An Orphan's Winter

by Sheila Jeffries

  Wide awake, Nan had observed him from her bed, and had finally got up. With Bartholomew now purring and growling at the same time, she’d seen the shadow of the boy, and her heart pounded with anger. He’d streaked across the yard and out of the gate, clutching his booty in a bundle of tied rag. Too late to catch him now. Nan made the decision to hide herself in the hay barn and confront the little thief.

  Tom was in school and Jenny had gone down into St Ives to buy fish and bread. Knowing Jenny, she was likely to be down there chatting to friends, or in the harbour hopelessly searching for Matt and his boat. Nan didn’t mind. It gave her time on her own to do something reckless or ridiculous. She chuckled to herself as she climbed the ladder. ‘There’s life in the old bird yet,’ she said aloud.

  Reaching the top, she crawled into the sweet-smelling hayloft and stood up at the third attempt. The hay bales had once been neatly stacked. Now they were all over the place. Tom and two of his friends had been playing up there, building dens.

  ‘Little toads,’ Nan tutted.

  She found a place in the corner where someone had made a bedroom from the hay bales. It looked cosy and, she suspected, the same someone had been sleeping there. A perfect cosy refuge for a wild boy on a rainy night. A wisp of compassion came over Nan, but quickly drifted on.

  The hayloft door was a granite archway, open to the sky and with a sheer drop down to the yard below. Swallows dived in and out at breathtaking speed, twisting and circling as they fed the first batch of fledglings in their cup-shaped nest in the rafters. Nan could see the row of black and white faces and open beaks peeping over the edge of the nest and it made her smile.

  In the back wall was a neat hole in the stonework, which had once been a tiny window. A good spyhole. Nan sat down close to it, wedging herself between the stacks of hay bales, well hidden from anyone venturing up the ladder. She heard the chickens coming up the ladder, clucking as they hopped from rung to rung.

  Nan sat quietly, watching the house and the open gateway through the hole. The wild boy usually came around mid-morning. He must have watched from somewhere nearby to make sure no one was outside.

  Today he’d get a shock.

  Nan relished the chance to give him a fright. One encounter with her would make sure he never, ever came back.

  It would be just her bad luck if he didn’t come today. After about an hour, Nan’s patience was running short. The fragrance of the sweet meadow hay was heavy and she was drowsy. She sat up straighter and listened to the distant sigh of the sea. Then . . . footsteps.

  Nan tensed. It wasn’t Jenny, but they weren’t the kind of footsteps the wild boy would make either. These were slow, deliberate footsteps. Boots on gravel. Nan couldn’t think of anyone who might visit her that day. It spooked her, especially when the sparrows flew up from the yard with a burr of wings.

  She struggled to her feet and peered out of the hole. She saw him immediately. A strange man creeping round the side of the house, bent double, below the level of the windowsills as if he didn’t want to be seen. Horrified, Nan watched him sneak into the back door, which was open.

  Heart pounding, she went to the ladder, lay on the floor and slid backwards, clutching at the hay-covered edges of ancient floorboards, her feet feeling for the rungs of the ladder.

  Be quiet, be quiet, she kept thinking, but she wheezed and groaned with the effort and the fright of lowering herself onto the creaking ladder. I might have a stroke, she thought, looking at her purple hands clinging to the ladder. And she thought about the man inside her home, eyeing her treasures. What about her money at the bottom of an earthenware rice jar in the kitchen?

  Someone in St Ives had been burgled that very week. She’d heard it in the bakery. He’d taken jewellery, silver and cash from a box on top of a wardrobe. He hadn’t been caught.

  ‘I should have got a dog. I knew I should have,’ Nan panted, reaching the bottom of the ladder and unhooking her skirt from where it was caught on a nail.

  Trembling from the effort, she seized the cricket bat Tom had left propped in a corner. Holding it with both hands, she took a deep, empowering breath and strutted towards the house with sweat trickling out of her hair.

  As she crossed the yard, Nan’s mind flickered with folklore and legend. The Cornish tales of giants hurling boulders at each other and carving chasms in the granite with the power of their voice. St Michael the Archangel, with his sword of light. By the time Nan reached the front door she had worked herself into a rage that infused the cricket bat with supernatural powers.

