by Annet Schaap
Lampie frowns. Her mat is gone, her lovely mat, which she understood. That mean boy has turned it into something else, something she is too stupid to read. With a letter C or something. C as in, “You see?” Yes, she sees that she can’t read C.
“C? Like the sea, with the waves and?…”
“No, no. I see where you’re going wrong. That’s the name of the letter, but that’s not what it sounds like in this word.” Then Edward pronounces the sound for her, very clearly. Lampie stares at him, feeling more stupid than ever.
But then suddenly she gets it. The light goes on. She sees the C!
“Cat,” she says. “C-A-T.”
“Cat,” replies Edward. He looks almost as happy as she does.
And now the world is made up of letters, of letters that she can read. Everywhere she looks, she sees the letters C and A and T and M.
On the spines of books, inside the books, on Lenny’s scraps of newspaper. In the kitchen, the C is on the coffee tin, and the T is on the packet of tea.
Lampie skips along the corridors all afternoon. She wipes a clean T in the dirt on the windows. She mops the slowest M ever in the longest corridor of all.
Tomorrow she is going to learn how to write her name.
Then she will finally belong in this world.
WARM DAYS
E-m-i-l-i-a. She can do it – just look, she is writing it with her finger on the tablecloth. She also learnt M-a-r-t-h-a in no time at all, and L-e-n-n-y, with two Ns. You see? She writes it down for him and even though he cannot read it himself, he looks at it as if it is one of the wonders of the world.
F-i-s-h, she writes.
“Edward,” says Edward.
By the next day, she has learnt how to spell that too. As if the letters were ready and waiting inside her head. All she had to do was learn them.
She quickly grabs Lenny’s newspaper, while it is still in one piece. A whole new world opens up: Rob-ber-y, she reads. Cow dead. Fair com-ing to town.
Lenny sits there with his scissors, looking bewildered. What is he supposed to cut up now?
*
But then, one afternoon, Nick comes into the kitchen at lunchtime and walks up to Lenny. His shoes are muddy and he is carrying something wrapped in a dirty cloth.
“Not on the table,” barks Martha. “What on earth is it anyway?”
Nick puts a finger to his lips, unwraps the cloth and places the contents in Lenny’s lap. “For you.”
“Oh,” says Martha. “Just look at that, son.”
Lenny does not look though. New things are far too scary. He looks up at the ceiling, where there is nothing. Nothing new in any case.
“Go on, Lenny. Take a look,” says Lampie. “It’s a pair of scissors.”
Lenny takes a peek. Yes, scissors. But these are very big scissors indeed. Nick lays a hand on his shoulder.
“They’re shears, Lenny. You’ll be able to cut lots and lots of things with them,” he says. “You have no idea.”
With frightened eyes, Lenny follows Nick to the garden. The dogs go too, with Martha anxiously following. She does not know what is going on. Whatever is Nick up to? Lampie quickly slurps down the rest of her soup and runs after them.
In the garden, Lenny is already snipping away at a blackberry bush. Gently at first, one branch at a time, but before long the shears are taking great big bites. After all, cutting is what Lenny does best. Nick points out where: brambles, nettles, big prickly bushes and then the green hedges behind them, taller than two men put together. Branches fly everywhere, and the dogs run around with big pieces in their mouths.
When Lenny sees what they are doing, he throws the shears onto the ground, runs after the dogs and takes back the branches. With the branches in his hand, he searches for the right spot. He takes hold of a twig, a leaf, and tries to match it to what he is carrying. Where did it go? Was it here? Or there? He looks despairingly at the mountain of green. How is he ever going to put it all back together again? How can he solve this puzzle?
Lampie places a hand on his arm. “There’s no need to do that, Lenny. A hedge isn’t the same as a newspaper,” she says. “It can just stay as it is.”
The boy looks at her in surprise. There’s no need?
“It’ll grow back by itself,” Lampie explains.
Nick nods as well. “Go on, Lenny. Cut it. You can cut whatever you like.”
And Lenny cuts.
The weeds around the Black House are blooming in so many different colours: pink, yellow, the white flowers of the blackberry bushes, the purple spikes of the thistles. The soft plumes of grass scatter their seeds all around and even the nettles are wearing crowns.
Lampie has been given her new dress and she is so pleased with it that she only wears it when she is sitting quietly at the kitchen table and not touching anything dirty. And as she sits there, learning the whole world, one letter at a time, Lenny is outside, clipping the tall hedges around the house. They become rounder and smoother, developing bumps that look like backs, and like heads. Slowly they turn into animals: two dogs, a rhinoceros, a swan.
All day long, everything smells of grass and cut leaves, and Lenny takes wheelbarrows full of clippings to the compost heap. The days grow longer and warmer.
Martha notices that she sometimes bursts into song as she is doing the dishes, and that she feels like making complicated soups. The kitchen belongs to her all day. And in the evening, when her son has drowsed off over his dinner and so she has sent him to bed, Nick no longer runs away straight after eating, but stays at the table to talk. Sometimes they even play a game or two of cards. Because she asks so nicely, Lampie is allowed to join in. However, you can’t spend half of your life around pirates without learning how to play poker like a champion, and she bluffs brilliantly, making mincemeat of them and winning all Martha’s savings that very first evening. She gives the money straight back though, and after that they play for matches.
