Shorecliff

by Ursula Deyoung

  “No, I won’t tell,” I said. For me there was no question—cousins’ secrets were sacred. As long as they considered me trustworthy, I could serve as a confidant.

  “He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” Tom said, pointing at me.

  “What does he know?” Yvette scoffed. “He’s only a child.”

  She was heading down an insulting path, but the conversation was brought to a halt by Pamela padding into the kitchen in her slippers. “Why are you all awake?” she asked sleepily. “Yvette, you woke me up. Do you have to thump around like that? I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “Sorry, Pamela,” Yvette said. “Tom and I were just having a fascinating conversation about—”

  “I’ve now heard three sets of little feet coming down the stairs. What are you all doing down here?” This was Aunt Margery, wrapped in a floral dressing gown and finally restoring the sense of normality that I had missed ever since waking up. Her presence ended the debate between Tom and Yvette, and from that point on the morning continued the way most Shorecliff mornings did. About five minutes after Margery’s arrival, Aunt Edie appeared at the screen door. I had forgotten that she was the earliest of early risers and frequently walked by the cliff at five in the morning as the sun came up. Tom jumped several inches when she rattled the screen behind him and asked him to move aside.

  Aunt Margery never commented on the fact that she had heard three sets of feet but found four cousins standing in the kitchen. Maybe the inconsistency escaped her.

  Tom shot Yvette a last pleading look as Aunt Margery began to whip up some pancake batter for me, and she responded with a slow, inscrutable nod. I didn’t know what she meant by that, since it certainly wasn’t acquiescence. Poor Yvette—she probably didn’t know herself. But she didn’t say anything that day and for several days afterward about Tom’s escapades with Lorelei.

  * * *

  The day of their confrontation was also the one on which Barnavelt escaped—one of the many events which, though they seemed innocent at the time, laid the groundwork for the summer’s final disaster. The fox’s escape sparked an idea in the minds of the Delias that germinated for a long time before the rest of us became aware of it.

  Since the day of my walk with Fisher, the fox had become a celebrity in the family. Uncle Eberhardt was outraged by the frequent invasions of the cottage and tried ineffectually to prevent them. Condor was secretly pleased—he was a more sociable person. But even he must have been unnerved to receive daily visitors after years of seeing no one but old Eberhardt.

  After two or three episodes of delirious amusement at being in close quarters with a fox, the older cousins lost interest. The more devoted visitors were Fisher, the two Delias, and me. Isabella was enchanted, but she felt so sorry for Barnavelt, who for the first week stared out of the box with his yellow eyes glazed and his ears laid back, that she stopped going after three visits. “I can’t stand seeing him all crouched down like that,” she said. “It’s awful. I don’t think any of us should go.” I thought this was one of the noblest comments I’d ever heard, and after she said it I deprived myself of seeing the fox for two whole days. Then I caved in and returned to the cottage.

  The fox was not ill treated. Though a stream of visitors came to see him during the day, he spent long evening hours and most of each morning alone with Condor and Eberhardt. Eberhardt returned to Shorecliff to sleep, so only Condor knew of Barnavelt’s nocturnal activities. The fox, though it was cautious with the rest of us, learned to love Condor, who had established from the first that Barnavelt was to be a tame fox—he could not help him survive and still allow him to maintain his wildness. So after the first few weeks Condor could hold Barnavelt and stroke him. He said that he was working on training Barnavelt to respond to a call. Condor would sit in his bedroom and say, “Barnavelt, come here, boy. Come here, Barnavelt!” (No one ever called him Barney.) Thus far Barnavelt had once wandered into the bedroom, where Condor promptly rewarded him with a bowl of milk. Condor didn’t know whether the fox had come in response to his calling or not, but he was hopeful.

  The two Delias, Fisher, and I listened to these reports as if they were necessary for our survival. As far as we were concerned, Condor had suddenly become one of the most important and fascinating figures at Shorecliff. I never tired of seeing him, an enormous man buttoned up in a pale pink Oxford shirt, with a tiny fox on his arm.