  Where was he?

  She listened.

  Trying not to wheeze, she crept towards the kitchen, hearing him moving bottles and jars. Next he was in the broom cupboard. Kicking the old tea chests and stumbling over boots and dustbin lids.

  Got him! Nan thought. She squared her shoulders. It would be some weedy little man. Some pathetic little runt. She hoped she wouldn’t have to kill him.

  ‘GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!’ Nan bellowed and the man fell over something metal. It sounded like a particular copper coal scuttle that had a way of trapping your foot in the handle. ‘OUT!’ she whacked the cricket bat against the doorpost, scattering flakes of paint onto the floor.

  She filled the doorway and the man swung round in the dimly lit cupboard, the whites of his eyes gleaming. And Nan had the shock of her life.

  ‘It’s you!’ she thundered and her eyes narrowed to unforgiving slits. ‘Come out of that cupboard and don’t you dare run away. You are going to face up to something for once in your life.’

  The cricket bat fell to the floor and she stood back to let him come out of the cupboard into the light. He was taller than she was. He wore the faded blue clothes of a fisherman. He held out his hands to her, palms upward, strong fingers, every crease ingrained with oil or paint. He had long eyelashes and – those eyes. Those soulful eyes.

  It shook Nan. Even though she’d been told by Jenny and Lottie how Matt resembled his father, she was unprepared for it. She needed to generate fury in order to deal with him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she demanded, trying to locate the insolent little boy she had once known. She hurled insults at him, unable to stop. ‘You devious brat. The black sheep of the Lanroska family. How dare you break into my home. My God, I could have killed you with that cricket bat – and I wish I had. You’re nothing but trouble – the devil’s child, that’s what you are.’

  Matt didn’t hang his head as he used to do when he was a child. He didn’t look shocked or hurt. He seemed self-assured and sceptical. In control.

  Nan licked the spittle from her lips. Bartholomew trotted into the kitchen with his tail up. His golden eyes looked from one to the other and chose Matt, wrapping his front paws around his leg and gazing up at him. A smile came into Matt’s eyes and he reached down with his big hands and picked the cat up.

  An angry flush spread up Nan’s cheeks as she restrained herself from saying, ‘Don’t you dare touch my cat.’

  Bartholomew pressed himself against Matt’s heart, purring and stretching up to kiss his face. Nan shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache. She could hear Matt breathing and Bartholomew purring, and the seagulls screaming down in the harbour. She was beyond words, suddenly silenced by a memory. Bartholomew used to do exactly that to Arnie.

  ‘You don’t look well, Nan,’ Matt said.

  His voice had broken since Nan had last seen him. She managed to open her eyes and look into his without hurling another insult.

  ‘You’d better sit down, Nan,’ he said and, with the lightest touch on her arm, he led her into the lounge to her favourite chair, the cat still draped over his shoulder. ‘You’re a bad colour. Shall I get you a glass of water?’

  Nan shook her head. She lowered herself into the chair and looked up at him. ‘You sit down too. I want an explanation. Why break into my house, Matt? Why? Why not knock on the door and tell me what you want?’ She pulled a stalk of hay out o
f her hair and wound it round her index finger.

  Matt looked at her calmly and Nan observed the way he was responding to the love Bartholomew was still lavishly giving him. ‘You never liked me,’ Matt said, the words coming from deep down in his soul, ‘and I didn’t think you would listen.’

  Nan shut her eyes again. Then she said, ‘I’m here now and I’m listening. Why are you here? Stealing, I suppose. You do realise you could end up in a borstal? That’s where they send boys like you.’

  ‘You’re still not listening,’ Matt said.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘No, Nan, you’re not. You’re accusing me and you’re judging me and you’re threatening me. That’s not listening.’

  ‘All right. Point taken. I’ll be quiet.’ Nan pursed her mouth and waited, her eyes impatient. When Matt didn’t respond immediately, she pointed a finger at him. ‘I hope you realise there’s been a bedroom waiting for you upstairs – and meals on the table. You should be living here, helping the family, Matt – we need a strong young man like you. Your mother has been to hell and back with polio, and you’ve caused her endless worry, just disappearing without a word, not even a letter – nothing.’

