by Polly Crosby
Up close, the shed appeared to be almost to the point of toppling over. I stood and observed it. Tiny creakings offered up from somewhere near its base, and water dripped from the rotted roof, though I couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. A good foot of the shed was below the earth. It had been sucked down over the years at an imperceptible pace.
Dad’s shed had once been a thing of beauty. He had written and painted most of the books in the tiny wooden space, but almost as soon as he had built it, it had begun to sink into the boggy ground. Where the farmhouse managed to stay afloat by clever use of a pump to draw water away into the moat, the poor sedge-ridden garden had no such luck. At some point whilst illustrating Romilly and the Picnic, Dad had noticed a slight list to the right. If you look hard enough at the pictures in Picnic, you’ll notice everything is at a very slight angle. By the time he began painting Romilly’s Christmas two years ago, he had corrected it by nailing wedge-shaped planks to the floor.
I don’t think Dad had stepped inside the shed for a long time. He certainly hadn’t painted anything in there for over a year. He didn’t paint at all now. I tested the weight of the spade in my hands and thrust the blade into the earth. The ground parted satisfyingly, and a huge sod of swollen earth settled, quivering, on the glinting metal. After half an hour of excavation, I was able to reach my fingers under the rim of the door. It opened a crack, and I peered inside. The shed’s windows had been boarded up after the panes of glass began falling out. A line of sunlight pierced the room, settling on the edge of an armchair and a curling wad of paper. Motes of dust danced in the air. I felt a thrill run through me.
Setting to work again, I clawed at the earth with my hands, spraying handfuls of wet dirt into the air behind me like a dog digging up a bone. At last the door began to come free and I pulled it open enough to squeeze inside.
From deep within the shed, a breath like the exhalation of a sleeping child flickered over my face, and I paused on the threshold, hesitating.
Inside were memories, some of them private to my father. But the pull of those memories was so strong: the robust, colourful dad of my childhood, full of stories and self-possession. I needed to remember him. I looked behind me, towards the house. Dad was a crumbling ruin now, a watercoloured echo of his former self.
I took a deep breath, and stepped inside.
The first thing that hit me was the dark: it was almost black inside. The wooden floor was littered with dead leaves. It felt soft underfoot as if it had recently been underwater. I stood for a moment to let my eyes get used to the dark. Eventually shapes began to form. A small desk, an armchair, horsehair sprouting from its seat. Pencils and paints lay on the desk as if their owner had left moments ago. Eraser rubbings were dotted across a piece of paper, the faint outline of a girl’s face that looked like mine sketched lightly upon it. I found the rubber lying nearby, a large grey thumbprint on its surface. I picked it up and pressed it to my lips.
I perched on the corner of the desk and observed the armchair, squinting my eyes, trying to see Dad through the fuzz of my eyelashes. A shadowy figure etched itself onto my retina, crammed into the chair, his hands working fast with the pens scattered around him.
I looked at the drawing he had been working on. It was full of movement and life, as if the girl he was sketching was dancing, her hair flying out in a messy braid behind her. The crack of light from the door shone straight onto the paper, and in its bright beam I thought I could see something else. I moved closer, my eyes inches from the paper, bringing my hand up to touch it.
Where the paper should be smooth and flat, soft bumps were impressed into it. I took my finger away and looked again. I could make out an imprint of words winding their way across the little girl’s smiling face, as if Dad had written something on another piece of paper, and the impression had carried through to the drawing, loping down the desk in his familiar handwriting.
I bent close again, my nose millimetres from the desk. It was some kind of a list. There were five words, each below the next.
As I read the first two words, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
‘Montgomery’s bell,’ I whispered to myself, ‘the pink feather.’ The two objects Dad had given me, concealed in his carved box. I read the rest of the words quickly, my eyes flicking down the list with mounting exitement. It was as if Dad was sitting at the desk with me, hunched over the page, sharing in my discovery.
