Shanghai Sparrow

by Gaie Sebold

  She wandered home still half in the dream. Papa came striding out and took her arm roughly. “Eveline, we thought you’d got lost! You know to be home before this. And look at the state you’re in. Your good boots, all soaked! You’re a careless girl, and this is no time for your mother to be upset.”

  “I’m sorry, Papa, but Aiden...”

  “Yes, well, I think we need a little talk about Aiden.”

  Mama was cross, and tugged her boots off roughly, and Eveline cried because Mama was upset.

  “Oh, my poppet, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Come, come, don’t fret, there. Mama was only cross because she worries about you.”

  She took Eveline on her lap – with a little difficulty, as her belly was getting big with the coming baby – and glanced at Papa, and said, “I want you to spend more time with people, darling, and less with the Folk.”

  “Do you mean Aiden? I like Aiden, he’s my friend.”

  “I know you think so, but the Folk aren’t like us, my pet, especially the Higher. They see the world differently. I’m not saying he’s bad, or anything like that, you understand? But if the tide had come in, and you’d not woken from the dream the merfolk sang you, well, Aiden might not have realised you were in danger. He’s not like you, you see. Things that can hurt you can’t hurt him. Besides... oh, you’re very young, I know, and not thinking of such things, but... Folk are Folk and people are people. I don’t want your heart broken. And if he ever asks you to go home with him, you’re not to.”

  “Aiden wouldn’t hurt me, Mama.”

  “He might not mean to, sweetheart. But he might not be able to help it.”

  “Emma Povey didn’t know any Folk, and her mama said she had her heart broken.”

  Papa coughed into his hand and he and Mama exchanged glances.

  “Oh, my dear, people can break your heart too.” Mama hugged her so hard Eveline was barely able to breathe. “I wish I could save you from everything bad, my dove. I do. But I can’t. All I can do is give you advice.”

  Eveline tried to be good, and come home early and do her lessons and help the maid as Mama got slower and heavier.

  And Aiden was about less and less.

  Days would go by, then weeks, when she never saw him. Autumn, with all its fruit and colour and sweetness, ripened. The local landowner obtained a steam tractor which was a wonder and amazement, though very loud, but Aiden did not come to see and she wondered if he had forgotten her. Some days she wandered the woods and fields and shoreline, occasionally calling his name, but he did not come. She wondered if he’d heard Mama and Papa and was cross that they thought so badly of him, or if she herself had done something to offend him.

  But Papa said that the Folk were retreating, withdrawing from their old ways. And Mama thought that perhaps it was the new farm machinery that they did not like, with its clatter. “Remember how they used to come to hear my instruments?” she said. “I never see them now.”

  Then one frost-crisped day as sweet as an apple, as Eveline clambered among the rocks along the tideline, Aiden appeared, so suddenly she slipped and almost fell in a pool and he caught her hand, laughing. “How clumsy you are!” he said.

  “Aiden! I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Have you?”

  “I thought you’d gone away.”

  “I had. Come with me, I’ve found the nixie’s new pool where she takes her baby to wash him. You’ll like him, he’s very funny and makes such faces.”

  “Why did you go away for so long?”

  “It wasn’t long.”

  “It was to me.”

  “Silly Eveline.” He took her hand and tugged her down from the rocks and into the forest. The nixie wasn’t there, but he showed her a fallen tree-trunk that someone had hollowed out into tiny rooms and passages, and a dormouse tucked into a curl in a nest of grass, so thoroughly asleep that even when Aiden put him in her hand, he didn’t wake. She held the tiny thing, feeling its warmth and the strange sleeping life in it, then tucked it back into its nest. “Aiden?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mama says...”

  Aiden was playing with something in his hands, tossing it from one to the other. It glittered. “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Would you like to see the new tractor? I know where they keep it.”

  “Not at all. Why must you make such noisy things?”

  “I don’t know,” Eveline said.

