The two Bears looked at each other and offered theirs. “Spoon!” Goldilocks declared, almost triumphantly.
A clean spoon was fetched and each bowl sampled. The first was pronounced “Too stodgy”, and the second, “Tastes funny”, which after a further taste was said to be because “it has yucky cream in it,” and refused with a defiant shake of the golden head.
“Well, no porridge for Goldilocks,” said James, “and more for us.” He had decided this was really too much; he would not rise to it, not when the provoker was a child.
Mrs Bear, meanwhile, was busily tidying up. Scooping up Goldilocks' thrown, though unbroken, bowl and mopping up the congealing porridge with a damp dishcloth. 'All this mess caused by one little girl', she thought as she wiped, 'how does her mother put up with it?'
A frowning Goldilocks watched them silently, 'Why were they not doing what she wanted? Or arguing with her? Her mother usually did.'
Mr Bear had disappeared to shave; the whirr and hum of his electric razor could be heard from the bathroom upstairs, and Mrs Bear was washing up in the kitchen. Goldilocks, her golden curly head resting on her right hand began with her left to drum on the table. Drum, drum, drum, “bored, bored, bored,” drum, drum, she muttered in time with and in-between the drumming.
Mrs Bear on hearing her called out, “You can get down from the table now and come and help.” Goldilocks, giving no sign of hearing her, went on sitting. Drum, drum, “Bored, bored.” Then having judged she'd left long enough between the summons she scooted down from the dining chair and went in search of Margaret (she never called her Mrs Bear), her little feet pattering on the lined flooring until she found her.
Mrs Bear was now plumping cushions, accompanied by the sound upstairs of teeth being brushed. “Ah, there you are,” Mrs Bear said, flushed, in response to the sudden appearance of Goldilocks before her, “I have an important job for you. Come with me.”
Mrs Bear walked purposively ahead, checking every now and then to make sure the little girl was following, and led her into a domed-glassed room with an outside tap, picked up the green watering can beneath it, turned the tap on to a steady stream and filled it partway, then turned the tap off and handed the can to Goldilocks, saying in a bright, clear voice, “The house-plants need a drink, see if you can find them.”
Goldilocks stood there, the sprout dripping a little on her black buttoned boots, with her little mouth open. A job! Mrs Bear almost laughed (and to Goldilocks almost looked pretty instead of drab and mousy), “Go on off you go...BUT no running!”
“The plants need a drink...the plants need a drink...hide and seek....plant, where are you?” chanted Goldilocks, with the watering can gripped in both hands, as she searched high and low, inside the house. “Mustn't spill...mustn't spill...”
A tall potted plant, standing in the cool hallway, was being given a drink when Mr Bear thumped down the stairs, “I know where you can find another,” he said in a mock whisper, to the watchful little girl, motioning with his head towards the stairs he'd just come down from, “in a small room, at the top.”
“Thank you James,” she answered quickly, with a bob, and pushed past him, though still being mindful not to spill, to take the stairs one at a time.
“Bye dear, see you tonight,” called James to his wife, as he headed out the front door.
Goldilocks, on reaching the top, saw first the door to the bathroom standing open; the closed door ahead she knew was Margaret and James' bedroom, and the door to the right was the study. Was she allowed in there? In she went, immediately spotting the plant just behind the desk with the typewriter on it. Hateful thing! Her writer-mother had one just like it. She very deliberately took some earth, clogged its keys, then watered it, and crept out.
Picture credit: A Girl with a Watering Can, 1876, Pierre Auguste Renoir (source: WikiArt).
Written May 2020.
