by Joan Aiken
“How did you go on for cash when you was living in London?”
“I sang songs in the streets.”
“Make ’em up?”
He nodded listlessly.
Is knew that he had not sung any songs, or made up any new ones, since his time spent in the mines and the death of his friend Davey.
“You make this one up?” she asked, passing him the scrap of paper.
As he read the lines, a faint spark of interest and recognition came into Arun’s eyes. He frowned, and looked about him as if he urgently needed a pencil to make some improvements.
“It’s not much good – hopeless, really. Must have been when I was ten or eleven; I can just remember writing it—”
“What about what’s on the back?”
He turned over the paper. Then he said, “But that’s Mum’s writing . . . How can she have got hold of this? Where did you find it?”
“Tucked way in, right at the back of the closet, where you slept. Under all them pictures.”
She paused, as he still intently studied the single line of writing, then suggested, with caution, “You think maybe that’s a message? From your Ma?”
Arun flung down the paper impatiently. “If it is, what’s the use? Somewhere in the woods? What good’s that?”
“She dassn’t make it any plainer,” said Is, “case somebody else come across it.”
Somewhere in the distance a cat mewed. Is turned her head sharply.
But the cat – she saw it in the distance, rubbing its back against the keel of one of the upturned fishing boats – the cat was not her own dear Figgin. It was a fat black-and-white animal with pale eyes. Still, she threw it a piece of faggot.
Turning back to Arun she was dismayed to see what looked like a tear push its way down his dust- and salt-caked cheek. Angrily he rubbed it away and pinched his lips tight together. But it was plain that he was in very low spirits; very low indeed. This return to an empty house had upset him badly.
“Maybe we should ax about in the town?” Is suggested. “We ain’t seen no one yet. We might meet some old pals of yours. Maybe arter your Dad died your Mum made friends we don’t know about. She mighta said summat about her plans to one or another. How about that?”
“I don’t see the point,” said Arun listlessly. “Ma never had friends. Dad said a wife’s place was in the home. How could she talk to folk, anyway? She wasn’t allowed.”
“Still, I think it’s worth axing around a bit,” Is persisted.
“Suit yourself . . .” Arun drew his arms round his knees and rested his chin on them. “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep last night.”
Is sighed and left him. She had slept badly too, but now she felt restless and longed for action. She set off for the centre of the town, clumped around the steeply climbing High Street. On the way she noticed various notices stuck on doors and lampposts.
If the Handsel Child is not returned within 20 days, Punitive Measures will be taken, said one. Another said, A Reward is offered for information relating to the whereabouts of Tabitha Howe, aged 7.
The air of the town was silent and gloomy. Is received a number of sour looks.
Small shops faced each other across the High Street – fishmongers, bakers, chandlers, gin shops, barbers, cobblers. Towards the top of the hill the shops were of a higher class: there were drapers, hatters, even a circulating library with books and papers and notices on a board. The two about Tabitha Howe and the Handsel Child were displayed here, too.
Few people were about. Of those she met, Is asked, “Did you know a Mrs Ruth Twite?”
Sometimes people said, “Why do you want to know?”
“She’s my auntie.”
Some spat and looked angry: “She was one of that Silent lot. Think themselves better than their neighbours. Went off to Seagate. Good riddance. Some said she was a witch.”
Some asked, “How is it that you talk?”
“My Dad didn’t belong to the Sect.”
“Mrs Twite used to do nursing,” somebody said. “She nursed old Mr Lillywhite when he was took bad. You could ask his widder.”
“Where’s she live?”
“Next to the paint shop.”
Aha! thought Is. Maybe that’s where Aunt Ruth bought her paints.
“Is you Mrs Lillywhite, beg pardon?” she asked a plump old lady carrying a jug of milk, who was about to climb an outside flight of steps alongside the paint store. At the foot of the stair stood boxes and barrels and pans of brilliant powders and liquids.
Bet this is where Aunt Ruth got her stuff.
“What did you say, my dear? I am a little hard of hearing.” The old lady cupped a hand round her ear.
“Is you Mrs Lillywhite? I wanted to ask about my aunt Ruth Twite?” Is bawled.
