An Orphan's Winter

by Sheila Jeffries

  Lottie nodded. There was something she wanted to ask – but not yet. Her period was late and the doctor in Derriford Hospital had told her it was because she’d been so ill. ‘It will come right,’ he’d said. ‘You might miss one, or even two, but your monthly cycle will return eventually.’

  ‘Promise?’ Jenny said, and when Lottie didn’t answer, her expression changed and she asked, ‘Is there something? Lottie?’

  Lottie felt cornered. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Well, you’re only young. Plenty of time yet,’ Jenny said, looking directly into Lottie’s eyes.

  Jenny was still looking at her searchingly. Time to change the subject.

  ‘What about Olivia? I don’t want her to come to St Ives, ever. I don’t want to live with her, Jenny, ever.’

  Jenny rubbed her hands together. ‘Don’t you worry. I can deal with her!’

  *

  ‘You’re not welcome here.’ Jenny stood on the doorstep of Hendravean, her hands covered in flour.

  ‘Oh, but let me explain who I am,’ Olivia said, her eyes sweeping over Jenny and pausing a bit too long on the iron leg. ‘I’m Charlotte’s mother. Her real mother.’

  ‘Who’s Charlotte?’

  ‘I think you know that,’ Olivia said smoothly. ‘My daughter – Charlotte De Lumen – she lives here with you, doesn’t she?’

  ‘There’s no one called Charlotte here.’

  ‘Well, Lottie, then, if you must call her such a common name.’

  ‘It’s the name Lottie has chosen for herself. Lottie Lanroska.’

  ‘What a pity you have encouraged her to choose a name like that. It sounds like a circus act. It won’t help her get on in life.’

  ‘It’s a perfectly good traditional Cornish name,’ Jenny hissed, struggling to control the sparks of antagonism gathering in her mind. ‘I’m Jenny Lanroska and proud of it, I’ll have you know. My husband, Arnie Lanroska, was a wonderful man – brave, strong, kind and clever – and a respected member of the RNLI lifeboat crew.’

  ‘Aw, how sweet.’

  ‘Sweet?’ Jenny thought Olivia was being sarcastic. She stepped outside and closed the front door behind her. She pushed her face closer to Olivia’s thickly powdered mask. A faint smell of wine hung in the air around her and the inner corners of Olivia’s eyes looked red and sore. She noted the blonde hair, wavy like Lottie’s but thinner and limp, dragged back from a face very similar to Lottie’s, but the mouth was tense and unsmiling, the eyes had no light. In fact, they were so dark that Jenny thought it impossible she had a soul. ‘What do you mean, sweet?’

  ‘Aw, don’t take it the wrong way. I just meant to compliment you on the way you defend your poor husband,’ Olivia said with a faint tinge of sincerity. ‘It’s the way we talk in New York. I’m getting used to England again – and Cornwall is so quaint.’

  Jenny stood looking at her, hands on hips, trying to reason with the exasperation Olivia evoked in her. This woman had abandoned four-year-old Lottie, broken John’s heart, and now had the cheek to turn up, uninvited, at the home Lottie loved.

  ‘Is Charlotte here?’ Olivia asked. ‘Is she better? She was so dreadfully ill, you know.’

  ‘I do know. Lottie’s not here. She’s out with a friend.’

  ‘I wanted to see her. And – I think we need to talk, don’t we, Jenny? Couldn’t we go indoors and sit down?’

  Jenny was alone at Hendravean. Nan was out selling herbs and posies from Mufty’s cart, the boys were playing in the hay barn, and Lottie was either with John or with Morwenna. If she asked Olivia in, Jenny wasn’t sure she could handle it.

  I’m that angry, I might start chucking saucepans, she thought.

  Olivia looked at her pleadingly. ‘Couldn’t I use your bathroom, Jenny – please?’ she begged, inching towards the door. ‘And I need to take some aspirin. All I want is a glass of water. You can’t deny me that, surely? I’ve never done anything to you. We ought to be friends, surely, for Charlotte’s sake. I promise if you just let me use the bathroom and give me a glass of water to take my aspirin, I’ll go.’

  Jenny sighed. ‘Oh, come on then. Anyway, I’m burning me scones standing here.’ She opened the door and the swallows came bombing out. ‘Oops,’ Jenny said, ‘I forgot about this lot. We have to keep the door open for them – they’ve got a nest in the rafters.’

