The Runaways (8 page)

‘I asked you, child, what are you doing here? Have you no tongue in your head?’

‘I am looking for my doll Gertrude,’ said Betsy.

‘And why should you expect to find your doll Gertrude in my private boudoir?’

‘Abednego might have brought her here. Abednego has stolen her.’

‘In what circumstances?’ asked the lady.

‘We came to fetch the beds,’ said Betsy. ‘And I went into the kitchen with Gertrude, and Abednego was sitting on the dresser and he took her out of my arms and ran away with her and I ran after.’

‘I see,’ said the lady. ‘And who are the
we
who came to fetch the beds?’

‘Nan my sister, Robert and Timothy my brothers, Absolom our dog, Ezra, Rob-Roy the pony and the cart. Uncle Ambrose stayed at home, but if you are Lady Alicia he presents his compliments.’

‘I beg that you will thank him,’ said Lady Alicia, ‘and present mine. I do not know your uncle personally, for I dislike being visited, but I correspond with him on occasions. You may sit down, child, on that chair, and describe your Uncle Ambrose to me.’

Betsy hoisted herself on to a chair in front of Lady Alicia and sat with her legs dangling. The sun shone on her rough red curls, and her cotton frock was the colour of the new green beech leaves. In the old room she
looked very fresh and new and a great deal more
beautiful
than in actual fact she was. ‘My Uncle Ambrose,’ she said, ‘is the very nicest kind of man. He loves me.’

A ripple of something that might have been
amusement
, or perhaps memory, passed over Lady Alicia’s face and she asked, ‘Has he informed you of the fact?’

Betsy shook her flaming head. ‘But I know,’ she said.

‘One does,’ agreed Lady Alicia. ‘But if you return his affection you should inform him of the fact. Not
necessarily
in words.’

‘I’ve told him,’ said Betsy, ‘like this.’ And she slipped off her chair, went to Lady Alicia and leaned close to her, fluttering her long eyelashes against the old lady’s cheek. ‘That’s a butterfly kiss,’ she said. ‘I do it to Uncle Ambrose, Nan and Father. And you. Nobody else. Where’s my doll Gertrude?’

Lady Alicia’s voice was no longer imperious but soft and slightly shaky as she said, ‘We must summon Abednego. But I have lost my silver bell.’

‘It’s on top of the bookcase,’ said Betsy.

Lady Alicia gave an exclamation of annoyance. ‘He puts it beyond my reach,’ she said querulously. ‘He does it on purpose.’

‘I’ll get it,’ said Betsy and climbing up on one of the chairs she reached it down. ‘Ring it outside the door,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘Ring it for a long time.’

Betsy did so. It was a small silver bell, but it rang out in a marvellous manner, clear and sweet and loud, as though it were ten times its size, and echoes woke up in the house and answered it, ringing and ringing away and away like birdsong in the wood.

‘That should fetch him,’ said Betsy and came back to Lady Alicia. ‘Have you any little girls?’ she asked, climbing back on her chair.

‘No,’ said Lady Alicia.

‘Little boys?’ asked Betsy.

‘A long time ago I had one little boy, called Francis,’ said Lady Alicia, and her blue eyes were hooded again and once more her hands looked as though she would never be able to lift them from the carved birds.

‘Did you lose him?’ enquired Betsy with great interest.

‘Yes,’ said Lady Alicia.

‘Where did you lose him?’

‘On Lion Tor,’ said Lady Alicia in a voice as dry as dust. ‘Thirty years ago. He was eight years old.’

‘Timothy is eight,’ said Betsy.

She was sorry Lady Alicia had this habit of losing things because she could see it made her unhappy, but she did not know how to say so. It was a relief when padding
footsteps
were heard in the passage and Abednego knocked at the door. ‘Come in,’ said Lady Alicia, unhooding her eyes, and he entered, put his feet together and bowed. ‘What have you done with this little girl’s doll?’ He straightened, chattering with vexation, but his eyes were piteous. ‘Abednego, you know quite well that you cannot keep this doll. Go and fetch it.’

He went out, muttering monkey curses under his breath, and from behind he looked about a hundred years old. Lady Alicia apologized to Betsy. ‘You must forgive him, child. This is not so much a case of stealing as of thwarted paternity.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Betsy.

‘When my late husband brought him from Africa to be my page he was a very young monkey, and so, you see, parted from his own people, he has never had the pleasure of bringing up a family.’

‘Did you lose your husband too?’ asked Betsy.

