by Julia Green
Chapter 15
It was the dead of night. Tilly crept out of her bed, lifted her bathrobe from the hook on the back of the bedroom door, and wrapped it around her snugly. She slid her feet into her soft slippers and opened the door. Along the landing she went, quiet as a ghost; down the stairs, across the hall into the dark kitchen. Tilly didn’t stop to put on her coat or boots, although she did pick up a slice of cake from the plate on the table and put it in her pocket.
She slid back the big bolt at the bottom of the back door and turned the heavy key in the lock. She stepped down onto the path and tiptoed around the side of the house to the lawn.
Above her, the sky was crystal clear, lit by a hundred million stars and a silver moon. The air was brittle with cold, and every blade of grass and every leaf and twig and petal and bud glittered with frost. Tilly’s breath made smoke clouds. Her toes curled into her slippers, so cold and hard was the ground. She pulled up the fleecy hood of the robe and tugged the belt closer around her middle.
Her fingers almost stuck to the ice-cold metal of the garden gate when she opened it to go through. She warmed them with her mouth. She shivered and shook, but still she kept going, across the path and through the wooden gate, into her enchanted garden, through the high grass to her den. The moon and stars fizzled and glittered, loud enough for her to hear, like electricity humming along a wire. In the silver light, the frosted clumps of grass and plants and seed heads stood stiff and tall like sculptures. Her blood tingled along her veins, her heart pumped, as if it was scared it too would freeze stiff and still. It was beautiful and dangerous tonight in the magic garden.
Amber eyes gleamed from deep in the thicket of brambles. Fox eyes, Tilly told herself, and nothing to be frightened of. She fished into her pocket for the cake, crouched down near the place where the tunnel began, and held it out. She sensed rather than saw the fox lean forward, its nose twitching. It edged forward, little by little. The fox looked as if it too had been turned to frost: every hair on its coat gleamed silver. Not a white Arctic fox, but her own magical silver fox.
Her hand shook, holding out the cake. Now the fox was so close, she could smell him. His strange, strong, animal scent. Delicately, he stretched out his head, and carefully, so he didn’t hurt her, he took the cake from her hand and gulped it down. This time, he didn’t run off to hide in his den in the bramble thicket. He sat down. He looked at her with his golden eyes.
Tilly, as delicate as the fox, stretched out her hand and touched the fur on his head. He felt cold and surprisingly soft. She stroked the place between his ears, and the fox let her. And then he stood up and turned and walked away into the garden.
Tilly followed after the fox. The garden was secret and dark, full of the sounds of the night. Rustlings and stirrings in the thicket under the brambles. The flapping wings of a bird. Farther off, a car engine, and high up and invisible, an airplane traveling across continents. In the cold air, sounds seemed to carry more easily.
The fox went steadily through the frozen grass and Tilly went after it, brushing against the iced branches of the shrubs and overgrown bushes on either side. When Tilly’s robe got caught on a thorn, the fox waited while she unhooked it, then padded onward. All the time, its ears and tail twitched, sensitive to sounds too tiny for Tilly to hear.
The garden seemed vast, a wilderness. They crossed through the wood, darker than ever, and out the other side to a lawn Tilly had never seen before, and a frozen pond with a statue of a girl, laced with frost. There were other statues, dotted around the edge of the lawn: a stone hare, nose pointing to the moon, and a stone dove. Ahead of them now, Tilly saw the deeper shadow of a house. As they got nearer, she saw it more clearly, lit by moonlight: a tiled roof, two chimneys at each end; white walls; green-painted bay windows; and a green front door.
Tilly heard a voice singing. The girl’s voice, high and clear. It was the same tune she’d heard that very first time but much louder. This time she could hear the words. The song was about a dress with green sleeves…
The fox stopped.
Tilly stopped too.
The voice seemed to be coming from one of the evergreen trees close to the house. Tilly peered up. There was a dark shadow among the other shadows, something moving…swinging back and forth. A leg, ending in a buttoned-up boot.
