“What’s this now?” she demanded as she pulled up the chair the doctor had been using and wrapped one matronly arm around my shoulders.
“Nothing to worry about Mrs Price,” Bickerstaff said casually, “Catherine’s had a bit of a strain from the physical test I gave her.”
A bit of a strain? Rude as it was for a young lady, I wanted to slap him across the face. If I had had the strength, I might have. The young doctor took his place behind his desk and pulled open a noisy drawer, producing four large objects made of fabric and wood. There were two boards about the length and width of shoe boxes with fabric straps attached to them, followed by two more that were only about the length of a domino box. The smaller ones had two boards each on them with a strap going all the way around, as though they were designed to be wrapped around something.
“What are those?” I asked, my nose turning up against them.
“Your treatment,” Bickerstaff replied in that same clinical voice. He turned his attention to Mam. “Catherine’s condition is quite serious, I’m afraid, and her previous doctor has done very little to improve her chances in the last three years. We must resist the contractive fusing of her joints overnight before it becomes permanent.” Mam was hooked on every word he said, nodding profusely. “Every night for the duration of the night, Catherine must wear these splints on her knees and elbows to keep the joints straight and prevent contraction.”
“Every night?” I exclaimed, looking at the horrible hefty things with loathing.
“And I want her to practise propelling herself in the chair,” Doctor Bickerstaff continued as though he hadn’t heard me at all, “So give her some old gloves to handle the wheels and encourage her to move short distances alone. Don’t be tempted to help her.”
Don’t help me. Had he really just said that?
I told Leighton about the horrible Doctor Bickerstaff when we got back to Ty Gwyn and he called him some names that I didn’t know were even in a ten year old’s vocabulary. I should have told him off for them, but in truth it made me happy to see Leigh go for him. He promised me that when he grew big and strong he’d punch the nasty doctor on the nose, but as he mimicked the punches I noticed his hands were pink and pruney. I made him come closer so I could take a look.
“What have you been up to?” I asked him, looking at the crinkly skin on his little palms.
“Blod made me wash up the dinner service,” he said with a scowl, “There were loads of dishes. She says someone special is coming to dinner.”
“And I’ll bet Mam asked her to do it, not you,” I added with a frown.
We were in the kitchen having a drink when the culprit returned to the scene of the crime. Blod strode in wearing a flowing cotton dress and high heeled shoes. She had a sunhat on and a magazine and I knew exactly what she had been doing whilst Leighton was enslaved with her chores.
“Enjoy yourself catching the last bit of summer, did you Blod?” I asked.
She turned with a wicked grin, taking off her hat. “I’m trying to keep my legs a nice colour for the harvest dance,” she explained, “Not your kind of concern, I suppose.”
I had tried to reason that Blod might come around to our presence in time, but twenty four hours with the young woman had done nothing to support that idea. Blodwyn Price was a cow, and that was that.
“Listen you,” I said, channelling all my rage from the Doctor Bickerstaff encounter into my voice, “You don’t tell my brother what to do. Only Mam’s in charge of us here. Not you and not anyone else.”
“Oh really?” Blod answered, “And what are you going to do? Leap out of that chair and knock me down if I’m mean to you? I don’t think so somehow.”
I was all the more angry because she was right. If there was ever a time to learn to propel myself in this chair it was now. Perhaps if I got good enough I could run her over.
“No, but I’m sure Mam would have something to say about the state of Leighton’s hands,” I countered.
Blod’s beautiful face faltered for just a moment. “Well, if you want me to get on with the chores so badly, then clear out the pair of you. Bampi’s coming for dinner and he’s not going to want to see you scruffy articles cluttering up the place.”
Leigh took the handles of my chair and pushed me out of the kitchen slowly. When we made it to the black and white hall I told him to stop and open my bedroom door. As he did so I reached down beside my leg and produced the old pair of leather driving gloves that Mam had fished out of her husband’s old trunk. Leighton watched me from the door. I put on the tough gloves and gripped the wheels of my chair, starting to push.
But nothing happened. The pressure wasn’t enough. I pushed harder, feeling my elbows start to strain. When they were stretched so far out that my shoulders started to tense I felt movement at last, but the pain was too much to push again. I had to stop for breath. I had wheeled half an inch, perhaps less, and already my bones were creaking. I dropped my arms, exhausted. I could feel my heart banging on my ribcage in protest at the effort.
“Honestly that Doctor’s got no clue,” I sighed, “How does he think this is even possible?”
Leighton made his punching motions again and I laughed, taking off the gloves.
“Shall I push you then?” he offered.
“Yes please,” I replied, “You heard Evil Blod; we have to get scrubbed up for dinner with a Bampi, whatever that is.”
It turned out that Bampi was the pet name for Blod and Ness’s grandfather, Idrys Pengelly, who was the owner and operator of the farmlands around Ty Gwyn. He was Mam’s father and he lived in a cottage on the far side of the pasture behind the house where the cows grazed, so Ness Fach was the first to spot him coming when she was playing outside that evening. At her announcement that Bampi was walking through the field, Mam helped me into the sitting room so Leighton and I could be introduced.
