Cold Shoulder Road

by Joan Aiken

  “That’s what these are?”

  Is cast her mind back to the old lady at the farm.

  “Yes, Mrs Nefertiti said the same . . .”

  “They came from the Admiral’s cave?”

  “That’s where! And the cream of it is,” said Is, beginning to chuckle, “it seems the old cove doesn’t have the least notion in the world that all that lolly is stowed away under his hill.”

  Pye was now eager to speak.

  “Tangerine rubies, too,” she said. “Twite has. In a sparkpin, like a twig with fruit.”

  “A brooch? You’ve seen this, Pye? When?”

  “One night. In Twite’s house. Pye wide awake. Sleep not. Get out of bed. Go down stair. Twite has tray with stones. Shine. Pretty! Brown. Gold. Orange. Ginger-colour. Red. Burned yellow. All shining. Twite sees Pye. Oh, terrible angry. After that, shut in box. Every night. Tells Pye, you speak these things, I drop under train. So Pye don’t speak. Not ever.”

  “And I don’t blame you,” said Ruth, giving her a hug. “Pye did very sensibly.”

  “Now, steady the buffs,” said Penny. “This-here Twite is crazy-keen on collecting sparklers. Extra-specially tangerine-coloured ones. That right, young ’un?”

  Pye nodded again, big-eyed.

  “So all we gotta do is show him one of these mibbies – and say we have more of ’em salted away – and then we’ll have him on toast?”

  “Ye-e-e-es,” said Ruth doubtfully. “But, even supposing we could persuade him to come somewhere – by means of such a temptation – then what would we do?”

  “True,” said Penny. “He’s not going to mend his ways just for one necklace, even of brown sparklers.”

  The cat Figgin came back from a bird’s-nesting foray in the upper shrouds and jumped up on to the captain’s card-table which, as the day was fine, Ruth had brought up on deck so that Pye could do lessons in the fresh air.

  The dusty necklace of brown diamonds still lay in a tangle on the green baize.

  When Figgin saw the beads he behaved strangely. Hissing and growling, with ears back and all his fur on end, he retreated at speed from the table and made off to a far corner of the deck, where he washed himself furiously all over several times.

  “Saints save us!” said Penny. “What’s got into the cat? He sure don’t like those stones.”

  “Perhaps he mistook the necklace for a snake?” suggested Ruth.

  “Figgin’s not such a dummy.”

  “Perhaps something bad happened to it once?”

  “He’s never acted so before.” Is was puzzled. She slid the beads into her pocket. “Here, Figs, Figs, Figwiggin!”

  But, so long as she had the stones on her, the cat would not come near.

  “Maybe that’s why he was so unfriendly when I first came aboard.”

  “Well,” said Penny, “if the stones are that valuable, it’s best, anyway, you shouldn’t carry them loose in your britches pocket all the time – you might lose ’em or drop ’em. Why don’t you put them in one o’ those little rowan-wood boxes I bought from a peddler for keeping dolls’ eyes in?”

  “Rowan-wood should be good,” agreed Is, “if there’s owt spooky about the stones.”

  Arun unexpectedly said, “Can I have a single stone? Just one? To take along with me?”

  Ruth gave him a doubtful look.

  “What for?”

  “In case . . . in case . . . Oh, I dunno. To be on the safe side. Maybe to pay for my new teeth!”

  “Are you mad, boy? You offer the dentist a brown diamond, he’d have you clapped in the pokey before you could sneeze. I can give you plenty of dibs for your teeth,” said Penny firmly.

  But Arun still persisted. “If Twite has such a craving for stones, perhaps I could contrive to drop one in his way . . . with a clue as to where it came from—”

  “Sounds a mite dicey,” said Penny, giving him a sharp look.

  Is caught a picture in Arun’s mind: the cave by the three great tubs of treasure; the loose, terribly dangerous sandy roof. If Twite could be lured into that cave, Arun was thinking, he might never come out alive.

  “But, Arun,” she said, speaking aloud, “that cave’s a death-hole. You mustn’t go near it yourself! Promise!”

  “How can I promise?” he said impatiently. “How can I tell what will happen? I just think it would be a useful thing to have one of the beads along with me.”

