An Orphan's Winter

by Sheila Jeffries

  An hour passed and Tom still hadn’t returned. Jenny distracted herself by making a batch of Cornish heavy cake in the kitchen. Once it was in the oven, she lifted the steaming kettle from the range and made cocoa the way Nan liked it, with a dash of cream and brandy. She put the two earthenware mugs on a brass tray and hobbled out into the yard with it, putting it down on the bench against the south-facing wall where Nan liked to sit.

  ‘Come and sit down, Nan. Cup of cocoa,’ Jenny said, sitting down herself as Nan led Mufty across the yard, the donkey walking eagerly towards Jenny, his eyes shining dark out of his furry face.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ Jenny loved Mufty, and she always put a piece of carrot on the tray for him. ‘Yes – this is for you.’ Mufty took the carrot graciously, crunching it and nodding his head approvingly. He pressed his cheek against Jenny’s shoulder and let her fondle him, running her fingers along the fluffy crest of his neck.

  ‘He’s missing Lottie,’ Nan said as she sat down on the solid old bench and picked up her cocoa mug.

  ‘We all are,’ Jenny said. ‘I expect they’ll be on their way back by now. What an adventure for little Lottie. I hope it went well for her.’

  ‘So do I,’ Nan said, with passion. ‘I hope that mother of hers turns up. She doesn’t deserve Lottie.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Jenny said. ‘Lottie is a ray of sunshine in all our lives. She was only ten when Arnie died, and she helped me so much. She did everything: the washing, the baking . . . she even mothered the boys. She’s a real gem, isn’t she?’

  Nan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, thank God we agree on something, Jenny.’

  Jenny smiled into Nan’s storm-coloured eyes, unafraid of their power. She’d learned to look beyond the glare and find the astonishing wisdom and the love that was hidden behind. ‘I worry about Lottie being so far away in America,’ she confided, ‘meeting her real mother, after so long. I hope that woman doesn’t break her heart.’

  ‘I think she already did break her heart, from what Lottie’s told me,’ Nan said. ‘But she’s got us to come home to. We’re her family now.’

  ‘And we always will be,’ Jenny said, with passion. ‘I’m more of a mother to her than that selfish cow.’

  Nan looked towards the house, wrinkling her nose. ‘Have you got something in the oven?’

  ‘The heavy cake!’ Jenny got up and headed for the house. ‘Just in time!’

  Tom had been gone for over an hour, she thought in alarm as she slid the tray of sweetly scented, steaming cake out of the oven. Where was he? If only Matt was with him.

  ‘Stop that, Jennifer!’ she said aloud to herself, feeling her mind perilously near to the edge of a crumbling cliff of grief and worry. She always called herself Jennifer when she was cross with herself. ‘Stop moaning and be glad for what you’ve got.’ She took a knife and sliced the heavy cake into tempting, sugar-dusted squares.

  ‘Who are you talking to, Mum?’ Tom came into the kitchen, red-faced and endearingly solid.

  ‘Meself,’ Jenny confessed, grinning. ‘Look at the state of you – you look as if you’ve been through a hedge backwards.’

  Tom looked down at the scratches on his legs, and shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I didn’t catch the boy, Mum. I couldn’t find him. He’s got a den somewhere down under that shelf of rock.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘No, Mum. I never seen him before – he don’t go to our school.’

  ‘He might be a gypsy.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘No. They couldn’t get a horse and caravan out there.’

  ‘Well, surely he isn’t living wild, is he?’ Jenny asked in concern.

  ‘I dunno. Can I have some heavy cake, Mum?’

  ‘Don’t drop crumbs everywhere.’ Jenny handed him a generous slice. ‘If I could walk, I’d go out there with you and look for the boy. Did you get close to him?’

  ‘Only when he was in the hayloft. The chickens go up there and lay eggs in the hay. He’d got an egg in his hand.’

  ‘Did he speak to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘No.’

  Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘Well, what did he look like?’

  ‘Like he hasn’t got a mum to take care of him.’ Tom bit into his slice of heavy cake. ‘Can I have another slice in a paper bag, Mum? I’ll take it out there for him.’

