Celandine (9 page)

Miss Bell’s greeting was sarcastic, and predictable. ‘Ah, Miss Howard. So good of you to come.’ Celandine swallowed, but said nothing. She took a deep breath and made her way to her desk as though she were walking through a mist. She sat down clumsily and opened her workbasket.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Bell. ‘You
may
open your workbasket. You
may
take out your scissors and thread. You
may
pick up your sampler and – and you
may
begin.’

Why were her hands shaking so much? She could barely hold the dressmaking scissors, clumping great things that they were, and the skeins of coloured thread quivered in her grasp so that she could not find
the
ends. Her sampler began to slide from her lap as she fumbled with the threads. She grabbed at it, but missed – and as she bent down to retrieve the crumpled material, she banged her forehead on the corner of the desk. Then the scissors and most of the threads fell to the floor also.

Miss Bell walked slowly and deliberately down the room, heels clicking on the age-blackened floorboards. She stood beside the desk. Dark grey shoes and stockings, dark grey dress – all of her was dark grey. Celandine eventually managed to gather up the sampler, the scissors, and the threads, all in one armful. She sat up, red-faced, and dumped the whole grubby tangled mess onto the desk. Then she slouched back in her chair, head down, arms outstretched in front of her. Her forehead felt as though it would burst open.

There was a long, pounding silence. Finally Miss Bell sniffed, and said, ‘Celandine, I can well understand that you might be upset about your
horse
, but—’

The scissors flashed sideways in a quick and savage motion. Through the grey dress, through the grey stockings and deep, deep into the dark hatefulness of everything . . .

Miss Bell’s shriek was so loud that it could be clearly heard in the kitchen, and it caused Cook to drop the kettle. She stared at Lettie. ‘Oh my sausages – what in the world was that?’ The noise was coming from the direction of the schoolroom.

They found Miss Bell propped against a table for support, pushing herself backwards in feeble panic, as
though
trying to retreat or escape from something, and still crying out with pain. There was nobody else in the room. Cook rushed forward, holding out her arms in readiness – and only then realized that she was still carrying the lid of the kettle. Her attention was distracted and it was Lettie who first saw the scissors. She put her hands to her mouth and gasped. ‘Look!’

The scissors were deeply embedded into the dark-stained folds of Miss Bell’s dress, the crossed blades protruding from the soggy material, just above the knee. Miss Bell’s face was sickly grey with shock and her cries had subsided into fast panicky breathing.

‘Lie back on the table, miss!’ Cook took charge of the situation. ‘No – don’t try and stand. Lean back – that’s it, just lean back on me. Lettie, you run for Mrs Howard – tell her to fetch Doctor, directly. Goo on, girl – don’t gawp!’

Cross-legged in the tall summer grass, Celandine sat and looked down upon the world. The gentle sound of the breeze in the treetops became a rhythmic swishing in her ears as she rocked backwards and forwards. It was peaceful beneath the trees on Howard’s Hill – peaceful and safe. No samplers here. No samplers here, no samplers here, no samplers here. I shall not want, I shall not want, I
shall
not want, I
shall
not want . . .

She chanted softly to herself and plucked at the grass stems in front of her, trying to keep the thought of what she had done at bay. But the scissors kept
flashing
into her mind, and she could still feel the weight of them, the curve of them against her palm, the pinch of the open blade as she stabbed at the dark pain . . . hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you . . .

‘Hate . . . hate . . . hate . . . hate . . .’ Celandine muttered aloud as she rocked to and fro.

‘
Cake . . . cake . . . cake . . . cake
 . . .’

Celandine looked up, startled by the echo.

A blurred little figure dropped from the overhanging boughs and landed in the flattened grass before her. Celandine scrabbled backwards, unable to focus properly. It was a surprise to find that she was crying, and yet even through her tears she knew instantly what this was – who this was. She even remembered his name.

Fin
 . . .

Chapter Five

CELANDINE WRIGGLED AWAY
on her hands and heels, but she didn’t get up and run. She saw Fin’s worried little face, his agitated hands, and realized that he was filled with anxiety at her own distress.

