The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  Things could not have turned out better, she thought happily, as she finished her sweeping and replaced the broom in the teachers’ pantry. The members of the school board (which included the vicar and Captain Woodcock) were entirely supportive. Margaret’s junior pupils were all that she might have wished in the way of interesting academic challenges. And Mrs. Daphne Holland, who had assumed Margaret’s place as teacher of the infants class, was an energetic and highly qualified young lady who had been widowed the year before and was glad of a job and a little money coming in. Mrs. Holland always presented a bright, cheerful countenance to her small charges and (perhaps because of her youth) seemed to like nothing better than to romp with them at the recess interval.

  Just now, Mrs. Holland joined Margaret in the pantry, for the cup of tea and the bit of talk they always shared after the children had gone home for the day.

  “Oh, Miss Nash,” she said, “I wonder if you and your sister will be going to tea at Raven Hall on Saturday. I’ve been invited and thought perhaps the three of us might go together.” She smiled. “Not that I’m shy, of course. But I did think there might be strength in numbers.”

  Margaret filled the kettle, put it on the gas ring, and reached for the biscuit tin. “Annie and I should like that.” She smiled. “I suppose I’m as curious as the next person to see the inside of Raven Hall, which has always struck me as a gloomy, forbidding old place.”

  “It’s the new Mrs. Kittredge I’m dying to see,” Mrs. Holland confided gaily. “You know what they’re saying in the village.” She leaned closer, her eyes sparkling in her round, girlish face. “They’re saying the lady’s a witch. Or maybe she’s the ghost of Raven Hall, come to life.”

  “Mrs. Holland!” Margaret exclaimed in a scandalized tone. “You shouldn’t repeat such wicked things.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Mrs. Holland said breezily. “It’s all balderdash, and of course one doesn’t believe it. But it’s what the villagers are saying.”

  Margaret gave her a severe look. “You and I, as teachers, are supposed to be above common superstition. And if we are heard to repeat such idle nonsense, the children and their parents might think we’re giving them leave to do the same. We have to set an example, you know.” And then, because she sounded like a scold, and since she hadn’t heard the gossip herself, she added, in a softer tone, “Who’s saying this?”

  “Bertha Stubbs,” Mrs. Holland replied, getting down the cups and saucers from the shelf.

  “Oh, Bertha,” Margaret said dismissively. “She’s liable to say anything that comes into her mind.” Bertha Stubbs was the school’s daily woman, and an inveterate gossip. Even worse, she was a cantankerous complainer. No part of her work suited her, from scrubbing the floors to stoking the stoves and cleaning the blackboards. Margaret often found herself wishing that Bertha would give in her notice (as she regularly threatened to do) so they could find someone more compatible.

  “And then I heard it again on my way home from school yesterday,” Mrs. Holland added, “when I stopped at Lydia Dowling’s shop to get some apples. I suppose it’s because she—Mrs. Kittredge, that is—has red hair. She’s said to be frightfully smashing.”

  Margaret frowned at Mrs. Holland’s schoolgirl slang. “I suppose it’s because she’s a mystery. People don’t know her, so they make up all sorts of things about her.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Holland said. She turned a serious face to Margaret. “It’s all rubbish, I grant you, and people ought to know better. But there is quite a lot of talk, silly or otherwise. And Deirdre Malone, poor child, has flaming red hair. She’s being tarred with the same brush.”

  “Oh, dear,” Margaret sighed. “So that’s what it’s all about. I saw Harold teasing the girl. She seemed to be holding her own, though.”

  Deirdre Malone was the young orphan who had come to help out in the Sutton household while Mrs. Sutton was entering the last months of her . . . seventh pregnancy, was it? or was it her eighth? It was hard to keep count of the burgeoning Suttons, who, when they were all old enough to go to school, might fill an entire classroom on their own. Deirdre had an abundance of bright red hair, flashing eyes, and a great many freckles—an Irish inheritance, Margaret suspected. And although she was a dreamy child, she knew how to stand up for herself.

  Mrs. Holland chuckled. “Deirdre gave some of it back to him, didn’t she? I saw Harold take a tumble and didn’t regret it a bit. One hates to say it, but he’s an awful bully.” She opened the biscuit tin and took out two for each of them. “It’s good to see that Caroline Longford has befriended her. And Jeremy Crosfield, too.”

