Celandine (5 page)

‘But I did see them. They
were
there.’

‘Ah,’ said Joseph. ‘Sometimes our eyes like to play funny games with us. You remember the little trick I showed you, Celandine, at Christmas, with the handkerchief and the playing cards? The Knave of Hearts, yes? First he was there, and then he was not there, and then he was there again. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Celandine. She remembered. But that was different.

They didn’t believe her, and she wasn’t sure why. The appearance of the tree-people had been surprising, shocking even, but no more so than some of the things she had seen at the travelling zoo – where
the
sight of a kiwi had so impressed her that she had held on tight to her mother’s hand and said, ‘But there aren’t
really
such things, are there?’ And the baboons she had seen with their brightly painted faces, and the gorgeous macaw that had offered to take her coat – these creatures seemed no less unlikely than a very small person with a taste for cherry cake.

But the more she insisted upon what she had seen, the more agitated her mother became, and the more grave the look in her Uncle Josef’s eyes. In the end she gave it up and tried another subject.

‘Have they all gone home now?’

But this didn’t seem to have been quite the right thing to say either, for now their expressions changed from concern to puzzlement. Then Josef understood.

‘Oh, the party. Yes, they have all gone home, Celandine. You have been sleeping for some while. The picnic party was yesterday – we have been quite worried, you know.’

Freddie, at least, believed her story.

‘Golly,’ he said, and jumped off the corner of her bed to go and peer out of the window. ‘How many, do you think? Just the two that you saw? Or are there lots of them? I wonder . . . I wonder what they eat.’

Celandine laughed. ‘Cake,’ she said.

‘No, but seriously . . .’ Freddie turned his head to look at her, his blue eyes wide and questioning. ‘And what do they do when it rains? And what about in the winter? Come on, Dinah – we have to go and see. Are
you
well enough? I wonder if they’d like some eggs. Or carrots. We could get some from the garden.’

‘Yes, all right.’

‘Hop up, then. I’ll go and see if I can find a basket.’

And that was the wonderful thing about Freddie – he had no patience. Everything had to happen
now
. He never said ‘We’ll have to wait and see’, or ‘Perhaps we’d better think about it’. He wasn’t sensible, like Thos.

‘What a
mixture
of children you have, Mrs Howard.’ People often said this – visitors who came to call. And Celandine could see that it was true, as she sat at her dressing table and tried to organize her ridiculous hair. Thos was dark, like their father – dark hair, and dark serious eyes. He also had Erstcourt’s dark and sudden temper. Freddie was fair and blue-eyed, like their mother, and his hair had to be kept very short because it was so curly. Freddie was impatient and it could be difficult to get his attention, but he was seldom grumpy. When Celandine looked into the mirror she could see Thos’s grave brown eyes staring back at her. And when she tried to get a brush through her frizzy blonde curls she could see how Freddie’s hair would be if it was allowed to grow. Yes, they were a mixture all right, and she was the strangest mixture of them all. No wonder people gave her odd looks.

‘Are you ready?’ Freddie was straight back, and he’d managed to get hold of an egg basket. ‘Let’s go and see if we can find them, then.’

* * *

They stood beneath the spreading oak on Howard’s Hill, where Celandine had lain in the baby carriage, and shouted up at the silent trees.

‘Hallooo! Is there anybody in there?’

Freddie lifted the basket so that it could more clearly be seen should anyone be watching. They had eggs and carrots, a bottle of liquorice water and most of a Bath bun, but so far no customers.

‘I don’t suppose they stay in the same tree all the time,’ said Freddie. ‘I expect they move about a bit. Wish we could get in there.’

They looked doubtfully at the heavy tangle of briars and Freddie went as far as trying to part a few of them, but they could both see that it was hopeless. ‘Even if we had a billhook, it wouldn’t be any good,’ said Freddie. He brightened up. ‘Still. There might be a better place somewhere else. We’ll go and see, shall we?’

Celandine stumbled along beside her brother, happy to let him be in charge as he swished through the long summer grass. Freddie was still hopeful that they would find a way through the continuous barrier of brambles. ‘And even if we don’t,’ he said, ‘they’re sure to spot us sooner or later. Once they see that we mean them no harm, they’ll probably come closer. Hallooo! Are you there? We’ve brought you some food!’

