by Julia Jones
As soon as she felt herself being lifted up, Vicky’s sobs ceased. Donny worried that he was holding her rather tightly. He wasn’t used to babies and was frightened he might drop her if she wriggled. He was glad he was still in his river clothes. She was not a hygienic sight and, close up, she was smelly.
“Um, she’s a bit smelly,” he said to Gerald.
“She can’t be. I only changed her nappy half an hour ago and she’s had nothing since.” He had a sniff. “Oh. Yes. Well, I can’t deal with that now. I’m trying to cook supper.”
Donny supposed he could put up with it. Vicky’s small body felt surprisingly warm and solid in his arms. He ignored the reek and hugged her protectively. It was nice to be touching another person.
“Does Luke know where her nappies are?” They’d done a bit of baby care in sex ed at school. He could give it a go.
“I’ll come in a minute. Now, please, just let me do one thing at a time. All of you.”
Donny took the hint and shut the kitchen door behind him as he left. A moment later he heard Radio Four come quietly back on again.
He looked into the sitting room. Luke started guiltily. He’d turned on the TV and was watching a game show without any sound. Donny grinned at him, pointed at the closed door of the kitchen and left the room again carrying Vicky upstairs.
He tried Anna’s door but it was shut and there was no answer when he knocked. He hadn’t realised she was that offended with him. So then he tried the adults’ bathroom.
“Don’t tell,” he said to Vicky, quiet and cosy and niffy in his arms.
He’d guessed that this was where her things might be and he was right. What lost him completely was that he couldn’t see any nappies. A changing mat, hypo-allergenic baby wipes, a bucket and a neat pile of folded white towels. It was only when he’d decided he’d best clean her bottom anyway, that he realised the white towels were what she was supposed to wear. She had one on already, fixed with a fearsome-looking safety pin. Not at all like the neat, disposable nappy that they’d practised putting onto the life-size doll at school.
Liam came in then. He didn’t say anything and he wasn’t much help.
At least he didn’t bring his football.
Vicky had begun to kick as soon as Donny took the towel off. He’d managed to get most of the poo down the toilet but there was still some on her bottom and a big smear across the changing mat as she rolled over and started to crawl away.
Liam seemed to think this was funny and started urging her on, “Go Vicky!”
Donny tried to keep calm but the floor was soon littered with used wipes and rumpled towels as Vicky did laps and Liam made everything worse. There was no way he was ever going to work out how to get the towel back on so he gave up and began running a bath. At least he could get her clean. He got a few more of her clothes off, then Liam splashed her. Not hard and she didn’t mind but all the rest of her clothes got wet.
They must have been making a lot of noise though none of them were exactly speaking to each other.
Anna came in.
“Out,” she said to Liam who had soaked a pile of cotton wool balls and was trying to get Vicky to watch him as he flicked them at a goal he’d drawn with toothpaste on the mirror.
“Sorry,” said Donny.
He’d not seen Anna do anything with the baby before. She was good, very good.
And Vicky was good too, sitting on Anna’s lap while she was dried, accepting the dry vest and clean baby-gro without a struggle, then lying quite contented on the mat while Anna fixed the nappy. If babies could show feelings it was obvious that Vicky liked Anna.
“Sorry,” he said again. “I did try. I wasn’t used to those sort of nappies.”
“Environmental,” she answered briefly. “Don’t tell them I changed it or they’ll make me do it all the time.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, smiling at Vicky. “You’ll have to show me. I don’t mind. I think she’s cute.”
“She’s my half-sister,” said Anna. “As far as I’m concerned she’s caused a lot of trouble.”
“But she’s a baby!”
“She lost us our mum,” said Anna shortly.
Donny was shocked. “You can’t blame her. I mean, of course
I don’t know anything about what happened but, whatever it was, you still can’t blame a baby.”
