Shorecliff

by Ursula Deyoung

  Fisher had been more impressed than I’d realized by the incident. “That was something!” he breathed, staring at the fox in awe. “That was something, all right! Did you see him lap up that milk? How old is he?”

  “Oh, he’s not an infant,” said Condor. “I would say he’s old enough to live without his mother but young enough to appreciate our help. How’s that?”

  “Ah, Barnavelt, my friend, you’ll go far!” said Eberhardt, leaping off the bed. “You boys think I went round the bend long ago, but who has the fox now, eh? Who has the fox? That’s what counts.”

  Eberhardt must have been experiencing senility that summer, but no one talked about it at the time, neither the children nor the adults. He was just Great-Uncle Eberhardt, difficult and eccentric and part of the family.

  “Wait until the rest of them hear about this,” said Fisher.

  His comment brought back the complex world of cousins that we had left behind at Shorecliff. The day with Fisher and its discoveries—the fields, the haystack with its hidden occupants, the woods, the fox—had cleansed my mind momentarily of familial intrigue. But after he spoke I was enchanted by the idea of reporting our findings.

  “Should we go back?” I asked.

  “We’ll go right now, if that’s all right. Condor, Uncle Eberhardt?”

  They waved us out. Barnavelt raced back to his box when we went through the room, and Condor insisted that we wait to open the door until he had lifted the box upright. In time, he said, he would arrange matters so that the fox would not have to be imprisoned every time someone wanted to use the door.

  Our return through the woods and over the grass to Shorecliff held none of the peacefulness of the beginning of our expedition. Fisher was talking so fast about the fox that his words piled up on themselves—I’d never heard him so excited. I desperately wanted to be the one to tell the news, but I suspected that he wouldn’t give me the chance. I was organizing the day in my mind and breaking it up into memorable episodes so that I could keep it all vivid. The lawn, abandoned in the languid hour before dinner, seemed mysterious and unfamiliar—our own private territory. As we walked the last stretch to the house, looking at the figures in the kitchen through the windows, I was filled with a sense of satisfaction. I had just had a marvelous time with someone I liked immensely. This was what a good day felt like.

  I broke into a run, and Fisher obligingly followed suit. We galloped toward the back door, laughing in our exhilaration.

  That was the last moment of the good day. The minute I stepped inside, I knew our timing was horribly off. Tension was crackling in the kitchen. All the aunts were there, but only a small assortment of cousins. Standing by the table were Pamela and Aunt Margery. It was strange enough for these two to be the focus of a crisis, but at Margery’s first words I felt utterly bewildered. As she spoke Fisher skidded up behind me, almost pushing me into the room, and we stood like that, with the door open and mosquitoes buzzing in.

  “You’re ungrateful,” Aunt Margery was saying. Her tone hit me like a ruler across the knuckles, and I felt my limbs tighten. All children recognize the feeling. It doesn’t matter which adult is angry or why or at whom—your heart speeds up, your mood is shattered, and you feel dismal.

  “I’m not ungrateful. Don’t boss me around in front of everyone!” Pamela’s face was pale, and there were tears in her eyes. I had never seen her emotional before, and I was astonished by the sight. I would almost not have recognized her except that she still held on to her overstated dignity.

  “If you’re not ungrateful, then why don’t you eat your pie quietly without making offensive remarks?”

  “I don’t want to eat your stupid pie! I hate this family and all of its endless pies and dinners and lunches and breakfasts. Everything’s awful!”

  She turned and ran from the room. Everyone else tried to relax but couldn’t. The fight wouldn’t have seemed so terrible if it had involved someone other than Pamela, but it was painfully obvious that for her becoming upset was a self-betrayal.

  “Does Pamela often get into states like this?” my mother asked Aunt Margery.

  “Almost never,” said Margery. “I don’t know, Caroline.” She sat down, and the cousins in the room—Isabella, Francesca, and Delia Robierre, if I remember correctly—beckoned for us to follow them out.

  “What happened?” Fisher asked as we went up the stairs.

