She kept saying how perfectly lovely it all was and that she felt like a queen and how comfortable the bed looked, and I said, “Yeah, it totally does.”
“Will you be all right here for a while?” Kevin asked. And she said, “Oh, indeed I will.” Then he said we had to go, or else Mrs. Kelly’d be wondering where we were. As we moved toward the door, he held out his hand to me and we did a handshake.
“Thanks, Cosmo.”
“Cosmo?” said Maggie from the bed. “I thought his name was Cyril.”
Kevin told her to get some sleep and that very soon he’d explain everything properly. We had to leave her there and get back to the main part of the Abbey.
“I really am grateful to you for helping us the way you did. I couldn’t have done it without you,” said Kevin. And even though I knew there was a serious risk that I’d more or less secured my own future annihilation that night, still there was a part of me that felt quite good.
Chapter 11
IT TURNS OUT that the place where we put Maggie was where Cordelia’s brother once used to live, except that he didn’t live there anymore. He didn’t live anywhere. He was dead. He’d died on a break from being a soldier. There at Blackbrick. To me it sounded like freakishly bad luck, someone dying when they were on holiday from the war.
Kevin told me that ever since then, George Corporamore had been a different man. All angry and restless and often loitering around the place in the middle of the night, or wandering down to the stables early in the morning before the sun came up, whispering his son’s name and generally behaving like a bit of a loolah.
I didn’t ask for any details because it wasn’t any of my business, but Kevin told me a few things about Crispin too: that his parents had loved him very much, which I’m sure was true; that he had been a pretty courageous guy; and that he had been by far the most popular Corporamore at the Abbey for generations. From what I could make out, he’d helped a load of people to escape from some terrible battle in the middle of the war, even though their faces and arms had been blown off and even though it has been quite difficult for him because he’d had something inside him called “shrapnel” and also because he’d been in a permanent state of horror.
Crispin had been a hero, which just goes to prove that having a weird name doesn’t necessarily predict how you’re going to behave in a crisis.
Later that night I was feeling a bit on my own, so I went off to Crispin’s wing myself, and Kevin was there, sitting on Maggie’s bed. Maggie said hello and Kevin smiled. It made me feel really good the way they both seemed happy to see me.
Pretty soon we were chatting among the three of us. She asked us when she was expected to start work and what her jobs were going to be.
“Maggie, just to let you know, you don’t really have a job here,” I explained helpfully, and I also confirmed that my name was not Cyril and that I wasn’t a Corporamore.
“Oh, Kevin, you haven’t!” she said, turning to him again. I couldn’t tell whether she looked happy or sad.
“Haven’t what?” he asked. I couldn’t tell whether he looked guilty or proud.
“You have. I knew it. You’ve SMUGGLED me in here. Oh, for the love of God.”
“Well figured out,” I said a bit sarcastically. But Kevin was very good at soothing a person when a person had just realized that something dodgy was going on. He told her for around the fifteenth time that she was to trust him. He’d work on everything and it was all going to be grand. Eventually she didn’t even seem that annoyed or worried that she’d been brought there under false pretenses. In fact she seemed a little bit thrilled, as if it made everything even better than she’d thought—as if as far as she was concerned it made Kevin even more fabulous than ever.
He kept saying he was on top of it, and that all he had to do was have a few conversations with some people at Blackbrick and she wouldn’t have to be kept a secret anymore. But I knew he was thinking on his feet. He hadn’t a clue how things were going to work out with Maggie. He didn’t know how anything was going to work out. Nobody does.
I’d forgotten to tell Kevin about how Maggie’s parents had asked for a letter, so I filled him in. And when I did, Kevin was all, “Can you write it for me?”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?” I asked him.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t got around to learning.”
He told me to stop looking so shocked. He reminded me that I hadn’t known how to hitch a horse to a cart. He said that he’d had quite a busy childhood in which he had learned to do lots of useful things, but writing didn’t happen to be one of them. And neither was reading.
“You can’t read?”
Maggie said that neither could she. She didn’t sound as if she thought it was anything to be particularly embarrassed about.
It’s amazing the things you can find out if you go to the past; for example, you might learn that your own grandfather was illiterate when he was already sixteen years old. If either he or Maggie had been in my year, they’d have been made to go to remedial after-school with D. J. Burke and the Geraghty twins. It was disturbing, this information about their very bad education, and I wasn’t too eager to dwell on it. I had enough on my plate already.
But I did tell them that while I was here, I might be able to give them a few quick tips on how to read and write, and Kevin said, “Do if you like,” but he didn’t sound that enthusiastic or appreciative about it or anything.
I went to see Maggie on my own the next morning before anyone else was up. I told her I was sorry for calling so early, but she said it was fine. She’d been awake anyway.
And I said, “You must be starting to be sorry that Kevin picked you up, seeing as you don’t really have a job here or anything.”
