‘Shh,’ Lotti begged. ‘You must be quiet.’
Ben wanted to say that this was his boat and he would make as much noise as he liked, but now curiosity was getting the better of indignation. Lotti was undoing the satchel’s buckles, making tender cooing sounds as she did so. Elsie quivered and stepped closer. Ben slipped his fingers through her collar and craned forward to look.
‘It’s all right,’ Lotti whispered into the bag. ‘No one’s going to hurt you.’
Ben and Elsie watched in astonishment as a small, black nose emerged from the satchel, then a slim, toffee-coloured snout. The nose twitched. A thin paw appeared, then another, followed by surprisingly robust shoulders and the rest of the head, with eyes like black marbles and ears like enormous bat wings, which would have made Ben laugh if the creature hadn’t been so very pitiful.
‘It’s a dog,’ he said unnecessarily, before adding, ‘He’s very thin.’
‘That,’ said Lotti darkly, ‘is because he’s been very badly treated.’
Elsie began to whine, soft little cries Ben recognised as words of comfort, and he relaxed his hold on her. Still whining, Elsie advanced on the little dog, who shrank back, flattening his enormous ears. Elsie pressed closer, sniffed him all over, then rather bossily began to lick him clean.
‘They’ve made friends!’ Lotti beamed, then turned to Ben. ‘Isn’t that wonderful? I’m Lotti, by the way. I live up at Barton Lacey.’
‘I’m Ben,’ said Ben. ‘I live here. And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing on my boat.’
Lotti, he noted, didn’t look the least bit repentant.
‘Do you know a man called Malachy Campbell?’ she asked. ‘Short and red, with a nose like a potato?’
‘Everyone knows Malachy Campbell,’ said Ben impatiently. ‘He’s Great Barton’s most famous crook. Look, I don’t know where this is going, but …’
‘Would you mind just stepping up on deck and looking to see if he’s out there? If he’s not, I promise we’ll be on our way. I have to get home soon anyway. It’s very important that I’m not late, especially today. But Malachy Campbell is chasing me.’
This was not how Ben had imagined his homecoming. He had been looking forward to reclaiming the Sparrowhawk, unpacking, making her cosy again for him and Elsie.
This was … annoying.
But also interesting.
He leaned forward. ‘Why is Malachy Campbell chasing you?’
Lotti grinned. ‘Because I stole his dog.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘Y ou stole Malachy Campbell’s dog?’
‘Oh, please don’t shout! You’ll upset him.’
Ben lowered his voice. ‘You stole Malachy Campbell’s dog?’
‘Very successfully.’ Lotti bounced happily on the berth and brought her legs up to sit cross-legged, looking perfectly at home. ‘I can tell you all about it, if you like, but I warn you, in the eyes of the police, that would make you an accomplice.’ She paused to think. ‘You may actually be an accomplice already. Technically, you may be harbouring a fugitive. And hiding stolen goods. The dog being the goods. And also, I suppose, a fugitive. But I promise, if the police come, I’ll tell them it’s all my fault. And to be frank, I don’t think Mr Campbell is the sort of person who would call the police. Shall I continue?’
Ben hesitated. On the one hand, he really didn’t want Malachy Campbell or the police or anyone to come round the Sparrowhawk asking questions. On the other …
‘Why did you steal his dog?’
‘Well, it’s a long story,’ said Lotti. ‘Could he have some water first? And food? And please can you check Mr Campbell isn’t out there? It would put my mind at rest.’
Ben climbed back up to the aft deck and looked up and down the towpath.
‘Empty,’ he confirmed.
Back in the cabin, he took two bowls from a cupboard in the galley, filled one with dog biscuits and the other with water, and put them both on the floor. Elsie fell to eating immediately. Lotti placed the little dog on the ground beside her, and Elsie shuffled aside to make room for him.
‘Isn’t that sweet?’ sighed Lotti. ‘Your dog is lovely. What sort is she?’
‘Mostly spaniel, I think. We rescued her as a puppy, so we’ve never really known.’
‘This one is a chihuahua. I’ve decided to call him Federico, because it’s a Spanish name and in Mexico chihuahuas were once worshipped by priests, or princes, I’m not sure which …’
This was interesting, and in other circumstances Ben would have liked to know more, but right now he wanted to know about this particular chihuahua.
