Kite Spirit

by Sita Brahmachari

  ‘I didn’t know . . . I didn’t even guess that Dawn was feeling so low . . .’

  ‘That’s why Garth asked me to talk to you. He told me that you might think it was somehow your fault, and that’s the thing I know that your friend would never ever want you to feel.’

  Kite was shaking now. Agnes placed an arm around her shoulders and held her close, and Kite began to feel as if she was talking to this strange woman for a reason. ‘Your friend didn’t give herself or you or anyone else the chance to help her. It’s tragic for her and her poor family . . . and heartbreaking for you, her best friend –’ Agnes sighed – ‘but it’s not your fault, and she would want you to know that too; you can’t go on feeling guilty for being alive. You’ve got to go forward with your life and find some happiness for yourself.’

  Over Agnes’s shoulder Kite watched as the owl’s head swivelled to face her through the veil of cobwebs.

  ‘The way owls look at you, it’s like they’re searching out the truth. Don’t you think?’ Agnes paused.

  ‘When I saw her smash into Mirror Falls I thought she had Dawn’s face.’

  ‘Maybe that was the truth for you then, but what do you see now?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘Just an owl,’ Kite whispered.

  Agnes nodded. ‘There are so many ways of finding happiness. I only wish I’d realized that when I was younger.’

  From the owl’s throat came a gentle contented gurgling sound. She hopped closer now, pushing through the cobweb curtain. Here she was with her creamy-white feathers and golden-brown markings within touching distance. The owl slow-blinked at her, as if in recognition.

  ‘Let’s leave her in peace,’ Agnes whispered, and began to feel her way back down the ladder.

  The lambs bleated noisily and their little tails knocked furiously against the stone wall. Agnes opened the pen gate, holding it for Kite, and they walked in. Agnes knelt down and lifted a lamb under each arm and handed one to Kite. It squirmed and wriggled, nuzzling into her, and started sucking on her finger. She was amazed how strong it was for such a skinny little thing. Kite laughed as it leaped out of her arms despite her desperate efforts to hang on to it.

  ‘They’ll be let back out on the fells soon, roaming around with Jack,’ Agnes said. ‘I can’t tell you how I felt when Garth brought that trout home . . . like Jack was sending me a farewell message. You see he always used to catch a trout for me to cook for him.’ They were both sitting together now in the gloom of the barn with the lambs nestling up to them. Kite felt sorry for Agnes; sitting this close to her she could feel her sadness too, and then she heard the old lady’s sobs rising as she cradled the lamb closer to her and rocked back and forth. ‘I loved him, you know.’

  To Kite’s relief she heard the barn door being pushed open.

  ‘Everything all right, Gran?’ Garth asked as he came over to them, looking from Agnes to Kite and back again. Kite shook her head. Garth opened the little gate and sat beside Agnes. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and through her tears she began to speak. She told them it was a story that no one else must ever know, a story that was meant to put things right, and that she was telling it to Garth and Kite because they were the next generation and had a chance of understanding what was important in life.

  It was an odd gathering – Kite, Agnes with her lambs, and Garth – sitting together in the gloomy barn with the Dawn owl above as witness to Agnes’s confession.

  The Passing Bell

  After Dr Sherpa dropped her off she went straight upstairs and lay down. She slept heavily without dreaming. It was as if she had reached a point of overload and had to switch off from the world and everything in it.

  ‘Kite, I’m sorry to have to wake you . . .’ Seth placed a hand on her arm.

  She scrunched her eyes closed, longing to sink back into the comforting arms of this rare dreamless sleep. She felt as she had once when she’d drifted off on the beach in St Kitts and woken to feel the sun warming her from the inside.

  ‘I told Ellie you’d help her with the flowers!’ Seth sat down on the bed next to her.

  She opened her eyes. Seth was already dressed for the funeral, in a thin dark purple jumper, pale blue shirt and black cotton trousers. She didn’t feel like going, but she could see how much it meant to him and strangely, since Agnes’s confession about Jack, she felt she should go for her sake.

