by Lucy Strange
I could just climb into a little boat, I thought, and sail away for ever into that endless blue . . .
‘Until you bumped into mainland Europe, of course,’ Robert’s voice said, with his usual unforgiving logic. I smiled to myself. Further up the coast was the white lighthouse I had seen from the attic window, standing on the clifftop like a sentinel.
I helped unload the things from the trap and we all carried them over the sand dunes and on to the beach. Mr Berry went back to the cart for the picnic hamper.
‘I’ll be at the hotel, Miss,’ he said to Nanny Jane as he helped arrange our things. ‘Just let me know when you want to head home.’ He smiled at me, and passed me a tin bucket. ‘Have fun, little ’un,’ he said.
Nanny Jane spread the blankets on the sand and we sat for a while, our faces turned up to the warm sun, listening to the gently crashing rhythm of the waves. Piglet lay on her front, like a little beached whale in a sun bonnet. She crawled to the edge of the blanket, grunting with effort, then collapsed and tried to eat a fistful of sand. While Nanny Jane cleaned her up and fed her something else, I took my shoes and socks off and walked down to the water. I was aware of Nanny Jane watching me and I sensed her desire to call out, ‘Be careful, please, Henry,’ but she just let me go.
It felt nice walking across the sand; I liked the way it moved beneath my bare feet, becoming firmer the closer I got to the sea. I edged into the water and allowed it to cover my toes. It was cold – startlingly cold at first, but I found that my feet soon became used to it and I paddled in a little further, tucking my skirt into my drawers. Doctor Hardy wouldn’t approve of this, I thought with a grin. No big adventures for small, bookish girls like me. Presumably he thought I needed some sort of medication to cure me of my smallness and bookishness . . .
I gazed out to sea and breathed deeply, enjoying the feeling that I was part of the cold water and the clean air and the endless sky. I tried to let my thoughts drift through my mind as easily as the gulls wheeling high above.
I looked back towards Nanny Jane and Piglet to wave at them, and my heart jolted when I saw the dark silhouette of a man standing at the top of the sand dune, directly above them. It wasn’t Mr Berry. There was something very odd about the way the man stood – at an awkward angle, perfectly still and staring out to sea. Was he aware that Nanny Jane and Piglet were right there, just a few yards below his feet, beneath his twisted shadow? He was leaning on a walking stick and, as I watched, he pivoted around and limped back towards the hotel. His stick shot out in front of him like an extra leg, and he moved surprisingly quickly, like an insect. Then I knew exactly who it was. It was the limping man who had called at Hope House the previous week – the one who had scuttled into my nightmares . . .
A colder current suddenly sucked at the sand beneath my feet and I lost my footing, falling back into the water with a splash – ‘Oh!’ I barely had a moment to catch my breath before a tall wave rolled towards me, folding down on itself and charging at me like a ram.
‘Henry!’ Nanny Jane shouted.
My face was underwater, and the freezing salt water filled my nose and mouth, blinding my eyes, burning my throat and driving the air from my lungs. I was lost in a splashing panic of grey-blue water and swirling skirts. But it was all over in a second. I managed to stand up, coughing, and lurched heavily towards the beach, my tears mixing with the salt water running down my face. I squinted up towards the hotel to see if the limping man was watching. Had he followed us from Hope House? But there was no one there now. It was as if I had imagined the whole thing.
Nanny Jane wrapped a towel around me and sat me down on the blanket. She dried my hair, wiped my eyes and gave me a glass of lemonade to take the taste of the sea away. She wasn’t cross with me, and I was grateful. I blew my nose, then I unwrapped a paper parcel and ate a cucumber sandwich.
After a little while Nanny Jane said, ‘It might be a good idea for you to take swimming lessons now we live so close to the sea, Henry.’
I dabbed at my ears with the towel; one of them was still filled with water and I couldn’t hear properly. She sounded far away.
‘I brought a spare skirt in case yours got damp,’ she added. ‘Would you like to change?’