The singing stopped.
The girl jumped down from the tree.
She smiled. “Hello, Tilly!”
“What were you doing up in the tree?” Tilly asked.
“It’s my tree house. See? Like a nest, up in the yew tree with the birds.”
Tilly stood right underneath the tree and peered up. Now she could see there was a small wooden platform, built onto the thick branches at the center of the old tree. “How lovely!” Tilly said.
“You can go up and see if you like. You have to climb up.” The girl looked down at Tilly’s feet in muddy slippers and frowned. “Maybe another time.” She smiled at Tilly. “Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?”
And suddenly Tilly was, though she hadn’t felt it before.
The fox barked.
The girl laughed and ran over to the fox. She took something out of her pocket and held it out. The fox took the food delicately in its teeth and swallowed it down. The girl ran her hand along his frost-silvered fur, right to the tip of his tail, and he let her. He sat down, scratched himself, and yawned.
Tilly shivered.
The girl peered at Tilly. “You look half-frozen!” she said. “I’d ask you in, except it is so very late, and I’m not supposed to be playing outside. Only it’s so beautiful, with the frost and the moonlight, I couldn’t resist…”
“What’s your name?” Tilly whispered, but the girl turned away just at that moment. A light had gone on inside the house.
The front door opened, an oblong of light. A woman stood on the front step, looking out into the garden, and behind her, Tilly glimpsed a hallway with rose-patterned wallpaper and a tiled floor.
Tilly stepped back into the shadows. The fox did too.
“Helen? What are you doing out there?” The woman’s voice was loud enough for Tilly to hear every word.
The girl turned back for a moment. “Wait here,” she whispered to Tilly. “I’ll come out again if I can…”
Tilly watched the girl go into the house. Framed in the doorway, in the light, she could see her red-brown hair, her green woollen coat, and her brown boots, same as before. Same as…what? Tilly couldn’t think what; she just knew they were familiar somehow.
The garden seemed darker now the door had shut out the light from the house. It was colder than ever. She shouldn’t be here.
Tilly thought guiltily about Granny; she imagined her waking up, coming to see if everything was all right, finding Tilly’s bed empty and the back door unlocked…But the girl—Helen—had said “wait.”
She waited. The door stayed shut. There was no sign of Helen.
Tilly wondered what time it was. She was shivering with cold. Tired. Now, all she wanted was to be back at home, warm and safe in bed.
The fox was sniffing at a pile of dead leaves at the edge of the lawn.
“Take me back,” Tilly whispered.
As if it understood completely, the fox started picking its way back across the silvery grass, past the stone statues and the pond, toward the darker line of trees. Tilly followed. It seemed to take forever. The fox made its way steadily through the trees, twisting and turning along paths that were invisible to Tilly, dipping and ducking under fallen branches that Tilly had to climb over. She was afraid the fox would leave her behind, but each time it waited patiently for her to catch up. She was exhausted and frozen, and still they had farther to go, until at last they were out the other side of the woods. She could see the wooden fence, and the rickety gate, and she was nearly home.
F
ar away, an ambulance siren echoed in the frozen night.
Chapter 16
Tilly woke up, late, to a different sound: music. Granny was singing along to the radio. By the time she’d got dressed and gone downstairs, Granny had already flung open all the windows to let in the fresh air. Light flooded the house, but it was so cold!
“You’ll need at least two extra thick sweaters on today, Tilly!” Granny said. “Inside and out!”
The house already seemed different with Granny sorting things out. The washing machine was whirring in the kitchen, and sheets and blanket covers were hung out on a line across the lawn.
Tilly looked at the clock. It was half past nine already! She’d forgotten all about school and so had Granny. Neither of them mentioned it. It was as if they both agreed that there was something more important to be done today. The horrible feeling in her stomach she got when it was a school day began to ebb away.