  “Oh, very well.” She took the beads from their rowapwood box and passed them over to Penny who, with skilled fingers, unknotted the silken plait on which they were threaded, unfastened the clasp, slid off the end bead, re-knotted, and put the clasp back on.

  Arun nodded his thanks, tied the bead in the corner of his regulation calico midshipman’s neckerchief (which had the words Property of H. M. Navy embroidered by the hem in red chain-stitch) and mumbled, in an effort to sound carefree, “I’ll be off, then. See you by cock-shut,” and climbed over the rail.

  They heard him go off through the wood, trying to whistle, but not succeeding very well.

  Then, when he musthave been aboutamile away, longsince out of earshot, Is, to her astonishment, began to catch, in thought form, the sound of his voice singing. It was like a tickle in her mind, and she cried out involuntarily.

  “Oh, how queer! How very queer! That’s never happened before!”

  “What is it?” asked Ruth.

  “You got hiccups?” said Penny.

  “No, but I suddenly heard Arun singing – inside of my head!”

  “You think there’s something amiss with him?” Ruth at once asked anxiously.

  “No . . . no, he sounded quite happy, just walking along, singing inside of his mind.”

  “What song?”

  Ruth sounded a little wistful – not envious of Is, but just as if she would give anything in the world for a chance to hear her son sing inside his head.

  “A song he sang the other night in Cold Harbour.” Is sang it herself: “If I had a bird that would bounce or a ball that could fly—”

  “Oh yes, I remember it.” Ruth smiled a little in recollection. “That’s one he made up when he was quite small – no bigger than Pye.” Pye scowled horribly. “He used to steal out and sing it on the hill above Cold Shoulder Road where he thought he’d not be heard, and I used to steal out and listen to him.”

  Ruth sang it herself softly:

  “No field would be long enough

  net would be strong enough

  song could be sung

  bell could be rung

  to give voice to our joy

  my companions and I . . .”

  Oh, Aunt Ruth, Is thought, not for the first time. Why in the world didn’t you tell Arun then how much you liked his songs? What a deal of trouble would have been saved.

  Pye had climbed to the cross-trees, a spot where Arun liked to sit when he was on board, and squatted there, hunched and frowning.

  “What’s come to Pye?” said Penny. “Dodging lessons, is she?”

  “Oh, she’s jealous,” sighed Ruth.

  “Jealous, what of?”

  “Jealous of Is being able to hear Arun sing inside her head,” Ruth said with sad certainty. “Now she has spoken to Arun, Pye wants him for herself.”

  “Oh, for the land’s sake!” Penny was impatient. “That young ’un’s got more tangles in her than this ship’s rigging! How you put up with all her whim-whams has me in a puzzle! I’d give her rats’ rations!”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “When a person – specially a child as young as Pye – has had nothing but bad usage, you have to go slowly with them. A step at a time. Just now, I am the only person in the world that Pye has learned to trust, a very little. A very frail trust! If she lost that, then we’d have to start all over. And the second time round would be harder.”

  Penny looked as if she doubted whether this would be worth the bother.

  But after a while Pye came down, sidled along the deck, edged her way up to Ruth, giv
ing Is a sulky defiant glare.

  “Right, time to start our lessons,” said Ruth. “Hallo – what’s this?”, for Pye was handing her a folded square of paper. “A note? Where had you this, Pye? The ladder is drawn up – nobody could have got on to the ship?”

  Pye shook her head and, from the other hand, which she had been holding behind her back, produced an arrow.

  “Stuck in deck,” she explained. “Paper on point.”

  Sure enough, there were four neat holes in the folded paper where the arrow-point had pierced it.

  “Well I never! Lucky one of us didn’t get spitted. Why in the world couldn’t whatever fool it was just give us a call?”

  Ruth opened the paper and read it.

  “‘Please Ruth come to farm. Missis Lee took poorly.’ Oh gracious me. I wonder which Mrs Lee that is? I hope it isn’t the old lady. ‘Bring beads. ‘Now, why in the world should they say that?”

  “Maybe she’s got a plan how to use ’em?” wondered Is.