They came to a halt at the top of a steep gully and looked down the bank at the little trickle of water that dampened the rocks below. The stream obviously
started
somewhere in the wood, and here was where it came out.

‘Aha! This could be a good place,’ said Freddie, and they scrambled down the side of the gully to take a closer look.

But the brambles that overhung the stream were as thick here as anywhere and there was no possibility of even touching them without getting their feet wet and muddy.

Freddie said that they could always come back later. ‘It might be the best place after all, but we’d better make sure that there isn’t an easier way in. Come on.’ They clambered up the opposite bank of the gully and carried on with their search.

Right around the entire perimeter of the wood they walked, and it took hours. They kept stopping and looking up at the trees, wishing that they could find a hanging branch that was low enough to reach. They shouted and whistled and promised that they only wanted to be friendly. Occasionally they had another go at picking their way through the wall of briars. None of it did any good, yet Freddie remained cheerful. ‘There might be
anything
in there,’ he said. ‘Bears, even. Or wolves.’ Another thought occurred to him. ‘If we can’t get in,’ he said, ‘then how can anything get out? They might be trapped, Dinah, whoever it is that you saw. They could be just waiting for us to come and rescue them.’

Celandine, so glad at first that Freddie had believed her story, began to wish that she’d kept quiet about the whole thing. Her legs ached, her head
ached,
and she was scratched and stung in a hundred places. She trailed miserably after her brother, wearily wading through the patches of nettles and dock leaves, following in his footsteps like King Wenceslas’s page.

‘Freddie, let’s go back,’ she said, at last. ‘I’m so tired.’

‘Well, but it must be just as far to go back as it is to carry on,’ said Freddie. ‘We’d do better to keep going. Tell you what though, we might as well eat the food. Here, you have the bun.’

By the time they reached the big oak tree that they’d started from, Celandine was absolutely ready to drop.

‘Want me to give you a pick-a-back?’ said Freddie. Celandine shook her head. She suddenly wanted to cry. Freddie had believed her story when nobody else had, and he’d never once got cross with her, although it was clear that the whole day had been a waste of time. She felt terrible about it, yet he had never complained or hinted that she must have been mistaken. He would even give her a pick-a-back home if she wanted. But what really upset her was that he’d given her the Bath bun and she’d eaten it all and not even offered to share it with him. Freddie had eaten a carrot instead. Why was she such a bad person?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and began to walk down the hill – trying to stay ahead of him so that he shouldn’t see her watery eyes. And even then she realized that he was still being kind, that he was carefully keeping a pace or two behind her because he knew that she was crying and he didn’t want to embarrass her.

‘Don’t worry, Dinah,’ said Freddie. ‘We’ll find them, you’ll see. Shall we try again tomorrow?’

‘Yes. If you like.’

She knew that they never would. Tomorrow was tomorrow, and something else would have claimed Freddie’s attention by then – and his company. By tomorrow he would probably have forgotten all about today.

And as the tomorrows came and went, Celandine also began to forget – there being more immediate troubles to occupy her thoughts.

After the Coronation picnic, Miss Bell’s attitude towards her turned to open dislike and she seemed deliberately to make life difficult. No piece of work that Celandine produced was ever quite good enough for Miss Bell. Celandine could not write satisfactorily, nor paint, nor draw, nor make fingerprint pictures without smudging them, nor embroider nor sew, nor play music – she did nothing well enough to suit her governess. Everything she attempted resulted in criticism and punishment.

‘What a pity, Celandine, that you had to spoil your map of Norway by decorating it with drawings of mermaids,’ said Miss Bell one morning. ‘I’m afraid it just won’t do.’ She studied the map for a few moments longer before screwing it up and dropping it into the wastepaper basket. Then she said, ‘And do you really think that blue and green are suitable colours for your embroidered lettering? You had better unpick it and start all over again.’

Celandine came to dread the very smell of the schoolroom, but worst of all were the piano lessons, held in the parlour.

