by Sylvia Waugh
Wimpey looked more closely at the rabbit.
“He’s hurt his paw,” she said. “That is why he hasn’t run away. You can’t keep him a secret, Poopie. You’ll have to tell Mother. She is the one who mends things.”
Vinetta came to the stables and cleansed and bandaged the hurt paw, but she looked worried.
“That’s the best I can do,” she said, “but I think maybe he should be taken to a vet. We’ll have to ask Albert when he comes.”
Albert came the next day. It was a Tuesday. He brought Joshua to stay the night and was to take him back to Castledean in time for work on Wednesday evening. The Range Rover had proved very useful. Joshua usually managed to pay his family a visit once a fortnight or so. It was a poor substitute for having his whole family at home in Castledean, but it was better than nothing.
“I don’t know about a vet,” said Albert. “I don’t really know very much about animals. It looks all right to me.”
“Did you never have a pet when you were young?” asked Vinetta to jog his memory.
Albert grinned.
“I once kept a worm in a shoe box!”
Joshua liked the look of the rabbit – a nice, quiet creature. “I’ll make a hutch for it,” he said kindly. “I’ll bring it down the next time I come.”
“That won’t make any difference to its paw,” said Vinetta, still worried. “We’ll ask Magnus,” she said at last.
They got a large cardboard box from a cupboard in the house, carefully tipped Andy Black into it and proceeded upstairs to Granpa’s room.
The old man was sitting propped up in the four-poster bed. The bed curtains, washed and ironed, were tied back with a cord, one to each bed-post. The pillows behind his head were very old and stiff, but the pillowcases were still white with deep frills round the edges. Granpa was wearing a crimson night-cap that Tulip had found in the dressing-table drawer. Magnus, alone of all the household, even including Albert, looked a real match for the house. The others were anachronisms.
“No need for a vet,” pronounced Sir Magnus after he had peered at the animal over the edge of the box. “You’ve made a good job of that paw, Vinetta. It’ll heal in no time.”
“What about a hutch?” asked Joshua.
“No,” said his father. “All that animal needs is some straw bedding in the stables. He’s a wild creature, not a pet.”
Sir Magnus looked down at Poopie.
“You’ll have to keep changing the bedding. Rabbits can get dirty and smelly.”
“What if he runs away when his paw gets better?” asked Poopie anxiously.
“If he does, he does,” said his grandfather. “By the time his paw’s better, he’ll know you. He’ll know it’s you that’s looked after him. Even a rabbit should have enough sense to know what side his bread’s buttered on.”
It was an alien pearl of wisdom. Only Albert had any idea what it meant.
“Come on, Andy Black,” said Poopie. Throwing caution to the winds, he lifted the rabbit out of the box and hugged it to his chest.
24
Allenbridge Market
“I’LL TAKE YOU both to Allenbridge,” said Albert. “It’s market day. You’ll like it.”
Poor Albert! He tried to sound hopeful but he was well aware that the family were fish out of water in the countryside. He hadn’t seen Soobie for the past three weeks but was careful never to mention it. He knew that Wimpey had bad dreams and slept with the light on all night. The dark passages of the house filled her with fear. The hoot of an owl would send her screaming to Vinetta. As for the older girls, they were obviously totally bored, especially Appleby who would not even take comfort in books.
Albert’s own life had become dreamlike. He was back at work, of course. The vacation was over, but he still spent as much time as he could toing and froing between Durham, Castledean and Comus House.
“Dr Pond,” one of his first-year students had asked in the middle of last term, “do you believe in the paranormal?”
He had blinked at the girl and looked guilty.
“I mean,” she had continued, “do you believe in reincarnation? Do you think that people from history could be living now? Kings coming back as road-sweepers, beggars returning as millionaires?”
“A nice thought, Lorna,” Albert had said, smiling, “but I don’t think it could work quite like that! If you carried it to a logical conclusion, you’d end up with too many kings and not enough road-sweepers!”
