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

by Siobhán Parkinson

  ‘Her sleep had refreshed her, so she was able to gather enough strength to pull herself out of the pit, but of course she was completely covered from beak to spare tail feathers with cement. She didn’t see any way to get the sticky stuff off, so the duckling resigned herself to a new life as a statue.

  ‘She stood very still and allowed the cement to dry, which it began to do very rapidly, and before very long it had dried into a duckling-shaped statue. The duckling was rather pleased with her new life, and she stood still by the side of the building site all day – for of course she had no option – and waited for something to happen. Being a statue had its advantages, she soon began to realise. For a start, statues don’t need to eat or drink, so she would never again have to worry about being hungry or thirsty. And as to sleep, a statue’s whole life could be looked upon as one long sleep, and she would never again have to worry about finding somewhere to lay her weary head.

  ‘That evening, one of the building workers noticed the little duckling statue by the side of the building site and wondered where it had come from. It didn’t appear to belong to anybody, so he took it home with him and put it in his garden. And the little duckling statue still stands in the building worker’s garden, rain or shine, and from that day to this, the duckling has never again had to worry about the rain, for, imprisoned inside the concrete, she never gets wet. In fact, the only sorrow in the duckling’s life is that occasionally she gets an itch at the end of her beak, and, being a statue, she is unable to lift her wing and scratch it. But that is a small price to pay for security and protection from the weather.

  ‘So, if ever you are walking past a garden and notice a duckling-shaped statue, especially if it is one with a rather disproportionately large tail, you might give the little duckling a wave and wish her good day.’

  The children clapped when she finished, and Dymphna stood up and took a little bow, holding out the hem of her raincoat with the tips of her middle fingers again.

  ‘That was a cool story,’ said Gerard, ‘but why don’t you tell us about yourself?’

  Oh no, thought Kevin, not again!

  ‘Ah, but that is my story,’ said Dymphna, picking through the peanuts for the ones with little bits of roasted skin still on them. ‘When you tell a story, it’s your story. Your telling it makes it yours. And every time you tell a story, you’re telling people something about yourself. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Gerard, because suddenly he did know, suddenly he understood.

  ‘Here, have one of these, Gerard,’ said Kevin, shoving a saucepan full of crisps under his nose. (They’d had to use saucepans, as Dymphna didn’t seem to have many bowls or dishes.) ‘Take a few,’ he said, rattling the saucepan, trying desperately to get Gerard to shut up, stop probing.

  Beverley opened the tinned fruit and passed it around, still in the tin and they all spooned it up gratefully in turn. Kevin tore bananas off the bunch and tossed one to everyone. Elizabeth helped everyone to biscuits. Dymphna proffered more shortbread, but nobody could look at another bit.

  ‘How are you going to steer in the dark, Kevin?’ asked Gerard, after they’d finished their meal and started to think about leaving Lady Island. ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

  ‘Safe as safe can be,’ said Kevin reassuringly. ‘There are no currents or rocks in the bay, and all I have to do is head for the lights of Tranarone. We can’t go wrong, I promise you. As long as everyone sits still and you keep that animal under control.’

  That animal was curled up on Gerard’s bony knees, snoring, and looking as if he couldn’t possibly cause trouble if he tried.

  ‘Good old Fat!’ said Elizabeth unexpectedly, and leaned over to stroke his dirty-cream ears. ‘I’m sure he’ll be as good as gold.’

  Gerard stared at his cousin in amazement. There was certainly nothing like a feed for putting Elizabeth in a good mood. He couldn’t remember her saying a single kind word about Fat ever before. Beverley put a motherly arm around Gerard’s shoulders and gave him a friendly little squeeze. Gerard’s amazement grew. They were starting to like him!

  ‘Before you go,’ Dymphna said, as they were clearing up and putting the furniture back in the house, ‘there’s one thing I have to ask you to promise me.’

  Uh-oh, thought Beverley. Now what? Just as they were almost free.

