Midnight is a Place

by Joan Aiken

  "But you are poor, Grand'mère, and yet you don't seem to hate people?"

  "Well," said Lady Murgatroyd cheerfully, "I've had everything taken away from me, and I found it wasn't so bad after all. It was a big relief not to have to look after Midnight Court, I can tell you! There was always a broken window or a smoking chimney that needed attention; I never had a minute. Whereas now I can do just what I like—read or weave or paint pictures, or just sit and remember old times."

  "So perhaps," said Anna-Marie, "it might be better for the people in the town to have everything taken from them?"

  "But they have never had much at all, poor things! It would be better, much better, if they could have enough, so they could stop worrying and be kinder to each other."

  "But Grand'mère," said Anna-Marie thoughtfully, "how do people know when they have enough? For I think Sir Randolph was quite rich and yet he was avare."

  "Stingy."

  "Stingy; thank you."

  "Yes; well," said Lady Murgatroyd, taking up the handles of the loaded barrow and wheeling it over the snow as quickly and easily as if she were twenty, not seventy, "I suppose he was worried all the time about losing his money."

  "So how can you teach people not to worry?"

  "You ask some large-sized questions, petite-fille! I suppose you can do it in two ways, and neither is easy."

  "Et quoi?"

  "Either you make their lives so much better that they don't have to worry—"

  "Or?"

  "You somehow teach them that worrying doesn't help, but is only a waste of time."

  "I think both ways together would be best," said Anna-Marie. "For some people will always be worrying—if only about whether the soup is going to be thick enough or if the milk will go sour. So you make them comfortable and you tell them not to unquiet themselves."

  "Eh bien, ma petite! If anyone is going to do that to the people of Blastburn, it will have to be you, not me!"

  "Why, Grand'mère!"

  "I am too old."

  "Oh, quelle blague, Grand'mère!" Anna-Marie said, laughing. "You are droll! If you can chimneysweep and lay bricks and make poterie, I think you can also tell the people of Blastburn to cheer up.... Aha, there comes Luc!" Her sharp eye had spotted him slipping through the gap in the wall with their basket. She bolted over the snow to help him.

  Luckily it was a dim, foggy day. Although no snow fell, the yellow-gray clouds hung low, full of smoke; a dull red sun climbed a little way above the horizon, crept into a cloud, and sank again quite soon. Even the keenest eyes could not have seen more than thirty yards through the gloom, and nobody was about to see Lucas, Anna-Marie, and Lady Murgatroyd building a lean-to stable of stakes and brushwood against the park wall, in the little copse.

  "In the summer," said Lady Murgatroyd, "we may as well enlarge the gap in the wall, so as to let the pony come through and graze in the park."

  "But Grand'mère, suppose the park is sold to someone who does not want us here?"

  "Now you are worrying needlessly," said Lady Murgatroyd. "If that happens, then we will make other plans."

  Lucas told them what old Gabriel had said about the park being sold for coal-mining land. Lady Murgatroyd sighed at the thought, but she said, "Well, it would certainly give employment to a lot of people. And if they put a mine here, we'd have plenty of warning beforehand, so that we could find somewhere else to live. There! I call that a really luxurious stable."

  "Un palais de cheval, "agreed Anna-Marie. The stable was walled and thatched with tightly bound bundles of brushwood; they had even constructed a brushwood door which hung on hinges made from leather straps; and the floor was snugly lined with dry bracken, which they had scratched out from under the snow.

  "I would not mind sleeping in here myself," said Anna-Marie.

  "Oh, in that case, you can have it, and we'll keep Noddy in the icehouse," Lucas said gravely.

  "Tais-toi, imbécile! But still," said Anna-Marie, "when it is springtime and Monsieur Ookapool is here, maybe we build another petite cabane, n'est-ce pad? It would be nice to sleep here under the trees, I think."

  "There are still bluebells in spring here," said Lady Murgatroyd. "Even though the town has grown so big and smoky."

  For a moment they were all thinking of spring; it seemed almost as if the bluebells were there already.

  Then Lady Murgatroyd said, "It's nearly dark; come along in."