  ‘OK! Give me a minute! What time is it anyway?’

  ‘Early. Ellie says wild flowers wilt if you pick them the night before, so she’s been out to get them this morning and she wants you to help her arrange them.’

  ‘This must be hard, with your friend dying so recently,’ Ellie said gently as they sat around the table tying posies.

  ‘When did your parents die?’ Kite asked.

  Ellie looked up at Kite as if she was surprised that Kite remembered what she’d told her. ‘I was fourteen when they had the accident,’ she replied simply. ‘It’s always really been Grandad here for me since then.’

  ‘It must have been awful for you too, the shock of it,’ Kite whispered.

  Ellie placed a little posy in Kite’s hand, ‘This is for you!’ She smiled through eyes brim-full of tears. ‘Because it’s hard not to get the chance to say goodbye.’

  Kite nodded, but as she concentrated on tying the bows, she felt stronger than she had in weeks. The slow blink of the Dawn owl, so accepting and full of understanding, kept returning to her and bringing with it calm.

  Later, as they walked up to the church, Ellie explained to her and Seth the meaning of the Passing Bell.

  ‘The first tolls will tell you if it’s a fella or lass: don’t ask me why, but it’s five for a fella, four for a lass, and –’ Ellie placed a comforting arm around Kite’s shoulders – ‘three for a bairn. After that you get a toll for every year of your life . . . I always think how sweet it sounds that old tenor bell, for such a sad occasion.’

  On the third toll a gust of wind lifted Kite’s hair from her shoulders. She looked up at the greying sky as the clouds billowed across like smoke wafting from a chimney. Was this the wind that would signal rain at last?

  ‘Three tolls for a bairn . . .’ She heard Ellie’s voice echoing through her head.

  The bell rang out across the fell. On the sixteenth toll Kite’s tears began to fall for how short a life Dawn had lived – they had only been standing around the grave for five minutes. That’s all it would have taken if the Passing Bell had been rung out for Dawn. But today the bell rang on and on, marking each year of Jack’s long life. On the thirtieth toll one of the mourners took what looked like an umbrella stick with a little piece of leather at the end, stuck it in the ground and rested his behind on it, like a little seat.

  ‘He might have been faster, but I’ll keep you all standing longer! Still, a fair old innings,’ another old man muttered.

  It was clear that several of the older people had been to many funerals and that this place was as familiar to them as the Carrec Arms.

  Kite hardly heard the priest’s words after the ninety-ninth toll had sounded.

  Agnes’s tearstained face entered Kite’s mind again as she glanced over at Jack’s wife’s grave and Ellie dropped the first clods of earth on to the coffin.

  Up until this point she had seemed calm and collected, but now her whole body shook in great racking sobs.

  A dog barked a little way off up the fell. Kite turned to find Bardsey bounding up to greet her at the church wall. Garth whistled and he obediently ran back to his side. He was holding a bunch of flowers in his hands, the blooms Agnes had been collecting in her garden when the wind had blown the flower heads like confetti at the wedding that might have been between Jack and Agnes. If only she hadn’t spoilt her chance of happiness by pursuing her obsession of building the perfect home. Garth had been as amazed as Kite to hear the story of how she had demolished the owl habitat where they had nested for generations, and fought with Jack and lost him because of it.

  In the bouque
t from Agnes’s garden there were pale pink roses and foxgloves, impressive stems of lupins and delphiniums that she had grown and picked with her own hands.

  Garth leaned over the wall and handed them to Kite.

  ‘Agnes asked if you’d be kind enough to put these on Jack’s grave.’ She could feel his warm breath on her ear. ‘I’ll come to Mirror Falls tomorrow morning so we can do the rest of what Gran asked.’

  Kite took the bouquet from him and glanced at Ellie, half expecting her to invite Garth back to the Carrec Arms, but she was already walking away. And when Kite turned back to see where Garth was he had already disappeared over the brow of the hill.

  ‘She’s got no business sending her showy flowers!’ Ellie snapped as they slowly processed away from the church.