“Your dad’s already gone back to the hospital. He sent his love. Your mom’s doing fine. We’ll go and see her later,” Granny said.
After breakfast, Granny put on her coat. “Right. Now you can show me the garden.”
Tilly took the crusts from her toast with them. She showed Granny how the birds flew down from the tree to be fed. The robin perched on the bench again. Granny followed behind while Tilly took the route down the path next to the raspberry bushes, down to the apple trees and along past the prickly bushes (gooseberries, Granny said) to the clump of funny nobbly pink stumps (rhubarb) and the hedge with leaves on it (beech). Granny kept stopping to look closer at dried up bits of plants.
“Look, Tilly!” Granny was smoothing away dead leaves to show her something hidden underneath.
Tilly saw tiny pink flowers with petals like folded-back ears, and gray-green heart-shaped leaves.
“They’re called cyclamen,” Granny said.
Granny showed her the tiny, pale green tips of snowdrops already poking up through the earth, ready for spring. “It looks like everything’s dead in the winter garden, but it’s all just there, waiting under the earth, already alive and growing.”
They found a twiggy tree with pink sweet-scented flowers growing out of the tips of the bare branches. Granny broke off some twigs to take inside. “Viburnum: that’ll look nice on the kitchen table.” She picked some ivy to go with it.
They had reached the two bushes on either side of the gate. Granny stopped and looked through the gate to the grassy path. “Where does that go?” she asked Tilly.
“I don’t know.”
“We should go and explore later.”
“There’s a fox,” Tilly said quietly. “It comes into the garden at night.”
Granny looked at Tilly. “How exciting!” she said. “Perhaps it comes along that path. Now, I need to put in the next load of washing. Do you want to come back with me or stay and play in the garden?”
“Back with you.”
Granny made hot berry drink for Tilly and herself. “I phoned the school earlier,” she said to Tilly. “I said you’re still a little under the weather.”
“Am I?”
“Not exactly. But I know it’s hard for you, Tilly, with your mom being ill…”
Tilly didn’t want to talk about it. But it was a huge relief that she didn’t have to go to school.
“We’ll bring her some flowers later,” Granny said. “Why don’t you go and pick some more viburnum sprigs? She’ll love that. They’ll smell sweet as anything.”
Tilly took the kitchen scissors from the silverware drawer and went into the garden again. She’d pick a huge bunch of the flowering twigs, the ones where the flowers were fully open and smelled the sweetest.
Tilly stepped back inside the kitchen and laid the bunch of twigs on the table. Granny was talking to someone out in the hallway.
Tilly listened. She couldn’t help it.
“It’s a real sign of anxiety, sleepwalking,” Granny was saying. “I know, it’s understandable. But anything could have happened…Yes, I know.”
Who was sleepwalking? Was she talking about Mom? Tilly wondered.
Granny came back into the kitchen. She smiled at Tilly and pointed to the phone she was holding.
“We’ll see you in about an hour, then,” Granny said into the phone. “Lovely. Bye for now.” Granny turned to Tilly. “Your dad. Everything’s fine. I told him we’ll be at the hospital right after lunch.”
Tilly didn’t like the look of the hospital. She didn’t like the smell, either. She was glad she’d brought the flowers from the garden for Mom.
They found her in a room by herself, not with the other women in the ward. The big window had a view of the hills and the tops of trees, and down over the parking lot if you stood close and looked down.
“They smell gorgeous!” Mom said when Tilly brought the flowers up close. “And how are you, lambkin?”
“I’m not a lambkin,” Tilly said crossly.
Dad went to get coffee.
Tilly tried out the headphones for the TV and the radio, and next she fidgeted with the things on Mom’s nightstand, and then there wasn’t anything to do. Granny and Mom were whispering softly together. She picked up the chart on the end of Mom’s bed, which had lines, and red crosses and scribbles in messy writing. She wished Little Fox were here. She went off to explore by herself anyway.
