Cold Shoulder Road

by Joan Aiken

  The stallholders were gloomily stamping their feet and rubbing their hands to keep warm. There were very few purchasers – half a dozen shadowy figures shuffling from one stall to another, inspecting the goods for sale. Nobody seemed to be buying much.

  Then Is, looking up over the market stalls, saw something very strange. There were houses up above, scattered over the hillside, and higher still, a stretch of roadway, crossing the grass. Now, along this, passed a figure so singular that Is rubbed her eyes, wondering if she had been mistaken. What she saw seemed to be a person astride of two large wheels – nothing more – and tugged along by the pull of a large pale-coloured kite, which flew above and ahead in the windy moonlit sky. The person – the wheels – the kite – all passed so swiftly that, a moment after, Is thought she must have imagined the whole thing.

  For how could a person ride on two wheels?

  Pulled by a kite?

  Arun lingered by a stall, looking at the pipes and whistles on it.

  “I used to long so for one of those,” he murmured. “I don’t suppose—”

  “Oh, come on, Arun, do,” said Is impatiently. “Your Ma won’t want a whistle! How about a fourpenny pie?”

  As she spoke, Is felt a sudden startled movement beside her, as if someone were about to grab her arm. She looked round to find, at her elbow, a person even shorter and smaller than she was herself – and Is was not tall – a stumpy, thickset little boy, clasping a bundle of hazel branches which he could only just carry. Their eyes met for a brief moment – his were large, round and pale – then he scuttled off hastily into the crowd.

  “Those pies don’t look too tasty,” said Arun, who had not noticed the boy.

  “Well there ain’t a lot else. And we may be glad of one ourselves, if we don’t find your Mum—”

  “Don’t find my Mum?” said Arun crossly, feeling for pennies in his breeches pocket. “Why shouldn’t we find her? She’s not one to gad—”

  As he bought the pie, and the stallkeeper wrapped it in a bit of greasy paper, Is noticed the little boy again.

  He had now stopped in front of a stall that sold brooms and brushes; without speaking, he held up the bundle of brushwood he carried, showing it to the man behind the table. The man took the bundle, inspected it carefully, nodded, and passed over a few small coins. Clutching them tightly, the boy ran to a fish counter, where he pointed silently at the herrings. Three were handed to him in a cabbage-leaf, he paid for them, and scooted off at top speed into the darkness.

  “Wonder if he’s one of Arun’s Silent Folk?” Is asked herself quietly. “Wonder if he can’t speak, or won’t speak? Come to think, if they’re never allowed to say a word, it’s a blooming marvel their kids ever learn to speak at all.”

  “This way,” said Arun, who was now walking at impatient speed; and he turned inland from the sea front, threading among a criss-cross of little streets which had plainly suffered from the flood, for their cobblestones were heaved out of place and lay in piles ready to trip passers-by. The ground between the cobbles was muddy and slippery; a sour smell of salt, wet rope, and rotting wood hung in the air. A few shadowy animals – dogs? wolves? – slunk in and out of gaps between the houses.

  “Now we turn right, this is Cold Shoulder Road.” Arun gestured to a little tumbledown row of weatherboarded houses, joined together by a common roof, which ran the length of the lane. “Our house is the last but one, down at the end.”

  Beyond the last house rose a bushy, brambly hillside, and above that, cliffs were outlined against the sky.

  Is, who had grown up in the spacious woods of Blackheath Edge, felt a little sorry for Arun, obliged to spend his childhood in such a dank, muddy little street. Still, at least open country must be near by – supposing his parents had allowed him to go off into the fields, or climb the cliff?

  “And the sea’s just over the road, after all,” she said, half-aloud.

  “What’s that? Come along, I’m freezing,” snapped Arun. He was striding faster, almost running. Waves of worry came from him.

  When they reached the last house but one, Is could see that its door, unlike many in the row, must once have been painted white, and had a brass ‘2’ on its crosspiece, tarnished by sea air.

  Arun banged nervously on the door with his knuckles. Then, as there was no answer, he rapped again, louder.

  But there was still no response. He tried the door. It was locked.

  Now a black cloud slipped across the slender moon.

