The Secret Starling

by Judith Eagle

  ‘A sweeping adventure … echoing classic fiction from The Secret Garden to Noel Streatfeild.’

  Fiona Noble, The Bookseller

  ‘An amazing story with lots of mystery … I couldn’t put the book down.’

  Kyra, age 10, Toppsta

  ‘A delicious adventure, packed with daring characters and remarkable pets.’

  Emma Carroll, author of Letters from the Lighthouse

  ‘Highly recommended.’

  Pops, age 9, Toppsta

  ‘Destined to be a future classic, Judith Eagle has all the hallmarks of the next Noel Streatfeild.’

  Scott Evans, The Reader Teacher & #PrimarySchoolBookClub

  ‘A mystery that has the reader on the edge of their seats.’

  Year 6 readers, Toppsta

  ‘I stayed up ridiculously late to finish it … A really excellent, gripping story.’

  Golden Books Girl

  ‘I really enjoyed reading.’

  Yzabelle, age 9, Toppsta

  To Mr Marks

  and all the teachers who encourage us

  to believe in ourselves.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Two Years Later

  Q&A with Judith Eagle

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Most people believe a little routine to be a good thing. Babies thrive on a routine of milk, cuddle, sleep; milk, cuddle, sleep; milk, cuddle, sleep. Schools tend towards a ship-shape routine of lining up, lessons and play. A good routine, say certain people, gives you a sense of purpose and adds structure and order to the day.

  But the routine that Clara was meant to follow at Braithwaite Manor would send those very people half mad. Day in, day out, it was always the same.

  Get up, get washed (in the freezing bathroom, where in winter icicles hung), have breakfast alone in the draughty dining room. The dining room, as always, would be deadly quiet except for the solemn tick of the grandfather clock and Clara’s chewing noises, which seemed extraordinarily loud.

  After breakfast came lessons, taught by a governess. The governesses changed almost on a monthly basis. ‘It’s like life GROUND to a halt in the nineteenth century!’ the last-but-one had cried, grabbing her bag and click-clacking furiously down the hall to the door.

  Clara couldn’t agree more.

  The house did, after all, look like something out of a Victorian gothic novel, crouching in the middle of the moors like an angry crow. A single dark turret rose up to stab the gloomy skies, and flinty little windows glittered meanly at anyone with the gumption to approach.

  The governesses had strict orders from Clara’s uncle to teach her the most boring lessons known to man or woman. Clara knew full well they would have preferred to teach her fun projects, like making collages, putting on shows and writing stories. But Uncle didn’t have a fun bone in his body and preferred the traditional approach: endless times tables, fiendishly hard spelling tests and complicated grammatical exercises that made both Clara’s and the governesses’ brains hurt.

  After lessons, came lunch, and after lunch it was time for a walk in the scrubby grounds.

  Perhaps if the sun ever shone, the garden might have held a bit more promise. After all, as certain grown-ups will tell you, there are endless games to be played in the great outdoors.

  But at Braithwaite Manor the sun rarely shone. Instead, the freezing wind whipped and whirled, and the rain spliced the air and grazed your face until it hurt.

  So while the governesses swaddled themselves in fur coats found in the upstairs wardrobes and huddled on the bench reading old copies of Vogue, Clara hung around and kicked her heels on the half-frozen ground. She never felt like playing with the mouldy old dirt and stones on her own.

  After the walk came the dreariest part of all, the daily visit to Uncle. And here is the truth of it: Uncle was an icily cold man. Not a glimmer of warmth emanated from this sternest of beings. It is entirely possible that he had no real feelings at all. His eyes never twinkled. He rarely smiled. He didn’t hug, or laugh, or cry, or do any of the things that warmer-blooded humans do. As far as Clara could see, the only things he liked were rules and routine.

  ‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ was his favourite saying. Clara was not to run in the house, but must always tiptoe quietly. He detested chatter, so Cook and Clara had to wait until he went out, which was rare. There was no television or radio, and he did not take a newspaper. To all intents and purposes they were quite adrift from the outside world.

  Clara had wasted hour upon hour wondering why Uncle was so mean-spirited. One likely explanation was that he was permanently grief-stricken. His parents had died suddenly when he was a very young man. His sister, Clara’s mother, had died in childbirth and Uncle had long ago made it clear that not one of the deceased was to be spoken about or referred to in any way, shape or form. Clara knew she had a father somewhere out there in the great wide world, but she had stopped asking about him ages ago.

  ‘He doesn’t even know you exist,’ Uncle had told her meanly. ‘How many times do I have to tell you before it gets into that woolly head of yours?’

  The daily visits to Uncle followed a familiar pattern. There he would sit, deep in his armchair, in his cosy study in front of the one roaring fire, and gaze at Clara as though he wished she wasn’t there. Sometimes he would close his eyes, breathe deeply and open them again in a kind of despair. It was at times like these that Clara couldn’t help wondering if he would just prefer her to disappear.

  Then he would ask the questions. The same questions he asked every day.

  ‘How were your lessons today? What did you learn? Did you say your prayers?’