  “Pamela started getting strange about Aunt Margery’s pie,” Isabella whispered. “She said she wouldn’t eat it and that she hated the way Aunt Margery was always shoving sweets at us. I don’t know what she was talking about.”

  “And then?”

  “That’s it. Then you came in and heard the rest.”

  “But that wasn’t anything,” said Fisher.

  “I know, but that’s all there was.”

  “You’d better go to her, Richard,” said Francesca.

  I thought I hadn’t heard correctly. “Me?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course. You two are always together. Go on up to her. Make sure Yvette isn’t in the room—Yvette is sure to say something wrong—and then drag it out of her. She’ll tell you what’s going on.”

  “Maybe it’s something serious,” Delia said, her eyes wide. She was still too young to act older and wiser.

  “Don’t worry, Deals,” said Isabella. “She’ll be okay. Richard will see to it.”

  The responsibility had been placed on my shoulders, and they made an aisle so I could go up the stairs ahead of them. I hadn’t had time yet to feel bitter about my obliterated good mood. I had a mission, and I hurried to carry it out. When I got to the room where Pamela and Yvette slept, I found the door partly open. Pamela was alone, crying facedown on her bed. I pushed past the door and crept up to her.

  “Pamela?” I said.

  “Go away,” she replied, her voice muffled in blankets. There is something intolerable about hearing a sad voice muffled by a blanket. It makes you want to roll the person over and free the voice from its misery.

  “What’s wrong? Will you tell me?”

  “No. You won’t understand. Go away.”

  “Can’t you explain it?” I ventured to sit on the bed, and she inched away from me toward the pillow.

  “I’ll be better in the morning,” she said. Her voice now sounded snuffly and resigned.

  I was itching to leave. “Did any of us do anything wrong?”

  “Well, you obviously didn’t. You were gone all day with Fisher.”

  “Did something happen today?”

  “No. Go away.”

  “Should I bring someone in to apologize?”

  “No! No one’s done anything. It’s me. I’m fine. Go away.”

  “Are you sure you won’t tell me what happened?”

  Abruptly she lifted her head so that I could see her face, now blotchy with tears, and shouted, “Isn’t it obvious that I want to be left alone?”

  That was enough to send me scuttling to the door, but it also wrung a flood of useless sympathy from me. I would have given anything to be able to comfort her. Seeing her ugly face was like a punch to the solar plexus.

  There was nothing left to say, however. I slipped out, closing the door behind me, and went straight to my own room. The other cousins were waiting like sentinels at their bedroom doors, but I didn’t say a word to them. It was clear that they had heard the interaction from the hall. I was embarrassed and defeated, and all I wanted was to get away from inquiring eyes.

  My mother didn’t come up to bid me good night that evening after dinner—an awkward and uncharacteristically quiet gathering—and I didn’t go down to her room. I think the aunts had decided it was best to leave all of us alone. Consequently, I stood for nearly an hour at my open window, looking through my telescope at the moon, which was pale and uninteresting but better than the ceiling. What I resented most was that Pamela’s inexplicable outburst had ruined my day with Fisher. Inevitably, whenever I thought of walking in the woods with him and
seeing the Stephensons’ farm, I would also remember Pamela and her tear-covered face. Her one little outburst had as much emotional clout as an entire day of happiness—that’s what was so unfair. I suppose I wouldn’t remember that summer at Shorecliff so well if it hadn’t been for the bad times, but I wish I could remember only the moments of glory. Would they be any less glorious if they weren’t shadowed by misery?

  * * *

  Luckily for my peace of mind, there were many days at Shorecliff—at least in the first half of the summer—that didn’t end unsettlingly. On one marvelous occasion, not long after my walk with Fisher, the cousins closed the evening with a dance of joy, though we had dawdled through the earlier hours in ignorance of the holiday we were missing.

