by Pauline Fisk
My Fitztalbot father rose to his feet as well, lending his support by holding her hand. ‘No one will ever know how I have suffered,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and what it’s cost me to bring my son into the Fitztalbot family. If I’d only left him with his grandmother in Wales, perhaps things might have worked out differently. But I wanted the best for him, and for his sister too. I wanted to give them every opportunity. And Cary was a good girl – everybody loved her, right from the start. But Zachary ...’
She broke off, unable to carry on. Immediately my Fitztalbot father took over, ready with the words that she couldn’t bring herself to say.
‘Zachary was ungrateful,’ he said. ‘He never took the opportunities that we offered him. We sent him to the best schools, but he didn’t even try. All he ever did was pay us back with bad behaviour. And now he’s gone too far. We’ve had enough of him. We’re overwhelmed with shame. There’s nothing we can say in his defence. He’s a hopeless case, but we’re not to blame. He’s not our fault. We did our best. We wash our hands of him. He’s no son of ours.’
All round the room, you could have heard a pin drop. Then the red judge rose to his feet, and every eye turned back to him. You could feel the atmosphere in the room becoming colder. Men reached for their jackets and women for their stoles. My mother sat down, and so did my Fitztalbot father. The case was closed – and I was done for.
‘Zachary Fitztalbot,’ the red judge said, looking down at me with twin fires in his eyes, burning for retribution. ‘This court has heard the case against you, weighed the evidence and heard the testimonies of all the witnesses. It is now my judgement that, for bullying your cousins, for bringing dishonour to the Fitztalbot family name, for ingratitude, for insolence, for throwing your father’s generosity back in his face, for bringing grief to your mother and causing her to suffer, and – most of all – for the murder of Gilda Katterfelto, I sentence you to …’
I waited for it. ‘Death. I sentence you to death.’ That’s what my punishment would be. No other sentence would do here in the court of this judge with whom I’d struck a deal already, promising him my life. I held my breath. Prayed for deliverance, but knew there was no hope for me.
But I was wrong! In the furthest corner of the room, the shadows began to shift again and, suddenly, another figure emerged. It came striding across the floor, pushing aside the Cŵn y Wbir as if they were nothing but a minor hindrance. Everybody stared, including me, as an old woman in a shabby skirt and apron, her pockets full of clothes’ pegs, headed for the dais. For a moment, it looked as if the court was being gatecrashed. But it was obvious the moment the woman stepped into the light, without a mask to hide behind, that she had the right to be here.
For she was my other grandmother.
Grace!
.
25
The Case for the Defence
Every New Year’s Eve since, I’ve always remembered it. Wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, it always comes back to me. Sometimes I don’t even have to know it’s New Year’s Eve and it still comes back. The whole thing’s burned on my brain – the people half-risen in their seats and the expression on the red judge’s face as Grace came towards him like a soul-survivor walking upon water.
She walked as if she had no fears. Nothing in this court could touch her. She wasn’t even frightened of the Cŵn y Wbir. The red judge’s legendary dogs – there to do their master’s will and keep his court in order, yet they backed away as if nothing had prepared them for this furious woman.
Nor, it seemed, had it prepared their master. The closer Grace got, the more the red judge seemed to lose his grip. I don’t know how she did it but, by the time she reached the dais, you could tell that she was the one in charge, not him.
And she knew it, too! She smiled triumphantly as she passed me by, and I caught a whiff of whisky on her breath and sunshine in her hair. Caught the scent of life on her, as if not even death could keep her down. Perhaps the red judge caught it too. Perhaps that was why he sat down, looking small and beaten. And that was before Grace even started speaking.
‘This court’s a travesty of justice!’ she cried out in a ringing tone. ‘It’s an insult to the law, and you, sir, are an insult to the justice system! Do you hear me? Don’t just sit there looking like that. Pull yourself together. Have a bit of dignity. Stop quivering, and sit up straight! The time has come to answer for what you’ve done. And to answer properly – no tricks this time!’
