Just as the train began to move, the door was flung open. Rusty jumped and her heart started thumping. But it was only a plumpish woman in her fifties with a basket of shopping. She returned to gazing out of the window.
It wasn’t till the train pulled out of the next station that she realized that the woman was staring at her. Suddenly, the train was running alongside the estuary, where the boats and birds sat bobbing on the water and those beautiful little houses stood on the hill opposite. And then, within minutes, there was the sea, large and tranquil, lying right alongside her. And for once she wanted to slow down. She loved this crazy train and the tiny railway line and the pinky-brown cliffs.
Just then the woman leaned forward.
“Scuse me,’ she drawled, ‘but I’m sure I knows a relation of yours.’
Rusty looked at her, startled.
‘I can see yer not English, though. American, are you?’
Rusty nodded. She was growing used to not giving explanations.
‘Funny,’ the woman said, puzzled. ‘What’s yer name?’
‘Guinivere,’ Rusty blurted out.
‘Guinivere what?’ said the woman.
As they drew out of the next station, Rusty saw a torn advertisement on the wall. ‘Virol,’ she said. ‘Guinivere Virol.’
The woman caught sight of the handle of Rusty’s screwdriver, which was sticking out of her pocket. Rusty casually pushed it back in.
‘That’s a funny name,’ the woman said.
‘I guess,’ said Rusty as brightly as she could.
‘Bit young to be on yer own, ain’t you?’
‘I’m being met at the other end.’
‘Oh. Where’s that, then?’
‘Plymouth. My aunt lives there.’
‘Oh. Where’bouts?’
‘I don’t know. It’s my first visit, see.’
‘Well I never,’ said the woman. ‘You looks the spittin’ image of a W.V.S. driver I used to see round ‘ere.’
Rusty could feel her cheeks growing hot. She looked hastily out of the window.
The woman got off at Newton Abbot, leaving Rusty alone again. Relieved, she leaned back and closed her eyes.
The train gave a violent jolt. Rusty glanced out of the window, flung open the door, and stepped out on to the platform. As the train drew out of the station, she realized that she had got off too soon. It was the station she had arrived at when she had first come to England.
‘Oh boy,’ she said, hitting her head with her hand, ‘what a goop!’
Strangely enough, though, she felt quite pleased to see the old place again. It was already afternoon. Maybe it was good she had got off here, after all. She could go sleep at Beatie’s and then set off early for Plymouth the following day.
As she walked through the station gate, she remembered how she and her mother had been greeted by a rather anxious W.V.S. woman; how her mother had gone off to fix the van and how angry Rusty had been; how she had disapproved of her mother’s messy hands and shabby appearance. Boy, she must have been unbearable.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a gentle tap on the shoulder. She jumped guiltily. It was a woman in railway uniform.
‘Ticket, please,’ she said, smiling.
‘Oh yeah. Sure.’ And she drew it out.
‘This is for Plymouth,’ the woman said.
‘Can I use it from here tomorrow?’
“Fraid not.’ Then, seeing Rusty’s face, she added, ‘Bring it anyway. I’ll see what I can do.’
As Rusty took it back and walked away, the woman gazed after her, puzzled. ‘Hey!’ she yelled. ‘Send me regards to yer mother.’
Rusty nodded and hurried on.
As soon as she was out of the station, she took a right turn and went on walking until she reached the tiny dirt road where Mrs Hatherley had dropped her and her mother off in November. She walked briskly past the tiny lodge-house at the entrance to the Estate, and within minutes she was looking down a grassy slope on her right to the river. The sun was out, and dotted about on the grass were snowdrops and primroses. She slowed down, afraid of reaching Beth’s school too soon and being seen.
