Blackthorn Winter (25 page)

"She was always envious of Nora's talent as an artist," pronounced Mr. Cooper. "That's what it was. Liza was out to hurt our Nora because she was jealous. Nora was on her way up—her painting career was really taking off and the London critics were taking notice ... Oh, yes indeed. Jealousy is a powerfully motivating force, I can tell you that."

Dudley Cooper was a fine one to talk about jealousy. I remembered his anger at not being given the lead in
Voyage of the Jumblies.

But Mrs. Cooper was nodding in agreement with her husband. "People who are jealous will do anything. Anything at all." She met her husband's eye, and I saw a wordless communication pass between them.

What?
I wondered, frowning. I was so hot now, I was sweating freely. The cat was like a hot water bottle in my lap, and my braid felt heavy on my back.
What are you saying to each other?

"So, has
Voyage of the Jumblies
been canceled?" I asked abruptly. Speaking of jealousy.

They both turned round, blue gazes on me. "Not at all," Mr. Cooper said after a moment. "No need for that! Not after I stepped in as director. Reassigned a few parts, organized a group to do the set design..."

"Yes," added Mrs. Cooper with pride. "Dudley even
got some members of Girl Guides over here the other day after school for a meeting; they'll do the posters and advertising—"

"The show must go on!" bellowed Mr. Cooper, punching the air with one fist. He was grinning like a maniac. "Isn't that right, Dunk-o, my lad?"

I turned at the sound of a bell being rung from the doorway. There, thank goodness, stood Duncan, wearing one of his grandmother's frilly aprons over his jeans. He waved a little handbell. "Dinner is served," he announced. I stood up with a feeling of relief. Parsley jumped down and zoomed under the couch.

Hazel Cooper led the way out of the hot sitting room into a dining room that was cool by comparison. Duncan had set the table with his grandparents' best china. "I hope it's okay to use it, Granny," he said, helping her to her seat. "I just moved everything that was on the table over to the sideboard."

"Everything looks lovely, Dunk-o," she said, smiling at him. "I always say it's good to get the nice things out and use them often. Not only at Christmas."

"And serviettes, too," said Mr. Cooper approvingly. I looked around for a "serviette," and figured he must mean the napkins under each fork. "Now let's light these candles."

As Mrs. Cooper lit the white candles in the silver candleholders, Duncan held out a chair for me in true gentlemanly fashion. I sat down and unfolded my cloth napkin. As I did so, my elbow bumped the piece of furniture at my side. I glanced over. It was the sideboard, an antiqueylooking long dresser. The drawers probably held the Coopers' table linen and silverware. The top of the sideboard
was piled high with sheets of poster board, papers, scissors, and glue. There was a basket holding markers in all colors. And then I saw something that made my eyes widen: a cluster of small paint pots. Yellow, blue, and red.

Bright red paint, next to a mug full of brushes.

I told myself I was being stupid. Anybody in this village of artists could have red paint.
But Mr. and Mrs. Cooper aren't artists!
I pushed the thought away. Pots of red paint were probably a dime a dozen—or in England, ten pence a dozen—and anybody was allowed to have them. I remembered they'd said the Girl Guides were making posters. The paint didn't mean a thing. I was being ridiculous.

Duncan's shepherd's pie was delicious. The concoction of beef and onions, tomatoes and peas topped with a thick layer of mashed potatoes quickly disappeared from my plate. I smiled and exclaimed over how good everything was, and answered the Coopers' questions about my home in California and about my dad and my school and my friends—still, I was super-aware of the red paint only an arm's length away.

At the end of the meal I offered to help Duncan clear the dishes, but he urged me to relax and wait while he brought in the dessert. The dessert was something called sticky toffee pudding, and it was luscious, and served with thick, hot custard poured over the top. It was so good, it took my mind off the paint for a while. I begged Duncan to come make this same meal for my mom and the Goops as soon as possible. He looked pleased and promised he would.

Mrs. Cooper seemed delighted at Duncan's success as a chef. "I always did say that boys need to know how to cook just as much as girls do," she told me heartily. "Our Nora was fabulous in the kitchen, I saw to that! But I would have made sure a son was just as good."

"My mum was a great cook," Duncan affirmed with a smile. "And Granny is, too."

