A Cornish Orphan, page 5
‘Where are you gonna put her, Jen?’ Millie asked. ‘You haven’t got room for her have you? She can’t sleep in with the boys.’
‘She can,’ Jen said. ‘She’ll have to at first.’
‘You don’t know what she’s been used to.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Millie, as long as she’s safe and warm.’
‘But what about when she’s growing up?’
‘She’s not gonna grow up,’ Jenny said, ‘if she doesn’t come through this fever.’
Chapter 4
The Attic Stairs
Nan felt very alone as she hesitated in front of the door to the attic, an iron key in her hand. Supposing she fell on the steep narrow staircase? Who would know? And who would look after Mufty and her cats and chickens? Her shoulders twitched. She was cross with herself for worrying. Get on with it, she told herself, and don’t be ridiculous.
The door to the attic had been locked for years. Ever since the rift with Jenny and Arnie. The attic was stuffed with memories, memories that hurt. Nan had forbidden herself to go up there, especially now her joints were painful, and she’d put on so much weight.
Two of her six cats sat, one on each side of her, looking expectantly at the attic door. They were brother and sister, Bartholomew and Bessie, both extravagantly fluffy, black and white and golden-eyed. Unlike the younger cats, they’d been in the attic years ago. A cat’s paradise.
Nan looked down at their bright, wise faces. ‘I suppose you can’t wait to go up there.’ She turned the key and eased the door open, breaking a spectacular cobweb with a soft tearing noise and the spiky shadow of an incensed spider running for cover. Mould and thick dust covered the steep stairs, and a lone woodlouse scurried out of sight. Dust motes danced in a shaft of morning sunlight from the gabled window. Get on with it, Nan thought again. She grabbed the rickety banister and hauled herself up, her big body brushing the walls both sides. The cats ran ahead of her, their paws pattering on the bare wood, and vanished into the spaces between the old furniture and boxes. Mice fled, squeaking, in all directions, one flying down the stairs between Nan’s feet.
Step by painful step, she dragged herself up, not daring to stop in case she panicked, and worrying in a corner of her mind about how on earth she was going to get down.
Hendravean was a twin-gabled detached house standing alone at the end of Foxglove Lane. It faced east so in the morning its windows glared with reflected sunlight. Unlike most houses in St Ives, it had a huge garden encircled by a Cornish hedge smothered in wild flowers. The westerly gales tore into the back garden, and today there were still banks of cream-coloured seafoam from the storm. Nan could see them shivering and glistening in the sun, piled against the chicken house and the back of Mufty’s ramshackle stable.
She paused by the attic window, her legs shaking, her breath panicky, her weathered fingers parting the cobwebs. It was reassuring to look down at her cultivated garden and see the chickens contentedly wandering and pecking, and the other four cats, all ginger, piled asleep on the seat against the shed. It calmed Nan down. Her breathing settled, and she found the strength to turn around and survey the dust-caked boxes, crates and furniture. The stacks of old pictures against the wall. The spinning wheel. The glint of a piano-accordion.
And the wardrobe.
She looked away. It was too tempting to unlock its creaking door and touch the taffeta and velvet gowns she had worn in her youth. Gowns with tiny waists and sweeping skirts, ruffled necklines and cuffs, now steeped in the scent of camphor. Nan remembered how desolate she had felt throwing the white mothballs in there like scattering marbles. Get on with it, she thought.
There was something in the attic that Nan wanted for Lottie. Arnie and Jen’s Downlong cottage was small. Lottie would end up sharing a mattress with the boys, and Nan didn’t think it was good enough for a shipwrecked orphan who looked like a princess. In the far corner of the attic was a bed, a special, treasured bed. Nan herself had slept in it as a child. She loved its ornate headboard, carved with twining leaves and woodland creatures, toadstools and the cheeky faces of Cornish piskies creeping through foliage. It even had the sun, moon and stars in the top corner. A bed to dream in. A perfect bed for Lottie. If only Nan could manage to drag it out of the attic, down the stairs and into the donkey cart.
