Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows, One Witch (Maybe)

by Siobhán Parkinson

  Elizabeth looked around to see if someone was listening in to their conversation, somebody who didn’t like what they heard. But she couldn’t see anyone.

  The rational explanation of what happened next was that Gerard, one arm full of cow parsley and breathing carefully, was holding Fat awkwardly and pinched or poked him unintentionally in some way. And yet, Gerard had the impression that someone or something else had provoked or irritated or frightened Fat. Whatever the reason, he leapt with a hiss out of Gerard’s arms, cleared the hedge and landed lightly in front of the sheep.

  The sheep lowered its long, startled face to examine Fat. Fat arched his back and started a quickstep with the sheep’s ankles. The sheep raised its hooves delicately in an effort to avoid the cat, but each time it lowered them, Fat stepped in again between its feet. The sheep started to panic and backed off with a graceless stumbling movement. The cat merely stepped daintily after it, still weaving in and out between its forepaws.

  ‘My God,’ said Elizabeth, ‘that cat is worrying the sheep.’

  ‘Cats don’t worry sheep. That’s dogs.’

  ‘I know, but if ever I saw a worried sheep, it’s that one.’

  Certainly the sheep looked intensely concerned.

  ‘Here, I have to rescue the poor creature,’ said Elizabeth, thrusting the garden candle at Gerard.

  ‘Oh, I think he’s all right. I don’t think the sheep will trample him or anything.’

  ‘Janey Mac, Gerard O’Connor! It’s the sheep I’m thinking about, not that feline freak!’

  Elizabeth put her two arms out as if she were doing the breaststroke, to push the greenery apart, and with a graceful movement she sank into the cool and creamy pool of cow parsley, meadowsweet, elder and woodbine, releasing an intensity of summersweet scents as the impact of her body bruised the flowerheads.

  Gerard watched her being swallowed up by the undergrowth as if by the waters of a still lake. And then he finally gave way to the asthma attack he’d felt coming on since morning. He sat down hard on the ground and bent over double with the effort of fighting for his breath. He groped in his pocket for his inhaler. Not there! Panic made his breath come even harder. Mustn’t panic, he thought, must keep it in control. Just keep breathing, he told himself. He patted his other pocket. There was something there, but it was the wrong shape. It was a chocolate bar, not an inhaler. He must have heard the cry of dismay, followed by a sharply in-drawn breath that was quickly released with a yell of pain, but because he was so taken up with his breathing, for a moment it didn’t register with Gerard that this was Elizabeth screaming, yelling, bellowing as she went down.

  ‘Aaaaaaaah!’ she roared as her body disappeared. ‘There’s a flippin’ ditch!’

  In a moment she came up for air, her arms flailing wildly now.

  ‘I’ve twisted my ankle, blast and blow and double-blast. Oh! Oh! Help! It hurts!’ And down went Elizabeth again, sinking once more into the ditch.

  At last Gerard realised that Elizabeth had fallen with a twisting motion onto her ankle, not simply swum gracefully through the hedgerow. With a sudden flash of memory he yanked the hood of his sweatshirt right down over his head and scrabbled madly with his fingers for the hidden pocket inside the hood. Yes, there it was, hard and comforting under his fingers. He rooted it out quickly, yanked the cap off and frantically stuck the inhaler in his mouth, pressing the release button wildly. He drank eagerly, gratefully, at the blessed mist that filled his mouth and immediately his breathing started to come more easily. He took long slow breaths, forcing himself to concentrate on his breathing, though he could hear Elizabeth’s yelling as if through a curtain.

  As soon as he could breathe easily, he stood up, kicking the garden flare aside, and reached his arm into the spot where he had last seen Elizabeth.

  ‘Here, Liz! Catch hold of my hand!’ he yelled.

  Elizabeth’s arm appeared again out of the sea of green and wavered in the air. Gerard grabbed it by the wrist and heaved, still breathing deeply and evenly. Elizabeth emerged like a lumbering shark caught on a mackerel line. Gerard thought his arm was going to snap at the elbow, and his lungs felt as if they would burst, but he held on for dear life and slowly hauled Elizabeth out of the ditch and back onto the grassy path. In the struggle, Gerard’s watch strap snapped, and his watch slithered into the ditch. Blast, he thought briefly. Luckily it had only been a nasty plasticky one he’d got in a pound shop.