  It was difficult to keep track of the days at Shorecliff. We had a number of clocks, some of them notoriously unreliable, but no calendars, and newspapers always arrived in a bunch a week late, when Aunt Margery drove to Pensbottom for supplies. The adults were usually better at remembering the date, but they were equally baffled when Uncle Kurt, one evening at the dinner table, said with a sudden grin, “Is anyone here aware of what day it is?” There was a chorus of “Well, let me see…” from the aunts and uncles. Then Kurt answered his own question: “The Fourth of July, of course!”

  The room broke out in a deafening clamor. The Fourth of July, and we had wasted the whole day! Shock and chagrin rolled through the cousins. In New York the day was one of my favorites—swelteringly hot but filled with cheering crowds, the patter of firecrackers, and the rousing melodies of brass bands. At night fireworks would light up the sky over both rivers, so that nearly everyone in the city could catch a glimpse now and again.

  Here in Shorecliff, we had heard not a peep. It had been a day like any other. Disappointment threatened to overwhelm me. Uncle Kurt was still talking, however. “The day may be over, but we’ve still got the evening. What’s for dessert?” He glanced at the aunts.

  “Ice cream,” said Aunt Margery. “Caroline and I made it this morning.”

  “Fine. We’ll take it out on the lawn. Go on, kids.”

  Obediently we trooped outside into the dusk, not sure what we were supposed to do when we got there other than slap mosquitoes. Aunt Margery and my mother scooped out the ice cream and handed bowls through the kitchen’s screen door. We ate in a gloomy silence, broken every once in a while by Tom or Philip thinking of things we could have done that day but hadn’t.

  “I bet they were selling firecrackers in Pensbottom,” said Tom.

  “Hell, I bet they were selling bangsnaps and flags and watermelons and the whole works. Even a sleepy town like Pensbottom celebrates Independence Day.”

  Uncle Kurt emerged to find eleven long faces drooping over empty bowls. “Well, boys and girls,” he said, still grinning. “Don’t look so down. See what I’ve got?”

  He held out a slim box. It took us several seconds to realize it held sparklers. Our moods revived as if we had taken a miracle cure. To a background of shouts and clucks from the aunts, we threw down the bowls and held out our hands.

  I lurked in the rear of the crowd. I had seen sparklers, of course, but never held one, and the thought of handling a live firework gave me a sinking feeling. Nevertheless, the older boys were delighted, so of course I had to be too. With a succession of pops and sputterings, sparkler after sparkler bloomed into life. The cousins raced and jumped over the grass, the stars in their hands tracing red tangles in the air.

  “Ready, Richard?” said Kurt. He bent down, gave me a stick, and held a match to its end. “Keep it away from your face,” he said, and my mother called out, “Don’t go too close to the others, Richard!” I could hear the aunts murmuring more and more fearfully, though even they couldn’t help commenting on the beauty of the scene—eleven giant fireflies dancing across the lawn.

  Mine was the lowest to the ground and the shakiest. I was mesmerized by the bright, joyful violence of it, but visions of a burnt hand haunted me. I leaped here and there, wondering how long sparklers stayed lit and what would happen if I dropped mine.

  Fortunately Uncle Kurt, as he so often did, divined what I was thinking. He came over and said, “How about letting me have a try, kiddo? Cedric and Frank are battling over the last one, so there’s none for me.” Gratefully I handed it over, and for the last three or four minutes of the fireworks’ short lives, I could watch the cousins in peace as they twirled through the darkness, lit by showers of sparks.

  6

  Pensbottom

  We had been at Shorecliff for a little over a month when an event occurred that involved, at first, only Charlie and Francesca. When I heard about it, I both hoped and feared that it had been inspired by the moonlight swim I had thought up. Neither Charlie nor Francesca would have deigned to tell me about it, but Isabella was in on the plan from its inception, and after it happened I came to her room and asked what it had all been about. Obligingly she gave me a spirited account of the night before, and I spent most of the day filling in the blanks with my own fabricated speeches and scenes—for it was certainly an adventure to excite the imagination.

  Francesca and Charlie had wandered into Isabella’s bedroom one night in search of a remedy for their boredom. Isabella’s room often served as a council chamber—she possessed the rare combination of being both an excellent listener and an unbeatable enthusiast. The other cousins were all in bed, with the exception of Fisher, who frequently went outside after dark to look at the stars and listen for night birds.