I found a pencil and hastily made a note of the words on a scrap of paper. My mind was racing. I took one last look at the shed, at the chair and the desk and the half-finished drawing, and slipped out into the summer sunshine, the scrap of paper held tightly in my hand.
Twenty-Seven
Bell
Feather
Bauble
Forget-me-not
Salt cellar
I was back in my bedroom, the books spread out over my bed. I ran my eyes over the words in the list. They resembled a potion bottle on the scrap of paper: a stoppered vessel, waiting for me to unleash the intoxicating answers within.
I thought of the people that were linked to these items, each one important to me, each one a special part of my life. The bell had belonged to my beloved Monty, the feather had been Lidiya’s. The bauble I knew immediately was Dad, round and jolly like him, a reminder of our Christmas tree decorating. The forget-me-not was inextricably linked to Beatrice, its delicate smell reminding me of the perfume she wore, and now of her grave in the woods with the two little hares.
I frowned at the salt cellar. Where had I seen one before? I flicked through the books, searching, until I found it in the picnic scene by the lake, a little mouse shaking salt over a large pork pie. I looked closely at the cut glass sparkling in the sun, and I remembered at last: it was from the Meissen tea-set that my mother had given me for my fourteenth birthday.
Five objects, each one from someone I loved.
Outside, the pale morning sun had reached my stained-glass window, and the coloured light painted itself across my duvet in thick, luscious strokes.
I pulled Romilly and the Windmill towards me and turned to the picture of the windmill at the centre of the book, its four sails pointing to the four corners of the page.
In the topmost window of the mill, my young face peeped out. Monty was sitting at the open door, looking up at a butterfly dancing just above his head. The grass around the windmill was choked with clouds of tiny blue flowers – forget-me-nots. A mouse in one corner of the picture had picked one and was sniffing it delicately.
Hidden within the picture – as with all of the pages of Dad’s books – were words, beautifully written in a bold italic script.
‘It must be to do with these,’ I muttered, finding the words and running my finger over them. They formed a list of the picture’s contents: sails, mouse, butterfly, forget-me-not, windmill.
Forget-me-nots were my link to Beatrice. They covered the garden with their little blue flowers just as they covered her grave. Had Dad chosen that flower because he knew she wouldn’t always be there for me? Reminding me never to forget her? Or perhaps it wasn’t just to do with Beatrice. Was Dad worried he would forget me as his illness overtook him? Or – and at this I let out a cry of anguish – that I would forget him after he was gone?
The word ‘forget-me-not’ in the picture was hidden in the brickwork of the windmill, its twisty letters disguised in the crumbling mortar. I looked at the little blue flowers that flooded the scene like a foaming sea, their swell surrounding the mill. I ran my finger over the word, thinking of Dad downstairs. Did he really think I could ever forget him?
My carved box was on the table next to me. Had he put a forget-me-not in there? Wrapped delicately in tissue paper, his huge thumbs slipping against its petals as he tucked it safely away?
I looked again at the word. It was written in masterful calligraphy, the letters sloping along in pale grey. As I peered closer, I noticed The n of ‘not’ was a slightly darker hue, more of
a charcoal colour. I took out my magnifying glass and looked at each of the hidden words in turn.
In each one, a single letter was a slightly different shade: the word ‘windmill’ was painted onto one of the sails, hardly distinguishable from the white wood it was written on. But one letter, the i, was a pale ash blue. I began to flick through the rest of the books, finding slight differences in the colour of one letter in every word hidden on every page.
I went from book to book, searching for the five words on Dad’s list, realising as I did so that each book contained one object from the list.
The bell was in Romilly and the Kitten, on the page that showed Monty lying curled up in Dad’s hand. It was written delicately into the chocolate brown at the end of his tail. The word ‘feather’ was formed in sawdust on the circus floor in Romilly and the Circus, with Lidiya riding gloriously in the ring above it.
