The Embroidered Sunset

by Joan Aiken

  “Don’t you go tickling me now, lass, or I’ll be obliged to wriggle and all yon soapy water’ll get spilt. Why, everybody in the village believes as those Bible pictures bring luck; Mrs. Thwaite’s dad had a big win on the pools when the old lady gave him one, the Holroyds sold their bull for a lot more than they expected to, and Mary Coxwold got fixed up with Lenny Thorpe, which most folks didn’t think she’d ever bring off. I don’t reckon you’ll find anybody that’s willing to let you have one.”

  “I wonder where Dr. Adnan got his?” Lucy said. “He’s got about a dozen; he said people had given them to him.”

  “Those as didn’t believe in luck, maybe. But he must ha’ come to the end of ‘em. He was asking all over t’village last summer, but no one else was willing to part. Oh, and o’ course the doctor got four all at once when they auctioned off Sam Thorpe’s stuff—tractor fell on Sam and all his nevvies and nieces is in Brazil.”

  “A tractor falling on you doesn’t seem like good luck,” commented Mrs. Marsham drily.

  “’Twas, though, because he’d been putting off paying his income tax for months; letter after letter the Revenue sent him; and then he never had to pay it at all!” old Mr. Cordwainer said triumphantly, putting out two arms like sticks of celery for his pyjama sleeves. “After old Miss Culpepper died—”

  Lucy gasped. “Miss Culpepper! But she’s here! It was the other old lady that died, Miss Howe, surely?”

  “Well, whichever on ‘em it was that died; most folk couldn’t tell them apart. They looked alike, and they didn’t use to come down to t’village much. Anyway, as I was saying, when one of ‘em died and t’other moved away, some folk went up to t’cottage hunting for more pictures. But Colonel Linton had cleared out the lot.”

  “Which was Miss Culpepper’s cottage?” the matron asked.

  “Up the beck—all on its own. Has anyone ever suggested that it was haunted?” Lucy asked Mr. Cordwainer.

  “Not as I know on. It’s yon public convenience that Colonel Linton will have is haunted.”

  “Oh really, what rubbish!” Mrs. Marsham said impatiently, but Lucy asked,

  “What by?”

  “Why, by t’old lady o’ course, the one who died. The colonel said he met her ghost there, moaning and wailing and bawling out that she’d been shoved to her death by one o’ they summer trippers that comes up to Appleby expecting historical relics and cream teas for half a crown.”

  “Was she really shoved to her death?”

  “Bless your heart, no. Twas just one o’ t’old colonel’s fancies when he’d had a few of his Highland Bluebells.”

  Lucy wondered what a Highland Bluebell was, but they had finished Mr. Cordwainer and the matron was already waiting by the next bed, glancing at her watch.

  “Old Mr. Cordwainer seems a lot better today,” Lucy said.

  “They always are when the rash comes out. Can you finish off here, Miss Culpepper, I think that’s the doctor arriving. And when you’ve done, could you go to the village—the shopping-list is on the kitchen table.”

  “Do you mind if I just see to my aunt first?” Lucy had been hoping for another word with Adnan, to ask for an explanation of last night’s cryptic warning.

  “She’s perfectly all right—she won’t mind waiting till you get back,” Mrs. Marsham said impatiently. “I just put my head round the door, looking for Emma Chiddock, and she was still asleep.”

  Since Aunt Fennel did, in fact, often enjoy a short nap after breakfast even in Mrs. Tilney’s uncomfortable parlour this seemed reasonable; when she had done the last bed-bath Lucy glanced in on her aunt and, reassured that she was indeed sleeping, ran down, picked up the shopping-list, and drove to Appleby.

  Deciding, after she had done Mrs. Marsham’s errands, that she was entitled to ten minutes for her own business, she parked little PHO by the haunted lavatory and walked up to the old parsonage.

  This time Colonel Linton answered promptly when she rang the bell. He was plainly suffering from a notable hangover; his eyes looked liable to roll out at any moment; but in other respects he seemed tidier and more collected than on Lucy’s previous visit, perhaps because it was earlier in the day.

  “Now what?” he growled, peering at her with difficulty, but the growl seemed a formality, merely his accustomed manner of talking, rather than specifically directed animosity. Then his face changed: wrinkled out sideways into an eldritch but rather touching smile. “Why, you’re little Cathy! Little granddaughter Cathy come back to see me!”