The first thing we knew of him was his booming voice as he entered Ty Gwyn; I could hear him greeting Ness in the wide hallway. He came into the sitting room at Mam’s call carrying her under his arm like a briefcase whilst she giggled. Idrys Pengelly was a tall old man with the same rosy face as his daughter. When he smiled he had several missing teeth at the sides of his mouth, which was surrounded by a reddish beard and moustache. The hair on his head was much more grey and nestled largely under a flat-cap, which he took off as he dropped Ness onto the sofa beside him.
“Well now,” he said loudly, patting his knees with a thump, “Who do we have yur then?”
He spoke almost exactly like Mam save for the deep, echoing tone that threatened to shake the roof from its rafters. I instantly liked him with his warm smile and the fact that he had worn his bright blue farmer’s overalls to dinner, he reminded me of my own Granddad, who had died when I was eight.
“I’m Catherine, Mr Pengelly, but people call me Kit.”
“Short for Kitty, isit?” he asked. I nodded happily, then nudged my brother in the side.
“Oh! I’m Leighton,” he said with a start.
“Are you indeed?” Idrys replied. “Well come yur and let me look at you.”
Leigh gave me a nervous look but I pushed him in the back, grinning. He approached the old man very slowly until he was close enough for Idrys to take hold of his shoulders. He looked at him carefully with an approving smile.
“Ie, ie,” the old man said, “you’re a strapping boy all right. But what’s this behind yur yur?”
“Behind my what?” Leighton asked, but Idrys had already put his hand up to my brother’s ear. He pulled back his hand to reveal a shiny sixpence, grinning at Leigh.
“I think this must be yours mate,” he supposed, “I wouldn’t keep it back there, if I were you.”
Leighton took the coin with a look of amusement on his face.
“Say thank you,” I pressed and he did, but very shyly.
“Blod and I’ll get the dinner on,” Mam said from the doorway, “We’ll call you when it’s ready Da.”
“Ta l
ove,” Idrys replied.
He settled back comfortably into the sofa and Ness crawled onto his knee and lay down, looking up at the ceiling. Idrys tickled her belly until she ran away to the corner with a huge grin.
“It’s lovely to have young people in the house again,” the old Bampi remarked, “Ness is too young to yur my stories, see?”
“What stories?” Leighton asked, learning forward eagerly in his armchair.
“Well I was in the first war, see, the Great War, but I must’ve told Blod a hundred times and well, she’s grown up now init? She’s yurd it all.”
“I’m sure we’d love to hear some stories before dinner, Mr Pengelly.” It wasn’t just that hearing about the war would be interesting; the mention of Blod made me feel the need to escape from the present moment for a little while.
“Well then,” Idrys said happily, “D’you want to yur about the battles or the spies?”
“Ooh!” Leighton exclaimed, raising his hand like he was in a schoolroom, “The spies please!”
“In that case, I’ll tell you something you’d never believe and you tell me if you think it could be true.” Idrys leaned forward and steeped his fingers together, his loud voice becoming softer as he started his tale. “When I was in Dover waiting to be sent out to France, there was a spy billeted with us, sleeping in our barracks, like. It was his job to infiltrate the German forces and look at their top secret plans, but he did it all without ever leaving Dover.”
Idrys paused for effect.
“What? How?” Leighton asked impatiently. I found myself eager for the answer too.
“Well, he was what you’d call a psychic,” Idrys answered, “He said he could travel, in his mind’s eye, to see things on other continents.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat.
“But that’s ridiculous!” Leighton exclaimed, slapping his leg, “That’s like a fairy-tale thing!”
“Ah well,” Idrys said, holding up a finger emphatically, “I thought that too, so did all the fellas, so we asked this psychic if he’d prove it to us.”
“And what did he do?” I asked, finding that my voice was trembling. I had never met anyone who talked about things like this before, never heard anything even slightly similar to my secret gift outside of fiction.
“Well we locked him in the loo see, where it was pitch dark and he couldn’t talk to no-one, then we sent our mate Billy into the billet. Billy went round taking things out of everyone’s packs and cupboards and putting them in new places. Then we sent Billy away so he couldn’t give no hints and brought this spy fella back to the billet. He stood at the door and he told us everything that had just happened. He told us exactly where to find every object that Billy had moved, he told us how Billy had swapped some things over and changed his mind, then swapped them back. He told us all sorts of things. And Billy came back and said it was all true. Well if you can tell me how that’s possible, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”
Leighton sat scratching his chin thoughtfully and Idrys gave us a satisfied look. I knew, of course, exactly how it was possible. If you locked me up somewhere and had me tell you what Leighton had been up to all day, I’d be able to rattle off every action as though they’d been my own. What fascinated me was not the demonstration, but the fact that someone else out there had what I had, knew what I knew.
“Suppose it’s true that this friend of yours was psychic, Mr Pengelly,” I began carefully, “Did he tell you how he did it? What was his process to travel with his mind?”
“Ah, you’re a scientific one, are you?” Idrys said with what he thought was a knowing grin. Clearly he thought I didn’t believe him. “Well Kit, he told me and the boys that all he had to do was close his eyes and think.”