‘No, he lost himself. He was an explorer. He used to travel all over the world digging up vanished cities. And then he also vanished.’

‘Perhaps he’ll turn up,’ said Betsy hopefully.

‘Not, I think, after twenty-seven years,’ said Lady Alicia. She sounded sad, but Betsy thought she had got over her husband losing himself in foreign parts a good deal better than she had got over herself mislaying her little boy on Lion Tor.

Abednego returned with Gertrude in the crook of his left arm and advanced towards Betsy with dragging
footsteps
. He stood in front of her, his eyes hot and angry as well as miserable, but he did not say any more rude things. He took Gertrude out of his cradling left arm with his right hand and held her rosy face briefly against his cheek, and then gave her back to Betsy. She looked up at him and saw that there were two wet tear-tracks smudged down his furry face from his eyes to the corners of his large ugly mouth. He was not weeping now, not in front of her, but he had wept.

Now Betsy was not an unselfish or even an
outstandingly
loving child, but she suddenly remembered her father saying goodbye to her before he went away. He had picked her up, holding her with her check against his face, and then had put her on Grandmama’s lap and gone
out of the room without saying a single word. And then there was the old lady, so heavy and dusty because she had lost her little boy. And now there was Abednego. Three times now this strange adult thing had touched her. She was well aware that her feeling for Gertrude was not this thing, but something far less admirable, and looking up into Abednego’s face she fought a battle inside herself with the thing that it was, a sort of grabbing thing, and then she held Gertrude out to him. ‘You have her,’ she said.

Abednego stared at her, stupefied.

‘My dear, are you giving your doll to Abednego as a permanent gift?’ asked Lady Alicia.

‘Yes,’ said Betsy. ‘I want him to have Gertrude for his.’

‘Abednego, you may take the doll,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘She is now your doll.’

Abednego snatched Gertrude out of Betsy’s hand and clutched her to the breast of his shabby green velvet coat. His eyes blazing like lamps and chattering madly, he leapt around the room, to the top of the bookcase and then to the back of Lady Alicia’s chair, from there to the mantelpiece and then windowsill. Then he came back to Betsy and stretching out his right hand he touched her cheek and her hair, and then gently laid the hand upon her chest. His eyes were soft and mild and the excited chattering had changed to crooning. Betsy smiled at him, aware that he loved her now and would always love her.

‘Child, you have made a friend,’ said Lady Alicia, ‘and a more valuable one than you realise. Abednego, fetch the tea. We will partake of it, the three of us together, and then we will play at spillikins.’

chapter five

the cave in the rock

Packing the beds, mattresses, and quilts into the little cart and tying them firmly into place, so that they should not fall out on the homeward journey, took quite a long time, and they were all so absorbed by it that it was not until the job was finished that Nan said suddenly, ‘Where’s Betsy?’

There was a moment of consternation and then Nan said, ‘She’ll be in the wood picking bluebells,’ and began to run across the yard. But Ezra ran after her and caught her wrist. ‘You don’t go into that there wood alone, maid,’ he said firmly. ‘I be comin’ with ee.’

‘Come back, both of you,’ called Robert. He had jumped up on to the parapet of the well and was looking very napoleonic and important and he spoke so loudly that they obeyed him. ‘Campaigns must be planned,’ he informed them, ‘and troops deployed in co-ordinated action. But first of all, where was this child last seen?’

To their shame no one knew, but Nan ran back into the kitchen and looked under the table and behind the roller towel that was hanging beside the sink. She never even saw the door in the dark corner that had so
mysteriously
closed itself behind Betsy, and perhaps would
have taken no notice of it if she had, so sure was she that Betsy was in the wood. She ran back to the others and heard Robert asking, ‘What does this child like doing best?’

‘Don’t be so silly, Robert!’ she said angrily, for there was no doubt Robert was showing off. ‘You know perfectly well what she likes doing best. Picking flowers. She’s in the wood.’

‘There are flowers in what used to be the garden,’ said Robert. ‘Now then. Ezra, Nan, and Absolom will go to the wood, Timothy and I to the garden with Moses Glory Glory Alleluja to show us where to look, and we’ll unharness Rob-Roy and put him in the stable till we come back.’

