Kingsholt (3 page)

‘Gina and the baby won’t be back from the market yet. We might as well begin.’

Tammy took hold of a dirty cloth and pulled an iron tray out of the small oven. They all sat on the floor and held the potatoes in napkins of newspaper. It’s a
truthful
way of life, thought Chloe, not bothering about knives and forks. No thick butter or creamy milk, just potatoes and a glass of water.

They ate in silence, until Nimbus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spoke in a slow voice. ‘So you’ve inherited Kingsholt, is that right?’

‘My Dad has. I don’t want it, I never did. It’s big and ugly.’

Nimbus crashed his free fist onto the ground. ‘It’s a palace,’ he said fiercely, ‘and by any rights it should be ours. Your Uncle George killed our Rosie and left us nothing. We have nothing. NOTHING.
I
can’t work now I’m not in the circus.’

Chloe had never seen his eyes flash like that, black, angry eyes.

‘He used to be a hypnotist and a trapeze artiste,’ said Tammy, nodding at her father. ‘That was before he hurt his foot.’ She looked up proudly. ‘I’ve seen him walk the sky. Until he fell.’

Chloe whistled. It was all Dad could do to crawl into the car.
She peered down at Nimbus’s feet, then at one of the big dusty boots lined with newspaper.

‘I was lucky not to be dead,’ he said. Then, after a while, ‘Enjoying it?’

Chloe nodded and wiped her mouth with her hand as he had done.

Nimbus finished eating, screwed up the newspaper into a ball and threw it into the stove. A fierce orange flame shot up.

‘Tammy would like you around, wouldn’t you, Tammy? Reading or no reading.’

‘Instead of Rosie?’ asked Tammy, both eyes blank.

Nimbus ignored her and smiled at Chloe. ‘When you come up here I’ll teach you —’ He broke off and brought more logs for the fire.

‘We keep it going all the year round,’ he said, shoving on another log and carelessly raking the ash, ‘no matter how hot it be. This is a cold cottage at the best of times.’ He looked intently at Chloe. ‘It’s in the stones, my dear, and in the history.’

‘How do you mean?’ said Chloe.

It was two weeks later when Nimbus told Chloe all about the cottage. She had often met him in the valley but had never gone back to the pest house on the hill. There was something about it that made her afraid.

‘Come on up,’ said Nimbus on a day when she was feeling very isolated. ‘Tammy’s wondering why she never sees you. She gets out of sorts, does our Tammy, without her sister or her mother.’ Loneliness was something Chloe understood, so this time she went up to the cottage and Nimbus took her inside. No one else was in the room.

‘It’s called the pest house,’ he said, ‘and that’s what it was.’ He pointed to the rough wall on the right of the window. ‘In the very old part over there – that’s where them with the plague were left to die.’

Chloe looked at the dark corner of the room. Shadows and cobwebs flapped from the ceiling, and on the flint wall a corn dolly, a horseshoe and a black pendant hung from three rusty nails. Nimbus’s words came out oddly, as if he was using someone else’s voice.

‘Aye, the Black Death. Blood spitting, putrid inflammation, black spots, tumours on thighs and arms.’

Tammy clattered downstairs and smirked as if she had been listening. Chloe’s mind raced back to the lesson in school about the fourteenth century, when the Black Death had killed over a third of the population of England. She touched the walls and imagined she heard the ring of the death bell and a voice calling, ‘Throw out your dead, throw out your dead.’ She rubbed her eyes. Dad always said she had too much imagination for her own good.

Nimbus took the pendant from the wall. It was jet black and shiny and there was a hole in the top where a thin thread of
leather had been strung. A funny sort of thing to have, thought Chloe as he swung it in front of her. She found herself looking at it intently, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

‘Backwards and forwards,’ Nimbus was saying in a soft hypnotic voice, ‘backwards and forwards, like the buzzard that flies free in the wood.’ He paused. ‘There are secrets, Chloe, grave matters to resolve, things to find out. You must do as we do, think as we think. Be one of us, one of the Nimbus tribe. And never listen to Aidan. He has nothing to tell you but lies. Come now, look into my eyes —’

Chloe met his gaze and found herself leaning towards Nimbus, as if he was a magnet. It was like the dream she sometimes had, when she couldn’t move, although a great black rock was about to tumble on her. Yet always, at the last minute, she stepped aside and the rock fell a little way off without harming her. He began to count slowly down from ten and Chloe found herself swaying to his voice as if it was quite a natural thing to do. The pendant traced smaller and smaller arcs and eventually came to a standstill. Nimbus was silent for a while and then he spoke. Although Chloe could never recall what he said, she remembered the bitter conviction in his voice.

