A Traveller in Time (2 page)

I was suddenly aware how quiet it was, never a sound, I might have been the only person in the world. Even the clock stopped ticking, and the mice ceased rustling in the wainscot. I turned my head and saw a lady coming downstairs from the upper floor. She was dressed in a black dress which swept round her like a cloud, and at her neck was a narrow white frill which shone like ivory. Her eyes were very bright, and blue as violets. I sprang to my feet and smiled up at her, into the beautiful grave face she bent towards me. She gave an answering smile, and her deep-set eyes seemed to pierce me, and I caught my breath as I stood aside to let her pass. I never heard a footstep, she was there before I was aware. She went by as I leaned against the wall, and I pressed myself against the paper to leave room for her full floating skirts which took all the stairway. I never felt them touch me, and this gave me a curious sensation. Soundlessly she swayed down the stairway, and I stood watching her, smelling the sweet, faint odour of her dress, seeing the pallor of the hands which held her ruffled skirts, yet hearing nothing at all.

I leaned over the rail to watch her, and suddenly she was gone. The clock ticked loudly, the sounds of the street came to my ears, the lamplighter's whistle, clear and round, fluted through the air, and the bright gleam of the gas danced through the fanlight upon the patterned wall. I ran downstairs and pushed open the door into the sitting-room, expecting to see her there. The room was empty, and I went thoughtfully down to the basement where my mother was cooking, and asked about the lady.

“There is no one, child,” she exclaimed. “You've imagined her. It is easy to think you see some one in the dusk with flickering street lights falling on the walls. It was the shadow of somebody in the street perhaps.”

I was positive I had seen the lady and I described her little pleated frill and the way her skirts hung over a quilted petticoat like the skirts in the oak chest.

Mother was very quiet, as if she were thinking what to say next. Then she changed the conversation, asking me if we would all like to make treacle toffee that night, for soon it would be Guy Fawkes's Day, and we should have fireworks as usual in our little paved yard, where the water-tank stood and the tubs which we made into flower-gardens each spring.

We made the toffee, and burnt our fingers as we picked up the little streaky coils which lay in alluring shapes at the bottom of the cup of cold water. I thought no more of the lady, nor did I see her again, but my mother looked at me sometimes with a curious glance, as if she were anxious about me. I overheard my father say very impatiently: “Nonsense, Carlin. I don't believe such moonshine, for moonshine it is. You with your country superstitions! You say she has inherited second sight from your grandmother, but I think she needs a complete change from London. All three of them ought to go away for a month or two, and breathe fresh air, and these things wouldn't happen. Now let me hear no more of this.” He muttered “second fiddlesticks” and banged out of the room.

Mother was very kind and gentle with me, as if she realized my solitary life for the first time. When I went to bed she came upstairs with me, pretending she had nothing else to do. She sat for a long time on the window-sill, talking of nice comfortable things, like Christmas presents, and pantomimes, singing happy songs of her own childhood, but I wasn't lonely, and I curled down in bed content.

That winter was very long and trying, but to me it was like other winters, with days of dreariness when things went wrong and the rain soaked me to the skin and my throat was sore, or the fog choked me as I fumbled my way to school, and days too of radiant beauty when snow fell and the church at the bottom of the street nearby wore a white bonnet on its tower. Then the gardens and trees of Cheyne Walk were like a fairy-tale and I ran along the paths with Alison and Ian throwing snowballs and shouting with excitement in the clear whiteness and the sharp frostiness of the air. To me it was meat and drink and I wanted to stay out all night, looking up at the sparkling stars above the Thames, catching their glimmer in the whitened boughs of the planetrees, stepping through the blue shadows on the trampled snow. But the street-cleaners came every morning and swept away the beauty so that the dark pavements were bared. The wintry days passed, the sky dropping its burden of glittering crystals, the dustmen carrying it off as if it were something wicked.

