But the little rhyme stuck in her mind. She sang it as she pedaled home along the uneven road, with glorious sky ahead and clouds massed at her back:
Trefoil, vervain, John's-wort, dill,
Hinder witches of their will.
It made her feel more cheerful.
Mrs. Beer was out in her own back garden, hanging up washing. Kate hopped off her bicycle and called to her over the hedge. At first she pretended not to hear; and then she did answer, but without turning around: she did not want to be drawn out.
“Will you be down this afternoon?”
“This is where I'll be, if you want me.”
So Aunt Rhoda had got the better of her already.
“I'll not stand interferings with my cooking.”
“Why Aunt Rhoda can't cook, don't take any notice.”
“It's all very well to talk. She thinks different. She can do it herself, then, and see how you all like her food.”
Kate looked down the hill, onto the roofs and chimneys of Hurst Camber. That was where Aunt Rhoda reigned, now, and waited for her to come home. She had four names to use against her, four plants: then it struck her that she had never looked in Miss Bybegone's dictionary of plants to see how to find trefoil, vervain, John's-wort and dill: she had not even the faintest idea of what they looked like. Only John's-wort she thought she had heard of. “What's John's-wort, Mrs. Beer?” She had to repeat the question.
“Why it's all over, there, at your feet,” and she looked down. There were yellow flowers growing on the edge of the red track, with spotted leaves. She pulled up a handful of them.
But Aunt Rhoda was not at home, and neither was Thomas. She put away her bicycle, her heart beating hard. She knew the house was empty, it had a hollow, anxious feeling; but she looked into all the rooms, to make sure.
She even looked into Aunt Rhoda's. She half expected to be bounced out at, but no one was there. The stars stood out vividly from the green wallpaper, as if a shutter had been opened onto another, fantastic sky. As she stared at it, she heard the whistle again, but inside the house: she could have sworn that it came from the nursery. She clapped the door shut and ran there, although a moment ago she had seen that it was empty. The whistling stopped. She searched Thomas's cupboard, and under his bed: there was nobody, nothing in the room.
They must be in the garden. She would have given a lot to see Mr. Beer among the potatoes, but he was not, and neither was Thomas, nor Aunt Rhoda. But she noticed some tall plants that had sprung up on the compost heap, with large funnel-shaped flowers. She sniffed them: the smell was horrid.
And somebody was whistling again she would swear to it down by the pond.
The garden had become strange, she did not know what lurked among the overgrown bushes. She ran down to the pond, although she dreaded what might be there. The whistling stopped, there was nothing but the water reflecting the overcast sky, gray and white like a blind eye. All around lay the heaps of rubbish Aunt Rhoda had taken out.
Kate began heaving the rubbish back into the pond. Leaves and twigs and lily pads: she hurled it all back into the agitated water. Bit by bit the sky was blocked out. But she could not alter the writing round the statue; and the little boy stood there sadly, a victim, looking down into his empty hands.
She had just thrown in the last of it when she heard rustling behind her, and jumped around. It was Thomas, pushing between the rhododendrons, and behind him Aunt Rhoda. He was pouting and dragging his feet, and carried a bunch of cow parsley. But the plants Aunt Rhoda held were more exotic. She had found myrrh, and deadly nightshade.
“You shouldn't bring that into the garden,” said Kate, “it's poisonous. Thomas might get hold of it,” and she picked him up, but he began tweaking her hair and put his tongue out. “All right then, go on your own, but you'd better put those flowers in water, or they'll die.”
Aunt Rhoda stared at the pond, her face hard and angry. “You've put back all that mess,” she said.
“It wasn't yours to take out.” There was a dangerous thrill in answering Aunt Rhoda.
But she began to laugh. Her long thin body doubled up with laughter which echoed among the trees around the pool, breaking up the water into a zigzag pattern. “It's too late slow Kate, always too late.” She gasped between her shrieks of mirth. “And don't forget -- it's your fault. You let me in –” but then she saw Kate's face turned to her, serious and puzzled, and immediately she shut off her laughter and went back to the house.