  Elizabeth lay for a moment gasping for breath, still a bit like a beached shark, and Gerard lay gasping beside her. He opened his inhaler again and took another long in-breath before capping it and tucking it away in his hood. Elizabeth coiled her body into a foetal shape so that she could grab her ankle between her two hands and cradle it. Gently she eased herself into a sitting position, and, still using both hands, she hauled the damaged foot across her other knee and hunched over to examine it.

  Both her feet were brown with muck from the floor of the ditch. Carefully, Elizabeth eased off her runners and turned them upside down to drain. Then she peeled off her sopping socks and chafed her sore foot, rocking back and forth with a grieving motion.

  Gerard sat miserably beside her and fixed his eyes on her ankle. It was starting to swell already.

  ‘Do you reckon it’s broken?’ he asked at last.

  ‘No. I can wiggle my toes – just about. But it’s badly sprained.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just a twist. Maybe it’ll be OK in a minute or two.’

  ‘No, it’s a sprain all right. I have a weakness in that ankle. Any sort of a twist on it and it puffs up like a balloon. I’m rightly stuck now! And no chance of getting help. It’s all Bossy Beverley’s fault – she just had to keep this whole thing a secret. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.’

  ‘Now what are we going to do?’ asked Gerard, anxiously.

  ‘Apart from a burning desire to drown your cat in the deepest, muckiest stretch of the ditch, I can’t suggest anything we might do right this minute.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Gerard.

  Elizabeth looked at his small, worried face and gave him a crooked wink. She’d noticed his desperate sucking at the inhaler. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said comfortingly. ‘Let’s just sit and think for a bit.’

  They sat and thought. Nothing occurred to them, except that the others had the lunch rations. Neither of them mentioned this gloomy fact, but both of them thought it. And although they’d just had breakfast, they were both suddenly very, very hungry.

  Chapter 8

  THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND

  THERE WAS NO BEACH, OR HARDLY ANY, on the other side of the island, just a cliff dropping sheer to the sea. Beverley lay down carefully on her front and poked her head over the edge. Some feet below she could see the greeny water belting itself furiously against the rocks and spewing up masses of white foam like a child in a tantrum foaming vigorously at the mouth. It was hard to believe this was the same sea that they had left less than an hour ago, lapping its way calmly up the beach. It wasn’t as though the weather was rough. The sky had cleared now to a pure blue, with just rags of cloud scattered over its surface, and there was only a slight breeze, but still the sea foamed and raged against the cliff.

  Beverley looked out to sea. Everything was stiller out there, the mass of water undulating rhythmically under the clear sky. It was only here that the sea boiled and roared. It must have something to do with the shape of the island on this side, jutting out awkwardly into the current and irritating the water by diverting it from the way it wanted to go, so that it lashed out in anger at the rocks and cliffs that trapped it against its will.

  As she gazed at it, the sea tilted. Beverley gasped at the clenching sensation this caused deep down in her insides, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the sea was just where it should be, not tilting, but still spitting and raging around the rocks. Then suddenly it tilted alarmingly again, and the sensation came back. It was like when an elderly lift arrives in the
basement with a jolt and your stomach does a flip inside your abdomen. Again, she closed her eyes against the sensation.

  Gingerly, Beverley wriggled backwards, away from the edge. Even though she was lying down, she could feel her knees shaking and her hands were cold and clammy. Her head was light, light as a window, light as a spinning glass sphere. She put her hands up to steady her spinning head, and lay there with her palms pressed against the flaps of her ears so that her head rang with the sound of the waves.

  She could hear muffled whoops away above her, like the cries of playing children, fields away. Carefully, she unstopped her ears and tuned in, but without opening her eyes yet. The shaking had stopped. She levered herself onto her elbows. Her stomach was in its rightful place. She sat up altogether. She still felt all right. Her knees were on a nodding acquaintance with each other again. But the whooping was still going on. Yes, it was definitely real, not just a noise in her head.

  ‘Look, Beverley, look!’

  The voice was almost down at her ear level now. She could feel the breath of its owner at her neck. She opened her eyes and looked into Kevin’s. They were hazel, speckled, shadowy. Well, he might ask how she was feeling, she thought irritably. But he didn’t. He didn’t know there was anything wrong. He merely repeated: ‘Look, look! Turn around and look, can’t you!’

