The Pinchbeck Mystery
Susan Sowerby
Romance
This one got third place in the 'Seeya Later Alligator' young adult contest. I feel pleased because I am told there were 360 entries.
No one at high school knew what made Ashley Ostfeld tick. He was a strange boy given to sudden unintelligible out bursts. Sometimes he would sigh impatiently, slam a book down, then angrily leave the student room where ordinary peer group conversations were taking place. Other times he left with quiet deliberation. No one, except Samantha, was any the wiser as to why. They never noticed that these reactions occurred whenever a group of teenagers bewailed the fact that they had parents, a very common topic in most high school student rooms.
Samantha Westaway, classy, well off, and beautiful, felt annoyed she found this marginal character attractive. She didn’t understand why the quiet outsider intruded so thoroughly into her perfect world. What was it? He didn’t try to fake, he didn’t try to be any one or anything. He was just quietly and doggedly his own man, and he kept to himself. She judged his looks as too angular to be main-stream classical like her boyfriend, Joe’s. Hot Joe appeared to have recently stepped out of a high fashion magazine. Sam knew she looked terrific beside him.
She judged Ashley as way too thin, his clothes too worn, his mood too taciturn, yet there was something about him. He had those lazy eyes she hadn’t realised were two different colours until he opened them up at her that time she returned the photograph, and he had a chiselled mouth like a Greek statue’s that could curl and say the most cutting things at times. It hurt. She had been on the receiving end lately.
He’d just happened to be standing behind her as she looked up the new timetable to see where they shared classes, and he had seen her print ‘Ash’ in each space on her own copy.
She’d even blushed when he retorted. ‘Haven’t you got a better use for your time?’
His cold shoulder only served to excite her curiosity. She felt certain he deliberately stayed on the outskirts of social life, yet he had a peculiar status of his own. No one really knew anything about him. She had to concede that although he looked like a poor boy,
there was some sort of elegance about his person, especially his voice. He spoke as though he was on the BBC – perfectly, without an accent. Something about Ashley Ostfeld didn’t make sense. He intrigued her.
Joe called Ash a ‘fruitcake,’ but Sam had to admit she liked fruitcake. Joe didn’t like Ash much or vice versa. One could say they entered from completely opposite sides of the stage. When Marta Jansen had called Joe ‘swanky,’ Sam had overheard Ash’s sly comment,
‘Just drop the ‘s’ and you’ll have it right.’
Sam sighed as she picked up the strange pen Ashley had given her early in the year when he had been more friendly. It appeared to be very old, artfully encased in green fabric to make it look like a stem. It blossomed into a small beautiful red cloth rose at the top. She imagined this to have been a lover’s pen, one used to write love letters at the turn of the century, perhaps. Ashley said he found it in a disused house and he gave it to her simply because, well, what else would he do with it? How should she take that? It could have meant everything or nothing, you just didn’t know with Ash. She knew it must have been washed and then freshly perfumed with something unfamiliar and beautiful. That had to be a clue. But whatever he felt about her back then, didn’t seem to be happening now.
She sighed again, ‘Ash, get out of my head, leave me alone.’ But the harder she tried to evict him, the stronger he stuck. Outwardly, he seemed to be pushing her away as though he had taken a sudden dislike. And yet, at other times, she caught him considering her from across the classroom with those strange eyes of his, weighing her up. He never looked away when ‘sprung’, just gazed right through her as though she wasn’t there. Damn you Ash. What is with you?
School work didn’t worry him at all. He was bright. She could see he could do a lot better if he wanted to, but he didn’t seem quite focussed. In her imagination, Sam made him everything from a spooky serial killer to the most amazing teen hero in history. He certainly was an enigma. How long had Ashley been a student at her school? He never invited anyone home and no one really knew him. Sam loved mysteries, in fact, she dreamed about becoming a great female sleuth, not a model as she was set up to be by her ambitious mother.
As her fascination for Ashley increased, she decided to follow him home and see what his house was like. What if his parents were so deformed he didn’t want anyone to see them? What if they lived in a house like the Munsters? Wow that would make a good school yarn. Sometimes his peers made up stories about him. Was it an attempt to fill in the blanks, because no one could get close. Everyone knew they weren’t true - or were they? In response to the rumours, he wrote an essay on school gossip. It was so hilarious the teacher couldn’t resist reading it out.
