The Swallow (27 page)

“About the baby,” she finally said, softly.

I turned over and looked at her. She had both hands on her lap and was fiddling with her wedding ring. She looked over at me.

“You’re right. We should have told you.”

“Yes,” I said. “I knew something was wrong and it worried me, Mother. I didn’t know why you were so sad.”

She took a deep breath. “We realized we needed to leave my parents’ house and be on our own. Your father hasn’t been happy at work, and he’s thinking about going back to teaching. Your grandfather doesn’t understand, and—well, we needed to get away. Losing the baby, and Granny McPherson … it’s been difficult.” Her voice broke.

I reached out and touched her arm.

“Mother,” was all I could say.

She smiled, shaking her head, and the tears spilled out of her eyes.

“We thought we were going to lose you too,” she said. “Last summer, when you were so sick. You could so easily have gone, like that little girl next door. Poor Mrs. Lacey.”

She produced a clean handkerchief from her suit pocket and wiped her eyes. She looked up at me again.

“Rose, we do love you. Very much. I don’t suppose we show you enough. I’m so sorry that you’ve been so lonely, and so sad.”

I crept forward and she put her arms around me. We sat like that for a long time, with the house very still and quiet around us.

THE PURPLE SHAWL

Rose

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I thought I was sick. All my limbs felt heavy and I could barely sit up. The house was quiet. A dull gray light filtered in through the curtains, and when I pulled them back I saw the sky was filled with a thick blanket of clouds.

Every step I took felt like an effort, and my throat was tight, as if I was about to start crying again. I hauled myself across the hall, into my grandmother’s room, and stood at the closet door looking at the ladder that led to the attic. What was the point? Polly wasn’t up there.

But I went up anyway, one rung at a time. I wondered if I had caught some kind of flu. My head throbbed. I crawled across the floor and leaned against the chair, without even the strength to lift myself into it.

Polly. The weight in my chest shifted, and I began to cry again. It seemed like I had been crying all night, in my sleep, and here I was at it again.

Memories of Polly started jostling through my mind, one after another.

Polly as I had first seen her, in the cemetery, in her too-tight coat and her cat’s-eye glasses. Polly running down the street after me, out of breath. Her expression whenever she got excited about ghosts. Stuffing her face full of cookies. Lying white and still on the attic floor after Winnie attacked her. Lying white and still.

I laid my face against the arm of the chair and closed my eyes.

“Come back,” I whispered. “Please come back.”

A hand gently stroked my hair. I turned my head.

It wasn’t Polly. It was the old lady. She didn’t have her knitting this time. She looked at me kindly and stroked my hair again.

“There, there,” she said softly. “Such a lovely girl. There, there.”

I let my head sink back against the chair and closed my eyes. She gave my back a little pat. Her hand was warm. It felt good to sit there feeling nothing for a while. After a long time, I sat up and turned to her again.

“What happened to your knitting?” I asked.

That wasn’t what I’d meant to ask. I’d wanted to ask about Polly, how she could be a ghost and still breathe and eat, and why the old lady’s hand was warm, and whether I would ever see Polly again, and a dozen other questions, but what came out of my mouth was the question about her knitting.

She smiled at me. I noticed then that she had blue eyes, like my mother’s.

“I’ve finished,” she said with some satisfaction. She reached down beside the chair and her hand came up full of
soft, pale purple wool, all knitted into a shawl. She draped it around my shoulders.

“There you go, Rose,” she said. “That will keep you warm.”

I looked down at the delicate pattern, like rows of little scallop shells, and I drew it tight. It was light, but wonderfully warm.

“Thank you,” I said, turning back to her.

The chair was empty.

TWO BREAKFASTS

Rose

I wore the shawl all weekend. All day over my clothes. All night over my pajamas. And when I went outside, I wore it as a big scarf, under my cloak.

My mother noticed it right away.

“Wherever did you get that, Rose?” she asked when I appeared in the kitchen Saturday morning, looking for breakfast.

“I … ummm … found it,” I said. I still felt tired and heavy, but I was suddenly ravenous.

My mother gave me a searching look. “Go and sit down and I’ll bring you some porridge.”

Eww. Gooey porridge. Not exactly what I had in mind.

“Could— could I have bacon and eggs instead?” I asked. “And pancakes?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Whatever’s got into you, Rose? You don’t usually eat a big breakfast.”