They didn’t look much like each other. Anna had washed Vicky’s hair and rubbed it dry and Donny could see the feathery curls were pale red, far finer and softer than down. He stretched out cautiously and twisted one round his finger. It was so light he could hardly feel it. Her eyes were maybe like Anna’s. They were grey.
“Logically I don’t,” said Anna. “But, also logically, the way she’s most useful at the moment is for keeping people like Gerald and Wendy occupied – changing her nappies and getting up to her in the night and all that.”
Donny blinked at her. What was she talking about?
“So, if you actually want to be helpful, you can take her downstairs again and make sure she gets right under Gerald’s feet while Wendy’s out. Slow him up. Then I can stay in my room till supper. The later the better.”
Obediently he picked Vicky up and headed for the stairs. But when Vicky saw she was being parted from her sister, she began to cry again, the same high, abandoned wailing that Donny had heard in the night. So he took her into his own room and played peek-bo and tickling games. He even tried signing to her and telling her poems.
Being with Vicky made him long to be with Skye.
Sunday, September 17th
“A Family Service is part of a Family Sunday,” said Gerald wearily. The children were all around the breakfast table. Rev. Wendy had already taken an early service somewhere and was back for a cup of coffee before she moved on to her next parish. “So if you expect to be part of our Family Activity in the afternoon, it’s only reasonable you should attend church in the morning.”
“What do you do in the afternoons?” asked Donny. His head felt heavy and his eyes hurt. The nights here were terrible. He’d spent ages last night making a new map and drawing a set of detailed pictures of Snow Goose for Skye. He’d have to find somewhere to hide them. Inside his pillow, for now.
Then he’d read Swallows and Amazons so that he could fall asleep in a tent with those other kids – John and Susan, Titty and Roger.
But it hadn’t worked. His dream had been confused and terrifying: container ships and fog and little Vicky needing him. Some book he didn’t know and couldn’t find.
He’d got to get those dream-catchers sorted.
“Those who attend the Family Service have their say in choosing the Family Activity,” Gerald replied.
“And those who don’t ...?”
“Have freely chosen to exclude themselves so spend the afternoon in their bedrooms,” Wendy snapped, spreading some over-boiled jam on a piece of Ryvita.
“My choice would be to go and see my mum.”
No response from either adult. No surprises there.
“But if I’m still not allowed I’d like to go for a walk. We could maybe go down to Pin Mill and explore the woods beside the river – ?”
The Ribieros had said something about a footpath and Anna had thought he could even walk to Shotley.
“Then you can come to the 10.30 at Harkstead with me,” said Gerald. “Anna, Liam, Luke – what do you choose?”
Anna shook her head and didn’t answer.
Gerald sighed.
“Wanna play football,” said Liam.
“Don’t care,” said Luke.
This was sufficient for Gerald to decide that they would all – except Anna – be attending the Family Service in the morning and going for a walk in the afternoon. He brushed Liam’s football pleas aside by saying he could bring his ball on the walk with them and told Anna sternly that she should remember that the Circle was always Open to her when she had learned to take a more Positive Attitude. She should consider that either he or Wendy would have
to remain at home to supervise her.
“Doesn’t bother me,” she told Donny. “Whichever one stays behind goes on about my negativity for a while then sends me upstairs so that they can snooze on the sofa with the papers. I love Sunday afternoons. Keep them out for as long as you can.”
Donny’s spirits lifted as they left the vicarage and set out down the single-track road to Pin Mill and the river. It wasn’t far and when they got there it was just as good as it had looked from Snow Goose. The foreshore was cluttered with boats. There were boats that had become houses, boats that were being built or repaired, boats that had been abandoned and were slowly rotting back to their skeletons. Out in the river, there were more boats of all sizes, sailing, motoring, rowing boats; dozens and dozens of boats tugging and swinging at their moorings.
He yearned for one of them to be his own.
“Get real!” he told himself.
The other boys weren’t enjoying themselves much. Luke was silent and Liam was sulky because there was nowhere that he could kick his football without it splatting into water. Donny felt guilty that he’d made them come.
