by Betty Neels
‘Me? No. Just think of it, six weeks of this— I shall read and sew and cook and discipline the kids...’
A remark which was greeted with delighted giggles from the children, because the idea of their beloved Aunt Cassandra disciplining anyone or, for that matter, being even faintly stern, was just too funny for words. They were still giggling as they led her away upstairs, where presently a furious uproar signified the fact that they were having their bedtime baths.
The weather had changed when Cassandra got up the next morning; the sun shone from a chilly blue sky, turning the sea to a turbulent green and the hills to yellow and red and brown, and in the distance the snowcapped mountains looked as though they had been painted against the horizon. The village was bright and cosy in the sunshine, its roofs and white walls sparkling, its windows gleaming. The sun was still shining as she drove back from the ferry in the afternoon with the two quiet and rather tearful children. The sky was paler now and already dim around its edges where the dusk was creeping in. Cassandra kept up a flow of cheerful conversation all the way home and as she swung the Landrover up the short track to the house, she asked:
‘How about a walk before tea? Just a short one—Bob needs some exercise and so do I. I’d love to go a little way up the hill behind the house.’
They set off presently, climbing steadily up the path which wound through the trees. It was sheltered from the wind and surprisingly quiet.
‘There’ll be mice here,’ said Cassandra, ‘and rabbits and an owl or two, I daresay, and any number of birds—I wish I knew their names. There’s a squirrel.’
They stood still and watched the creature dart up a tree and Bob, the elderly Labrador, who had grown portly with his advancing years, sat down.
‘Draw him when we get home,’ Penny begged her.
‘Certainly, my dear, if you would like that.’ Her aunt smiled fondly at her and added briskly, ‘Shall we go to that bend in the path and then go back for tea?’
There was a gap in the trees at the path’s turn; it afforded an excellent view of the hill above them, and the sun, gleaming faintly now, shone on something near its summit, in amongst the trees. Cassandra, staring hard, saw that it was a window and what was more, there was a chimney besides, with smoke wreathing above it.
‘A house!’ she exclaimed. ‘Whoever lives there? Why, it’s miles away from the village.’
For the first time since they had parted from their parents, the children perked up.
‘That’s Ogre’s Relish,’ Andrew informed her importantly, and waited confidently for her reply, for unlike other, sillier aunts, she could be depended upon to give the right answers.
‘What an extremely clever name,’ said Cassandra. ‘Do tell.’
She watched his little chest swell with pride. ‘I thought of it—Penny helped,’ he added. ‘There’s a man lives there, and one day I heard Mrs Todd telling Mrs MacGill that he relished his peace and quiet, and of course he’s an ogre because no one’s ever seen him.’
His aunt nodded her complete understanding. ‘Of course. Does he live alone?’
Penny answered her. ‘There’s another man there too—he’s old, and he comes to the shop sometimes and buys things, but he hardly ever speaks and Mrs MacGill says he only buys enough to keep body and soul together. Are ogres poor, Aunt Cassandra?’
‘This one sounds as though he might be.’
‘He can’t see.’
Cassandra stopped to look at her small niece. ‘My darling, are you sure? I mean, not see at all?’
Andrew chipped in: ‘We don’t know, but I heard Daddy tell Mummy, he said. ‘‘He can’t see, poor beggar.’’ That means,’ he explained, just in case his aunt hadn’t quite grasped the point, ‘that he’s not got any money—not if he’s a beggar.’
Cassandra nodded; it seemed hardly the time to start a dull explanation about figures of speech, and even if the poor ogre had enough to live on, it seemed a dreary enough existence. She turned her back on the gap, shivering a little. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.
She took the children down to the village school the next morning and then went back to give Mrs Todd a hand in the house; but Mrs Todd assured her that she needed no help, so she retired to the kitchen and set about preparing their midday dinner. There was more than enough to choose from; she delved into the deep-freeze and settled on lamb chops and by way of afters she made a queen of puddings, adding homemade strawberry jam with a lavish hand and wondering as she did so if the poor ogre really had enough to eat. She found herself thinking about him as she worked; one day soon, while the children were at school, she would climb the path behind the house and call on him—he might be glad of a visitor, but perhaps he didn’t like callers, so it might be a good idea to walk up the hill and spy out the land first. Still busy with her thoughts, she started on a cake for tea, for the chocolate one had been demolished for all but two slices. She made the coffee, called to Mrs Todd to join her and they sat together in the kitchen, consuming the rest of the cake between them. Mrs Todd, Cassandra discovered, was a perfect fount of knowledge; she was told all about the pastor and the pastor’s sister, who according to her companion, was a proper old termagant. ‘No wonder the puir man has never taken a wife,’ she observed. ‘Who’d want to with him, knowing she’s landed with his sister too?’
Cassandra, her mouth full of cake, agreed fervently, ‘And the man who lives in the cottage behind us on the hill?’ she wanted to know casually.
‘Och, him. Now, there’s a tale I could tell ye...’
And never to be told, for the doorbell rang at just that moment. It was the lad from a neighbouring farm who brought the eggs each week; he had to be paid and given a cup of coffee, too, and by the time he had gone again Mrs Todd had no time left to talk. She still had to do the kitchen, she told Cassandra rather severely, and perhaps Miss Cassandra would like to go to the sitting-room or take a walk?
