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

by Siobhán Parkinson

  ‘Wow!’ said Gerard, but whether in astonishment at Elizabeth’s cure or at Beverley’s wording was not clear.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ said Kevin ruefully, fingering his amputated sleeves. ‘It’s a waste of my second best shirt. That’s what it is.’

  Chapter 19

  THE BANQUET

  A SORT OF PEACE HAD FINALLY DESCENDED on the kitchen. It took Beverley a moment to realise what it was: the rain had stopped at last. They were no longer being assailed by its noise. Only an occasional drip came from the roof and landed with a quiet plop in a puddle outside. Better and better – now they could get out of here. Yes!

  ‘I think it’s time we were getting on our way,’ Beverley said tentatively, looking around at the others. ‘We’ll have to get back to the beach by the time the tide is out again, so we can walk home. What time is that by the way, Gerard?’

  Gerard looked at her blankly. He’d found out about the morning tide, but it hadn’t occurred to him to find out about the evening low tide for getting home again.

  ‘Oh, it’s long past low tide,’ said Dymphna carelessly.

  ‘What?’ asked Beverley dismayed. They’d just got Elizabeth marching fit and it looked as though all their problems were over. And now this. Were they going to be trapped on this island for ever? Beverley looked at Dymphna with a new distrust. ‘You can’t mean it. What time is low tide? What time is it now anyway?’

  She cast an irritated look at her stopped watch and rattled it in frustration. She tried rattling her brain too. Don’t be silly, she told herself. This is not Dymphna’s fault, and she is not trying to trap us here. But it did look as if they weren’t going to be able to get off the island this evening. That meant they’d have to stay here overnight. Goodness knows what Dymphna would be like at night. She was weird enough in the daytime. And anyway, where would they sleep? Beverley looked doubtfully at Elizabeth’s sofa. There were four of them after all, and only one sofa. She didn’t fancy snuggling up with Dymphna (the cow) in the parlour. And she didn’t even want to think what Dymphna’s spare bedroom was like, if she had one.

  And their parents didn’t know where they were. They’d be out of their minds. Elizabeth had been right to want to leave them a note or tell them their plans. Why hadn’t she listened to her? Why had she been so intent on punishing her parents? Just because they were a bit irritable at times. They were OK really, better than lots of parents she could mention. She was a bit irritable herself at times. And now look! She’d be in deep trouble after this if they stayed out all night.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Dymphna comfortably.

  Nobody seemed to have a working watch, and there was no sign of a clock in this kitchen.

  ‘But then how can you know it’s too late?’ asked Beverley.

  ‘I just do know,’ said Dymphna smugly. ‘I always know when the tide’s out. I feel it in my veins. And it’s right in now. It won’t be out again till morning. You can go and look if you like, but I’m telling you.’

  The children sat in silence for a moment, taking this uncomfortable information in. Dymphna was probably right. She knew this island and its sea better than anyone. She’d be sure to know about the tide. So now what was going to happen? Their parents would have to ring the Guards. They’d be Missing Persons. There might be a child-hunt for them, with volunteers dragging the rockpools and sweeping the hills. There’d be an SOS message on the evening news. There might be a murder inquiry. Some innocent person might get arrested. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a phone?’ asked Beverley, clutching at straws. A woman who kept a pet cow and calf in the parlour and thought you could cure sprained ankles with Johnson’s Baby Lotion was unlikely to have a telephone.

  ‘Oh no,’ Dymphna cackled, amused at the very idea. ‘I haven’t even got electricity, not to mind a phone. And as you see, I have well water only.’

  ‘Oh no!’ wailed Beverley. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Dymphna.

  ‘I mean, we’re going to be stranded here. How are we going to get home? I’m hungry. And I want my mother!’

  Beverley could hardly believe she’d said that last bit. It was just an infantile streak brought on by panic. She was embarrassed she’d let it slip out.

  ‘So do I,’ Gerard chipped in.

  Silly child. His mother was at home in Dublin, miles away, probably listening to the Garda SOS message at this very moment.

  ‘Well, why don’t you take the boat, in that case?’ asked Dymphna, as if it were the most obvious suggestion in the world.