  ‘If you promise, I’ll tell you where the boat is.’

  ‘OK,’ said Kevin. ‘What’s the promise?’

  ‘Don’t tell them,’ Dymphna hissed, gripping Kevin’s arm.

  ‘Who? What?’

  ‘Them,’ insisted Dymphna. ‘Anyone. They’re all the same. It doesn’t matter who.’

  ‘But what are we not to tell them?’ Kevin asked, though he knew, really. Dymphna didn’t want people knowing about her crazy spells. Not that she was all that crazy really. She was quite sane in lots of ways.

  ‘That you saw me. I’m not supposed to be here, you know.’

  ‘But Dymphna,’ said Kevin gently, ‘everyone knows you’re here. They all know you in Tranarone. You come over for your messages. The postman calls with your mail.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know, I know, but don’t tell them anyhow,’ she insisted. ‘Not officially. Please, Kevin, please.’

  Dymphna’s voice wobbled. She was pleading with Kevin, and she sounded close to tears. She knew people knew she was here, of course she did, but what she was really asking was that the children wouldn’t talk about her to the people on the mainland. All she really wanted was to be left alone. She was terrified that they would come and take her away.

  ‘It’s not my island,’ she said. ‘It’s not my house. Some rich person owns it. I know they want me out, even though I pay my rent. They can’t get me out, though, sure they can’t, Kevin?’

  ‘No,’ said Kevin, ‘of course they can’t, not if you pay your rent,’ though in fact he hadn’t a clue whether they could or not. ‘Look, don’t worry, Dymphna, we won’t say a thing, not a word. I promise.’

  ‘What about them?’ Dymphna asked, still talking to Kevin, but waving her arm at the others. ‘Those city children?’

  ‘They won’t either, not a whisper,’ said Kevin. ‘We promise, don’t we everyone?’

  ‘Oh Dymphna,’ said Gerard, ‘we wouldn’t dream of it!’

  ‘What about the curly one?’ Dymphna asked Gerard. ‘She looks as if she might tell.’

  ‘Beverley? No way, she won’t, will you, Bev?’

  ‘No,’ said Beverley. ‘No, definitely not.’ And she meant it. Poor Dymphna, living her funny life out here on the island, in precarious isloation, scared to death of being evicted, or worse.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Dymphna, looking pleadingly at Beverley. ‘I don’t want to go into one of those places, you know,’ and she tapped her forehead.

  ‘No, I promise, I won’t tell a soul you’re here or that we met you or anything, really and truly I won’t, and neither will Elizabeth or Gerard.’

  ‘Right so,’ said Dymphna, with a sudden beam, and she explained to Kevin where the boat was stashed. She produced a battery-operated torch to light their way, and she stood at the gate, the garden candle flickering behind her and seeming to cast a nimbus around her, and waved them all goodbye. The Pappagenos wove in and out of the candle’s orangey light, only the tips of their tails visible, wavering as they tiptoed disdainfully around the unpleasantly damp grass.

  The children stood at the gate for a moment and waved back at Dymphna. Then Kevin swung the torch to light up the daisy-sprinkled trail back to the beach, and they were off. The daisies had all curled up for the night, but they still showed white against the grey-blue evening grass, in the light of the torch, like Hansel and Gretl’s pebbles gleaming in the moonlight.

  At the beach they found the currach where Dymphna had said it would be and clambered aboard. As Kevin pushed it out to sea and leapt on board himself at the last minute, the others hunkered together and sat as still as they could, talking in low whispers. Kevin stood i
n the boat and looked down ruefully at his jeans, streaming for the third time today. He might as well have spent the day in swimming togs.

  As the little craft pulled away from the shore, Kevin rowing strongly and confidently, the children could just make out the point of light that marked Dymphna’s garden, and they fancied they could see a shadowy figure still at the gate, still waving slowly as they plashed and rocked their way out to sea and made for the string of lights on the far shore that identified Tranarone, civilisation, parents, home.