  Clara barely heard the questions now, so familiar was she with the mind-numbing tedium of it all. Anyhow, her answers were always the same.

  ‘Good, Uncle,’ ‘Many things, Uncle,’ and, ‘Yes.’

  The yes was a lie because Clara couldn’t always be bothered to pray, just like she couldn’t always be bothered to brush her teeth. Instead she put her hands together, shut her eyes and counted backwards from ten.

  Clara knew that if she changed her answers Uncle wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Once she had tried it just to see. She’d answered, ‘Boring,’ ‘Nothing at all,’ and ‘I never do.’

  Then she’d squeezed her eyes tight shut and held her breath, waiting for Uncle to explode. Or at least to look at her and take notice. He did neither. It gave Clara a weird sinking feeling. At least now she was one hundred per cent sure he didn’t listen to her any more than she cared to listen to him.

  After the visit to Uncle it was teatime.

  ‘What’s for tea?’ Clara would ask in the vain hope that
Cook might say something interesting like coq au vin, or beef Wellington or prawn cocktail, just some of the recipes she had read about in her governesses’ magazines. But Uncle was a firm believer in plain meals – nothing fancy was allowed.

  Recently the answer was always ‘spreadables’: three slices of bread and margarine and a variety of jars on the table. The jars were full of untempting things like fish paste, strangely crunchy honey and gloopy jam.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Cook, when Clara’s face fell again. It wasn’t Cook’s fault. Clara knew that Uncle was terribly mean with the housekeeping money. Last month he had halved Cook’s budget and two weeks later he had halved it again. Cook whispered to Clara that she was almost at her wits’ end.

  When tea was finished, it was time for bed. And that was it: the exact same thing, over and over, day in, day out, forever and ever, amen.

  It was true that, occasionally, Uncle did disappear for a day or two. Then Clara, James the butler and the governess-of-the-month would join Cook in the kitchen for hot buttered toast and card games. If she was lucky, James would teach Clara some DIY skills. Now she knew how to saw wood, drill holes and hammer in nails.

  In bed, Clara would read until she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Besides a scrap of red ribbon tucked inside her shell box, books were the only things she had of her mother’s: a battered collection of paperbacks with yellowing pages, the fly leaf of each inscribed in violet ink:

  Clara loved to hold the open books to her nose, inhaling the musty oldness of them. Her favourite was The Secret Garden, which she had read again and again and again. It was a shame there was nothing remotely resembling a secret garden at Braithwaite Manor. Just a patch of scrub, a tumbling-down stone wall and beyond that, miles and miles of desolate moor.

  It was hard not to feel hopeless. But Clara tried her best to look on the bright side even though the days dragged interminably and there was no one to play with, nothing new to see.

  Chapter Two

  Despite the deadly dull routine, there was one thing at Braithwaite Manor that was changing. And that was the state of the house, which was slowly falling into terrible disrepair. Doors didn’t close properly, windows creaked and gaped. Only last month a crack had appeared in a pipe in the governess’s bathroom. Within weeks it had turned from a crack to a jagged fissure and water, at first just a trickle, was now almost gushing out in a steady stream. James said there was nothing for it but to put a bucket underneath to catch the drips. Soon one bucket became two, then three. The buckets needed emptying and replacing at all hours. No wonder James had dark circles under his eyes.

  At the same time, Clara started to notice things disappearing. The first was the portrait of Uncle’s ancestors in the hall. Clara wasn’t sorry to see it go. It was a dark, gloomy painting and she hated the way the ancestors always looked at her disapprovingly as she came down the stairs. It was almost as if they were agreeing with Uncle, that she wasn’t up to much.

  Next to disappear was the huge blue-and-white china soup tureen decorated with dancing maidens that sat on the sideboard in the dining room. Many times Clara had asked Cook why they couldn’t serve actual soup in it. But Cook always said the same thing: ‘It’s an heirloom, ducks, and it’s just for show.’

  Soon it was one thing after another. The bowl of silver eggs from the mantelpiece in the drawing room; an entire shelf of leather-bound books from the library; the series of small animal paintings placed at equal intervals up the stairs.

  ‘Where’s everything going?’ Clara asked Cook. She missed the pictures of the foxes and farmyard animals. Now all that remained were ghostly white rectangles, the wall around them almost black from years and years of accumulated dust. But Cook just mysteriously shook her head and muttered something about ‘needs must’.

  Then the unheard of happened. The routine faltered. Well, not just faltered, it ground to a halt. A week ago, the latest governess had left in a huff, loudly declaring that Uncle should be arrested for child cruelty. It wasn’t the first time Clara had heard such words. Cook occasionally murmured them under her breath while casting sorrowful looks in Clara’s direction. Clara wondered if it was true and decided not. She wasn’t kept locked in an attic or starved or anything like that.

  For five days Clara was left on her own.