Martha pushes a quarter across the table to Lampie. The girl can take it to the fair on Wednesday afternoon, she says, feeling unusually generous. And then she sends Lampie to bed too.
Lampie creeps up the stairs and heads to the room in the tower to look out at the lighthouse. She opens the window just a little way, closes her eyes and listens. Down there, at the foot of the cliff, she can hear the sea gently splashing.
“Goodnight, Father,” she whispers. Then she tiptoes out of the room and back down the stairs. She does it so quietly that Fish does not wake up. Or so she thinks.
So that’s it, he thinks. Her father is out there somewhere, and that’s why she always goes to that window.
The boy is lying in the darkness, looking up at the underside of his mattress. His own father is out there somewhere too, far away at sea. Cutting through the ocean on his white ship, defying the waves and so on. He has no idea where. But no matter how far away he is, his eyes always find Edward, even in the darkness under the bed.
What are you doing there? Resting? Why? After all your hard work? All your progress? And what progress would that be, boy?
He can picture him so clearly, sitting at his desk, like the last time he was at home.
“Just a little progress. That is surely the least a father can expect of his son. For him at least to try his best.”
The way his father had looked at him… He was not even angry. If only it had been anger.
“But it would seem that I was mistaken about you. You are not made of the right stuff after all.”
“Stuff?” Edward had feebly replied. “What kind of stuff?” He honestly did not understand what his father meant.
“Oh, goodness, boy! Don’t always take things so literally.”
The rusty springs coil up into the darkness to where he can no longer see them. He can smell the summer night; she forgot to close the window.
FATHERS AND LEGS
And this is how Lampie finds him the next morning, when she comes for her reading lesson. Edward is still on the floor, not lying u
nder the bed now, but in the middle of the room. He is struggling and kicking like a rabbit in a snare. There is a kind of leather harness around him, with belts and straps, and at the bottom a clumsy leather shoe that is sticking out at an angle. His tail is hopelessly entangled; the belts have buckles and holes and he keeps tugging away at them, but he cannot undo them.
“Fish? What are you doing?”
“My. Name. Is. Not. Fish!”
“Do you need some help?”
“No. Go away.”
“Couldn’t I?… If I just undo the buckles on that… What is that thing you’re wearing?”
“Go away, I said!” His hands keep fiddling with a prong that he cannot get out of a hole. The whole rotten contraption is twisting his back and he cannot take it off, he simply cannot take it off.
“Are we going to do some reading?”
She is still standing there. “If you don’t go away this instant…” he pants. “I’ll bite you in two. I’ll bite your stupid head off. I’ll…” He struggles and kicks, but he only gets even more entangled.
“If you’ll just let me…”
“No! How many more times do I have to tell you? No!”
He hears her put down the tray on the chest of drawers and then she is suddenly standing there behind him. He feels a small tug and the harness slides off him and onto the floor. He is free. He wants to slip straight under the bed, but he has no strength left in his arms. So he lies there, with his cheek on the carpet.
“What on earth is that thing?”
He groans. She can’t just go away and leave him in peace, can she?
“Are you learning to walk with it? Are you trying to walk on your, um… deformity?”
She can see for herself, can’t she? She’s not blind.
“But why?”
“Because I made a promise.”
“Who to? Your father?”
He gives a little nod. She picks up the breakfast tray and puts it down beside him on the floor. He smells the fish and it makes him feel sick.
“Take that away. And take yourself away too. I have a headache.”
“But you have to eat,” she says. “You know, a bit of strength for the day ahead.”
What nonsense, thinks Edward. He lies on his back.
“My father,” he suddenly hears himself saying. “My father has a box in his desk.” He was not planning to tell her, but that little box has been on his mind all morning. “There’s an arrow inside it, he showed it to me once. A tiny little poisoned arrow.”
“Oh yes,” says Lampie. She sits down on the floor beside him. “The kind that the Bushmen use.”
He looks at her. “How do you know that?”
“Oh, I heard it somewhere.”
“Who from?” She can’t read, but she knows that?
“From Crow, from… from a pirate I know.”
“You know a pirate?”
“I know plenty of pirates.”
“Oh,” says Edward. She knows pirates? He can’t imagine that at all. So she must be lying. He sits up a little straighter. “But, anyway, that arrow – it came out of my father’s leg. Someone shot him with it, somewhere in the jungle. It was an ambush, of course. The cowards. His men took him straight back to the ship. Poison arrows are really dangerous, because…”
“Yes,” the girl says with a nod. “They give you blood poisoning.”
“Um… Yes. Well, anyway, the ship’s doctor was ready and waiting with a saw. But my father was still conscious. Any other man would have fainted from the pain, but not him. He took out his pistol. ‘Anyone who attempts to saw off my leg is a dead man,’ he said. No one dared to go any closer. The poison was slowly creeping higher. ‘But, captain,’ they begged. ‘You’re going to die. You have to—’”
“I thought he was an admiral.”
