Lampie and the Children of the Sea

by Annet Schaap

  “Shall I wash up, miss?” she asks. The very thought of it!

  “This is not a good time! I’ll explain everything to you, but not now. Not this afternoon. This afternoon we have to… We have to…” Martha wants to sit down, but she doesn’t do that, and maybe she’d like to cry too, but she doesn’t do that either. She would rather be angry.

  “Yes, child? Why are you still standing here? Get out of my kitchen. Go to your room. Go on!” She gives Lampie a push towards the door.

  “I don’t know where my room is, Mrs… Um…”

  “Martha! Martha’s my name!”

  “Martha.”

  “Oh… no. Of course you don’t.” Martha points angrily at the door. “Up the stairs, second door on the left, no, the third, take that one, the bed’s made up. Now, off with you. We have to… I need to get changed. Why are you still standing there?”

  The long wooden staircase creaks, and so does the third door on the left. Lampie stands in her room and looks all around. It’s chilly and it smells a bit like mould. There is a chair, a table, a wardrobe.

  So this is where she has to live. All on her own. For seven years. She shakes her head. She can think the thought, but she still does not understand it.

  A window without a curtain looks out over the garden. She sees a large overgrown flight of steps and, beyond that, an explosion of hedges, bushes and gnarled trees, stretching their branches in every direction. Lampie can only make out a little bit of the sky. No distance, no sea. It starts raining, gently at first and then harder.

  But there is also a bed, with a bedstead of gleaming copper and a soft white bedspread. So much softer and whiter than at home. Lampie runs her hand over it and turns back the cover. For the first time since she arrived, she smiles a little. So clean! Spotless!

  “I’ll wash my feet,” she whispers to the bed. “So that I won’t get you all dirty.”

  When she hears some noise outside, Lampie runs to the window. Resting her elbows on the window ledge, she looks down. Two men are leaving the building, carrying a black coffin. A small thin one in a big coat is carrying the front end: the man who just opened the gate. The back end is carried by a big, burly boy. The rain rattles on the coffin; the two men are soon soaked through.

  Then Martha comes outside too. She has put up an umbrella and wrapped herself in a black scarf. She is gesturing angrily at the two men. Go on! Get moving! Off you go!

  The little procession sets off, across the terrace and down the steps. The difference in their heights means that the men have to carry the coffin at an angle. Martha hobbles after them, trying to keep the umbrella over the head of the boy at the back, but her arm is far too short.

  The other man almost drops the coffin and Lampie hears Martha shriek: “You idiot! Be careful!”

  As she runs to the front of the coffin to help them to carry it, she drops her umbrella into the grass and the boy steps on it. Slowly plodding, the three of them disappear behind a hedge.

  Lampie waits, but they do not return. The umbrella is still lying there in the grass. It gets darker and darker, and finally night falls.

  She does not know how they light the lamps here. She cannot see any matches. The house is absolutely silent.

  No one brings her anything to eat.

  NIGHT

  When Lampie’s mother became sick, she lost her voice. She had already had difficulty walking for some time. First she had to lean on her daughter, and when that became too difficult she just remained sitting. She was finding it harder and harder to pick things up, and she kept dropping everything, and then one day she started stumbling over her words as well. Before long, she was unable to make herself understood. No one knew how it had happened. But nothing could be done about it. Strange sounds fell from her mouth like marbles. She sounded like a drunk, like a madwoman. So she stopped speaking. She lay with her head on her pillow and stared and stared.

  All that time though, Lampie could hear her talking inside her head. And when her mother died, her voice stayed with her. She usually says nice things. Sometimes she is a bit stern.

  Come along, she is saying now. Nightdress on, wash your feet and into bed! Stop dawdling!

  Lampie does not mind it when her mother is stern. Then it seems as if someone is still looking after her a bit. When she goes to take off her dress, she finds the shard in the pocket. She strokes it a few times before placing it on the bedside table. As she bends down to untie her laces, she hears something out in the corridor. Shuffling, snuffling. She jumps and looks up, but then she can’t hear it any more. Maybe it wasn’t even there.

