An Orphan's Winter

by Sheila Jeffries

  Jenny’s job in the gallery had been a welcome bonus too, easing their finances and giving Nan some peace. Nan often found herself thinking of Warren. Where was he? Was he all right? How sad that he’d gone just as she was getting to know him. Did he still have the piano-accordion? It was an heirloom, having belonged to Nan’s father, and she would have liked it back. But it was only a thing, Nan reasoned. Nothing mattered as much as Warren’s life. Sometimes she went into his room and touched the little jacket, and so did Jenny. Nan intended to go off in the car one day and try to find him, but there never seemed to be a day when she had enough energy and strength.

  Between showers, the noon sun was balmy, warming the cottage walls and coaxing bees and butterflies out to feast on nectar from the mass of blue Michaelmas daisies, the wide-open marigolds and sunflowers. Nan went outside to potter in the garden, pausing to check Mufty on the way. She looked over the stable door and was astonished to see the donkey lying down in the straw with Lottie curled up against his shoulder, fast asleep, still wearing her posh frock. Bartholomew was there too, nestled close to Lottie, his paws stretched over her heart. Nan could hear him purring. She opened her mouth to ask what in heaven’s name was going on, and shut it again when the cat gave her a slit-eyed stare. Best not to disturb them.

  Nan leaned on the door and Mufty looked up at her with liquid eyes, his soft grey muzzle resting on Lottie’s hip. Both cat and donkey looked blissed out. But Lottie didn’t. She was deeply asleep but there was a frown on her brow and her cheeks looked drawn and smudged as if she’d been crying. Her dress was splayed out on the straw, its colours glimmering in the dim interior of the stable.

  Nan knew immediately that something terribly upsetting had happened to Lottie. It would be Matt’s fault, of course, Nan decided.

  Hailstones bombed down from a cloud with violet edges racing over the sun. A chilled wind blew low across the yard. Nan glanced at the sea and noticed surf breaking over Godrevy and white horses tossing far out beyond the bay. It confirmed what Nan had heard on the shipping forecast: a storm was out there in the Atlantic. She turned and went indoors to find a blanket, and emerged with a thick tartan rug. Moving furtively, Nan eased the stable door open and covered Lottie’s sleeping form with the warm rug. Mufty didn’t move and neither did Bartholomew.

  Let her sleep, Nan thought, and when she wakes she will tell me what’s happened.

  Her mind went back to the time Jenny took Lottie to the doctor because of her constant sickness. Now Lottie had been to Dr Tregullow on her own and had refused to tell Jenny why. Nan tried to dismiss the suspicion building up inside her.

  Surely not Lottie? But the thought just wouldn’t go away. I’ll find out, Nan told herself.

  Nan went back to the house and rummaged in a drawer for her pendulum, which was a small pebble with a hole in it, threaded onto the end of a piece of string. She crept back to the stable, pleased to see Lottie still fast asleep.

  ‘You stay quiet,’ she whispered to Mufty, and the donkey did as he was told, keeping still as Nan came in and closed the door. She didn’t want Lottie to wake up and ask what she was doing.

  She held the pendulum directly over Lottie’s womb, steadied the string so that it hung motionless, and then waited, her heart beating faster as she asked a question from her mind. It began to stir, then it spun round positively. Yes.

  Nan’s heart raced with shock. She asked another question.

  ‘Is it a boy?’

  No.

  Then: ‘Is it a girl?’

  Yes.

  ‘I knew it,’ Nan thought, and her legs began to tremble. She wound the string around the pebble and pushed it into her apron pocket. This poor child is pregnant. So young.

  Nan drew a kiss in the air with her finger. ‘Sleep well, precious one, little mother.’

  Lottie didn’t stir. Nan left the stable and shuffled back to the house where she sat in her chair, shaking with emotion, her mind replaying something that had happened in her own life. A secret she’d never told.

  Chapter 16

  The Last Happy Day

  There would be no more revelations, Lottie decided, when she woke up in Mufty’s stable. Her arms and legs itched from the straw and the first thing she spotted when she opened her eyes was Bartholomew’s golden-eyed cat face very close, his expression radiating concern. She felt he wanted to know if she was okay so she said, ‘Thank you, darling cat. I might never be happy again, but I can manage. Providing nothing else goes wrong.’