Sam thought of the time he had dropped the tiny picture of the woman in an ornate gold frame. She was striking, dressed in what appeared to be eighteenth century garb, and adorned with the most amazing jewellery. The other boys had said ‘Woo Wooo,’ and thrown it around. Ashley simply shrugged and walked back into the classroom, but Samantha noticed the anxiety in his eyes. No, you wouldn’t catch Ash giving them satisfaction by chasing it. Sam had finally caught it. Who was this gorgeous woman? The gold inscription on the back said ‘Elizabeth Pinchbeck, 1968’. The girl must have been in fancy dress. When Sam returned it, the look in Ash’s eyes had been monumental and she experienced a strange instant. Was that the moment she’d fallen in love with him? She still struggled with the fact.
On the day she decided to follow him, she waited behind the school gate in her blue raincoat. Drizzle fell incessantly, so she could effectively withdraw like a snail into the dark hood. It would not be easy to follow Ash because he noticed everything, but on this day he seemed worried, more than a just a little distracted, which was why she had chosen it.
Sam followed him onto the bus to Sheldon Park. That in itself was unusual. She had expected him to walk from school as he usually did, in a different direction each day. She chose a seat behind him just across the aisle and watched carefully, trying to keep her hood covering her face so she couldn’t be seen in the bus driver’s mirror. Once seated, Ashley took an old brooch from his pocket and stared at it. Sam didn’t know for sure, but she thought she saw a quick tear fall. He alighted seven stops down, with Sam sliding out like a ghost behind him. Ashley did not turn or show any sign he noticed her, but walked straight into the Pawn brokers on the other side of the street. Wondering if he was a thief, Sam stood out side the door listening to the argument that broke out inside.
She heard Ash yell. ‘It’s worth a lot more than that and you know it! It’s an antique made by old Pinchbeck himself. It’s totally authentic. Rub it, smell it and you’ll know, if you’re any sort of a jeweller.’
Phew thought Sam, Ashley can be tough. I wonder who ‘old Pinchbeck’ is.
She heard the pawn broker mumble again then Ash’s raised voice, ‘That’s not enough and you know it!’
Shoving the brooch back in his pocket he strode towards the door. Sam quickly turned her back, but she felt the angry breeze as he whooshed past, muttering,
‘Bloody old miser, how dare you make me barter over this!’
Such a strange self-possessed boy, thought Sam - more man than boy, actually. She identified the trait as one of the attractions. Stealthily, she followed at a distance. Ashley slowed, hands in pockets as though thinking hard, then turned abruptly into the industrial area where the city smelled ever more mundane. Warehouses and trucks faced each other on either side of the street like commercial cowboys ready for a draw. Sam saw Ashley approach several of them until one nodded. She wondered what it was about. Drugs? But Ashley took off his now wet jacket and laid his shoulder into the boxes along with the truck driver. Sam scratched her head. It seemed he only wanted a job after all. Not prepared to spend hours kill
ing time till he finished, she unwillingly turned back. The mystery had only deepened. If it was anyone else, she would simply ask what he was up to. Not Ashley. Either he would tell her something way out or simply say ‘Mind your own business’ if he happened to be having a bad day. Sam decided to stop the imagination and the stories and strip it right back to the facts. One thing seems to be true, she surmised, he’s badly in need of money. Why? Drugs? Oh shut up on the drugs, she told herself. Nothing is proven.
The next day at school she called, ‘Hello Ash,’ in all innocence. He put down his pen and gazed quizzically at her. He did looked tired and no wonder.
‘Hello Sam-an-tha,’ he returned coolly, almost threateningly, definitely warning her off.
Damn you Ashley, she thought, you know! He compressed his mouth and stalked off. After that, he treated her with even more diffidence. In fact, he shut her right out. Before, he had shown bursts of warmth, which she found completely disarming. Angrily, she realised she had lived for those moments. Now, without them, her popular life quickly slid into meaninglessness. How could he exert such a hold on her, especially when he didn’t seem to want to?
Damn you Ashley, damn, damn, damn you! How dare you make me cry! Do you have any idea how much that hurt? As the longing to reach him grew, she felt completely stymied. It didn’t make sense, plus it affected her school work. He remained doggedly distant. She wondered how following him could have constituted such an offence when it should have been a compliment. She watched him in the classroom. Something vulnerable and mysterious hung around him, fine spun as a spider’s web. Maybe he’s gay? She wondered. Maybe he hates me or he’s some kind of a ‘Mr D’Arcy,’ and is secretly madly in love with me?
