Cold Shoulder Road

by Joan Aiken

  Mrs Twite spoke first, awkwardly, as if she hardly knew how to begin.

  “Here you are, then, my son. At last! How many times had I given you up for lost . . . I hardly expected to see you again . . . This is Pye.”

  Pye scowled horribly at Arun, squinting, sucking a thumb.

  Pye is a right queer little goblin, thought Is. He – or she? – was a thickset, solid child, aged perhaps four or five, with a round face, a blob of a pink nose, and round, staring, squinting pale-coloured eyes.

  “Wotcher, Pye!” said Is kindly. “My name’s Is.”

  Pye made no answer, only sucked and stared and squinted the harder.

  “Pye can’t speak,” Penny explained.

  And Ruth added, “She screamed so much, while she lived with Dominic de la Twite, that we believe she screamed herself dumb. But we are hoping that time will mend this.”

  “She ain’t deaf?” asked Is, wondering if it was kind to talk about the kid like this, to her face.

  “Oh, no. She hears us very well.”

  Pye put out a long pink tongue.

  “Are you hungry, you two?” Penny asked quickly. “Why don’t you come below and see our quarters? There’s plenty of room for you on this craft. She used to carry a crew of fifty. I believe.”

  She led the way down a companion ladder, along a passage past cabin doors and into quite a fair-sized panelled room, shaped to the curve of the ship, containing a mahogany table and chairs.

  Why the pest, thought Is, following, don’t Aunt Ruth have a hug or a kiss for Arun? If she’d given him up for lost, if she’d worried about him so? What kind of a welcome is that? She talked to him as if he was the rent collector. These Silent Sect folk sure are a cussed lot.

  As they sat down to a meal everybody – except Pye, perhaps – felt a good deal of awkwardness and constraint; the kind of curb on natural chat which falls when people have not seen each other for a long time, people to whom a whole lot of strange and drastic things have happened in the meantime.

  Also – although they were related – Is had never met her aunt Ruth before, Arun had never met his cousin Penelope. Furthermore – Is noticed – Arun had taken a strong instant dislike to Pye, which she returned with interest. She often stuck out her tongue at him and scowled horribly; then he would give her an angry look, at which she clung even tighter to Ruth’s hand.

  “We use the officers’ mess for eating,” Penny was explaining matter-of-factly. “And the galley next door we cleared out, too. Chock-full of chestnut burrs, we found it. There’s a plenty cabins with hammocks in em. But the hold down below is a real mess. Everything under this deck got pretty well mashed.”

  “What was in the hold?” asked Arun.

  “Gunpowder, mainly,” said Penny drily. “So don’t go poking around down there with a candle.”

  While Penny spoke, she was ladling out a stew of rabbit, parsnip, chestnuts, and mushrooms – much tastier, Is thought, than what the sailors had provided last night in Cold Harbour. Pen always had been a right handy cook.

  Ruth Twite fed little Pye with a spoon.

  “Can’t she feed herself yet?” demanded Is, surprised and shocked.

  “Not always.” Ruth raised her brows. “Some times better than other times.”

  Pye clung to Ruth’s wrist all through the meal and insisted on being fed.

  Afterwards, while Ruth put Pye to bed in the Second Officer’s cabin, Penny showed Is and Arun the rest of the ship.

  “Pen – how long d’you reckon to stay here?” Is asked her sister.

  She had told Penny about leaving de la Twite locked up in the barn, and her fear that he might have done the place some mischief when breaking his way out.

  “He musta been as mad as a hornet by the time he got loose. I’m right sorry, Pen.”

  “And he’s a nasty chap to tangle with at best, by all accounts.” Penny shrugged and sighed. “No, I’ve not met him, but I’ve heard plenty about him, and that sister of his, from Ruth. Well – it’s too bad about the barn, but it can’t be helped. So long as Pye’s with us, I reckon we’ll have to keep on the run.”

  “But, Penny – does Aunt Ruth mean to keep Pye for ever?”

  Arun had wandered off to investigate the rigging; he had climbed up the shrouds and now was high in the chestnut tree’s upper branches looking out over the forest into the night sky.