Kate followed, sick at heart (how often she had read that expression! and now she knew how it felt). It was time to make tea, and she took comfort in filling the kettle, and setting the table in the kitchen (Aunt Rhoda could jolly well make do). Thomas was arranging the cow parsley in a jam jar, and she saw that he had found the John's-wort she had collected and left in the sink, and was putting that in as well.
Aunt Rhoda came in and sat down at the table. Kate eyed her as she warmed the teapot. She was sitting very straight, her pale eyes staring ahead. Kate keeping watch saw Thomas finish arranging his flowers, and look from herself to the aunt as though debating which one of them to please. Evidently he concluded that Aunt Rhoda would be more worthwhile, for it was to her he went, holding out the jam jar of cow parsley and John's-wort. He stood in front of her, smiling, expecting her to be pleased.
She did not seem to notice him at first. But when she saw what he held up to her she moved so quickly that her chair, pushed back, clattered over onto the floor; she glared at Thomas's jam jar, and then, obviously with a great effort, knocked it out of his hands so that it too fell, and smashed upon the floor in a mess of water and plants and glass. She left the house then, by the back door so that she would not have to step over it: later they heard her come in again by the front, and go upstairs to her room.
Thomas sat down at the table and ate bread and butter very carefully, so as not to make crumbs, and later he got onto Kate's knee and she told him a story. He was asleep before she had finished and she put him to bed without bathing him.
She cleared the mess from the floor, but collected the sprigs of John's-wort carefully and put them in water in another jar, which she hid in her bedroom cupboard. Aunt Rhoda did not come down: Kate did her homework, ate a boiled egg, had a bath and went to bed. She fell asleep at once.
She dreamed that she walked along dark passages in a house that she did not know. Each passage contained many doors, all closed, and she could hear Thomas crying somewhere in the house. There was no one to go to him but herself, and she kept opening the doors; but the rooms behind them were vast, and gray, and empty of furniture. She walked faster and faster in her dream, and then began to run, and still she opened the doors and always there was nothing, and still he went on crying. At last she got to the last door, at the end of the last passage, and he must be behind it, but she could not open it. She pushed and pushed, and twisted at the handle. Suddenly it gave, she tumbled into the room and woke up.
Her own room seemed vast and gray to her suddenly opened eyes and for a moment she thought that she still slept. She still seemed to hear Thomas crying. Then with the shock that does sometimes come after waking, she realized that this was in fact her own room, and that her brother really was crying. She slipped out of bed, padded across her bedroom floor and opened the door into the bathroom.
She could not put on the light because the switch was by the other door that led onto the landing. She had to cross the bathroom in the dark. And she was absolutely certain that somebody, something, was in there, watching and avoiding her.
Her heart was beating hard when she switched on the light. As she did so she saw the black dog rear, and leap out of the bathroom window, which was wide open, onto the common.
And as she stared after it, transfixed with her mouth open, Aunt Rhoda rushed in, and guessing instantly what had escaped through the open window, turned on her. “You sent it away! You put it out! Oh, you'll be sorry for this!” She had such a wild look that Kate quailed, think
ing she would fly at her, and put up her arm defensively. And still Thomas cried.
But Aunt Rhoda went to the open window, and leaned out over the common. She stretched her arms longingly after the dog, searching through the sweet summer night with pale, grief-stricken eyes. Kate went to her brother. And as she wondered anxiously what could be the matter with him, she also thought how odd it was that Aunt Rhoda, at this hour, still wore her brown belted mackintosh and laced shoes, as though she never did undress and go to bed like everybody else.
Thomas's face was hot and damp, and he would not let go of her. She took him into her bed, at last, and he went to sleep in her arms. If a fight was coming, at least they were together.
But the fight did not come yet, and it was Wednesday.
The morning broke cold and gray with a steady drizzle of rain that blackened the colors of the valley, making the opposite hills look closer and higher than they really were. Thomas slept on, with his head in the crook of her arm. She stroked his hair gently to wake him, and decided not to go to school that morning. The house was perfectly silent: not a door slammed, not a stair creaked. And then, as Thomas stirred and woke, the whistling began.
