Love and Family Theme Analysis

My grandmother was tremendously old and wrinkled, with a massive wide body which was smothered in grey lace. She sat there majestic in her armchair, filling every inch of it. Not even a mouse could have squeezed in to sit beside her. I myself, just over seven years old, was crouched on the floor at her feet, wearing pyjamas, dressing-gown, and slippers.

[…]

My grandmother was the only grandmother I ever met who smoked cigars. She lit one now, a long black cigar that smelt of burning rubber.

“Why can’t we stay here in Norway? You would hate to live anywhere else! You told me you would!”

“I know,” she said. “But there are a lot of complications with money and with the house that you wouldn’t understand. Also, it said in the will that although all your family is Norwegian, you were born in England and you have started your education there and he wants you to continue going to English schools.”

“Oh Grandmamma!” I cried. “You don’t want to go and live in our English house, I know you don’t!”

“Of course I don’t,” she said. “But I am afraid I must. The will said that your mother felt the same way about it, and it is important to respect the wishes of the parents.”

There was no way out of it. We had to go to England, and my grandmother started making arrangements at once.

When there were only three weeks of the Summer Term left, an awful thing happened. My grandmother got pneumonia. She became very ill, and a trained nurse moved into the house to look after her. The doctor explained to me that pneumonia is not normally a dangerous illness nowadays because of penicillin, but when a person is more than eighty years old, as my grandmother was, then it is very dangerous indeed. He said he didn’t even dare move her to hospital in her condition, so she stayed in her bedroom and I hung about outside the door while oxygen cylinders and all sorts of other frightening things were taken in to her.

“Can I go in and see her?” I asked.

“No, dear,” the nurse said. “Not at the moment.”

“A mouse!” cried the witches. “What a frumptious thought!”

“Classrooms vill all be svorrrming vith mice!” shouted The Grand High Witch. “Chaos and pandemonium vill be rrreigning in every school in Inkland! Teachers vill be hopping up and down! Vimmen teachers vill be standing on desks and holding up skirts and yelling ‘Help, help, help!’”

“They will! They will!” cried the audience.

“And vot,” shouted The Grand High Witch, “is happening next in every school?”

“Tell us!” they cried. “Tell us, O Brainy One!”

The Grand High Witch stretched her stringy neck forward and grinned at the audience, showing two rows of pointed teeth, slightly blue. She raised her voice louder than ever and shouted, “Mouse-trrraps is coming out!”

“Your biggest problem at the moment is your parents. How are they going to take this? Will they treat you with sympathy and kindness?”

Bruno considered this for a moment. “I think,” he said, “that my father is going to be a bit put out.”

“And your mother?”

“She’s terrified of mice,” said Bruno.

“Then you’ve got a problem, haven’t you?”

“Why only me?” he said. “What about you?”

“My grandmother will understand perfectly,” I said. “She knows all about witches.”

“I’ll talk where I dashed well want to, madam,” Mr Jenkins said. “Come on now, out with it! If Bruno has broken a window or smashed your spectacles, I‘ll pay for the damage, but I’m not budging out of this seat!”

[…]

“Where is Bruno, anyway?” Mr Jenkins said. “Tell him to come here and see me.”

“He’s here already,” my grandmother said. “He’s in my handbag.” She patted the big floppy leather bag with her walking-stick.

“What the heck d’you mean he’s in your handbag?” Mr Jenkins shouted.

“Are you trying to be funny?” Mrs. Jenkins said, very prim.

“There’s nothing funny about this,” my grandmother said. “Your son has suffered a rather unfortunate mishap.”

“He’s always suffering mishaps,” Mr Jenkins said. “He suffers from overeating and then he suffers from wind. You should hear him after supper. He sounds like a brass band!”

“Bruno is a mouse,” my grandmother said, calm as ever.

“He most certainly is not a mouse!” shouted Mr Jenkins.

“Oh yes I am!” Bruno said, poking his head up out of the handbag.

Mr Jenkins leapt about three feet into the air.

“Hello, Dad” Bruno said. He had a silly sort of mousy grin on his face.

Mr Jenkins’s mouth dropped open so wide I could see the gold fillings in his back teeth.

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Bruno went on. “It’s not as bad as all that. Just so long as the cat doesn’t get me.”

[…]

“B-b-but B-B-Bruno!” stammered Mr Jenkins again. “H-how did this happen?” The poor man had no wind left in his sails at all.

“Witches,” my grandmother said. “The witches did it.”

“I can’t have a mouse for a son!” shrieked Mr Jenkins.

You could hear Mrs Jenkins’s shrill voice all over the room. “Herbert!” it was screaming. “Herbert, get me out of here! There’s mice everywhere! They’ll go up my skirts!” […]

My grandmother advanced upon them and thrust Bruno into Mr Jenkins’s hand. “Here’s your little boy,” she said. “He needs to go on a diet.”

“Hi, Dad!” Bruno said. “Hi, Mum!”

Mrs Jenkins screamed even louder. My grandmother, with me in her hand, turned and marched out of the room. She went straight across the hotel lobby and out through the front entrance into the open air.

Outside it was a lovely warm evening and I could hear the waves breaking on the beach just across the road from the hotel.

“A mouse-person will almost certainly live for three times as long as an ordinary mouse,” my grandmother said. “About nine years.”

“Good!” I cried. “That’s great! It’s the best news I’ve ever had!”

“Why do you say that?” she asked, surprised.

“Because I would never want to live longer than you,” I said. “I couldn’t stand being looked after by anybody else.”

[…]

“How old are you, Grandmamma?” I asked.

“I’m eighty-six,” she said.

“Will you live another eight or nine years?”

“I might,” she said, “with a bit of luck.”

“You’ve got to,” I said. “Because by then I’ll be a very old mouse and you’ll be a very old grandmother and soon after that we’ll both die together.”

“That would be perfect,” she said.

“So we have work to do, you and I!” she cried out. “We have a great task ahead of us! Thank heavens you’re a mouse! A mouse can go anywhere! All I’ll have to do is put you down somewhere near The Grand High Witch’s Castle and you will very easily be able to get inside it and creep around looking and listening to your heart’s content!”

“I will! I will!” I answered. “No one will ever see me! Moving about in a big Castle will be child’s play compared with going into a crowded kitchen full of cooks and waiters!”

“You could spend days in there if necessary!” my grandmother cried. In her excitement, she was waving her stick all over the place, and suddenly she knocked over a tall and very beautiful vase […] “Forget it,” she said. “It’s only a Ming.”