  ‘Course you can.’ Jenny quickly found a brown paper bag and popped a slice inside. ‘You’re good-hearted, Tom, and I’m proud of you for that.’ She put a finger to her lips and whispered, ‘But don’t tell Nan. And don’t go fighting with him.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Tom promised. ‘I wouldn’t like to fight him, Mum. You should see his nails – like bird’s claws, they are, and his toenails.’

  ‘Really?’ Jenny’s eyes widened. ‘Then he’s on his own, poor lad. He’s a wild boy.’

  ‘Like Mowgli?’

  ‘Like Mowgli – without the tigers.’

  Chapter 4

  Going Home

  Lottie pressed her face against the porthole of her cabin, feeling the great ship vibrating with quiet power as it pulled away from the quay. She wanted to be up on deck with her father, watching the glimmering vista of Manhattan sliding past across the grey satin water. The sound of the ship’s horn buzzed through her and vanished into the mist.

  Take me home, she prayed. Home to Nan and Jenny and Mufty and St Ives. I don’t need my real mother. She breaks hearts, and I won’t let her break mine.

  She decided not to look back at New York. Pressing the other cheek against the glass, she gazed forward into the glow of dawn as the ship emerged from the bank of fog. It hurt too much to imagine her mother up there on deck, flashing those manipulative eyes at John, flaunting her scarlet coat.

  The last patches of sea fog drifted past the porthole and spray began to hit the glass. The golden sea turned slowly to silver, then to sage green and charcoal, a storm-flecked swell far out on the horizon.

  Lottie remembered something Arnie had taught her: When the sea is two colours, a storm is brewing. In St Ives, the two colours were an ashen turquoise and a dark plum-purple. Here on the shores of America, the Atlantic looked stormy in a different way, heavy and metallic, as it sucked the ship out of the mist.

  Lottie slumped on her narrow cabin bed and picked up the knitted toy donkey – a model of Mufty that Jenny had made for her. He felt warm and friendly, the smooth stitches and tassels kind against her fingers. She looked at the black beads of his eyes and tried to find a sentence to describe the way she was feeling, but it was too overwhelming. She retreated into a safe haven, a dreamlike memory of her last evening in St Ives with Matt.

  Nobody had seen Matt all winter, and Jenny had spent hours at the window of Hendravean, breaking her heart not knowing the whereabouts of her eldest son. Their relationship had always been difficult, but Jenny loved him and wanted him back. They all wanted him back except Nan, who would only purse her lips and hold silence on the subject of Matt.

  Lottie could picture him now, lean and confident in his blue-as-the-sky fisherman’s smock, a sparkle in his eyes as he looked at her. ‘You’ve grown up, Lottie,’ he’d said shyly. ‘You look . . . lovely – really lovely.’ He’d taken her hand and pressed it pensively between his rough palms, giving her that first, unexpected flare of excitement, a mysterious ache inside, an undeniable answer to the feelings of longing that she’d been trying to ignore.

  She’d listened, spellbound, to Matt’s story. How he’d built himself a life from nothing. From stealing his first sketchbook and pilfering food, Matt had lived rough and worked hard, developing his talent as an artist, selling his drawings to tourists. Then he’d discovered The Jenny Wren moored in Hayle: unwanted, derelict and sad. Seeing her as a home, Matt had set about earning enough money to buy her, restore her paintwork, make her seaworthy and learn how the engine worked.

  Remembering the present she had bought Matt, Lottie o
pened her suitcase and pulled out the tiny ship-in-a-bottle and gazed at it in wonder, imagining Matt’s face when he saw it. She sat holding it, indulging in reliving some special moments shared with Matt. After escaping from the orphanage, they had sat under the stars on the massive granite rocks of the Carn Brea. Together they had gazed at the lights of St Ives twinkling far away, sharing an unspoken sadness of seeing the lights of home so far away.

  Another moment hung bright in her memory. That last evening, on The Jenny Wren, when Matt had looked down at her with serious eyes and touched her hair. ‘I’ll miss you, Lottie,’ he’d said, his voice husky and intense. ‘You will come back, won’t you – from America?’ He’d given her a hug, and Lottie found herself with her hair nestled against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. In that moment, something shifted in their relationship, like the gleam on the unburnt wick of a brand-new candle, waiting for a flame.