  She does not want to think about monsters. Her head is full of things she does not want to think about. But now that it is getting dark and she can’t see anything outside, she can’t stop herself, and she thinks about it all: Her own bed. The sound of the sea around the lighthouse. Her father’s snoring, at home in the night. She tugs at her laces, which are in a knot, and tries so very hard not to think about everything that it feels as if she can actually hear his snores. Or maybe it’s real.

  It is as if, far off in the house, someone is snoring.

  Or maybe growling.

  Mother? There isn’t really a monster here, is there?

  Her mother just laughs at her. A monster? Of course not – what nonsense! Wouldn’t it have gobbled up Martha and those men with the coffin?

  But what was inside the coffin? wonders Lampie. Could it have been a girl, a girl just like her? Is she the monster’s next meal, a monster that only likes little girls? With claws and teeth, with hairy paws, a man with six arms and with no mercy… Lampie can imagine all kinds of things.

  She tugs even harder, but the lace won’t come undone. In the darkness she can’t see the knot and her hands are too shaky. It smells a bit different now too – like rotten fish that has been lying around for a really long time.

  The only monster she has ever seen for real smelt like that. A fisherman had caught it and half the town went out to take a look: a foredeck full of a tangle of black snakes, with two big dead eyes at its centre. Everyone went, “Aah” and “Ooh” and “Eeuw”, and the air above it was black with flies.

  But if a thing like that were still alive… If those dead arms had muscles that could pull her down into the black night…

  Stop it, Emilia! says her mother. When she says “Emilia”, she really means it. That’s enough. Shoes off, wash your feet and go to sleep right away.

  Yes, but, Mother, I really did hear something. It might have been a monster.

  Don’t be silly. Monsters don’t exist.

  The growling turns into a gurgling, barking sound. Far away. Or is it coming closer?

  Lampie does not dare to wash her feet now. She does not dare to take off her clothes. She does not even dare to lie in the bed, but crawls underneath it instead, wearing one shoe and one sock. If something comes into the room, maybe it won’t find her.

  She can’t sleep. Again.

  She rolls herself up around her fear, and lies there on the cold floor, listening. Sometimes the barking sounds far away, sometimes closer. One time she hears something prowling along the corridor, with heavy paws and tapping claws. When it comes closer, she makes herself even smaller and curls up in the corner, with her back against the wall.

  She wishes she had checked to see if the door had a lock. Anything could just come into the room. But the paws walk by and the tapping disappears down the long corridor. Then it is silent.

  So she goes looking for shells, on a beach inside her head. She finds some really pretty ones, pink and green, shining and wet. She washes off the sand and lays them out to dry on a rock in the sun.

  By the time the whole rock is full, she has finally fallen asleep.

  DAY ONE OF SEVEN YEARS

  Lampie is awoken by a voice saying, “Oh”. Pale light pours into the space between the bed and the floor. She sees legs walking past, legs in ribbed stockings and black shoes.

  “Oh,” says the voice. “So
did I dream it? Or not?”

  The legs walk to the window, someone gives it a rattle. It does not open.

  Whose are those legs again? thinks Lampie. Why aren’t I at home? Oh yes. Oh yes, Martha.

  “Well, maybe it’s just as well,” says Martha. She walks to the chair with Lampie’s pillowcase on it, picks it up and shakes it out. Lampie watches her clothes tumble out onto the floor. A ball of socks rolls away.

  “Ah,” mumbles Martha. “So there is a girl here. But where is she? She can’t have been… Not on the very first night? Surely not…”

  “Here I am,” says Lampie, crawling out from under the bed.

  Martha gasps in horror! As if Lampie is a snake, or a crocodile. Or a monster. Panting, she clutches her hands to her chest.

  “It’s only me,” says Lampie.

  “I don’t like that kind of behaviour, young lady,” says the woman angrily. “Sneaking around and hiding. You’d better not do that here. Do you understand?” She strides towards Lampie and looks at her clothes. “Did you sleep on the floor? In your dress? Tsk.”