He was relieved that the girl was just burbling on the way his students sometimes did. For a moment he had thought she’d divined the terrible tangle he had got himself into caring for Kate’s creations.
He had checked several times on what was happening in Brocklehurst Grove. It was now nearly four months since the family had left, and there seemed to be no progress at all towards saving the Grove, despite valiant efforts to gain public support. Albert had rung Anthea once at the gallery number and been told cryptically, “Wait and see, Albert. The Fryers are not easily beaten.”
It was Albert’s best hope. But in the meantime he had to try to get the Mennyms settled down, just in case the worst should come to the worst.
Appleby heard the magic word ‘market’ and was keen to go. Castledean Market, row upon row of stalls with all sorts of goods on display, had been one of her favourite places. Allenbridge Market should be interesting.
“I’m sitting in the front seat,” she said. Albert gave Pilbeam a rueful, apologetic smile. Pilbeam smiled back and shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t mind taking a back seat,” she said. “Let her have her own way. She usually does.”
Appleby said grudgingly, “You can have the front seat on the way back, if you really want it.”
The little town of Allenbridge was twenty miles north-west of Comus House. The Range Rover crossed the humped-back bridge and went up the narrow street to a clock tower that stood right in the middle of the road which, of necessity, widened at that point.
“We go right here,” said Albert. “The marketplace is just round the next corner.”
“Is that it?” asked Appleby in disgust. There were no more than a dozen stalls. A fête on the local cricket field back home would have made a better showing. People in the square seemed already to be eyeing the Range Rover and wondering who the visitors might be.
Pilbeam said quietly, “It was a nice thought, Albert, but I don’t think we’d dare get out here. We’d be too conspicuous, especially arriving in the Range Rover. It’s a small place. Everybody obviously knows everybody else.”
Appleby flopped back in her seat sulkily. “Some use this is,” she said. “I wish I’d never come.”
“I’ll take you up to Scotland,” said Albert desperately. “We’ll have a nice long drive and I’ll get you home by ten. That’s the time I told your mother we’d be back. It’s only ten past two now, so we’ll have bags of time.”
Where time was concerned, Albert always tended to err on the side of optimism.
They drove on. There were fields and hills and a long stretch of forest. It was a beautiful golden afternoon, better than many a summer’s day.
The signpost at the road-side told them that they were crossing the border.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Albert.
“Lovely,” said Pilbeam from the back seat.
“It’s no different from England,” said Appleby. “Just the same thing over and over again. Fields and trees and more fields.”
She said it spitefully. By this time she had made up her mind to see no good in anything. She had expected to rummage in a market and nothing else would do.
Albert gave her a sidelong glance.
“What did you expect?” he said. “Tartan hills?”
“Or streets paved with bagpipes,” Pilbeam added with a giggle.
Appleby was not amused. She gave them both a look of fury, and she sat in her seat and she smouldered, she smouldered and smouldered and smouldered!
“I want to
go home,” she said.
“That’s where we’re going,” said Albert as he turned to the south.
“No it’s not,” said Appleby, just about spitting out the words. “We’re going to Comus House. That’s not home. It never will be.”
“Ungrateful brat!” said her sister, and thereafter they were silent.
Albert drove carefully along the narrow country roads. He broke no speed limits and when darkness came he was extra wary of every bump and bend. There were, however, one or two slight hitches.
“I thought we would be too far west to see the sea,” said Pilbeam after they had travelled for some while.
“The sea?” said Albert, looking across to his left.
“No,” said Pilbeam. “Over there, on our right. I can barely see it, but I am sure there are lights on a ship out there.”
Albert gave a cry of dismay.
“We’re going north-east,” he said. “I must have taken a wrong turning. We should be going south.”
It was after midnight when they arrived at Comus House. There were lights in most of the windows – Vinetta’s idea. The curtains were all open and the lights shone out like a beacon across the countryside. Only the library and Granpa’s room were left in darkness.