  ‘Don’t be too harsh on her, Ellie. She’s hard enough on herself. And she’s been very unwell these last few days,’ Dr Sherpa counselled.

  ‘All I know is that he had that stroke on the way back from Mirror Falls after begging her not to demolish the old barn. Then she did it anyway. The week before that he’d been as fit as a fiddle, running up to Kite Carrec and back. She probably put a hex on him, the old witch.’ Ellie was sobbing again now and Dr Sherpa was attempting to calm her down as she grabbed the flowers off Kite, marched them back up to the grave and threw them on to the coffin.

  ‘Seems like the owls got their own back and drove her out anyway.’

  Kite wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. The temperature had dropped and the long grasses surrounding the churchyard swayed wildly in the quickening wind.

  Jack’s seat had been pushed up close to the table making it clear that it was not to be sat on. Over the back of the chair Ellie had placed his tweed jacket and cap.

  ‘I think I’ll light the fire for him. He always liked the hearth lit up,’ Ellie said, busying herself.

  Aida, a woman with a wave of hair sprayed purplish grey, manoeuvred herself into the pub in a large silver wheelchair with a little help over the step from Dr Sherpa. In her lap she had gathered a small bunch of forget-me-nots, the exact same blue as the sky had been for all the time that they’d been in the Lakes so far. Kite thought their centres looked like modest yellow suns.

  ‘I heard the passing bell for Jack and just about managed to reach over my great girth for these!’

  Ellie kissed Aida fondly on the cheek, took the flowers from her and arranged them in a tiny glass vase which she placed on the table in front of Jack’s chair.

  ‘Not that anyone around here’s ever likely to forget him.’ Aida smiled.

  ‘He’ll be at peace now with Joyce. She was always the love of his life.’

  Kite thought of how Agnes had sobbed when she’d told them that the two of them had planned to marry when Mirror Falls was complete, and how nervous Jack had been about telling Ellie.

  ‘You know,’ cackled Aida, ‘I asked Jack to wed me once, but he turned me down kindly, maybe for the best. It wouldn’t have been decent being a widow three times over!’ Then she seemed to freeze as she wheeled a little closer to Seth.

  ‘For a minute, lad, I thought I was seeing ghosts!’

  Aida looked to Ellie to introduce them.

  ‘This is Seth. His grandmother was from around here. Grandad was helping him to trace her.’

  ‘Shame he never thought to ask me! But then I suppose Jack would never have met him, though he knew all about Lily, of course!’

  At the mention of Lily’s name, Seth looked down at Aida.

  ‘It is Lily you think you’re related to? Am I right?’

  Seth looked dumbfounded.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s the spit of him, Giles?’ Aida asked, turning to a tiny bald man wearing an old-fashioned waistcoat who stood nearby.

  He took a pair of half-spectacles from his pocket and placed them on the end of his nose.

  ‘Can’t say. I only set eyes on the beggar once when I was home on leave.’

  ‘So you know who I’m thinking of?’ Aida raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘If I’d have got hold of him, he wouldn’t have gone back to Germany in one piece,’ butted in a tall man with a shock of white hair, wearing a dapper black suit and tie.

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake, Lance, can you never make your peace?’

  Seth stared from Giles to Aida to Lance, a look of complete bewilderment on his face.

  ‘Go on then. You tell them, Aida. I’m just amazed you’ve managed to keep it to yourself for all this time.’ Giles grimaced, not exactly kindly.

  ‘I’ve got plenty of secrets you’ll never know about,’ Aida retorted.

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder!’

  Aida ignored him and turned back to Seth. ‘You’ve got a look of your grandad, that’s for sure –’ she nodded at him – ‘but this bonny lass is the picture of Lily. Jack must have seen that . . . Strange how the likeness finds its way out generations down, isn’t it? They used to call Lily Storey the belle of the valley. She was as pretty as a primrose too –’ she smiled at Kite – ‘and the best friend I ever had.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’ Seth sat down on the bench next to Aida.

