The Cuckoo Tree

by Joan Aiken

  ‘There’s a cove there as asked to see me, and it seems only civil to go, seeing they sent us the basket o’ prog. Mebbe I’ll find someone as we can trust there; you never can tell.’

  Captain Hughes agreed to this, but since he seemed rather low-spirited at the prospect of being left along, Mr Firkin was easily persuaded to come and keep him company. Mr Firkin’s brother, it turned out, had been a seafaring man and a great singer; the two men were soon absorbed in discussing sea-shanties and comparing tunes. Leaving them to it, Dido slipped off.

  As she left the cottage some animal scuttled away, quick and quiet, along the wall. It might have been a rabbit or a large rat. I’ll be glad when we can shift out o’ this hurrah’s nest, she thought with a shiver. You gets the notion someone’s everlastingly a-peering over your shoulder.

  However, nothing else seemed to be stirring in the cold, moonshiny night. She walked up the beech avenue towards the Manor, turned right at the top as instructed, and found herself on the edge of an enormous sunk lawn.

  Guess this must be the tilting-yard, Dido thought. The sides is tilted, anyhows; it’s like a dripping-pan. She scrambled down the steep grassy slope and walked across turf that was silver with icy dew. Black yew trees, once clipped to resemble giant pineapples, but grown into many strange shapes from neglect, were placed about the lawn in pairs, like sentries. Dido slipped from one pair of shadows to the next and ran softly up a flight of steps towards the house. She passed along a terrace above the lawn, through a wicket-gate, through a small walled garden, and so came to a side door, half hidden under a great vine. While she was wondering whether to knock, the door opened.

  ‘Hallo! I saw you come up the steps. Make haste – after me. Isn’t this capital!’ breathed Sir Tobit. Dido felt her hand taken; she was pulled into the dark; the door shut quietly behind her. She allowed herself to be led up a narrow flight of stairs, along a passage, and so presently found herself in the room where she had been before. It was just as dusty and untidy as it had been on the previous evening.

  ‘Now we can talk,’ said Sir Tobit, throwing himself comfortably in a chair. ‘Grandmother is in bed with one of her headaches, so she won’t trouble us.’

  ‘Talk, what about?’

  ‘You can tell me your adventures. I’ve read all my books. So the only way I can amuse myself now is to make up stories – and that’s very boring because I know what the end is going to be. Well, go on – begin!’

  Dido was not eager. However, she felt some sympathy for Sir Tobit’s solitude and boredom, so she obliged with a brief account of how she had been shipwrecked, picked up by a whaler and carried to Nantucket, and brought home by His Majesty’s sloop Thrush.

  ‘And I must let someone in London know that Cap’n Hughes is stuck here with a broken gam,’ she finished. ‘I’ve sent a letter to a pal o’ mine, but I don’t trust that carrier Jem above half. Is there any reliable cove you can suggest?’

  ‘There aren’t many men left on the estate,’ Tobit said. ‘We’re so poor, everyone has left, except Frill and Pelmett, and I wouldn’t trust them.’

  ‘Poor? In a place this size?’ Dido was surprised.

  ‘You see, grandmother has a great fondness for betting on the horses. When she was a girl she loved riding; then she was thrown and broke her leg. So now, as she can’t ride, she bets instead; since I’ve been living here I believe she has gambled away, oh, hundreds of thousands of pounds. Yesterday she gave FitzPickwick her last diamond ring to sell. That’s why I have to wear these clothes: we can’t afford to buy new ones. But luckily there are lots of old ones about the house.’

  ‘How long have you lived here, then?’

  ‘Oh, ever since I was a baby. I was born in the West Indies, on Tiburon Island; we have – used to have – estates there. Papa and Mamma lived there, but they were killed in a hurricane, so Tante Sannie brought me here. I don’t remember that. Sannie didn’t know what it would be like here; she’s homesick, but there isn’t enough money to send her back.’ He spoke indifferently. Dido felt that since he was lonely himself he ought to have more sympathy for the old woman’s plight, stuck here in this great dusty cold house, so far from her own warm island.

  ‘I’d better be getting back.’ She prowled restlessly about the untidy, shadowy room. ‘Is that you?’

  A picture on the wall showed three children, dressed in clothes such as Tobit wore. The boy in the middle, holding the hands of the other two, who stood slightly behind him, might have been Tobit at a younger age.

  ‘No, that’s three ancestors – two brothers and a sister who lived in Charles the First’s time. They were triplets – all the same age.’

