A Cornish Orphan, page 7
She made herself go upstairs. The landing had four doors, one of them open. Jenny could see a four-poster bed covered in a massive crocheted blanket of jewel-bright colours. The bed was empty. Where was Nan?
She called out again. ‘Nan? It’s Jenny.’
A creak came from the attic stairs, and the voice she had dreaded hearing bellowed through the house:
‘O MAGNUM MYSTERIUM.’
Jenny froze. The woman’s gone mad, she thought, she’s spouting Latin!
It was followed by a wheezy laugh.
‘Pardon?’ Jenny headed for the attic stairs, shocked to see Nan wedged halfway up, her face crinkled with laughter, but her eyes, usually so fierce, were the eyes of a frightened, lonely old woman. ‘Oh Nan,’ she said kindly, ‘did you fall?’
‘Of course I fell. Why else would I be stuck here? Stuck. That’s what I am.’
Jenny started up the stairs, but Nan shouted at her in the wheezy voice. ‘No. Go back, you stupid girl. If I fall we’ll both get hurt.’
‘But . . .’
‘But me no buts – Jenny. You go and get help. Arnie and Vic, or the coastguard, or somebody – or even the fire brigade. It’ll take an army to get me out of here.’ Nan began to laugh, her big belly shaking the staircase, and the laughter seemed precarious as if it could quickly switch over to crying.
‘How long have you been there, Nan?’
‘All day and all night.’
‘You must be cold.’
‘Of course I’m damned well cold. The damned stove has gone out. And the damned chickens haven’t been fed.’
‘Don’t worry, Nan. I’ll see to it all,’ Jenny said, feeling compassion at Nan’s obvious distress. ‘Don’t you even try to move. I’ll fetch you a rug and a drink. Then Lottie and I will feed the animals and light the stove. Then I’ll get help.’
Jenny went back to the bedroom and dragged the crocheted blanket from the bed. She filled a cup with water from the big jug on the marble washstand. A small bottle of brandy was on the bedside table so she picked that up too and hurried back to the attic stairs. ‘I’m coming up whether you like it or not,’ she said, and saw relief in Nan’s eyes, even a flicker of gratitude. ‘There you are.’ She tucked the blanket over and around Nan as best she could. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Yes, of course I’m hurt. I fell down these infernal steep stairs.’
‘Well, let’s hope nothing’s broken and it’s just bruises,’ Jenny said. She half-wanted to apologise for the way she’d spoken to Nan earlier but her anger was still there, like a stone wall. ‘What was it you said first?’ she asked. ‘O mag – something?’
‘O Magnum Mysterium,’ Nan said, and her storm-coloured eyes were looking right into Jenny’s mind. ‘It’s Latin – you wouldn’t know, would you? It means Oh great mystery.’ Her voice became a wheezy whisper. ‘God works in mysterious ways, Jenny. I lay here praying and praying for help. And what does God do? He sends my deadly enemy to help me!’ She burst into another volley of laughter, spilling some of the water over her bristly old chin.
Lottie put her foot on one of the wooden wheel spokes and scrambled into Mufty’s cart which was parked in the yard. The black velvet pouch was wedged between two baskets, and she retrieved it quickly, a lump in her throat. She took a deep breath. No need to cry. She inspected it, feeling the familiar contents through the worn velvet. Her fingers pulled at the drawstring. The knot was still sealed. Lottie had done it herself with a drop of red sealing wax held over a candle flame. It was safe. Her heart beat a little faster, remembering. No one, not even Matt, could undo the knot, and she’d keep it that way. The animosity in Matt’s eyes had registered in Lottie’s sharp mind. Fear and challenge knotted together as tightly as the drawstring.
Jenny had given her an apron to wear over her red dress. Lottie tucked the velvet bag into its deep pocket, and climbed down from the cart, knowing exactly what she was going to do next. She gave a little skip of excitement.
Next to Mufty’s stable was a sweet smelling shed stacked with bales of meadow hay and hessian sacks of grain. The door was open and a flock of chirruping sparrows fled past Lottie with a burr of wings, their bodies fat with the corn they’d been feasting on. Lottie went to one of the bales of hay and grabbed an armful, enjoying the honey-sweet scent. She took it to Mufty who was waiting, his eyes bright in his furry face. ‘Here you are, Mufty.’ She stood on tiptoe and pushed the hay over the door, happy to hear the donkey munching and rustling.