  “You’re sad I went away. Don’t be sad, Eveline. Hold out your hand.” He dropped the glittering thing onto her palm, hard and cold after the soft breathing warmth of the dormouse. It was a crystal, a milky ghost-coloured thing, hung on a thin silver chain. “This is for you.” He stroked her hair. “I’ll always come if you really want me, you know.”

  “It’s so pretty.”

  “So are you,” he said. “My pretty Eveline. Put it on.”

  She did, and he nodded. “Don’t fret if I’m gone awhile.” And in that moment he was gone, only a swirl of red and gold leaves to show he had ever been there. Eveline smiled and walked towards home, still smiling.

  “Don’t you know respectable ladies don’t go into the forest?” said a voice.

  Eveline turned around. Peering at her over a neat hedge were a pair of wide blue eyes: Theodora Veal, the vicar’s daughter. “The Folk are wicked,” she said. “And don’t know about Morality. Do you want to come to tea? I’ll show you my dolls. Some of them are very expensive, they come from London.”

  “All right,” Eveline said.

  Theodora marched ahead of her into a hall overcrowded with small wobbly tables and umbrella stands (one brass and one, at which Eveline gazed with horrified fascination, which appeared to have toenails), and tugged the long velvet bell rope. A maid appeared, panting, through the green baize door at the end of the hall. “We want some tea,” Theodora said. “Bring it to the nursery.”

  “Yes, miss,” the maid said, and disappeared.

  “What’s that?” Eveline said.

  “It’s an elephant’s foot. Don’t you know anything?”

  Eveline wanted to ask what an elephant was, but didn’t want to admit to another thing she didn’t know, so she followed Theodora’s lacy skirts upstairs to the nursery.

  It was the size of the main room in her parents’ cottage, and full of fragile furniture and dolls with eyes as wide and blue and skirts as lacy as Theodora’s own. The maid brought tea and they drank from tiny rose-painted cups, only big enough for a mouthful, but very pretty, and added milk from a matching jug, which Eveline wanted more than she had ever wanted anything, because it was so pretty and perfect and small.

  “That’s Marie and that’s Lucy and that’s Angeline – she’s from France, she was extra specially expensive – and this is Miss Biddy, she’s my favourite. Unless she does something naughty.” Miss Biddy had pale curls and blue ribbons in them and a tiny pursed pink mouth not unlike Theodora’s own. “You can touch her if you like.”

  “Her hair feels real!” Eveline said.

  “Of course it’s real. Proper dolls have real hair. Poor girls cut it off and sell it. My papa says it’s a good thing, it prevents Vanity.”

  Eveline envied the dolls at first, but after a while she found them rather unpleasant. They stared so. Their flat blue eyes had lids that clicked when they opened or shut, and beneath the fine velvet and lace their bodies were oddly pulpy.

  Theodora, too, seemed slightly ill-at-ease – she fussed with the dolls and teased their hair but except for Miss Biddy she didn’t caress them or cuddle them the way Eveline did with her own battered doll. “At night they go in the trunk,” she said, “except for Miss Biddy.”

  “Why?”

  Theodora shrugged one shoulder pettishly. “They shouldn’t be out. My mama said bad ’fluences will come in the window and make them misbehave if they’re left about at night. I have to tell the maid ever so many times to put them away.”

  Eveline felt a moment of wonder at a maid who had time to
put dolls away. Theirs only ever had time to do laundry and help Mama with the heaviest work.

  Once all the dolls had been named and their dresses admired, there didn’t seem to be much else to do. Theodora had lots of books but didn’t like reading, because her mama said it promoted forehead wrinkles. She didn’t seem to want Eveline to read them either, however. So they sat in silence drinking cooling tea until Theodora said it was time for her tea and Eveline, not ungratefully, went home.

  “Did you make a friend, dear?” Mama said.

  “I had tea with Theodora Veal.”

  Mama and Papa exchanged one of their looks, but Papa said, “Well, at least she’s human. Probably.” And Mama giggled, and the baby went Bah!

  That was the last good day.

  She was never sure what happened, except that Papa was walking to his work, and a herd of cows being driven to market panicked, and Papa couldn’t get out of the way in time.