  Chapter 21

  AFTER AND BEFORE

  ‘WHAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND,’ Elizabeth was saying, ‘is how my ankle got better so quickly.’

  It was three weeks later. There’d been plenty of trouble when the children got home. The local sergeant had questioned a few people, and the children’s parents were in a right state about them. They’d been lectured and hugged and grounded in that order. But it had all blown over by now. And they hadn’t squealed on Dymphna. They just said they’d missed the tide and then they’d found this boat and borrowed it.

  Elizabeth and Gerard were leaving Tranarone the next day, and Kevin and Beverley had come to say goodbye. They were all gathered around the round, brown table in the Ryans’ holiday bungalow kitchen.

  ‘It must have been only slightly twisted, Elizabeth,’ Beverley insisted. ‘You probably thought it was worse than it really was, because you’d had trouble with that ankle before, and you were expecting the worst.’

  ‘No,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It was genuine agony, I tell you. Really bad. And then suddenly it wasn’t any more.’

  ‘Well, it can’t have been the Johnson’s Baby Lotion, can it?’ Beverley reasoned.

  ‘No,’ Elizabeth agreed reluctantly, ‘but it might have been the water from the holy well.’

  ‘Ah rubbish!’ said Beverley vehemently. ‘Even if that sort of thing does work, surely you would have to know you were doing it. You’d have to pray and concentrate on it and that sort of thing.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I think the whole point about a miracle is that it’s – well, undeserved, if you see what I mean.’

  Beverley shook her head. She couldn’t, simply couldn’t, accept that it had been a miracle. Nothing would ever convince her.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’ said Gerard. ‘The main thing is that the ankle got better. What difference does it make how?’

  The two girls looked at the small boy pityingly. He was obviously too young to appreciate what was really important in life.

  ‘I mean,’ Gerard went on stoutly, ‘you might say it was a miracle that Fat turned up, but I don’t care what it was, just so long as he did.’

  He gave Fat a hug as he said this, and Fat grudgingly put up with it.

  ‘That’s completely different, Gerard,’ said Beverley, but patiently. ‘The chances were that Fat would turn up anyway. There’s nothing miraculous about that. Not even anything vaguely mysterious.’

  ‘But it felt like a miracle to me,’ Gerard argued.

  ‘Feelings don’t come into it,’ said Beverley, putting on her scientist’s voice again.

  ‘And what about my asthma?’ asked Gerard. ‘Has anyone noticed that I haven’t had a single attack in three weeks, since the day on the island, in fact?’

  The others looked at Gerard in amazement. They hadn’t noticed, but now that he said it, of course he was right.

  ‘Well then it can’t have been the well water, or the lotion either,’ said Kevin, going back to the earlier part of the conversation. ‘I think it was Dymphna. You can see why people think she’s a witch, if she goes around curing people like that.’

  ‘They think she’s a witch!’ said Beverley indignantly. She didn’t know whether to be more outraged at people’s ignorance in believing in such nonsense or angry that they should think such an unflattering thing about their friend. Since they’d left the island and looked back on their adventures there, they had got fonder and fonder of Dymphna, and they’d completely forgotten how scared of her they’d all been at the time. ‘That’s absurd!’

  ‘Yeh, but there it is,’ said Kevin. ‘That’s why she lives out there on that island, away from people. They would give her an awful time if she lived in the village. They did in the past. They hounded her out to the island. And that’s why nobody ever goes out there. They’re afraid of her. And you heard what she said. The people who own the island are trying to get rid of her, and if they do manage to evict her, what’s going to happen to her? She’s afraid they’re going to put her into one of those hospitals.’

  ‘Just because she’s a bit peculiar?’ asked Beverley. ‘They can’t do that!’

  ‘Well, she’s more than a bit peculiar,’ said Kevin, remembering the wailing and the dancing.

  ‘But Dymphna’s a sweetie,’ said Beverley. ‘She’s no more a witch than you are, Kevin.’

  ‘I thought you said she was weird!’ said Gerard indignantly.