  Matt was seventeen, almost a man, startling in his resemblance to his father, and Lottie sixteen, a child-woman, woman-child, not yet understanding, but wanting, feeling that secret, unexplored fire in the pit of her belly. Forbidden fire, she thought.

  Deep into the birth of a new daydream, Lottie jumped when someone tapped at her cabin door. She was glad she’d locked it.

  ‘Lottie? Are you in there? I’d like to speak to you.’ It was her father’s calm voice, just a semitone higher than usual.

  She went to the door and stood behind it.

  ‘Is she with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise. I’m on my own, Lottie. Let me in, please.’

  Sighing, Lottie opened the door, her eyes searching up and down the corridor for her mother. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Settling into her cabin,’ John said. ‘We’re sailing into a storm. She’ll be seasick – she always is.’

  Lottie glanced at the porthole and saw the crest of a wave sweeping past, trailing a plume of windblown foam.

  ‘Can I come in?’ John asked, always courteous, but with a note of resignation Lottie hadn’t heard in his voice before.

  ‘You can.’

  There was nowhere to sit in the tiny cabin, except on Lottie’s bed. Side by side they sat staring at the floor instead of looking into each other’s eyes as they usually did.

  ‘Your mother does want to see you,’ John said in a dispirited tone. ‘She’s disappointed.’

  Lottie looked at him in mutinous silence.

  John straightened his back, shocked at her expression. ‘This isn’t like you, Lottie. I’m surprised. You’re usually so sensible.’

  Lottie shrugged. Only a jagged-edged silence seemed to express the antagonism she now felt towards the mother she’d longed to see.

  ‘Talk to me. I’m trying to understand,’ John said.

  She clung to a stubborn silence.

  ‘We’ve never had an argument, have we?’ John’s voice was eager and persuasive. ‘It’s one of the things I admire about you, Lottie.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s best if you meet your mother now – before the seasickness takes hold,’ he said. ‘In my experience, Olivia will be lying in bed for at least three days, until we reach calmer waters. She’s waiting for you in her cabin.’

  Lottie dug herself in, pushing her heels against the floor. Words nudged at the silence. A question. ‘Why – why didn’t she come?’

  ‘To the gallery?’

  ‘Yes.’

  John didn’t answer, but stroked his beard, his eyes anxious. He clasped his hands together. ‘Your mother is a very complex person. It would be wrong of me to even try to explain her reasons. You must ask her yourself, Lottie.’

  Lottie set her face to a hard, porcelain stare. ‘I’m not going to move from this cabin.’

  ‘You’ll have to,’ John pointed out, perplexed by this new stubborn version of his beautiful daughter. ‘What about your meals?’

  ‘I shall eat them at a table on my own.’ A tide of sadness flowed into Lottie’s life as she visualised two miserable weeks of eating alone in a crowded dining room. On the voyage to New York she’d enjoyed her meals with her father, just the two of them. The way he was so attentive, listening to her chatter, sharing fascinating bits of his life with her. John was a model parent, always courteous and encouraging. Calm. Never tetchy or critical.

  ‘I shall miss you,’ he said wisely.

  Lottie bit back the words she wanted to say. Bitter words. Her father would be with her mother. Gazing into her eyes, patiently listening to her chatter. Jealousy magnified the sadness in Lottie’s heart.

  John stood up. ‘Hating your mother is going to be complicated and painful. Loving her would be so much easier for you. I’ll leave you to sort yourself out, sweetheart.’ And he walked out, shutting the door quietly.

  The impact of his well-chosen words burst over Lottie in a thousand pieces. John was right. She had chosen hate – and it wasn’t in her nature. But having declared it, she felt as if she’d fallen into a bramble bush, and the only way out was going to be prickly.

  Overwhelmed, she lay staring at the sea outside the porthole, the knitted donkey warm against her cheek. Jenny had put her love into every stitch, and Lottie could feel it there. It was something to hold onto. Jenny was far away, but close in Lottie’s heart because she’d performed a simple act of love – sitting in hospital with polio, pouring her love into knitting a donkey.

  For me, Lottie thought. Jenny is my mother, my best mother. Not her. Not Olivia. Never Olivia. I’d wanted my real mother so much, and now I just want her to go away. But I haven’t even spoken to her. I haven’t given her a chance.