Sometimes, as she watched, she glimpsed a private smile, directed down onto his books. Then he would close his eyes and shake his head slowly as though struggling with a painful dilemma. With all her heart, she wanted to touch this strange distant boy, to make him feel warm and somehow loved.
She couldn’t believe it. Samantha Westaway, the most desired girl in school, brought down by the one boy who wanted nothing to do with her! In that very brief moment when their eyes had met over the photograph, it seemed to her as though they looked right into each other’s soul. For Sam, it was a truth. Did he miss it completely? Was it not a reality for him? He was driving her crazy. Sam, the great sleuth of her own imagination couldn’t get the slightest handle on Ash Ostfeld, not even where he lived. He only had a post box for an address. Sometimes she felt she hated him for leading her on such a chase, yet it wasn’t his fault at all. All the while, her fake life went on like a box office hit as she walked beside her picture perfect boyfriend. She felt she was walking in slow motion, while everything gradually dissolved and it was all because of Ash!
A few weeks later as she wandered despondently through an unfamiliar suburb, something stopped her abruptly. Her much loved, but long divorced father planned to meet her there and take her for coffee and a movie. He offered light relief from her scheming, socially prominent mother. The blue flash caught her eye as though beckoning her to cross the road. The jeweller’s shop from where the light glinted sported a sophisticated looking façade. Sam approached hesitantly. A gasp escaped her lips. No, it couldn’t be, but there it was! The brooch Ashley had shown to the other pawn-broker! She put aside the foolish notion that it had beckoned her. How many of them there could be? By the price, plus the argument in the other shop, this must be something special. No! I’m not going to look, she warned herself, but was propelled through the door as though by an invisible hand.
Since hearing Ashley mention ‘Pinchbeck’ to the jeweller, she had read up about it on the net and discovered it was the name given to a metal invented in the seventeen hundreds by a talented clock-maker and metallurgist whose name was Christopher Pinchbeck. Though popular in its time, the word ‘Pinchbeck’ later became synonymous with ‘cheap’ and ‘tawdry.’ Back then, there had been an exciting race among the alchemists of the day to invent an untarnishable substitute for gold that looked as beautiful, but weighed in as light as a feather. This would enable the society ladies to wear large gold trinkets without the inconvenience of heavy weights or the danger of theft when they wanted to travel. Christopher Pinchbeck had won the race, but since his secret died with his son, those trying to copy it did not quite succeed. They managed similar, but not the same. This made the original antiques and metal very valuable.
Samantha fell into conversation with the German born pawn broker and finally asked the question bugging her. ‘Did a young guy, tall, thin with one hazel and one grey eye like David Bowie, sell you that brooch?’
The jeweller raised an eyebrow and answered in his accented voice. ‘I don’t like to discuss suppliers. Is there a problem?’
‘No, not at all,’ Sam improvised, ‘I’m just surprised the Ostfeld family decided to sell it. Of course it was a much loved heirloom,’ she improvised.
The pawn-broker looked perturbed and repeated ‘Ostfeld?’ He shook his head as though puzzled and replied absently. ‘Yes, seemed nice young chap. We had a wonderful conversation in German. I miss the old country you know.’
Sam left also puzzled. German? He speaks fluent German? She had thought he was English. Obviously, he hadn’t used his true name, if it was his true name. The plot thickens, she thought. Of course, ‘Ostfeld’ is a German word.
After the movie, she hugged her father, hurried home to look for Ashley’s name on the net. She found that Ostfeld meant ‘east field’ in German. A nice name, she thought, and here am I, Samantha Westaway! Our names are complementary at least.
In the following weeks, Sam felt depressed. She also felt silly because she knew she was behaving like a jilted lover over a love that had never happened. How could this experience be so intense, just because two pairs of eyes met over a photograph? Her relationship with Joe faded by comparison.
In a final hour of darkness, she decided to end it with Joe. The glamour of the school ball was coming up on the next full moon and though her flattering ball gown hung ready, she thought, ‘what the hell. Everything seems so unreal - sick.’ A weight constricted her chest. She felt that if she didn’t get out of the life she was leading, she would go mad.