  Olivia gasped. ‘Birds! Nesting inside?’

  ‘We’ve got a robin’s nest as well,’ Jenny said, seizing a chance to wind Olivia up, ‘in between two chutney jars on the shelf this year. Last year they were in the bookshelves.’

  Ducking her head, Olivia followed Jenny through the hall, eyeing the high shelves stacked with Nan’s bottled pears and homemade chutneys. The male robin supervised her from the shelf, a territorial gleam in his eye.

  ‘The bathroom is first left at the top of the stairs,’ Jenny said, ‘and do mind the chickens don’t peck your ankles,’ she added wickedly; even though the chickens were actually outside, there were plenty of feathers lying around.

  Leaving Olivia to brave the stairs, Jenny limped into the kitchen and flung the oven door open to rescue a tray of slightly burned scones. She filled a glass with tap water and slammed it on the table for Olivia and her aspirin. Manipulative. That’s what Olivia was. She’d wormed her way in.

  A few minutes later, a wild-eyed Olivia came creeping into the kitchen. ‘I’ve never been in a place like this,’ she said, staring at the cornucopia of Nan’s kitchen. ‘What are these bunches of dead leaves hanging from the beams?’

  ‘Herbs. We grow our own and dry them,’ Jenny said proudly. ‘And there’s your glass of water.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Olivia sat down gingerly and opened the snakeskin handbag she carried. Jenny was horrified when she took out a brown bottle labelled ‘100 Aspirin’. ‘Whatever do you want a gurt bottle like that for? Surely you don’t get a hundred headaches, do you?’

  Oliva tipped the bottle, releasing a pile of white tablets into the palm of her hand. She carefully counted out two, then tipped the pile back into the bottle.

  ‘That lot could kill you, Olivia,’ Jenny said, using her name for the first time.

  Oliva smiled sweetly. ‘Yes, I know. That’s why I carry them with me.’

  She’s insane, Jenny thought, and finally the two women had eye contact over the tray of burnt scones.

  Was this woman for real? Was she really Lottie’s mother? What exactly was the demon lurking behind those dark eyes? Fear. It had to be fear. It had floated to the surface after Olivia’s cryptic words. Jenny felt herself cooling down. She’d been prepared for a cat-fight, but not such an emotionally precarious opponent. She reached out and touched Olivia’s arm. It felt brittle. ‘What did you want to talk about?’ she asked in a kinder voice.

  ‘My daughter.’ Olivia’s voice went husky.

  ‘Lottie,’ Jenny said firmly.

  ‘Okay, Lottie.’ Despite being invited to talk, Olivia went quiet, her scarlet fingernails tapping the scrubbed pine table. ‘I’m . . . I’m so sad that she hates me now. She hates me, Jenny. What can I do?’

  Jenny felt immediate empathy. ‘My son, Matt – he’s seventeen too – and he hates me. I know how it feels. Believe me, I do.’

  ‘We’re quits then.’ Olivia’s eyes swam with tears and she fished out an embroidered hanky from the snakeskin bag and dabbed her cheeks with it, smearing the heavy layer of powder. Under the powder, her skin was deathly white and as the powder washed away, it uncovered the circles of shadow under her eyes. ‘Instead of fighting, we could be friends – support each other.’

  Jenny nodded slowly. ‘We could. But that depends on what your intentions are.’

  ‘I am Lottie’s birth mother,’ Olivia said, still clutching the bottle of aspirin, turning it over and over, top to tail on the table, the tablets inside rattling. ‘I carried her. I gave birth to her. She was a beautiful baby, just beautiful. I did love her, and – I want her back, I guess.�
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  Jenny shut her eyes and made herself listen to Olivia’s tale of woe, knowing that for Lottie’s sake she must try to understand. Those white aspirin tablets being tipped over and over in the glass bottle chilled Jenny.

  What if she swallows a handful? she thought in alarm.

  ‘It would be lovely to have a mother and daughter friendship now she’s growing up – shopping for clothes, doing our nails, seeing movies together. She’s missing so much stuck down here in a place like this. I want to take her to live in London where she’d meet people and—’

  ‘She meets people down here.’ Jenny felt her face flame and the words she’d been holding back sizzled in the air between them. ‘As for you carrying her – I carried Lottie when she was eight years old, soaking wet, cold and terrified after my Arnie rescued her from a shipwreck, risking his own life. I carried her through the wind and the rain to our cottage. I took off her wet clothes by the fire and we were horrified – horrified – to see the terrible scars on her little back. You didn’t know that, did you?’

