A Cornish Orphan, page 9
She and Lottie climbed on, up the rocky path with sunlight flickering over dry brown earth and drifts of fallen leaves. The boys were whooping and yelling, both at the top of an ancient curly oak tree. ‘I can see the lighthouse,’ Matt shouted, and his hot face glowed down at Nan and Lottie, ‘and the Carn Brea far away.’ Lottie stared up at him through the branches. Matt had his cap on backwards, with some feathers stuck under it, and the branch he was sitting on looked too thin to take his weight. He didn’t seem to care but sat there grinning down at Lottie. Tom was further down, clinging on, his plump legs hunched and covered in scratches, his lip quivering.
‘Can’t you get down, Tom?’ Lottie asked, and he shook his head miserably. ‘Yes, you can. Just go slowly, and think before you move.’
‘Good advice.’ Nan looked at Lottie approvingly.
‘I want Daddy,’ Tom said.
‘Daddy is busy. We can’t go all the way back to St Ives. You get yourself into a pickle, you get yourself out,’ Nan tutted and stood up, brushing twigs from her skirt.
‘Why don’t you climb up here, Lottie?’ Matt called.
Lottie shook her head. She’d never climbed a tree and didn’t fancy trying.
‘I DARE you,’ Matt shouted. ‘Cowardy custard.’
Lottie turned her back on him, her face flushed. She knew what ‘Cowardy custard’ meant from the books she had read, but it was the first time anyone had called her that. She began gathering acorns from the woodland floor. ‘Those aren’t hazelnuts,’ Matt yelled down. He gave a horrible laugh. ‘Don’t you even know that? Townie.’ He tore an acorn from his branch and chucked it down at Lottie. It hit Nan on the cheek.
‘Right.’ Nan pursed her lips, and turned her back on Matt. ‘Come along, Lottie, and Tom. We’ll go on and enjoy picking hazelnuts, and we’ll leave that rude little boy in the tree. Perhaps the crows will get him.’ She swung her basket over her arm and walked on.
Lottie waited for Tom who was scrambling down the tree. She wasn’t sure he could manage. He was only five and she thought he looked scared. On the lowest branch he hesitated, then jumped, landing with a thud. ‘You’re a good climber,’ Lottie said, noticing Tom was trembling from the effort of overcoming his fright. He rubbed at a graze on his shin, and pulled a twig out of his unruly slab of hair.
Obviously keeping up with Matt was too much for him, and he seemed glad to take Lottie’s hand and walk beside her, his sleepy eyes looking up at her adoringly. ‘You’re like my big sister,’ he said, and Lottie felt proud. Being a big sister appealed to her. She already felt responsible for Tom and, surprisingly, for Matt. She didn’t think it was right to go off and leave him up there in the curly oak tree. What if he fell? She worried about him and listened for him to be following. He soon was, begrudgingly, kicking leaves and swiping stinging nettles with his stick.
Nan was ahead of them, deep in the nut grove, her bulk half hidden by the papery leaves of the hazel trees, her stout arms reaching up to pick the hard, shiny nuts in their feathery green cups. She didn’t look round to see if Matt was there, but went on filling her basket.
‘You lot pick them up from the ground,’ she said. ‘I can’t bend down to get those.’
The four of them gathered the abundant hazelnuts in an industrious silence, broken only by a steam train powering through the cutting nearby.
When the baskets were full, Nan led them down a steep path to a rocky hollow where the grass was rich and moist. She sat down on a flat rock, next to a spring that bubbled up from a deep round hole. It was surrounded by weathered stones and festooned with vivid green delicate ferns. Nan looked at them for a long time in silence, running her rough old fingers through the arching fronds. Lottie copied her, enjoying the airy lightness and magical fluttering of the ferns. ‘What are they?’
‘These are rare, very rare Maidenhair Ferns,’ Nan said, her voice quiet and full of mystery. ‘Never pick them. They are special.’ She looked upset. ‘People used to try to dig them out of the stone and take them home to plant in a pot. Wicked thieving. WICKED.’
The three children stared at her, mesmerised by the sudden change in Nan’s voice and the look in her storm-coloured eyes. It was spooky. Lottie sensed a story brewing in Nan’s mind, a story waiting for a captive audience. It had such power that even Matt kept still, crouched on the rock, his eyes fixed on Nan.