“If they’re lost,” Vinetta said; “they’ll see the lights and Albert will surely recognise the road.”
Tulip’s look was one of exasperation but she said nothing. It was impossible to persuade this daughter-in-law of hers to ease up on the worrying. So the lights burned on wastefully for hours.
“Where on earth have you been all this time?” Vinetta demanded when they returned at last. “You’ve had us terrified in case something had happened.”
In the loft at Bedemarsh Farm, more than seven miles away, Billy Maughan and his friend Joe Dorward had just finished a feast of crisps, pop and chocolate biscuits. If Billy’s dad had known they were up there, there’d have been the devil to pay. It was a good hiding place, above the west wing of the old farmhouse and accessible by an iron-rail fire escape. If Joe’s mum had known he was so far from home at that time of night, she would have been frantic with worry, but she didn’t know and she was fast asleep in the room above the bar at the village pub.
“I’d best be going now,” said Joe. “Let’s have another look at our fireworks, then I’ll be off.”
Billy carefully opened the brown-painted metal ‘tatchy’ case that had belonged to his maternal great-grandfather. The name THOMAS MACRAE was scratched right across the inside of the lid in huge twiggy letters that looked like runes. It was a safe place to store their secret hoard of bangers, whizzers and rocketry.
“Your dad would skin you if he knew you had that lot up here,” said Joe looking down at his younger, smaller friend. Billy was ten years old, but he was small for his age and very slightly built. His wispy ginger hair and pouchy grey eyes made him look wizened. Joe was tall, dark, handsome and twelve.
“Well, he don’t know and he’s not goin’ to know, less you tell’m,” said Billy smartly. He might be small but he had spirit.
They were about to have a scuffle when they decided to play secret agents instead. Billy had an old pair of binoculars which he used for watching the countryside in the wee small hours, hoping to spot poachers, smugglers or even villains carrying a body out to a secret burial. There never was anybody, but you could always pretend. They took turns looking.
Seven miles to the north-west was Tidy Hill, high and round-topped, the site for the bonfire.
“It’ll be better than ever this year,” said Joe. “Jimmy Reed and Geoff Martin’ve been up there and they say the pile of rubbish is the highest they’ve ever seen and there’s three weeks to go yet.”
Billy took his turn with the binoculars. He swivelled round to the south and there, four or five miles south of Tidy Hill, was Comus House, lit up brightly against the dark sky. Billy nearly dropped the binoculars in his excitement.
“There’s nobody lives there,” he said. “Nobody’s lived there for years. Look, Joe, look.”
“There’s somebody there now,” said Joe in a waspishly mysterious voice, “and it’s my betting they’re up to no good. We’ll have to investigate this one, Watson.”
“Yes, Holmes,” said Billy, in a rather poor imitation of his friend’s sinister tones. Playing at the game they called ‘Holmes and Watson’, the boys had investigated more than one ‘case’, but this looked above average interesting.
The lights at Comus House went out. Joe consulted his very special watch and, in his own voice, said, “Crumbs! It’s nearly one o’clock. I’ll never be able to get up in the morning! It’s all right for you, Billy Maughan, all you have to do is sneak back to your room. I’ve over a mile to walk before I get to mine.”
“But we will investigate it sometime,” said Billy hopefully.
“Sometime,” said his friend, “but not in the foreseeable, leastways not at this time of night.”
With a quick “See ya”, he ran out and down the fire-escape into the darkness.
25
Sir Magnus
“THIS CAN NEVER be home to us,” said Sir Magnus yet again as Tulip opened the curtains on a raw October morning. The fine spell had passed and winter looked like setting in early. Tulip pursed her lips and went on with tying up the drapes round the four-poster bed.
“Well?” said Magnus. “What do you think we should do?”
“This is a stupid conversation,” said his wife. “We’ve had it every morning for weeks. There’s nothing we can do. We’ll just have to get used to it.”