  Eveline was looking out of her window when she heard the gate creak and saw the neighbours bringing Papa home on a trestle, his smart coat all torn and covered with mud and his face slack and grey. Mama had come to the door wiping oily hands on a rag, and had fallen to her knees in the mud by the step.

  After that were days of confusion and weeping and kissing Papa’s cold grey face before they put him in a box and took him away. They had to go to church and Mama sat there pale and still as a wax candle that had gone out. They went home and Papa was not there.

  There was the vicar who droned at them and his wife and a gaggle of women from the village. Eveline didn’t like them. They took Charlotte out of her arms just when she had settled, and said they were “poor mites” and pinched her cheeks and called her pasty, and nodded at each other and said “no wonder” in meaningful tones when Mama was out of the room.

  “There’s a brother, isn’t there? Perhaps he’ll take her in hand,” said a woman in a purple bonnet. “Those poor dear children!”

  Eveline bristled. “We’re not poor. My papa earned good money and Mama’s work will, too. Papa said.”

  “You shouldn’t interrupt your elders, child.” The vicar stared down at her from under heavy brows. “Poor manners,” he said, turning back to the women. “Of course, it was only to be expected, in such an irregular household. It seems the brother was unable to attend the funeral, but perhaps I should write to him and suggest that his sister would benefit from some... moral guidance. A firm hand.”

  “Come here, child,” said Purple-Bonnet. “You have a smudge on your face.” She caught Eveline in a firm grip and applied a heavily-scented handkerchief to her cheek. “Now, tell me” – she looked over her shoulder, then whispered – “is it true your mother sometimes worked at her mechanisms all night, and never made you supper or mended your clothes, and your papa did it all?”

  Eveline pulled away. “Go away. I don’t want you. I want my papa!”

  “Well, really!” Purple-Bonnet humphed and shook her finger at Eveline. “Your papa has gone with the angels, who are respectful to their elders and never naughty, and answer questions when people ask them. You would do well to follow their example!” She turned back to the vicar. “Quite the little fury. You had better write to the brother straight away, Reverend!”

  “Your bonnet is crooked,” Eveline shouted, and stormed out into the woods.

  She sat yanking up handfuls of wet brittle grass, miserable and furious, mud soaking through her skirts.

  “Hello, Eveline. What are you doing?”

  “Hello Aiden.” She had waited so long to see him, but now she didn’t care. One thought filled her whole world. “My papa’s dead.”

  “Oh.”

  “They say the angels took him. I don’t want the rotten angels to have him! They can’t have him! He’s my papa, I want him!”

  Aiden reached out and took her cold muddy hand, and stroked it. “I expect you do.”

  “Do you know angels? Will you tell them to give him back?”

  He looked away from her. Later, she would realise it was the only time she ever saw him look... embarrassed was too strong a word. Thrown, perhaps; the self-confidence that ran through the Higher Folk like a vein of quartz through rock, for once disturbed. “Would you like to come and see...?”

  “I don’t want to see anything, Aiden, thank you.”

  “I can make you a vision of your papa,” he said. “If you like.”

  “No!”

  He looked at her, startled.

  “No,” she said, more quietly. “He’s gone. It wouldn’t be real.”

  “You’re not wearing your crystal,” he said.

  She tugged up more grass between her fingers, and when she looked up, Aiden was gone.

  GRADUALLY, THERE HAD been less food, and fewer fires, and then the maid had gone away.

  Mama, trying to cheer them both, took Eveline to May Day at the village green. Eveline’s dress was too small and faded around the seams where Mama had let it out, and her shoes pinched badly, but the sun was shining and the sound of laughter reached them on the path through the woods.

  Lots of other children were there, and at the centre of an admiring crowd was Theodora Veal, tossing her glossy brown ringlets and laughing. Eveline ran towards the group, smiling. Theodora caught sight of her and said, “You can’t be with us. My mama says I’m not to play with you.”

  Eveline stopped in her tracks, humiliation burning her cheeks.