  Matt’s face hardened. ‘What’s the use of trying to talk to you?’ He put Bartholomew down and stood up, towering over Nan. ‘I’ll take what I want and go. Mum never wanted me and neither did you. And don’t worry, I won’t take any of your precious stuff – or hers. All I want is what my dad would have given me – his lifejacket. I need it ’cause I’m living on his boat.’

  He went back to the broom cupboard and took Arnie’s cork lifejacket from its peg.

  Nan picked up a book and pretended to read, hoping Matt would just go. She wanted peace. At any price.

  But Matt came back into the lounge, the lifejacket over his arm. Seeing it brought tears to Nan’s eyes. She shook her head, now too upset to argue.

  Matt hovered, looking at her, and Bartholomew sat between them on the floor, his tail twitching. Nan knew she hadn’t listened, but she felt too weary to try again. She’d given up on Matt long ago – hadn’t she? Why did she keep getting it wrong? She looked up at him, hoping her silence would speak for her.

  ‘You look after yourself, Nan. And look after Tom.’ Matt’s voice had an odd blend of arrogance and kindness. ‘I’ll look after Lottie,’ he added cheekily, striding purposefully out of the house, across the yard and down through the flower-filled lane towards the sparkling sea.

  Exhausted and upset, Nan watched him go, her mind overloaded with a new threat.

  What did Matt mean by saying he would look after Lottie?

  Chapter 6

  A Cry in the Night

  On the other side of the storm, the Atlantic Ocean was tranquil, the air still. No land was visible; the horizon a vast porcelain bowl, its rim sharp against a peachy sky.

  Lottie hadn’t seen Olivia for three days. Her mother stayed in bed, terribly seasick and wanting to be left alone.

  On that peaceful morning, Lottie loved being up on deck with her father, sitting on one of the roomy wooden seats, watching the ocean for dolphins and the flying fish that she found captivating. Earlier they’d seen a pod of killer whales close to the ship, their black and white faces bursting out of the water as if they could see her up there on the ship. Orcas, John called them. She loved to hear their haunting, high-pitched cry, a strange, musical language incomprehensible to humans.

  ‘Matt would love to see them,’ Lottie said. ‘Do they ever come to Cornwall?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he will see them from his little boat. He’s got a lonely life, hasn’t he?’

  ‘He likes it,’ Lottie said. ‘When we get home you must meet him, Daddy. He wants to show you his paintings.’

  ‘Hmm . . . Well, yes, I’d like to see them.’ John spoke courteously, but there was a discreet frown on his brow. ‘I’m interested, of course, but everything I’ve heard about Matt so far has been negative. He’s something of a challenging character, isn’t he?’

  ‘No, it’s not true,’ Lottie said passionately. Her cheeks flushed. ‘He’s not the bad boy of the family like people say he is. No one understands him. But I do – and honestly, Daddy, Matt is a secret angel. Jenny and Nan are so down on him. I wish I could make them see how wonderful he is. He’s brave and clever and he’s my . . .’ The word ‘lover’ burned on her lips and Lottie stopped speaking, her hot cheeks and bright eyes giving her away.

  John looked at her sharply. Had she said too much? Ever anxious to put things right, Lottie knew she must honour the pledge of secrecy she and Matt had made. She couldn’t think of a single person in her life who would understand, except her friend Morwenna, but Morwenna would gossip. Lottie wanted justice for Matt. And she wanted something they could never have – freedom to love. She sighed. ‘I wish I wasn’t sixteen.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because being sixteen is like a disease. Everyone keeps saying I’m too young for this and too young for that – but I feel old. Sometimes I feel older than Jenny.’

  ‘Well, you’ll soon be seventeen,’ John said. ‘The eighth of May, isn’t it? I think you’ll be very surprised at what I’m planning to give you, Lottie.’

  ‘Ooh, what?’

  ‘It’s a secret. But I shall have to go to London to fetch it.’ John’s eyes twinkled. Then his expression changed. ‘Ah – here’s your mother, up and dressed at last.’