People who are quite sure what one ought to do are always obeyed, even if what they think one ought to do isn’t what one ought to do, and everyone immediately did what Robert said without further discussion. Robert himself, jumping off the well to unharness Rob-Roy, decided he would be a great general. There was
probably
less money in it than in burglary or the stage, but it would please Father. Nan, Ezra, and Absolom set off for the wood, making for the part of it that was directly opposite them across the yard, for that was the way they thought Betsy would have gone. ‘You see, she loves picking flowers,’ said Nan again, ‘and look at those
bluebells
. They’re like the sky fallen down.’

She was near to tears and Ezra said soothingly, ‘Now don’t ee take on, maid. Remember our bees be about.’

There was no visible path through the wood, but they made their way upward, wading in and out of pools
of bluebells. There were other flowers too, white ones with veined petals like the wings of moths that Ezra said were anemones, sorrel smelling sweetly of hay, and late wood violets. Nan would have felt herself in heaven had it not been that Betsy was lost. The way grew steeper and she asked anxiously, ‘Aren’t we climbing toward Lion Tor?’

‘Aye,’ said Ezra. ‘But don’t ee fret. The little maid could never ’ave climbed that far. Absolom, where be off to?’

There was a whirring of wings and a great clattering cry, for Absolom had started a cock pheasant. There was a gleam of purple and crimson and green and then the great bird flew off with Absolom in pursuit, with Ezra shouting at Absolom to come back, for pheasants are valuable birds and must not be pursued by dogs. Nan stayed where she was, knee-deep in bluebells, for she knew Ezra on his wooden leg had as much chance of catching up with Absolom as he had of catching the pheasant. They would both soon be back.

Yet they were out of sight and she felt lonely. Far up above her head, in the galleries of the trees, among the interlacing sunbeams, the birds were singing, but they seemed far removed from her and only a few of the sunbeams pierced down to where she was. Yet a few did and turning to one of them for company she saw four bees revolving in it, turning slowly round and round, as though bathing their wings in gold, and now that she saw them she could hear their low humming. They came from the sunbeam, flew around her head and then moved slowly away to the left. She followed them because she found she had to.

They led her uphill among rocks and brambles, but they found the way through for her so that she did not fall or hurt herself. They led her to where a wall of rock had forced itself through the hillside. She
realised
she had come along way up the hill, that the trees were thinning and that up above her she could hear the baaing of sheep out on the hillside. A narrow path led steeply upward a long the face of the wall of rock and Nan climbed it, following the bees. She had no doubt that Betsy had been this way because here and there she found flowers lying on the path, anemones and sorrel and a few violets, and she picked them up because she did not want them to die. Yet it was not like Betsy to drop the flowers she had picked and Nan was surprised she had managed to climb so far by herself.

The path grew steeper and Nan found she had climbed above the tops of the trees. She turned round with her back to the rock and she almost forgot her anxiety for Betsy in wonder and awe. For here was another country. The rustling green that had made the ceiling of the country below was the floor of this one, and it rippled to her feet like the sea. She climbed up farther and saw high white clouds sailing over her head and she knew that if she were to go up above them the marvel would be repeated. Over her head there was world upon world, and below her feet too, going down and down for ever. It was her first experience of the heights and the abyss and she felt a little dizzy upon the rock-face.

She climbed on farther and then stopped, finding her way barred by a boulder of rock thrust out across the path like the paw of some great beast. The bees had
vanished and she began to feel frightened. She wanted to go back, down to the floor of the wood where Ezra and Absolom were, for these other worlds were not where she belonged. And surely Betsy could not have come this way. She could not have climbed over the boulder. Yet somebody had climbed over it because halfway up lay a white anemone like a dying moth, and because the somebody might possibly have been a scared Betsy, who had gone on because she was too frightened to go back, Nan went on too. She reached the dropped anemone, rescued it, scrambled to the top of the boulder and began to climb down the other side, and now it was suddenly easy because below her she was aware of refuge. It seemed no time at all before her feet sank into soft grass and she knew she was safe.

She stood and looked about her and she wondered if there was any place anywhere more lovely and strange than this, poised here halfway between the world of the trees and of the clouds. It was a miniature green valley, almost like a garden, held in a cleft of the rock. The two spurs of rock that contained it on each side were both the same shape, like the paws and forearms of a huge beast, and viewed from this side they were not menacing but protective, as though the beast held the garden in his arms. A small stream ran down the centre of it and fell over the edge of the cliff down to the trees below, and the banks of the stream were thick with water forget-me-nots and green ferns. There were flowers everywhere in the grass and more ferns and little rowan trees grew up the sides of the valley. Nan put her flowers into a pool between two stones at
the edge of the stream, to get a good drink, and she had a drink herself, lifting the water in her cupped hands. Then she sat down to rest and for the first time looked up at the rock at the head of the valley and saw it shaped like the chest of the beast, and up above it, against the sky, was the huge shaggy lion’s head. Now she knew where she was, between the paws of the lion who kept guard beneath the tor.