  I was frightened, Lampie wants to say. I heard something. She wants to ask: is there really a monster? Is it free to run around? Is it going to eat me up? Is that why they sent me here? She wants to ask a hundred things. But the words suddenly seem strange in the morning light. And Martha looks so angry, even angrier than yesterday, if that is possible. And her eyes are still really red.

  “Don’t you have any other clothes?”

  “Yes.” Lampie points at the pile on the floor. Martha picks up a couple of things, a dress and a vest.

  “Hmm,” she says. “This clearly won’t do. I’ll make something for you. Yet another thing to worry about.” Then she holds Lampie’s chin, turns her face to the light and looks at her cheek. Lampie can feel herself blushing; she really wants to turn her head away. The cheek hurts a little bit more than yesterday, as is always the case with bruises.

  “I’ve read the letter,” says Martha. “This isn’t what I had in mind at all, but it’s what has been agreed, or so it would seem. Not with me, of course. But when does that ever happen?” She sighs. “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea. I really don’t know, um… Amalia. That is your name, isn’t it?”

  Lampie gasps. “Emilia! My name’s Emilia!” Amalia? The very thought of it!

  “Good, fine. Well, there’s breakfast in the kitchen, Emilia.” Martha turns to the door. “Are you scared of dogs?”

  “Um…” says Lampie. “Are they big ones?”

  They are very big ones. When Lampie walks into the kitchen, they run towards her, stumbling and drooling, and barking their warm dog-breath into her face. She screws her eyes shut and lets them sniff her hands. The dogs could easily bite her fingers right off, but they don’t. The big, burly boy, the one she saw in the garden yesterday, pulls them back by their collars and slaps them on their big, hard heads. They do not bite him either – they just lick at his hands, Lampie is relieved to see. They let him push them away and then they walk over to the fireplace, paws tapping, and drop down sluggishly onto the rug. Was that what she heard last night? Just dogs, just animals? Not monsters?

  “This is my son, Lenny.” Martha pushes the boy towards her. “Shake hands, Lenny.” She says it again, louder, when Lenny blushes and keeps his hands at his side. “Well, go on!”

  The boy towers over his mother, but he looks like a child. His cheeks already have stubble, but he is painfully shy and does not even dare to look at the girl. So Lampie takes the big hand herself and gives it a bit of a shake. “Hello, Lenny.”

  Behind her, someone else comes into the kitchen.

  “Oh,” says Martha crossly. “You’ve decided to show your face, have you?”

  Without replying, the man in the big coat sits down at the kitchen table, picks up a bowl and pours himself a cup of coffee.

  “This is Nick.” Martha lifts a pan from the stove and brings it over to the table. “Apparently he is capable of speaking, but sometimes you wouldn’t think it. Don’t go running off when you’ve finished your breakfast, Nick. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  Nick stirs his coffee and shows no sign of having heard her.

  “This is Ama… no… Emi… What was it again?”

  “Emilia,” says Lampie. “Or, um… Lampie, that’s what they call me…”

  She wants to say, “at home”, but her throat squeezes tightly shut.

  “And porridge.” Martha puts the pan on the table with a bang and starts serving.

  Spoons tap against bowls and rattle in cups. Coffee is slurped down. Chew, chomp, clink – and no one says a word. The dogs by the fireplace whimper in their sleep.

  Lampie does not quite know where to look: at the strange faces, the chewing mouths, or at the big blue eyes of the boy in the corner, who keeps glancing up at her and then back at his bowl? Martha feeds him as if he is a baby, and she gives Lampie a grumpy look when she sees that she is watching. Lampie stares back down at her bowl. At the stains on the tablecloth. At her spoon full of porridge.

  Yuck. She does not say it out loud, but that is what she thinks.

  It’s porridge! says her mother inside her head. You used to love porridge.

  Lampie does not believe a word of it. She lets the porridge drip off her spoon. Slimy.

  I always used to feed you porridge when you were a baby. Don’t you remember? Give it a try. Mmm!