‘The theft …?’ he said.
Lotti wrapped her arms round her knees.
‘I suppose,’ she mused, ‘it all started when I stabbed the sewing mistress.’
Ben’s head started to swim. ‘Stabbed …?’
‘Only with a needle,’ Lotti explained hurriedly. ‘To get expelled. I wanted to come home so badly, you see. I’d been away at school for so long, longer even than the war, since my aunt and uncle sent me there after my parents died in an aeroplane crash when I was eight. And I was sort of used to it – I mean, it was miserable but bearable, in a prisony sort of way – but then this new girl came, Veronica Smedley, and locked me in the coal cellar.’
Ben was confused. ‘Why?’
‘I laughed at her,’ admitted Lotti. ‘She slipped in the mud playing lacrosse. It wasn’t nice of me, I know, but she did look funny covered in mud. Anyway, it made her furious. So first she told all the girls they shouldn’t speak to me, and then she got them to play pranks on me, and one of the pranks was locking me in the coal cellar. Ben, you look lost. Don’t you go to school?’
Ben thought about this. Because they moved around so much, Nathan had always taught his boys at home on the Sparrowhawk. When Ben went to live with Mercy, she had vaguely made him attend the Great Barton school but Ben, used to a lifetime of freedom, hadn’t loved it. Now that he was living alone, he thought he might go back to learning alone.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Then you don’t understand how properly horrible bullies can be. Veronica made them keep me all night in the coal cellar, and it was one of the loneliest nights of my life, almost as bad as when my parents died. Have you ever been lonely, Ben?’
‘I lived in an orphanage until I was four,’ Ben replied quietly. ‘And for the last eight months, I’ve been living alone with a stranger.’
Lotti nodded. ‘Then you do understand. I couldn’t breathe for loneliness at school, and the worst thing was none of the teachers cared. There was no point telling my aunt and uncle, because they wouldn’t have cared either, but I couldn’t go on like that. And Papa always said, if you don’t like something, you should try to change it. So first I tried to run away.’
‘Where to?’ asked Ben. ‘Back to Barton?’
Lotti hesitated, but it was too painful to explain that she had wanted to run all the way to France, to Moune, who didn’t write but was the only person left who had loved her once.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Back to Barton. I made it to the station, but the last train had gone, and they caught me. So then I realised the only way I would leave is if I got expelled. Hence stabbing the sewing mistress.’ She paused, remembering the feel of her needle piercing the sewing mistress’s arm. There had been screams, and blood. ‘It was very satisfying.’
Ben was speechless, equal parts admiring and appalled.
‘What did your aunt and uncle say?’
But this was something else Lotti didn’t want to talk about – Hubert Netherbury’s rage at Lotti’s scandalous behaviour, the hard, humiliating slap across the face she had received at Great Barton station when she returned from school, in full view of the other passengers.
‘They were a bit cross,’ she said airily. ‘But the plan worked, because Uncle Hubert says now I’m nearly thirteen and don’t have to go to school by law, there’s no point wasting money on my education
and I should be learning to Make Myself Useful to My Aunt instead.’ Lotti rolled her eyes. ‘I have to do things like tidy her writing desk and sewing box, and mend clothes for the jumble sale at the Women’s Institute fête. She is obsessed with the Women’s Institute fête. She is running it this year and Lady Clarion, whom she worships because she is a proper aristocrat, is on the committee. The fête is to raise funds for returned servicemen and Lady Clarion says it is our patriotic duty to make as much money as possible, and Aunt Vera is desperate for her approval. Aunt Vera has this thing about Barton Lacey not really being hers – it’s actually mine – and she sees the fête as her way into high society. It’s not till June, but she already keeps having all these committee ladies in for awful coffee mornings where I have to hand round sandwiches. To be honest, I do wonder sometimes if it was worth being expelled from school for this, but then – Ben, you’re looking impatient.’
‘I’m just wondering what this has to do with the dog,’ Ben said honestly.