  Bartholomew got up and stretched, then leapt down into the yard, the tip of his fluffy tail disappearing over the door.

  Mufty was fidgeting and she sensed he wanted to stand up. She wondered what the time was. Late afternoon, judging by the mellow gold of the sunlight. Mufty must have stayed lying down for her benefit. Lottie gave him a hug.

  ‘You helped me so much, Mufty.’

  They both stood up, Mufty having a good shake, and Lottie brushing the bits of straw from her dress. Everything hurt. Even seeing the flowers on the fringe of Nan’s garden. Even the butterflies.

  She put both hands over her womb. ‘Don’t worry, little one, little star. I am strong. I shall carry you and be your mum forever. I will never abandon you.’

  With that empowering thought, Lottie walked towards the house and each footstep brought an affirmation: I can still walk, I can still feel the warmth of the sun, I can still be a mother. A secret mother. Without Matt. She turned back to pick up the tartan rug. Someone must have loved her enough to put it over her. Nan. Nan, her rock. Lottie folded it and carried it inside.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Nan said, deftly crimping the edges of the pasties she was making, her freckled old hands covered in flour. She asked no questions, and for that Lottie was grateful.

  ‘I’m going upstairs to study,’ Lottie said, and Nan gave her an approving nod.

  Lottie trailed upstairs thinking of Matt. He was having a bad day. He’d get over it, wouldn’t he? She was glad she’d walked away and left him to sort himself out.

  She opened her school bag and took out Romeo and Juliet. It fell open at some of Juliet’s meaningful words:

  Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,

  Take him and cut him out in little stars,

  And he will make the face of heaven so fine

  That all the world will be in love with night.

  It was exactly how she felt about Matt. Stunned, she sat reading it over and over. Matt could do no wrong. She loved and adored him. Why hadn’t she told him that?

  He’d abandoned her without looking back. Where would he go? What did he intend to do?

  A vivid memory came to her – of the night Arnie left. She’d been nine years old, and awake, listening to the row he was having with Jenny. The sound of his footsteps thudding down towards the sea was unforgettable. She’d leaned out of the window and tasted the easterly wind, heard it driving waves into the harbour. She’d gone downstairs and told Jenny.

  ‘We should go out and get him,’ she’d said. And Jenny had said no – he’d be all right. But Arnie never came back. Matt closely resembled him, especially today: his face strong, his eyes wounded.

  Abandonment and bereavement were twins. If Matt had truly abandoned her, then Lottie would deal with it like grief. She stared out at the sea, Romeo and Juliet open on her lap. Surf was breaking over Godrevy and under a lustrous thundercloud the sea was flecked with the white crests of waves, the wind ripping and twisting them into plumes of spray.

  Was he out there trying to get back to Portreath? Would The Jenny Wren cope with such a wind-whipped tide?

  Lottie sat on her bed, surrounded by books but not looking at any of them. Could she really study with a broken heart? Could she eat and chat to people as if nothing had happened? She would have to try.

  Telling Cora and telling Matt had been disastrous. Right now, Lottie didn’t feel strong enough to tell anyone else. She needed time to reclaim her true conviction that being a mother was bea
utiful and important. Mothers should fight for their children. She would fight. She would fight everybody and anybody who opposed her right to love and keep her child, and for the child’s right to have its own true mother.

  There were three more people she had to tell: Jenny, Nan and her father. Olivia didn’t count. Olivia was out of the way in London and Lottie didn’t care if she never saw her again. It occurred to Lottie that telling each of the three individually would only prolong the agony. Why not tell them all at once? Choose a good, happy moment when they were together. Instead of three ordeals, she’d only have one.

  Lottie sighed. Everything was going to be twice as difficult with a broken heart. She felt more vulnerable than ever before, as if the slightest thing would make her cry.

  With the books untouched around her, she sat watching the golden evening melt into twilight. She jumped when her bedroom door opened and Tom came in.

  ‘Supper’s ready,’ he said, ‘and Mum’s got a surprise. Why are you sitting in the dark, Lottie?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but thudded down the stairs, leaving her door wide open. Lottie didn’t want a surprise. It sounded like a threat when her heart was broken. She wrapped a shawl around herself and went down into the warm, steamy kitchen.