“That was later. Do you want me to tell the story or not?”
She nods.
“‘You’re going to die, captain,’ they said. ‘Let us do it.’ No. My father shook his head. ‘A man with one leg is no man at all,’ he said. And then his leg turned completely black. Any other man would have died. But not my father. He sweated it out. You can only do that if you’re really strong. Two weeks later, his blood was clean. A month later, he could walk again. Mind over matter.”
Edward sighs. It is the best story his father has ever told him. It is pretty much the only one too.
“Then it can’t have been actual blood poisoning.”
“Yes, it was, you stupid child.”
“Blood poisoning always kills you. Everyone knows that.”
“Not my father,” replies Edward. He does not care if she believes him. He just feels so very, very tired.
The girl lies down beside him on the floor and together they look up at the flakes curling off the ceiling.
“My father has only one leg,” Lampie says after a while.
He raises his head and looks at her. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not.” She shakes her head. “Honestly. He has one whole leg, but the other one is just half a leg. He walks with a limp. Which causes all kinds of problems with… with his job.”
“Because he’s a pirate too, of course.” It’s all lies – he’s sure of it.
“No, he’s a lighthouse keeper.”
“So how did it happen, then? His leg, I mean.”
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Oh.” He lies back down again. “Does he mind?”
The girl thinks for a moment. “Yes,” she says. “He does.”
Augustus would never talk about it. And he never wanted anything that might help either. Not a strong crutch, not a wooden leg.
“Gone is gone,” he used to say. “Dead is dead. I’m not going to go out and get myself a wooden wife, am I? So I’ll just have to do without. It’s not a problem anyway, is it?”
No, thinks Lampie. It wasn’t a problem. As long as I was there to do everything for him. And what about now? How is he doing it all by himself? Suddenly she really, really wants to go home. Wednesday afternoon, she thinks. Wednesday afternoon off.
The scent of grass wafts in through the window, along with the sound of Lenny’s shears snipping away. Seabirds sail around the tower, shrieking happily at the sun.
“What a din,” says Edward. “Shut that window.”
“But it’s nice with the window open. Everything smells so good.”
“Do as I say.” He rolls under the bed. “I’ve got a headache. Shut the window and go away.”
“Aren’t we going to read?”
“Not today.”
She picks up the tray and walks to the door. “I’ll be back at half-past three for your bath then. See you later.”
He does not reply.
When she goes outside, Lampie sees Lenny’s ladder sticking up over a hedge. He keeps moving it along just a little way, and then climbing back up and going on snipping. The two hedges at the front are beginning to look a lot like dogs, with open mouths and their ears flapping in the wind. The tall hedge at the back is turning into a rhinoceros, and the long spine that winds between them is getting dragon spikes.
Oh, Lenny, she thinks with a smile.
The air around her is warm and soft and even the house no longer seems quite as angry, now that all those little owl chicks are growing up in its ivy.
Lampie looks up at the tower with its windows so firmly shut. How is she ever going to get that boy to come outside with her?
CARPENTER’S HUT
Nick carefully puts the ship down. It is as long as his little finger and as wide as his thumb, but it has masts and sails, portholes and even a tiny little mermaid as a figurehead. The bottle he is about to slide it into is ready and waiting on the table. Then it can go with the others, which are gleaming away on shelves on the wall. Rows and rows of bottles, all with little ships inside, ships that should never have fitted in through the necks of the bottles, and yet there they are. He has a whole system of little strings to
pull, hinged masts, folding sails, and his fingers are learning to work on a smaller and smaller scale, and every ship is an improvement on the last one.
He used to make real ships, big ones, but this is much more fun. A lot less tiring too. He could do it all day, in his hut that lies hidden in the garden, so overgrown and entangled with thorns and nettles that no one knows it is there. Squirrels on the roof, robins at the window, a bit of porridge, a cup of coffee now and then – that is all he needs.
Until suddenly there is something that he has to do. Even though his hut is so deep in the garden, he still hears it when the girl calls. He hears it every time.
Help. How am I ever going to get over the fence? Help, I’m falling. Help, how am I ever going to get that boy to come outside? How am I ever going to see my father again? Help! Will someone help me?
Well, then, that someone would be him.
Perhaps because she is her mother’s daughter, perhaps that is why. He had not thought about her for years. But he saw it as soon as she walked through the gate. She looks so much like her.
Nick pushes back his stool and stretches. Then he looks for a few suitable pieces of wood, a saw, a sanding block. He should still have some wheels somewhere too. After brushing down his workbench, he sets to work.
The little boat will have to wait.
Behind his hut, up on two blocks of wood, there is another boat, a real rowing boat, made of green wood. That is for later, but it is already waiting there. Upside down, but you can still read its name: Emilia.
Lampie has almost finished the dishes when she hears a shrill whistle from outside. From the kitchen window, she sees Nick on the path, beckoning at her to come out. He is pulling something behind him: it is a cart, newly made, softly sanded, with a handle on the front and a leather cushion inside, which you could rest your tail on, for example, if you happened to have one.