A man passing on the other side of the street halted and looked up attentively.
Mrs Lillywhite shook her head vigorously. “Come up if ye like, love. But I can’t tell ye anything to signify.”
However, once she was back in her small room – which was kept neat and clean as the inside of an eggshell and held little beside a bed, a table, chair, and about forty blooming geraniums, all different colours – Mrs Lillywhite said, “Ah! She were a right one, your auntie! I was sorry when she had to go. Looked after my old man like a haingel, she did. But she was one as had to do what she thought right.”
“Did you know her well, then? What did she think right? Did she talk to you, Mrs Lillywhite?”
“Used to fetch along her bit o’ slate, and we’d have a chat, once in a while, her writing, me talking. And a good cup of tea. She liked that, did your auntie.”
“When did she go? Why did she go?”
Mrs Lillywhite looked vague.
“A fair old while back, it was. As to a week or so, I couldn’t say. ‘Mrs L,’ she writ on her slate, ‘there’s summat terribly wrong. And I can’t stand it no longer.’ Those were the words she writ clown. ‘I gotta do summat’, she writ.”
“But what was the trouble?” cried Is, deeply interested. She wished that Arun were there.
“Ah. That, dearie, I can’t tell ye. ’Twas summat to do with her Sect. That Reverend Twite, as he calls hisself. Twite, blight! I’d give him Twite. A powerful good thing it is they’ve all gone to Seagate. Better if they went right away to Ameriky.”
“My Aunt Ruth, though – she didn’t go to Seagate?”
“Not as I thinks on, dearie. Going with her friend, I bleeve she was.”
“Friend?” Is pricked up her ears. “What friend?”
“A lady. A lady with a funny name. Cashy? Minty? Pinky?”
“Not Penny?” cried Is, electrified.
“Penny . . . ay, ay, that might ha’ been it. Skinny kind o’ woman – had a rare sharp way with her.”
“Had she a cat with her?”
“As to that, dearie, I couldn’t tell ye. I only saw her the once, in Cold Shoulder Road, a colloguing with yer auntie.”
“I’ll lay it was my sister Pen,” muttered Is with deep satisfaction. “The very minute we’ve dropped off Aunt Ruth’s pictures with the Admiral, I’m a-going to make Arun come with me to Blackheath Edge, to Penny’s and my place.”
She was talking mostly to herself, but Mrs Lillywhite caught the words.
“You going to do what? Leave y’auntie’s pictures with the Admiral? Admiral Fishskin? The dentist feller’s cousin? The old ’un as flies the kites?”
“Yes, why not?” demanded Is, suddenly caught by some note of warning in the old lady’s voice. “He’s straight enough, ain’t he? The Admiral?”
Mrs Lillywhite shook her head doubtfully.
“A rare rum bird, he be, the owd Admiral. Like a magpie. Once he latches on to summat . . . I dunno. They say that house of his is like a jackdaw’s nest, since his wife passed away. Got treasures there from all over. Locked up at night like a prison, they do say.”
“Well,” said Is, “we ain’t putting Aunt Ruth’s pictures exactly in his house.
In a cave, they’re going. Safer there, he said they’d be, than in Cold Shoulder Road, where Mrs Boles says the neighbours are ready and raring to burn the house down.”
“An’ I don’t say she tells a lie. (Though I dessay lies comes easy as breathing to Winnie Boles.)”
“Better in a cave than all burned up. Have you seen my auntie’s pictures, Mrs Lillywhite?”
“Ah,” said the old lady thoughtfully. “I have, then. Right purty, they are. She give me one—” nodding towards a bit of board lodged among the geraniums. It blended in so perfectly with their dazzling hues that Is had not noticed it.
“Ay, that’s one of hers, sure enough.”
“Real naffy they are; real nobby,” said Mrs Lillywhite. “I tell her, she oughta show them to some genelmun in Lunnon Town, they fare to make her fortune. But, ‘No, Mrs L,’ she writ on her slate, ‘I does them for the good feeling I get. Not for money.’ But – mark you – what she done that was even cleverer – to my mind – was her likenesses.”
“Likenesses?”
