by K. Velk
“Wow. Sorry,” Miles said. “That sounds, uh, awful.”
“It’s not quite so bad these days. The place she’s in now is a little better than the one where they tied her up – but I’m going to take her in with me once I’ve done with this job and got a better one in London. I’m quite sure we could manage her fine. When we was kids, my brother and I, we did all right cause we understood her – but we was too little to keep her from running out o’ the ‘ouse when she had one of her bad spells. And that were the end of us.”
Miles thought about what his life had been like when he was eight. He couldn’t imagine himself as a second grader trying to contain and soothe a parent gone mad or chasing his mother down the street and trying to talk the police out of hauling her away. His estimation of Violet Shivers ticked up at the same time he ticked her off of his list. Surely with a plan like that, she couldn’t be the one he was intended to take away.
He turned the conversation easily to Rhonda. Rather, Rhonda turned it that way at the faintest nudge of interest from Miles. She was obviously her own favorite subject, other than her boyfriend, a marvel called “Tommy.”
“Tommy and his brother Bill went down to Australia, just four months ago. They’re big, strong lads, already in with the stevedores in Sydney Harbor. I’m goin’ down too, once they get settled and I’ve earned the money for my passage. Then Tom and I are to be married straight away.”
Miles’ heart sank as Rhonda went on and on about the promise of Australia. The beautiful sea and lovely sunshine and it being a land of opportunity for a workingman, not like England at all in that way, as Tommy said. It might be the happiest prospect for Rhonda, but Miles felt he was back to square one. He beat the rug with a savagery the girls admired.
They were full of questions about New York and Hollywood and film stars and other things about which Miles knew nothing. He was inventing answers as fast as the questions came, hardly caring in his disappointment. It was almost a relief when he turned to see Mrs. Grimwald had again crept up behind them.
“This is not a revel,” she said. “Attend to the business at hand and lower your voices. I expect you could be heard in Australia or America the way you are carrying on.”
The three young people fell silent and commenced rolling the carpet for its return journey up the stairs. Mrs. Grimwald looked on in mute disapproval. Her gaze was so penetrating; it made the hair on the back of Miles’ neck stand up. He felt sure that she suspected there was something not quite right about him and resolved again to keep out of her way.
28. Dark Moments
Miles was thwarted, and it was bitter. He had felt so close to solving this terrible puzzle only to find all the pieces again mixed up in front of him. Where was this blasted mysterious girl? How would she show herself? And was “the secret” to be revealed with her, or was it a separate task?
Making matters worse, the atmosphere at Peppermore cottage had continued its slide into gloom. At the weekend, Mrs. Peppermore and Susannah asked politely about Miles’ work, and he had tried to make them laugh with his descriptions of the stealth of Mrs. Grimwald and to please them with praise of Lady Fisher, but he felt that they had lost interest. Of course, the Peppermores were no strangers to disaster; it had alighted on them regularly and it lingered with them always, but their familiarity with it was no protection from being smashed flat once again. Susannah’s hoped-for bright future as “Mrs. Slade” had winked out, and now all of them were depressed.
After dinner on Saturday night, Susannah dropped a large serving platter as she was clearing the table. It had not just broken, but had seemed to explode into a thousand pieces.
The rest of them looked up from their seats in surprise. Susannah was never clumsy. The expression on her face – a mixture of rage and despair – silenced the usual questions that follow the crash of a plate.
“Someone will have to get the broom and sweep up the pieces. I am obviously useless for such a job. I am sorry,” she said. With every syllable her tearful voice got louder. “I am sorry – and I am vexed! I am a vexed and a sorry creature!”
And with that she stumbled away from the sink and in a horrible awkward way to the door of the bedroom, which she slammed behind her. The door was solid oak and two inches thick. Still, the sounds of Susannah’s sobs came through it.