It was almost time to fetch the children from school; she chose to go for a walk, going the long way round to the school and calling in at the shop to buy stamps—Rachel would expect letters.
During their dinner Rachel telephoned; they were on the point of catching their flight to Athens, she told them, talking to each of them in turn and then making way for Tom, who promised that they would telephone that evening. Cassandra, who had expected the children to be tearful, was agreeably surprised to find that although they were excited to hear from their parents, they showed no signs of being unhappy. Just in case they were, she promised, rather rashly that they would play cards that evening.
The first few days went quickly and she enjoyed them; she missed the busy hospital life and the urgent work in theatre, on the other hand it was delightful to have time to read and sew and knit. Besides, she enjoyed cooking; she found a cook book and between the three of them, they chose something different each day, very much influenced by the colourful illustrations of dishes with exotic names and an enormous number of ingredients. They made toffee too and went for long rambles, so that it was almost a week before Cassandra had the opportunity of going to the cottage on the hill. The children had been invited to a birthday party in the village, a protracted affair which would last well into the evening. She had walked down with them just after two o’clock on the Saturday afternoon and seen them safely into the cottage where the party was to be held and then, her mind made up, went back through the village. She had almost reached the track leading to her sister’s house, when John Campbell came out of the manse front door.
She stopped because he had called a greeting as she went past and it would have been rude not to have stopped, and he quite obviously wanted to talk. They stood together, chatting about nothing in particular for five minutes or more until she said: ‘Well, I’ll be getting along...’
‘I wondered if you would care to come to tea—today, perhaps?’ he smiled at her. ‘My
sister would like to meet you.’
Cassandra, normally a truthful girl, lied briskly, ‘I’m so sorry, I promised Rachel that I would do some telephoning for her this afternoon—family, you know—she hadn’t time before she went. Besides, I’ve a simply enormous wash waiting in the machine.’ She smiled at him kindly, quite unrepentant about the fibbing, because she was determined that she would climb the hill and take a nearer look at Ogre’s Relish—and nothing was going to stop her.
It was further away than she had thought and the path became steeper as she went. It petered out at length in a small clearing from which several smaller paths wound themselves away into the trees all around her. She could see no sign of the cottage now and it took her a few moments to decide which path to take. The wrong one, as it turned out, for it led to a small enclosed patch of wild grass and thistles and heather, so she went back again and this time chose the path opposite, pausing to look about her as she went. All the same, she was taken completely by surprise when it turned a corner and opened directly into a quite large garden, very tidy and nicely sheltered by the trees. A path led to the cottage front door, set sturdily between two small windows with another two beneath its slate roof. She looked around her; the place seemed to be deserted, so perhaps it wasn’t the right one. She crossed the grass with the idea of peering in through one of its windows and then let out a small gasp when a voice from behind her said:
‘You’re trespassing, my good woman.’
The ogre! She forced herself to turn round slowly, filled with a ridiculous, childish fear which was instantly dispelled when she saw the dark glasses and the stick. For an ogre, she thought idiotically, he was remarkably handsome; tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair greying at the temples, the dark glasses bridging a long straight nose beneath thick brows. His mouth was well shaped and firm too, although at the moment it was drawn down in a faint sneer. Probably, she told herself with her usual good sense, she would sneer too if she had to wear dark glasses and carry a stick... She found her tongue: ‘Good afternoon. I’m sorry if I’m trespassing—I didn’t mean to come into your garden, it was unexpected...’
The dark glasses glared at her. ‘Only to spy out the land, perhaps?’
Cassandra flushed. ‘Well, yes—at least, you see, I knew you lived here—the children told me about you.’
‘Indeed?’ The dark glasses bored a hole through her, the voice was icy. ‘And should I be flattered?’
‘Why?’ she asked matter-of-factly, and went on: ‘The children—my nephew and niece, were telling me.’
‘I’m all agog,’ he said nastily.
‘Well, they’re only small children and imaginative—they call this cottage Ogre’s Relish.’
His lips twitched. ‘So I am an ogre?’
‘No, not really. They’ve heard about you and they made up stories.’
‘Really?’ His voice was cold and she gave him an apprehensive look and said uneasily: ‘You’re not offended?’
‘What does it matter to you?’ he wanted to know coolly. ‘Don’t let me keep you.’
He might not be an ogre, but certainly he had the disposition of one! Cassandra retreated down the path and paused to ask: ‘Can you see at all?’ knowing that it was unpardonable of her to ask, but wanting very much to know. He didn’t bother to answer her and she took another step away from him, then stopped again because another man, elderly this time and as dark as the ogre, had come round the corner of the cottage. He had his sweater sleeves rolled up and the first thing Cassandra’s sharp eyes saw were the numbers tattooed on his arm, between his wrist and his elbow. She knew what they meant—he had been in a concentration camp. He had the face of an old hawk and looked decidedly surly, but all the same she wished him a good afternoon and he gave a surprised, reluctant reply. Still more surprising, however, was the fact that the man in the dark glasses spoke. ‘This is Jan, my good friend—he can do everything except make cakes.’ He smiled a little. ‘He speaks excellent English and Polish, if you should have a knowledge of that language, but don’t on any account address him in German; he dislikes that, for his own very good reasons.’