I looked at Nanny Jane’s stern face, suddenly aware of just how lost I would be without her. She had started working for our family when Mama became pregnant with Piglet, though now it felt as if she had always been with us and I couldn’t imagine our family without her. Our family. What had happened to it? We were just a few lonely people, held together by Nanny Jane’s hard work.
I put my wet arms around her and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
Nanny Jane looked surprised and a bit embarrassed. She smiled, and then started singing ‘Bonny Bobby Shafto’ to the baby – it was one of her favourites.
It seemed a good moment to talk to Nanny Jane about Mama.
‘Nanny Jane,’ I began cautiously, ‘can you tell me, please, about the medicine that Doctor Hardy is giving Mama?’ And then the dam burst and all the questions just flooded out. ‘And why doesn’t he want me to see her? And what sort of treatment is he planning that needs Father’s permission? And where does he want to have her admitted to? And—’
‘Henry, stop – stop! I’m sorry, but I really can’t discuss these things with you.’
Nanny Jane put Piglet down on the blanket and started tidying the picnic things. ‘You simply have to trust that your mother is receiving the medical care that she needs.’
‘But that’s just it, I don’t trust Doctor Hardy at all, and I don’t like him either.’
‘Henrietta! That’s enough! You will show some respect towards your elders, please!’ She was shouting now.
With fresh tears burning in my eyes, I picked up my socks, shoes and spare skirt, and walked up to the hotel to change. I stopped at the top of the sand dune and looked back; Nanny Jane was standing quite still, one hand over her mouth, looking out to sea.
Mr Berry drove us home in the trap later that afternoon. I turned my whole body away from Nanny Jane to stare out across the yellowy blur of fields, answering her questions as briefly as possible. Then I pretended to be asleep so I didn’t have to speak to her at all.
Immediately after supper I was chivvied into an early bath and bed. Nanny Jane held out a spoonful of Doctor Hardy’s nasty-tasting medicine. I didn’t want to take it.
‘I’m afraid Doctor Hardy has said it is necessary, Henry, particularly after such an eventful day,’ Nanny Jane insisted.
She looked worn out and I didn’t want another argument with her, so I took the medicine and got into bed. As my head sank into the pillow, I remembered the white rose I had placed next to Mama’s bed. Had it been found? Well, it was too late to do anything about it now. Sleep was wrapping its soft tentacles around me and was pulling me down, down . . .
Nanny Jane was agitated the next morning. Her foot tapped a tattoo on the floor as she chewed distractedly on a piece of toast. Then she knocked the milk jug off the table. It smashed to pieces on the floor. Shards of white china trembled in a cool white puddle.
After I had helped clear up the mess, I asked if perhaps Mama could come outside and sit on the terrace with me for a while – it was such a lovely day. (Robert always used to say I was tenacious. I’d had to ask him what it meant: ‘Hanging on to things, refusing to give up or let go . . . Like a tick,’ he had said.)
‘No, I don’t think so, Henry,’ Nanny Jane replied, without looking at me. ‘Your mother needs to rest. Doctor’s orders.’ She collected up the last fragments of the milk jug and hurried off to the kitchen.
Doctor’s orders. They had been law in our house since Robert’s death. Why could no one else see that Doctor Hardy’s orders were not making Mama any better? I wondered how long it would be before I would have an opportunity to visit her again in secret.
Just then, the telephone started ringing in the hall, as loud and urgent as the bell of a fire engine. I nearl
y jumped out of my skin. My tea slopped over the edge of the cup and spilt on my pinafore. I didn’t move from my chair, though. I wasn’t allowed to touch the telephone; it was one of Father’s strictest rules. Robert had been allowed to answer the telephone in the London house on a few occasions, but only because he was older than me. I was rather afraid of it, to be honest – as if I thought I would be electrocuted if I tried to pick it up. I heard Nanny Jane’s feet pattering towards it.
‘Hello? The Abbott household?’ she shouted. Then there was a long pause. When Nanny Jane spoke again, her voice was deliberately quiet, as if she was aware of me sitting there, listening. ‘Are you absolutely sure this is necessary?’ she hissed. ‘I can cope perfectly well . . . No . . . No, of course not, but . . . Very well. Yes, I suppose so. If Mr Abbott has said that’s what he thinks best . . . Wednesday, very well. And there’s something else we need to discuss. Yes, exactly. I shall. Goodbye, then.’ And she hung up the earpiece with a clatter.