  ‘It’d be grand to be a triplet – you’d never be lonely then,’ Dido said, studying them with some envy. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘They quarrelled,’ Tobit said coolly. ‘One fought on the king’s side, one on Cromwell’s and the third one went overseas and vanished. The other two lost all their money in the Civil War, so ever since then triplets have been thought unlucky in our family.’

  ‘Have there been many more?’

  ‘No, none, but we’ve had bad luck just the same . . . Come along, I’ll show you Cousin Wilfred’s doll’s house.’

  He pulled the reluctant Dido – croopus, doll’s houses at his age! she thought – out of the room, along passages and downstairs into the main hall – empty tonight – and through an open door into a small room at one side of it.

  ‘Come on – old Wilfred isn’t here, he’s playing tiddlywinks with Sawbones Subito. Look – isn’t it queer!

  Cousin Wilfred’s room was as shabby as Tobit’s, but in a different way. The furniture here was old, and had once been handsome, but was now falling to bits: the wood was worm-eaten, the satin upholstery faded and torn. Only the doll’s house looked well cared for. It was a faithful copy of Tegleaze Manor, beautifully made, furnished to the last detail with curtains, carpets, plates on the tables, pictures on the walls, even a carriage in the stables. There were no dolls, but tiny suits of clothes like Tobit’s hung in the closets.

  ‘He made it all himself, from old prints of the house as it used to be,’ Tobit said, carelessly throwing open the front.

  ‘Even the pictures?’ These were oval miniatures, carefully framed, no bigger than postage stamps.

  ‘No, those are real. Some ancestor collected them. Some of them were quite valuable, but grandmother sold those – all except one, which isn’t here. She’d like to sell that, but it belongs to me – or will when I come of age.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘Next week – on my fourteenth birthday.’

  ‘Where’s the picture now?’

  ‘At the lawyers’ – they don’t trust her. Come on.’ Tobit was restless – nothing seemed to interest him for long. He moved to the window. Dido took a last look at the nursery with its three white-spread beds, box of tiny toys, hoop leaning against the wall and dappled rocking-horse which might just have stopped swaying, as if three children had rushed out of the room, slammed the door and gone their different ways.

  ‘Hey!’ whispered Tobit. ‘Look!’

  He beckoned Dido to the window. They were looking out on the moonlit tilting-yard. Two figures paced across it and vanished into the shade of a pair of yew trees.

  ‘It’s old FitzPickwick – wonder what he’s doing here at this time of night? And who is that he’s talking to? Tell you what – let’s go and stalk ’em, that’d be famous fun. Wait, have I got my pea-shooter on me?’

  Tobit rummaged in his black velvet pockets.

  ‘I druther have a word with your butler – is he anywheres about?’ Dido said, impatient at the prospect of such a childish sport.

  ‘Gusset? Why? Anyhow, you can’t, it’s his evening off; he goes to see his son. Ah, two shooters and lots of peas. Here, have one.’ He thrust a slender pipe into her hand and poured into the pocket of her duffel-trousers what felt like about a pound of heavy little dry objects.


  ‘Ain’t we a bit old for sich goings-on?’

  ‘What else is there to do in this mouldering barracks – except make up stories? I’m a dead shot,’ he boasted. ‘With a sling I can hit a hare at a hundred yards. Only there aren’t any hares. Oh, do come along.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Dido asked, as they passed a large chart on the wall.

  ‘Family tree – all the way back to the Saxons.’ He pulled her along yet another dark passage.

  ‘Who’s old FitzPickwick?’

  ‘Our bailiff – he’s a toffee-nosed sort of fellow. It’s my belief he’s feathered his nest handsomely out of Tegleaze Manor,’ Tobit said, sounding all of a sudden surprisingly shrewd. ‘He sells Grandmother’s jewellery for her, and places her bets.’

  ‘Doesn’t give her very good advice, if she always loses.’

  ‘Hush!’

  They had come out into a brick-paved stable-yard, like that of the doll’s house. A gate and a flagged path brought them back to the terrace overlooking the tilting-yard.

  ‘When Jamie Three had his coronation,’ Tobit muttered discontentedly, leading Dido down the steps and along in the shadow of the high yew hedge that bordered the lawn, ‘Granny and Grandpa had a pageant here, with champagne and roast peacock for all the tenants. But now there are hardly any tenants, and no cash – not even enough for me to go up to London to see the coronation.’

  ‘Would your gran let you?’ Dido asked. ‘I thought she was so set agin your going out in case you catch summat nasty?’