“Think about what?” I pressed.
“About where he wanted to go, or who he wanted to find,” Idrys answered.
“And was it easier to reach people he knew, but harder to find strangers?”
Idrys quirked a grey eyebrow at me. “That’s a funny question,” he said with amusement, “Are you thinking of trying it sometime?”
It was hard not to be flustered by the accusation, so I tried to laugh it off.
“I’m just interested,” I lied, “It’d be nice to think we have people who can spy in on the Germans now, in this war, wouldn’t it?”
“I wish I could do it,” Leighton said excitedly beside me, “I’d give all of Hitler’s secret plans to the Prime Minister!” I wished I could tell him that it wasn’t as simple as that.
***
Idrys moved on to his battle stories at the dinner table, which caused Blodwyn to groan regularly between bites of her roast. She only perked up when her Bampi told her how pretty she was looking. I was totally lost to my own thoughts as I chewed aimlessly on a piece of chicken at the far end of the table, wondering about the psychic spy of the Great War and his special skill. If it were true, then that meant other people out there could do what I could do. If it were false, then people who could pretend to be psychic were making a fool out of the military. But the military wanted them, needed them even, to gather their information.
It was silly to think that a girl like me could ever be of use in the grand scheme of the world war, but it was also quite possibly true. If I could hone my focus into people and places further away than just Leighton, there was a chance that I could actually be useful to someone. I thought back to the German man from my dream the night before and spoke without thinking, interrupting one of Blod’s little rants.
“Where’s Oslo?” I asked.
Blod shot me a stabbing look across the table. Idrys swallowed his mouthful of potatoes as he turned to look at me.
“Norway, love,” he answered, “It’s the capital city.”
“Why’d you ask Kit?” Mam said, shifting more vegetables into the available space on my plate.
“I, um, I heard it in a dream,” I answered, realising seconds later how stupid I sounded.
“That’s funny,” Mam remarked with a kind smile.
“Yeah, she’s a funny girl, isn’t she?” Blod added. She too was smiling, but not in the same way. The urge to slap people’s faces was apparently quite a popular one for me today.
Leighton started school again in the village the week after our arrival, so I was left in peace in the sitting room most mornings in order to practice propelling myself in the chair as the rotten Doctor Bickerstaff had ordered. But with the luxury of time without supervision all I could think of was Idrys’s tale of the psychic spy and the soldiers I had seen in my dream. If I was going to get back into the head of the German man talking about Oslo, I would have to stretch my mind a lot farther than it had ever deliberately travelled.
The first thing to practice was finding Mum. I had been able to do it with ease when we were at home, when she was in another room or even down the end of the street chin-wagging with the local gossip, but I had never attempted to reach her any farther afield than that. Now was the time to try. I raised my hands up for the heel of each palm to touch my forehead, my eyes slipping shut. Two big breaths. In and out and in and out. And I thought hard, thought of Mum and her short, curly hair the colour of autumn leaves, her eyes the same navy blue shade as mine, her smart brown hat with the pretty white bow that she wore to go out and about.
I opened my eyes to a familiar scene: Blackwell’s Post Office in East London. I could see my mother’s slim white hands holding a small stack of letters. She was waiting in a noisy little queue. I congratulated myself very quietly on a job well done. My gift had taken me all the way back to London, though it was still into a head that I already knew I could reach, it was something. Distance was possible.
“Hello Gail,” said a woman behind my mother in the bustling queue. She turned and through her eyes I was overjoyed to see the familiar sight of Anne, my mother’s childhood friend who lived not far from us.
“Oh Anne,” Mum said, giving the woman a hug with one hand whilst she clasped her letters
in the other, “How are you dear? Did Bobby and John get off okay?”
“Yes everything was smooth as you like,” Anne replied with a smile, “They sent me a letter from Merthyr.”
“I thought they were going to the Rhondda something-or-other?” my mother pressed.
Anne waved a casual hand. “Oh there was a terrible mix up, too many kids in one place and not enough homes to put them in!”
“How awful,” Mum said. I thought the same thing.
“No harm done, the boys are all right with the new family. Have you heard from your two?”
As I felt a wave of disappointment wash over Mum, the crushing guilt grabbed me like those awful splints Bickerstaff had given me, except this time the hard boards were cramping around my heart. I hadn’t even thought to write to Mum yet, everything had been so busy here and I had set off on this new psychic mission without even thinking about her as more than a practice target. It made me feel a little sick.
Mum was trying to smile; I could feel the movement in her face. “I’m just sending them a letter now,” she said, indicting her pile of mail as the queue shifted forwards, “So I’m sure they’ll send me all their news then.”
Too right we would. I would make a point of sending pageloads to tell her how much we missed her and make sure Leighton did the same.
“I have heard from her doctor though,” Mum added, “He wrote as soon as he’d seen her the other day.”
I froze, hating Doctor Bickerstaff all the more for pipping me to the post with my own mother, especially before I could give her my own impression of him.
Anne asked the question that was on my mind. “And what did he say?”
Worlds Between Page 8