She knew where she was, but she still did not know where Betsy was. She called her, but there was no answer, and taking her flowers out of the water she began to search the little valley, following a path beside the stream. It only took her a few minutes to reach its source, bubbling out of the rock near the head of the valley. She walked a little farther and the path brought her out into an open space in front of the lion’s chest. Only now the mass of rock became less like a lion than a house. What from a distance had looked like the lion’s mouth was the door-shaped entrance to a cave up above her in the rock-face. Rough steps had been cut diagonally in the rock, leading up to the door, and at the bottom of them was a work-bench, a saw and chopper, a pile of logs, and a water pot. Evidently the lion was inhabited. He was alive.

Still carefully carrying the flowers, Nan climbed the steps with a beating heart. She was not afraid, for she knew there was nothing to be afraid of in this place, but life for the last few days had been not quite what she was accustomed to and she did wonder what was going to happen next. She reached the top of the steps, came to the mouth of the cave and looked in. There seemed no
one about and she very timidly went inside, and she felt at once as though she had gone back thousands of years, right back to the time when people had no homes except the caves, when they dressed in skins, hunted the wild beasts and drew wonderful pictures on the cave walls. There was a picture in this cave, on the wall opposite her, but she could see it only dimly because smoke drifted between her and it, smoke going up in a waving blue column from the fireplace of stones in the centre of the cave to a hole far up above in the roof. The floor of the cave was spread with dried bracken and there was a table of rough planks laid upon logs of wood, a few pots and pans beside the fire, and bunches of dried herbs hanging on the walls. Light came into the cave from its opening and from the hole in the roof above and Nan found she could see quite well. She crept cautiously round the fire because she very much wanted to see the picture on the wall.

It wasn’t one of the long-ago cavemen’s pictures because it wasn’t of wild animals. It was of men in tall hats with flacons on their wrists riding through a forest, and up above them was a town with towers and pinnacles perched on a mountain top. Nan was reminded at once of Linden Wood and Lion Tor. The outlines of the picture had been incised in the rock with a sharp tool and the colours carefully applied within the outlines. It was not an oil painting and it looked as though the artist had got the colours from roots and flowers. The picture was not very clear, yet Nan could feel the mystery of the wood, and the airy-lightness of the towers in the sky.

She moved on round the cave and there were other pictures on the walls, more like the cavemen’s pictures
because they portrayed hares, foxes, squirrels, striped badgers, and all sorts of birds. She did not yet know the names of the birds and beasts, but the little pictures made her love them. In one corner she found a bed of dried heather spread with old sacks and near it some roughly made wooden dishes, a clay pot full of wild flowers and a basket of plaited osiers containing dry wrinkled apples, nuts, and queer-looking roots. But no Betsy. She was on the point of going out again when she noticed a curtain of hide hanging on the wall, lifted it and saw a narrow fissure in the wall of the cave, just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, and beyond it a roughly made wooden ladder ascending a sloping chimney in the rock. Pale green light filtered down the chimney, so she supposed it led up to the hillside above. She dropped the curtain and drew back, for the ladder was so steep and the rungs so far apart that she did not think Betsy could possibly have gone up it.

But after a moment or two she realised that someone was coming down it, for she heard heavy footsteps slowly descending. Had it not been for Betsy she would have run away, but she had to ask whoever it was whether he, or it, had seen Betsy. So, trembling, she stood her ground.

He came out backwards from behind the curtain and with deep relief she saw he was a man, not a thing, a tall man with bent shoulders and tawny hair and beard. He turned round, straightened up and saw her. His jaw dropped in consternation and a look of alarm came into his golden-brown eyes. He was dressed in the oddest assortment of ragged garments and seemed to be what Grandmama called a tramp. She did not like them and had a notice on her gate which said, ‘No tramps. No hawkers. Beware of the dog.’ But Nan liked this man on sight, just as she liked Ezra and Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. He was big and strong, and golden like a lion, yet at sight of her he had begun to tremble too, and because he was frightened she ceased to be afraid, and to reassure him she held out to him the flowers she was still carrying. He took them with joy, his whole face lighting up, counted them
carefully
and added them to the other flowers in the clay pot.