“Folk’s faces; y’auntie Ruth is a rare hand at that. Maybe,” said Mrs Lillywhite, shaking her head, thinking it over, “maybe a sight too clever. Maybe that had its part in why she run off.” “What do you mean, Mrs L?” Is asked with a beating heart, for she believed she had some notion.
“Why, love, maybe she saw some faces what she’d ha’ done better not to see. Let alone draw them down.”
“But when would she have seen them?”
“Maybe time she worked for the dentist feller. Denzil Fishskin.”
“Fishskin? A dentist?”
“He be a cousin of the owd Admiral. But nothing like so grand. A tooth-drawer, he be – an’ one o’ the Silent Folk, like yer auntie and uncle. And she, yer auntie, used to work for him as his nurse, helping folk rinse their mouths an’ all. A notable tooth-puller, he were, that Denzil Fishskin . . . took three o’ mine, an’ offered to make me a new set from mammoth ivory, but ‘No, thank you,’ sez I, ‘I’ll just mumble along on what I got left.’”
“Mammoth ivory?” said Is, very interested indeed. “But that—”
“And,” went on Mrs Lillywhite, “this is where I reckon yer auntie might ha’ put herself in trouble. Folk do say the Merry Gentry has tattoo marks on their tongueses.”
“In the name of mystery, why?” demanded Is in astonishment.
“Why, so they can’t ever slip off and leave the band. They’re marked for good an’ all.”
“Oh, I see. I reckon that’s so. But, croopus—”
Is fell silent, considering. Plainly anybody in a position to have seen those tattoo marks – while helping a dental patient rinse his mouth – would also be in a position of danger.
“And if Aunt Ruth drew the faces she had seen—”
“That’s it, dearie. If she put ’em down on her bits of paper—”
“Paper? Not board?”
“No, she done her picters of flowers on board. But the faces were on paper. The owd Admiral, he give her a liddle copy-book, one time, to make face picters in. ‘You have a ree-markable talent, Miz Twite,’ he tells her.”
He never told us that, thought Is. “Mrs Lillywhite, do you know anything else about the Merry Gentry?”
“Hush, lovey!” The old lady looked very much alarmed. “I dunno as I oughter told ye what I did. And not another thing do I know, not a blessed thing. And wouldn’t tell ye if I did. Now run along, I can’t talk to ye no more, I begin to feel my apilepsick sweats a-coming over me.”
Indeed she shivered violently, and almost pushed Is out of the room, calling after her in a loud voice, “I can’t tell ee nothing. Nothing at all! And that’s my finial word!”
Is made her way down the steps, pondering deeply. As she did so, a man loitering on the other side of the street moved off and vanished down an alley-way.
Although Is had been absent from Cold Shoulder Road for a couple of hours, when she got back, she found Arun still gazing at the sea, hunched up in the same despondent position; it seemed as if he had not moved a toe or a finger since she left him.
“Listen, Arun!” said Is, plumping down beside him. She glanced up and down the beach. Nobody seemed to be within earshot. There were a few fishermen doing things to their boats a long way off. Still, it seemed best to talk to Arun in thought language. And he might pay better attention.
“I believe it was Aunt Ruth who drew pictures of the Merry Gentry,” Is told Arun. “You remember the Admiral’s story about Mrs Boles’s husband? How the Gentry left him out in the forest for the wolves, because he said he’d seen pictures of the band, and knew who they were?”
“But there aren’t any pictures of people in the house. They are all flowers.”
“Aunt Ruth did her likenesses on paper. In a book the Admiral gave her.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Wanted to find out who they were.”
“But why would my Mum do such a thing?” Arun complained. “Why did she paint pictures and draw people’s faces? She never used to do so.”
“Ah, but in those days your Dad was alive,” pointed out Is.
“Well I wish she hadn’t,” Arun grumbled. “It just makes things worse.”
Is thought Arun was being amazingly unfair to his Mum.
“What d’you expect her to do? You walk your chalks from home, never come back for years, never write her a letter, you expect to find her still a-waiting, a-knitting away at a new pair of socks for you?”
“Well, what else could she do?”
“She did summat else, didn’t she? My notion is, she’s gone off with my sis Penny.”