  “Seems like there’s nobody home,” said Is, after a fairly long pause. She added hopefully, “Maybe your Ma might have gone out a-marketing? To the fair? To get herself a fish for supper, likely? Or to visit a friend? Do you think?”

  “No I don’t!” said Arun. “She never went out. Dad did the marketing. And she wouldn’t stir out at night. Not unless it was to look after a sick person.”

  Is could hear the worry and uncertainty in his voice.

  She thought to herself: His Dad died. Now, maybe, he’ll find his Mum has died, too. Poor Arun. It’s hard for him. But what we need, right now, is a bite to eat and somewhere to doss down. Aloud she said, “Did your Mum use to keep a key anywhere? Like, under a brick?”

  A note of hope came back into Arun’s voice. He said, “Yes, she did, come to think. Round at the back. You have to go past the end house, and there’s a path all along behind the back gardens.”

  They walked on past the last house in the row. Its windows were dark. In fact there had been very few lights all along Cold Shoulder Road. Which seemed odd, thought Is, for it must be early still, not more than about nine o’clock.

  She shivered as two large drops of icy rain fell on her cheek.

  “I sure hope she did leave a key. Maybe she’s round at one o’ the other houses, chewing the rag with a neighbour.”

  “I tell you, she never—”

  Arun shoved open a small paling gate, and made his way gingerly along a narrow slippery garden path between cabbages which had shot up tall and then fallen over. They smelt strong and rank.

  By the back door of the house there stood a wooden rain-water barrel, set up on two piles of bricks. Arun knelt and poked his hand into the gap between the bricks; then let out a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Here’s the key, inside of a jam-pot.”

  “Not before time,” muttered Is, for rain was now falling steadily, and a low rumble of thunder came from over the sea.

  The key from the jar opened the back door and they walked through into icy cold and damp, thick, stuffy dark.

  “Smells like a sardine factory in here,” muttered Is. “And the floor’s ankle-deep in mud – watch how you step! Where does your Ma keep her candles, Arun?”

  “On a shelf under the stair.”

  He crossed the room and felt in the accustomed place. But let out a yelp of disgust.

  “Shelfs all mud and slime. Like fishing in a basket of eels.”

  “Reckon the flood got into the house, waist level at least,” said Is, feeling the stairs, which rose straight out of the kitchen. “And no one’s troubled to clean up since. Best have a look upstairs, had we?”

  She tried to speak in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice, but secretly she had a frightening notion of what they might find up above.

  “Ma always did keep a bedroom candle and some lucifer matches in her room,” Arun murmured. “I’ll just take a look up there.”

  He slipped past Is on the narrow stair, and went up. She followed close behind, hoping strongly that the upper floor of this little house might be less damp and wretched than the downstairs.

  A rumble of thunder overhead accompanied them as they climbed; it was not a full peal, but sounded like people shifting bits of furniture about the sky so as to make room for something bigger.

  “Lucky we’re under cover,” Is remarked. “It’s raining stair-rods out there. Hark!”

  They could hear the rain lashing on the roof.

  Arun said nothing. There were tw
o doors at the stairtop, each side of a tiny landing-place. He opened the right-hand one and walked into the room beyond, Is still keeping very close behind.

  As they entered the room a mighty, scalding-yellow canopy of lightning swept over the whole sky. Next moment a tremendous crash of thunder, just overhead, it seemed, made the whole house rattle.

  “Croopus!” gasped Is. “That was a close one!”

  But she spoke with huge relief. The flood of yellow light had revealed a neat bedroom, with bedcovers tightly tucked, clothes hanging on a hook, candle and matches on a chair by the bed. Nobody was here. No ill or dead person – which was what Is had feared – lay stretched on the bed.

  “I just can’t understand it,” Arun was saying in a puzzled voice. “Where can she be?”

  “Maybe she went on a visit? You got aunts – uncles – she got family of her own?”

  Is knew nothing about her aunt Ruth, Arun’s mother, save that she had married Arun’s father, Hosiah Twite, brother to Desmond Twite, Is’s own father. And that the pair had belonged to this Silent Sect.

  “Her parents were dead,” said Arun. “We’ve only got family on Dad’s side, and who’d want Uncle Desmond?”