  “No, I’m not little Cathy,” said Lucy, foreseeing endless complications unless this misunderstanding were scotched right away. “But can I come in and see you just the same?”

  While he still squinted at her doubtfully through half-closed eyes, she edged her way past him and crossed a dark flagged hallway into an equally dark dining-room where the sombre glint of gold frames had caught her eye. She was not disappointed. A whole batch of ancestors had evidently been removed from their frames and at least a dozen of Miss Culpepper’s pictures substituted for them. The effect, in the gloomily furnished Victorian room with its huge expanse of mahogany table, was magnificent; the pictures gleamed and sparkled on the walls like glow-worms seen in a dusk-filled thicket. Lucy drew a sharp breath of pleasure and began to move slowly round, identifying them: Jacob and the angel playing tug-of-war with a ladder; a family piece, Jacob, Esau, Leah, and Rachel, conversing in front of an amazingly sequinned sunset; Daniel with some bright-eyed lions; Moses, Aaron, and a serpent; David, Saul, and a harp—

  “If you aren’t little Cathy,” demanded Colonel Linton, “who the devil are you? What’s your name?”

  “Culpepper.”

  “Oh, well. Why didn’t you say so? That accounts, of course. One of Great-aunt Cathy’s children, Bell Earnshaw—she married a Culpepper. That explains the likeness. You could be two peas in a pod. Here, look—”

  He turned and began rummaging among a pile of canvases without frames which had been stacked casually in the great empty hearth.

  Really I’ve had enough of likenesses, Lucy thought. Any more peas-in-a-pod stuff is going to be a bit too much of a coincidence.

  But then it occurred to her that of course, in a remote, cut-off place like Appleby, where even during the first half of the twentieth century inbreeding was the rule and few people moved away, where almost everyone was related to everyone else, likenesses would be common enough. Probably I’m a second cousin twice removed of his little Cathy and everyone else in the village.

  But that doesn’t account for the resemblance between Russ and whosit—Harold Marsham. They could hardly be cousins—Russ told me his family came from Ireland.

  “There!” said Colonel Linton. He rubbed the canvas he had selected with his sleeve, and put it down on the dining-table. “That’s her—Great-aunt Cathy Earnshaw—Linton was her maiden name, of course. See the likeness for yourself!”

  Lucy could. It was like looking into a mirror; except that the girl in the portrait had long hair tied at the back with a ribbon, and a couple of ringlets.

  “Even to the buck teeth!” said Colonel Linton triumphantly. “You’re not a good-looker, my girl, but you’re a proper Linton, proper sprig of the old tree. Well, well, well! Come into the kitchen and celebrate—the sun ain’t quite over the clothes-line yet, but this calls for a Highland Bluebell.”

  He took Lucy’s arm affectionately and piloted her into a warm, cluttered room where a couple of hens were nesting in majestic Victorian hatboxes in front of the coal stove.

  “Saves going out to the hen-house for eggs,” Colonel Linton explained. He then disconcerted Lucy very much by pouring a small tot of whisky into a jam-jar and adding a generous quarter-pint of methylated spirit.

  “Is—is that a Highland Bluebell?” she stammered.

  “That it is, midear. Invented it myself,” said the colonel, absentl
y swigging half of it.

  “In that case I think—I mean—do you think I could possibly have milk in mine, instead of methylated? I have to drive, you see,” Lucy explained cunningly.

  “Milk? I don’t think there’s any milk in the house, midear. You could have an egg,” the colonel said, casually thrusting a hand beneath a hen and fetching one out, “there’s nothing to touch a raw egg beaten up in whisky if you suffer from Irrawaddy stomach, as I do.”

  “My stomach’s okay at the moment, thanks. I guess I’ll just take my scotch with a little water, if you have that?”

  When she was accommodated with a drink—mildly surprised to see water come from the tap—and Colonel Linton had mixed himself another Bluebell, he said,

  “Now, what can I do for you, my dear? Pleasure to help anyone so like Great-aunt Cathy.”

  Lucy explained yet again about Great-aunt Fennel and her pictures. The colonel listened attentively, mixing himself another drink midway.