Suddenly there was a light shower of rain. She ran part of the way down the slope and stood for a while under a tree for shelter. As soon as it was over, the sun came out. She climbed up the slope again, and there across the sky was a rainbow-
Rusty stood there, mesmerized. Was it possible to fall in love with a place, when first of all you had disliked it? She hadn’t thought all that much of Devon when she had first arrived. It had seemed small and tame and claustrophobic. It lacked the grandeur of Vermont and the intensity of the Connecticut climate, but now it seemed so beautiful and it smelled so rich. She stayed there, staring at the rainbow for some time, before returning to the sheltering tree. When the dusk had begun to fall, she stepped out from underneath it and climbed up the slope and back on to the path.
By the time she reached the cluster of school buildings, it was dark. No one would be able to see her if she was careful.
Rusty ran up the slope along the outside, and headed for the building at the end. From inside there came a loud animal noise, followed by a burst of laughter. She flung herself against the wall. The windows were too high up for her to be able to see in, but she realized that there were children in the hall rehearsing a play. The characters in the play had strange, foreign-sounding names like Chonga, Tonga, Wonga, Tala and Mela. There were two clowns called Sneezer and Boozer, the crew of a ship called the Mary Jane, a monkey, a snake, an ostrich, a baby elephant, a mother elephant and a crocodile.
Rusty squatted down beside the wall and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. She edged along the wall to where the ground fell away to a lower level. Still keeping to the outside of the buildings, she crept cautiously to a set of windows and peered in.
It was a workshop. Half a dozen boys and girls were making things out of wood. A boy in the corner was making a lampstand. A girl was making a small bookcase, and another girl was hammering a nail into an orange crate. Rusty sprinted quickly past the window and peered in so that she could see into the other side of the workshop. There, in a corner, a group of children were making scenery. Two boys were busy building flats while two other girls and a boy were painting them. There wasn’t a uniform to be seen. They were all wearing old sweaters, and skirts or shorts. A man strolled over towards them and they began talking casually with him. He seemed really interested in what they were doing – but what was even more astonishing was that they called him by his first name!
Quickly, she drew herself away from the window. Looking quickly from side to side, she sprinted as fast as she could over the courtyard to the inside wall on the opposite side.
She could hear children talking and someone playing gramophone records. She edged her way along until she came to a window. Inside a small room, two girls and a boy were having a serious discussion and sharing some home-made fudge. One of the girls rewound the gramophone and turned the record over. It was a single room with one bed in it, a shelf for books, a table and chair, and all sorts of pictures stuck up on the walls. Rusty crouched down and crept past. The next room was a single, too. A boy was lying on the bed reading. She was puzzled. Maybe they didn’t have dormitories at this school. In the next bedroom, four children were sitting on the floor playing a very hectic card game.
Hearing a sound behind her, Rusty ran swiftly to the end of the courtyard and pushed open a door. She was immediately surrounded by a cacophony of sound: singing, a violin, viola, cello, flute, recorder and drum, coming from various rooms inside. She ran across a hallway, flung open another door, and fled outside. Again she had a feeling that she had been seen, but she didn’t dare look behind her. She leapt down the slope and ran across the field towards the farm. Although her side hurt, she staggered on past the farm and turned up a sodden dirt track.
The ground grew softer and muddier as she ran, and her feet were sucked into it, dragging her back. As soon as she r
eached the gate, she hauled herself over it and stumbled crazily up the wet slope towards the woods.
Once there, she leaned against a tree-trunk, gasping. A twig broke. She swung round and stared into the darkness. She took her torch out and turned it on, but there was no one there.
As she staggered on through the woods, the sky grew darker. Eventually she heard the sound of the river, and she knew that that meant she was near the bridge by Staverton Bridge station. She pushed on, her feet and ankles becoming encased in mud. The sound of the river was louder now. At last she stepped out on to the road. Ahead of her was the bridge.
As soon as she had crossed over it, she began running again, putting as much distance between her and the railway station as possible. Gradually the sky grew blacker till she really couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. She turned on her torch and half walked, half ran, hoping that a car wouldn’t suddenly appear from around a corner and hit her.
It took her an hour before she reached the Hatherleys’ house. As soon as she saw the lights from their windows, she turned her torch off and pushed herself up against the hedge. A dog barked loudly from inside.