‘This was once a Holy Well,’ she began in a hoarse whisper. ‘The Holy Well of Carrack Gladden. I shall tell you the legend – it’s sad – and it’s beautiful – the legend of the Maiden’s Tears.’
Jenny was enjoying her Saturday morning without the children. She loved the sound of Arnie and Vic whistling and chatting as they worked upstairs. They’d put Lottie’s bed together, and now they were building a partition out of driftwood planks to give Lottie a tiny bedroom of her own. The room had two windows, one front and one back, and Lottie was to have the back one with its view down into the yard and across the rooftops. A wedge of dark blue, sparkling sea was visible, and Millie next door had a garden with a palm tree she was proud of, its blade-like leaves vibrating in the wind. In the cleft between two of the rooftops was a well-established seagulls’ nest. Jenny thought Lottie would enjoy watching the devoted pair of herring gulls raising their young in the spring. Along the cottage walls, under the eaves were the cup-shaped nests of house martins, and on the north side of the yard the eaves were occupied by a colony of sparrows. It was part of life in St Ives, a life shared joyfully between birds and humans, and the many cats in the town.
Today Jenny was happy to have Mufty tethered in the yard, with his hay net and bucket of water. Mufty had been led through the cottage, leaving his cart, loaded with Lottie’s bed, parked outside in the narrow street. Mufty was good company, always ready for a cuddle and a few treats. ‘You’re a good friend, Mufty,’ Jenny said, fondling the donkey’s long fluffy ears as he munched the carrot tops she’d given him. ‘It is a pity Nan is so difficult. If only she just listened, like you.’
Jenny had made an effort to hide her vengeful feelings about Nan, especially when she’d seen how excited the children were about going to the nut grove with her. She was looking forward to seeing Lottie’s face when she discovered the bed and, she had to admit, it was the perfect bed for a little girl. She sighed, and went inside to iron the bed linen Nan had sent down, finding it incredibly white and scented. Little muslin sachets of pot pourri and lavender kept dropping out from the pile. She makes her own, Jenny thought in awe. She was sniffing the perfume when someone rapped on the door. Jenny tensed. Most of her visitors were friends who just walked in. This had to be someone official, maybe threatening to take Lottie away.
She opened the door suspiciously, and was surprised to see Lottie’s teacher, David Merryn, standing there with a book in his hand. Her eyes rounded. ‘Mr Merryn!’
‘Good morning, Mrs Lanroska.’ He touched his cap. ‘Excuse me calling like this on a Saturday, but I felt you had to see Lottie’s English book. May I come in?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Jenny felt her heart racing as she stood back to let him in. What has Lottie done? she thought, bracing herself for trouble. It has to be that Morwenna Bartle’s fault.
David Merryn stooped to get his head under the tiny cottage door. His eyes darted around the room, looking at the trail of hay and bits of mud Mufty had brought in.
‘You’d better sit down.’ Jenny showed him the wicker chair, but he chose to pull out a chair and sit at the table. He put two books down in front of him. One was BLACK BEAUTY and the other Lottie’s English book.
‘Are the children here?’ he asked.
‘No, they’ve gone nutting.’
‘And is your husband in?’
‘Yes, and his dad. They’re upstairs building a bedroom for Lottie.’
‘I think your husband should be here too. Can he spare the time?’
Even more alarmed at his serious tone, Jenny called up the stairs, and Arnie’s head appeared. ‘Can you come down – we’ve got Lottie’s teacher here. He says it’s important. Vic had better come too.’
Arnie and Vic clattered downstairs in their work boots, their clothes covered in sawdust, sleeves rolled up, and their eyes full of life and light. Jenny felt better immediately, and the four of them sat round the table.
‘So what is it, Mr Merryn?’ Jenny asked.
‘You can call me David.’ He took his cap off and put it on the table. It looked uncannily clean, and so did his hands as he carefully opened the smooth light green exercise book. ‘I . . . must explain,’ he hesitated, his eyes nervous behind the round spectacles he wore. ‘You see, I took the children’s books home to mark as I always do. Lottie has survived that dreadful shipwreck, such an ordeal for an eight-year-old. I didn’t expect much from her, but for composition I chose the title of AN INTERESTING JOURNEY, thinking it might encourage her to write about her experience.’ He paused, looking round at the three attentive faces as if they were a class of children. ‘I thought Lottie might manage to write a few lines – most of the class do one or two pages. I walked around, supervising them, and I noticed Lottie was working very hard. She wrote faster and faster, and never looked up from her book once – page after page – she just kept going as if her life depended on it. To be honest, I anticipated an illiterate mess, but when I opened her book I was astounded, and so moved.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’ Jenny snapped, wishing David Merryn would get on with it.