  “They are all three orphans,” Margaret said. “Perhaps that’s their common bond. And Jeremy’s had his own taste of Harold’s bullying.”

  Mrs. Holland poured hot water over the tea in the chipped Brighton teapot, a souvenir of one of Miss Crabbe’s long-ago summer holidays. “Caroline is rather a surprise, isn’t she? One would think she’d be doing better.”

  “Yes,” Margaret said. “It’s a puzzle.” Caroline’s school in New Zealand, where she had come from, had not given her a very good start. She should have been able to catch up easily, but something—Margaret had no idea what—was holding her back.

  “Anyway,” Mrs. Holland was going on, “you’d think that Lady Longford’s granddaughter would have a governess, or be sent away to school, rather than attending here in the village. One wonders why.”

  “Oh, haven’t you heard that story?” asked Margaret. “It’s all on account of Miss Potter.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” said Mrs. Holland, with interest. “Tell me about it.”

  And as their tea brewed, Margaret told what had happened the year before, when Miss Potter had helped to persuade Lady Longford that Caroline should be allowed to attend the village school for a year. Now, though, Margaret understood that her ladyship was dissatisfied with Caroline’s performance and had decided to obtain a governess for the girl. Caroline would not be coming back to school after the end of term.

  Margaret sighed. That was the worst part of being a teacher. Just when one became attached to the children, one had to say goodbye.

  5

  Caroline and Deirdre Make a Plan

  Caroline Longford was at that very moment relating the same story to Deirdre Malone as they walked up the road between banks of blooming hawthorn and verges bright with buttercups. Caroline, whose mother and father were dead, had come to Tidmarsh Manor the previous summer from a sheep station in New Zealand. Her grandmother, Lady Longford, had disowned Caroline’s father when he stubbornly refused to marry the young woman she had chosen for him, ran off to New Zealand, and married for love. Her ladyship, an elderly autocrat with the unfortunate habit of expecting everyone in the world to follow her orders, had at first refused to take Caroline in. When she finally agreed, it was on the condition that Caroline be sent away to school as soon as a suitable place could be found.

  But Miss Potter had intervened—quite miraculously, it seemed to Caroline—and persuaded Lady Longford to allow Caroline to stay on at the Manor and go to school in the village, at least for a year. Things weren’t perfect, by any means. Grandmama was as ill-tempered and dictatorial as ever. She had recently forbidden Caroline to play with the village children, who were a “bad influence” over her, and kept her from doing well in school—in Grandmama’s opinion. And Tidmarsh Manor was a cold, stiff house, crowded with heavy furniture and fragile bric-a-brac. It was the kind of place that makes laughing or playing, or any other kind of ordinary enjoyment, utterly impossible, and was fit only for reading, or embroidering, or doing lessons. Worse yet, it was the kind of place that makes you feel as if somebody is looking over your shoulder all the time. But Caroline had a pair of guinea pigs and a private journal where she could say anything she felt like saying because she wrote it all in her own secret code. Even if somebody was looking over her shoulder, the words would look like alphabet soup. The little animals and her journal were her dearest companions,
always ready to listen to her when she was feeling sad or lonely.

  And now she had a new friend. Deirdre was a year or so younger than she, and new to Sawrey. She was small for her age, with a great mass of red-gold hair that she wore in thick braids and blue-green eyes that could be lit by a dancing amusement or a fiery indignation. There was a certain dreaminess about her expression, and she had a vivid imagination that made the other village girls seem dull and stolid in comparison, or awful prigs. It was Deirdre’s imagination that appealed to Caroline, who hated being told that something had to be done or thought because it was “practical” or “the usual thing.” And her grandmother’s refusal to let her be Deirdre’s friend only made her more stubborn. It wasn’t fair. She ought to be able to choose her own friends!