  No governess meant no lessons, no walk in the garden and no one reminding her to visit Uncle in his study before tea. Clara didn’t complain or seek out Uncle to ask what was going on. Instead she did the sensible thing: stayed quiet and kept out of the way. She invented her own routine, which was much nicer. Each morning she would slip into the library, silently do ten star jumps to warm up because it was like the North Pole in there, and then choose a book. On Monday she re-read The Secret Garden; on Tuesday, Thursday’s Child; on Wednesday, Oliver Twist; on Thursday, Anne of Green Gables and on Friday, Ballet Shoes. Clara was especially fond of stories about children who were all alone in the world.

  After that she followed James about. She liked to watch the butler quietly appraise the latest damage to the house, select the correct tools for the job and tackle the repairs. Best of all was when she was allowed to help. Her favourite thing was to mix up the Polyfilla until it looked like thick white icing and then fill the spidery cracks that lined the walls.

  Later, Clara would make her way to Cook’s quarters. Uncle didn’t like her in this part of the house in case she and Cook got chatting and disturbed the peace. But all week the study door stayed firmly shut, which meant Cook was quite free to regale Clara with tales about her family. Her son was married to Celeste, a nurse who had come all the way from the Caribbean; her daughter, Babs, was a dancer on a cruise ship and had travelled all over the world. There were heaps of grandchildren, all of whom seemed to have special talents. One of them could play ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano blindfolded; another could do backflips and walk on his hands; the littlest one could touch her nose with her big toe.

  The stories filled Clara with a strange yearning. More than anything she would have liked to belong to such an interesting-sounding family as Cook’s.

  * * *

  On Saturday, the sixth governess-less morning, Clara woke hardly daring to believe it would be another routine-free day. As usual, and because old habits die hard, she rose at seven, washed, shivered, dressed and descended to the draughty dining room. It seemed draughtier than ever, if that were possible. But what was really odd was the table. It hadn’t even been laid. How incredibly vast it looked when it was not set for one.

  Even more strange, the table hadn’t been polished. In fact it looked like it hadn’t been polished all week. Usually Clara could see her reflection in it. Now she wrote her name, with a swirl, in the dust.

  Clara sat for a while and listened to the clock. No toast. No marmalade. Was the routine, Clara thought, utterly and actually dead?

  And then, from the direction of the kitchen came the sound of sobbing. Was it Cook? Surely not. Quickly, Clara rose and hurried out of the dining room to Cook’s quarters. Pushing open the green baize door, she breathed in deeply. She would eat her toast in here. It was warm and smelled of apples. But no. Here was Cook, slumped over the scrubbed pine table, her head in her hands. The sobbing noises were coming from her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Clara asked anxiously. She had never seen an adult crying before.

  ‘No, I’m not, duck,’ sniffed Cook, raising a tear-stained face. ‘He’s sacked me. Run out of money, he says, none to spare for wages, would you believe. I should have seen it coming, what with the measly housekeeping, not to mention the funny business with the family heirlooms.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Clara. She felt a nervous fluttering start up in her chest. Cook couldn’t leave!

  ‘Right,’ said Cook, ‘come with me.’

  Clara followed Cook into the pantry. She wanted to grip her arm and plead with her to stay, but she couldn’t because Uncle would accuse her of making a scene. Together they surveyed the almost bare shelves. There were three dozen
eggs, half a sack of potatoes and a handful of vegetables so old they were starting to sprout hair and eyes.

  ‘Not much, is there?’ said Cook.

  ‘No,’ agreed Clara, who knew next to nothing about supplies and how long they were supposed to last. All the same, she understood that no money meant no more food. ‘Not much at all.’

  ‘When you’re hungry,’ said Cook, ‘take an egg and boil it in a pan of water. Five minutes if you want it soft, eight for hard.’

  ‘OK,’ said Clara, hoping she would be able to remember. Five for soft, eight for hard.

  ‘Potatoes,’ said Cook, nodding at the sack. ‘Peel them if you can be bothered, but don’t worry if you can’t. Boil ’em for a good twenty minutes. Mash them if you like.’

  Clara gulped. She had not expected a cookery lesson this morning. Was Uncle expecting her to cook for both of them? It was all rather a lot to take in.

  Now Cook bustled back into the kitchen. Clara saw she was gathering her bags.

  ‘Where’s James?’ asked Clara tentatively. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen the butler since yesterday morning.

  ‘Already gone,’ said Cook, giving Clara a short, fierce hug. ‘Too upset to say goodbye.’ Clara felt a great big sob well up inside her, but she pushed it back down. Years of being the niece of a cold-hearted uncle had toughened her up. She wanted to fling herself at Cook and not let go, but she told herself not to. Cook had her own children and grandchildren to look after. She could hardly go worrying about other people’s children even if there was a bit of child cruelty going on.

  ‘Just you and Mr S now, dearie, but you’re a strong ’un, you’ll survive.’

  Clara drew herself up. If Cook thought she was strong, then she would be. Bold and fearless, like a heroine in a book.

  ‘I won’t be far,’ said Cook, taking a shiny new fifty-pence coin out of her purse and pressing it into Clara’s hand. Clara tried to give it back. It didn’t seem right to accept money from someone who had just lost her job. But Cook said, ‘Take it,’ in a funny, gruff sort of way, and then, ‘I’ll be in the village if you need me.’