‘Nothing – nothing at all, Mrs Lanroska. Don’t look so worried.’
He’s human, Jenny thought, catching the same glint of surprise in Arnie’s eyes.
‘Lottie has written five pages,’ David Merryn continued, ‘in excellent handwriting and only a few spelling mistakes. But – what she’s written is so important, and it truly touched my heart, as it will touch yours. I felt I had to come straight round and see you. I’m glad you were in, and it’s good that Lottie is out.’
‘Let’s have a look then,’ Jenny said, eyeing the book still closed under David Merryn’s chalk-ingrained thumbs.
‘But I must just tell you . . .’ he continued, hanging on to the book, ‘when she finished writing, minutes before the bell for playtime, Lottie put her head down on the desk and wouldn’t move. I had to pull the book out from under her arms. She wasn’t crying. She just seemed – frozen. She wouldn’t go out to play. She wouldn’t move, and I didn’t think I should force her. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she seemed locked into herself, if you know what I mean.’
Arnie nodded. He looked at David Merryn from under his long eyelashes. ‘We do. Don’t we, Jen?’ He held out his hand for the book, opened it, and gave a low whistle of surprise. ‘She can write better than I can.’
He put the open book between himself and Jenny, and Vic got up to read it with them. Their three heads bent over Lottie’s neat, rounded script. The sound of the sea sighed through cracks in the window panes, and the eternal anthem of seagulls echoed from the harbour.
David Merryn cleared his throat, breaking the pool of silence as Arnie turned the last of Lottie’s five pages, to where she’d written THE END with elaborate scrolls on the letters. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that this could one day be a very important document.’
‘Before I tell you the legend,’ Nan reached down and dipped her hand in the well water, ‘you must make a wish, because this is also a wishing well.’ The water sparkled as it ran through her fingers, and the sun lit the brown freckles on the back of her hand. ‘BUT . . .’ she added forcefully, ‘you must make the wish in silence. Don’t tell anyone, and don’t speak the words aloud, or the wish won’t come true.’
Lottie knew immediately what her wish would be. She scooped a palmful of the ice-cold water and closed her eyes tightly. I wish my mother would come back from America and find me. The water felt alive in her hand and she let it trickle back into the well. She imagined the handful of water carrying her wish through the deep blue ocean, all the way to America. The silence hung in the air above the well. Lottie opened her eyes to check Matt and Tom were still there. Both boys were uncannily still, like time’s forgotten children in a painting behind thick glass. Nan seemed to have cast a spell on the three of them, and her eyes were firmly closed, intensifying the strange power she had, as if nobody would dare to move until her eyes flickered open.
The sound of the well water was intimate, like tiny bells being inhaled by the whisper of waves along the shore of Carbis Bay. Today the sea was a dark Prussian blue, and Lottie noticed a bird out there behaving oddly, its sleek body lit lemon-bright as it folded its wings and dived, arrow-fast, vanishing into the water. Just as Lottie became convinced it had drowned, it reappeared in the sky, flexing its black-tipped wings. And again, the lemon-bright, spectacular dive into the water. Lottie longed to ask what kind of bird it was, but Nan’s eyes were still closed.
Finally Nan opened her eyes, and the storm shadow had gone. Her eyes glistened with mysterious light, and she clasped her freckled hands together as if they were a book. Lottie somehow knew that when she began to tell the legend, her hands would open and let the story flow out into the silence.
‘A long, long time ago,’ Nan began, ‘not hundreds, but thousands of years ago, a maiden and her lover came walking, hand in hand, through the nut grove.’
Matt tried a discreet smirk at the word ‘lover’, rolling his eyes, and one side of his mouth twitched. Nan zapped his lopsided grin with a glint in her eye, and a pause just long enough to refreeze him, effortlessly.