  Ruth hurried down to the cabin where she kept a bag of medicines and bandages and herbal remedies.

  Returning on deck, she said to Is: “I’ve a queer feeling – kind of a premonition – that those brown beads are going to be needed.”

  “Like a medicine, Aunt Ruth?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel – very strongly – that I ought to have them with me. Would you mind, Is, if I took them with me?”

  “No, that’s all rug,” said Is, passing over the little rowanwood box. “Maybe the old lady can work a cure with them.”

  “Pye come too!” announced Pye, when Ruth walked to the rail.

  “No, Pye. Not this time. I’ll be busy, looking after the sick lady. You must stay on board and learn your lesson with Is.”

  Pye went black in the face. She began, obstinately, to follow Ruth, who turned and gave her a long, clear look, then let herself nimbly down the rope-ladder. Pye opened her mouth wide, ready for a scream, and drew in a huge breath; but before she could let the scream out, Is whipped a thought into her mind.

  “Pye, listen! Arun will hear, if you scream. He’ll hear you inside his head – all across the wood, he’ll hear you – the way you are hearing me now. And he’ll think you have gone back to being a baby again. ‘What a pity!’ he’ll think.”

  Pye let her breath out very slowly, staring at Is.

  “How can you tell that?” she asked in thought language. “Where is Arun now?”

  Is shut her eyes and frowned, concentrating.

  “I can see him in the main street in Seagate. He’s talking to a girl in a red dress – her name is Jen – and he’s asking her the way to the dentist’s house . . . Now he is walking to the edge of the town . . . Now he is knocking at the door.”

  “Can you see Ruth too?” Pye demanded.

  Is opened her eyes. “It’s no use, I can’t find Ruth that way. She doesn’t talk in thought-pictures as you and I and Arun can. And I can’t always do it with Arun. It’s very hard work. Like trying to remember something that happened a long, long time ago.”

  “Nothing happened to Pye a long time ago!” shouted Pye in a passion. She sat down suddenly on the deck. Tears poured from her eyes like water over a weir. “Pye wants Ruth,” she sobbed. “Pye wants Arun. It’s bad without them.”

  Penny shrugged. Is looked at Pye rather helplessly.

  To her surprise, she suddenly felt sorry for the poor little being.

  “Pye,” she said after a moment. “Ruth and Arun aren’t gone for good. You know that. They’ll come back.”

  But will they? she wondered to herself. How can I promise that for sure? There’s nothing but danger in these parts.

  Still, she forced her voice to be calm and reassuring. “Why don’t you pass the time till they come back, making something nice for them? A present? Then you’ll be working for them, and it’ll be as if they were here, because you are thinking about them. See what I mean?”

  Pye stared at Is for a long time out of large, round, pale, tear-filled eyes.

  “Make bread,” she said finally. “Pye can do that.”

  Is looked enquiringly at Penny, who nodded.

  “Yes, she can. Ruth taught her.”

  “All right, then, Pye. Let’s go to the galley. You show me.”

  At least mixing flour and water and yeast and thumping it will keep the kid out of mischief for a while, Is thought.

  I wonder how Arun is getting on at the dentist?

  “Yes, yes, indeed, my young sir, I can most readily furnish you with highly superior new teeth; there will be no difficulty whatsoever. They can be screwed to the stumps of those broken ones,” Mr Fishskin the dentist was telling Arun. His own wide smile revealed two shining rows of big, well-shaped white teeth which looked as if they had been designed as an advertisement for his work.

  “How much will they cost?” Arun asked doubtfully, hoping that the money his cousin Penny had lent him (“Pay me back when you are rich,” she had said) would be sufficient.

  “A trifle, a mere trifle,” the dentist replied airily. He looked remarkably like his cousin the Admiral, Arun thought; the same round, flat face and pale intent eyes, screened by thick spectacles. I don’t like him, not one bit, Arun decided. I wish he weren’t the only dentist for miles. But it’s true; if I don’t have those teeth mended, I shan’t be able to sing.

  And at least Denzil Fishskin seemed to have accepted the story of the midshipman and the marlinspike readily enough.