Cassandra said briefly: ‘I can’t speak anything but English and school French.’ She put out her hand. ‘How do you do, Jan?’ and shook his hand, careful not to look at the tattooed numbers. ‘I daresay I shall see you some time in the shop, shan’t I?’ She smiled and saw the faint reflection in his own face. She wished the ogre would smile too—he would look very nice then—if he ever did, but he seemed a bitter man, which was natural enough. She wondered how he had come to lose his sight in the first place and longed to ask him, although she knew that to be impossible. She wished him a pleasant good-bye which he answered with the briefest of nods in her direction, and started back down the path. She was almost home when she remembered that he had never answered her question as to whether he could see at all.
The next day being Sunday, she took the children to church, a bare whitewashed building, filled to capacity, and after the service, when she paused at the door to wish Mr Campbell a good morning, she was bidden to wait a few moments so that she might meet Miss Campbell, a treat she wasn’t particularly anxious to experience. The lady, when she came, was exactly as Cassandra had pictured her, only more so; she was younger than her brother, with a determined chin and cold blue eyes which examined Cassandra’s London-bought hat with suspicion and then raked her face, looking for signs of the frivolity the owner of such a hat would be sure to possess. But there was nothing frivolous about Cassandra’s face; Miss Campbell sighed with vexation—she had already heard far too much about this young woman from London from her brother, who, at his age, should know better, and now she had seen for herself that there were none of the more regrettable aspects of the modern world visible in the girl—only the hat. She would have her to tea, she decided, and show her up, with her usual skill, before her brother, and Cassandra, while unaware of these thoughts, sensed that she wasn’t liked—well, she didn’t like Miss Campbell either. She murmured noncommittally over the invitation to tea and made a polite escape with the murmured excuse that she had the Sunday dinner to see to.
Out of hearing, she was immediately attacked by her two small companions.
‘But you got the dinner ready before we came out, Aunt Cassandra,’ Andrew pointed out.
‘You said...’ began Penny.
‘Yes, my dears, I know. I told a fib, didn’t I? I’m very sorry, but you see I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I didn’t want to go back to the Manse, and I believe Mr Campbell was on the point of asking us.’
This sensible way out of an awkward situation was immediately sanctioned, although Andrew asked doubtfully, ‘But you don’t usually fib, Aunt Cassandra, do you?’
And she, in some ways as young as her companions, crossed her fingers as she assured him that no, she did her best not to.
She thought about the ogre quite a lot during the next few days, and when she met Jan in the village shop and saw the meagre groceries he was buying, she went home, baked a large fruit cake and that same afternoon, after the children had gone back to school, climbed the path behind the house once more.
Probably she would get the cake thrown at her, but at least she had to try; the thought of the two men living in a kind of exile without enough to eat and with no hope of a home-made cake for their teas touched her heart—and perhaps this time the ogre would be more friendly. She had no wish to pry, she knew how difficult it was for anyone to reconcile themselves to blindness, especially when they were young—and he was still young, she guessed about thirty-five.
This time she walked boldly up the path and knocked on the door, and was rewarded by the ogre’s voice bidding her to go in and shut the door behind her. It led directly into the sitting-room, small and cosy and extremely untidy, but none the less clean. Cassandra paused just inside the door and before she could s
peak, the man in the dark glasses said: ‘It’s you again.’
‘Oh, you can see—I’m so glad!’ said Cassandra, her plain face illuminated by delight.
‘We don’t have so many visitors that I can’t make a shrewd guess as to who it is. Besides, Dioressence isn’t so difficult to recognize—I don’t imagine that there are many women in the village who wear it.’ The dark glasses were turned in her direction. ‘Why have you come? Did I invite you?’
A bad beginning, she had to admit. ‘No—but I was in the shop this morning and Jan was there and—and...’ She paused, not knowing how to say it without hurting his pride, of which she had no doubt he had far too much. ‘Well, I thought you might like a cake, as you said Jan couldn’t make cakes—it’s only a fruit one, but if you put it into a tin it will keep for days.’
She was still standing by the door and she couldn’t see his face very well, for he was sitting by the fire in a large armchair, half turned from her. He said quietly: ‘Will you sit down? I’m afraid we aren’t very tidy, but move anything you have to,’ and when she had done so, still clutching the cake, he went on: ‘You’re kind. We don’t encourage visitors, you know—there’s no point. I’m only here for a few weeks and they are almost over.’
‘You’ll go home?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think you’re English—or Scottish—and you can’t be German because if you were Jan wouldn’t be with you.’
His smile mocked her. ‘Intelligent as well as beautiful,’ he remarked silkily.
‘If you didn’t have to wear those glasses you would see that I am rather a plain girl.’
‘Indeed? In which case we must allow my dark glasses to have some advantage after all.’
She went a painful scarlet. In a voice throbbing with self-restraint, she said: ‘That was really rather rude.’