  When Caroline had finished her story, Deirdre sighed. “Just be glad ye’ve got a grandmum,” she said, “whether ye like her or not.” She spoke in a soft Irish brogue, and her words seemed to lift at the end. “When me own mum died, there wa’n’t nobody t’ take me and no place in the world t’ go ’cept St. Mary’s Orphans Asylum.” She shuddered. “Mrs. Sutton needed a girl t’ lend a hand with her babes, an’ came an’ looked us all over. She picked me ’cause I look strong, an’ I picked her ’cause she said I could go to school. And ’cause she di’n’t look like she’d take a stick t’ me very oft’n,” she added matter-of-factly. “I don’t mind hard work, but I despise bein’ thrashed.”

  Caroline shivered, not liking to think of the contrast between her own private luxuries—books and pets and presents and pretty clothes—and Deirdre’s work-a-day world, filled with too many tasks and the threat of thrashings.

  “I shouldn’t think Mrs. Sutton would thrash anybody,” she ventured. The Sutton boys and girls wore merry faces, and never seemed to care if their clothes weren’t clean. Mrs. Sutton was clearly overwhelmed with the task of caring for house, children, and the business end of her husband’s veterinary practice. “Do you like living at Courier Cottage?”

  Deirdre chuckled grimly. “Livin’ is fine, it’s the workin’ that’s hard. There’s always heaps of laundry an’ piles of washin’ up after meals. Might’ve stayed at the asylum if I’d known there was six babes already, soon to be seven, an’ Lizzy—she’s the oldest—not yet nine.” She shrugged. “But I’ve me own pallet in the attic an’ a candle t’ read by and me own scrap o’ mirror, which is more’n I had at the asylum. An’ tatie pot for supper is more’n the bread and treacle I had at home with me mum.”

  Laundry and dirty dishes and a pallet in the attic, Caroline thought guiltily, remembering the servants at Tidmarsh Manor, and the quantity of food on her grandmama’s table, and her own spacious bedroom, with a bed that was wide enough for two, and a paraffin lamp, and a mirror with two wings on her dressing table.

  “Now, don’t ye be feelin’ sorry for me,” Deirdre warned, with a quick glance, as if she had read Caroline’s mind. “I’m stronger ’n I look, and I’m glad t’ have a place. I don’t need nobody t’ pity me.” She turned quite remarkable blue-green eyes on Caroline and added fiercely, “Or call me a witch, neither.”

  “They don’t mean it,” Caroline said uneasily. “They’re just teasing because you’re new.” She had experienced her own share of teasing, especially because she spoke with a New Zealand accent. And because she never quite came up with the right answer when she was called on—most of the time because she wasn’t listening. But even when she listened, she didn’t seem to get it right, and so the others teased her constantly.

  “O’ course they mean it,” Deirdre retorted. She pulled her strong, thick brows together and stuck her balled fists into the pockets of her gray pinafore. “It’s ’cause I have red hair an’ my eyes’re green an’ I’m as freckled as a red pig. It’s also ’cause I have an Irish name they can’t get their fat tongues around. And,” she added astutely, “it’s ’cause everybody’s talkin’ about that red-headed witch at Raven Hall. Or maybe she’s a ghost.”

  Caroline nodded, having heard about the mysterious Mrs. Kittredge.

  Deirdre tossed her head. “But they’re all a lot of ign’rant heathens. They c’n eat worms, ’spesh’ly Harold Beechman. I’m even with him, though.” She grinned slyly. “Told him I’d spell him into a frog if he di’n’t leave off.”

  “So that’s what you said to him,” Caroline exclaimed, with a horrified delight. Harold Beechman was a notorious bully who loved to pull hair and tweak noses. Everyone longed to see him get his comeuppance.

  Deirdre’s mischievous grin widened. “An’ then I yelled out some gibberish an’ waved my arms an’ the cowardy custard ran away, he did.” The grin again. “He di’n’t look where he was runnin’ an’ stumbled over the water bucket an’ whacked his nose proper an’ smeared blood all over his shirt.” The grin became a chuckle, and then a hearty laugh. “Which pleased me ever’ bit as much as if he’d turned into a frog, it did. If he likes t’ think I’m a witch, that’s just jolly good.”

  Deirdre’s Irish laughter was infectious, and Caroline found herself joining in without reservation. “Maybe,” she said, when she could get her breath, “you could catch a frog and bring it to school and—”

  “—An’ tell everybody he used t’ be a lad that called me a witch an’ I turned him into a frog!” Deirdre finished, with a giggle. “Aye, that’s grand, that is. Do y’know whereabouts I c’n find one?”