  ‘I never did,’ said Beverley. ‘That was Elizabeth who said that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I didn’t mean it unkindly. But she is pretty eccentric, you must admit, drinking her tea black rather than milk the cow! I mean, I ask you.’

  ‘She’s probably just leaving the milk for the calf,’ said Kevin. ‘That’s just good farming.’

  ‘Yes, but those names. And keeping the cow in the parlour,’ Elizabeth went on. She rather liked the idea that Dymphna might be a witch – the good sort, of course. ‘And the wailing, remember the wailing?’

  Everyone remembered the wailing. It brought them out in goosebumps again, just thinking about it. But did it mean Dymphna was mad, or mad enough to be put away? Probably not. What harm was it doing?

  ‘The thing I really don’t understand is about the stories,’ said Kevin. ‘I mean, where did they come from, and why did we tell them? I never told a story in my life before, did you?’

  ‘It’s something to do with the island,’ said Gerard. ‘It makes people tell stories. It must be a story island. And remember what Dymphna said? Everyone tells their own story.’

  ‘What do you mean, Gerard?’ asked Beverley. Really the little lad was losing the run of himself. Maybe he’d got too much sun.

  ‘Well, take Dymphna’s story, for example,’ said Gerard, getting enthusiastic now. ‘The duckling who didn’t like the rain. Well, that’s really Dymphna, you see. She’s different, she’s peculiar, she doesn’t do the sort of things everyone else does and like the things other people like. She’s like the duckling, and like the duckling, she ran away, looking for somewhere new to live, where she would be able to be different in peace. And then the duckling got covered over in cement and that made her happy, remember? That’s what Dymphna wants, to be safe and protected and out of the rain, only the rain you see in the story means the way ducklings are supposed to live, so in Dymphna’s case it means the way other people live, all ordinary, like us, with lawnmowers and insurance policies and school uniforms and everything, see?’

  ‘Golly!’ said Beverley. ‘I think you’re right, Gerard. How did you work all that out?’

  ‘Well, I just liked her so much,’ said Gerard. ‘I knew she wasn’t bad, even if she might be a bit mad. And I just kept thinking and thinking about it, and wondering about her and trying to work out why she behaved so oddly some of the time and so normally the rest of the time, and I thought she must have been afraid of something. And then she made us promise not to tell about her, because she was afraid of whoever owns the island trying to get rid of her. I think she must be scared of people coming to the island, in case they’re coming to take her away, and so when she saw us right there in her kitchen, she must have been terrified, and so as soon as she got a chance to get away from us, she started that awful wailing – I said at the time it was because she was upset. It sounded like … like despair! And I felt so sorry for her when I heard it, and then I thought, gee, she really thinks she’s blown it now, because now we all know ho
w nutty she is, and she’s worse off than ever, and so then she tried to behave more normally, and she did some of the time, but she couldn’t keep it up, because she’s so used to living on her own and doing whatever she feels like. But then she needed us to understand how threatened she felt, how much she needed to be protected, and so she told us the story, like a sort of code so we’d understand. Only she didn’t give us the key to the code, because that’s not how stories work. You have to work them out for yourself and make your own sense of them, so then she had to make us promise too, you see, in case we didn’t understand the code.’

  ‘I think you’re right, Gerard,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Wow! I didn’t know you could be so smart.’

  ‘Oh gee,’ said Gerard, blushing and hiding his face in Fat’s fur.

  ‘Poor Dymphna,’ said Beverley.

  ‘Yeah, poor old thing,’ said Elizabeth, and the others nodded in agreement.

  ‘Anyways, we better get a move on,’ said Kevin after a while. ‘It’s teatime. Are you ready, Beverley?’

  Kevin and Beverley stood up to go. Beverley kissed Elizabeth and gave Gerard a hug. He was embarrassed and delighted at the same time, but he tried not to squirm too much. Kevin shook hands with them both and said ‘Pssst!’ loudly in Fat’s ear, by way of farewell.