  ‘No.’ Olivia was wide-eyed and trembling.

  ‘She’d been beaten. Cruelly beaten by a man in an orphanage who was supposed to be caring for her. Where were you? Go on, tell me, where were you, Olivia?’

  Olivia trembled and shook her head violently, unable to answer.

  ‘In America with your fancy man – the man you broke John’s heart for, the man you abandoned your little girl for.’ Jenny reached out and grabbed Olivia’s arm as she tried to get up. ‘Oh no you don’t. You’re gonna sit here and listen to this, ‘cause it’s the truth. Do you know why Lottie was on that ship? Do you? She ran away from the orphanage – eight years old she was, a little blonde angel who never hurt anyone, and she stowed away on a cargo ship. Why? Why, Olivia? Look at me. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Olivia whispered, terrified of Jenny’s passion.

  ‘Because Lottie thought the ship was going to America. She thought she was going to end up in America and that she would find you – her mother. That’s what she wanted, Olivia. But the ship was wrecked here on Porthmeor. She ended up with us and we’ve loved her and looked after her – the whole town loves her. She belongs here now.’ Tears ran down Jenny’s face but her eyes hammered the words into Olivia like nails. She pushed her face closer. ‘So don’t you come here and think you can take our Lottie away, madam, because the whole town will rise up against you. If you want Lottie so much you should ask her, not tell her – ask her what she wants to do – and respect the choice she makes.’

  Jenny sat back, drained, looking at the wreckage of Olivia, still clutching the bottle of aspirin. In one swift movement, Jenny whipped the bottle away from her. Olivia cried out and clawed at the air, but Jenny struggled to her feet, lifted the iron lid of the stove and threw the bottle and its contents into the fire.

  She went back to Olivia and sat close, holding her the way she would hold a child. ‘I just saved your life,’ she said, with quiet love. ‘I hope we can still be friends.’

  Chapter 9

  Searching for Matt

  Unbeknown to Jenny, Lottie was spending a lot of her time searching for Matt. No one had seen him, not even the harbour master, Ken, who kept a kindly eye on Lottie. She was known and liked by most of the locals, especially those who knew her story and understood what she had been through. There was much gossip when John had turned out to be her father – it seemed like a story with a happy ending. At first, John had been regarded with suspicion, but gradually people were talking to him, liking his quiet ways and forgiving him for having painted a granite cottage dazzling white and turning it into a gallery.

  Two days were left of Lottie’s sick leave from school. Longing to see Matt, she often sat at the end of Smeaton’s Pier on the sun-baked granite, watching every incoming boat. Why didn’t Matt come? Was he all right? Both Nan and Jenny seemed to have forgotten about him, except in the occasional doom-laden prediction: he’d get in trouble with the boat, he’d get caught stealing and be sent to a borstal. Lottie talked to her father about it.

  ‘Does he steal?’ John asked.

  ‘Only when he’s desperate,’ Lottie said. ‘He doesn’t steal for fun.’

  ‘And what would he be desperate for?’

  ‘Food mostly – and maybe fuel for the boat.’

  ‘Jenny would be told if he’d been sent to a borstal,’ John said, ‘so it couldn’t happen without her knowing.’

  ‘He might lie about his age.’

  ‘Hmm – well, the police have clever ways of finding out the truth,’ John said. ‘I don’t like to see you breaking your heart over him, Lottie. I know he’s your brother, but he’s chosen his life.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘He’s settled in Portreath, hasn’t he? It’s not too far away. Why not go there? Nan would take you, wouldn’t she?’

  Lottie shook her head. ‘Nan hates Matt.’

  Leaving her father attending to customers in the gallery, she walked back to the harbour, thinking about how it would feel to return to school on the following Monday. She didn’t have to go back. She could leave, like Morwenna had done, and earn some money.

  And live with Matt.

  Why have I changed so much? Lottie sat on the harbour wall, gazing at the water. Today it was tranquil, with gently waving reflections and silver lips of light unfolding like smiles along the flare path of the sun. It was the middle of March, summer on the horizon. A time to be free. A time to dream.