They dressed and went downstairs. No pleasing smell of breakfast cooking, no clatter of crockery: Mrs. Beer was not there, and the stove was quite cold, it had gone out. Three bottles of milk stood on the back doorstep. It was a dismal morning, smelling of moss and wet wood. Kate got in the milk and was glad to shut the door. And still the whistling went on, penetrating, right inside her head as though her own brain made the noise.
They had bread and butter and milk for breakfast, that lay cold in the stomach. The kitchen was peculiar without Mrs. Beer, useless, like a stopped clock. Kate peeled some potatoes, partly on the alert for any sound of Aunt Rhoda. Then she took a duster, polished the dining-room table and the umbrella stand in the hall, and went into the drawing room. And it seemed pointless to fuss about the furniture in the chilly rooms, the house was like a stage set for a play that had not yet started, with a certain expectancy in the walls as if they waited for the curtain to go up.
It was musty in the drawing room, and she opened the windows. Some scarlet and black moths had got in, and slept with their wings fattened against the folded shutters. Surely it was not so long since Miss Bybegone came? And yet the furniture was thick with dust. She made herself busy, trying to ignore the thin whistling that went on and on, clear from the wood through the open windows. The curtain hung over her father's picture, she would not touch it, but she dusted the legs of the easel. Thomas sat in the big red armchair with his back to the garden. He was tracing holding the book steady on his knees; though he also might have been waiting, with the hollow room, for what would happen.
There was a shadow outside the window, there was a dark head outside, and for a moment while Kate's heart beat fast she did not know whose it was, Aunt Rhoda's or the dog's; then it moved and she saw that it belonged to Aunt Rhoda coming into the house by the front door. Soon she was with them in the drawing room. She was wet, the shoulders and sleeves of her mackintosh were patched a darker brown, and she held a sheaf of plants that dripped, making dark spots on the carper. There was myrrh, and deadly nightshade, and another plant that Kate seemed to have seen before but could not remember where. She laid them down on a polished table by the door.
“So you took our little conversation to heart, did you? And you have decided to cultivate an orderly mind. perhaps you have left it rather late, my dear.” She crossed the room to see what Thomas was doing. Kate had her back to them, but she heard Aunt Rhoda speaking in a sweet voice. Raising her eyes she could see them in a mirror hanging on the wall, and she was shocked by Rhoda Cantrip's expression. Now that she thought herself unobserved, dislike and contempt gave her a gargoyle’s face, yet the honeyed words came out.
“And what is he doing, my Tom, my little Tom Tit Totl He shall watch the pictures in the fire his Aunt Rhoda makes, he will have strange new things to draw, then.” His hair needed cutting: she smoothed it back gently from his forehead.
Watchful Kate could not help herself: she jumped around.
“Don't you touch him, just you leave him alone!”
Aunt Rhoda looked scornfully at her, over the back of the chair. And Thomas, too, looked at her with disapproval, as though he had asked her to his party and she was behaving in a rude manner. His prim little face made her more angry.
“You come with me, Thomas, we're going for a walk,” and she caught his arm. Immediately, Aunt Rhoda gripped his shoulder. He sat on his chair between them, perfectly still. “You let go of him,” muttered Kate, flushed and furious. Aunt Rhoda did not answer, but she did not let go. The joints of her fingers were white; she must be hurting him, but he did not move. Kate wanted to pull him out of the chair, out of the room, and she did not dare to because she did not know how far Aunt Rhoda would go. The hand on Thomas's shoulder was tight-stretched like a bird's claw. Kate let go of his arm, and immediately he got on with his tracing as if nothing had happened. She flung out of the room.
But as she passed the flowers Aunt Rhoda had brought in, she noticed their foul smell. Then she remembered where she had seen some of them before: on the compost heap, in the kitchen garden.