It had been taken apart and stashed against the wall, covered in a dust sheet. Nan’s heart leapt with joy when she spotted it. But could she get to it? And would her wheezy chest cope with the dust? The air was heavy with it, she could taste it, and the two cats were inadvertently making it worse. They were belting in and out of the stacks of boxes, appearing momentarily, wild-eyed, and with a glaze of grey dust over their fur, only to vanish again into ever dustier spaces. The scrabble of their paws on the floorboards was comical and it made Nan smile as she edged her way towards the bed.
In one place the floor was littered with the discarded bright wings of butterflies and moths. ‘Bats!’ Nan said, aloud, and looked up at the rafters. Above her hung clusters of bats, upside down, like folded gloves of burnished suede, their tiny faces crumpled in sleep. A wasp flew close to Nan and she saw the glint of its wings as its yellow striped body passed through the shaft of sunlight. Frowning, she observed its progress across the attic. She didn’t like wasps. Her skin chilled when she saw an enormous wasps’ nest hanging, lantern-like, from the roof in the far corner. It was October, but she knew the wasps were still active. She could hear the low-pitched buzzing. There must be hundreds, even thousands of them in that huge nest. It made her task even more scary.
Nan had respect for all wild creatures. In fact, she often felt like a wild creature herself as she worked in her garden, a creature who had forgotten how to talk to other humans. Talking to bees and aphids and hedgehogs was easy and fun. Her self-imposed isolation had made her attempts at conversation sound fierce and abrupt. She had forgotten how to talk gently and kindly. Until she’d found Lottie with her arms round Mufty’s head. A certain look in the child’s eyes had touched a chord of abandoned tenderness in Nan’s heart. She felt instantly connected and committed to this pale child with the stubborn, haunted eyes. Eyes that were ready for magic. For stories. For dreams and fables to help her grow and make sense of the world. All of which Nan could give her.
If it wasn’t for that infernal woman. That Jenny. To get to Lottie, Nan would have to talk her way past, or over, or even through Jenny.
She squeezed between the back of the wardrobe and a wooden cider barrel which still retained a faint whiff of fermenting apples. Thinking she would have to make a gangway in order to drag the bed out, Nan gave the barrel a push. It toppled over with an alarming clatter. The noise made her heart race. She froze, then turned her head very slowly to look at the bats and the wasp nest. Neither of them reacted, as if an old woman knocking down barrels was normal practice in their attic home.
Breathing hard, she finally reached the bed, and tugged at the dust sheet. It sighed and slid to the floor in a haze of dust. Nan felt emotional. She touched the green and white striped mattress. It was warm with her memories. It looked intact except for a small hole at the lower end with the stuffing bursting out. She examined the frame with its wooden slats and found some woodworm holes. Vinegar, she thought, I’ll fix you lot with white vinegar.
The carved headboard had been tightly wrapped in oilcloth. Nan unpicked the knots and peeled back just a corner, and an old friend stared out at her. The carved badger peeping from curls of bracken. It looked fine. The oilcloth had done a good job and the wood still had a glow. It still felt alive. Nan smiled to herself as she ran her hand over it, remembering those pitch dark nights of her childhood. Touching the carved leaves and animals had been comforting to a child alone in the dark.
All she had to do now was drag it downstairs and load it into the donkey cart. First she struggled to undo the knots of rope and pull the mattress down from the wall. Then she heaved it towards the stairs, encouraged by the two cats who thought it was an excuse to go mad, pouncing and diving over the slowly moving mattress. More dust. Nan’s breath wheezed and hurt, her cheeks flamed red with the effort.
She fetched the precious headboard, then the slatted base and the legs which were bundled into a canvas bag with various nuts, bolts and brackets. Once it was all stacked at the top of the stairs, Nan leaned on the windowsill trying to calm her breathing. She banged her fist on the window to force it open, its rotting frame shedding flakes of blue paint and a few splinters. The only people she could see were far away, fishermen spreading their nets to dry. There was no one nearby who would help her to get the bed downstairs. It seemed the whole town was still looting timber and boxes of goods from the wreck.
Nan thought maybe she could do it on her own if she fetched some rope from the garden shed. But first she must face the daunting task of getting herself down the steep stairs. She stood at the top, looking down, feeling the pain in her knees. She kept an eye on the wasp nest, knowing the warmth of the morning sun would tempt them out. Already a number of the striped yellow insects were zigzagging around the rafters. She would have to move carefully, not drawing attention to herself. If just one wasp came close and she swatted it, the whole nest would be summoned to attack her.