“I’m just … hungry,” I replied. I didn’t know myself what had got into me. One minute I was feeling like death warmed over and now suddenly I could eat two breakfasts.

Kendrick trekked in from the pantry and gave me the usual dirty look.

“Kendrick, would you be a dear and cook up some bacon and eggs for Rose? And some of your delicious buckwheat pancakes? She’s woken up hungry.”

Kendrick looked affronted but mumbled something, and my mother ushered me through the swinging door to the dining room.

She sat down beside me and took up the end of the shawl.

“I haven’t seen this shawl for years,” she mused. “Not since my mother packed it away when I was a girl. Where did you find it?”

“In—in—the attic,” I said, dumbfounded.

“Well, however did it get there?” said my mother, stroking the soft wool. “My granny knit that shawl for me, before I was born. It was my baby shawl, and I always had it on my bed when I was little. But then it got packed away at some point and I never saw it again. I looked for it when you were a baby, but I couldn’t find it. Fancy you coming across it, after all these years.”

She sighed and put it down.

“My granny was a great knitter. She died when I was eight. I’m sure I’ve got a picture of her somewhere. I’ll have to show you.”

“Oh,” was all I could say.

“She taught me to knit, when I was only six. I’d sit by her chair and she’d show me how to hold the needles, and how to wind the wool around. She was very patient, as I recall, because I kept forgetting how and she had to show me again and again.” A
smile played around my mother’s lips, and she had a faraway look in her eyes. “You would have liked her, Rose. She was a very sweet old lady. No matter what was going on in our house, all the bustle and carry-on, Granny was always in her chair by the living room fire, knitting. I spent a lot of time just sitting with her.”

My mother gave herself a shake.

“Enough of all that. I’m glad you have it now, however it turned up. On to business.”

LEAVING SOCKS

Rose

My mother folded her hands together on the dining table and leaned towards me, much as if she were in a board meeting. She had that brisk air of organization that meant things were going to be accomplished quickly.

“Your father and I have been talking. He’s decided to leave socks and go back to teaching. I support him completely, but it won’t be easy. He has a lot of responsibilities at the company, and I’ll have to find a replacement for him.”

Kendrick chose that moment to bang through the door with the first part of my breakfast. I fell upon the eggs and toast while my mother watched me in silence for a moment.

“We’re both concerned about you,” she said finally.

I looked up at her, wondering if my father had mentioned anything about me seeing ghosts. It didn’t seem likely, judging by the way he’d told me not to mention Winnie when my mother had stormed in last night. But you never knew with grown-ups.

My mother was frowning, but at least she didn’t have that my-daughter’s-so-weird expression on her face. Believe me, I knew that when I saw it.

“You spend too much time on your own, Rose,” she said. “We’ll have to do something about that. Once your father gets a job at a school, he’ll be here to have supper with you every night. There’s not much I can do about my schedule, but I can start taking Saturday afternoons off and perhaps we can have some family outings.”

“I’d like that.”

“And we agree with what you said about … telling you things. We need to communicate more with you. We forget you’re not a little girl anymore.” She stood up. “Your father and I need to go to work this morning. But we’ll be home for a nice dinner together tonight.”

Phew. My father couldn’t have told her about the ghosts, or she would have brought it up by now.

As she came around the table on her way out the door, she stopped and fingered the shawl again.

“So strange that it should turn up again after all these years,” she murmured and left.

DON’T TELL YOUR MOTHER

Rose

Well, that was my mother. Businesslike. Used to managing people. Now she was going to manage me. It was better than being overlooked, but I felt a stir of uneasiness. Family outings? I couldn’t imagine it.

Kendrick stormed back in and plopped a plate of pancakes and a jug of maple syrup down on the table, snorted, and then returned to the kitchen.

I don’t know where my appetite came from, but I plowed through those pancakes with no difficulty. I felt a prickle of guilt. It didn’t seem right to be stuffing my face when I was so upset about Polly. And yet, the food made me feel better—more solid, less drifty. And surely Polly herself would approve? I gave a big sigh, got to my feet and wandered towards the window, which overlooked the back garden and the cemetery wall.

The heavy clouds lay over the day like a blanket of gloom. I could see the tips of some of the taller monuments beyond the stone wall, and the bare trees stood outlined against the sky.

The door behind me opened. I thought it was Kendrick, come to clear away the dishes, so I didn’t turn around.

“Rose.”