  Is went on: “Pye’s such a spooky little chavey! And there’s such a lot of trouble rising from her: the Merry Gentry taking other folks’ kids – two, at least we’ve heard on – and everybody scared to put a foot out of doors. Is it worth it, Pen, just for that little hobgoblin?”

  Penny said in a dry voice, “You mean it’d be better worth it if Pye had long gold hair and taking ways, then she’d be more value for people’s trouble?”

  “Well, no. Perhaps not that—”

  Penny said, “Ruth ain’t one to turn back off a job once she’s begun it. And she reckons it’d be a big step forward if the kid can get back her voice and learn to talk. Or write. Then, d’ye see, she could tell what she’s seen. The Gentry had her as a hostage, you know, before she were handed back into Twite’s keeping; only, it seems, the Gentry found her own folks didn’t want her, so then, as no one cared what became of her, the Gentry passed her back to Twite, when Uncle Hose said there should be a Gentry hostage. Of course Twite was sore as a bear when he found out she’d no folks to care, for that lowered her value. But the Gentry said she’d the knowledge, and could lay information about many of them. Only, of course, she can’t talk. That’s why Ruth is trying to teach her to write. Then, maybe, there’d be enough evidence to cop the Gentry.”

  “On the word of a little dumb kid? Teach her to write?” said Is dubiously. “Ain’t she a bit young for that?”

  “Young she may be,” said Penny, “but she’s sharp as a needle. Make no error about that! De la Twite, though, he gave her a real hard time. Hung up in a basket, she were, all day, every day, over the rail track where it goes into the Channel Tunnel – so they say, for I’ve never seen it—”

  “Croopus,” said Is, who had. “Why?”

  “As a warning to the Gentry. She could be dropped down any time. Under the train, you see.”

  Is remembered the round, black entrance, the red gate with its criss-cross bars. She shivered.

  “And at night he shut her in a box.”

  “A box?”

  “So’s she couldn’t escape. She’d tried, ever so many times. That was when Ruth used to hear her screaming every night – when they lived next door in Cold Shoulder Road, you know. So, well, Ruth couldn’t stand it. Happened I come down that way from Blackheath Edge, selling dolls to the fancy shops in Folkestone Parade, and I called in on Ruth, which I’d took the habit of doing, to ask if she’d news of you or Arun, and she said to me, ‘What shall I do? I can’t abear it any longer.’ She’d asked the neighbours, she’d asked the parson, everybody said it wasn’t their business, and it wouldn’t do to rile the Gentry, and what did it matter about one halfwitted kid? Dead scared, everyone was. Didn’t want to meddle. So I said to Ruth, it’s none of my affair either, but if you want to snatch her, you and she could hole up in my barn, and no one the wiser. No one visits there, not above twice a year. And I’m just off westwards, to buy wool in Dorset and china clay in Cornwall. I give her a key to the barn . . . So that’s what she done.”

  “You weren’t there when she flitted?”

  “Me? I was away in St Ives. Didn’t I just say? Then, as ill luck would have it, along came that pesky gale, and done a lot of damage, and all the Silent Blokes took and moved up the coast to Seagate. Ruth mighta stayed where she was, and wouldn’t have had Twite next door no more.”

  “But she’d still have thought of Pye screaming every night,” said Is, half to herself. She asked, “What made you leave the barn, then?”

  “We found one day a stranger had been, while we was out. Footprints. And your cat Figgin was real gnarled in his temper. It wo
rried Ruth. She didn’t want to take no chances. Little Pye had just begun to act a bit more human. And we heard about this-here ship, lodged in the tree, reckoned it might make a good place to perch. So we come and give it the once-over. And moved in.”

  “Aren’t there neighbours who’d tell on ye?”

  “In Womenswold? Nary a soul. It’s only two farms. All the men were snatched by the Gentry when they were short of hands. And they got killed in some fray. The wives aren’t a-going to tell on us. And one of the daughters is only ninepence in the shilling. We get milk and eggs and they help when we need provisions. Take Pye for an outing sometimes.”

  “Ain’t that risky? Someone might see her.”

  “Not round here. But once Henzie – that’s the simple gal – she did take Pye to Folkestone market. Ruth was wild about that, when she heard. So now we don’t take Pye to the farm no more.”

  Is remembered her glimpse of Pye at the Folkestone market.