‘I’m getting to that! The point is, Aunt Vera can only put up with me for a few hours at a time. So in the afternoons, as long as I don’t behave scandalously, I’m free as a bird to wander around and explore, and while I was exploring I noticed that Malachy Campbell kept poor little Federico in a tiny dirty cage in his yard. And then I followed him for a bit, because he was taking Federico all around town trying to sell him, but despite chihuahuas being worshipped in Mexico, nobody wanted him. I mean –’ Lotti dropped her voice – ‘even I can see he’s quite odd-looking, especially when he’s so thin. So I said to myself, if Mr Campbell hasn’t sold that poor dog in five days, I will rescue him. And he didn’t. So I did.’
‘But how?’ Ben was enthralled.
‘Well, that bit was quite easy,’ said Lotti. ‘All I had to do was steal a crowbar from Zachy – Zachy is our gardener, and a darling – and then wait for Mr Campbell to go out, climb over the wall of his yard, force open the cage, pick up Federico and run!’
‘But why are you here, on the Sparrowhawk?’
‘Because Mr Campbell came back and saw what I’d done, so he ran after me. Luckily, even carrying Federico, I’m much faster than him. He never got close! But then I got tired, and I saw your boat and I just … jumped on.’
‘How did you get in?’
Lotti shifted guiltily and glanced towards Nathan’s workshop. Ben followed her gaze and winced. A trail of muddy footprints led right across the floor to the door, which was hanging ajar. The gardener’s crowbar lay on the floor beside it.
Ben stood up and closed the door between the cabin and the workshop.
‘Are you cross?’ whispered Lotti.
Ben thought about this carefully. Nathan’s workshop! He had avoided it for months, and she had just breezed in, traipsed through it as if it were nothing. He should be cross. He was definitely upset. And yet at the same time, he knew that Nathan and Sam would both have loved the story of the rescued chihuahua …
‘No,’ he admitted.
Lotti breathed a sigh of relief, then burst out laughing. ‘Ben, what is your dog doing?’
Elsie had climbed on to Ben’s berth and was turning round in tight circles on the mattress. As they watched, she curled into a ball and pulled the blanket over her head with her teeth.
Ben smiled and reached into the blanket to scratch her ears. ‘It means it’s going to rain.’
‘Rain? But it’s a lovely sunny day!’
‘Doesn’t matter. She’s like a barometer, Nathan always said.’
‘Nathan?’
‘My dad.’ Ben stopped scratching Elsie and burrowed his hand in her fur for comfort. ‘He adopted me from the orphanage. He died in the war.’
‘Oh, rotten luck!’
She didn’t say she was sorry, and Ben was glad. He hated it when people said they were sorry, as if that should somehow make things better. It was rotten luck that Nathan had been killed, when he wasn’t even fighting, couldn’t fight because of his leg. Rotten luck was exactly the right response.
‘That’s why I live here on my own,’ he said. ‘I’m just waiting for my brother to come back. He’s been at the war too.’
It was the first time he had said this out loud to anyone other than Mercy. He hoped it sounded convincing.
‘What about your uncle and aunt?’ he asked, to change the subject. ‘Will they let you keep Federico?’
‘They can’t stop me,’ said Lotti, proudly raising her chin. ‘It’s my house, after all.’
Even to her own ears it didn’t sound convincing. Lotti glanced at her wristwatch. Her dinner was served in the kitchen at seven o’clock sharp, and Aunt Vera hated it when she was late. Today of all days it made sense not to annoy her.
‘I have to go,’ she said regretfully. ‘Come along, Federico! You can walk a bit, now you’ve eaten. You’re much heavier than you look. Ben, would you mind awfully checking again that Malachy Campbell isn’t lurking?’
The coast was clear. Dogs and children trooped out of the cabin on to the rear deck.
It was approaching the time of day Nathan had loved best, when mist hovered over the water and the sun’s sinking rays touched the dirty canal with gold. Ben felt a quiet glow of pride as Lotti caught her breath.
‘It’s even better from the roof,’ he offered.
He stepped on to the storage box and hoisted himself lightly on to the roof, then turned and held out his hand. Lotti glanced at her wristwatch, then climbed after him.
‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Oh, you’re right.’
The sun sank, the shadows lengthened, the gold of the water deepened. Ben and Lotti sat with the dogs between them and forgot about aunts and being late and wars and rotten luck.