  Anna-Marie had already made herself familiar with the interior of the icehouse. Now she had a very enjoyable time showing it to Lucas. There was the big room with the fireplace where Lady Murgatroyd lived and slept, comfortably furnished with rugs and books and tree trunks. Then there were three smaller rooms, one of which Lady Murgatroyd had used as a larder, because it had slate shelves all up one wall. One was her washroom, because it contained a very large stone basin, which in Sir Quincy's day had been used for making ice cream. And the third was empty. Bet the baby at present occupied this room in her wicker cradle. It had been decided that Anna-Marie should share it with her, and that Lucas should have the larder. His room had a small door leading out, and all three rooms, as well as the big one, had little grating-windows cunningly sunk in the turf so that they were almost invisible from outside, unless you stood very close, and yet they let in some light.

  "Isn't it a nice house, Luc," Anna-Marie kept saying.

  "No, it's an icehouse!"

  "Ah, bah! Tu es vraiment stupide!"

  "Children! Suppertime!" Lady Murgatroyd called.

  At supper—which consisted of a very delicious cheese-and-apple pie—Lady Murgatroyd explained that if they liked to bring back meat from Blastburn, she would not have the slightest objection to cooking it, but she herself ate only eggs, cheese, fruit, and vegetables.

  "I have always found that best for my voice," she explained.

  "Do you sing songs, Grand'mère?"

  "I used to, petite-fille; now I only teach."

  "I wish you will sing to me; Papa used to."

  "Yes, he had a beautiful tenor voice. And you, my child, can you sing?"

  "Oh yes. And I make up tunes."

  "Then, after supper, I will show you my tuning fork."

  "Papa had one of those."

  "I'm sure he did. But mine is a special one."

  After the meal, true to her word, Lady Murgatroyd produced the tuning fork from a wooden case. It looked ordinary enough: a bluish metal prong which, when banged on the stone wall, gave out a sweet tingling note.

  "Why is it special?" Anna-Marie wanted to know.

  "You have heard of a composer called Georges Frédéric Handel?"

  "Oh, di! He has written some music about water." She hummed a bit of it.

  "Quite right. He was born over a hundred years ago, and died in seventeen fifty-nine, as you may know. This tuning fork belonged to him."

  "Truly?" said Anna-Marie, very amazed.

  "True as I stand here. When Handel died, he left his tuning fork to a friend of his, an English musician and singer called Henry Metcalfe, who made up some beautiful songs. And Henry Metcalfe gave it, when he grew old, to a German composer called Diefenmacher, who wrote organ music. He died in eighteen hundred, and left the tuning fork to a French singer called Hector Boismachère. And he was my father and left it to me."

  "Oh, Grand'mère! So you are French?"

  "Half French, half English; like you. So, you see, the tuning fork has always been passed on from one musician to another. And I hope it always will be."

  "So you, grandmother, when you grow older, will have to find a musician to give it to."

  "Yes, I shall, " said Lady Murgatroyd.

  Anna-Marie begged her grandmother to sing a song. And before long they were singing together, half in French, half in English, nursery songs, ballads, whatever came into their heads.

  Lucas, who could not tell one note from another, listened politely. But his eyes, ever since he came into the icehouse, had been straying more and more eagerly toward
the books. Lady Murgatroyd said, laughing, "Do read whichever of them you would like. I am afraid they are mostly poetry and plays, but there is some travel and biography. And a bit of philosophy."

  Lucas was across the room before she had finished speaking. He opened one book and then another. He was lost.

  A couple of hours later, Lady Murgatroyd said gently, "I don't want to be a killjoy but you did say, didn't you, that you had to get up at half past five so as to get to your sewer at six o'clock?"

  Lucas dragged himself out of a play called The White Devil. It was like pulling himself out of the Muckle Sump. "Yes, of course," he said dazedly. "What time is it, my lady?"

  "Oh, why not call me grandmother? You and Anna-Marie might just as well count yourselves as cousins. Its ten o'clock." She pointed to an old silver-gilt clock which sat in a hole in the wall where one stone had been removed. "And you needn't worry about waking in the morning. Listen."