  “She didn’t seem so babyish there; she acted right sensible. Buying fish.”

  “I know,” said Penny, sighing. “She acts babyish when she’s with Ruth. To get notice took of her. Makes me wild, sometimes. But Ruth says we havta let her. She’ll get over it by and by.”

  Pye’s babyish ways at breakfast next morning made Is impatient too, but she supposed that Aunt Ruth knew what she was about. One certain thing in Pye’s favour was that the cat Figgin seemed fond of her. He followed her about, and jumped on her lap when she sat down – a thing he had not yet deigned to do with Is, who was still in disgrace. And Figgin was no fool when it came to people.

  People and cats is full of cussed ways, thought Is.

  Indeed at breakfast Arun and his mother fell into a painful, sharp-edged quarrel.

  It began when Ruth said that she saw no need for him to take the horses back to Seagate.

  “It is only putting yourself at risk. Quite needlessly.”

  “The man at the King’s Head ought to have his horses back,” said Arun doggedly. “Why should he be the loser?”

  “Twite is a dangerous man. We’ll be worried all day about you. Oh, when I think of how your poor father walked up to London, searching for you, seventeen times – and never found you – inconsiderate . . . just like a boy . . . never think of putting yourself in someone else’s position—”

  “Dad walked to London seventeen times because he liked rambling about the country . . . I’ll lay he wasn’t only looking for me,” argued Arun. “He was always going off on those roaming walks. You can’t deny that. Long before I ran off he’d be away for days on end, hunting for Ladies Tresses Orchids or Birds’ Nest Orchids. Ma! You know that’s so.”

  “Oh! I believe you are just like him. A real Twite!”

  “You’re a Twite yourself!” retorted Arun. Mother and son glared at one another. Pye began to snuffle and tears poured down her cheeks. She stuck out her tongue at Arun as far as it would go.

  “Keep on doing that! Maybe you’ll learn to talk that way!” he snapped at her.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Ruth. “How can you be so heartless to the poor afflicted child?”

  “Maybe she needs more of that and not so much cosseting!”

  Arun removed himself huffily and went off to Seagate, riding one horse, leading the other.

  Is took him on one side before he went. “Arun! You will be really, really careful, won’t you? Y’Mum ain’t wrong about the risk.”

  And what Ruth don’t know, thought Is, is the awful, baleful power that Dominic de la Twite has – over Arun, anyway. She thought of Arun’s spellbound sleep, the gap in his memory covering all the time he was with the Leader . . . Yet she did not dare offer to go with Arun; that would seem as if she did not trust him to carry out a simple errand.

  “But do make haste back!” she urged him. “We’ll be right anxious till we see you.”

  “Never fear, never fear,” he answered impatiently, and went off to where the hobbled horses were grazing. She watched him leave, kicking his mount into a trot. Bless him, she thought, I dare say he needs to get clear of all us females. Could be he’s ashamed of being led off like a pig to market, yesterday, by old Domino. Let’s hope this ride sets him up a bit in his own mind.

  Sighing, Is went off in search of Penny.

  Penny, never one to let the grass grow under her feet, had set herself up a doll-making workshop in the cook’s galley of the Throstle. The fire in a brick box provided her with a means of melting wax and glue, singeing feathers, heating a flat-iron; and she was busy, in the way Is remembered seeing her for years past, stuffing cotton bodies with sheep’s wool gathered from hedges, and fastening them on to china or porcelain or wax heads. Automatically, Is sat down and began to help.

  Penny nodded thanks, but said, “Better maybe ye should go and see if ye can be any use to Ruth, help learn little Pye to read. Or tell her stories, you used to be a rare hand at that.”

  “You used to tell me stories, Pen.”

  “Other way round as well.” Pen threaded a needle, knotted a thread. “And it’d be a good turn to Ruth. She’s mortal upset that Arun hardly more than handed her the time of day when they met.”

  “What?” cried Is, greatly astonished. “When she was so stand-offish with him, and gave him no more than a little bit of a snippety nod? She must be moonstruck!”

  “You gotta remember,” said Pen, “she belonged to that plaguey Sect for most of her life. She ain’t in the way of showing what she feels. She never used even to talk to Arun. Let alone hug or pet him. You gotta keep that in mind.”