  Barnavelt was never so relaxed when we were in the cottage. The moment Condor saw us through the window, he would wave and send the little fox back to his box. He was constructing a wooden house for Barnavelt, but it wasn’t completed yet. Condor claimed that when none of us was around, Barnavelt would run to the wooden house, investigating everything with his twitchy black nose and occasionally forgetting even to pretend to be afraid. There was no pretending with us, though—every time we stared into the box, his ears went back and his eyes took on the petrified look I had seen on the first day. After Isabella’s outburst I felt guilty whenever I saw that look, but the Delias were undaunted. Condor would open the door and try to look fierce, but we could see from the smile in his eyes that he was pleased by our interest in his new project. Of course we weren’t allowed to do anything more than look on from a distance. Condor sometimes showed us how he could pat Barnavelt, the fox cringing away from the meaty hand and then suddenly rubbing against it, making us squirm with envy.

  About a week after Condor found him, we made another unexpected discovery connected with Barnavelt. Lorelei had come over to Shorecliff for one of our morning croquet matches, which Tom was still organizing assiduously. Diffident and meek and un-Hatfield-like as she was, Lorelei had become a fixture at our house. Tom had exclusive rights over her, and she seemed willing to follow his direction. Sometimes, though, she was left alone with a group of us, and it was enchanting to watch the impulsive Hatfield girls deferring to her slow, uncertain manner. They would listen with the utmost respect, their mouths open, as if they were worried she might stumble over a word. I caught Francesca once nodding unconsciously in time to Lorelei’s hesitant voice. Not one of the girls was exempt from this involuntary soft-​stepping around her. The Delias would stop giggling, Yvette would thaw, Pamela would come close to pandering. Maybe this was the sort of extreme politeness that results when two alien beings come into contact, or maybe the Hatfields admired qualities in Lorelei that they knew they could never attain. In any case, we were not averse when Tom suggested that Lorelei come to visit Condor and Barnavelt.

  We knew, moreover, that Great-Uncle Eberhardt was safely out of our way. Earlier that day we had noticed him, in one of his unusual morning appearances, stalking across the lawn, grumbling something about lemonade. He had one of the most bizarre gaits I’ve ever seen: with every step he swayed from side to side as if each foot were coming down much lower than the level of the grass. To balance himself, he would hold his arms out under his black cape in a position I’ve seen ballerinas use, elbows bent and forearms hanging down. With his gray hair springing out on either side of his head, he looked like a scarecrow covered by a black tarpaulin and swaying in the wind.

  As Eberhardt passed, Isabella commented, a little too loudly, “I think Uncle Eberhardt has a peg leg!” The minute she said this we could imagine it perfectly. There he was, wobbling past us over the yard, lifting up each leg as if he were pulling a weight with it. But now he froze in his tracks, his arms still held out from his sides, and turned to Isabella. The cousins roared with laughter and then tittered into silence.

  “Well!” he said in his grating voice. “So you think I have a peg leg, do you? I suppose you think I’m an old retired pirate? Is that your idea?”

  He began to stump toward her. Isabella essayed a smile but failed to produce one. The uncles, who had ranged themselves by the side of our croquet court, were enjoying themselves immensely.

  “You’re in for it, Isabella!” Uncle Frank cried.

  “You’ve got her now, Uncle Eberhardt. That wi
ll teach you to make accusations about your elders, Bella!”

  We children were too afraid to say anything. Eberhardt bore down on her, swaying and clumping.

  “I didn’t mean it, Uncle Eberhardt!” Isabella squeaked. Her stance seemed to increase tenfold in its gangliness. The phrase “every which way” defines her at that age.

  “You want to see my peg leg, Isabella?” Eberhardt demanded. “I’ll show it to you!” He staggered up until he was standing two feet in front of her. Isabella was taller than he was, but he was by far the more powerful figure. He stared at her, his round eyes glinting, and then kicked out a leg to the side. There was a black boot on the end of it. Then he kicked out his other leg, also black-booted. He might have been dancing in very slow motion. “Happy?” he barked.

  “It was just a joke, Uncle Eberhardt,” Isabella said with an effort.