  Charlie and Francesca flopped down on the spare bed, treating Isabella as a Complaints Bureau to whom they could air their grievances.

  “There’s not one damn thing to see or person to talk to in this hellhole, and I want to get out and revive my dying life,” Francesca announced.

  Isabella replied, “Why don’t you?” which caused momentary confusion but was soon taken as a suggestion to leave Shorecliff. Within minutes the plan had been born.

  “Where would we go?” Charlie asked. His was always the voice of practicality, probably because he had so much experience in carrying out college pranks.

  “Anywhere!” Francesca replied, eyes sparkling.

  “Pensbottom is really your only choice, unless you want to go for more than one night,” Isabella said. From the first she assumed that only Charlie and Francesca would be involved in the escape—they were the oldest and thus the most immune to parental retribution.

  “Not more than one night,” Charlie said. “We don’t want to lose our beds here or anything like that.”

  “Who cares how long it’s for as long as we get out in the first place?” Francesca said. “We’ll go to Pensbottom if there’s nowhere else. How do we get there?”

  “It’s obvious,” said Charlie, and they exclaimed at the same time, “The rattletrap!”

  This was when Charlie became fully invested in the plan. Driving the rattletrap, no matter the destination, was something he yearned for as much as Francesca yearned for a new setting. They decided on the following night as the best time for their escape and spent the next hour talking excitedly about the details.

  For some time they toyed with the idea of inviting Tom and Philip to join them. “The more the merrier!” Francesca cried at first. But they concluded that Philip would not be a good man for the job. “He’s too introspective for games like that,” Isabella told me afterward. “He’s much too serious. He wouldn’t see the point.”

  “I don’t think he’s serious all the time,” I answered.

  “Of course he has a lighter side,” Isabella said sharply. “All geniuses do.”

  Tom’s candidacy lasted longer, but eventually they decided that he would rather dream about Lorelei than go with them. This was said half in jest, but I think it arose from a feeling of jealousy. Tom, after all, was already having an adventure. The question ended when Charlie sighed, “Lucky bastard.” Having heard Uncle Kurt as well as Charlie use the word, I looked up “bastard” in the dictionary later an
d found “illegitimate child.” When I looked up “illegitimate,” it gave a series of definitions, one of which was “when pertaining to children, born out of wedlock.” I looked up “wedlock” and found “marriage.” With these clues my infant brain deduced that I should be having doubts about Aunt Rose and her husband. This will show what a sheltered life I led. The possibility that Rose and Cedric had never been properly married occupied me for a while, but in the end I decided that “lucky bastard” must be simply affectionate slang.

  Finally Francesca said it would be better with just the two of them anyway, and I can easily imagine in what manner she said it, her eyebrows raised, that unforgettable feline expression creeping across her face.

  The next night began smoothly. At one o’clock, the hour they had appointed as the earliest at which all aunts and uncles would be asleep, Francesca and Charlie tiptoed down to the front door. Isabella waved good-bye from the top of the stairs. Charlie was wearing his usual outfit of brown slacks and light shirt, but Francesca had on a black skirt, a black blouse, and a black shawl around her shoulders. Isabella was particularly struck by the shawl. We had no idea where Francesca had found it—we guessed one of Shorecliff’s many closets—and we couldn’t figure out why she would want to wear it. Nevertheless, it added to the mood. “She looked like a gypsy!” Isabella told me, and that, I suspect, was the desired effect.

  Francesca and Charlie galloped across the yard to the fence, where the rattletrap was languishing from lack of use. They hopped in, and Charlie, who had lifted the key from its hook in the kitchen, started the car. The rattletrap always made a terrific noise when the engine first came to life, and they must have spent a good few moments frozen with apprehension as the car cleared its throat and prepared for action. No one emerged from the house, however, and soon Charlie and Francesca were bouncing along on the road to Pensbottom, giddy with the success of their departure.