Tiger Moth (7 page)

I blinked and rubbed my eyes to make sure it wasn’t some kind of crazy mirage and, when I realised it wasn’t that or a dream, I grinned from ear to ear. Hiding, tucked away from
view, was a beach. A real beach! A proper sandy beach at last and I almost jumped down to the other side. Well, I would have jumped, but it was pretty high up so I kind of slid on my bottom until I
felt the warm sand between my toes. It was almost like the beach me and Dad had sailed out to on our last holiday. And, as I looked up towards the other side, I saw it had something which made it
probably the most amazing beach I had ever seen. It had a waterfall. It came sort of crashing down from the top of the hill to the sand. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the sun and I
couldn’t be sure, but I swear I saw something moving in the green bushes just above me. I waited for a while then I decided that I must have imagined it.

I walked along the sandy cove towards where the waterfall came down the hillside. The sand was a soft sort of pale pink and when I looked down I saw there were millions of tiny pink and white
bits of shell that sort of sparkled in the sunlight. The water on the shoreline was shallow and warm, and the large grey rocks that jutted out of the water created a lagoon like I had only ever
seen in movies. As I got nearer to the waterfall, the rushing sound of water was almost deafening and I held my hand under the water. Cold.
Freezing
cold, but I took a deep breath and
dipped my head under the icy rush of it. It felt amazing and my whole body cooled down so that I felt comfortable again. I turned back and saw the sun was dipping lower in the sky. I knew I
wouldn’t have long before Mum or Gary came to find me; besides, I was so hungry that I would have to head back at some point. But, for now, I didn’t want to leave.

I sat down at the far side of the little cove and rested my back against the warmth of the rocks and looked around at the secret, hidden beach. My tummy rumbled again. Then something else
rumbled and, when I turned to look, I had just enough time to dive out of the way before it hit me straight on the side of the head. At first I thought it was an enormous rock and it scared the
pants off me. I thought,
O
h no, I’m going to be squashed to death
, and, as I rolled out of the way, my heart was pounding quickly. But when I sat up again and saw what the
mysterious flying object was I realised I needn’t have been scared at all, not unless a flying Barbie rucksack can kill you. It made me laugh and I placed it to one side where its little
Barbie girl owner could find it.

After a while, I thought I could smell something lovely and lemony, and when I leaned in towards the bag I realised that it was coming from inside. My stomach rumbled once more so, after I had
glanced around to check if there was anyone else about, I picked up the bag and unbuckled the clasp. The smell of lemons got stronger and I would have bet my guitar, my keyboard and my iPod that
there was some kind of cake hiding in Barbie world. I pulled out a pale blue towel and watched in horror as the predicted cake rolled out of it and down the sandy beach.

The girl must have moved like a ghost or something because I didn’t hear her creep up on me at all. The next thing I knew there she was, standing over me, and she gave me such a fright
that I jumped up and dropped the bag. She was a lot smaller than me and I thought that she reminded me of someone I knew, but I couldn’t think who. At first I thought she was going to shout
because her mouth hung open, but she didn’t. I panicked as I remembered the ‘Private property. Keep out’ sign. I held my hand up to shield my eyes and to look out for some kind of
grown-up who was sure to come marching over any minute and tell me to get off the private beach. I suddenly felt scared, but then I remembered what Mum often said to me: ‘Zack, when in doubt,
just smile because no one can stay mad at you for long. You’ll break all the girls’ hearts with that smile of yours.’

So that is what I did. Sounds dumb, doesn’t it? Sounds well stupid, but when I smiled at the girl she stopped looking so angry. She didn’t shout. She didn’t say one thing. Not
one single word. She just stared and stared. She went red so I think she was either blushing or she had sunburn all of a sudden, but still she did not say one word. I was sure that her mum or dad
would appear any minute and so I turned round and ran away.

It took me ages to climb back along the rocks and it seemed loads harder than on the way in. When I finally got back to where Gary’s van was parked outside the middle white cottage, Mum
was so mad at me that everything she said was a sort of shouty bark. Gary didn’t say much to me at all, he just went back and forth with the rest of the boxes, but Mum went on and on at me
for ages. She went on and on at me until I was shouting back at her and everyone that was in the harbour was staring, and when I finally went inside and slammed the door I saw our new home for the
very first time.