Leaning heavily on the banister, Nan took the first painful step down. Then another. And another, her breath fast and shallow, fighting the fear. A bead of sweat trickled out of her hair, and her knuckles looked blue as she clung to the rail. A sharp pain stabbed her left knee, like bone rubbing against bone. Nan gritted her teeth and forced her foot down onto the stair. You can do this. You can, she thought. Her knees were weak but her grip was strong, so strong that the banister cracked and tore away from the wall. Nan cried out as she fell forward, banging her head on the wall. Knocked unconscious, she bumped and slid down a few steps and then her huge body came to a halt, wedged awkwardly in the narrow stairwell.
The sky darkened and clouds rolled over the sun. Hailstones stung the roof tiles and hissed along Foxglove Lane as if the weather rumbled out a warning of imminent death. Down in the garden a pair of foxes came, ginger-eyed and swift, over the Cornish hedge, caught one of Nan’s speckled chickens and dragged it, squawking, over the wall and away into the bracken-covered cliffs.
Jenny was terrified Lottie would die. She’d sat all night with the feverish child, sponging her hot face with a flannel dipped in cold water. Now and again Lottie had something to say, looking at Jenny with bright, dilated eyes. ‘I wanted to go to America,’ she said, more than once, and, ‘I let the birds out and I’m glad I did. They flew away out of the window and then . . .’
‘What birds?’ Jenny asked, but Lottie’s eyes were closed again. In the morning, when Doctor Tregullow came, Lottie wouldn’t answer any of his questions but she let him dab some tincture on her back. ‘It might sting,’ he said, ‘but it will make it better. You go back to sleep now.’ And Lottie did, curled on her side, her face turned towards the open window and the cool breeze from the sea.
‘I suppose you’ve got no suitable clothes for her.’ Doctor Tregullow looked over his glasses at Jenny.
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Would you like my wife to run her up a couple of dresses? She’s got plenty of fabric, old curtains and that sort of stuff. She likes sewing, and it won’t cost you anything.’
‘Yes please,’ Jenny nodded, feeling tears pricking her eyes.
‘And you should get some sleep yourself,’ he added, folding his stethoscope into his medical bag. ‘You look tired.’
‘I can’t. Look at this heap waiting for me. It’s Monday.’ Jenny showed him the mounds of washing piled on the scullery floor. Some women had already done theirs and strung it across the street to dry in the sun and wind. Earlier, a hailstorm had hissed over the cobbles, leaving globular clusters of ice along the base of the wall.
Once the doctor had gone, Jenny made herself a cup of strong tea and went back to sit with Lottie. She was glad the boys were in school. It had been a fight to get them to wear shoes and socks that morning, and Tom had cried loudly because his shoes were too tight. He was growing so fast and Matt’s hand-me-downs were often not big enough.
Lottie would need shoes. Smart girly shoes. And she needed a proper bed. Jenny sat worrying about how to afford them for her. She already loved the brave little girl and didn’t want to let her down. ‘I’m here with you. Don’t worry,’ she kept saying when Lottie woke up.
Arnie had come downstairs at first light and sat beside her, a tray of tea and saffron buns between them.
‘I can’t make sense of anything she’s saying,’ Jenny said, glad of the hot tea steaming between her hands.
‘It will all come out in time,’ Arnie said wisely, ‘ just let her be. And you get some sleep, Jen.’ He’d given her a cuddle, slurped his tea, and gone to get his boat ready for a day’s fishing.
‘When you come back we’ll unpack the boxes,’ Jenny called after him, looking at the stack of rough wooden crates from the wreck. She thought some of them had tinned food in them. She could see labels hanging, soaking wet, from between the slats, in a mess of wet straw and fronds of seaweed. The boxes loomed in a toppling tower in the back yard where Arnie and Vic had dumped them, leaving a trail of seaweed and straw through the living room. Normally Jenny would have cleared it up, but now she just ignored it. She wasn’t going to leave Lottie.