Every afternoon at four o’clock, Celandine sat at the piano to play her scales, and every afternoon she got something wrong. Miss Bell stood beside her with a wooden ruler poised above Celandine’s hands as they made their uncertain progress up and down the keys. And whenever those hands stumbled upon a wrong note, down came the ruler with a smart rap on the offending knuckle.

There was more torture as they moved on to ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’. Celandine had played this wretched little tune so many times that it still jangled in her head when she closed her eyes at night.

‘Please, Miss Bell,
can’t
we have another piece of music?’

‘Yes, of course, Celandine. As I’ve told you before, we shall select another piece directly you are able to play this one without these silly mistakes. Again please.’

And the wooden ruler continued to hover above her outraged fingers, waiting to strike.

Celandine had appealed to her mother on several occasions, and one Sunday evening, with the prospect of another painful week before her, she tried yet again.

‘I
hate
Miss Bell,’ she said. ‘And Miss Bell hates me. I wish you’d get rid of her, Mama, and find me a better governess.’

Her mother looked up from her sewing. ‘Miss Bell
is
a very
good
governess,’ she said. She lowered her spectacles and peered around the spirit lamp that was set upon the little table beside her. ‘And of course she does not hate you. You must not keep saying such a thing. There was no trobles with Freddie, or with Thos. If there is trobles now, then perhaps is with you, Celandine. You did not hate Miss Bell, did you Freddie?’

Freddie mumbled something. He was sitting at the parlour table, surrounded by bits of angling tackle, concentrating upon trying to tie a fishing fly.

‘Well, Freddie doesn’t have to be with her any more,’ said Celandine. ‘Now that he’s going away to school. And anyway, Miss Bell was never as awful to Freddie as she is to me. I wish somebody would hurry up and marry her, then she’d
have
to go away.’

‘Tom Allen might marry her,’ said Freddie, ‘if he could only forget about her being sick in a bucket.’ He gave Celandine a sly grin.

‘Sick in a
bucket
? What is this?’ Mrs Howard looked from one to the other.

‘It’s your own fault, you know, Dinah.’ Freddie held up the brightly coloured fly and brought it towards his mouth, gulping at it as though he were a fish. ‘If you didn’t tease her she’d be much nicer to you.’

‘Freddie, that’s so unfair! She’s just horrible to me – it’s not
my
fault. She hits me with a ruler. I keep trying to tell everybody, but nobody believes me.’

‘No, no. I’m sure that this is not so and that Freddie is right.’ Mrs Howard picked up her sewing
again.
‘And I shall hear no more, Celandine. But I shall speak with Miss Bell tomorrow, and see what
again
she has to say of this.’

‘Hmph.’ Celandine glowered at Freddie and then went back to practising her scales. She struck the piano keys as hard as she could and wished that the hated instrument would collapse into a heap of firewood. It was plain that she would have to fight her own battles and take her revenge wherever she could find it. Celandine frowned at her right hand as it stumbled up and down the keys – like a clumsy spider. Yes.
That
was something to think about: the big spider that she had hidden upstairs in the Bovril jar . . .

Miss Bell’s spectacular fear of spiders was a great discovery, and it gave Celandine some real ammunition. Nothing could be easier than to catch one or two of the really leggy ones that inhabited the stables, pop them into an empty jar and transport them to the classroom, where they could be re-housed in Miss Bell’s desk. It was a delight to watch her governess trying to control her choking horror upon the discovery of yet another of the appalling creatures, to see her attempting to stand her ground when all her instinct was to cry out and flee the room. But Miss Bell had quickly grown wise to this trick and now opened her desk with extreme caution – and a ruler held at arm’s length. The element of surprise had gone.

It was a shame, because Celandine had managed to catch a real monster earlier that evening, just before supper – a spider so big that she had felt it pinching furiously at her finger as she hastily clapped
the
pierced lid of the Bovril jar into place. She had poked a couple of dead flies through the holes in the lid and hoped that these would keep the beast going until the morning.

Plink-plink-plink
 . . .

Her spider-fingers crept along the piano keys more stealthily now, taking their time, quietly stalking their prey.

The next morning Miss Bell left the schoolroom at two minutes to eleven, as she always did, to fetch her cup of coffee.