What was that about? I wondered. But there was no point in asking. Secrets were growing quickly in the corridors of Hope House now. They were appearing overnight in fat, white clusters, like mushrooms in the dark loam of the forest.
Nanny Jane said she had to go to the village that afternoon to send a telegram. To Italy? I wondered. To Father? Or was it something to do with that mysterious telephone call?
‘I won’t be long,’ she said. ‘Be a good girl, please, Henry, and help Mrs Berry prepare the vegetables for dinner.’
‘Of course I will,’ I lied. Beneath my pinafore, the key burned against my skin.
I read Mama the story of Rumpelstiltskin. It was not one of my favourites. I liked the brave miller’s daughter, but I hated the stupid miller who bragged that his daughter could spin straw into gold, and the greedy king who locked her up and forced her to perform this impossible magic on pain of death . . .
But there was something about Mama’s room that afternoon – a locked, lonely cell, with sunbeams shooting through the gaps in the curtains like spears of gold – that made me turn to that story. I read until the poor miller’s daughter had married the king, and was begging Rumpelstiltskin not to take her baby – ‘Oh, do not take her away!’ The words hung strangely in the warm, dusty air of Mama’s room, and I saw then that there were tears slipping silently from Mama’s eyes and sliding down her colourless cheeks, like drops of wax down a candle. I held her hand tightly.
‘It’s all right, Mama,’ I said urgently, my voice thick and choked. ‘It’s all right, I promise. Listen . . .’ And I read that the queen guessed Rumpelstiltskin’s name and won back her child. The story ended with Rumpelstiltskin stamping so angrily that he drove his foot into the earth and tore himself in two. I didn’t read this bit, though. I closed the book and finished the fairy tale myself, still holding Mama’s hand.
‘And so the queen kept her beautiful baby and promised her that she would never be taken away or locked up or asked to do impossible things, and that she would never, ever be alone.’ I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ After a moment, I sniffed and added, ‘Except the stupid miller and the greedy king who both died when a great big pile of gold fell on their stupid, greedy heads.’
Afterwards I sat for a while, watching Mama as she slept. The white rose I had placed on her bedside table had vanished. Someone must have taken it. Nanny Jane? Did she suspect that I had put it there? Was that why she had been in such a strange mood this morning? I would have to be more careful in future.
I caught sight of the clock on the mantelpiece: three o’clock. Nanny Jane would be back soon. Just a few more minutes. I took a brush from the dressing table and brushed Mama’s hair very softly, teasing out the tangled ends one handful at a time and placing the tresses in shining coils upon the pillow. As I brushed, I thought about Doctor Hardy’s treatment. Expecting Mama to get better all by herself, locked up in a dark and lonely room, was the same as expecting her to weave straw into gold, like the poor miller’s daughter.
I stopped brushing. I suddenly felt quite certain that Mama needed to be rescued, and that I was the only person who could possibly rescue her. But what could I do? With Mama like this, we could hardly run away. No – I would have to find a way of defeating Doctor Hardy and his stupid doctor’s orders right here at Hope House.
The first thing I needed to do was get rid of the pills.
I tried the drawer of her bedside table, the cupboard and the chest of drawers too, but everything was locked. Nanny Jane would be back any minute . . . Where else? I looked around. Mama’s writing desk stood against the far wall. Beside it was a wastepaper basket – and in that was a single crumpled sheet of writing paper. I picked it out and smoothed it flat on the desk.
It appeared to be an abandoned first draft of a letter to someone called Doctor Chilvers. The date was the previous day – the day Nanny Jane, Piglet and I had gone to the seaside. It was not signed, but the address at the top of the page was Little Birdham Surgery. Doctor Hardy. Why was he writing to another doctor? I couldn’t make out the meaning of it – the handwriting was so scribbled – but after squinting at the paper for a minute, a few frightening phrases became clear.