  ‘Look at what?’ Beverley asked, carefully not looking anywhere near the sea.

  ‘It’s seals. Out on the rocks. A whole family of them. Or a tribe maybe. At least a dozen. I bet you’ve never seen seals this close before.’He didn’t add that this was the sort of thing you didn’t get to see very often if you lived in the city.

  Beverley enclosed her knees in her arms and didn’t look around. She could hear the seals barking on the wind.

  After a moment, she turned her head seawards with infinite care. From her sitting position she could see the open sea, but not the cliffs and crags and the raging inlet directly below. The ocean rose and fell with a calm rhythm, as if to say, Nothing to be afraid of, everything under control.

  Beverley believed the voice of the sea. She found herself adjusting her breathing to its rhythm and the deep, salty breaths she took had a calming effect. She rolled onto her stomach again and started to scan the seascape in front of her for seals. She hadn’t seen them when she had looked over the cliff before. They must have been too close to the shore, out of her carefully maintained line of vision. After a moment she spotted them, quite close, as she had expected, ducking and diving, fishing, slithering off the rocks and into the water and swooping underwater. They were very beautiful. Kevin had been right to make her look at them, and no, she had never seen seals so close before, except in the zoo. Even as she watched, one of the seals left the others and started to swim lazily towards the island.

  ‘It’s coming ashore!’ said Kevin. ‘And look, there’s another one. And another.’ He was jabbing his finger in the air, trying to make Beverley see them as he saw them.

  And sure enough, like swallows making a collective decision to migrate, the seals seemed all to have agreed to swim towards the cliffs.

  There was a tiny shaly V-shaped beach in a crevice in the cliffs, and it was for here that the seals were aiming. Kevin counted them bellying onto the beach – four, six, seven, nine.

  ‘Beverley,’ he said, ‘would you like to see them closer? Why don’t we climb down to the beach and get a really good look at them? Come on.’

  Beverley froze. She dug her fingers into the tough, sparse grass that grew at the cliff’s edge, as if to reassure herself that she was on dry land.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘No. It’s dangerous. No don’t, Kevin, please don’t,’ she pleaded.

  ‘It isn’t dangerous at all. Not a bit!’ said Kevin. ‘Sure it’s only a few feet and aren’t there loads of footholds? I can see them from here. We’ll make it down easy, no bother to us.’

  ‘No, I’m not going,’ said Beverley, feeling panic starting up again somewhere in the depths of her insides – her stomach, perhaps, or her pancreas or spleen, somewhere juicy and gurgling and turbulent. She backed away from the cliff again, slithering on her front, and buried her face in the grass, feeling little blades of it tickling her nose, and breathing in the salty, earthy scent of the sandy soil.

  ‘Spoilsport!’ said Kevin, already lowering himself over the cliff edge, his back to the sea.

  Beverley looked up tentatively and watched Kevin’s head disappearing over the edge of the cliff. No, she mustn’t look. She closed her eyes again. My God! Suppose he slipped and fell. What would she do? She’d have to rescue him. Panicky feelings started to multiply. She swallowed, as if she could eat her panic, push it down her gullet, into her stomach and digest it. All she could hear were pounding waves, and even though she kept her eyes shut tight she could see endlessly tumbling images of Kevin and herself, herself and Kevin, falling, falling, Kevin and Beverley, Beverley and Kevin, head over heels and heels over head, and all the time falling. She must keep her eyes shut. If she opened them, they might reach the end of their fall and be smashed to pieces on the rocks. As long as she kept her eyes tightly closed, they would just tumble and tumble, rolling images captured against the insides of her eyelids.

  ‘Kevin!’ she called out, but there was no reply. Perhaps her cry was lost in the sounds of the sea and the seals barking, or perhaps the wind picked it up and carried it away. ‘Kevin!’ she called again, louder than before, still not daring to look, but seeing him all the same, hurtling to his death. ‘Kevin!’ Her throat ached with screaming his name, but there came no reply.

  She was going to have to look. Panic fizzed in her head. She crawled forward, to the edge of the cliff, and looked over. Kevin was sprawled against the rocky surface of the cliff.