Dad and I got in his car and drove up the long winding driveway to the road. He didn’t say anything at first, but when we turned on to the lane he did this thing where he
sort of pinches your knee and it tickles so much I actually laughed really, really loudly.

‘That’s better, Alice. It would be a shame if I never got to hear your laughter again.’

We drove down the winding lane towards the village and now that all the oak trees had their leaves the road looked a bit dark. We turned left at the churchyard and down the hill past the post
office where Pippa lives, and Dad parked up by the bookshop so we could walk down the lane towards the harbour. We ordered fish and chips from the Boathouse Café and the two of us sat down
on the harbour wall and ate delicious, hot, salty chips. There were quite a few big boats to look at and, as I waved at a man who was lowering the anchor on his little sailing boat, we heard really
loud shouting. Dad and I turned to look. Actually, everyone turned to look.

At the end of the harbour wall is a little bridge that you have to cross to get to the beach and a row of three white cottages. Years ago, they were the cottages that the fishermen used to live
in, but these days they’re the sort of cottages that people stay in for their holidays. The middle one is bigger than the other two and it has a pretty front garden with roses that climb up
the front and round the doorway.

Parked on the narrow cobbled lane was a blue van with the words:
A 2 B Removals. No job too big or small.

The shouting began again and a woman emerged from inside the van, carrying two large boxes. We watched her carry her heavy load into the cottage, but when she appeared again my dad suddenly sat
up and craned his neck.

‘I don’t believe it!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I think that’s . . .’ But he suddenly stopped talking and rubbed the back of his head, and when I looked up
at him he seemed kind of sad. ‘When I was younger, I used to be friends with the girl that lived there. My brother, Aunt Aggy and I used to have a lot of fun together.’ The way he said
‘used to’ made it sound miserable.

I watched him gaze out to sea for a while. Mum once told me that, after my dad’s older brother died, Grandma got very sick, but she didn’t have an illness that made your body hurt,
she had an illness that made her feel very sad all of the time and she spent most of it in bed with the curtains drawn. I thought about Uncle Tom. Even though there are lots of photographs of him
in our house, my dad hardly ever talks about him. There’s a garden bench at the back of our house with his name on and sometimes I see Dad sitting there with a book, but he never seems to
turn the pages.

‘Your mum made Culver Manor beautiful again,’ Dad said, looking down at me. ‘She made the gardens so lovely and the house full of light and colour, and now I wouldn’t
ever want to live anywhere else. You brought the laughter and the happiness back, but it didn’t used to be like that.’

I looked up at him and because I didn’t want him to look upset any more I leaned into him and squeezed him tightly.

‘Anyway,’ he said, trying to look cheerful again, ‘we all spent a lot of time down here at the coastguard cottages and Jane Rowe was the girl who lived in the middle house. She
was quite a tomboy. She wasn’t afraid of anything and she didn’t mind telling you what to do either.’ He laughed and shook his head.

At that moment the shouting started again and we watched Jane Rowe appear from inside the blue van again.

‘All I asked you to do was help,’ she barked. ‘I’ve had to do nearly everything by myself! Where the hell have you been? Gary has been looking all over for you. I thought
you’d had an accident.’

And a voice shouted back from inside the van, ‘Well, I thought I was the accident, MOTHER.’

Everyone was staring and some people were whispering to each other too. I looked up at my dad. He raised an eyebrow and whispered, ‘Ooh, nothing like new people to get everyone talking,
eh?’

He looked at me hopefully, but I just frowned and thought,
Couldn’t even if I wanted to
.

Then the voice from inside the van appeared. A boy. He had his back to us and was carrying a large lamp in one hand and a kettle in the other. He stopped just in front of the house and this time
he shouted not just so the harbour could hear, but the whole of the vale too.

‘I didn’t ask to be born, you know!’

I thought that was going to be the end of it, but a tiny upstairs window opened and the woman stuck her head out.