  ‘Here you are, Lottie.’ Jenny put a plate in front of her with one of Nan’s pasties on it. The crust was golden-brown and flaky and the pasty was longer than her plate. It was one of Nan’s specials with the meat and vegetables at one end, and spiced apple and sultanas at the other. Dinner and pudding all in one. Both ends had a rock-hard knob of pastry.

  ‘So you could drop it down a tin mine,’ Nan said, and she cackled with laughter.

  Everyone looks happy, Lottie thought, and I’ve got a broken heart.

  Jenny sparkled. Her skin glowed and her eyes were bright. ‘I’ve got a surprise,’ she said, beaming. ‘We’re having a day out tomorrow. John is taking us to Penzance. And there’s an island there, with a castle on top – St Michael’s Mount. You can walk to it at low tide along the causeway.’

  ‘Aw, Mum, I always wanted to do that,’ Tom said, his cheeks full of pasty.

  ‘Isn’t it exciting, Lottie?’ Jenny said, looking at her with wide, magnetic eyes. ‘You’ll come, won’t you? John wants you to – and Tom. He said we’ve worked hard and we deserved a day out, as a family.’

  Lottie hadn’t yet bitten into her pasty. It felt like a hot water bottle in her cold hands.

  ‘All five of us,’ Jenny added happily.

  Five and a half, Lottie thought, and felt yet another ache in her throat.

  Jenny looked at her suspiciously. ‘Is something wrong, Lottie? Aren’t you well? You’ve been so quiet.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  Nan gave her a knowing look, but tactfully changed the subject. ‘When we’ve had supper, I might be persuaded to tell you the legend of St Michael’s Mount, and,’ she added, seeing Jenny rolling her eyes, ‘even Jenny will like this one as it’s based on a true story.’

  ‘Oh, go on then, Nan,’ Jenny said. ‘A bit of silly magic might do us good.’

  Nobody moved from the table as Nan prepared herself for telling the story, first cleaning her hands on her napkin, then sitting perfectly still with her eyes closed, creating tension without even trying. When she opened them, she had a captive audience. It lifted Lottie.

  *

  ‘Cor, look at THAT,’ Tom yelled. ‘A real castle – on an island!’

  Jenny and John smiled at each other, enjoying Tom’s excitement as the train steamed into the great curve of Mount’s Bay, the sea and sky china blue and the mystic island of St Michael’s Mount floating like a tall ship in the shimmering light.

  Even Lottie, who had been quiet all the way, stood at the window with Tom, thrilled to see the fairy tale island. ‘You know what Nan would say if she was here?’ she remarked.

  ‘What?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘She’d say, “O Magnum Mysterium”,’ Lottie said. ‘It’s Latin, and she’s always saying it.’

  Nan had chosen to stay at home. She’d seen the Mount many times and someone had to look after Mufty and the chickens. Lottie’s plan to break her news to all three of them at an auspicious moment didn’t seem likely to happen. Jenny and John looked so happy, and Tom’s enthusiasm was infectious. Why spoil their lovely day? Lottie almost felt like a child again, an echo of being carefree, and it was pleasant.

  There’s magic in the air, she thought, and it wasn’t only coming from St Michael’s Mount. It was coming from Jenny and John too. Lottie had never seen her usually serious father smile and laugh so much. The way he kept looking at Jenny, looking after her, and Jenny was enjoying it. She remembered how she’d once hoped John would fall in love with Olivia again. She was glad he hadn’t. John falling in love with Jenny would have been Lottie’s perfect dream, if only she were still a child. But she wasn’t. She was a mother in waiting.

  John paid for a cab to take them to Marazion where they spent the first hour watching the tide slowly ebbing to reveal the cobbled causeway leading to the island. While they waited, Lottie and Tom collected some of the pebbles studded into the wet sand, tiny jewel-like stones in myriad colours, quite different from the black pebbles of Porthmeor Beach. The shells were different too. Instead of limpets and blue mussel shells, there were neat little spirals of bright yellow, amber and cream, and delicate fan-like shells in pink, orange and white.

  ‘She’s still a child at heart,’ John said, as he sat on a rock with Jenny, watching Lottie gathering shells.

  ‘She is,’ Jenny agreed, ‘but something’s wrong with her, John. She doesn’t look right, does she?’