‘Darn it!’ she muttered.
With one dash, she fled past the driveway. She was too tired to stop now. Her legs had taken over, and they simply went on placing her feet one in front of the other.
She felt so relieved when she saw the opening in the hedge and the dirt lane. Ahead of her, creaking in the wind, was the long, battered wooden gate that led into the front garden of Beatie’s house.
The Bomb was still standing there, looking abandoned. She staggered over the grass to the front door. It was locked.
Around the back, she found the conservatory door was open. She fell in and closed it quickly behind her. As soon as she entered, she discovered that there was still no electricity. She shone her torch through the kitchen and hall, and opened the living-room door.
The room was bare, except for the blankets she and her mother had used, which were folded up by the fireplace. She swung the light to an object in the corner by the bay window. It was a trunk with several foreign labels stuck to it. She flashed the torch’s light over the surface. The trunk had been to Spain and Scotland and to places she had never even heard of, but it was definitely the one that Aunt Hannah and Uncle Bruno had mentioned in their letters.
She began sawing her way through the rope with her jack-knife. After much grunting and pushing, she prised open two large clips and lifted the lid.
She stared, amazed, at the American newspapers, magazines and comics. She’d forgotten how colourful and thick they were. She was about to read a strip cartoon when she remembered that there were things packed underneath. She pushed them aside and let out a gasp.
At the top was’ the round, multicoloured rag rug she had made one winter. She pulled it from the trunk and spread it out on the floor. There were a hundred memories in that rug. There were whole episodes of The Lone Ranger,
Sky King, Superman and Captain Midnight. And Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy with his B-17 Flying Fortress and his Uncle Jim. And Molly McGee saying, after another wardrobe of stuff had come crashing on top her, ‘T’ain’t funny, McGee.’
And then at weekends the Starlit Balloon, when the dance bands played Tour Hit Parade and the Sunday night Jack Benny shows and the thriller, The Shadow. It all seemed like something she’d dreamed up. But there was the rag rug on the floor, so it must have been real.
Next in the trunk was the log-cabin patchwork quilt Grandma Fitz had made her. She laid it across her knees. Each large square was made up so that the tiny centre square was an ochre colour. Surrounding it in rectangular strips were reds and oranges. That represented the fire. Gradually the strips became darker, till the ones at the edge were black. That was supposed to be the glow around the fire becoming more shadowy. She loved it. It made her think of sitting in the dark by a log fire.
As she pulled out various sweaters and dresses, she gave a loud whoop. There were two of her thick woollen snow-suits, her sunsuits with the matching blouses, shorts and wrap-around skirts, and a large framed photograph of Frank Sinatra. There were her warm L. L. Bean boots and flannel shirts, and her red boxing-glove-shaped mittens with the fleecy lining. It was then that she discovered her books and comics underneath.
‘My Friend Flicka!’ she whispered. ‘And The Yearling? She’d wept buckets over that.
There were horsey books, Nancy Drew mystery books, Bambi and Lassie Come Home and the Terhune books – all dog stories like Treve and Wolf, The Way of a Dog and Crazy Quilt.
‘A collie down is a collie never beaten,’ she stated. ‘Oh no! I don’t believe it!’
It was Lochinvar Luck, the Terhune book that her Girl Scout troop had given her when she’d been sick. On the front it had a picture of a collie standing on a cliff top, and in the background was a fiery sky and tall green fir trees in a valley. Between the pages was a tiny card, with flowers in a basket on one side, and underneath ‘Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery’ were lots of tiny signatures that filled both sides of the card.
There were also several Ernest Thompson Seton books all about coyotes and wolves and bears, including some of the ones she used to borrow from Gramps’ library in Vermont.
‘Old Silver Grizzle’ she muttered. ‘Lives of the Hunted, Wild Animals I Have Known, The Biography of a Silver Fox.’ She gave a yell.’ The Bobbsey Twins!’