A shiver ran round the court. The tables had been turned, and nobody could quite believe that it had happened. Grace had come back from the dead, and they couldn’t believe that either. They were standing on a crossroads between life and death, but couldn’t even grasp what was happening. They didn’t understand.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Grace said, looking round at them all. ‘Hold on to your masks, all you fine Fitztalbots – you’ll need them to cover up your blushes. Then tell me what sort of people would bring a boy before a court like this? Would let him stand with no defence? With not a word on his behalf. Alone, and unprotected. Without a chance to speak for himself. What sort of family? Shame on you, I say! Shame on you all!’
Around the room, cries broke out. Words like ‘old’, ‘mad’ and ‘troublesome’ flew everywhere, with calls to ‘stop her’ and ‘do something’. But nobody could stop Grace. Not even my Fitztalbot grandmother, whose voice rose above everybody else’s.
‘And while we are about it …’ Grace said, looking at her pointedly and shouting her down, ‘what sort of grandmother would hold it against a boy because he couldn’t do his sums, or wasn’t grateful enough?’
Grace’s eyes were blazing by now, and her words were like a whip. My Fitztalbot grandmother flinched, as if she had been stung. So did the rest of them.
‘Before you start judging others,’ Grace said, ‘you should take a look at yourselves. This trial’s a sham, and you all knew it from the start. You could have refused to go along with it, but you let it happen. You could have stopped it, but you sat back and enjoyed it as if it were the entertainment at your annual Christmas party! Well, if it’s entertainment that you’re after, then watch this …’
I had never seen Grace like this before. Never so angry, or so powerful. She strode up to the red judge, whipped the cloak off his back and held it up for everyone to see. He tried to get it off her, but Grace shook the cloak in his face, driving him back.
‘You’ve had your turn in the limelight,’ she cried out. ‘Now it’s mine. Let’s see what secrets you keep hidden here. What little tricks, waiting to be conjured out of thin air!’
She shook the cloak and things started falling out. First it was old pennies that had been stuck down in the lining, and then it was the lining itself, coming away in a single piece. Then a woolly mitten came flying out, followed by a matching red wool hat. Then a boot came flying out, followed by another. Then a duffle-coat came flying out – a hefty-looking duffle-coat with chunky padded lining. Then I don’t exactly know what happened, but suddenly it wasn’t a cloak hanging between Grace’s hands.
It was a boy!
All around the room, people gasped. But I gasped louder than the rest because I knew that boy! I’d met him once before, throwing snowballs at sheep. Now I stared at him, remembering him pointing me in the wrong direction, sending me up Plynlimon when I’d asked for the main road. He’d even laughed as I set off.
But he wasn’t laughing now! Grace was shaking him as if he was a wicked child in need of punishment. She shook so hard that the rest of his clothes fell off him, right down to his pants and socks. The room rang out with protests that it wasn’t right to treat a child like that. But, before anyone could stop her, it wasn’t a boy hanging between Grace’s hands any more. He’d gone, shaken clean away – and someone else hung in his place.
It was the dad this time! The one who’d built that snow-castle, complete with towers and battlements, then gone indoors leaving me to freeze outside. He’d smiled as h
e’d closed his door – a strange smile, I’d thought at the time, but one that had filled me with black despair.
But he wasn’t smiling now! He was being shaken as if he’d known what he was doing – known the despair he’d left me in and hadn’t cared. His clothes came flying off him, just like the boy’s had done. Layers of coats and scarves and hats went flying in every direction until they’d finally all gone, and so had he, and the person hanging between Grace’s hands was someone else.
It was the snowplough driver this time. The one who’d carried on through the forest when the Cŵn y Wbir were chasing me, disappearing from sight when he could have stopped to help me. Now Grace was shaking him as well, as if she knew that he had seen me waving and yelling. She shook and shook until everything came off him and a crow appeared instead. A huge, black crow with a crabbing voice that went through me.
Then Grace shook the crow, and feathers flew everywhere, and a cat appeared. A small, black cat, just like the one that had trapped me in the stable block at Clockvine House – the one I’d tried to kill, but had killed Gilda instead.