  ‘Oh, she won’t care what happens to me once I come of age, and my birthday’s before the coronation. I’m fourteen on Monday, the coronation’s on Wednesday – I daresay you didn’t know, just home from sea? Old Jamie Three died, and now it’s going to be his son. He’s always been called Prince Davie but he’s going to be Richard the Fourth. And there’s going to be fireworks on Ludgate Hill, and oxes roasted in Stuart Square, and processions, and all sorts of high jinks – don’t I just wish I was going.’

  Mention of the coronation reminded Dido of her own worries. ‘If Gusset isn’t here I guess I’ll be going, back to Dogkennel,’ she said. ‘Please to thank your gran for the prog.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The grub – the basket o’ vittles.’

  ‘Oh, she won’t have sent anything – far too mean. No, if some food came, I daresay Gusset sent it. Hush – there they are!’

  He dragged Dido into an alcove in the yew hedge, where they lurked in the shadow. Low voices gradually became audible as the two men paced across the immense lawn.

  ‘Oh, I won’t expose your little g-games – don’t think it my dear f-fellow. It’s n-nothing to me, believe me, if you’ve pocketed a rent-roll as long as the M-Mississippi River. Money is of s-small interest to me.’

  The speaker’s voice had a curiously deep, grating quality, broken by his occasional stammer.

  ‘What is, then?’

  ‘That’s old Colonel FitzP,’ whispered Tobit in Dido’s ear. ‘But I’m blest if I know who the other one is.’

  ‘The name! The place! You d-don’t understand what it means – when one has s-spent all one’s life in a lumber-camp as n-nobody – Miles Tuggles – pah! To get my hands on all this I’d commit any c – any crime. As to your peccadilloes – what’s the old lady to me? Or the b-brat either? I give you my word, my research into your d-dealings was solely to effect an introduction so that we could meet on equal t-terms – ’

  ‘I wonder?’ Colonel FitzPickwick’s soft mutter was overheard only by the two eavesdroppers.

  ‘But harkee now,’ the first man went on. ‘I hold you in a cleft stick. I know so much, I promise you I could c-cook your goose with six words dropped in the right quarter. S-so it is in your interest to help me. I n-need a pretext for remaining in the neighbourhood – ’

  The two men moved away. The word ‘puppets’ was all that Dido could catch of the next remark.

  ‘Puppets!’ muttered Tobit discontentedly. ‘Old FitzPickwick’s mad about puppets: they’re his hobby. He’s always boring on about them.’

  ‘ – be a first-rate cover,’ FitzPickwick was saying, when the two men next strolled in the direction of the watchers.

  ‘That will do. Now tell me the rest – you have n-no choice. This Godwit you mention – ’

  They turned and paced away again.

  ‘Let’s go after them!’ breathed Tobit, and tweaked Dido’s hand. The two listeners slipped from their hiding-place and crossed to the shadow of a pair of yews.

  ‘ – rollers,’ they heard Colonel FitzPickwick say. ‘They are fixed already. And the diamond will pay for half. But the rest of the money – ’ The two men passed behind a tree and their words were lost. ‘ – still to come,’ the Colonel was saying when they reappeared. ‘If Lady Tegleaze – ’ Another pair of trees cut off his words. ‘ – certain His Highness Prince George would lend a favourable ear to your claim.’

  ‘Rot it, so I should hope! But as to these rollers – ’ the stammering man was beginning, when Dido heard a soft hiss beside her, a phtt! and Colonel FitzPickwick raised a hand to his cheek.

  ‘Strange! I could have sworn I felt a hailstone. Yet there’s not a cloud in the sky.’

  ‘Oh, famous!’ Tobit breathed in Dido’s ear. ‘I got him fair and square.’

  ‘’Twas a m-mosquito, I daresay. Rollers, now: rollers are all very fine. But where’s your motive-power?’

  ‘A mosquito? You forget you are in England in November, my dear sir. If the weather’s breaking I must be off. My mare’s a thoroughbred – she has an aversion to hail.’

  ‘You shoot now!’ whispered Tobit. ‘Go on – I dare you!’

  ‘I druther listen,’ Dido muttered crossly. ‘Hush! I’ve a notion – ’

  ‘Motive-power yet remains to be found. Godwit thinks a system of levers. Now, if humans were as easily moved as my mannikins – Devil take it! That was certainly a hailstone. It hit me on the ear.’

  Tobit was suffocating with suppressed laughter.