Mrs. Peppermore and Miles and Jack froze at their places, their mugs of tea cooling before them. Mrs. Peppermore clutched the handle of the mug so hard that her knuckles grew white. Jack looked down at his shoes and tried to pretend that he was not wiping his eyes. Miles thought he had never known a more thoroughly miserable moment.
“I shall never, ever, credit that man again!” Mrs. Peppermore announced with a shaking voice.
Jack reached for his mother’s clenched hand. “It’s going to be all right, Mum, I promise. I’m going to look after Susannah, come what may.”
Mrs. Peppermore covered her son’s hand with her own and gave him a weak smile. “I know lad. It’s not for her food and shelter that I am worried, but all the rest…”
Miles felt an intruder. He looked down and saw Mrs. Peppermore’s tears making ragged, dark disks on the pale stone floor.
“I’ll get the broom,” he announced.
The shards clattered into the dustpan noisily. He noticed that the back of the ruined platter had been stamped, “Fairlamb Pottery – Stoke-on-Trent.” The Fairlamb pottery was the source of the family fortune that Lady Fisher, formerly Margaret Fairlamb, had brought to her marriage with Sir James Fisher.
It was a small world, he thought; a small world and a very hard one.
29. News of the Woods
The visitors to Quarter Sessions were made very comfortable by the servants. No hint was dropped by any of the staff that the guests were, in reality, viewed as storm crows.
“No matter how you might disagree with the Fishers’ plans for Quarter Sessions,” Mr. Scott had decreed, “you are not to give voice to those opinions, at least not anyplace where they might be overheard.”
The visitors had come to Quarter Sessions with a dark purpose, at least as far as the staff was concerned. They were there to make preliminary plans for the eventual conversion of the estate into the new home of the St. Hild’s School for Girls.
St. Hild’s was a London establishment for “poor girls of decent character” and Lady Fisher was its great patron. The headmistress, a young progressive woman called Miss Everett, and the architects were to study how the disused areas of the house might be converted into schoolrooms and dormitories. This work was to be started soon, so that when Sir James and Lady Fisher eventually decided that they had done with Quarter Sessions – which would be years yet, the staff all said – the school could move in easily.
Miles’ part in the re-purposing of Quarter Sessions was largely confined to fetching and carrying. He was assigned to see to the visitors’ baggage, which meant carrying big trunks up what seemed like a thousand stairs – without banging the banisters. Then, for each day of the occupation, there were jugs of water to be fetched to each room and basins to be emptied morning and evening. Miles was also expected to make himself available as needed by the guests.
This general assistance involved a great deal of trying to find servants better able than he was to answer the architect’s unending questions about chimneys and drains and such. He also carried innumerable trays of tea from the kitchen to the far corners where the architects were working. When an unusual August cold snap settled in, Miles was additionally charged with maintaining the fires.
It wasn’t deemed cold enough to start the great boiler in the basement, but the chill called for “a nice fire in the bedrooms to take the nip off the evening air,” as Lady Fisher put it. “And I hate to see a dark grate anytime of year, don’t you? So let’s have fires in the dining room, the library and the drawing room, all right Miles?”
It was a tricky business to light a coal fire. Mr. Scott showed Miles how to add the paper, then some small tinder,
and then the lumps of hard shiny coal to the grate. The lumps must be added slowly, smaller pieces first, then larger, carefully timed so as not to smother the burn.
“They always buy the best coal for Quarter Sessions,” Mr. Scott said during their training session as he turned a shiny lump of anthracite admiringly. “Hardly any smoke or smell.”
Although it wasn’t easy to set and look after half a dozen widely-spaced fires in the evenings – a full coalscuttle weighed nearly forty pounds – Miles quickly began to enjoy the task.
There was something satisfying about getting a deep bed of coals burning red and hot – and keeping the fires in each room going was like a slow juggling act. A well-stoked fire, with the last fuel added just before the guests and the Fishers went to bed, would burn through to morning. Miles quickly learned the varying personalities of the fireplaces and was soon able to achieve the gratifying overnight burn in all of them.