Inside the locker room, after the others had left for class, Sam decided to break the news to Joe. Of course, she made no mention of Ash. How could she? There really wasn’t anything between them. Joe was angry and disappointed,
You can’t Sam. It will be the talk of the town.’
He seemed angrier about losing her image at his side than the loss of any form of affection. She detected something she didn’t like in his eyes. It looked like rage over the loss of a possession.
‘Who is he Sam! I’ll rip his head off.’ The threat in his tone chilled her.
‘There’s no one else, Joe. I just need to be on my own for a while.’ The tremor in her voice betrayed her.
Joe didn’t look convinced. Like her, his looks and style gave him the pick of the school. Though tears ran down Sam’s face they were not for Joe. She realised how little there was between them, other than appearances. After she had finished her confession, a locker suddenly slammed on the other side of the locker row, and none other than Ashley sailed out the other end, nonchalantly flicking up his pen and catching it. He didn’t look back, but continued towards the classroom with his proud, straight backed walk.
So you know, thought Sam bitterly, and I don’t care if you do. I don’t care about anything anymore.’ The rose, un watered, was dying in her heart.
The night of the ball came around with brutal suddenness. What made it more traumatic for Sam was that her Birthday fell on the same day. Excited friends had been arranging the big celebration. When the news of her break-up got out, suitors fell over each other to ask her to partner them. Who would she choose? Gossip, gossip. She selected one, but only out of duty. How could she let her social circle down without awkward consequences? Ash would never go to anything
like this.
The sad princess looked beautiful in the low cut ball gown her mother had picked out for her. Crystal earrings hung like tear drops and a real gold pendant glittered on the smooth tanned skin of her chest. Her model mother looked the costume up and down with an approving eye.
‘What time do the photographers arrive?’ she asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sam snapped, ‘they’re always there.’
She hadn’t told her she and Joe were no longer the showy magazine couple she loved to brag about. How could she? She wouldn’t understand her reasons at all. And she would never approve of a boy like Ash! Sam sighed. What did it matter? Sometimes she felt her mother’s values came straight from Mrs Bennet out of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’
As she stepped into the hall, the evening burst to life with streamers, balloons and birthday greetings. A cloying confusion of perfumes almost suffocated her. She executed her social tasks with a grace far distant from her inner state of mind. Her mother had told her that being a model was very close to being a queen. You did everything in a way that never betrayed how you felt. Story of my life, thought Sam ruefully. If my actions get much further from how I feel, I will explode. She finally acknowledged she had never wanted to be a model. That was her mother’s life.
The noise in the hall seemed to close in as her outrage swelled. She became desperate to escape, but how, when everyone would follow the ‘worlds’ next top model’ like a bunch of sucker fish? Of course, the good old toilets always provide refuge! Excusing herself, she fled through the boisterous knots of students, but slipped past the ablutions and out into the fresh air outside. Tears stung her eyes.
The belle of the ball stood panting in the half-light, her back up against a hard brick wall. Now that she had finally admitted she didn’t want the perfect life her mother had mapped out for her, she felt lost. Where to now? The moist air caressed her troubled brow and played sensually against her bare chest. Coils of mist rose from the damp air’s contact with the hot tarmac. Sam felt a scream of frustration rising in her throat, but froze when she heard a voice call her name. The single soft word came from the shadows. A figure stood at the other end of the wall, obscured by the street light. Oh no! She could not bear to deal with anyone just now.
Suddenly, the figure strode towards her. The lamp glared into her eyes, showing nothing more than a black silhouette rapidly approaching. Surprised, she tried to step back, but the shadow took hold of her firmly, and laying his whole body shamelessly against hers, kissed her with startling passion. Something astonishing happened. The ghost in each of them seemed to merge for one split second. Ash! The kiss burned right down to the soles of her feet. Just as suddenly, he stepped away and putting his back to the wall, slid to the ground with a groan as though he had been shot. Sam gasped as she tried frantically to scrape her wits together.
‘A-are you …. Ok?’ she stammered.
‘Me? Maybe - I think,’ came the faint reply. She could hear the twinge of humour in his tone.
Struggling to suppress her amazement, Sam pounced and slid down beside him. Not daring to expose the true nature of her obsession, she fumbled at a joke. Lifting her finger to his throat like a knife, she whispered in a heavy German accent.