“I’m not sorry at all. To be honest with you, I consider it the most wonderful thing anyone could ever have done for me. I’ve been wishing for this for I can’t tell you how long.”
“Don’t you find it a tiny bit disturbing? Aren’t you worried about it?” I asked her.
“Worried about what?” she said, her massive brown eyes shining at me all round and big and, well, you know . . . lovely.
“About what those Corporamore owners would do if they found you here? About being in a massive amount of trouble for trespassing and illegal entry, and for being a stowaway?”
She said that it was pretty much impossible to be scared or worried now that she was with Kevin. She was still talking about him like he was the most fabulous guy on the entire planet, and I think I already knew that nothing I said was going to make any difference. But I didn’t give up for ages. I tried to explain to her all about what a lousy place this was to work. I told her about Cordelia and her brattishness, and how Kevin spent more or less every morning trying to make a perfect breakfast for her but it was never good enough, and how he always had to apologize to her for basically nothing. I kept on saying, “Really, Maggie, it might seem like a superb place to be, but to be honest with you, working here is lousy.”
All the more reason for her to stay, she explained. To be company for Kevin and me, and to keep our spirits up.
“You’re wrong, Maggie. You’re much better off cutting your losses and going home again. I’m not hanging around here for too long myself. I have a home to go back to. I’ll be gone by the end of the week, and if you have any sense, you will be too.”
She wasn’t listening to me. I don’t think she would have listened to anyone except Kevin.
I asked her about all her little brothers and sisters, and I said they must be missing her a lot and maybe some of them were crying, wishing for her to come back, and wouldn’t they be so thrilled if she did. It was below the belt, I know, but when you’re desperate, you have to use whatever tactics happen to be available at the time.
She said that she did miss her family, and she admitted that it had been heartbreaking to say good-bye, and her eyes got a bit misty. For
a second I thought I had her, but then she swiftly went on to say that Kevin was her savior, blah blah blah, and she didn’t want to be anywhere that he wasn’t, blah blah blah . . . and what a prince of a guy he was.
I only had a couple more days before I had to get back home and give Granddad lessons about the past so that he’d pass the memory test and nobody would take him away. It wasn’t a heck of a lot of time. But it’s a big job, trying to split people up who were never meant to be together. Plus, neither of them was making it very easy for me.
A little later the same morning, for example, Kevin had legged it off to Crispin’s wing to be with Maggie before I even got to the kitchen. Mrs. Kelly was there smoothing down her apron, and when I arrived, she straightened my hair a bit like she was a gran and not a strange woman in an old house, and she said, “Now, Cosmo, Kevin was supposed to be doing all manner of duties today, but he is busy and he’s said you’ll do them instead. And of course, it’s irregular to have visitors working for their keep, but times have changed, as we keep telling you, and I daresay it might do you a world of good.”
“Yeah, I daresay that as well,” I said, and the whole time I was thinking that I knew exactly what Kevin was “busy” with. Busy trying to snog Maggie in Crispin’s wing, that’s what. Anyway, the point was that I definitely couldn’t leave those two alone together for very long. It wasn’t safe. I could picture him going on about exactly how much he fancied her the whole time, and then asking her to marry him, and I already knew that it wouldn’t take too much persuasion before she said yes.
I was about to tell Mrs. Kelly that I had no time to do anyone’s chores, least of all Kevin’s. I was on the verge of heading off to Crispin’s wing myself with the intention of being a tactical third wheel, when something crept across my brain. It was an idea, and the idea was that I was going to rat out my own granddad.
Chapter 12
IT’S QUITE interesting how someone can go from being a loyal, trustworthy grandson to being king of the rats in a relatively short space of time. All it takes is a few changes in your life circumstances.
I asked Mrs. Kelly what duties I was supposed to do, and she started reeling off a whole massive list of things, and I wrote them all down in my notebook because there were too many to remember. And she was impressed because I was able to write, and she asked me where I was from and who my family were, even though she’d promised she wasn’t going to ask me stuff like that. I told her I wasn’t able to talk about my past, it was too painful, which is a great way to stop people from asking nosy questions that you’re not too interested in answering.
The first thing on the list of duties was to make Cordelia’s breakfast and take it up to her. I could feel my plan firming up. After that I was to clear out the grates of three fires, sweep the kitchen floor, peel a massive bucket of potatoes, polish the furniture in the hall, and feed the horses. I told Mrs. Kelly she could count on me, no problem, and she said, “Lord above, Cosmo, but you really are a great fellow altogether,” and I said, “Thanks.” Being called a great fellow was a few notches up from being called madder than a brush. It felt like I was making progress.
She looked at me a bit dreamily as I started getting Cordelia’s breakfast ready. She said my name a few times, and then she asked how on earth I’d come to be called something so unusual. I told her that I wished I knew.
I’d figured out exactly what I was going to do by then, and it was lousy, but at the time I didn’t think I had much of an option.
When I knocked on Cordelia’s door, she was just as rude to me as she’d been to Kevin.