She went upstairs. And now the whistling began again, loud and clear; she could have sworn that it was inside the house. It increased, it almost deafened; then, when she thought she could not bear it another minute, it shrank thin and shrill. She felt more and more certain that a crisis would come, as if she could see its dark shape moving slowly towards them across the valley. She was desperately worried for Thomas. She crept down the second staircase and listened at the locked door. There was the crackle of Aunt Rhoda's fire, and a strange humming noise. She peered through the keyhole: Aunt Rhoda knelt in front of the smoky fire, throwing wet plants on it and crooning. And Thomas -- he still sat in the red armchair with the tracing book on his knees, but he was not using it. He was staring directly at the locked door, at the keyhole through which his sister peered. She thought he must see her inquisitive eye. Whose side was he on? Or had he his own, childish point of view? She longed for him to smile at her, but, of course, he could not possibly know she was there.
She went into Aunt Rhoda's room. The green wall with white scratchings faced her, dark and strange, and she had a curious feeling, as she stood in the doorway, that she could walk straight out of this room into that green, scrawled night. It was difficult not to look at it, it pulled at her attention like the most fascinating picture. She left the room, shutting the door carefully behind her.
What of Thomas? She could not be still. She went to the kitchen, and got the stove going with damp sticks and paraffin, and put the potatoes on to boil. The house was dreadfully quiet but for that whistling, that shiny clamor, and she did not know, any longer, whether it was really there, or simply echoing on and on in her own head. She walked in the garden. There were many blood-red flowers out against the walls of the house, sweet william and flax that had opened under the rain. The drawing-room shutters had been closed, but there were two more little windows on each side of the fireplace: she could spy through those. She went around the angle of the house, and managed to scramble up against the wall and peer in. Thomas sat in the same armchair with his book on his knees, but now his eyes were shut. She could not see Aunt Rhoda: presumably she was crouching directly beneath the window, in front of the fire. The room was dark, but as far as she could see it was in order. How was she to get Thomas out? She slid back onto the wet grass, grazing her knees and the palms of her hands. As she pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket she felt again the scrap of lead that she had picked up from the church floor. Suddenly she remembered that according to Miss Bybegone’s book it was a valuable amulet.
She wiped her hands and knees and carefully wrapped the bit of lead in her handkerchief. This strange battle with Aunt Rhoda seemed part of a greater, predestined war. It was important to win it, not just for herself and
Thomas, but for the balance of a greater power. And then it struck her that if Aunt Rhoda willed herself to be used for a bad purpose she could put herself into the hands of goodness. After all, she had been protected through the wood.
So her panic shrank, and she crossed the lawn, and went down the steps to the pond. It was dismal under the great trees. The yellow cat sat on a paving stone, staring down at the muddy water. His fur was spiky with damp. She picked him up and he stared at her with his yellow, secret eyes; he smelled of warm wet fur. Over his head she read again around the statue: “First we'll wait, then we'll whistle, then we'll dance together.” Was it today that the dancing would begin? She walked back to the house, the cat limp in her arms. Now she knew what to do.
But as she opened the back door he came to life violently; he was stiff, protesting, electric; he leaped out of her arms, scratching her bare skin, and flew back into the garden. He was not going into that house at any price.
The jam jar of St. John's-wort was standing in her bedroom cupboard. She took out the whole bunch, and pinned it to the front of her jersey. The church lead was safely in her pocket. She went downstairs to the drawing room, wondering whether the door would be locked.
It was not, although the shutters were still barred across the big window, and the room was rather smoky, smelling of spice. Thomas sat upright in the red chair with the cheap, brightly colored book on his knees; his eyes were shut, but he did not look asleep. She went to him and touched his shoulder, and he opened his eyes. Then she saw that Aunt Rhoda was standing with her back to the shuttered window, staring at Mr. Pawley's picture. She had pushed the cloth back, and stared, entirely concentrated, upon it, as if she willed it to alter to her own design. Evidently she had not heard Kate enter the room, and she did not look up until she began to lead Thomas away. Then she was instantly upon them.
Moon Eyes Page 10