Gerald, however – away from his kitchen and possibly also away from his wife – became rather skittish and demanded they play tracking games as he’d used to do on boy scout summer camps. He had Vicky in a sort of canvas chair on his back and seemed keen to go galloping about making funny noises. He and Liam would lay a trail through the woods, he announced: something very simple using twigs and stones to indicate changes of direction. Donny and Luke could prove they’d followed it correctly by collecting the ten different leaves that he’d place at turning points along the way. He lent Donny a watch and said they would meet back at Pin Mill Hard no later than four o’clock if they hadn’t caught up with each other earlier.
This sounded all right.
Donny wasn’t planning to spend too long in the woods, though. Okay, he wanted to find nuts and stuff for the dream- catchers but he also wanted to check along the strip of sandy beach that seemed to run behind the houseboats. See whether it really led to a footpath that might take him down along the riverbank for however many miles it was to Shotley.
As long as he could get Luke to co-operate they could always scoop up a few random leaves before they got back.
He must have seemed a bit too cheerful because Gerald suddenly became ponderous about the importance of Sticking Together, Playing the Game and Not Speaking to Strangers.
After which he cheered up again and galumphed off into the woods with Vicky bouncing on his back and Liam looking marginally happier at the prospect of being the one who might choose the pathways and confuse the other two.
Donny was left with Luke.
They hadn’t been alone together before and were awkwardly silent while they waited to give the others their agreed start.
The tide was rising and there were several empty dinghies rocking and jiggling near the top of the Hard. Presumably their owners had come ashore to walk up to the shops or go to the pub. Donny couldn’t resist wandering across to have a look. Some had outboard motors; others had oars and rowlocks.
He leaned over to touch the smooth wooden handle of an oar, fitted it experimentally into a rowlock ... He was sure he could do this. Rowing was something people did a lot in his book. This dinghy was clinker-built – like Swallow – but not varnished. It had been painted a delicate pale green outside, a workmanlike grey within. Margery. Someone had painted a cluster of flowers beside the name.
Margery was tied to a chain, quite safely – Donny admired the knot – but there was enough water in the runnel beside the Hard to keep her floating. It wouldn’t do any harm, would it, if he climbed in ...?
Luke had got bored and was throwing stones at a coke can. One of them, rather a large one, missed the can, ricocheted off a mooring post and hit the pale green dinghy with a sharp crack, removing several fragments of paint.
“I say!” shouted an untidy-looking lady with a big nose who was drinking beer in the pub.
But the boys didn’t wait to hear what the lady was going to say. They turned and legged it up the path behind the pub, disappearing as quickly as they could into the trees. They didn’t dare stick to the main path for long in case she came after them. There was obviously no chance of them pausing to look for twig arrows or whatever Liam and Gerald had left to mark their trail. As the main path curved upwards they took a downhill track that soon had them pushing through dense rhododendron bushes and jumping across the damp bed of a stream.
They were at the edge of the wood before they knew it. There was a straight drop of two or three metres to the beach. Luke was about to hurl himself over when Donny pulled him back.
“Stop a minute. We need to look around. Once we’re down there, we maybe can’t get up again.”
A few paces to the right an oak tree spread low branches out across the sand. Donny wriggled out to a broad fork where a burst of thick leaves screened them from view. He noticed some startlingly pale acorns still in their cups, and dropped a few in his pocket for Anna. They were about the same colour as the dinghy they’d damaged.
Then he took a look at his companion. Luke had followed a little way out onto the branch, then stopped. He was sheet- white and trembling. Not at all the hard man who’d been finger-swearing in front of the TV or kicking his brother in the vicarage garden.
“I didn’t mean to ...” he said, to himself rather than to Donny.
“I know you didn’t. You’d have had to be a snooker-champ to get an angle like that on purpose!”
Luke didn’t seem to be listening.