  Lottie knew she was bright. She’d worked hard at school, but her education had been badly disrupted. The teacher, David Merryn, had offered her the chance to join the elite college class, but was she too far behind to catch up with the class? Nan, Jenny and her father had encouraged her to work hard and try for a place at college. Make something of your life, they’d all said. Right now the only thing Lottie wanted to make was a nest. Like the two seagulls on the roof of the Downlong cottage. They mated for life, came back every year contented and regal, devoted to each other, so sure of what they had to do next. Raise a family.

  Raise a family. The thought fell from the sky like fruit from a tree. A fruit to be eaten and savoured. I want to be a mother, Lottie thought. It was a dream beyond all dreams. Powerful. But still so far away. If only time would disappear. She wanted a life that wasn’t controlled by age, a life dominated by adults forever saying, ‘You’re too young’, and sometimes, ‘You’re too old.’ There was a very hazy line between being a child and being an adult, over which she had no control. Then there was the option of rebellion, which was what Matt had chosen.

  Deep in thought, Lottie squealed in fright when someone crept up behind her and put a pair of rough hands over her eyes. ‘Guess who!’

  Her pulse quickened when she recognised the soft huskiness of the voice. She turned, laughing. ‘Matt!’ He towered over her, unrefined and earthy against the noontime sky. His hair stuck out from under his cap, his eyes devouring her with the same deep hunger as she’d been feeling.

  He sat down. ‘Are you better, Lottie? Tom told me how ill you were.’

  ‘I had peritonitis – but I’m okay now.’

  Lottie felt herself tingling deep down from the intensity of his gaze.

  ‘You look like a beautiful seashell,’ he said quietly, reaching out to take her hand. He glanced around furtively. No one was there on the end of the pier except a pair of herring gulls perched on a coil of rope.

  Lottie smiled. She noticed how the fine hairs on his arms glistened a brassy colour in the sunshine. She waited.

  ‘I’d love to kiss you,’ Matt said, ‘but when we’re here in St Ives we’ve got to be brother and sister.’

  ‘Of course. I’ve kept our secret, Matt. Have you?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s in here,’ he patted his heart.

  ‘Where’s the boat?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘She’s in Portreath. I came by train. I can’t do too many long trips in The Jenny Wren. It’s cheaper by train and I’ve found a way t
o walk up through the woods to Camborne from the North Cliffs. You’d love it, and Tom would. I’ve been drawing some of the old trees – there’s an ancient beech tree that is twisted like a rope. The trunk is wide and underneath is a thick carpet of red-gold leaves. It’s so quiet in there. I really want to take you there, Lottie.’

  ‘For a picnic – like we used to have with Nan?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but just for us. Just you and me. Don’t you dare bring Nan!’ Matt grinned. ‘We could go now, but it’s a long walk. Are you back to normal or still a bit delicate?’

  ‘I do get tired, and my tummy hurts from the operation. I haven’t been swimming yet.’

  ‘We could walk through the woods towards Carbis Bay,’ Matt said. ‘No one knows us down that end of St Ives.’

  Lottie noticed his other hand was delving into the canvas haversack he carried over his shoulder. ‘What’s in there?’ she asked, hearing a crackle of paper.

  Matt’s eyes sparkled. ‘I missed you,’ he said, and his tanned cheeks flushed with sudden awkwardness. ‘I – I wanted to make you something special, Lottie, to remind you how . . . how much I love you.’ He thrust a parcel into her hands, something carefully wrapped in a brown paper bread-bag and tied together with a frayed bootlace.

  ‘Ooh, Matt! Whatever is it?’ Lottie fingered the mysterious package, her eyes and lips wide open with surprise. ‘How kind of you.’

  ‘I made it for you,’ Matt said, and he went all fidgety with excitement as she undid the bootlace. ‘From driftwood.’

  Lottie gasped in surprise. ‘A boat!’ She extracted the model boat from the bag and squealed. ‘It’s The Jenny Wren! Oh, Matt – it’s just perfect. I can’t believe you made this for me.’

  Matt looked pleased. ‘Took me a while,’ he said modestly. Lottie could see by the look in his eyes how much it meant to him. She examined it closely, marvelling at the detail and the way he’d painted it so beautifully. ‘I can’t think how you made it. It’s exquisite, Matt. I shall keep it forever and ever. I love it.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed the hollow of his cheek. She felt him catch fire at the touch of her lips. The longing swept through both of them like a blaze of light. Then he stepped back. ‘Brother and sister,’ Matt whispered, and grinned. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. ‘Best calm down.’