One early evening, a week or so after the guests had arrived, Miles went to the drawing room to start his fire, lugging a full scuttle. He came grunting through the door only to discover the Fishers and a roomful of guests, including Daphne Lightfoot and a man wearing a very strange brown necklace, like a Hawaiian lei that someone had freeze-dried. He figured this had to be Daphne’s Professor father.
Miles tried to vanish from the room in the silent way the upper servants seemed to have mastered, but when he turned to go he upended the coal scuttle. Every eye turned on him.
“This must be the American lad you mentioned, Daphne,” the Professor said. Miles wasn’t sure if he was supposed to speak. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he stooped to collect his coals.
“I mentioned to Dr. Slade that our next outing was to the ancient oaks of the Quarter Sessions Wood,” the Professor continued, “and he told me he’d had a patient recently who’d cracked his head on the surviving tree. Curious place to go cycling, isn’t it my boy?” The Professor looked at the red centipede of a scar on Miles’ forehead.
“Well, I was lost. I , I…”
“Miles, go ahead and start the fire,” Lady Fisher said. “I’ll ring Mrs. Grimwald and let her know that Professor and Miss Lightfoot will be joining us for dinner. Do continue, Professor, to tell us about your garland.”
The Professor chuckled. “I’ll confess that I was relying on it to help charm you into allowing us to visit your woods.”
“I am sure you and your group will be quite welcome,” said Lady Fisher, “no charms required, but what was it you were saying about it?”
Daphne Lightfoot laughed. “You realize, Lady Fisher, that you have just asked a question which is likely to result in a lecture that will last through dinner, dessert, and coffee? Perhaps even into our next meeting?”
“Honestly, I can’t think of anything I would like better,” Lady Fisher said, sounding perfectly sincere.
“Well, then, remember that you asked for it,” Professor Lightfoot replied. “You may be aware that in the Middle Ages a necklace of peony root was thought to ward off evil. Some hold that the first mention of this use was made in the 12th century work, A Pouch of Pearls. In fact, however, the peony root has been well known as a wholesome protective since Roman times.”
“You rang, Madam?” Mrs. Grimwald appeared at the door.
It always gave Miles a pleasant little jolt when the English said something like that, so much like a line from a movie that you couldn’t believe they were actually saying it – even something like “blimey” or “cheerio” had that effect on him. He silently mouthed, “you rang, Madam?” at the little heap of tinder in the grate. Lady Fisher gestured for her to wait so the Professor could continue.
“I have been spending part of this summer reading Goodyer’s seventeenth-century translation of the Materia Medica by the great Greek physician Dioscredes. Just yesterday I came to the bit about peony roots.”
“How fascinating,” Lady Fisher said. “I so would have liked the opportunity to go to university and learn about such things.”
The Professor beamed. “I wonder if you might like to hear Goodyer’s description? It was so charming that I memorized a little of it.”
“Oh yes, please.”
The Professor began like a Shakespearean actor, “’The herb Peony is plucked up in the heat of the dog days, before the rising of the sun, and it is hanged about one and is good against poisons and bewitchings and fears and devils and their assaults, and against fever that comes with shivering whether by day or by night.
“There was a bit more but that was as far as I got.”
The little audience applauded. “Perhaps I should get some peony root myself,” said Lady Fisher, “or perhaps I should just be grateful that Quarter Sessions is ringed about with the most lovely peonies thanks to our Mr. Graves.”
Mrs. Grimwald cleared her throat.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Grimwald, did you say something.”
“No, Madam, I did not.” Mrs. Grimwald’s expression was thunderous.
Professor Lightfoot broke in, “Oh dear. It appears that your housekeeper does not approve of Dioscredes, or perhaps my poor recitation was offensive.”
“Excuse me, Sir,” said Mrs. Grimwald in a voice like ice. “I am sure it is not my place to approve or disapprove, nor to take offense. Such judgments are made elsewhere.” She looked heavenward.