  “Ask Jeremy Crosfield,” Caroline replied. “He’ll show you lots of frogs, down at Cunsey Beck.”

  “Jeremy’s nice,” Deirdre replied thoughtfully. “He doesn’t tease.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Caroline said. Jeremy and his aunt had moved into the cottage at Holly How farm, one of the Tidmarsh Manor farms, and they often walked to school together. He always surprised her with what he knew, for he seemed to have a personal acquaintance with almost every animal in the Land between the Lakes, and he was an accomplished artist. But for all that, Jeremy never made a show of what he’d learnt, or made her feel that he was smarter than she, the way the others did.

  “He’s clever, Jeremy is,” Deirdre added in a respectful tone. “I’ll wager he’s the clev’rest lad in the village.”

  “Oh, yes,” Caroline said, and sighed. “This is his last year at Sawrey School, you know. He passed the exams for the grammar school in Ambleside with high marks. But he can’t go.”

  Deirdre turned a surprised glance on her. “He can’t? Whyever not?”

  “It costs too much. His aunt can’t afford it.”

  “Well, I call that a shame, I do,” Deirdre said definitively. “Them that wants t’ go t’ school should have their chance. If I could really do spells, I’d spell it so Jeremy could go.” Leaning over the nettles at the foot of the stone wall, she broke off a twig of delicate white hawthorn blossoms and tucked it over her ear. “I ain’t a real witch,” she added over her shoulder, picking another sprig. “But I c’n see fairies. I don’t tell that t’ just anybody, an’ it’s not for spreadin’ around. But it’s true. Or it used to be, anyway.”

  Caroline eyed her. “See fairies?” She herself had never seen one, although she had read enough stories about them to know that quite a few people thought they were real. For Christmas, Miss Potter had sent her a book called Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, by Mr. J. M. Barrie, who had also written a play about Peter Pan. Mr. Barrie (who obviously believed in fairies, which was unusual for a grownup) said that children sometimes declared that they had never once seen a fairy when they were looking right at one, who was at that moment pretending to be a flower, or a tree, or something else. So Caroline wasn’t quite ready to state categorically that Deirdre could never have seen one.

  “Stand still,” Deirdre commanded, and stuck the hawthorn over Caroline’s ear. “Me mum gave me the gift, she did. She was Irish from the top o’ her red hair down t’ the tips o’ her toes, an’ y’ know how the Irish are about fairies an’ elves an’ leprechauns an’ the like. She got the gift from her mum, who got it fr
om hers, so I got a good strong dose—although, sad t’say, I ain’t seen a fairy since me mum died. I’d like t’ see one, just to know I’ve still got it.” With light fingers and a half-sad smile, she rearranged Caroline’s hair. “There. Hawthorn keeps away evil, it does. Ye c’n walk through storms an’ the lightnin’ won’t strike ye. Me mum told me so.”

  Caroline regarded her new friend, thinking how sad it would be if Deirdre had lost not only her mother, but some special gift her mother had passed along to her. She herself hadn’t got a special gift from her mother, just a pair of eyes and a nose. When she looked into the mirror and saw those familiar features, she sometimes pretended she was looking into a magic window, and what she saw wasn’t her reflection, but her mother looking out at her, and smiling, and sending love and kisses.

  And then it occurred to her that perhaps Deirdre was pretending, too—or both pretending and believing, at the same time. Perhaps her gift was like the mirror, a way of holding on to her mother, who was gone.

  Well, if that’s what it was, Caroline thought with compassion, she could help Deirdre pretend. “Your mother knew that hawthorn was magic?” she said tentatively.

  Deirdre laughed with delight. “Why, o’ course, silly. Ye’ve never heard the old saying? ‘Beware the oak, it draws the stroke. Avoid the ash, it courts the flash. Creep under the thorn, it’ll save ye from harm.’ Hawthorn’s magic, for sure. In Ireland, the fairies use the wood t’ build cradles for their fairy babies, an’ wear the blossoms for hats, an’ sew them into skirts.”

  “And you’ve seen the fairies.” Caroline tried to sound convinced, for she truly wanted to help Deirdre pretend.