pleased to meet you, Ma'am.'
Nana took Harriet's hand. 'I'm sure Petrova would appreciate some help. Pauline remembers how to skate - a little, at least - from many years ago, and my Posy... well, she seems to be taking to it like a duck to water.'
'Is Posy the little girl talking to Lalla?' asked Harriet. 'There in the centre of the rink? It can't possibly be the first time she's skated.'
'And yet it is,' replied Nana. 'I've brought her up from a baby, and this is the first time she's been on the ice.'
'She's ever so much better than I was, my first time, isn't she, Nana?' Harriet said, looking towards her own Nana.
'That's as may be,' she responded. Harriet smiled and nodded, and then took off across to the centre of the rink, where Lalla, Posy and Pauline were standing.
Nana Fossil watched as Harriet chattered quickly with Lalla, and then glided across the ice to Petrova. She introduced herself prettily, and Petrova's harried face lit up with a smile.
'She's a treasure, my Harriet,' said Harriet's Nana. 'My real charge is Lalla Moore. Always destined to be a champion figure skater, like her father, Cyril Moore,' she said. 'But things turn out differently, and it's actually Harriet who's the better at figures. Lalla, there, she's heading for exhibition skating. But it does both of them good to come to a rink like this and just skate like normal children.'
Nana Fossil, watching Lalla and Posy in the centre of the rink, laughed. 'I'm not sure that mosst normal children can skate like that,' she said, nodding at where Lalla seemed to be teaching Posy some most complicated movements.
Nana Moore shook her head. 'I don't know all that much about the intricacies of skating,' she said. 'Never cared to know too much, only wanted to keep Lalla healthy and happy. But I know that those spread eaglets or whatever she's teaching your little one right now... they're fairly basic movements. Not that Lalla doesn't do them beautifully. She does. Very proud of her eaglets she is. But it's Harriet who puts all the careful work into her skating.'
'You have two very interesting charges there,' said Nana Fossil.
Nana Moore looked from Petrova to Pauline and Posy. 'Seems to me that you do, too,' she said. And for the rest of the time that the girls were skating on the rink at the Museum end of the Cromwell Road, the two nurses chattered amiably about their charges.