With an enormous effort she moved away from him. A little later she had an uneasy feeling something strange had happened. She looked round but nothing very much had changed. Only Tammy had moved and was stuffing tight balls of newspaper into the fire, her red hair glowing in the colour of the shooting flames.

‘I must go now,’ said Chloe hurriedly. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

Nimbus hung the pendant back over the rusty nail. ‘Children are always in a hurry. But I’m not. I have time. Plenty of time.’ He saw her to the door. ‘You will come back, won’t you? I’ve a thing or two to sort out and I could do with your help.’

Chloe nodded and went out into the sunshine. She walked quickly down through the wood, fearful that Nimbus would
come after her, yet wondering why she was so afraid. He and Tammy were her friends, weren’t they, needing her help, asking her to go back? Of course, Mum had told her not to talk to strangers but he wasn’t a stranger, was he? He was part of Kingsholt.

There was a sudden ruffle in the trees overhead and through the shadows she saw a buzzard land high up in a tree, neck forward, wings back, ready to swoop. She froze, as an animal might, until the buzzard beat upwards again and left behind nothing but a few falling leaves. That was when she became aware of a strange putrid smell and a whining sound that might be Aidan’s saw.

He’s probably spying while he’s up in the tree, she thought and stopped dead in her tracks. What had made her think that? How had that thought come into her head? In a moment of panic she broke into a run, taking a short cut through the undergrowth so that she would avoid the Nimbus Tree.

Beyond the wood the sun lay in great sheaves over the fields, and at the bottom of the valley, the little stream shone like silver paper. Chloe watched the brown meadow butterflies flit over the grass. Ewes were grazing with their half-grown lambs under the chestnut tree. Slowly her feelings of unease and fear drained away. It was as if they belonged to another life she had left behind, on the other side of the wood. She decided to leave it behind forever.

‘Now this should tempt you,’ said Mrs Penfold, as Chloe walked into the kitchen. The table was piled high with fruit – apples and oranges, bananas and melons.

‘Enough to feed an army!’ Dorothy Penfold said, peering at her daughter carefully. ‘You’re looking peaky, darling. Well, here’s something to cheer you up.’

‘I’m all right, really I am,’ Chloe told her as she took the letter her mother was holding out and opened it.

Cheriton rd. Balham. July 4
^th
.

Chloe handed the letter to her mother and leaned out of the window, secretly pleased. Sam would make everything normal again, just as it used to be. Aidan was in the yard feeding the chickens and from behind, her mother’s voice filled the kitchen with waves of comment and information. ‘…Trust Dad to ask me to be with him just the week that Sam’s coming. I’ll just have time to settle him down, then I’ll be off to some retirement do in London, then back to the other house, and up to London again. It’s unremitting, isn’t it darling? And of course I won’t go if you’re still under the weather.’

‘I’ll be fine, Mum,’ said Chloe without turning round.

The voice went on, bouncing off different corners of the kitchen. ‘Leela will be here to keep an eye on you all. Mind you, she’ll have to go back in the evening to feed Tyler but I know she’ll sleep over if need be. Such a kind person, and of course Aidan is a gem.’

Chloe turned round and watched her mother sit down at the table, her chin cupped in her hands. ‘It all seems rather difficult doesn’t it, darling? I sometimes wish we could go back in time.’

‘That’s a thought,’ said Chloe. ‘I’d go back any day.’

Her mother uttered a little sigh. ‘It’s too late, pet. You know Dad’s had enough of London. He really does want to develop
this place and spend more time with us at the same time. And he will one day. It’s the best way through, I’m sure of that. Besides, Uncle George wouldn’t want us to abandon the ship.’