The day passed and squares of sunlight moved out of the scullery and across the living room floor, mellowing to a deep rose pink as the sun set. The boys came home from school, and still Lottie was feverish, her small face troubled, her breathing rapid and shallow. ‘You LEAVE HER ALONE,’ Jenny said fiercely to Matt and Tom who wanted to wake Lottie up and talk to her. ‘She’s very ill. She might have something infectious and we don’t want you catching it.’ She sensed the boys felt miffed. She held out a hand to them. ‘You don’t have to be jealous. I don’t suddenly love Lottie more than you. I just need you to be good while she’s ill.’
Matt gave her a sullen, chilling glare, and Tom looked at her sorrowfully like a spaniel.
‘Go upstairs and play marbles,’ Jenny said and they did. She sighed with relief when she heard the marbles rolling noisily over the floorboards. But before long the two boys were playing Shipwreck, bouncing on the mattress and fighting. Predictably it reached crisis point with Tom crying, a loud, nasal, echoing howl.
Lottie tried to sit up, her eyes black and bright with alarm.
‘It’s all right, Lottie. It’s just Matt and Tom. Don’t take any notice.’ Jenny smoothed the child’s hair back from her hot face. She comforted Tom who came downstairs and wanted to sit on her lap and cry. She was glad when Arnie finally came home and put the boys to bed. The low rumble of his voice reading them a story seemed like a blessing to Jenny. To have a husband who loved his family enough to put them first, even when he was tired and hungry.
‘She’s not getting any better,’ she told Arnie when he came downstairs.
He stood looking down at Lottie, and touched her face gently. ‘Hmmm, she is hot. She’s burning up.’
‘Should we call the doctor again?’
‘I don’t know. If it was Matt or Tom we’d trust they’d come through it. But we don’t know what illnesses Lottie’s had – and she has just survived a shipwreck. She was icy cold and scared.’
‘I’m trying to get her to drink, but she won’t,’ Jenny sighed. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’
‘Nan would know,’ Arnie said, then held up his hand when he saw fire in Jenny’s eyes. ‘All right. All right – I won’t mention her again.’
‘I do NOT want that cranky old woman interfering. And I don’t want a quarrel with you over it.’
Arnie’s jaw stiffened and a muscle twitched in his cheek. His eyes looked hurt under their long lashes. He loved Nan dearly. He’d grown up at Hendravean, his life enriched by Nan’s love of folklore and music. She’d been strict but he’d soon discovered that inside her hard shell of eccentricity and power was a sensitive soul with a heart of gold. He knew she loved him, and he was saddened by Jenny’s unforgiving attitude. To keep the peace at home, Arnie had to visit his nan by stealth. He felt his boys were missing out on the influence Nan could have given them. He hoped it might change now Lottie had come into their lives.
‘She’s trying to talk.’ Jenny turned back to Lottie, her gaze tender again. ‘What is it, Lottie? You can tell me. I’m here . . . I won’t leave you.’
The bright black eyes stared up at them in the candlelight. ‘Is Nan coming back?’ Lottie asked.
Arnie and Jenny looked at each other. ‘Not tonight,’ Arnie said. ‘She’s got six cats and a donkey and some chickens to look after.’
‘I gave the donkey a hug,’ Lottie said, ‘and he loved me. I wish he was my donkey. I want to see him again. And I want to see Nan again. She was kind to me, and I like her.’
Arnie looked at Jenny in silence, and behind his silence was a secret smile. Behind Jenny’s silence was a stubborn wall of resistance, a wall stronger than granite.
Delivering milk in St Ives was no easy task with a pony and cart because of the steep hills. Les Pengellan had worked out a route from his farm zigzagging down the narrow streets, always parking the pony on the level. The cottages in very steep streets had to be done on foot by him and the boy, each carrying a basket clinking with heavy bottles of milk. They’d start at the top and work downwards, one each side of the road, so that they carried the weight downhill, never uphill.
One of the first calls of the day was at Hendravean, Nan’s house at the end of Foxglove Lane. The lane was smooth enough for the pony to trot smartly along between the high banks of gorse and bracken. At this time of the year the sun would be rising over the vast bay of Hayle sands, just as it was that Tuesday morning.