  “So you see if I could get hold of a dozen—even half a dozen—of those pictures and sell them for her, I have a notion it might make enough money to see her comfortable to the end of her days.”

  “Very good plan, my girl—splendid scheme. Don’t deny I’ll be sad to part with my lot—must confess I kept the pick for myself when she told me to give ‘em away—but of course I’ll be glad—hup!—excuse me, very high pollen count this autumn—glad to help. Glad to see your aunt again, too—used to be great cronies when we were young. Even proposed to one of ‘em once, which one was it now? Anyway—hup!—that’s an old story. Wouldn’t leave her friend—devoted to one another, they were. Dill and Daff. Even looked alike—way people get to resemble their pets. Or vice—hup!—versa.”

  “Did you see Aunt Fennel after Miss Howe died?”

  “No, didn’t see her. Sent a note, asking me to deal with pictures. Nasty business, that was. Pushed into the dene by a foreign tripper—daresay he was drunk after all those herbal brews the old ladies used to do for tourists—people will swallow anything on holiday. Ever tried Irish coffee, by the way? I do it without the cream—using scotch, of course. It’s just about elevenses time—how about a drop now? Let’s see, what’s all this stuff in the kettle?”

  The kettle appeared to be full of ants’ eggs.

  “Please don’t bother,” Lucy said hastily. “Is there really a ghost in the glen?”

  “Heard it dozens of times. Sounds like an owl. Shows she must have been done in, doesn’t it—ghost not paid by the council to haunt—hup?”

  “Could I bring Aunt Fennel to visit you?”

  “Delighted, midear. And what about the pictures? Want to take them now?”

  He started towards the dining-room, carrying his fourth Bluebell.

  “I guess perhaps I’d better fix up crating and transport first,” said Lucy. “Maybe I could come back tomorrow? I don’t think it would be a very good idea to take them to Wildfell Hall—”

  “Where?”

  “Wildfell Hall—the old people’s home. Aunt Fennel’s lodging there now and I’ve got a temporary job—”

  “Clear out!”

  Lucy had not believed that people could literally go black with rage; she had thought this to be a figure of speech. Now she saw that it could really be done, for Colonel Linton had done it. His face was fearsomely suffused, his eyes were like blood-blisters.

  “Mean to say she’s staying there—you’ve got the gall to come here—hup!—and tell me you’ve taken a job there—hup? The name of that place, I’d have you know, is not some tuppeny-halfpenny piece of tosh out of romantic fiction but APPLEBY OLD HALL! Now—clear out!”

  Without conscious process, Lucy found herself outside the front door, vibrating from top to toe as if someone had swept a thumb across all her strings. The door slammed in her face.

  Too bad, she thought, I forgot the Old Hall used to belong to him; at least I didn’t realise it meant so much to him. That was stupid of me. Shame, just when things were going so well. Dear Max, we sure buggered it up that time. But will he remember, if I go to see him another day? He seems fairly disconnected. Maybe there’s a chance he’ll forget this visit—it would be worth another try, anyway.

  If he does remember, she thought, it’s an argument for getting Aunt Fennel away from Wildfell Hall.

  A vague project had been forming in her mind. As a first step she went to call on Fiona Carados.

  “Hi. How’s the baby?”

  “Oh, he’s super. Come and see. He’s put on two ounces, and learned to smile, and grown a whole tuft of hair.”

  Lucy studied the baby who seemed, to her ignorant eye, exactly the same as he had two days ago.

  “He’s not a bit like his father.”

  “No, thank God! What I ever saw in that little drip—”

  Fiona stretched her arms, in immense relief, it seemed, at being free of male entanglements. She was almost too large for the tiny room; today she wore a bulky, natural-coloured Irish sweater over ploughmen’s corduroys. “One of my many consolations is that I shan’t now have to read the poor child his father’s ghastly books.”

  “Oh, then he is the Robin Carados who writes all those children’s books? I’d wondered about that.”

  Lucy had seen them in the Kirby W. H. Smith’s where she bought her wrapping materials: shelf after shelf of brightly coloured thin red and green and blue books, price three shillings each—Tom the Trawler, Douglas the Destroyer, Larry the Lifeboat, Fred the Ferry, Bill the Barge, Sam the Schooner, Percy the Punt, Dan the Dinghy.