‘Ashley Ostfeld. You haf much explaining to do! How long have you felt like zis?’
‘Oh, only about a year,’ he replied carelessly.
Sam’s heart missed a beat ‘Er - what?’ she stammered, all eloquence deserting her.
‘I mean, you did me in long before I got you back.’
She stared in disbelief. Much to her annoyance, a rogue tear escaped and made a track down her cheek as she burst out,
‘You hurt me so much! ‘Why were you so horrible?’
Reaching over, he followed the tear with his finger. ‘Innocent as an angel! You won’t believe it.’
‘How, what?’ she repeated, confused and annoyed that she sounded so dumb.
‘It’s a long story. Suffice to say I have my reasons. I thought you weren’t my kind of girl, but I couldn’t lose you, no matter how hard I tried. When you started to feel the same way, I couldn’t do it anymore. A girl like you doesn’t just give up does she?’ As he reached out and held the softly sobbing Sam, she felt a flicker of joy. It’s true! This is Ash after all, warm and responsive, but in the next instant, he let go and frowned at the ground as though believing he was making a big mistake.
No, thought Sam desperately, don’t you dare close up on me, not now. Don’t you dare open my heart just to crush it again! She grappled for her newly discovered authenticity, believing it might be the key to keeping him there. ‘I feel my whole life has been a lie and illusion. I’ve been pleasing everyone else. I’m done with that. Give me your true story or I want nothing from you.’ How hard was it to say that? Especially to someone she wanted to know more than anyone else in the world. At last, Sam Westaway knew she was making a stand where it really mattered! Elation and liberation fizzed through her veins.
In the half light, she was relieved to see the secretive smile she’d often seen directed down on his books. He sighed and reached an arm around her shoulders.
‘I was wondering when you’d get real and dump that poster boyfriend of yours. At the same time, I was afraid you would because I’d be forced to deal with you.’ He gave her a little shake.
She opened her mouth to speak but was stopped by another surprising kiss. Sam had received many kisses, some stolen, some approved, but this time it was different. She felt she was opening like a flower, there was no resistance. It frightened her and at the same time, filled her with joy. This was Romeo and Juliet stuff, Elizabeth and D’arcy power - what she’d always longed to feel, but was afraid she would only ever read about it in romantic classics. Was this happening because she ‘got real’ at last?
‘Give me your full story before you undo me completely!’ She panted, pushing him away and pulling him to her at the same time.
Ash laughed and held up both hands in surrender. ‘O K Interrogate me! I’ll tell you anything you want,’ then he dropped his voice to a warning whisper, ‘but only if you promise not to tell anyone else.
With all her heart she prayed that what she was about to hear would not be terrible or compromise her in some way, but he had put her in a position of power by inviting her to ask anything she wanted and that felt wild!
‘Right! Why were you keeping me away?’
‘In a nutshell? I’ve been living incognito. I don’t have parents: I don’t have a proper home: I’ve been keeping myself for the last three years: I’m saving up to go back to Britain to find my parents, and the last thing I need is a girlfriend to tattle on me or get in my way. Enough reasons?’
Sam didn’t like the finality in his tone. ‘But why does she have to get in your way? She protested. ‘She could be your ‘Ninety-nine’ and help you, Mr Smart!’
‘Then she’d better be as smart as Ninety-nine,’ he chuckled, ‘and I really hope I’m not as dumb as Smart!
Sam laughed, her heart overflowing. ‘Are your parents in England then?’
She saw a shadow cross his face. ‘Both my parents disappeared four years ago, when we lived in Edinburgh, Scotland.’
‘But you would have been only twelve or thirteen, four years ago. How come you’re in Australia?’
‘The police closed the file on my parents and after a while they simply became missing person statistics. I put up with a string of foster homes, but finally, I was sent to an aunt in Australia. The police said I was a problem child because I kept running away in search of my parents. Well they weren’t doing their job properly were they? At first, this aunt said she didn’t want me, then after seeing a photograph, she said she did. Through my own internet investigations I found out she had become well off through running some sort of introductory agency. I didn’t like the sound of her. Did she want to train me up as a gigolo or something?’
‘You might make a good one,’ Sam put in mischievously, ‘
if kissing’s any indication.’