He rocked from side to side, stroking the back of his wrist and pressing it against his grubby cheek – making desperate little cooing noises, as though he were comforting a baby. ‘Ooo . . . ooo . . . better . . . all better . . . ooo . . . ooo.’ It was clear that he was confused and upset, so that Celandine’s first instinct was to reassure him, despite the shock of his being there at all.

‘No . . . I’m all right. Don’t be . . . I’m all right.’ She brought her hand up to her face and made a brief show of wiping away her tears. ‘See?’ Her neck was tingling, and her cheeks felt flushed and icy cold at the same time.

Yet now he seemed to have momentarily forgotten her, to be caught up in some inner turmoil of his own, moving away from her as he continued to pet the curve of his wrist, ‘Ooo . . . ooo . . .’ The long rough
grass
caused him to stumble, and he threw his arms forward in alarm. He just managed to save himself from falling, and stood with his fingers splayed, open-mouthed, as though he was balanced at the edge of a precipice. ‘No . . . I all right. I all right. See?’ He looked at her in delight, very pleased with his balancing.

Celandine was sure that if she blinked he would be gone. If she closed her eyes for just one moment, he would disappear – and so she kept absolutely still and simply stared at him. His long black hair was dusty with pollen, great hanks of it tumbling wildly about his small brown face so that his eyes were as startlingly perfect as birds’ eggs in a ramshackle nest. The ill-fitting corduroy tunic, slung over his skinny frame like an oversized waistcoat, was so worn away that great bald patches of the weave were visible across the shoulders and his knee-length leggings hung down in baggy ruins, supported by what looked to be a strip of rabbitskin tied about his middle. His wiry little limbs were scuffed and grazed, streaked here and there with the green of tree-bark, and on one of his bare shoulders there was a single bead of blood, as shiny-bright as a ladybird in the sun, and presumably just acquired. The poorest village urchin would have laughed to see him, and yet how miraculous he was. How beautiful, and extraordinary, and perfect.

Fin turned his head sideways, looked away for a few moments, and then glanced shyly back, pretending to see her for the first time once more. ‘Cake?’ he said, in his throaty little croak of a voice, and Celandine wanted to pinch herself.

So many times they had told her – her mother, her father, her Uncle Josef – that her account of what had happened on the day of the Coronation party was all her imagination. She had had a nasty bang on the head, and that was the cause of it. And yet here was the truth, the amazing truth, standing before her – fidgeting with the ragged hem of his open tunic, looking up at the sky, seeing her, not seeing her, his attention everywhere and nowhere. ‘I all right.
I
all right.’

His actions seemed entirely unpredictable and Celandine felt a moment of apprehension, the same wariness with which she would regard a stoat or an owl, or any wild creature that was suddenly sprung upon her and beyond all reason and control. He might bite, she thought. He was tiny, perhaps a little more than knee-high to her, but he wasn’t a child. There was something monkey-like about the length of the arms and stooping body. He could hurt her.

No, she thought, he wouldn’t hurt her. He could have been newborn, for all the harm in him.

She was holding her breath, she realized, as she watched him – not daring to move lest she should frighten him away. He gazed out over the distant landscape, his small weathered hands clasped unselfconsciously together, his mouth open in a little ‘o’ of fascination. But then his eyes widened, as if he had perhaps recognized or understood something, and his expression became agitated. Something was troubling him.

‘Fin?’ She had remembered his name, and it was funny to hear herself whisper it.

He turned to her, and now there was growing panic in his expression.

‘No. Ooooh! No! Bad! Not go there.
Gorji
there.
Gorji
is get you!’ He ran at her and gripped her sleeve. ‘Ah – ah – ah.’

‘What? What is it? What’s the matter with you?’ Celandine drew her arm back, alarmed by the sudden change in his manner.

Fin let go of her sleeve and scuttled off a few paces – crouching low in the long grass – then ran back to grab at her again, and all the time he kept looking out over Howard’s Hill as though he were expecting an attack.

‘Ah – ah. Gorji! No! Come I – come I. Gorji is! Come I – me.’