Back in the shed, Lottie surveyed the hessian sacks. She read the black lettering on them. Whole oats. Bran. Corn. That was it. Corn! She went to the open sack and plunged her small arms deep into the glistening grain. She couldn’t resist playing with it, smiling as it streamed through her fingers. Then she found a metal bowl, scooped corn into it and took it out into the sunshine.
Lottie had never seen a real chicken, only pictures of them in books with smiling women scattering corn on the ground. The women and the chickens glowed with happiness. To Lottie it was like a dream coming true as she stepped outside with the bowl of corn and chickens came belting towards her from all directions, their scaly legs taking huge strides. Giggling with joy, Lottie hurled arcs of corn into the light, some of it raining down on the chickens’ plump backs. A feeling of peace settled over the yard as the chickens pecked busily at the corn, beaks to the ground, stubby tails pointing at the sky. A cruising seagull tried his luck at pecking corn and was swiftly evicted by the cockerel who flew at him like a dragon, colours gleaming, a hooked beak breathing puffs of fire. I fed the chickens, Lottie thought, ecstatically, it’s the BEST thing I’ve ever done, in my whole life.
A twinge of pain from her back reminded her that what she saw as joy was so often regarded as a punishable crime by the adults. Would Nan be cross? Or Jenny? Lottie glanced at the house. Nan and Jenny were her friends. Only Matt, and the orphanage women, had felt threatening.
Lottie leaned against a sunny wall, watching the chickens and the flock of sparrows until they had eaten every last morsel of corn. The chickens waddled away, except for one, a motherly, amber brown hen who meandered close to her and sat down, her bright eyes looking at Lottie. Spellbound, Lottie reached out and touched the sheen of her back, marvelling at the warmth of it while the chicken made conversational crooning noises in her throat. ‘Can I pick you up?’ she asked, and stood up, working out how to peacefully pick up a bird who looked too full of corn to move.
Experimentally she slipped her hands under the warm body, one each side, and was thrilled when the hen didn’t move but allowed herself to be picked up. She nestled contentedly into Lottie’s arms, even tucking her feet up out of the way. The crooning sounds deepened, and so did the awe Lottie felt at cradling this soft shell of warm feathers and friendliness. She carried the chicken towards the house, proud of herself, wanting to show Jenny and Nan that she was holding a chicken. A glow of importance hovered over Lottie’s life.
‘Put that chicken down this minute.’ Jenny whirled out of the house, hot-cheeked and frowning. ‘We’ve got to help Nan. She’s fallen down and she’s stuck on the stairs. She can’t move. PUT THE CHICKEN DOWN.’
Lottie bit her lip and did as she was told, sad to see her new friend walking away, her moment of glory deflated.
‘Look at you! Covered in hay. What have you been doing?’ Jenny picked bits of hay from Lottie’s hair and clothes. ‘What’s this in your hair? Corn?’
Lottie looked dejected. ‘I fed Mufty. And the chickens.’
Jenny’s face softened. ‘Good girl,’ she conceded. ‘But now, we must get help for Nan. I’m going to run down to the harbour and see who I can find.’
‘Can I stay here?’ Lottie asked. ‘I could make Nan a cup of tea. I know how to make tea.’
‘The stove’s not lit. When we’ve lit it you can make tea, Lottie. You can stay here if you promise not to run off again; just stay in the yard.’
‘I shall go and talk to Nan.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Why not? Nan likes me.’
Jenny looked perplexed. ‘If you must. Look, I can’t stand here arguing, dear. You be a big girl. Be sensible. And I’ll be back soon. All right?’
‘All right, Jenny.’
Lottie stood up on the wall and watched Jenny’s head bobbing as she ran down Foxglove Lane. She thought about Jenny’s eyes. Kindly eyes, ready to laugh and sing, but today her eyes were overloaded with too many sparkles, not all of them friendly. Lottie felt older and wiser than Jenny but there was no way of expressing such a thought. In her short life Lottie had learned some hard lessons. How to survive the worst kind of emotional trauma – by herself – and through it all she’d learned to hang on to inner happiness, tenaciously, just as she’d clung to the broken door on the stormy sea.