  He was trying to light the candle. Slowly the flame grew, and soft shadows flickered across the small room.

  “The Twites ain’t all bad,” said Is. “There’s Dido. She’s a real one-er! And my sis Penny’s not so bad, so long’s you take her the right way—”

  Arun was carefully carrying the candle across the room. “I’ll have a look in Dad’s room—”

  His voice came from the top of the stairs.

  “Where did you sleep, then?” asked Is, following behind.

  “There’s a little clothes-closet off Dad’s room. I slept in there on a cot-bed. Blister it! What, in the name of—?”

  There was a loud thump and a crash.

  “What’s up?” called Is.

  “There’s things piled all over the floor – bits of board – I gashed my shin – oh, curse!” He tripped again, and only just managed to save himself without dropping the candle. “Watch how you go!”

  “Rum stink in here,” said Is. “Paint, you reckon?”

  Another terrific flash of lightning suddenly lit up the room in bold black and yellow. Arun and Is let out simultaneous gasps. For what dazzled their eyes was not only the lightning, but also the contents of the room: all around the walls, and on the bed, and stacked three-deep over the floor, and on the single chair, and on the clothes-chest, were piled squares of wood about the size of chair-seats, and these were all dashed and splashed with wild, brilliant colour.

  “What in creation’s name are those things?” gasped Is, as they were plunged back into dark, lit only by the candle’s shadowy gleam. She picked up one board and held it near the flame.

  “It’s a picture. Of flowers. But what flowers! Glorious me! I never saw anything like it! Not in my whole life. And there’s hundreds of ’em.”

  “In the closet too,” said Arun, investigating.

  Several more lightning flashes gave them a chance to decide that all the paintings had been done by the same person. They were nearly all pictures of flowers.

  “There’s jars of paint here, in the corner,” said Is. “And brushes. D’you reckon your Mum did these, Arun? Was she fond of flowers?”

  “Well . . . she was,” he said doubtfully. “If she were out in the lane, and she’d see a dandelion on the bank, most often she’d stop and look at it. Just for a minute. But my Dad was the real one – he knew a lot about plants. He’d walk all over the county, times when business was poor, or even if it wasn’t, and he made a map showing where all the rare ones grew, Jacob’s Ladder and Green Man and the Monkey Orchid. But he never told people where they grew. And Ma never went with him.”

  “Could your Dad have painted these?”

  “Never!” declared Arun. “He used to say pictures were the Devil’s likenesses. He’d never do anything like this. And he’d never allow Ma . . . Not when he was alive. No, this couldn’t be Dad’s work.”

  Is felt inclined to agree with Arun. She had, by chance, been present as her Uncle Hosiah Twite lay dying of cold and wolf-bites. He had seemed a sad, defeated man, certainly not capable of producing pictures like these, which blazed with colour, which twisted and writhed and swarmed with strong, bright, wild interlocked shapes.

  “Then it must have been your Mum what painted them. But where can she be now?”

  “If only I knew! – We can’t sleep in here,” said Arun. “There’s no room for a mouse. We’d best drag out the mattress from underneath and lay it on the floor in the other room. I’ll have that, and you can have Mum’s bed.”

  “Maybe she’ll come home yet – yes! Hark!”

  Rat-tat! on the front door.

  “Maybe she lost her key,” said Arun with a huge gulp of relief. He ran down the stair. There was no key in the locked front door. He opened the window beside it, with a struggle, and called hopefully, “Is that you, Ma? Go round to the back, we’ve no key for this one.”

  When he returned to the kitchen, his candle flame revealed the sorry state it was in, mud and slime all over the brick floor, mould and mildew on the surfaces of chairs, table, and sink-board. But on the dresser he found two more candles, and lit one of them before opening the back door.

  Surely this can’t be Arun’s Mum? thought Is, gazing with some dismay at the woman who came pushing into the kitchen. She looked like a weasel, with a thin pale face, wispy grey hair escaping from under a shawl, and a lot of teeth which looked as if they were made of china.

  “Mrs Boles!” said Arun.

  “There! I made sure it must be robbers when I saw your light!” cried Mrs Boles aggrievedly. “That or yer Ma come back. I never thought as how it would be you, Arun Twite! Given up for lost, you were! And your Dad walking to London-town seventeen times, a-searching for you, and yer Ma crying her pore eyes out – when he wasn’t there. Caused a peck of trouble, you did.”