Could I cook? they wondered. Was my mother a good cook? Talk turned to my family again. The Coopers asked what we'd already seen of the area. Had we gone to Hoarcute House, the stately home just two miles away in Lower Dillingham? "That's a must-see," said Mr. Cooper. "It's even grander than Quent Carrington's Mill House, if you can imagine. Owned by the National Trust since the war. Families just can't keep up a place like that—even wealthy families, not anymore. Dunk-o, you ought to take this young lady there! Do some sightseeing."

"I'd like to, Grandad. And also up Castle Hill. I was hoping we could have a picnic, Juliana. But now the weather's turned rotten again—we might need to wait till it's
truly
spring."

"It's the blackthorn winter," Mr. Cooper said gleefully. He pointed at me. "You know, my girl, that in the past the thorns of the blackthorn were made into ink? And the bark of the blackthorn was stripped and boiled to make a lovely red dye for linens and wool? A very useful bush is the blackthorn—and not only for predicting a false spring!"

"That's right," added Mrs. Cooper. "In fact, you can make all sorts of syrups and jellies from the blackthorn fruit. They ripen in late summer, but they're edible only if there's been a really good frost earlier in the year. Luscious blue black fruit, like plums."

"We have plum trees at home," I offered.

"My dad once tried to make sloe gin from the blackthorn fruit," Duncan told me. "It didn't turn out very well, but apparently it used to be made and drunk often around here."

"Just the thing for harsh winter weather!" cackled Mr. Cooper. "Have we got any sloe gin, Hazel? Or sloe wine for these children to take on their picnic?"

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Cooper cheerfully. "It'll be a real English picnic, Dunk-o. I'll pack you a nice basket, and you take along your umbrellas in case of rain. A little cold and damp never hurt a soul!"

"And there are benches up there," I offered. "We wouldn't have to sit on the ground."

"So you've been up Castle Hill already?" asked Mr. Cooper, approvingly.

"Just today," I told them. "But it would be nice to go again with Duncan."

Duncan winked at me. We decided we'd go the very next day. Then as we finished eating, Dudley Cooper regaled us with facts and folklore about the ancient Castle Alnwick.

"There's a connection between this little house and that old castle, believe it or not," he told me. "But you'll never guess what it is!"

"No, you never will!" laughed Hazel Cooper. "Go on and guess, luv."

"Ummm, could it be that this house is built from the old castle stones?" I asked.

"Oh, probably," said Dudley Cooper dismissively. "Most buildings in Blackthorn are. But this special connection is much more intriguing. Look, let me get the news
clippings!" He shuffled over to the sideboard, moved aside the red pot of paint, and opened one of the drawers. From among a welter of papers, he managed to extract just the one he needed: a yellowing newspaper cutting. He brought it to the table and showed me. It was dated June 12, 1979.

"We were having a problem with our drains under the house back then," Mr. Cooper explained. "Remember that, dear?"

Mrs. Cooper nodded. "Yes, there was a foul smell coming out of the kitchen sink. So we had to call in the experts, and they said they were going to have to take up part of our kitchen floor and dig down under the house to clean out the old pipes and lay new pipes. Well, what can you do? I figured it would be a fine time to remodel the old kitchen as well. Get some new cabinets and nice lino on the floor. Well, you'll never guess! They ripped up the old floorboards, and went down under the house, digging a huge hole ... and when they were fitting new pipes, you'll never guess what they uncovered!"

"A tunnel!" cried Mr. Cooper, his blue eyes bright with excitement. "Right next to our pipe system. Built of the ancient castle stones! Our repair crew contacted the newspaper, and the work on the sewage drains had to stop while historians and archaeologists were called in to figure out what the tunnel was and who had built it."

"Turns out to be an escape tunnel," Mrs. Cooper clarified. "Built back when Castle Alnwick was still standing. Probably built with the thought that there might be a siege someday, and if the enemy had the family trapped inside the castle walls, the poor family could escape right under their enemies' noses!"

I examined the newspaper article and accompanying
photo that showed a much younger Dudley and Hazel Cooper standing with smiles on their faces, pointing down into a huge hole.