‘The maiden had long golden hair, like Lottie,’ Nan said, and Lottie instantly identified with the maiden, visualising a cream silk dress, a tiara made from flowers, and Flora Day shoes. She saw her drifting through the nut grove, her dress rippling in hazy sunlight. The man would look like Arnie, tall and broad-shouldered, with soulful, confident eyes under long lashes. He’d be dressed like a prince.
‘They loved each other very much,’ Nan continued, ‘and the maiden dreamed of their wedding day and how happy she would be. She thought her life was perfect. She believed nothing could ever go wrong. She trusted her handsome man, and when he said he wanted a swim in the sea, she let him go. While he was gone, the maiden explored the clifftop paths. It was early summer and she was happy to be picking flowers in the hot sun. There were sea pinks, bluebells and moon daisies. She added pink campion, sheep sorrel and ferns. Then she pulled the white ribbon from her golden hair and tied it tightly around the flower stems to make a bouquet fit for a bride. But as time passed and her lover did not return from his swim, she grew worried. She came to sit by the wishing well, on this very stone.’ Nan paused to pat the lichened stone she was sitting on, the folds of her green and purple dress brushing the lush grasses. The mood of the listening children shifted into sorrow as they sensed impending tragedy, and a note of foreboding rang in Nan’s voice. ‘The maiden sat gazing out to sea for many hours, until the sun turned scarlet in the west. Still he did not return and, as the sun set over the western sea, the maiden was distraught. She knew her lover had been drowned. The sea had taken him.’
Nan paused again, to allow the voice of the wind to speak in a great breath that swept through the dry ferns, the gorse and the fluttering yellow leaves of the nut grove. It unravelled a strand of Lottie’s hair and left a tiny ripple of silver on the surface of the well pool.
Then she continued. ‘Grief-stricken, the maiden took her bouquet of flowers and flung it over the edge of the cliff as a token of her love. She heard the sea suck it away, and the seagulls cried for her, and the wind moaned in sympathy. As twilight came, and the evening star shone bright in the west, the maiden sat weeping. Her tears dripped into the waters of the well. Her tears never stopped. They filtered down, through the rocks, and carried the seeds of the Maidenhair Fern down, down to a dark cave on the sandy shore. The ferns grew in the rocky walls of the cave, and even to this day the maiden’s tears drip from the fronds of fern, and when the sun sets, the light turns them to drops of silver and gold.’
‘Like diamonds?’ Lottie whispered.
‘Like diamonds.’ Nan’s hands came back together. The story was over. The book closed. The shockwaves settling.
Lottie held on tightly to the black velvet bag deep in her apron pocket. Diamonds, she thought, tears of stone. The story was devastatingly true. Her mother might never come back. She would have to be a Lanroska. A broken-hearted Lanroska. Nan was looking at her enquiringly, as if she could see right into Lottie’s heart.
‘Stupid maiden,’ Matt said, and the atmosphere changed instantly. Nan shut her eyes and pinched the top of her nose as if she couldn’t bear to look at Matt.
‘No she weren’t.’ Tom gave Matt an angry push.
‘Don’t you DARE fight!’ Nan snapped. She reached for the deep willow basket full of hazelnuts and heaved herself up, her eyes scanning the beach. ‘The tide is going out, so we shall walk back, up this path and through the nut grove. We’ll have our picnic on the beach. I’m not going to let you go looking for the fern cave. It’s too dangerous for children.’
Chapter 8
‘That Man Is Watching You’
Matt knew the one way to seriously upset Lottie was to pinch the black velvet bag she guarded so fiercely. He awaited his chance, watching her as she darted around helping Jenny, helping Tom with his reading, walking to school with Morwenna. He watched with jealous eyes as Lottie bewitched Arnie with her engaging smile and her bright, confident chatter. Lottie had taken a big slice out of Matt’s life. Even his bedroom had been cut in half to accommodate Lottie and her grand bed, leaving him and Tom too close together, their mattress covering most of the floor, taking away their play space.
He didn’t dare carry out his plan at home. Lottie would get all the sympathy and attention while he got the blame. It wasn’t fair. Matt smouldered, eyeing Lottie and sending her bad thoughts and dark, dark wishes in the privacy of his mind. His chance came on a sunny afternoon when the three of them were out on the cliffs after school. It was April, and the cliffs beyond Porthmeor were cushioned with sea pinks, the sea covered in sparkles, the air still and drowsy.