  “You children,” Eberhardt said, sweeping all of us with a beady-eyed stare. “You think I’m nothing but a figure of fun, don’t you? You’d be surprised at what I know—things about you, things about your parents, things about your family and your past. I wouldn’t underestimate the older generation if I were you. It’s fouled up this family before, and it can foul it up again.”

  “What are you telling them?” Uncle Frank called from the sidelines.

  “You keep out of this, Frank!” Eberhardt said, waving a hand. He fixed each of us with a long stare. Finally he reached Lorelei, who was hovering in the protection of Tom’s shadow.

  “And you?” he said. “What do you say to all this?”

  “I’m very glad you don’t have a peg leg, Mr. Hatfield,” Lorelei replied.

  We agreed afterward that she had found the perfect answer. Eberhardt grunted, almost smiled—Tom swore he saw teeth—and headed for the house.

  Uncle Frank gave Lorelei a round of applause and claimed that she’d slain the beast, but she put her head down and seemed uncomfortable at being the center of attention. We obeyed her unspoken request. The croquet game was resumed, and when later on Tom made his suggestion about going to visit Barnavelt, we knew that the coast would be clear of great-uncles.

  It was when we arrived at the cottage—Tom, Lorelei, the two Delias, Fisher, Pamela, and I—that we made our discovery.

  Condor had Barnavelt on his arm, but when he saw us at the door he tipped the fox back into his shelter. He greeted us with the words “I’ve redesigned his house,” and we saw that the frame for Barnavelt’s more permanent home had been demolished.

  “What are you doing with it?” Fisher asked, intrigued. His architectural streak came to the fore, and for a while we heard of nothing but angles and supporting beams.

  The two Delias crept to the box and peered in, kneeling side by side on the floor, giggling to each other, their brown and black heads touching. The charm of Barnavelt never wore off for those two—it was enough for them simply to see his silky fur. Pamela and I hung back, waiting our turn. Pamela liked the fox but never said anything about him. Since her inexplicable tantrum she had been acting more inscrutably than ever, but she spent no less time with me, so I didn’t resent her moodiness.

  Tom waited for the Delias to finish their worship session and then said, “Move aside, girls. I want to introduce Lorelei to the fox.”

  Obediently, the Delias moved away. We stood around the walls of the cottage, even Tom, and watched as Lorelei knelt down next to the box. She hooked a hand over one of the sides, and then she became perfectly motionless, staring into the box with her back to us.

  After a minute or two, the rest of us began to get edgy. None of us wanted to speak to her; her stillness was as intimidating a barrier as a physical wall. So we waited for Tom to say something. The minute I looked at him, though, I knew he was content just feasting his eyes on her as she crouched on the floor, her soft hair falling around her shoulders. He wasn’t going to say anything.

  Soon after that Fisher and Condor moved into Condor’s bedroom so Fisher could see the blueprints for Barnavelt’s new house. There was a cry of surprise, and we trooped into the bedroom, leaving Lorelei and Barnavelt to their own devices.

  Fisher had discovered that Condor was planning a sliding door for the house, and the structural intricacies of this luxury distracted us for almost ten minutes. Condor handed the plan to Fisher, and while all of us clustered around him, for once the center of attention, Condor crept back into the living room. I prided myself on being the only one who heard his exclamation when he saw Lorelei and the fox. He said, “Well, string me up for the bears!”—an expression I have never heard before or since. Lorelei, he told us afterward, was patting the fox, stroking him from the top of his head to the tip of his tail, and Barnavelt’s ears were sticking straight up. Condor said he had never seen the little fox so comfortable with anyone, not even him, let alone a stranger.

  “What it was,” he said, “was that at first she kept perfectly still. She didn’t make a single move, that girl. I’ve known her since she was a little mite, and she’s always been like that—good with animals, good at spotting birds.” Fisher looked up at this and later asked Lorelei about it, but she denied all knowledge of birds, to his disappointment. “None of you Hatfields,” Condor went on, “could stand still for more than five seconds at a time. You’re like candle flames, all of you. But that Lorelei—well, she’s like a statue, that’s all. Calm and still. Animals like that.”