  ‘What boat?’ snapped Beverley. ‘You haven’t got a phone. You haven’t got electricity. You haven’t even got proper running water. You’re not going to tell me now that a friendly packet steamer trundles by every evening to see if you have any passengers for the mainland.’

  ‘Arrah whisht!’ said Dymphna, showing irritation for the first time. ‘Of course it doesn’t. But I have got a small currach.’

  ‘A currach! One of those black beetly boats?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s wonderful! Will you row us home? Please, Dymphna.’

  ‘Well, now,’ said Dymphna thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think my little curracheen would take four half-grown children, a large adult female and a cat.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Beverley, disappointed at their chance of freedom being snatched away as soon as it had appeared.

  But Dymphna went on: ‘I think young Mulrooney here will have to row ye.’

  ‘Kevin, can you row?’

  He didn’t look like the type to be able to handle a currach.

  ‘Yeh,’ said Kevin shiftily.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Beverley was doubtful. She wanted to trust Kevin, but she had no idea how he would cope at sea in the dark.

  ‘I’m positive. Amn’t I a fisherman’s son? My da, before he – well, anyway, he was a fisherman in those days. I often went out with him. I was learning. That was before.’

  ‘But if we take the boat, how will Dymphna get it back again?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘It’s a bit like that puzzle where the man has to get a fox, a goose and a bag of corn across a stretch of water, and can only take two items at a time. Suppose Kevin took two of us ashore, and then came back for the other one and Dymphna, and then Dymphna could row home again.’

  ‘That’s far too complicated,’ said Dymphna. ‘You just take the boat, and tie it up ashore. I’ll walk over some day during the week at low tide and row it back later.’

  The children were impressed by the sensibleness of this. Could they have imagined that Dymphna was mad?

  ‘If you’re sure,’ said Beverley politely.

  ‘Now, did somebody say they were hungry?’ asked Dymphna, ignoring Beverley’s politeness.

  ‘Well, we’ve only had some half-melted chocolate and a few pieces of shortbread since breakfast,’ Beverley explained.

  ‘But why didn’t you say so?’ Dymphna was suddenly quite the hostess.

  ‘You said you only had shortbread,’ said Beverley, ‘and we’ve had some of that. We can’t very well eat you out of house and home. Then you’d go hungry.’

  ‘Not at all!’ said Dymphna. ‘It’s true that I only have shortbread in the house,’ she went on slyly, ‘but outside in the back hall,’ (she seemed not to count the back hall as part of the house) ‘I have my messages that I picked up from the pier at Tranarone this morning. I send a list over every week with the postman, you know, and Mrs Mulrooney packs me up a cardboard box and delivers it to the pier. Very convenient.’

  While Dymphna was wittering on about her grocery arrangements, and pointing out the neatness of it all, Beverley was wondering what there might be to eat. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about food for some time, but now suddenly images of beef stew and fried eggs and spinach lasagne started to float before her mind’s nose, so to speak.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Dymphna was saying, ‘and now I come to think of it,
I also have some stuff that I found on the beach this morning.’

  ‘You found food on the beach! That must have been our supplies!’ Beverley didn’t know whether to be indignant or relieved.

  ‘What supplies?’ asked Dymphna, not sounding in the least concerned. Obviously, anything she found on this island she considered as belonging to her. Did she think the fairies had left the food for her or what? And since when did the fairies pack their gifts in rucksacks? And why had she pretended earlier not to have any food apart from the shortbread? Could it be that she was lonely, and this was her way of trying to keep the children with her? And yet she’d offered them the currach to get home in. Beverley just couldn’t make this strange woman out at all.

  ‘We brought food with us for our pilgrimage,’ Elizabeth explained.

  ‘Expedition,’ Beverley corrected her.

  ‘But we left it on the beach,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘We thought it had been swept out to sea when the tide came in.’

  ‘Well, isn’t it lucky I found it and rescued it so?’ said Dymphna complacently, as if she had done them a favour by snitching their grub, which in a sense she had. Before they had time to be angry, she went on, gleefullly: ‘I know, let’s have a farewell banquet before you leave. Gerard, will you bring in the food? Beverley, find a few saucepans like a good girl.’