She flicked open a book about a church mouse. ‘Ah, here it is:
‘Snap, whack, bang,
Goes the snap-rat bang,
Goes snap bang,
Goes whack bang,
Fuss, fuss, fuss!’
She used to love Uncle Bruno reading that out loud.
And there were lots of other books in the trunk, books she’d loved when small, like the two Thornton W. Burgess books, Old Mother West Wind and The Adventures of Peter Cottontail, and, joy of joys, Ferdinand the Bull, who loved to sit under a tree and smell the flowers, rather than go into a bull-ring.
‘Charlie will just love him,’ she whispered.
She lowered the book. What was she talking about? She was leaving Charlie behind.
She put it aside as a familiar sound filled the room. ‘Oh my gosh,’ she murmured. ‘Rain!’ And she ran for the door with her torch.
‘Now just hold your horses,’ she shouted as she stumbled weakly up the stairs with a bucket and bowl.
As soon as she had dumped them under the drips, she draped herself over the banisters and slid down. It took an enormous effort to muster up enough energy to carry the next armful of containers up the stairs. Once she had laid them out, she collapsed on the landing and sat with her back against the railings, her legs outstretched. As the rain continued to hammer on the roof, Rusty sat, exhausted and cold, listening to the different-sounding drips. She remembered the last time she had been up there, how she had seen her mother laugh out loud for the first time and how they had sung ‘Ten Green Bottles’.
And as she sat there, she realized, in spite of the fact that she still didn’t know an awful lot about her mother, that she had grown to love her and that she didn’t want to leave her again. And as she sobbed in the dark, under the leaking ceiling, among all the drips and plops, she told herself she was sure pioneers must cry sometimes.
By the time she had stopped crying, she had made up her mind that she would find a way of returning to Benwood House the following day. She dragged herself down the stairs to the living room, pulled her patchwork quilt over to the fireplace where the blankets were folded, lay on the floor and dragged them over her. She didn’t even take offher cap or her muddy sneakers. She was just so cold, she couldn’t move.
She dreamed that she could smell wood-smoke, and that when she woke up, Mrs Hatherley, Beth and Harry were building up a large fire in the grate, and warming bricks in front of it. Then she dreamed that they were removing her sneakers and socks, wrapping pieces of flannel around the bricks, and placing them by her feet an
d body. And as she lay there, with the warmth of the bricks soaking into her, she saw Beth and Harry sitting in front of the fire with old blankets around their shoulders; and once, when she opened her eyes, Harry turned round and smiled, and she knew he didn’t think she was a pompous ass any more, and she sank back into the warmth, strangely contented.
33
Peggy stared silently at the hastily painted cream walls. She was hardly aware of the other people standing in the room. She was too stunned. She took in the yellow and barn-red flower designs, the different-coloured greens in the leaves and the vines that trailed along the walls, the bird designs in the panelled door and around the two windows. She noticed her daughter’s dressing gown and pyjamas flung over the camp-bed, next to Peggy’s own overalls and scarf, and the carpentry tools arranged neatly on one of the shelves next to the stencils.
On the dark-green table with its central pineapple design stood an oil-lamp. A few small flowers and tendrils were stencilled down the table legs and on the two matching stools. Another lamp stood on the step in front of the fireplace. Leaning against it was an unopened envelope addressed to Miss Bembridge, but it was the note above which caught her attention. It was a piece of torn wallpaper that had been stuck on to the nail from which the mirror hung. On it in scrawled handwriting it read:
Dear Lance,
They’re taking away the scaffolding so I’m running away. I’m going back home. I’m sorry I was mad at you. I hope you get into the team.
Love Rusty.
She glanced at the thirteen-year-old boy in the scarlet-and-grey uniform, and she felt sorry for him. He looked so small and pale among the adults who surrounded him.
His Housemaster had his arm around his shoulder. He looked like a kindly man.
Miss Paxton, Rusty’s Housemistress, stood next to a policeman who was in the process of taking down information. ‘And where do you think she’s heading, sonny?’ he asked.
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