My mother lighted my bedroom fire, and I sat by its glow with her, we two crouched on the hearthrug, the woollen curtains drawn over the window, and a kettle singing on the hob for cocoa. As she told her stories of her own girlhood, how she used to toboggan down the hills by moonlight, steering the wooden sledge past the holly bushes and by the wild brook to the last dip, how she cooked potatoes in a wood fire under the stars, and walked with the shepherd up the snowy fields to take care of the lambs, I could hear the faint sound of the fiddle in the inn across the road. It seemed to be part of her tales, and I thought of the little girl she described in scarlet tam-o'-shanter and scarlet shawl tied round her body, riding triumphantly down those lovely great hills with a fiddler tall and thin and outlandish playing fantastic icy tunes to her from his seat in the holly bushes.

But I got one cold after another, and then I was very ill. I don't remember that clearly, except the visits of the doctor and whispers behind the screen, and the crackle of the fire as I lay in bed with Mother sitting by me. When I came downstairs I was strangely weak and wretched, and I wanted nothing at all.

“Penelope must go away,” my mother said firmly. “All three of them are ill with this terrible winter of snow and fogs.”

“We haven't any money,” my father groaned. “Where can we send them?”

“I'm going to write to Thackers Farm and see if Aunt Tissie will have them for a while. She won't charge much, there are plenty of spare rooms, and the children will enjoy it.”

“Oh Mother! Can we all go?” cried Alison. “What is it like? Is it real country?”

“Shall I be able to ride and shoot?” asked Ian. But I said nothing.

“I don't even know if Aunt Tissie can take you, children, and I doubt if there will be much riding. Your Great-Aunt Tissie is not young, and she's old-fashioned in her ways.” My mother pondered, as if she were thinking of reasons to persuade her aunt to have three careless young people suddenly thrust upon her.

“Tell her that I can darn and mend,” cried Alison, “and I will help with the cooking.” It was noble of her for she hated sewing and cooking.

“And I'll help Great-Uncle What's-his-name. Mother, what is his name, your uncle?” asked Ian.

“Uncle Barnabas. Yes, he might be glad of help, if it is real help and not hindrance,” my mother agreed.

She spent a long time writing the letter that night, and I sat waiting to take it to the pillar-box. I wanted to push it safely deep down with a little prayer that Aunt Tissie would accept us. Mother was offering £2 a week for the lot of us, board and lodging, and we were a hungry three, but that was all she could possibly afford. We always knew about money in our house, just what everything cost, and that made us more careful.

At last the letter was sealed and I slipped it gently into the box with a fervent prayer. Then I stood for a moment by Chelsea Church, thinking of Sir Thomas More and his children who had perhaps walked there when Chelsea was a village and gardens and fields spread around. I thought of them so long, somebody stopped and asked me if anything was the matter, and blushing furiously, I hurried home again. It was always difficult to find a place to think without being noticed and questioned.

A few days later the expected letter came from Thackers. I lay in bed with a sore throat, listening to the noises in the street below, the cat's-meat man, the newsboys, the rumble of barrows and flower-carts. Then the postman's step came tapping down the street, and I was sure there was a letter for us. I flew downstairs in my bare feet to the dining-room where my parents were having breakfast alone.

“Go back to bed at once,” scolded my mother, but I begged to stay and curled myself by the fire to hear the news when the postman stopped at our door.

Dear Niece Carlin [my mother read],

I was very pleased to receive your letter. I am sorry the children are badly. I have talked it over with Brother Barnabas, and we shall be glad to take them. I wish I could do it for nothing, but we have had some losses of stock. We had to buy hay, the crop was so light, and the hard winter has made everything dear. We will meet the children if you let us know the train, and we will do our best to make them happy.

I have no more news at present, dear Niece Carlin.

Your affec. aunt,

C
ICELY
A
NNE
T
ABERNER
.

Alison and Ian had come down, and we all shouted together: “Hurrah! When can we go?” My sore throat miraculously disappeared, so that I was quite well the very same day.

Our clothes were washed and ironed and mended. Our suitcases were brought out of the corner of the top landing, and carried to our room where they stood gaping wide their mouths and swallowing all we put inside. Alison and I folded the garments, our best frocks, Alison's coral-coloured, mine green, and two small aprons with gay French stripes which Mother made for us from a piece of linen she had bought on her honeymoon. These were for housework she said, and I felt I could do anything wearing my little apron, but I never guessed where it would accompany me.