  ‘Got the old windbag again. Him and his mannikins!’

  Colonel FitzPickwick turned and walked off decisively, his companion following with reluctance, turning back for many glances at the house. The shadows of the two men followed them like long black-velvet trains.

  ‘Now we ain’t sure what it was all about,’ Dido complained when they were out of earshot.

  ‘Oh, pho, what does it matter? Just old Pickwick’s usual hocus-pocus about puppets.’

  ‘But it seemed to be about your grandmother and this place.’

  ‘What do I care about this place? As soon as I’m of age I shall run off to sea and turn pirate. Yo, ho, ho, and the jolly black flag,’ said Sir Tobit, and aimed a broadside of peas into the yew tree. ‘Come on, we’ll spy on old Wilfred and the Sawbones.’ He tugged Dido at a run along the yew hedge, up the steps, and round the end of the house. They looked through a window into a small room where, by the light of one dim candle, two men were crouched over a tiddly winks board. Dido recognized the doctor; the other was a little tiny grey-haired old fellow like a water-rat in a velvet robe and nightcap.

  ‘Pity the window’s shut,’ Tobit muttered. ‘I’d like to give old Wilfred a fright, in return for all the games of tiddly winks he’s bored me with. D’you dare me to break the window?’

  ‘O’ course not! What a mutton-headed notion.’

  Dido, becoming more and more impatient, was about to take her leave when a sudden fierce whisper from behind startled them both.

  ‘Bad, bad boy! What you doing, what you about?’

  Like a black, angry dragonfly the tiny figure of Tante Sannie darted from a patch of shadow, hissing reproaches at Tobit.

  ‘You not allowed out after darkfall, you know that! S’pose a memory bird hear you, s’pose the Night Lady catch you in her claws?’

  ‘Oh, stuff. Don’t talk such nonsense, Sannie,’ Tobit said, but he glanced behind him uneasily, then put a couple of peas in his mouth. �
��Anyway, I’ll be of age next week and can do as I please!’

  ‘Also, who this?’ Sannie peered up at Dido. Over the black-and-white draperies muffling the lower part of the old woman’s face, her tiny eyes glittered like the points of nails. ‘Hah! I know you! You little bad sickness-girl, Sir Tobit not allowed to play with you. Lady Tegleaze be very angry when she hear.’

  ‘We weren’t playing,’ Sir Tobit said sulkily. ‘I was showing her the grounds by moonlight.’

  ‘Don’t you false-talk me, boy! What this?’ Sannie twitched the pea-shooter from his hand. ‘Ho! You be of age next week, be you? You got no more sense than baby picknie. Out after darkfall, shooting Joobie nuts! S’pose hit somebody in him eye, sent to prison? Then you never come of age, you know that!’

  ‘Oh, fiddle. Nobody gets sent to prison for shooting with a pea-shooter. I shall shoot as many as I like.’ Rebelliously he snatched back the tube and blew a pea at the window. It bounced off the glass with an audible ping, but the two men inside, absorbed in their game, never even lifted their heads.

  ‘Oh, so brave little feller!’ Sannie’s tone became silky as syrup. ‘So brave to shoot Joobie nuts. But don’t you dare swallow nut!’

  ‘I’ll do that too, if I want!’ He swallowed the two nuts he was sucking, eyeing the old woman with defiance. But almost at once a curious change came over his face. He glanced behind him again, twice, and gave a violent shiver.

  ‘Is cold, my little thingling? Is hearing some noise in bushes, memory bird, maybe?’

  Tobit shivered again, glancing about with dread.

  ‘Come along then, come in quick before the Night Lady fly over. Come along, little thingling. Old Sannie make you cup of thistle tea.’

  She took his hand and led him off; Tobit followed meekly.

  ‘Croopus!’ muttered Dido, when they were out of sight.

  She was so startled by the change in Tobit that she remained where she was for several minutes, pondering. ‘It was those peas – Joobie nuts or whatever she called them. What the blazes can they be?’

  She pulled a handful of the heavy little dry things from her duffel pocket and eyed them suspiciously. In the moonlight they looked grey, wrinkled, harmless enough – about the size of nasturtium seeds; they felt faintly gritty, as if they had been dusted with salt. Warily Dido tried one with the tip of her tongue. It did taste salty. She spat, and glanced behind her, suddenly overcome with an almost irresistible urge to duck: it seemed as if she could hear the whizz of giant wings overhead. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw a huge shadow flit over the moonlit grass. But when she turned and looked, there was nothing.