Then Grace shook for a last time. Fur went flying everywhere and the cat screeched and clawed and tried to get away. But Grace was too strong for it. She wouldn’t let go. She shook and shook. And, when she’d finished, Gilda hung from her hands.
Gilda Katterfelto!
I stared at her, and Gilda stared back, her eyes as bright as emeralds. The last time I’d seen her she’d been dead, but now her cheeks were full of colour, and there wasn’t a hint of scar where that flying mallet had struck her. I cried out in astonishment and, all around the room, people cried out too. They didn’t understand how the Gilda on the flickering film could be this Gilda now. And I didn’t either – but one thing was for certain.
I had been fooled!
Gilda glanced at me, edgy and nervous, and gave a little helpless shrug as if she didn’t understand either. It was then that I snapped. I mightn’t know exactly what was going on, but I could tell she’d been a part of it all the way along. I leapt on to the dais, snatched her off Grace and started shaking her myself. I thought I’d never stop. Her green silk costume went flying one way and her cap the other. Her hair flew away, just like the cat’s fur before it, and crow’s feathers before that. Then the rest of her went too. I shook and shook until nothing – nothing – was left.
Finally my hands were empty. I held them up, and everything had gone. The cloak. The boy. The man. The snowplough driver. The crow. The cat. Gilda Katterfelto. Not a trace of any of them. I turned to Grace. I still didn’t understand.
‘It’s very simple,’ she said. ‘Gilda wasn’t real. She was an illusion. So were all the rest of them. They were pieces in a game whose purpose was to trick you and confuse you, to spur you on, string you along, outsmart and outmanoeuvre you. To see you run, and track you down and – when the fun was over and you finally became boring – do away with you.’
A buzz of voices broke out all round the room. Embarrassed voices, as if behind their masks people were finally realising what they’d got caught up in. Amid the general clamour, the red judge rose to his feet. None of the others noticed, but Grace did.
‘Go!’ she cried to me. ‘Get out of here! He can’t hold you. He’s got no right. You didn’t kill Gilda, because she didn’t ever live. You may have thought you did, but that was an illusion. You’re free, Zed, free! This so-called court can’t touch you. Go. Right now. While you still can!’
I should have done it, like she said. But something made me hesitate, and then it was too late. As if he had regained his strength, the red judge clapped his hands. Immediately, a black candle flame sprang to life deep in the shadows at the outer edge of the room, revealing a hospital bed with my sister Cary lying in it. She was covered in tubes and bandages and surrounded by screens and monitors that bleeped as if her life still hung in the balance, despite what Pawl had said about her turning a corner, and only I could save her.
My mother cried out, and so did my Fitztalbot father. And I cried too, knowing that the red judge had got me. I looked at Grace, and she looked back as if she knew the deal I’d struck and couldn’t help me. For a few moments there had been a chance, and she had seized it, but now that chance had gone.
The red judge smiled, holding out his hand to me, as if the game was won fair and square. And perhaps it was, and I would have shaken on it, conceding defeat. But suddenly a new voice rang out – one that I recognised, but didn’t know where from.
‘Cary’s life is hers alone, to live and die in her own time!’ it shouted. ‘It isn’t yours to give, or take, or gamble for or buy. She stands and falls by her own efforts, thank you very much. And so does Zed. He’s capable of great things, and he’ll do them too, and if some here in this room can’t see it in him, then that’s their loss. They may look down on him, and think he isn’t good enough and even wash their hands of him. But they don’t see him like I do. Don’t see him like a father looking at his son!’
The moment was electric. Voices broke out all round the room. Then a figure came striding out of the shadows and I recognised it – of course I did. But I knew it wasn’t possible. It simply couldn’t be. Not so firm, and bold and certain. Not with words so clearly spoken. Not the man I’d always thought of as my uncle.
Not Pawl Pork-pie.