No one took much notice of her. She walked past a ward full of women all laughing and joking, and one of them waved at her. Then she went through some swinging doors and along a corridor and through another door labeled Special Neonatal Unit.
Through a long glass window on one side of the corridor, she saw a small room full of plastic cribs and loads of tubes and wires and things, and the tiniest real babies she had ever seen, with funny knitted bonnets and mittens. Some were lying on sheepskin, and they all had tubes taped to their tiny noses. Tilly couldn’t stop herself from staring until a nurse suddenly saw her and whisked a curtain back across the window.
That squirmy-eel feeling was in her stomach suddenly. She was hot all over. She started running back to find Mom, scared she might have forgotten the way, but phew! There it was: the swinging door with its blue sign: Prenatal Ward. She leaned against the heavy door, her heart thumping too hard in her chest. She closed her eyes; she could feel it, thump thump, the blood rushing in her ears. Those tiny babies, all covered in wires and tubes, lying all alone in the plastic cribs; it had looked all wrong and terrible.
Tilly went more slowly along the corridor and pushed open the door to Mom’s room. Granny and Dad were sipping coffee from plastic cups, and Mom was smiling. Tilly let out a long breath. She sat on the bottom of Mom’s bed and watched a pigeon preening its feathers on the windowsill while the grown-ups talked.
“So what did the doctor say?” Granny asked Mom. “How long does she think it will be?”
“Soon, now. If not, they’ll do a caesarean.”
“Have you got everything ready? Do you need me to buy you anything?”
“We’ve got most of the stuff already, from when we had Tilly,” Dad said.
The pigeon tapped the window with its beak. It bent its head and looked at Tilly with its beady eye.
Tilly stood up. The pigeon flew off. She watched it fly down onto the parking lot and start pecking at half a sandwich lying in the gutter. She thought about the hungry fox and about the girl living in that old house. The girl called Helen.
“Can we go now?” Tilly asked Granny.
“Whenever you like,” Granny said.
“Thanks for coming,” Mom said. “It was wonderful to see you, Tilly. Your pretty twigs have filled the whole room with their sweet scent.”
Tilly leaned over to kiss Mom good-bye. She walked away as quickly as she could, before the tears came.
Granny drove fast. When they s
topped at a red traffic light, she reached across for Tilly’s hand.
Tilly pulled her hand away.
“Has Dad explained Mom’s illness to you, Tilly? I mean properly, so you understand?”
Tilly bit down on her lip. She didn’t answer.
“As soon as the baby comes, Mom will get better,” Granny said. “For now, because of her headaches and high blood pressure, she has to lie down and rest and be extra careful.”
Tilly watched a cyclist go past the car, to the front of the traffic line. He had a little seat on the back, for a child. She tried to block out Granny’s voice. She didn’t want to think about the words.
Granny was saying something about your baby brother or sister.
A picture came into Tilly’s head of those tiny babies in the incubator, struggling to breathe and eat, born too soon. And then the lights went green and they were off again, and Granny was quiet, concentrating on driving them home.
Granny cooked sausages and baked potatoes for supper, but Tilly wasn’t hungry.
“Can I go out to play in the garden?” she asked.
“It’s dark, Tilly! And too cold. Wait until the morning.”
Tilly knew the fox would be hungry. When the telephone rang and Granny went to answer it, she picked up her leftover lunch and wrapped it in kitchen paper. She slipped out of the back door and ran fast across the damp grass to the garden gate. “Fox?” she called.
She waited, but no fox appeared. Anxious now, she pushed the potato and sausage through the gate onto the grass path and ran back to the kitchen before Granny realized she’d gone out.
It was bedtime. Dad was still at the hospital.
“I don’t need you to read me a story,” Tilly told Granny. “I’m too sleepy tonight.”
“Well,” Granny said, “in that case, I’ll run myself a bath and have an early night too. It’s been a busy day. I hope you sleep better.”