Rest cure is not proving sufficiently (something illegible) for Mrs Abbott – advancing dramatically . . . Sleep cure (something) until admittance to – here there was a word that looked like ‘Helldon’.
Helldon? Was this the place Doctor Hardy wanted to send Mama to? And the ‘sleep cure’? That must be why he has increased the dose of her pills, I thought. I wondered if Mama had dreams – or nightmares – while she slept. I wondered what it would be like having nightmares you couldn’t wake up from. I shuddered and looked back at the letter. As I deciphered the final phrases, my insides turned cold.
Very interesting behaviour . . . (something) possible emerging symptoms in the daughter too. Further observation required . . .(This was where the ink had been smudged.)
The daughter?
Me?
Panic coursed through me. Did I have ‘emerging symptoms’ of something? I wondered what Nanny Jane could have told Doctor Hardy to make him think this. I thought about the strange looks she had given me recently when she had seen me talking to Robert, or when I had seen the figure in the garden . . . Perhaps I did have ‘emerging symptoms’ after all. My eyes moved over those last words again – ‘observation required’. Who was going to be observing me? Doctor Hardy? Or this other man – I looked at the name at the beginning of the letter – Doctor Chilvers?
Then it clicked horribly into place, like the splintered ends of a broken bone pushed back together. The limping man. The limping man who scuttled like a spider, who had called at Hope House and who had been watching me at the beach. He was Doctor Chilvers and he was observing my emerging symptoms already.
Suddenly I felt dangerously alone. Mama was ill and drugged. Father was not here. Doctor Hardy thought I was going mad, and Nanny Jane had become his spy.
There was no one else I could trust. Except . . .
Moth was building a campfire, her back to me.
‘Lend a hand, will you, Henrietta?’ she said, without turning her head. ‘Pass me those bits of wood.’
I took a deep breath and moved closer. I picked up a small dry log from a pile near the caravan and passed it to Moth.
‘Fires are like living creatures,’ she said. ‘They have to breathe, and be fed.’
I swallowed and nodded, watching her.
She stood back and admired her work. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Like a sculpture.’ She offered the box of matches to me. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Light that twist of paper at the bottom.’
I shook my head and sat down on the steps of the caravan. Moth shrugged and lit the fire herself. Together, we watched the flames catch and grow.
‘I need your help, Moth,’ I said after a moment.
She laughed her short, dry laugh. ‘Ha. My help.’
‘It’s Mama. She’s sick.
She’s more than sick. I have to help her. And the doctor thinks I’m sick too – he’s . . . observing me.’
Moth frowned and looked straight at me. She narrowed her eyes and her mouth twitched. ‘Nothing wrong with you, Henrietta Abbott,’ she said. ‘Had a bit of a cold last week, but you’re well enough now. You’re as strong as a little ox.’
I felt a wave of relief. At least Moth didn’t think I had emerging symptoms.
‘Have you been able to see your mother?’ she said.
‘Yes.’ My hand moved unconsciously to the secret key, hidden beneath my pinafore. ‘Can you help her, Moth?’ I asked. It came out in a very small voice. I took another deep breath and gave voice to the thought I had been keeping hidden, even from myself: ‘I’m afraid she might die.’
Moth’s smile faded. Neither of us said anything for a while. Bright Star nudged my knee with his cheek and sat down next to me. He folded his front paws neatly beneath his chest and looked up expectantly. I stroked his head.
‘It’s because of my brother, Robert,’ I said after a moment. ‘He died last year. I think she is . . . I think Mama has been dying too, ever since. I have to help her.’
There was a pause while Moth thought about this.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I see now.’
We sat for a while longer.
‘I don’t want her to be on her own any more,’ I said, ‘but it’s like she’s a prisoner now. And the pills Doctor Hardy gives her just make her sleep and sleep—’
‘Yes. Yes, I know,’ Moth said again, staring into the fire. ‘I know all about him and his pills. As if sleep can cure grief . . . It’s just one prison within another. It isn’t sleep she needs. It’s peace.’
‘Peace, yes.’