  Lottie stiffened. Olivia glided along the deck towards them in her red coat, an exotic mohair scarf tucked around her neck.

  John sat up attentively. ‘What a lovely scarf.’

  Lottie bristled, remembering how annoyed he had been when Olivia didn’t show up at the gallery, yet he was charm personified. As he stood up to welcome her, John turned to look at Lottie and his face shone with intense, expectant love. Lottie melted. She let her angry feelings slip away like cold pebbles. Give her a chance. I’m sixteen, not six.

  ‘Good to see you up and about,’ John said, and kissed Olivia on the cheek. ‘Come and join us. It’s a beautiful morning.’

  ‘Hello there, John – and Charlotte, how lovely you look.’

  ‘Lottie.’

  ‘Okay – Lottie – forgive my absence. I’ve been so ill and sick. I think I’m dehydrated.’

  Lottie sat tensely, mesmerised by her mother’s eyes. They studied each other, both searching. Searching for love. For understanding. For strength to cross the long, iron bridge of separation and blame. Years ago, there had been confidence and fun in Olivia’s expression, but now Lottie saw only a desperate loneliness lurking beyond the painted image. She wanted to go on looking, but Olivia broke the spell first, as if the level of spiritual contact was unsustainable for her.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said, her voice rough and tired.

  ‘Twelve years,’ Lottie said, and added firmly, ‘but I’m grown up now and I hope we can be friends.’

  Olivia nodded. She seemed to change gear then, pasting a vivacious smile on her thin face. She flashed a set of scarlet fingernails at Lottie. ‘How do you like my nail varnish, honey-child?’

  ‘It . . . it’s okay,’ Lottie managed to say and caught a discreet gleam of amusement in her father’s eyes.

  ‘We can paint your nails for you later if you like?’ Olivia said, leaning so close that Lottie could feel her breath.

  ‘I think she’s too young,’ John said.

  ‘Aw, you’re never too young to look pretty,’ Olivia gushed. ‘I did my feet as well.’ She slipped her shoes off and wiggled a set of scarlet toenails on bony white feet. Lottie eyed the discarded snakeskin shoes with their high heels and longed to try them on.

  Olivia seemed to read her mind. ‘Wanna try my shoes on, hon? Go on – you can.’

  Lottie shook her head vigorously. Why am I still sitting here? she thought, and started to get up, suddenly aware of a stabbing pain low down in her right side. Her father put a gentle, restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘Lottie, please,�
�� he pleaded, and she met his eyes in silence. ‘Remember how much you wanted this.’

  ‘Excuse me. I need to be on my own for a few minutes,’ Lottie said. ‘I’ve got a tummy pain. I’ll be back d’reckly.’

  ‘D’reckly? What on earth does that mean?’ Olivia asked as she walked away, and Lottie heard John’s answer. ‘It’s a Cornish way of saying, “in a minute”.’

  It hurt to hear Olivia laughing. The sound of it cut into her unopened box of bad memories. That laugh. Always her laughing. Lottie couldn’t remember laughing with her, not the way she did with Jenny. In the first four years of her life, when she had lived with her mother in a substantial townhouse in Swansea, Lottie remembered the laugh and how much it had hurt. Olivia had constantly laughed at her, not with her. Laughed at her falls and her failures, her ideas and her dreams. What kind of mother did that?

  Lottie walked alongside the deck rail to the front of the ship. She leaned over. It was a long way down.

  John’s words stayed with her: Remember how much you wanted this. She appreciated his quiet wisdom. She could hardly forget how her dream of going to America to find her birth mother had overshadowed her thoughts for years. It had blotted out the sun. Everything she loved and enjoyed had gone streaming past and she’d only half lived. Her childhood was over. She’d let it slip away. But now her womanhood had begun, glorious and unannounced, with Matt’s lovemaking. It had eclipsed her dream of America and her mother along with it.

  What she wanted now was a way out of the secret, for both of them. But right in front of her, barring the way, was a solid wall of well-meaning adults. None of them could accept that inside every child was an adult, and instead of taking painful years to evolve, that adult could emerge in a sudden burst of glory. Emerge and fly – until its wings were clipped, ‘for its own good’.