  “Now, just sit in this armchair, my lad, make yourself comfortable, lean back so; and now, we must clap this mask, which is soaked in ether and nitrous oxide, over your face,” went on the dentist, producing from a large basin a soft, thick, round white pad about the size of a soup-plate. “Lie well back – so – just imagine that you are lolling in your hammock in the midshipmen’s quarters and that your ship is becalmed in the balmy Bahamas . . .”

  I don’t care for this at all, thought Arun, and that was the last thought that came into his head for some considerable time.

  Is lined up a number of Penny’s dolls’-heads and painted red mouths and black eyes on them while, rather inattentively, she supervised Pye, who was thumping and pummelling a large, grey, loaf-sized mass of elastic dough, which was steadily growing grimier and grimier.

  “Don’t you have to leave it to rise, now?” Is suggested after a while.

  “Soon,” panted Pye, bashing away as if she had the Leader of the Silent Sect laid out on her pastry-board. “Bread wants banging real hard, Ruth says.”

  She pounded on.

  When Arun’s thoughts next began to reassemble themselves inside his head, he realised, first, that he was desperately thirsty, second, that his mouth felt horribly sore and uncomfortable. He was dizzy, too, and his surroundings seemed to be whirling round him so rapidly that it was safer – just for the moment, anyway – to keep his eyes shut.

  But the worry that had gripped him from the moment when Pye broke his teeth was still with him, and now worse than ever. Would he be able to sing properly with these great bulky fangs stuck in his jaw? He explored the new teeth nervously with his tongue. They took up a huge amount of room in his mouth. They seemed as large as tombstones.

  Not far away, he could hear quiet voices talking. Absorbed in his worry, he paid them no heed.

  “I shall need some more mammoth tusks next time the troop come this way. I am now down to my last . . . And a jug or two of Barbados rum would not come amiss . . . I can use it on the rougher type of customer . . .”

  “It was ill-advised and thoughtless of the men to despatch that group. It may lead to undesirable attention from the authorities in London. An individual here or there, yes; a whole group, decidedly no.”

  “London is a long way from here. And a new reign has begun. Government will be in disorder. Meanwhile the local people were becoming restive . . . murmurs . . . this will bring them to heel.”

  Never mind about the murmurs and the mammoth tusks, thought Arun muzzily
.

  Mammoth tusks, though. Who was talking about mammoth tusks not so long ago? But never mind, never mind, never mind about that. The important, the terribly important question is, will I be able to sing?

  There seemed only one way to find out.

  Arun opened his mouth wide and sang out, suddenly, at the full pitch of his lungs:

  “Heel and toe,

  high and low

  hold her tightly

  swing her lightly

  and sing, everybody, sing!”

  That’s all right then, he thought in deep satisfaction. The new teeth haven’t spoiled my singing. Improved it, if anything.

  A stunned silence had fallen.

  Then a voice said, “But . . . good god, that was the boy. That’s the boy – that’s the Twite boy, the one who gave me the slip in the wood . . . Here, let’s have a look at him.”

  Oh, croopus, thought Arun. I know that voice.

  With an effort, he hoisted up his eyelids and found that he was staring straight into the large grey-blue eyes of Dominic de la Twite.

  “Denzil, I must trouble you for another helping of ether and nitrous oxide,” announced the voice of the Leader, after a moment. “Pass me that swab, will you, my dear fellow?”

  Arun sank down again, into a white and whirling fog.

  Chapter Seven

  “CAN YOU SEE ARUN NOW? OR HEAR HIM?” PYE asked, still vigorously pounding away at her dough.

  “No. Not just now.”

  Is most certainly was not going to tell Pye that she had, in fact, received a very queer, worrying impression which had slipped into her mind following a few jerky notes of a song. The song was sung loudly, almost bawled, as if Arun were trying to prove something to himself. But then had followed a confused vision of Arun tipping head first into a deep well smoking with white foggy vapours.

  “Arun! Where are you? What’s happening?” She poured out the thought-call, with all her energy, over and over. But not a sound, not a sign came back.

  And it was becoming a long time since Ruth had gone off to the farm. Two hours? Three? A worryingly long time.

  “Now put bread on top of stove to rise. Now we wait,” Pye said importantly.