  “My mama says your mama is mad and should be put away. She says that’s why you look like a gypsy child.”

  Eveline felt the bile rise in her throat, but no words would come. Theodora smugly stroked the pallid blonde curls of her favourite doll as she watched Eveline, her head slightly tilted, a smile on her pretty pink lips, like someone looking at a curious animal in the zoo. Her court gathered around her, tittering and staring.

  A strange, fizzing sensation rose into Eveline’s head, not a plan, exactly, but the ghost of one, expanding outwards, driving words out of her mouth. “I’m not a gypsy child,” Eveline said, “but there were some came through last month and they did a curse.”

  “They did no such thing.”

  “Oh, they did. But you wouldn’t want to know about it. I expect your dolls are all right.”

  She turned and walked away, hatred and excitement burning together in her.

  The vicarage was a huge rambling old house and often open for the dispensation of charity by the vicar’s wife, who had brought her own money to an already substantial living, and enjoyed the chance to lecture the villagers on frugality and thrift from beneath a succession of fetching and expensive bonnets.

  Eveline, a shawl about her head, sneaked past the dispirited queue to which the vicar’s wife was dispensing pennies and homilies, her heart jumping in her throat like a trapped frog.

  Theodora’s room stood silent. Eveline crept to the toy box and opened the lid; the dolls lay like pretty corpses in their linen and lace.

  EVELINE WAS SITTING on the back step of the house, dandling her own ancient doll on her knee, when Theodora came scurrying down the lane, red-eyed and white-faced.

  “You have to tell my mother about those gypsies!”

  “What gypsies?”

  “The ones who put a curse on dolls! I told her that it was the gypsies and she doesn’t believe me!”

  “What happened?”

  “They moved around! And they made a mess! And I don’t like them any more!”

  “Oh, dear,” Eveline said. “I remember the gypsies said they made one of the dolls the leader. If that one was given away it couldn’t tell the others what to do and then the curse would stop working. That’s what they said. I have to go in now.”

  “But which one?”

  “I don’t know, I’m not a gypsy child,” Eveline said. “But I ’spect it was the biggest and fanciest, don’t you?”

  She skipped up the steps, grinning to herself. And the next day she had a new doll, and Mrs Veal was going around the village saying how her daugh
ter had given the poor Duchen girl her favourite doll out of pity, and didn’t it do your heart good to see such charity in one so young.

  But once she had the doll, Eveline didn’t play with it much. Getting it had been more than fun enough.

  Mama worked very hard, with her instruments, writing dozens of letters and sometimes leaving Eveline with one of the village women while she travelled to London or Bristol. Sometimes she cried.

  “Mama?” Eveline said, watching one of the ball-bearings run down its track, rhoum, rhoum.

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “When you get paid, may I have some new shoes?”

  “Oh, dear, are yours pinching already?”

  “A bit.”

  “I’ll have to see...” She sighed, and ran a hand over the rosewood casing of the mechanism. “I may have to sell some of these.”

  “Oh.”

  “No-one will listen to me, Eveline. I know that Etherics can work to help people. Like poor Miss Fremantle, remember her?”

  “She drowned in the pond.”

  “That’s right. Poor lady. Her mind was very troubled. I know she improved after I tried some of the new sounds on her, but her family thought it was witchcraft. I didn’t dare carry on; I was afraid...” She looked at Charlotte sleeping in her cot. “Oh, never mind, dear, this isn’t for you to worry about. We’ll manage somehow.”

  A man took away some of the instruments, and Eveline had new shoes, but it was getting cold and there was no firewood. And Mama wrote another letter.

  When the answer came Mama stared at it for a long time, then took Eveline onto her lap and told her they were going to live in Watford with Uncle James.

  “Who’s Uncle James?”

  “He’s my brother, Eveline. He’s going to take us in. I...” She looked down at Charlotte snoozing on her lap, nothing visible but a small bump of nose among layers of wool, and sighed. “Never mind. Things will be different there. Uncle James isn’t used to children, so you must be very quiet and good, and do as you’re told. Will you do that for me?”