"How exciting!" I said. Our own house back in California had been designed and built by my dad. It was airy and big and modern, with beautiful landscaping and a hot tub on the deck, but it had no history and contained no mysteries. Personally I liked the safety in that, but I knew some people—like my sister, Ivy—preferred old houses
because
of the secrets they might contain. "My little sister would love to see this news clipping," I said. "She's really interested in history."

"Of course, the tunnel didn't end here at our house back in castle times," Duncan said. "Our house wasn't even here until the mid-1800s; this property was probably just a field when the tunnel was built. But it's still interesting."

"Did you get to walk through the tunnel?" I asked the Coopers.

They shook their heads. "No, although I did climb down for a look," said Mr. Cooper. "Walked back about fifty feet. Shone my torch around for a few minutes. But nobody knows how stable the old stones are, so we didn't go farther. Didn't want to risk a cave-in."

I pictured Mr. Cooper venturing into a black hole with a fiery torch of burning grasses. "Why didn't you just take a flashlight?" I asked.

When Duncan looked at me quizzically, I added, "Wouldn't it have been easier?"

It took another minute of puzzlement for us all to work out that we were talking about the same thing, and that in England flashlights are called
torches,
and it was a
flashlight
that Mr. Cooper had taken down into the tunnel with him
rather than a flaming stick. Obviously Mom hadn't completely covered my new English vocabulary.

"All right, all right," I said, laughing a little. "But what would people in castle times have used? They didn't have batteries then, of course. Would there be enough oxygen through the whole long tunnel for lanterns or fire-torches? It's a pretty long way up to the top of Castle Hill from here."

"Good point," said Duncan.

"Vents," said his grandfather. "The archaeologist found one out in our garden, covered by a metal grate, though it's pretty much covered now by earth. Probably there are others along the route. Must also be covered up now by gardens and houses."

"In California we sometimes hear of ancient Indian artifacts being found when a new house is being built," I said. "It always makes the evening news."

"Well, our tunnel was on the news for a few days," laughed Mr. Cooper. "Our moment in the sun, eh, Hazel?"

"Underground, dear. No sun there," she quipped. Then she started clearing the table, but Duncan jumped up to stop her.

"Oh, no, Granny," he said. "You and Grandad go have another chat with Juliana in the sitting room while I wash up."

No way was I going to be stuck back in that hot little room with the Coopers, chatting while I slow-roasted. "I'm great at washing dishes," I insisted. "And fast. We'll do them together."

I carried cups of tea into the sitting room for his grandparents, and then we were alone in the kitchen. He filled the dishpan with hot, sudsy water. I unfolded a clean dish towel and stood ready to dry.

He was in high spirits. "I'm glad you liked the shepherd's pie," he said, scrubbing the casserole dish. "But I hope you'll be hungry again for our picnic tomorrow because Granny packs enough for an army. I bet there will be at least half a roast chicken and a dozen sandwiches, not to mention an entire chocolate cake and some scones, too, for good measure!"

I laughed distractedly. He handed me the dish to dry and a rivulet of water ran out onto my sleeve.

"Oh, wait a minute—you need protection!" he said, taking one of his grandmother's aprons from the hook next to the back door. "Here—turn around." And when I did, he wrapped the apron around my waist. He tied the sash in a big bow, then let his hand trail slowly down my back.

Any other time I would have wanted to savor that touch and lean back into his arms. I'd want to turn up my face for the kiss that we both knew burned between us. But ... there was a collection of round beach stones lined up on the window ledge above the sink.

I stiffened.

"What's wrong?" he asked me. "You're not an apronwearing sort of woman?" His voice was warm and teasing. But I couldn't play along. "What is it?" He turned me around to face him.

I pointed back at the stone collection, silent. Then I glanced out the kitchen doorway into the dining room. "Look on the sideboard," I whispered.

"It's a mess," he acknowledged. "But—so what? Are you the sort of girl to get upset about a lapse in housekeeping? Or doesn't like rock collections?"

"Of course I'm not," I said wearily. "It's not about the
mess. It's about ... the paint. And the rocks are
beach
rocks, Duncan."

He looked perplexed. I walked into the dining room and picked up the little red pot.

"What are you suggesting, Juliana?" His voice, deepening, told me I'd better not be suggesting anything. "This is paint I was using this afternoon for my science project."