Magnus gave her one of his bleakest looks.
“We’re town sparrows, Tulip,” he said, “not country crows. A few more weeks of this and we’ll all be dead.”
Tulip sat beside the bed and put her small hand into his large mittened palm.
“That’s putting it a bit strong,” she said. “I do know how you feel, but try to be more positive. What’s so special about the town anyway? When we were there, you never went out. You never stirred from your bed. The world outside might have been anywhere, town, country or Timbuctoo. Think of it that way. Try to pretend that this is Brocklehurst Grove and that Castledean is just outside the window.”
Sir Magnus sat up very straight, clenched both fists by his sides and said, “Do not humour me. I will not be humoured. I know what I know. The main street ran past Brocklehurst Grove. The sky was never totally dark. The town lights gave it a night-long glow.”
“And what did you see of it?” said Tulip.
“It doesn’t matter. I knew it was there. The spirit of the place was different. The light that filtered through the curtains had a different glow. Here the light of day is cold and blank, the night is dead. I hate it. It gives me claustrophobia.”
“Agoraphobia,” Tulip corrected him. “You have a fear of open spaces.”
“Agora – you would know if you had studied Greek – is a market place. I have no fear at all of marketplaces. What I dread is being imprisoned by fields.”
Tulip decided to try another way to pacify him.
“The view from the back of the house might please you better,” she said. “Put on your slippers and dressing gown. Let’s go and see the view from Appleby’s room. Hers is the best. She specially chose it for the view. But if you like it, we’ll persuade her to change over.”
Tulip fully knew what ‘persuade’ meant when talking of Appleby. The bribe would have to be big enough!
Appleby was amazed when she opened her bedroom door and saw her grandparents standing there. Tulip was no real surprise, of course, dressed as usual in her neat dark dress with its lace collar and her blue and white checked apron. But Granpa, resplendent in a dressing gown of dark red velvet trimmed with gold braid and wearing a very large pair of green leather slippers on his purple feet, looked fantastic. The walking-stick he leant on was not the smooth cane that had stood by his bed at Brocklehurst Grove. It was a stout, gnarled, country model that went with the house.
“Can we come in?” asked Tulip politely. “I’d like to show Granpa the view from your window. He’s feeling a bit down.”
Appleby looked at the two of them and shrugged her shoulders.
“Come in and see the view, if that’s all you want,” she said. “It’s not much to write home about, supposing we had a home. Still, it’s not moorland, and there are no scruffy sheep.”
Comus House was built on the ridge of a scarp. The familiar west side, at the front, fell steeply down to the moor road. To the east, from the upstairs windows, one could see the old stone wall, and, over the wall, ten or twenty miles of gently sloping land. Meadow gave way to crop fields, stubble now after the harvest. In the distance were well-scattered clusters of farm buildings. To the north there were even signs of a village, a church spire so far away that it looked no bigger than a pencil point. And, best of all, due east, almost parallel to the horizon and very near to it, was the main road.
Appleby was eager to point this out to her grandfather.
“Look,” she said. From the window ledge she took a pair of bright yellow binoculars. They were not much better than a child’s toy, but their magnification was sufficient to bring the road near enough for them to make out the dual carriageway and the vehicles travelling north and south.
“We live down there,” said Appleby pointing to the south. “I’ve looked it up on the map.”
“No we don’t,” said Magnus harshly. “We live here. And I can’t see any prospect of us living anywhere else.”
“I know, Granpa,” said Appleby. “You hate it here, don’t you? I hate it too. I know just how you feel.”
Tulip gave her granddaughter a very severe look.
“Stop that. We’re very lucky to have this place. We could be much worse off.”
“Could we?” said Granpa sourly.
“Yes. We could. What we have to do now is to get used to being countryfolk. What can’t be cured must be endured.”
Faced with one of his own pearls of wisdom, Magnus thumped his stick on the floor, plodded heavily across the corridor to his own room and settled back in his bed to sulk.