The Professor seemed amused. “I say, you’re not an adherent of that cleric in Hayslope– what’s his name…?
“Are you referring to Father Stone?” She asked.
“Yes, that’s the one. I had heard that he was preaching against our little group of folklorists. A methodistical type, I suppose.”
“But why should he or any other clergyman object?” Sir James sounded genuinely bewildered. “It’s just going into a little local history and curious old traditions, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Grimwald’s expression softened, as it always seemed to whenever she spoke to Sir James. “Forgive me, Sir James if I am being forward, but to be perfectly clear, Father Stone is a priest of the established church – not a ‘methodistical’ type at all.”
She turned back to Professor Lightfoot. “It is true that he has warned the congregation about this druidical business that Mr. Lightfoot and his associates have been promoting in our neighborhood.”
“But it’s just a bit of fun,” Sir James persisted, “like the Green Man, or May Queen, or Morris dancing, am I right Professor?”
The Professor bowed in the direction of his host. “Well, yes, Sir James, it is true that many ancient rites and customs often strike us as simply amusing superstitions today, but I will own that there is a bit more to them than that. I suspect Reverend Stone is sensitive to the fact that some of this old lore, like my peony root charm, for instance, retains a certain power – or might for some people. I suppose that the poorly informed or the particularly susceptible might be influenced to mischief if they took on some half-baked knowledge.”
The Professor turned back to Mrs. Grimwald. “But we can hardly allow such considerations to impede our researches, can we?”
It was obvious that Mrs. Grimwald had been biting her tongue, but she had been pushed beyond her limit.
“Surely Professor, you see that when … glamorous individuals,” her gaze fell on Daphne, “appear on our country scene and commend dark forces, that a priest of God cannot be expected to stand mutely by? You must agree that it is the business of a parish priest to protect the ‘particularly susceptible’ and the ‘poorly informed’, as you put it, against false and impious doctrine?”
“I suppose that may be his business, but it is not mine,” the Professor said with obvious irritation. “And I certainly do not concur that my work is a wedge for the devil. I seek, Madam, to know what was and why it was, and to share that knowledge. That is the study of history.”
The room fell into an awkward silence. The Professor looked around at the lowered faces and continued in a milder tone.
“I would, therefore, invite you, Mrs. Grimwald, and
your priest, to attend any of the remaining lectures or outings I have planned this summer. Then you may ‘judge with right judgment,’ about the nature of our activities. I am certain no rational individual could object once properly informed.”
Ms. Grimwald nodded stiffly. “Thank you Sir. I shall consider your offer and inform the Reverend Stone when next I see him. Lady Fisher, was there something you wanted?”
The poor hostess of the group, which seemed to have been plunged in a few breaths from a cheerful summer party into an ugly debate, said, “Oh yes Mrs. Grimwald. Will you tell Cook that Professor and Miss Lightfoot will be joining us for dinner?”
“Certainly Madam. Will that be all?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
With the housekeeper’s departure, the whole room relaxed.
“I am sorry about that,” Lady Fisher said. “Mrs. Grimwald is very observant and very strict. I assure you that she’s as hard on herself as she is on anyone else. And she is perfection as a housekeeper. She’s been with us for years. In fact, her parents served at Reddlegowt with James’s father.”
“Well that’s a relief,” said Daphne. “I was worried that she might tell the cook to poison our soup.”
Everyone laughed again. “I am trying to work out whether my charm was effective or useless in that exchange,” the Professor said. “I suppose, at least, I was not physically attacked so that’s something.”
Miles had been quietly placing coal on the grate and puffing away at the kindling all the while. As he scrambled out of the room and down the backstairs with his empty coalscuttle, his only thought was how he might join the folklore group for their trip to the woods. He was, of course, more expert than any of them about the true nature of the famous oaks, but he might learn something that would help get him home when that time came, if it ever did.