‘Humph! So much for sincerity!’
Sam giggled. It struck her as funny that he actually seemed offended. She knew most boys egos would take it as a compliment, but her skin tingled as she realised he was letting her know that the kiss was hers’ alone.
‘Go on,’ she begged, ‘I’m intrigued by your story. Don’t let me distract you.’
‘You, not distract me? Impossible,’ he muttered gruffly.
‘Please, do go on,’ she urged.
‘Alright, Okay. After so many foster homes, I wanted to live my own life with my own agenda, so I sent my aunt the appropriate letters from the department, with the wrong return address of course and the appropriate letters back to them. It wasn’t too hard. I’d pinched a bit of stationary with their letter head, since I ended up back there so many times. Now both parties think I’m safely overseas.
‘And what was that brooch about?’ Again, Sam felt the chilling fear that she was she about to find a serious flaw in her Romeo.
He glanced at her. ‘You think I stole the brooch?’ Sam cringed feeling he’d picked her doubt up too quickly. He went on, ‘the truth is, it was handed down the Pinchbeck line from mother to daughter, but because I’m an only child, my mother gave it to me for any daughter I might have. It is an authentic family heirloom, made by the original Christopher Pinchbeck.
‘But you sold it!’ said Sam accusingly.
He glanced at her sharply, ‘Some things have to be sacrificed Sam. In a few months, I’ll be gone, another reason not to have a girlfriend.’
Sam gritted her teeth, ‘What about me? You can’t kiss me like that and then sacrifice me as if I don’t exist. I’m in it too now.’
‘I can’t, I’m not,’ he returned desperately, ‘but I have to work all the time to pay for my fare and investigations. The brooch helped somewhat, but it’s still not enough and I don’t want to sell the others. I have to do this for my parents, Sam.’
‘Why did your parents disappear?’ she laid her head against his shoulder, determined to help, not hinder. She would collect all the data she could.
‘They knew something I think - some old formula, some old alchemy. Of course there was old Pinchbeck too. Way back in the seventeen hundreds, he and his sons made amazing clockwork toys, planetariums, little singing birds and things, but I think there was more. He was an alchemist who belonged to a secret fraternity. There might have been something else he discovered, not that they told it to me, mind you. My parents might be dead, they might be alive. I have no way of knowing, but I intend to find out.’
Sam considered the hugeness of what he’d told her and how it would feel, not knowing where your loved ones were, whether they were imprisoned somewhere, abandoned by the authorities or if they were actually dead. Alone in the world, Ashley Ostfeld had to grow up fast. It certainly explained why he was different from all the others. From her own painful experience with Ash, Sam understood why a few hard knocks gave a person a different perspective on life. No matter how he might deny it, the woman in her immediately understood how much he needed her. She knew she would be all he had in the world, and she found that exciting.
‘Ash, that picture?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is she a relative?’
‘My mother.’
‘Is she German? How come you speak German?’
He frowned, ‘How do you know that?’
‘The guy in the jewellers shop.’
For a second time that night, she saw him smile. ‘You mightn’t make such a bad sleuth after all, Ninety-nine. My father was ….. is, German.’ Ash’s confusion over whether his parent was present or past hurt her heart. She took his hand.
They sat in silence, hardly daring to breathe. Mist gathered, and the air around them seemed pregnant with magic and mystery. Finally Ash spoke,
‘Let’s move before all those deros. come out looking for you.’
He pulled her to her feet and they walked out onto the frosted street. Sam shivered. Ash made the comment that her dress was too low and she should snuggle close or she might catch a cold. She willingly did as he suggested.
‘At what point did you know I was following you, that day you first tried to sell the brooch?’
‘I looked up in the bus mirror. I couldn’t see your face, but I know your shape, your presence anywhere. I think you saw me having a blub about that brooch. I felt like I was selling my daughter. It didn’t matter that you saw me try to sell a brooch. Anyone can do that, but I didn’t want you to follow me to where I live. That really is illegal.’
Sam asked boldly, ‘Where do you live, Ash?’ Would he answer her question? He’d certainly thought on his feet that afternoon to make her lose the scent. It was unlikely he’d had a job in that suburb before. She found his predicament more moving by the minute.
‘Truth is,’ he sighed at last, ‘I live in that condemned house at the end of Rowe street.’
‘Where all the morning glory is?’