  ‘Kevin!’ she yelled again, the fizzing in her ears so violent now that she could hardly hear her own voice. This time Kevin must have heard, for he raised his head and then he raised an arm to wave at her. My God! He shouldn’t let go like that. Was he signalling to her to come and rescue him? Yes, he must be. He must be stuck, pinned to the cliffside.

  The secret of conquering vertigo is not to look. She knew that. Swallowing again, she closed her eyes, turned around to face inland and eased her feet over the cliff, her bottom sticking awkwardly out to sea. She found footholds easily, just by kicking with her toes along the face of the cliff until they settled into nooks. She opened her eyes again now, to watch the progress of the top part of her body as she eased herself further down. Her hands left the grassy cliff top and found roots and jutting rocks to grasp. There was a scab on one of her thumbs, where she had cut herself with a breadknife. She concentrated her gaze on that and tried to move automatically, without thinking about what she was doing.

  Before long she was level with Kevin. Now what was she going to do? How was she going to effect this rescue? She hadn’t thought about this problem – she had been concentrating all her energies on reaching him.

  Kevin smiled at her.

  ‘So you’re after changing your mind,’ he said. ‘That’s great. It’s really dead easy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Changing? – rubbish – came to – rescue,’ Beverley panted, gripping the cliff-face desperately with her knees.

  Kevin’s body started to shake alarmingly.

  ‘Don’t!’ she yelled at him. ‘What is it? Oh, stop! You’re making me dizzy!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kevin spluttered, but still his body shook. ‘But sure what would I need rescuing for, Beverley? It was only waving I was!’

  He was laughing. He was laughing at her. She had summoned up her deepest reserves of courage to save him – for nothing. And now he was laughing at her. How dare he!

  ‘Stoppit!’ she screeched again. ‘Just stop it, you blithering, overgrown, stupid, lunatic, idiotic boy!’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

  ‘You’re not offending me. You’re terrorising me. You’ll fall right back if you laugh like that. You’l
l lose your grip.’

  Beverley didn’t know where she found the breath for this absurd conversation, but she had to make him stop.

  ‘No, I won’t.’ Kevin sobered up. ‘We’re nearly there, anyways. Come on so.’

  With that, Kevin started to slide down the cliff-face, away from Beverley. Sobbing with terror, frustration and indignation, Beverley buried her face in the gritty rock. In a moment she heard a thump. Kevin had landed on the beach he’d been making for.

  ‘Come on, Bev!’

  She heard his voice not far below, but she couldn’t respond to it. She couldn’t move from this spot. All she wanted in the world was not to have to move. She would happily die here, now, transfixed to this cliff, if only she didn’t have to move a muscle. If she moved, she would fall into the cauldron of the sea, she knew she would. Anything would be better than moving.

  ‘Easy does it,’ Kevin’s voice said, closer to her now. He must have started back up the cliff. ‘Easy now.’

  She felt pressure on her ankle. Frantically, she pulled away, but his pull was stronger than hers and eventually she had to give way to it for fear the struggle would make her lose her grip. As soon as she did, she felt Kevin’s hand guiding her foot to a new foothold. Then he tugged the other ankle. This time she went with him. He lodged that foot too in a foothold, lower than the first one. Her body slithered down an inch or two, her hands rasping along the cliff-face. Foothold by foothold he eased her down until she stood gasping and sobbing on the gritty little beach, her arms still akimbo against the rockface and her face pressed to the cliff’s unyielding bosom.

  Kevin reached up and brought her arms down by her sides. Then he turned her around, to face the sea. She could hear screaming, now, and she felt hot tears on her neck. They had streamed down her face so fast she hadn’t felt them on her cheeks. She could feel them now, though, gathering at the neckline of her T-shirt.

  Suddenly, there was a powerful, black, heavy smell and a sensation of dark and warmth and Beverley felt herself being rocked. She could still hear the screaming, but it sounded muffled. She didn’t care who or what was screaming. She just wanted the rocking to go on. She wondered for a bit about the smell. She couldn’t decide whether she liked it or not. But she liked being rocked. Someone used to rock her like that, she dimly remembered. It must have been her mother. Could it have been? She wouldn’t have thought her mother was the rocking type. But perhaps she had been, once.