  ‘The prisoners of war helped work the farms round here, while our lads were off fighting. Some of them were no more than young boys.’ She glanced over to Seth. ‘I remember Peter – he was a looker like you and sweet-natured with it. I never saw him complain even though he hardly had an hour off. But whenever he did, he used to make these toys for Lily. He gave one to me once too.’

  ‘I bet he did,’ mumbled Lance bad-temperedly.

  Aida shot him a dirty look.

  ‘I’ve still got it. You can have it if you want,’ she continued. ‘Peter Klein was his name, had the voice of an angel. He used to sing to us – we hadn’t a clue what the words meant, but his voice could melt your heart. Lily was only sixteen and I think he was eighteen or nineteen. Then the war was over and he was packed back to Germany before anyone knew, and well . . . the shame of it, you know,’ Aida sighed, pointing down at her own round belly.

  ‘They said he forced hissel’ on her,’ Lance growled. His face was flushed with anger. Kite couldn’t believe that something that had happened so long ago could still provoke such strong feeling.

  ‘However it was . . . they packed the bairn off as soon as she was born. Lily named her though. I remember that because it was the name she gave her first doll when she was just five years old – she told me then that she was going to call her baby girl Hannah, and that’s what she did when her time came.’

  ‘That baby was my mum!’ Seth whispered, as if he’d been winded. Kite had never seen him look so stunned, and she felt breathless and churned up herself.

  ‘There’s no doubt in my mind. It’s like a piece of Lily has come back to me after all this time.’

  So Aida had known Lily since she was small too, just as Kite had met Dawn in nursery. It was touching to see how much she still missed her. I never want to forget Dawn either, Kite thought.

  Seth stood up and started pacing around the table. He rummaged in his pocket for his rolling tobacco and walked out into the lane. As Kite followed him Aida placed a hand on her arm and pointed to the back of her wheelchair.

  Outside they found Seth drawing heavily on his roll up.

  Although there was no one else about, Aida lowered her voice to a whisper so that Seth and Kite both had to lean in to hear what she said next.

  ‘I’m maybe the only person in these parts that can tell you this. Your grandma swore me to keep it to myself, but it seems to me you’re supposed to know.’

  Seth nodded and ground his butt into the road.

  ‘It’s not true what they said. He didn’t force hissel’ on her, though it made them feel better to think it. They were in love, and she begged them to let her keep the bairn, but . . . It breaks my heart still to remember her crying out for her little Hannah, long after she was gone.’ Aida took one of Seth’s hands and held it tight as if she hardly dared
ask the question. ‘Is your mam still with us?’

  Seth shook his head sadly.

  Aida’s eyes filled with tears and soon Kite found herself welling up too. It seemed so wrong that her Grandma Hannah whom she’d never met had died thinking she was unwanted by her natural parents.

  ‘I’ve no wish to upset you, lass –’ Aida reached to wipe the tears from Kite’s eyes – ‘but it does you good to know that you come from love, no matter how old you get. Lily told me when they sent the lad away that she would never love again, and I can tell you she had plenty of offers.’ She pointed into the pub and smiled with satisfaction. ‘Do you know she turned them all down, the lot of them in there!’

  Kite let the tears roll down her cheeks for the great-grandmother she had never known. Seth placed an arm around her shoulders and smiled at her through his own tears.

  ‘Thanks for caring. Well, at least now we know.’

  Jack’s brother, who had travelled from Cornwall with his carer, arrived halfway through the day. He was eighty-two years old and the only words Kite heard him utter was that Jack had been a ‘hard act to follow’. The constant stream of visitors gathered around the table eating, drinking and sharing memories. There was plenty of singing and storytelling at the Carrec Arms that afternoon, but Kite didn’t hear much of it, because all that she could think of was her broken hearted great-grandmother, and how sad it was that she never got to tell her daughter, Kite’s grandmother, that she was loved, and then there was Dawn, who had been so loved but had ended her life before it had started. None of it made any sense to her and what she was beginning to realize was how complicated life was, how full of challenges and secrets, even for these old people who she would have thought might have worked everything out by now.