  Really, this woman had a nerve, thought Beverley. First she stole their food and now here she was issuing party invitations on the strength of the stolen goodies.

  ‘What’s that yoke by the way?’ Dymphna was pointing at the sagging garden flare, which was slouching against Elizabeth’s sofa.

  ‘It’s a sort of a candle,’ Beverley explained.

  ‘Well, that’s great. Can we light it? I’m out of candles, and it’s getting dark in here.’

  The dark that had come with the storm had never lifted, and now the dark of evening was setting in as well, and the foliage-shaded kitchen was thick with shadows. Kevin got all four rings of the gas stove going, and by its eerie light he started sorting out the food that Gerard had brought in, looking like an Oriental field-worker in his towel-sarong. He had hung his wet clothes on a hanging clothes drier that swung high above the cooker, so that they could dry in the heat given off by the cooking.

  ‘I think it’s only meant for outside,’ said Beverley doubtfully, meaning the garden candle. ‘It might be dangerous indoors, there might be fumes.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Elizabeth, inspired, ‘why don’t we light it in the garden and have a picnic out there?’

  ‘A picnic in the dark!’ Typical Elizabeth, Beverley thought. Fanciful to the last.

  ‘I think it’s probably lighter out there than it is in here,’ said Elizabeth practically. ‘It stays light for ages at this time of year. And anyway, if we light the flare it won’t be dark.’

  ‘But the garden will be wet,’ Beverley protested.

  ‘I know, but we don’t need to sit on the ground, like an ordinary picnic. Let’s take the table and chairs outside. We can cook in here and then spread everything out on the kitchen table in the garden.’

  Beverley still looked doubtful, but Elizabeth took over at this point. ‘Come on, lads,’ she cried, not waiting for Beverley’s approval. ‘Let’s get this furniture shifted.’ And up she hopped as if she’d never had the slightest thing wrong with her ankle and started lifting chairs.

  The garden was wet, of course, but, as Elizabeth had said, it was both lighter and warmer than it had been in the kitchen, and they had a most glorious picnic. The sky was still filled with clouds, piled up like dirty pillows, but there was an orange glow all the same, gleaming through just at the horizon, which might have been the sunset. Elizabeth stuck the garden candle in the soaked earth, and lit it. It took immediately and lit up a small circle of rain-sparkled garden. Its reflection in the window stared back at it and enlarged the glowing circle.

  Within this circle, Dymphna and the children sat around the table, illuminated by the hot and flickering light of the garden flare, their feet cold in the wet grass and their faces scorched golden-red like the faces of American Indians in the torchlight. Dymphna, still wearing her coat belted with blue twine and her sawn-off wellies, presided over the meal, graciously passing plates and doling out helpings. The evening air was seeping with the wet scent of summer flowers as they dipped fried sausages wrapped in slices of bread into tepid tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce.

  ‘Tell us about yourself, Dymphna,’ said Gerard, eating sardines with his fingers and secretly passing every second one to Fat (except it wasn’t a secret at all, as everyone saw him at it, but nobody mentioned it, even though Fat had already had the best part of a tin of tuna fish).

  There they went again, thought Kevin. Why couldn’t these townie kids leave well enough alone and not go pestering her? Goodness knows how she might react to personal questions. He coughed loudly, partly to distract Dymphna and partly to try to warn Gerard off.

  ‘About myself?’ said Dymphna dreamily. ‘Well, let’s see now.’

  Chapter 20

  DYMPHNA’S TALE

  ‘ONCE UPON A TIME,’ DYMPHNA BEGAN.

  Then she stopped and cocked her head on one side, just as the seal had done when it was looking at Beverley, and thought for a moment.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ she said again, ‘there was a duckling who hated the rain. Every time it rained, she waddled for shelter. All her brothers and sisters – dozens of them there were, though actually some of them were really cousins, but nobody bothered too much in this farmyard about who exactly belonged to whom – well, all her brothers and sisters and the other ducklings in the farmyard adored the rain. They would wake up out of their sleep at the sound of it and slither into the pond and swim around ecstatically with their little beaks opening and shutting with delight. They spun around in circles and did little twirls and pirouettes, as if they were afraid they couldn’t get wet enough and they wanted to be in as many places as possible at once so as to get multiple doses of raindrops. But at the first hint of rain, this little duck put her head down to make sure as much as possible of the rain ran off down her beak like a slide, and she made for cover.