In my excitement I went to nudge Stacey. ‘This is it!’ I whispered frantically, remembering too late that she wasn’t there. How she would have loved to be in on this discovery, I thought. I could almost see her, leaning in to look, her hair tickling my ear, her hands frantically running over the pink feather in anticipation.
The salt cellar was in Romilly and the Picnic, the word winding around the edge of a plate full of cupcakes. The word ‘bauble’ was in Romilly’s Christmas, written in glittery tinsel on the tree.
I picked up my pen, making a note of the different coloured letters from each of these important words.
n
a
e
f
e
Naefe. What did it mean? Quickly, I tore around each letter, making five little papery tokens. I tried putting them in different orders, remembering as I did so the way I used to try to slot the last few pieces of jigsaws together, my brain never quite seeing how to do it until the picture was almost complete.
Anfee
Efane
Feean
I stared hard at the words as I rearranged the letters. I was getting closer: something about them felt familiar. I tried to make my mind relax, my eyes hazing over until the letters danced in front of me. Slowly they changed position, like an unhurried waltz until they stopped again, forming into a word I knew.
A word I had not spoken or heard for eleven years.
A name.
The morning sunlight was beginning to disappear from the garden when I finally made my way back downstairs. The great girth of the house blocked out the sun’s rays from soon after lunchtime in summer, and during the winter the huge swathes of yellow grass hardly saw the sun all day. I checked on Dad, snoring in his armchair, before pulling on a pair of wellies that stood by the door, and trudging back to the shed.
The pale trickle of light made the shed shine silver as I approached the door, and the garden seemed to whisper, the closer I got. Montgomery followed silently behind me, winding round my legs as I came to a stop. We stood, studying the shed, the breeze lifting my hair. I shivered and stepped forward, my hand on the door, my body squeezing through the small gap. Montgomery stayed, sentry-like, outside.
It was easier to see this time, as if my eyes had memorised the small space perfectly. A plan chest stood in one corner. There was a muffled sound coming from it, a hushed sigh that I thought I recognised, rising like vapour from the drawers. I shifted round in the tiny space, balancing precariously on the edge of the desk, and pulled at the top drawer. With a wet screech it began to open, jamming halfway, and the voice from my dreams was there, rushing into the air and settling around me, whispering to me, as if she had been hiding inside all along, waiting for me to let her out.
I reached inside the chest. Folder after folder of drawings met my fingers. I pulled out the top one and settled into the armchair.
Dad had drawn many preparatory sketches: picnic hampers, plates full of sandwiches, a small oil painting of Monty holding a teacup with the claw of his paw stretched out like a little finger. I spent a long time examining a sheaf of pastel drawings, all of a huge black panther. There were hundreds of sketches of me, running, sleeping, eating. The girl continued to whisper all around me, her voice encouraging me, urging me on.
And then, quite suddenly, I came upon the painting I had been looking for. It was in a drawer marked ‘1987’. I remembered the first time I had seen it, a year later, the day Dad had brought the book home fresh from the publishers. It was a close up of my face, my red hair brighter than a fiery sun, blazing like a halo around my head. It was an iconic painting, one that had been used in adverts for all of the books.
I studied the original. It was far more beautiful than the print in the book. I was sucked into the little girl’s world, captivated by the light that played across her face.
My face.
At this thought, the whispering voice became more insistent, chattering at me, babbling in a language I couldn’t yet grasp. I looked hard at the picture, feeling the voice around me become a tangible thing, a solid presence in the tiny shed.
The light in the painting was fluid, trickling over the brushstrokes that made up my skin as if reflected from water. In the painting I was looking slightly off to the left, an expression of something like joy turning to laughter.
Then I noticed the mole.
In the pictures in the books, my mole had often been on the wrong cheek. I put my hand to my left cheek unconsciously to check, feeling the familiar bump, just above the cheekbone. The girl in the painting had a mole on her right cheek. Her left cheek was smooth and blemish free.
The girl in the painting was not me.