Ian hunted about seeking darkly for catapults and knives. Alison took her workbasket and chose her favourite authors. As for me I took my sketch-book, and Hans Andersen.

At last all was ready and we set off, carrying our bags to the bus for St. Pancras. We settled down in the express which speeded north through the centre of England. We had to change at Derby and a different atmosphere enveloped us as we got into the slow train. It was market-day, and people crowded into our carriage, stout folk with baskets of cabbage plants and bags filled with sausages and pork pies and fresh herrings, and as each large person peered in at the open door at the already full seats, the others called: “Come along in, there's plenty of room for a little one.” They all knew one another, and we three, squeezed together in the space of one, listened to their talk. A stout lady offered us humbugs from a paper bag, and Alison stiffly refused, but I was glad to eat them. An old bearded man brought red pears out of his bulging pocket, nearly dislocating the whole carriage as he struggled to draw them forth, and again I took some and the others refused.

“And where do you three young people come from?” asked one. “You're not belonging here, I can tell.”

“From London,” said Alison proudly, as if she had said “From Buckingham Palace”.

“London! Harkee there, John. They've come from London. Eh! It's a tidy big place. Not like here-abouts. My sister lives there in Camden Town. I don't expect you've ever set eyes on her, but she's the very spit of me.”

The others agreed the two sisters were as alike as two peas in a pod, and they talked of that lady in Camden Town, how London had rubbed the corners off her and now she was smooth as silk.

Ian began to laugh but Alison nudged him to be quiet.

“And where may ye be going?” asked a farmer, and he settled his large shape by my side and lifted his full pockets out of the way so that they did not hurt me.

“To Thackers Farm, near Hollow,” I told him. All eyes were turned on us, and those who had not heard were now told.

“Thackers. To old Barnabas Taberner's. He wasn't at market to-day. Well I never! Be ye related?”

“Miss Cicely Taberner is my Great-Aunt,” replied Alison primly.

“And Mister Barnabas Taberner is my Great-Uncle,” I added.

“Then ye'll be the childer of Penelope's daughter, Carlin, as married a Scotchman, up Edinburgh way, and went to live at Lunnon. Well I never! Well, ye'll liven 'em up. It's a quiet spot, Thackers. Quieter than most, but ye'll do well there. It'll put some roses in your cheeks, and ye need 'em.”

He pinched my cheeks in a friendly manner, and then turned back to the others. Soon they were all talking of market prices, and the poor prices of cattle, and the frost of winter and deaths and births. We sat silent, looking out at the darkening landscape, with a village here and there, and woods and hills and the little wild river which ran foaming alongside.

At each station somebody got out and the rest cried good-night, and sent messages to those at home. We felt they were all one family, they knew everybody and were friendly together. There was a general lifting down of packages and searching under seats for sacks of provender, and we joined in the chorus as we watched them set off with hands laden to be met by others who nodded and smiled back as if they knew us.

Then we came to our station, and our fellow travellers said good-night, and started us towards the station yard where they said the cart would be waiting. As we walked down the platform with its tiny roof and little stone booking-office we were hailed by an enormous old man wearing a great top-hat and widely flapping trousers. His red smiling face was wreathed in whiskers, and he waved a large hand and beckoned to us.

“Be ye Niece Carlin's childer from Lunnon?” he asked, and we said we were.

“I'm your Uncle Barnabas,” said he and he shook hands, imprisoning our fingers in his great palms so that mine ached for half an hour afterwards.

“Welcome,” said he. “I'm right glad to see ye. Come along, for ye'll be starved after your journey. Come along to the cart that's waiting over there.” He nodded to the darkness, and swept up all our bags as if they were straws. I sniffed the cold, scented air as if I could never get enough of it. There was not a light in the countryside, never a house, nothing at all except the river which we could hear roaring in its rocky bed. Then we saw the cart with its couple of lamps, and rugs and cushions piled upon the seat. Uncle Barnabas went to the horse's head and spoke to her, and the solitary porter carried some packages from the van and stowed them under the seat with our luggage.