  “Yeah,” said Fiona, “that’s him. He was just getting his ideologies sorted for Ned the Nuclear-powered Submarine when we broke up. And do you know what was the last straw? Why he insisted on stowing me in this hideaway, far from the madding crowd? It was because it wouldn’t do for his saintly reputation as purveyor of high-moral-tone nautical slop for the kiddies to be sullied. Someone in the middle ages referred to woman as a sack of dung, didn’t they? Well, that’s how bonny sweet Robin really thought of me, and in the end the message got through.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  There was a silence, and then Fiona laughed. “I won’t plug poor little Bub’s subconscious full of wicked words; don’t they say that everything you hear before three months sticks tighter than glue?”

  “I expect he hears it anyway, whether you speak it or think it,” suggested Lucy. “Why didn’t you and Robin get married?”

  “Oh, the publicity of a divorce wouldn’t do for someone in his exalted position; honestly, it was like associating with royalty. I expect really he just wanted to eat his cake and have it; that’s the usual, isn’t it? He’s back with his wife now; she’s quite rich. Want a drink?”

  “No thanks, I already had one. I’ve been visiting Colonel Linton.”

  “The old boy at the vicarage? He’s rather a sweetie, isn’t he? I’ve met him once or twice when I take the bub a walk up the glen; he likes the noise the water makes.”

  “Water?—I shouldn’t think it’s quite his—oh, you mean the baby. Have you had measles?”

  “God; yes; when I was fourteen. Why?”

  “Are you still looking for a way to earn some cash?”

  “Yes, it’s getting quite crucial, actually. I was thinking I’d have to go back to London, only I’d have to sell the pram to raise the fare, and it doesn’t seem likely anyone in Appleby would want it.”

  “How would you like to come and give a hand at Wildfell Hall? That’s where I am at present. They’ve got a crisis: measles epidemic and next to no help.”

  “I thought you looked a bit washed-out and peaky,” said Fiona. “Sure you won’t have that drink? No? Well it might be quite a lark, I suppose; that’s the old folk’s home, isn’t it, not the retired clergy place? But would the old battle-axe who runs it have me? I’ve seen her about the place; she loo
ks like a tough Jane.”

  “I guess she’d take on Fanny Hill right now, if she’d do the work.”

  “I’d need to find somewhere to park young Oedipus Carados; measles wouldn’t be the best thing in the world for him. But I daresay it could be managed. All right, I’m on, if she’ll hire me. What’s the form? Shall I put on my black bombazine and come to the back door?”

  “I’ll suggest it to Mrs. Marsham this morning, shall I, and then call you up. Are you on the phone?”

  “Do me a favour! Phone? In Appleby? I’ll call you, from that lovely public post office. When’s a good time?”

  “About five, I should think, when the old things are having tea.”

  “Right. And thanks. Meanwhile I’ll organise a sitter. Maybe your old colonel would oblige.”

  “Not if you tell him where you’re working,” Lucy said, grinning, and told the tale of her previous call.

  “So you didn’t get your pictures? What a pity. Why do you want them?”

  “They might fetch a good sum, my uncle thinks. He planned to make a fortune out of them—or show the art world he’s an unacknowledged genius at spotting talent—but I plan to see any proceeds go to make Aunt Fennel comfortable.”

  “Like me to see if I can wheedle any out of the worthy villagers? You can’t have a lot of time at the moment to go canvassing from door to door.”

  “No, I ought to be back right now; Mrs. Marsham will probably think I’ve absconded with the housekeeping. Yes, I guess that’s a kind thought; thanks very much.”

  “I’ll expect a commission on every one I collect,” Fiona said calmly. She walked out with Lucy into Appleby High Street. An overalled figure, vaguely familiar, veered erratically past on a rusty bike and waved to Fiona, who waved back; after a moment’s thought Lucy identified the figure as Clough, the man who had been knocked down.

  “Is he all right again?” she said.

  “Clough? As much so as he’s ever likely to be; he’s a bit simple. Heart of gold, though; he helped me when I had a rook stuck in my chimney. That was another of dear sweet Robin’s little misdemeanours; he knocked Clough off his bike and didn’t wait to see if he was all right.”