‘Dad always says he wants to be with us,’ said Chloe, ‘but he never is. I don’t remember the last time I went for a walk with him. I reckon he couldn’t walk properly if he tried.’

Her mother shrugged her shoulders and looked dreamily out of the window. ‘By the way, Chloe, have you seen Aidan wearing his tree climbing gear. Talk about old fashioned. But he seems determined to let in the light and make a clearing for the chapel he and Uncle George planned.’

Chloe spoke quickly. ‘He’s always creeping around in those woods as if he’s on to something. I shouldn’t trust him if I were you.’

‘Whatever do you mean, pet?’

Chloe watched her mother’s face sag into anxiety. ‘I don’t believe in the chapel idea for a moment. Where’s the money coming from? He’s crazy.’

Her mother sighed. ‘He’s a good man, Chloe, honest as the day is long. It’s simply that Uncle George had a mission, and he wants to fulfil it. Besides, I really couldn’t do without him. For instance, tonight, he’s promised to cook for you while I’m at the concert. Didn’t I tell you?’

‘You’re always doing something,’ said Chloe taking back Sam’s letter and reading it again.

That evening, Aidan cooked two trout he had caught in the stream.

‘We should have a trout farm,’ he said. ‘We might make some money that way.’

‘It’s delicious,’ said Chloe, squeezing half a lemon onto the crisp, shiny trout skin. ‘Just what I like to eat. I had a meal at Nimbus’s cottage the other day —’

‘So you’ve been —?’

She spoke sharply, ‘What’s wrong?’

Aidan stopped picking at the fine bones of the fish. ‘It’s hard to explain, Chloe, let alone believe. Things have become overshadowed in the valley.’

‘It’s all rubbish!’ she said, but she didn’t mean it. They ate in silence, then she stood up and collected the plates and handed Aidan the fruit bowl. He picked off a few grapes and she took a small red apple and held it up.

‘I loved being in our other house,’ she told him, ‘but I have a funny feeling about this whole valley.’ She became silent again then looked straight at Aidan.

‘I wish I could go away.’

She bit the apple and looked round. ‘How did this place get like this?’

‘Money,’ said Aidan flatly. ‘Your Uncle George ran out of money. He was always helping people of course, but he wasn’t very practical. Nor was his father or grandfather. This place was in a pretty bad way when
he
took it on.’ He looked up quickly. ‘And yet once upon a time there was nothing but happiness here. It’ll come back one day. Listen Chloe, I’ve discovered something.’

But she wasn’t listening. All she could hear was the slamming of a door inside her head, the turning of a key. ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she said, a break in her voice. She hurled the rest of the apple at the wall and stamped to the door. ‘I don’t trust you, Aidan. I don’t know why, but I don’t trust anyone anymore.’

Sam stood up and looked out of his bedroom window. Whatever am I doing here, he thought?

The sun was turning red and leaden, slinking into clouds that looked like those dusty plush cushions in the living room. This place was spooky all right, and had been from the moment Aunt Dorothy had met him at the station without Chloe. ‘Sorry dear, she’s exploring the grounds,’ was all the explanation she had offered as they drove into the Devon countryside. It was bad enough without Chloe, but as the lanes became narrower and the hedges higher, he had felt enclosed, even captured. Would he ever get back to Cheriton Street, Balham? His feelings intensified when they turned into a lane edged with high banks and overhung with thick, old trees.

‘There’s an iron age fort up there. It’s called Blackburr Fort.’

His aunt had slowed up and pointed to the right where high banks encircled a flat area of open grass, broken up by a few tall trees. It was at that moment Sam thought he had seen someone peering out behind a branch, smiling as if he knew him. Someone familiar, like Dad perhaps, though he hadn’t seen Dad for ages. He had felt breathless, almost disorientated by this strange figment of his imagination and had been relieved when Aunt Dorothy had said, ‘That’s Tyler, dear. His mother, Leela, teaches him at home, and now he’s older, Leela gives him all the freedom he wants. He’s just a little strange and never wants to leave this place.’

She had swung the car to the left, through an open gate and into a long drive. They had gone down and down between dark green rhododendron bushes and through wooden gates that Sam opened for his aunt. They had swung round another corner and there it was, an old mansion, standing in a wide valley of grass and sheep.