  “Was Aunt Ruth always in the Sect?”

  “No. She met Uncle Hose when she was fifteen, she told me – they were cousins, she’s a Twite, too – and they fancied each other and fixed to get wed. So she was obliged to join the Sect, for he was in it already.”

  “What a shame!” said Is. “I bet she was sorry. Fancy having to stop talking! I bet she hated it.”

  “Very like. Soon as he died, she began painting those pictures. As if someone had taken a lid off. Talking, too. First time I met her, she hardly talked. Then, after I’d been to Folkestone a couple of times, we got friendly.”

  “That Sect are a rum lot,” sighed Is. “I dunno what to make of ’em. Some of ’em ain’t so bad. The only way the old ’uns seem to let loose is by dancing – have you seen ’em do that?”

  Penny shook her head, biting a thread. Is described the solemn dance session which she and Arun had watched in Seagate. “And I’ve heard the young ’uns gets together secretly at night-time just to talk. That’s a prime treat for them.”

  “They could do worse,” said Penny briefly. “And I think the folk in the Sect are decent enough. It’s only that Leader who’s a wrong ’un. There’s nowt wrong with silence. Most folk gab too much.”

  “I reckon the Leader’s got pals in the Gentry,” said Is.

  She was about to tell Penny what she had heard at night in the forest when a series of ear-splitting shrieks broke out in the officers’ mess. Is leapt up from her stool, but Penny remained unperturbed.

  “Pay no heed. That’s Pye. The only sound she ever makes. She does that when summat riles her, or she can’t have what she wants. Or tries to do one o’ the things Ruth shows her, and can’t.”

  “Croopus! How you stand it!” said Is, as the row went on. “I don’t wonder Aunt Ruth snatched her, if she did that next door every night. I only wonder nobody drowned her.”

  “Well,” suggested Penny, “why don’t you go and see if you can pacify her?”

  “Me?”

  “Why not?”

  Is went into the officers’ mess and found Ruth sitting at the mahogany table opposite Pye. Between them on the table lay a piece of paper and a slice of bread.

  On the paper were written the letters B R E A D.

  Pye was shrieking with terrific intensity and beating her fists on the table until they must have been bruised black and blue.

  Is asked, “What’s amiss with the chavey?”


  Ruth was perfectly calm.

  “I’m trying to make her see that that—” she pointed to the piece of bread – “and these—” she pointed to the letters on the paper – “and the spoken word bread all mean the same thing.”

  “Can’t she take it in? Maybe she’s too little – or too thick-headed – to understand?”

  “Oh, no, she understands very well. But she wants to eat the bread.”

  Indeed Pye made a snatch for the slice while Ruth was speaking, and Ruth neatly whipped it out of reach. Pye stood up on her stool and jumped up and down in a passion of fury. Her round face was purple, her eyes were invisible, screwed into slits . . . she reminded Is of somebody. Who?

  “She can’t be that hungry?” Is said. “She had a big breakfast. I watched her. An egg, an apple, and four slices of bread and honey.”

  “No. She is not usually so demanding,” Ruth answered quietly. “But, you see, she is jealous of Arun. Because he is my son. She is very quick at picking up other people’s feelings. She knows well that I have been worried about Arun for so long, before he came here. Now that he has come, she is afraid that I will love him the better of the two. Is she not a foolish child?”

  There was a smile in Ruth’s voice. Is wondered if Pye heard it. Pye still continued to shriek, but Is felt quite sure she was listening to what was said.

  “Arun is afraid of the same thing,” Is said. “He thinks you love Pye best.”

  “People wear themselves out with such needless worries,” Ruth said.

  And you do it, too, Is thought.

  “Aunt Ruth?”

  “Well?”

  “Can I try something with Pye?”

  “By all means,” said Ruth.

  Is said to Pye in thought language: “Pye? Can you hear me? Can you understand what I am saying to you? I am thinking about a fox and a big black bird. Both of them want that piece of bread. The fox is running, the bird is flying. Which do you think will get to it first?”

  Pye looked up, astonished. Her pale eyes had become round again, round as marbles. I wonder if she needs glasses? thought Is. I suddenly have a picture of her with glasses on her face. Rimless ones. Now, why should I think that?