It never failed, this magic of the world seen from the roof of the boat.
‘When I was little, we used to go on holiday to my grandmother’s house in France,’ said Lotti at last. ‘Papa kept a little rowing boat in the boathouse by the river. I always thought, when we went out in it, how different everything looks from the water. Like anything is possible, you know? Like you’re completely free to go anywhere you want. Is that what it’s like living on the Sparrowhawk?’
‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘That’s exactly what it’s like. Or it was, when Sam and Nathan were alive.’
‘Do you know how to drive her?’
‘I do, actually.’ Ben blushed under Lotti’s admiring gaze.
‘Maybe one day you can teach me.’ Lotti sighed, then reluctantly stood up. ‘I really do have to go, but may I come back?’
Ben didn’t miss the falter in her voice. She sounded vulnerable suddenly, and much less confident.
‘Of course you can,’ he said. ‘Just make sure Malachy Campbell doesn’t see you.’
‘I’ll try to come back tomorrow, then,’ said Lotti happily. ‘And you can show me all over your boat.’
She held out her hand. Ben, having shaken it, found he didn’t want to let go.
He stood and watched as Lotti and Federico ran down the towpath, away from town. As they turned into Barton Lane, he thought how strange it was, that even though she had barely stopped talking throughout her visit, the silence when Lotti had gone was even louder.
*
Earlier that afternoon, just a hundred yards away from the Sparrowhawk, at about the time when Lotti was telling Ben about being expelled from school, Malachy Campbell knocked on the door of the lonely cottage Ben had run past earlier. A thin, untidy young woman rushed to answer the door, her wire-rimmed spectacles slipping down her nose.
‘You seen my chihuahua?’ asked Malachy Campbell.
The young woman, whose name was Clara Primrose, pushed her spectacles back into place and regarded him with an air of intense disappointment.
‘Showed it to you last week, remember?’ said Malachy, conscious that the air of disappointment had changed to one of blazing fury. ‘He’s been nicked.’
‘Well, he’s not here,’ Clara said, and slammed the door.
*
In the summer of 1914, Clara Primrose had been eighteen, at university and in love with a fellow student called Max. Max wrote poetry and hated fighting and was the last person you could imagine as a soldier, but he had gone into the army as soon as war was declared.
‘When it’s all over, I’ll come for you,’ he wrote to her, over and again in smuggled letters through those four bleak years. ‘Promise you’ll wait for me!’
Clara promised, and waited. She waited as she finished university, and she waited in the hospital where she volunteered as a nurse, and though she had received no news of him for months, she was still waiting now. Her parents disapproved of Max so much they had kicked her out of their home. She had moved to Great Barton because nobody here knew her, and she had rented the lonely cottage by the canal so that when Max arrived no neighbours would pry on them. She had told her landlady that she was a writer looking for peace and quiet to finish her novel, and the landlady believed her because, as she told Mercy Jenkins in the baker’s queue, Clara with her spectacles and the general air she had of falling apart – all that red hair escaping its pins and her sweaters full of holes – well, she looked like a writer, didn’t she? And though it wasn’t exactly proper for a young lady to live all alone like that, everyone knew artists were mad.
It didn’t occur to anyone that Clara had a secret.
She hadn’t always been like this. At university Clara had been positively curvy, and worn her hair in a rich, swirling curtain down her back, and she had laughed a lot. As a nurse, she had been neat and efficient. But now …
Well, war and waiting did things to a person.
Really, Clara earned her living as a translator. After Malachy Campbell had gone, she took a pile of papers from the drawer in the kitchen table, made tea, forgot to drink it, picked up a pencil, hunted for a sharpener, found one in the fruit bowl and settled down to work. She tried to concentrate on her translation, which was about fertilisers and agricultural production, but her mind refused to settle. How her heart had leaped when Malachy knocked on the door, thinking … hoping, really … that it was Max! But then her heart leaped at every knock on the door. She pushed aside her translation, picked up a blank sheet of paper and began a letter to Max’s mother, then pushed that away too after a few lines, and went out for a walk instead.
Voyage of the Sparrowhawk Page 2