His panic transferred to her, and she too looked about wildly, scrambling to her feet and wondering where the danger was. The sunny wetlands below seemed as tranquil as ever, but Fin was insistent that they should move – ‘Is
Gorji
come! Is
get
you!’ He looked quickly upwards at the branches he had lately tumbled out of, half raising his arms towards them. But there was obviously no possibility of getting back into the wood by that route, and with a last tug at her clothing he was off. Celandine followed as best she could, picking her way through the clumps of dock leaves and tufts of long grass, keeping close to the high barrier of brambles that surrounded the wood.

Doubled over as he was, scurrying low through the undergrowth, he could easily have been mistaken for a hare or a pheasant – but every so often his head
bobbed
up from the grass, making sure that she was still there, his eyes wide with panic. He moved quickly and it was difficult to keep up with him, but Celandine was not going to lose him if she could help it.

Around the crest of Howard’s Hill she stumbled in his wake, until they were approaching the place where the gully was – a steep cut in the hillside that Celandine remembered as having explored before, with Freddie. By this time she was convinced that she must be dreaming, that this could not be happening to her, and when the little figure ahead of her disappeared over the edge of the gully she was certain that she would never see him again.

She reached the top of the gully a few seconds later and looked down the stony bank at the damp trickle of the stream below. Nothing but brambles and bare rocks and silence. Her side hurt and she pressed a hand to her ribs as she tried to get her breath back. Whatever it was that she had been chasing had gone.

The pounding in her ears gradually subsided and the sounds of the world returned – the cry of the lapwings drifting up from the wetlands below, the doleful clank of a distant mowing machine, the chirrup of grasshoppers on the warm hillside. Mill Farm was down there, along with all her troubles, and soon she would have to go back and face up to what she had done. Celandine shook her head, trying to keep the terrible thing at bay, but she could find no escape. The very trees were whispering behind her back, as though they were telling each other how wicked she was, and the insistent warble of some nearby water-bird
sounded
like a mocking little laugh. She looked down into the gully, half-heartedly searching for the source of the sound, and then saw Fin once more, crouching among the brambles at the head of the stream. He had his hands cupped to his mouth. When he was sure that she had spotted him, he parted the brambles a little and gave her a hurried wave.

There was a tunnel – a dank and forbidding place – cleverly hidden behind the brambles. It looked like the inside of a long wicker basket, a loose weave of willow sticks, black with age and damp, spanning the little stream. Astonishing though this was, Celandine really didn’t like the look of it. The tunnel was only a few yards long, and if she stooped low enough she would just be able to squeeze through it, but she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to try. The overhanging brambles that concealed the entrance were already snagging at her clothing, and if she went any further she would almost certainly get her feet wet. She turned and looked behind her to where the bright sparkles of sunlight danced upon the rocky shallows of the stream, then peered once more along the extraordinary basketwork construction. She caught a glimpse of Fin, briefly silhouetted against the circle of light at the far end. Then one of her feet slipped on a stone and she fell forward with a gulp, pushing her hands against the creaking wicker walls as she tried to save herself, feeling the instant shock of cold water through her shoes and stockings. She staggered on a couple of paces further, still trying to
regain
her balance, and it seemed as though her choice had been made for her. Yet she stopped and hesitated once more. It was chilly in here – creepy-cold – and there was a musty smell, like the smell of the black earth beneath the laurel bushes at home.

Celandine called out, her voice sounding panicky and strange in the dim confined space.

‘Fin?’

But Fin had disappeared again, and there was no reply.

The end of the tunnel was only three or four yards away, and it would now be easier to continue than to try and turn around. Celandine could see a grassy bank in the sunlight, clumps of brambles, part of a mossy tree limb, but little else. Another few crouching steps forward, her feet now hopelessly soaked, and she paused again, listening. She thought she had heard Fin’s voice – ‘Ah – ah – ah . . .’ – a brief, muffled cry. She peered ahead and waited, shouted again, but Fin did not return. There was nothing but the sound of her own fast breathing, and the soft trickle of the water over the slippery stones.

At last she made up her mind and picked her way along to the end of the tunnel, her hair coming undone and falling over her face so that she could hardly see. She kept one hand resting on the top of her head to prevent the sharp ends of the willow sticks from making matters worse, but then her bracelet became caught up instead and this delayed her further. The colour of the wickerwork had changed, she noticed. It was lighter at this end of the tunnel,
newer,
as though it had recently been added to, or replaced.