  The thought came hot with tears and she let them flow silently into the crisp linen pillow. She lay still and allowed the gift of sleep to wrap her in its embrace.

  The ship steamed on, rolling a little on the swell, ever closer to the impending storm.

  Lottie slept deeply, blissfully unaware that her door was not locked. She didn’t hear it open and quietly close. She didn’t hear the light footsteps creeping to her bed. But in her dreams she felt a presence, a mysterious butterfly warmth, a breath and a perfume.

  Someone sitting beside her as she slept.

  Someone who could only love when words were stripped away and, on the barest of branches, silence became a blossom.

  *

  From the deck of The Jenny Wren, Matt glanced up at Hendravean, nestled into the hill in splendid isolation. Its dormer windows had a glint of intelligence, as if the house itself was alive and on guard. He thought he might catch a glimpse of Nan or even his mum. It would be good to know they were up there and he could go into St Ives without encountering either of them. Tom would be in school, and Lottie thousands of miles away, but on her way home, he hoped. Lottie was the one person he wanted to see. Matt allowed himself a few minutes to dream about the last time he’d seen her – dressed in blue, with her golden-blonde hair rippling in the breeze. No longer a child, but a young woman with tantalising breasts and a firm, slim waist. Beautiful, but still Lottie, with her honest dark blue eyes.

  He’d brought the boat down the coast from Portreath on a tranquil morning sea. The Jenny Wren was more than a boat. She was Matt’s home, and he didn’t want her stuck on the sand at low tide, tipped sideways. He wanted her afloat, so he waited for the high tide to lift her gently towards the slipway.

  Coming back to St Ives was an emotional rollercoaster and Matt wasn’t sure he could handle it. Even now, out on the water, the memories of his father were surfacing in his mind, shining memories dusted with the animosity he felt towards his mother, Jenny. There were happy memories, too, and Matt wanted to revisit some of those places where they had played and made dens and learned to swim.

  The winter sea and sky were hazy and still, like smoked glass, the water dappled with light and reflections of boats, cottages and clouds. Matt looked at the rooftops and chimneys of St Ives, reassured to see the nests of seagulls, each
with the mother bird firmly sitting on her precious eggs. Subconsciously, Matt was looking for his own two seagulls, which had nested on the roof of the cottage in Downlong where he had grown up. The pair of gulls had been like family, returning every year to the same nest, always rebuilding it with new treasures of seaweed and straw, and even strips of aubrietia plucked from cottage gardens.

  Matt looked at the rings in the harbour wall, hoping it would be all right to moor the boat there. The harbour master, Ken, was standing at the top of the slipway, tapping his pipe on a stone. Matt knew him as one of his dad’s many friends in St Ives; men who had proudly carried Arnie’s coffin into the church on their burly shoulders. Matt called out to him and Ken turned, then froze, his eyes wide with shock.

  He thinks I’m Dad, Matt thought, flattered.

  The same thing had happened when he’d been to see Jenny in hospital. She’d woken up with a gasp. She’d called him ‘darling’, but then quickly realised and said, ‘You’ve grown so ’andsome – so like your dad’. He’d treasured those words, but then she’d spoilt it by snapping, ‘Don’t you make trouble.’ It had touched a raw nerve. After all he’d been through, losing his dad, surviving a time of extreme poverty, then the orphanage, Matt couldn’t take any more. He’d flung some bitter words back.

  ‘I won’t make trouble. I’m leaving. And I’m not coming back.’ He’d marched out of the hospital, his attitude hardening by the minute. It was the day he’d begun his life as a homeless artist.

  ‘It’s Matt,’ he called to the harbour master.

  ‘Matt?’ Ken came striding down the slipway in his navy-blue overalls, his pipe in his hand. He peered at Matt suspiciously, his eyes taking in the freshly painted boat.

  ‘Well – that’s The Jenny Wren!’ he exclaimed, and his eyes twinkled. ‘That were Arnie’s boat – I knew her well.’ He looked again at Matt and a smile of recognition creased his weathered face. ‘Aw!’ he growled softly. ‘If it isn’t Arnie’s boy. Good to see ya, Matt.’

  Matt glowed. It felt so good to be welcomed, to be acknowledged, to be someone who actually belonged.