  She stared at him accusingly, out of eyes which were red-rimmed with gin, not tears.

  “But where is Ma?” demanded Arun.

  “Ah! There’s plenty as ‘ud like to know that! Vanished clean away, she done – clean as a whistle. Not but what they all of ’em went, those mumchance beggars as calls ’emselves the Silent Sect – I’d give ’em silent! I daresay their thoughts is as nasty as anybody else’s, if not nastier; special that one as calls hisself the Elder – Dominic de la Twite, fiddle-faddle! Plain Twite’s his monacker, ask me!”

  “The Silent Sect have gone from Folkestone?” exclaimed Arun. “Did they go to America, then?”

  “Nah, nah! Only just up the road to Seagate town. Made the neighbourhood too hot to hold them here, I reckon, and there was plenty empty houses going free up there. Seagate’s welcome to ’em, says I. (Not but what your Ma was a decent body, when you got her alone; nursed me through a nasty case of gordelpus, she done, once.) But as to where she’d got to – well, a nod’s as good as a wink to a dead donkey.”

  She crossed her arms and stared at Is and Arun. “’Oo’s the gel?” she demanded. “She’ve a look of you, Arun – but you never ‘ad no sister, did you?” Her eyes gleamed with curiosity.

  “She’s my cousin, Is Twite. My Uncle Desmond’s youngest. But when did my mother go, Mrs Boles? You say she didn’t go with the Sect, to Seagate?”

  “Nah. Like I say, she went afore they did. Days before. And there’s some as say she abducticated little Abandella Twite, time she went. And was a-going to use the kinchin for wicked magicking, some do say. There’s plenty, Arun Twite, as said your Mum is a witch, that she got rid of you, first, and then done in your pore Dad. In fact, if it weren’t for me, keeping a neighbourly eye on the place, this house woulda been burned down, weeks back.”

  “What?” Arun gaped at the woman, quite stunned. “For a start, who in the wide world is Abandella Twite? I never heard of such a name. And why should my Mum abduct anybody? She’s
the very last person . . . And, as for her being a witch, that’s just clung-headed. Why, Mum wouldn’t hurt a fly! I’ve seen her pick up an ant, crossing the kitchen floor, and carry it safe outside.”

  “All I knows is,” said Mrs Boles, “there’s folks around this town as don’t scruple to call your Mum a wizard. Acos she used to go and nurse sick folk, and mostly they got better. That ain’t natural. And you’d best look out yourself, Arun Twite – anyone as is connected to the Silent Folk, hereabouts, they can be in for a peck of trouble.”

  She leaned close to Arun and hissed, “With the you-know-who!”

  “I don’t know who,” said Arun, puzzled, stepping back. Mrs Boles’s breath stank of gin, old potato-peelings, and fish-bones.

  “The Emjee!” she whispered, and nipped through the back door, pulling it to behind her with a spiteful slam.

  “The Emjee?” said Arun to Is. “What in the world can she mean?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’ll find out in the morning. Let’s eat the pie and go to bed.”

  They went to bed as the storm rumbled away inland. Is wondered if the rain was falling on Arun’s Mum. And on those two queer figures – the stumpy little character with pale eyes like silver pennies – and the person riding on two wheels and drawn across the hillside by a kite.

  I must have just thought I saw him. But how could I invent such a thing?

  Finding no answer to any of her questions. Is fell asleep.

  Chapter Two

  “WE HAD BETTER GET HOLD OF MRS BOLES and ask some more questions,” said Is next morning. She and Arun had breakfasted scantily off a loaf, which Is went out and bought in Wear Street, and they were now making a rather hopeless attempt to clean the filthy kitchen with brooms and rags and pails full of sea water, scooped from the high tide which chomped and frothed beyond the shingle bank on the south side of Cold Shoulder Road.

  “Mrs Boles is a horrible woman,” said Arun. “There’s lots of things missing from the house: Ma’s work-basket, and the pink mug my Granny Twite gave me when I was born, and all Dad’s fish-hooks and lines – and the clock. I bet she took them—”