  We resented his crack about the Hatfields, but it was accurate, of course. Not even the Wight children could stand still for more than a minute without stretching or rearranging themselves, and as for the more volatile members of the family, Francesca or Isabella or Cordelia, they couldn’t be motionless to save their lives.

  We were more impressed by Lorelei than ever after the incident with Barnavelt. When Condor said, “There’s a look in her eye that Barnavelt understood right away,” we all knew what he meant. Tom nearly burst with pride, and I was annoyed by how proud he was, as if he could take credit for Lorelei’s talents. After that day she became, for me at least, more than simply “Tom’s girl.”

  * * *

  The day Barnavelt ran away, Lorelei was with us at the cottage. She came often after her initial visit, and Condor welcomed her more warmly than any of us. Pamela told me once that she thought Lorelei visited Condor in the evenings, when we were having dinner, and she may have been right. Certainly Lorelei seemed more comfortable in Condor’s cottage than in Shorecliff.

  The more unexpected participant was Philip, who almost never accompanied us. I don’t know why he came that day. He was standing in the cottage, looking out the window and apparently bored by the whole idea of the fox. I would have been more fascinated by his presence had I not been mesmerized by Lorelei. Armed with my memory of the confrontation between Tom and Yvette in the kitchen that morning, I watched her with new eyes. She had become an object of lust, fantasy, jealousy. A cloud of sexual intrigue surrounded her. I felt guiltily that by thinking of her in this way I was defiling her purity—for there was something pure about Lorelei—but at the same time I knew, or thought I knew, that she had been anything but pure with Tom. Though hazy about the idea of sex itself, I was well aware that Tom’s actions with her had been of the illicit and highly secret kind that yields the direst consequences when discovered by adults.

  Now there was Lorelei, crouching by Barnavelt’s box with the Delias, and there was Tom, standing over her with God knows what knowledge of her in his head. Yvette had declined to join our expedition. I assumed she did not want to be near Tom after the altercation of the morning.

  Delia Ybarra suggested that we let Barnavelt out of the box while all of us were in the room. “You said yourself he’s getting more and more comfortable in the cottage,” she pleaded. “And we wouldn’t move. Really, we wouldn’t!”

  “Hatfields always move,” Condor grunted, but he was close to yielding.

  Fisher, who thought of it, as of most things connected with Barnavelt, as a naturalist’s experiment, suggested
that we stand in the bedroom doorway so the fox would have the main room to himself. Condor assented to this idea after some hesitation, and we crowded into the bedroom. Philip remained by the window until Condor called him away, and as he turned he said, “Uncle Eberhardt is coming.” But we were all so excited about seeing Barnavelt come out of the cramped cardboard box, which seemed horribly small and rundown after nearly three weeks, that we didn’t pay attention to him.

  Condor tipped the box onto its side and came to join us. I was reminded of the first day when he had shown us Barnavelt lapping milk, but the fox that emerged from the box today was a far cry from that tiny, ragged, terrified creature. Sleek and fat from Condor’s careful treatment, Barnavelt trotted out after only a minute or two. He looked at us and then moved toward the skeleton of his wooden house as if he were quite familiar with his surroundings.

  “He likes to explore it,” Condor said in a Paul Bunyan whisper. “He’s going to love living there.”

  Barnavelt was sniffing the planks that would one day be his walls and roof. He avoided the doorway to the bedroom where we were all squashed together, watching him, but the rest of the room he treated as his own territory. He was slinking along the wall beneath Condor’s table when the door slammed open and Uncle Eberhardt stomped into the room.

  “Stop!” we roared.

  Barnavelt took advantage of the opportunity almost instantly. It was astounding that he wasn’t more terrified by the banging door. He froze for only a second and then flew outside in a flash of orange fur.

  Wails of grief rose from the Delias. “Oh, he’s gone, he’s gone! You let him get away!”

  “Uncle Eberhardt,” Delia Ybarra cried, stamping her foot, “how could you do that!”

  It took a moment for Eberhardt to figure out what was happening, and by then Condor was already taking action. “All of you kids stay in the cottage,” he said. “Our only hope is that Barnavelt will come when he’s called. I’ve been training him, after all. Don’t move, any of you.”