Skates and Tulips by Dorothea Callum
Author: Dorothea Callum
Publisher: Probably never finished
Source book: Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome (Swallows & Amazons #4)
Dick and Dorothea Callum appear before the Swallows and the Amazons do in Winter Holiday. In fact, we see our heroes first through their eyes: they watch “the other children” rowing on the lake, and signaling to each other. Later Dick indulges in some star gazing (he’s a scientist at heart), then he and Dot ‘signal to Mars’ which is to say, they unknowingly signal to Holly Howe where the Swallows are staying.
When Captain Nancy of the Amazons is diagnosed with mumps, the Swallows and the Ds are quarantined for a month in the coldest, snowiest January anyone can remember for years. None of them is ill but they can’t go back to school all covered in germs, so they are able to take advantage of the snow and the frozen lake. The igloo they have carefully constructed in the hills is abandoned in favour of the Fram (named for Nansen’s Fram, but also see Nansen’s amazing achievements in later life); Captain Flint’s houseboat, frozen in the ice.
Nancy is very keen that the polar explorers should take advantage of the Fram as much as possible, preferably sleeping there overnight. Dick and Dorothea are volunteered. But when Dorothea is standing on deck, looking out at the lights of Rio, she sees a tall man skating towards her, dragging a small sledge. Dorothea has seen pictures of people in Holland, all doing their shopping with little sledges at their heels. Dorothea decides the man must be Dutch, and the small suitcase on his sledge must be full of tulip bulbs. At once (because that is Dorothea all over), she begins a story:
“The tall Dutchman bowed low. “Madam,” he said, “Your taste in tulips has become proverbial in my country and I have come from Amsterdam to offer you a small collection...” Skates and Tulips would be the title. But she never gets any further.
The tall man turns out to be Captain Flint (Nancy and Peggy’s Uncle Jim), and not a Dutchman at all. Quickly realising that the strange children on board his houseboat are friends of his masterful niece Nancy, he stops for tea before escorting them home to Dixon’s Farm.
Perhaps not the very first fictional book I ever came across but the one I never forget. Skates and Tulips: what a great name for a book. What a shame it never got written. Of course the skates and the tulips are a bit of a cliché and there’s a great deal more to the Netherlands than tulips, including lots of fabulous art and some amazing crispy snacks, plus the tallest population in the world (my Dutch friend really feels it that she’s so short!).
Dorothea also begins to write The Outcasts: The two children, brother and sister, shared their last few crumbs and looked this way and that along the deserted shore. Was this to be the end?
And Iron Bars. A Tale of the Past: “In you go,” said the goaler, and, as the unsuspecting maiden crept into the darkness, the gate clanged behind her, and she heard the rusty key grate in the lock. She was a prisoner.
Plus Frost and Snow. A Romance. Whatever plotting Dorothea did inside her head she never seems to get any further than writing “Chapter 1” in her notebook.
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| Can you spot the Fram? |
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