Donny tried again.“It was m e she must’ve been watching. I was about to climb into that boat. Like I was in a dream or something. I don’t know what I was thinking. Let’s hide here for a bit and see whether we see her go out onto the river.”
Luke still didn’t speak. He looked cold with fright. Donny checked the watch.
“We’ve got about an hour before we have to go back. She’ll have got fed up by then. Maybe the dinghy wasn’t even hers.”
“Will it break?”
“Of course not. You only chipped the paint.”
“This ... tree?”
“No Luke, it won’t.” Donny scrambled back along the branch. “It’s been here ages. You can see. The cliff’s eroding but the tree’s still here. Its roots go right into the sand. Look down here, you’ll see what I mean.”
“Can’t.”
Luke sounded as if he might throw up.
“Okay, okay, so you don’t like heights. Tell you what. That lady’s not going to come. Let’s get ourselves down onto the beach. You don’t have to look. I’ll go first. You turn round onto your tummy and slide. I’ll catch you.”
But even as Luke slid, Donny heard the sound of rowing and he guessed their luck was out. The big-nosed lady was rowing Margery steadily along the beach, quite close in. She had her back to them so Donny dragged Luke into the only possible shelter, a sort of cave, made by the tree roots, where the cliff had worn away.
“Sit as small as you can. Wrap your arms round your knees. And don’t move.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Wicked Plan
Sunday, September 17th, continued
There were two people in Margery. The lady who’d seen them was doing the rowing but there was an old lady sitting in the stern, facing forward. She looked quite short and dumpy and was wearing something green on her head.
Donny didn’t hardly dare breathe and Luke kept his eyes tight shut.
When Margery was just metres away the old lady said some- thing that made the other one look right across the river. To the far side. She kept on about it all the time the dinghy edged past. It seemed to take ages until, finally, they were gone.
Still he knew they mustn’t come out yet. The lady who was rowing would be looking their way for a long while if she carried on parallel to the shore like that. Maybe he should get Luke talking. Relax him a bit. Take his mind off it. Those oars had been quite n
oisy. She wouldn’t be able to hear them.
“Don’t suppose this is exactly what Gerald had in mind for a Family Sunday – !”
Luke looked up, shook his head. Almost smiled.
“What do you do normally do then?”
“Usually football for Liam or sometimes we go to Ipswich when it’s my turn.”
“What do you do there?”
“Bowling or the cinema.” Luke didn’t sound as if these were exactly highlights.
“Is that what you like doing?”
“Not really. Makes a change from football though. Or sitting on our rooms.”
“I suppose it does. Er, do you ever ... you know, like go and see your parents or anything?”
Luke shrugged and looked depressed.
Donny probably shouldn’t have asked. Except he badly wanted to know. He felt as if Skye had been blotted from his life. He wondered if it was the same for the others.
“Our mum’s dead. Liam and I can’t hardly remember her. Anna’s mum had us for a bit. Then she went too. After that baby was born.” He sighed. “They take us to see Dad sometimes.”
“Does he live near here?”
“Don’t think so. We have to go in the car and it takes ages. Liam gets sick and I don’t like it ’cos there’s dogs.”
“Don’t you like dogs?”
“Not those ones. They sniff you.”
“Oh.” Donny didn’t understand. “I suppose if we had sniffer dogs we could give them a bit of the others’ clothes to smell and they could take us along the trail really quick without us having to bother looking for twigs and stones at all. They wouldn’t ever know we hadn’t done it properly.”
Luke brightened up. “Yeah. And when they found the others they could like knock them over and stand on them and growl if they moved. And bite their throats ...”
“Er … maybe.”
Donny inched forward in their shallow cave and poked his head out between the tree roots.
Not so good.
Margery had been pulled up on the sand at the far end of the beach. Fifty, one hundred metres away? The two ladies were gone, he didn’t know where, and the tide was ebbing fast. Already there was a distinct gap between Margery and the river’s edge.