‘Yes.’
‘But how can you live there? It’s collapsed, condemned and there are danger signs all around it.’
The enigmatic smile surfaced again. ‘With wind up toys, amazing clocks and little birds that sing. I’ll tell you a secret, Sam. At the back, a new room had been built late in that house’s history. It’s large and very strong. The way it stands, it can not easily be accessed as there is thick briar rose all over it at the back. I have my own ways in. It’s not like you think. I’ve made it very comfortable.’
Sam could see it was a relief for him to confide in someone at last. She hoped he knew she wouldn’t betray him. Since he was almost seventeen, child welfare would not bother him, either. Though he was two months younger than her, she could see that life had made him years older. Obviously, he did not want to live someplace where he had to pay rent while he saved for England. All he had told her reeked of intrigue. In truth, she found his tale far more exciting than any of her fantasies. Ash revealed had scrubbed up better, smarter and far more passionate than she’d dared to imagine. A little shiver ran down her spine. She could feel this guy’s heart.
Sam made a snap decision. She could not step backwards. Something beyond her false little world had beckoned her towards Ash. That world felt like a nightmare now. She had to step forwards, even if no one else understood. He had wounded her, and at last, he was claiming her. Did he know what he had done? His timing seemed uncanny, perfect. She felt that in a way, they were both orphans. Taking a deep breath, she extended her arms like a tender fledgling, poised at the edge of a cliff, about to fly into the vast blue unknown,
‘It’s my seventeenth birthday today. Will you take me home with you?’
He stared at her for a moment. ‘With me where? To England?’
She shook her head. ‘No. To where you live. Now!’
He stopped abruptly, alert and confused. ‘Steady, Sam,’ he said softly, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘Are you surprised?’
‘Well, yes, that’s - fast!’
‘Fast! Fast?’ Sam felt incensed. ‘Ashley Ostfeld, you forget. You’ve been a long, slow agonising trip for me!’
‘Sorry. As you have for me.’ He gathered her into his arms, somewhat unsteadily. ‘Happy Seventeenth, Sam, lovely girl who’s better than she knows! Want a confession? For a long time I’ve pretended you were with me, but I thought it way too risky to act on. I keep my space beautiful, as though you’re beside me. It helps me keep my act together and makes me feel less lonely.’
That took Sam’s breath away. The world ceased around her. This was her coming of age. It was her life, no one else’s. Not her mother’s, not Joe Hamersley’s, not her friends. Hers! And she was taking it back.
‘You really are as contrary as Mr D’Arcy.’ She murmured, snuggling close, desperately wanting to merge with something she felt was steely strong and honest in his character.
‘Mr D’Arcy?’ he began to laugh, ‘Oh God, I know why the poor dude seemed
all screwed up! He didn’t want the inconvenience of a hook through the heart, but he copped it anyway.’ Sam joined his laughter until the tears rolled down their cheeks.
‘Whatever rules,’ she spluttered, ‘It definitely isn’t us!’
Still laughing, they began their journey hand in hand. Rowe street loomed close, only four streets on. As Sam moved, she could feel the soft silk gown caressing her thighs. Dew congealed on her chest and trickled between her breasts. She wasn’t cold. All her sensations felt heightened, every inch of her skin glowed with a mysterious age old rite. Steam rose from the road as they passed, twisting around her hem like dancing wraiths. Once or twice he halted her under a hazy street lamp, and held her hand above her head in a dancers grip, turning her with slow appreciation. This beautiful girl seemed like a miracle gift in his troubled life. Sam felt that he saw her completely, not only the much desired outer form everyone else saw also, but something much deeper, something much closer.
As they tip-toed towards the wall of morning glory, she felt both fear and exhilaration. There was no posing here. This was real. She knew she was walking towards the portal that led from childhood to womanhood. In the last few weeks, she had become brave, honest and naked in her own eyes. She had faced the phoney, suffered the truth and grown. She had changed, her life had changed - the honesty and power in Ash’s kiss had also changed her. She had thrown herself into the void, and he had caught her. Once she entered this portal, she knew there could be no going back. Sure, he had offered her a choice, but she knew there was none. Tonight, she would have to be woman to this strange, intense young man, for there was no other honest way to manage the fire that had grown so silently, so magically between them.
Salt and Pepper Short Stories and Poems Page 6
