~ by Vanessa Parry-Elwen
Primula bit back a squeak of alarm when she saw her faunt race up the path, and she was at the door to greet him before he touched the handle. It was some relief to discover that the red stains all over his clothes and body were not blood, but bramble juice.
Placing her hands upon her hips, Primula planted herself in the entrance and glared down at him. For his part, Frodo stared up in innocent confusion. “Hello Mama. Is it teatime?”
Primula’s eyebrows lifted. “Frodo Baggins, just look at the state of you?! You’ve been down in the copse, haven’t you?”
Frodo gave her a sunny gap-toothed, red-lipped grin. “Yes. You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing.”
Primula began to see the funny side of it once the alarm faded, and she tried to restrain her laughter. “Oh, I think I can make a very good guess.”
When Frodo blinked in surprise, she tugged at his sticky shirt sleeve, bringing his arm up to eye level. Her son’s eyes widened as he noticed his red-stained fingers, and he looked down in growing horror at his red-stained shirt, red-stained breeches, and red-stained feet. All he could manage was a subdued, “Oh.”
Primula’s chestnut curls bounced as she shook her head in exasperation. “Alright. Off with the lot while I fill the tub. Then you will climb in and scrub until you’re spotless.”
A rather sheepish Frodo stripped down to his smalls in the hallway and then followed his Ma to the kitchen, where the tub waited, along with a scrubbing brush usually reserved for laundry. Primula threw his clothes in a basin of cold water to soak – although she held out little hope of removing all the stains. It seemed that, until he grew out of them, her son was destined to play in pink clothes.
Then she turned to watch as Frodo dutifully scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed. But there was no shifting the stains. It seemed that for a few days, at least he would have pink skin to match the pink clothes.
“Frodo. Next time you go brambling, ask me for something to cover your clothes. Or better yet, ask me to come with you. We could at least have had apple-bramble pie. And I suppose you will be too full to eat your tea?”
When Frodo turned huge blue eyes upon her, Primula could only relent. “Oh, get along with you.” She laughed as she threw him a towel, which he caught deftly. “Go and put on your nightshirt. Then come back to the table for tea.”
Frodo did not need telling twice. His mother smiled as a pair of pink heels, and a little bare bottom disappeared swiftly through the kitchen door.
And that is why Frodo Baggins spent the rest of that year wearing what his Aunt Esmeralda euphemistically referred to as his “rose-clothes” when he played out.