  ‘Hmm. I worry about the illness she had. It’s left a shadow,’ John said. ‘Before I took her to New York, she was confident and optimistic, wasn’t she? Now she often looks as if she’s carrying a secret burden.’

  ‘It’s Matt,’ Jenny said. ‘I wish she wasn’t so obsessed with him and his boat. He’s always been the troublemaker, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I like him. He’s a fine, brave young man.’

  ‘I don’t see him like that at all.’

  ‘When I look at him, I see a young man who desperately misses his father,’ John said, thoughtfully. ‘I hope, as time goes on, I can take him under my wing. He does talk to me about art.’

  Tom was on the causeway. ‘It’s nearly uncovered,’ he yelled. ‘I’m going over. Come on, Lottie.’

  Lottie followed him, stepping over the wet cobbles. Life would be so wonderfully simple if she could just follow Tom and be a child again.

  ‘Do you think you can manage to walk the causeway?’ John asked.

  ‘Course I can,’ Jenny said. ‘Forget about me iron leg. I’m going to enjoy this.’

  ‘We can always catch a boat back,’ John said, taking her arm, ‘and the slower we go, the more beauty we will see. I love these ancient stones, all different-coloured granite. When they’re wet and in the sunshine they’re quite gorgeous. I think I shall be down here painting before long. Perhaps I’ll bring young Matt with me.’

  The walk to St Michael’s Mount was unforgettable, with clear, shallow water on either side of the cobbled causeway. Mops of wine-coloured seaweed flounced in the waves, leaving lush curls of it deposited on the pale sand, entangled with white cuttlefish and driftwood. Ahead of them, the island towered out of the sea. There was a harbour with a terrace of cottages along the quayside. Enormous crags of granite and mysterious pine woods led up to the castle walls.

  ‘Nan says there’s a tropical garden on the other side of the island,’ Jenny said. ‘She said flowers grow out of the cracks in the rock; not wild flowers but some kind of multi-coloured daisies, and they come from Africa.’

  ‘Osteospermums,’ John said.

  Jenny laughed. ‘Osteo-who? That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?’

  Tom and Lottie were already on the island, exploring the harbour. Jenny welcomed the chance to sit down on a sunny bench with John and gaze across the sea to Penzan
ce. ‘Wish I’d brought a picnic.’

  John had a gold watch on a chain in his top pocket. He took it out and listened to hear if it was ticking. ‘We’ve got about three hours,’ he said, ‘and before we catch the train home, I’d like to treat you all to fish and chips.’

  ‘We’ve never had fish and chips,’ Jenny said.

  ‘The fish is covered in crunchy batter. It’s delicious. You put salt and vinegar on it and eat it out of newspaper. It doesn’t taste the same if you put it on a plate.’

  Jenny looked at him with round eyes. ‘I’m having a wonderful time, John – thank you.’ She gave him a quick kiss and saw the spark leap in his eyes. She wagged a finger. ‘Better not get too cuddly, had we? Here’s Lottie.’

  Lottie was walking slowly towards them, her blonde hair swinging down her back. ‘She looks deadly serious,’ John said. ‘I wonder what she’s thinking about.’

  Lottie was considering whether now might be the time to tell them, here in the sunshine on the peaceful island. The thought wouldn’t leave her alone.

  But when she saw Jenny kiss John and saw how happy they looked, she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.

  *

  Matt had gone to ground like a wounded fox. He’d intended to sail back to Portreath, but realised the boat was low on fuel and the only option was to return to St Ives. He couldn’t face seeing anyone so he sailed in quietly, moored the boat and crept into the cabin. He drew the curtains over the windows and lay down on his bed, a row of brown velvet cushions from a discarded sofa, and two fusty grey rugs he’d bought for sixpence at a jumble sale. His pillow was clean and comforting, made for him by Lottie, a simple patchwork of sea and sky with white stitched-on clouds and a stitched-on boat like The Jenny Wren. Matt pressed the cool cotton against his face, his fingers touching the neat stitches she had made.

  As soon as Lottie had gone, he’d wanted her back. But the way she was, not pregnant and irritable, like Jenny had been. He didn’t want her torn apart by birth pains and worn out and scruffy with the demands of a screaming baby. In his mind, his Lottie had gone forever. He’d lost the beautiful girl he worshipped and adored. It had sabotaged his dream of a future: a home in St Ives with Lottie.