“But they didn’t even know each other.”
“Ah,” said Is, “but I writ Penny from up north, telling her that I’d found you, and that you were alive and well. Penny used to travel the roads, now and again, selling her dolls; she knew your Mum was in Folkestone, she might think it was neighbourly to drop in and say you was pert and bobbish. And that feller in the lane said summat about a lady with a cat. When we’ve stowed away your Mum’s pictures, I votes we go off to my sister Penny’s place. Maybe your Mum is there. And shan’t I be pleased to see my old Figgin.”
A faint interest came into Arun’s face. “Can’t do any harm, I suppose . . .” he agreed.
It seemed a terribly long time until dusk. Both Is and Arun were hungry again long before the light was dim enough for them to dare start moving the pictures. But there was not a scrap of food in the house. Doubtless anything edible had long ago been taken by Mrs Boles.
The job was slow and laborious. If they loaded the trolley too heavily they found they were unable to haul it up the steep slope to the East Cliff. In the end they had to divide the pictures into four loads, and were worn out, panting, and hollow with hunger by the time they had piled all the pictures around the wall in the garden room. On none of their trips had they seen a single soul, but when they arrived with the final load, they discovered a lighted lantern which had been left near the top of the ladder in the well, and a note leaning against the lantern said:
KINDLY PLACE PICTURES IN SMALL CAVE AT REAR
“Oh, thanks! And likewise, don’t mention it!” tartly commented Is, who had been hoping that another pair of hands would undertake this part of the job. For the last hour she had been thinking longingly of the Admiral’s hot supper.
“Oh well,” sighed Arun. “Better make a start on it, I suppose. I’ll climb halfway down the ladder, and you pass the pictures to me.”
“The old gager might ha’ left one of all his gardeners to give us a hand,” grumbled Is, impatiently handing down the pictures. “My back aches fit to snap in half.”
This part of the operation took them nearly three-quarters of an hour. By now it must be well after midnight. Then Is too climbed down the ladder, and stared curiously about her. They were in a round, dome-shaped room, hollowed out of the chalk. The walls were white, and glistened faintly in the lantern light. The floor had a sandy surface, c
overed by a thick carpet of dead leaves. There was a sharp, dry, chill, chalky smell.
“Different from the coal-mine,” said Is, sniffing. “Croopus, how that place did stink.”
“Well, it was under the sea, and all wet.”
“Which d’you reckon is the small cave where he wants the pictures stowed? There seems to be a whole passel of ’em.”
There were about a dozen door-holes all the way round, leading apparently to further caves.
“The one opposite the ladder, d’you reckon?” Arun said, pointing. He picked up the lantern and went into the next cave. “Seems dry and clean,” he called.
He left the lantern in the second cave, and they started carrying armfuls of pictures through, and stacking them tidily on edge against the rock wall. After a while the floor was quite covered, so, leaving a gangway across the middle, they began filling a further cave which lay beyond.
“Last load,” panted Is, carrying four pictures together into yet another cave, on beyond the third one. “Odds Fishikins! There’s as many caves down here as daisies in a meadow. Lucky that’s the lot; I reckon our glim is ready to die on us.”
Indeed the lantern was flickering smokily as if running out of oil.
“Hey for the old codger’s hot supper. I’m clemmed,” said Is.
But, on returning to the first cave, now cleared of paintings, they were greatly disconcerted to find that the ladder had been withdrawn. Or at least they were just in time to see its feet and bottom rung pulled up over the top of the well-hole.
“Oy!” shouted Is. “Don’t forget about us! We’re still down here! Hi! Hollo! Let down the ladder, ye dumfoozle squareheads. Don’t leave us down here!”
There was no reply.
But, a moment later, a loud bang overhead caused Is and Arun to jump. Looking up they saw that a heavy, round wooden cover had been lowered into place over the hole. And a metallic clang suggested that it had been bolted down. At the same moment their lantern went out.
Chapter Three
“WHAT THE PLAGUE DO YOU MAKE OF THAT?” said Is to Arun. “Some knothead’s gone and shut us in.”
“Let us out of here!” she shouted again, at the top of her lungs.