The murmur in the shed was louder now, calling to me, spilling over in excited childlike laughter as I reached into the plan chest again and pulled out folder after folder, searching through them feverishly, not caring if I ripped them or dropped them on the wet floor. Hastily I pulled out another batch of sketches and paintings, trying to find something, anything to prove what I was thinking.
These ones were early: drawings of my mother looking young and ridiculously happy, a gruff self portrait of Dad in brown pastel. I slowed down, forgetting for a moment why I was here, examining each one.
I could hardly remember my parents like this. Mum’s face was full of wonder. Her deep lidded eyes were looking up, and raindrops fell on her softly smiling face. I stopped to look properly, enraptured.
This was a different mum to the one I knew, a mum from so long ago that I could allow myself to love her a little. The woman I knew, I realised now – the mother who flitted in and out of my life – could never be the mum I needed, and with that thought, I felt lighter. Bringing the drawing close, I kissed her forehead gently before putting the sketch back into the chest, knowing I was strong enough to begin to let her go.
The girl’s voice had quietened while I looked at the pictures of Mum, but as soon as I put them down it began to babble again, muttering feverishly in excitement, and at last, as I listened properly, I began to understand what she was saying. The meaning behind her words was penetrating me, appealing to something deep within me, something instinctive and ancient. It was a language I had forgotten, a language that came back to me now, lost many years ago.
‘This way,’ she was saying, ‘this way, Romilly,’ her words urging me on and on.
As the early afternoon light began to disappear from the shed, I pulled open the last drawer with some difficulty, drawing out a final bundle of sketches tied with string, and her voice, wherever it was coming from, began to sigh with excitement.
‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘look.’
I flicked through the sketches in my hands.
And there, on the last but one piece of paper, I found it. A small drawing in charcoal, sketched very quickly so as not to wake the subjects. The child’s voice that had filled the shed stopped with a sudden hiccup, and in the silence that followed, I stared at the drawing.
Cradled in the arms of my mother were two babies. Two heart-shaped faces, two rosebud mouths. Each child had a mole prettily stamp
ed on her cheek, and they were gazing into each other’s eyes, mirror images of each other.
Twenty-Eight
Dad was still in his armchair when I came in, an empty whisky glass on the table next to him.
As soon as I saw him, a bittersweet burning sensation ignited deep in my chest, a flickering, peppery heat, dangerous and addictive.
I was still holding the sketch, and I dropped it into his lap. When he didn’t wake, I kicked him hard in the ankle. He awoke with a snort and, seeing me, smiled. Then he noticed the piece of paper.
‘What’s this? Have you been drawing?’ He smiled again, his mouth crinkling so that his face was all beard. Slowly, his expression changed.
‘You’ve been in my shed,’ he said, his words tinder to my combusting chest.
‘Yes.’ My voice felt strange, as if I had swallowed the word and it had caught alight somewhere near my lungs.
He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through his nostrils as he looked at the drawing.
‘You made a mistake in your planning,’ I said, and with each word I spoke, my chest got hotter and hotter until I could feel the heat rushing up through my throat and coming out as sparks in my voice. ‘You left a list of all the objects, and I worked out the clues.’
Dad put his hand over his face and rubbed hard. ‘You weren’t supposed to find out yet,’ he said eventually.
At his words, my heart caught alight, a pyre of burning meat inside me. ‘It’s not a game, Dad,’ I said, ‘it’s not a treasure hunt with a deadline and a prize. It’s my dead sister.’
He flinched at my words.
‘She is dead, isn’t she? I haven’t got that bit wrong? She’s not locked up in a tower somewhere? Or lying comatose, waiting for her prince?’ I was pacing the small room now.
‘You’re too young,’ he said, his words hardly audible.
‘Too young for what?’ My whole body was on fire now, I could feel flames leaking round my eyeballs, fire-hair licking about my head. ‘Too young to take care of myself? Too young to feed us, to look after us? I run this house, Dad, I take care of you. But I’m too young to know about my own dead sister?’