  ‘The adult ducks would quack their annoyance at her and tell her to get out into the rain and not to be so unducklike, and if they found her huddled under a water-lily or behind a dock leaf during a rainstorm, they would snap at her tail feathers until she was forced out into the open again.

  ‘Unfortunately for the duckling, there was a particularly wet summer that year of her ducklinghood, so she spent most of her time being totally miserable. One wet night when all the other ducks and ducklings were asleep and for once missing a chance to get wet, the duckling decided that she had had enough of this miserable life and that she was going to run away to a hot country. So she packed up all her belongings – which consisted of two dead caterpillars and a frog’s leg that she had saved from supper that evening and a spare set of feathers her mother had given her to snuggle down into on cold nights – and off she set. She arranged the spare feathers among her own tail feathers, so that she looked like a duckling whose back half was trying to be a gosling, and she tucked the two dead caterpillars and the frog’s leg under one wing, and set off at a waddle to seek her fortune and follow the sun.

  ‘She wandered off over bogs and meadows and cornfields and across motorways and through woods and forests and housing estates, and when the morning came, she was still waddling along bravely, all alone except for the two dead caterpillars and the frog’s leg. She was delighted to see the sun coming up in the morning, having travelled all night in the dark and the damp. She rewarded herself for having got so far by eating one of the caterpillars and the frog’s leg. They didn’t taste as fresh and juicy as the caterpillars and frog’s legs she had had the previous evening, naturally enough, considering they had travelled all night in the duckling’s oxter.

  ‘She waddled along a bit more in the sunshine after that, but by now she was starting to feel ver
y weary. She wondered how far she had come, but she had no way of knowing. She wondered if she was in a hot country yet – she didn’t know that Ireland was an island and that she would have to travel over the sea before she had any chance of getting to a hot country.

  ‘As she waddled along more and more slowly, wondering where she was and how far from the tropics, she met a man carrying a load of hay. The hay looked soft and warm and sweet and inviting, and as soon as she saw it, the duckling thought that she would like to sleep in it.

  ‘She asked the man if he would barter a load of his hay for a dead caterpillar, but the man just laughed and laughed and didn’t even answer her.

  ‘So the duckling waddled sadly and wearily along some more, and then she met a woman driving a mule. The mule was pulling a cart full of sticks. The sticks looked like a very uncomfortable sort of a place for a duckling to sleep, but by now she was so tired she thought she could sleep on a load of sticks, so she asked the woman if she would barter part of her load of sticks for a dead caterpillar, but the woman got such a shock to hear a duck talking that she didn’t wait to hear the bargain she was offering. She just gee’ed her mule up into a canter and trundled off out of earshot with her cartload of sticks.

  ‘By now the duck was desperate for someplace to sleep, but still she could find nowhere suitable, so when she met a cement mixer coming along the road she didn’t even ask the driver if she could have some of his cement to sleep on, she just made one huge effort and flew up and in at the mouth of the cement mixer.

  ‘When she raised her wings to flap them so that she could make her valiant little flight, of course the second dead caterpillar fell out of her oxter, so there was her lunch gone. But the little duck was by now too tired to care about food.

  ‘Inside the cement mixer, she flew round and round a bit to get her bearings, and she soon realised that this was no place for a duckling to be trying to get some sleep. But she was so desperately sleepy that eventually her little wings stopped flapping and she fell down into the cement mixture and sank right into the middle of it. The blades of the cement mixer turned the cement relentlessly, and the duckling with it, like a rather large plum in a cake. Up and down and round and round the cement mixer she went, completely coated in cement, but the little duckling didn’t know a thing about it, for she was by now fast asleep. Presently the cement mixer came to a halt, and the cement was poured out at the back of the machine, into a pit on a building site. When the movement of the machine stopped, the duckling woke up and felt herself being slowly catapulted through the air and into this pit.