‘Zachariah Ethan Drake, if I had known you’d be a selfish, spoilt little brat, I can tell you now, young man, if you had asked to be born, I WOULD HAVE SAID NO!’ she
yelled.

I gasped, but my dad sort of laughed. I had never, ever seen people shout at each other like that. Not ever, and I know I shouldn’t say so, but it was kind of fun to watch. I think that
every single person in the harbour was waiting to see what happened next. I almost held my breath and, as if he could sense us all staring, the boy suddenly turned round.

‘WHAT ARE YOU ALL STARING AT?’ And, with that, he went inside and slammed the front door. It was difficult to see his face, but I could swear it looked like the boy on the beach. If
it was him, what did he mean when he said he was the
accident
? How could a person be an accident?

‘Oh dear,’ said Dad. ‘He looks like trouble.’

And, as we drove home, I thought of the letters that I’d seen on the map. Was Jane the J?

Today is the first day of the summer holidays and guess what? It’s raining. I haven’t been down to Culver since my secret excursion, but we’re going on
holiday at the weekend. Well, we’re going up to Scotland for a week to see Aunt Agatha, Uncle Alistair and my cousins Florence and Casper.

Florence and I get on like best friends, even though she’s over a year older than me, but Casper is just about the most annoying little toad you ever met. He’s seven years old and
the last time he came to visit us at Culver Manor he locked himself in the playroom and wrote on the walls. Every night he had a massive tantrum about going to bed so that Aunt Aggy had to chase
him all over the house, up and down the hallway, until he hid behind one of the red velvet curtains and when she tried to drag him away he held on to the curtains and pulled them down.

The thing about Casper is, apart from his whiny, screaming, whingy voice, apart from his horrid, pasty white face that gets redder and redder when he has a tantrum, apart from all of that,
he’s a telltale. And he makes stuff up, like, all the time. He once gave himself a Chinese burn and blamed it on me. He once said I’d pushed him off the sofa and Mum actually believed
him so I got sent out of the television room. One day he slapped himself across the face, smiled at Florence and burst into tears. Florence and I watched in horror as he ran down the hallway
shouting: ‘Mummy! Mummy! Florence slapped me!’

‘I’m telling Mummy,’ he’ll say if he sees me and Florence doing anything out of the ordinary. ‘I’m telling Mummy on you and then you’ll be
sorry.’

And guess what? If we don’t get told off like Casper had hoped then he really loses it. Last time it happened he actually kicked, spat and swore at all the grown-ups. In the end Uncle
Alistair, who is bigger and broader than any man you have ever seen (when I was little I thought Uncle Alistair really was the giant from
Jack and the Beanstalk
), picked Casper up, tucked
him under his arm and carried him straight up to bed – it was the middle of the day. Florence and I had found it really hard not to laugh as we watched Casper being carried upstairs like a
parcel, but I bet the grown-ups just thought, ‘Thank goodness.’ I actually think that everyone is much, much happier when he’s not around.

I’m not making it up; he really is THAT BAD.

Problem is we’re going to his house and Mum says that me not talking at all might be a bit of a problem with Casper, especially when he’s in his own kingdom or at least his own
castle. And guess what? Casper really does live in a castle. Aunt Agatha is my dad’s sister and she married Lord Pengarden of Pengarden Castle. So when Caspar sings: ‘I’m the king
of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal!’ it’s completely true. Although he’s the horrid little ‘King Brat Rascal’ as Florence calls him.

We packed the car and set off at five o’clock in the morning when it was still dark because it takes all day to get there. Last time we went I slept most of the way and this time, with Mum
being really pregnant, she wanted to have space to spread out on the back seats, so I got to sit in the front instead. I love Dad’s car; it’s one of those high-up truck-type cars that
you can take off–road, and Dad had promised me and Florence that he’ll take us out of the castle grounds and over to the glen.

On the way up Dad came up with a plan. He said that, so everyone would understand, perhaps we could say I had lost my voice instead and, seeing as Dad’s a doctor, they’d believe him.
But, as soon as we arrived and Dad told them, I could tell from Aunt Aggy’s face that she and Uncle Alistair knew that wasn’t true. But at least it meant that toady-faced Casper
wouldn’t be more of a toad than he already is.