She studied the view of the little harbour town that was to be her home, and liked the way the cottages nestled into the hillside. She liked the way the church tower sent the sound of bells chiming across the water. She liked the immaculate, confident seagulls that hung on the wind, their stillness as they perched on the harbour wall, looking at her with one bright golden eye, and their wild, exultant voices. She thought St Ives looked like a fairytale town in a story book. But most of all she liked Nan and her charismatic donkey cart. She wanted more and more of Nan’s stories about Saint Ia and the sun and moon shining across the water.
In the distance she could see Jenny running towards the harbour. I’ll go and talk to Nan, Lottie thought, and she ran to the house door which Jenny had left open. She peered inside. A glimmer of metal shone from the top of the rosewood sideboard, a round brass gong hanging from a polished pedestal. A drumstick with a soft ball of a head lay beside it. Lottie’s fingers quivered with temptation. A gong! Why did Nan have a gong? Did she bang it, just for the fun of hearing the sound reverberate through the house? Or did she use it to call people in?
Lottie reached out and picked up the drumstick. It smelled musty. Silence glistened in the shaft of sunlight, expectantly, as if silence was a person waiting to come alive, waiting for the gong. Jenny had said Nan was stuck on the stairs, but the staircase was empty; a crimson carpet with patterned borders covered the middle of it, pinned there with bright brass stair rods. What would happen if she banged the gong? Lottie didn’t want anything to happen, but she longed to experience the delicious power of wielding the drumstick and sending the sound echoing through the empty house and out over the cliffs and the rocks, into the streets of St Ives.
No one was there to punish her. No one would see her. So . . . why not? Lottie gave the gong an experimental tap. It made a muted hum, and a whisper rippled into the herb-scented caverns of Nan’s house. Nothing happened. Excited, Lottie swung the drumstick and hit the gong harder. The sound trembled like a cry in the wind, dying away to a sigh and vanishing into doorways and shelves of bottled pears.
Harder, Lottie thought, and swung the drumstick outwards. But before she could make the magnificent satisfying sound, a voice bellowed down the stairs, and it was chillingly different from the voice Nan had used to tell her the story of St Ia.
‘WHO is down there meddling with my things?’
Lottie’s arm jumped back, dropped the drumstick, and knocked over one of the china horses. It crashed to the floor and broke into two pieces. Lottie’s heart thudded as she stared at the hollow fragments of china. She felt more frightened than she’d felt in the shipwreck. Petrified, she stood perfectly still in the hall, and the voice boomed out again.
‘Who is down there?’
The grandfather clock in the hall ticked into the silence, each tick like the sucking in of a breath.
What should she do? Lottie thought of her mother then, a clear picture of those tormented eyes set in a face ruled by encrypted grace. She remembered the time when her mother had broken a Crown Derby teacup at Lady Rees Evans’ tea party. ‘I’m SO sorry. Clumsy me! I’m afraid I’ve broken one of your beautiful cups’. Lottie had watched the red flush creep up Lady Rees Evans’ hollow cheeks, and creep back again as her mother turned on the charm. It was all about courtesy and control. ‘You could do the same, honey,’ her mother had said later. ‘You make a mistake – you deal with it straight away. Otherwise it blows up like a black cloud over your life.’
Lottie’s eyes burned. She picked up the two halves of the china horse and carried them upstairs. Bartholomew escorted her, his tail waving importantly, and, not knowing what she was going to find, Lottie followed him to the attic stairs.
Nan was still wedged halfway up. When she saw Lottie, her glare changed to a smile.
‘I’m so sorry. Clumsy me. I wanted to bang the gong, and I accidentally knocked the china horse over – and . . . it broke.’ Lottie held out the two hollow pieces.
The seeds of a smile twinkled in Nan’s eyes. ‘Give them to me.’ She took the two halves of the broken horse in her fruit-stained hands.
Lottie wanted to turn and run but she made herself keep still. Standing close to Nan felt better than standing alone in the hall. ‘But,’ she added, ‘I don’t think I deserve to be beaten.’
‘Beaten?’ Nan looked puzzled. ‘Of course I wouldn’t beat you, child. Whatever gave you that idea?’
Lottie shrugged, her eyes roaming over the colours of the blanket.