On the far side of the room, I heard somebody start to cry. I turned and saw that it was my mother. She was looking at Pawl as if he was somebody she’d once known, long ago, but turned her back on. Her expression was sheet-white, and there were things in it that I had never seen before. Hidden secrets, shaken out at last. Secrets between the two of them.
She said his name. ‘Pawl,’ she said, but he wouldn’t look at her.
Instead he looked at me – my shambling uncle, who couldn’t usually string his words together but had done it just this once, because he wanted people to know that he was proud of me!
‘Pawl,’ I said, as well. And then, because I understood at last, and wanted him to know – understood it all, and the word I’d longed to use was suddenly appropriate – I said, ‘Dad.’
Then the whole room erupted as if an explosion had taken place. Everything went flying up in the air. Somewhere in the chaos of it all, I heard Grace crying, ‘Yes, oh yes!’ as if it was out at last, and my mother no longer had a hold over her. I tried to get to her, but tables went flying between us. So did my cousins, Frieda, Lottie and Claudia, along with all my other Fitztalbot relatives, and the monitors and tubes and my sister Cary’s hospital bed.
Bells rang inside my head. The WELCOME ZED banner went flying past, and so did chairs and tablecloths, silver cutlery and crystal glasses. The Cŵn y Wbir were swept up, howling, into darkness. The black corph candle was snuffed out, as if it had lost its power, and my ramrod-straight Fitztalbot grandmother was swept away like a handful of old bones. The red judge was swept away, clutching his wig. He went flying past and the expression on his face was enough to last me a lifetime. Then he was gone, and the shadow of Plynlimon fell from me.
Finally, Grace went as well. I saw her swept up with the rest of them. And I never got to say goodbye, but I felt her brave spirit in the face of death passing down to me like a family bequest.
It took a while for the dust to settle. When it did, I found myself standing back in the hotel basement, before a staircase leading up into the light. It was the world I’d left behind, and I climbed the stairs to join it. Through the open kitchen door, I could see leftovers from the New Year’s Eve dinner – everything from tureens of soup and carcasses of pheasant to the remains of lime tarts and baked chocolate pies.
Suddenly I felt hungry. It wasn’t the hunger of a starving boy who’d eat berries if he really had to, but the hunger of an ordinary boy who wouldn’t mind the chance to stuff his face.
‘There’s food upstairs … for us waiting … in our room,’ a voice said.
I turned around, and it was Pawl. The rest of them had gone as if they’d been a d
ream, but he remained, as real as ever. And the room key in his hand was real as well.
26
The Offer
I awoke in a sea-green hotel bedroom to find myself curled up in an enormous four-poster bed with curtains pulled around it. Pawl lay at the bottom of the bed, sprawled across a chaise longue. His shoulders rose and fell as he snored his way towards morning. I sat up and watched him. I couldn’t see much likeness to myself, but knew that I had found my father. My real father too – not some father I’d invented because I didn’t have anybody else, but the one who’d always been there for me, even though I hadn’t known it.
It felt like coming in to shore after a long sea voyage. I got out of bed, too excited to lie still, went to the bedroom window and pulled back the curtains to let in the new day. Outside the sun shone across the forest with not a hint of mist. It was a beautiful morning, crisp with snow-white frost, but as bright as summer. The light awoke Pawl. He ran his fingers through his hair, and sat up looking confused as if he didn’t know how he’d got here. I’d wondered that as well, but, from the expression on his face, I guessed I mightn’t ever find out.
We made ourselves cups of coffee, watched a bit of morning television, ran ourselves hot baths and finally went down for breakfast. In the dining room a table was waiting for us, with our room number on it. The waitress greeted Pawl by name, as if he was a proper signed-up guest, and we tucked into a full English breakfast, not scrimping on the toast or extra cups of tea.
Then, after we had eaten, we went out walking. I wore Pawl’s old black coat, which had dried out overnight on the bedroom radiator, and he wore his pork-pie hat. I wondered what the hotel staff made of us, down there at the reception desk, me in my scruffy clothes and him with half his back to front. He checked out before we left, paying for our room with handfuls of money, then leaving the hotel abruptly without wanting change.