  On the other side of the table, the thin man is shoving great big mouthfuls of the stuff into his face, and it is dripping down his chin. She puts her spoon back in her bowl. Not today, thank you. Her stomach is closed.

  You have to eat something. Her mother does not give up. Go on. A bit of strength for the day ahead.

  Day one, thinks Lampie. Day one of seven years. With breakfast here every day. With these silent people. With these scary dogs. With that disgusting porridge.

  Come on, says her mother. Whatever happened to my brave little girl?

  Lampie grits her teeth and tries to hold back her tears, but one escapes and falls into the bowl. Plop.

  Because it is so quiet, everyone looks up.

  Lenny gapes. His lips begin to tremble. “Oh!” he says, pointing, and he starts whimpering along with Lampie, who is so startled that her own tears immediately dry up.

  “Oh dear…” Martha puts down her coffee and sighs. “Oh dearie me…” She unties Lenny’s napkin and wipes away his tears. Then she looks at Lampie. “Just make a start, child, eh? What else can we do?” Lenny sniffs and gives a few more sobs. “You wanted to do the washing-up, didn’t you?”

  Lampie shrugs and then nods shakily. Not really, but she has to begin somewhere.

  “Then I’ll give you a bucket in a minute.” Martha gestures to her son to blow his nose. “And eat something, child,” she says to Lampie. “A bit of strength for the day ahead.”

  Lampie looks at her, and Martha looks back for a moment. Not unkindly. Then she turns to Lenny, who has forgotten that he was crying and has started banging his spoon into his porridge. Splashes fly up in every direction, and Martha has to wrestle the spoon from his hand. That is no easy task, because the boy is strong and splashing porridge is fun. Nick watches the struggle from the other side of the table. He scrapes his bowl, swallows the last mouthful and stands up. Giving Lampie a little wink, he turns around and silently leaves the kitchen.

  “Wait a moment,” Martha calls after him. “Nick, I wanted to… You need to…” But he’s already gone.

  Martha begins angrily wiping the porridge and tears from Lenny’s face. And from the table, because it is everywhere.

  It looks really unpleasant, but Lampie still takes a mouthful of her own porridge. And another one. It’s not good, but it does warm her up a bit. And maybe it does taste just a little bit like home once used to taste.

  BUCKETS AND MOPS

  And that is how Lampie’s days at the Black House begin. Two, three, four days crawl by, more slow and dull than nasty and terrifying.


  In the morning, after Lampie has washed up, Martha gives her a bucket, a brush and a mop and shows her where to start. Lampie brushes and mops the tiles in the long, draughty corridors.

  The house is big and dirty, the wind blows through all the gaps, it is mouldy and smelly, and her cleaning does little to help. She can only mop a small area at a time before the dogs go traipsing over the clean tiles again with their grubby paws. She is still a bit frightened of them and so she quickly gets to her feet until they have lumbered past into the garden, where they hunt rats. Later, with even dirtier paws, they walk back to the kitchen, to chew on bits of rat and to fall asleep.

  Sometimes Lenny lurches out of the kitchen to watch Lampie and get in her way. At first he stood still in the corner, but he is no longer as shy and so he comes to sit beside her, with his bottom on the wet tiles, watching everything she does. She does not understand him when he speaks, but that does not matter. He splashes in the water and sometimes knocks the bucket over, but that does not really matter either. After a while, Martha comes to fetch him and takes him back to the kitchen table. He spends the whole day there, cutting up old newspapers. He snips them into pieces, going neatly around the columns, making a pile of letters and black-and-white photographs and, when he has finished, he puts them all back together again, like a jigsaw puzzle, to make a newspaper. Whenever a piece blows away or gets lost, he cries. Lampie helps him to look. She is good at looking, finding even the tiniest pieces in the dusty cracks between the floorboards.

  In the afternoon, the girl is given another bucket and a clean cloth, and she wipes very old dust from lamps, ledges and windows. Cheeky spiders crawl over the duster and up her arm, to take a rest before beginning a new web. Lampie usually lets them do as they please, and all afternoon she feels an occasional tickle by her ear or in her hair.