‘I expect it could be mended.’ Nan tried to fit the two pieces together. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘You know what? I never liked this particular horse anyway. We’ll put it out in the barn and I shall make it into a flowerpot.’
‘How?’
Nan smiled and handed the china back to Lottie. ‘You’ll see. Now you go and put them in the barn next to Mufty’s stable, and when I’m better you can come and help me. All right?’
Lottie nodded.
‘And while you’re out there,’ Nan added, ‘you can open the lids of the nesting boxes inside the chicken house and see if you can collect some eggs. Take a basket from the kitchen.’
Lottie felt like a candle that had just been lit. She skipped downstairs, through the bedroom and down the main stairs, only to meet Jenny coming with Vic and another man.
‘Hello, Princess.’ Vic looked at her curiously. ‘All dried out now, are you? Last time I saw you, you were like a drowned rat.’
‘How did that happen?’ Jenny eyed the broken china horse in Lottie’s hand.
‘It was an accident,’ Lottie’s eyes were calm and very adult, ‘and I’ve dealt with it.’
Chapter 6
The Sole Survivor
‘I don’t want that worm-infested rubbish in my house.’ Jenny stood in Nan’s garden, hands on hips and two spots of angry colour on her cheeks.
Arnie continued loading the bed onto his handcart in obstinate silence. The precious headboard was in, and the bundle of slats. He tied the green and white mattress on top, winding a rope around it.
‘That rope is wet, Arnie, and it stinks of fish,’ protested Jenny. ‘And look at that fusty old apology for a mattress.’
The obstinate silence darkened. Arnie tugged at the rope, refusing to look at Jenny, a tactic which she found infuriating. ‘Will you LISTEN to me, Arnie?’ She grabbed his sleeve and shook it.
‘I’m listening. Can’t help hearing when you shout like that.’
‘I’m not shouting. I’m trying to get this into your thick head. I don’t want Nan’s fancy bed. And I don’t want her brainwashing Lottie with her stupid folklore.’
Arnie continued tying the knots. ‘I thought you wanted the best for Lottie.’
‘I do, of course I do. But we could make her a bed. You’ve got enough wood stacked in the yard.’
‘What’s wrong with this bed?’
‘It’s ancient. It came out of the ark. And it’s HERS. We’ll be for ever beholden to Nan for it. She’s only doing it to get her oar in. It’s bad for Tom and Matt if Lottie gets spoilt. It isn’t fair.’
‘Lottie needs a bed, Jen.’
‘But not a bigoted old grandmother to go with it. Why should Nan be let back into our family just because of a shipwreck? We’ve had nothing to do with her for years – eight years, Arnie. I know you’ve been visiting her and taking Matt and Tom, but the boys don’t like her. She’s intimidating and cranky, and she doesn’t like them either – especially Matt. You should support me – not side with her.’
‘I am supporting you.’ Arnie’s voice was suddenly, frighteningly loud, like a whip cracking. He was looking at her now, as if he didn’t like what he saw, the weather-beaten skin on his cheeks drawn into taut hollows. ‘I’m up here, loading Lottie’s bed, when I should be out there fishing.’ He glanced at the sunlight sparkling on the waves. ‘And whether you like it or not – Jennifer – I love Nan. She’s been good to me, and she’ll be good to Lottie, if you give her a chance, and the boys. I don’t know what gets into you. Why can’t you forgive and forget, and stop being so spiteful.’
Jenny had spent the last week loving and caring, and worrying about Lottie. To be accused of being spiteful was an unbearable insult, especially from Arnie, who had shouted it all over St Ives. She felt abused and infuriated. And the way he’d called her ‘Jennifer’, with such cold dismissive anger. She was his WIFE – wasn’t she? Not just his wife, but the mother of his boys, his housekeeper, cook, slave, washerwoman, and devoted, adoring defender.
‘You’re being unreasonable, and childish,’ he added.
Jenny exploded. She screamed at Arnie and tears of exhaustion raged down her cheeks. She seized the bag of clean linen Nan had given them, wrenching it out of the cart and sending it flying across the garden. Too late, she caught a glimpse of Lottie standing in the doorway, looking shocked and scared, a ginger cat in her arms with its tail hanging down over her body. Jenny hadn’t wanted Lottie to witness her row with Arnie. She wanted Lottie to feel loved and secure.