  She pressed a button at the back of the clock and it immediately played a sweet silvery tune: "London Bridge Is Falling Down."

  "You see," said Lady Murgatroyd, "it is an alarm clock; set this little hand to the time at which you want to get up, and the clock will wake you by playing its tune. Put it on the shelf by your bed."

  Lucas and Anna-Marie had piled themselves beds out of more bracken, which had been drying in front of the fire all evening, giving off a leafy, earthy smell. Lady Murgatroyd luckily had two spare blankets, and Lucas said that he would buy some more in the market; cotton blankets cost only five shillings there. Meanwhile they also piled sacks, and what clothes they had, on top of the blankets, for the stone rooms were cold.

  "But this bed is much, much more comfortable than the one at Mrs. Tetley's," Anna-Marie said.

  After they had gone to bed Lucas came out of his room again—his own room—to ask, "Ma'am—Grandmother—do you have any spare paper that you aren't using?"

  "To write on, do you mean?"

  He nodded.

  "I have some blank account books of my husband's that you are welcome to use. Over there in that corner, see? I brought them, thinking I might keep a diary in them, but then I found more interesting things to do. You are welcome to them, my dear boy." She paused, looked at him thoughtfully, and then said, "Now, I ask myself, does this belong to you? I found it, and have been keeping it, somehow expecting that the owner might come back looking for it."

  From the wooden chest she produced a brown leather book—the book that he had believed burned.

  Lucas found that he was unable to speak. He gave Lady Murgatroyd a throttling hug, and went back to bed, from where he could see a star, just one, stuck in the middle of his tiny grating window.

  He slept.

  While they were building the stable, Lucas had—rather cautiously—suggested to Anna-Marie that there was not much use in her trying to keep on her cigar trade if the boys of the town were determined to stop her. He had been afraid that her hot temper might make her wish to go on battling against their unfair persecution, but luckily the practical side of her nature came uppermost.

  "No: I do not see any point, if they are going to take away all my work and spoil it; I do not wish to work for nothing. C'est de la folie, cela! In the morning I shall ask the advice of Grand'mère; she knows so much; I am sure she will think of some good plan."

  This was such a relief to Lucas that he did not even consider discussing Anna-Marie's occupation with Lady Murgatroyd, but went off to bed easier in his mind than he had been for weeks, and slept dreamlessly until the gentle silvery notes of "London Bridge Is Falling Down" woke him at half-past five.

  From here, it was no farther to the Market Square than it had been from Haddock Street, so he need start no earlier. He had persuaded Anna-Marie that there was no purpose in her getting up so early, as she was not coming with him. Lady Murgatroyd had made him some chestnut porridge the previous evening, cooking the chestnuts over the fire in a little water until they were boiling, then placing the pot, which was made of heavy earthenware with a lid, inside a padded box, thickly stuffed with hay. To his amazement, for though she had told him the porridge would be ready for breakfast, he had not really believed her, he found it still hot in the morning, and perfectly cooked. It made a delicious breakfast, completed by three more gingersnaps.

  He had on his outer clothes and was on the point of leaving quietly through his own little door when Anna-Marie darted silently into his room.

  "Good-bye, dear Luc! I could not let you go off without saying bonjour," she said, and gave him a hug. "Take care! And find something nice in that nasty place."

  He went off feeling warm, well fed, and cheerful, in spite of being bound for the sewers; how different from leaving Haddock Street with its smell of boiled dirty potato peelings and atmosphere of grudging dislike. Now his mind had so much to occupy it that he hardly knew where to begin.

  In fact he did not notice that Gudgeon greeted him with a scowl and seemed—even for Gudgeon—unusually surly.

  Anna-Marie had returned to bed after saying good-bye to Lucas, and even gone back to sleep for a short time, but the baby woke at seven and wanted to play; so after that there was no more sleep. Bet was just old enough to scramble out of her cradle and crawl about the floor, strong enough to overturn anything that could be upset and to break anything breakable if it were left within her reach.

  She did, too, seem to be passionately fond of stuffing anything into her mouth: sand, ashes, moss, earth, charcoal, the bracken lining of Anna-Marie's bed—the more unsuitable it was, the better she liked it.

  "Grand Dieu!" panted Anna-Marie at the end of an exhausting hour. "How, Grand'mère, an old lady, ever kept up with you, I cannot imagine. Je n'ai aucune idee."

  "Day, day," repeated the baby, happily thumping a wooden spoon against the copper can in which Lady Murgatroyd fetched water from the spring in the park.

  "Grand'mère, " said Anna-Marie, when they had fed the baby her bread and milk and were eating their own (the bread made by Lady Murgatroyd twice a week, the milk fetched from a farm on the moor), "Grand'mère, what can I do? As work, I mean?"

  "You are sure that you would not rather stay here and help me? Others of your age would still be going to school. You are quite young."

  "No," said Anna-Marie positively. "We have not enough money that I stay at home. And if Luc works it is fair that I work also. And others of my age also work. Certainly I wish to help you, Grand'mère, but it shall be after I get home or before I go. I would like also to learn singing from you and how to make that potage de marrons and many other things, but first we must have enough money so that we are not a burden on you, Grand'mère. After all, you did not even know that you had a grandchild."

  "No indeed. It was the nicest surprise in the world. I had heard that the Sea-Witch, that was the boat on which your father went to France, had been sunk and all the people on her drowned, so I thought that he was dead."

  "He swam to shore; he has told me about it many times. And he thought that you were dead, Grand'maman; he told me once that he read a piece in a newspaper about how Grandpère died just after Papa left home, and it said that you had died too."

  "Pieces in newspapers are generally wrong," said Lady Murgatroyd sadly. "And look what a lot of harm they do. If it had not been for that, your father might have written a letter to me years ago."

  "And come to visit you, peut-être. "

  "I am not sure that he could have done that. But I could have gone to see him in France."

  "Why could he not come to England? He would never tell me that."

  "Well—you know about how Sir Randolph won Midnight Court."

  Anna-Marie nodded. "Yes. And I think he was a rrrogue to do it so," she said vehemently. "If I had known when he was still alive, I would have told him so, to his face."

  "And he wanted to fight a duel with your father, because people were saying Sir Randolph had cheated. But your father would not fight; he said he was not interested in whether Sir Randol
ph had cheated or not, and fighting would not prove anything, either way."

  "I would have fought him, me," said Anna-Marie.

  "Well—it is possible that he did have to fight him in the end. It is all quite a mystery. Your father was planning to sail to France in this little fishing boat, the Sea-Witch, leaving from the port of Shoreham. Two people went with him as far as the coast. Tom Grenvile, a college friend of his who had lent him a horse and some money, was one. Ah, poor Tom," Lady Murgatroyd sighed.

  "And who was the other?"

  "The other was a young boy, no more than fifteen years old, who was very greatly devoted to your father. He had run away from his home and his school, and he begged to be allowed to go to France. Your father said no, but he might come as far as the coast; he kept trying to persuade the boy to turn back, but he would not; your father did not know what to do about him."

  "I should have been like that too. Naturally he wanted to go with Papa. And so, what happened?"

  "When they came to the seashore—it was at night—there was an ambush."

  "An ambush? But this is an adventure you are telling me, Grand'mère. "

  "It certainly was. A whole party of men, five or six, were there, in masks, with swords, and they attacked your papa, and his friend, and the boy."

  "They were sent by Sir Randolph. Maybe he was there too," stated Anna-Marie.

  "It is possible. Certainly your father had no other enemies. But why, just the same? Sir Randolph had the house and everything else already; there was nothing to be gained by killing your papa."

  "If he had cheated there was. In case anyone found out. But also I think it made him feel bad—horrible—whenever he thought of my papa. The only way not to feel bad—he believed—would be to kill my papa altogether."

  Lady Murgatroyd looked at her thoughtfully. "You may be right."

  "I am right," said Anna-Marie with certainty. "For he went on feeling horrible all the rest of his life; everybody knows that. And when he saw me—just before he jumped himself into the fire—he said to me, 'I shall tell your papa that I didn't much care for his slice of Clutterby Pie.'"