“Oh, come IN,” she said. And when I did go in, her face was hard and sharp, her words bitter and cross. She asked me who the devil I was, and I told her I was a new person come to help for a few days.
“I didn’t give anyone permission to send a strange new boy to me. Where’s Kevin?”
I told her that Kevin was busy. I told her that I was a family friend of Mrs. Kelly’s and that I was above board in every way. But I said there was something else going on that was completely below board and she might want to know about it. Cordelia started nibbling on the corner of one of the pieces of crustless toast, and she looked into my eyes and said, “Very well, then. What is it?”
“There’s this girl who’s been smuggled in here, and now she’s sleeping over and she’s planning to stay. I don’t think your dad would be that thrilled if he found out about it.”
“A girl?” Cordelia said, pensively pouring herself some tea, steam rising in front of her face.
“Yes, a girl.”
“Who smuggled her in?” she said, plinking two sugar cubes into her cup and making a little tea whirlpool with the skinny silver spoon.
“Look, all I’m going to say is that at the moment she’s asleep in the old wing where your brother used to live.”
She stopped stirring, put the spoon back down on the tray, and blinked a few times.
“Did you know my brother?” she said, and her arrogant little voice changed for a moment.
“No. I didn’t. But anyway, that’s where she is.”
“Father doesn’t allow anyone to go in there, not even me. If he finds out there’s a strange girl staying there without anyone’s consent, he is going to lose his sense of reason.”
Excellent, I thought.
“Don’t you think you’d better tell him, then?”
“Yes,” she said, staring out the window, munching away. “Yes, I very much think I ought to. Father and I shall be dining together this evening, and I shall use that as an opportunity to inform him of the situation.”
“Great,” I said.
“By the way, how is it that you know about this girl?”
I told her that I’d prefer not to get into the details, just that I knew a lot of stuff that other people didn’t know, and that was all I was prepared to say. I also told her not to tell her father who she had gotten the information from. I sold the idea to her by saying that if she didn’t reveal her sources, she’d get all the credit herself.
Her eyes went kind of flickery and gray for a second like she was suspicious, and as if she thought I was some kind of snake or weasel. And I suppose if you want to be precise about it, that’s what I was, but I was acting for a good cause, even though it might have seemed mean at the time.
After filling Cordelia in on Maggie, I had to go and do all of Kevin’s other jobs. And I kept on thinking how much I hoped my plan to get Maggie kicked out was going to work.
I thought I had the whole thing in order: Corporamore was going to find out about Maggie and go mad and send her away, and she would go back to where she’d come from, where she had all those brothers and sisters who loved her so much, and Kevin would be able to get on with the life that he was meant to have, not the one he thought he wanted, and I’d go back home to the present, and that would basically be that.
“The best way to make the gods laugh is to tell them your plans,” is what my granddad used to say. I’m sure if I’d listened that day for a second, I would have heard a thousand gods laughing their heads off.
By the middle of the morning, I was already a hundred percent wrecked, partly because of the stress but mainly because of all the heavy lifting and slave labor. I legged it down to the kitchen, where I bumped straight into Kevin, who apparently was “nipping up” to get himself and Maggie a cup of tea. Very Romeo and Juliet. I had a disturbing image of the two of them sitting at the end of Crispin’s bed, sipping from the polite little china cups, both of them saying, “Ah, fantastic” together.
He asked me how I was getting on with the work, and I said fine but that to be perfectly honest, I didn’t have much time to hang out and chat because I still had a ton more of it to do.
And he said, “You’ve no idea how wonderful it has been to spend time with her,” and I said, “No, I’m sure I haven’t a clue.”
In my head I was thinking that pretty soon Cordelia would have briefed her father and Kevin and Maggie would
be ratted out and everything would be okay.
Mrs. Kelly made dinner for the Corporamores and hobbled up with it to the dining room herself. She reported that by the time she was serving pudding, Lord George Corporamore had drunk a whole bottle of brandy. You can’t always predict when people are going to do things like that. And you definitely can’t predict the way they’re going to behave after they’ve done it.
I sprinted off to Crispin’s wing. Maggie was asleep, like an angel in a white nightshirt with her messy black hair all spread out over the pillow and the pale skin of her cheek looking kind of like it was glowing.
I made it in just ahead of him and hid under the bed. And then almost instantly I heard the thuds and bangs of George Corporamore’s feet getting closer and closer, and I could hear him bursting in through the doorway and I was realizing that this whole thing was my responsibility now, and if something bad happened to her, it would be because of me.
From where I was hiding, I could see his boots in the doorway, and they were very pointy. And I could feel the bed creaking, which must have been Maggie waking up.
“Who the blazes are you? What are you doing in this bed? NO ONE is ALLOWED in here. Do you hear me? This is a place where people are FORBIDDEN. Explain yourself immediately,” he demanded, and I was thinking this was all going to go horribly wrong now.
More rustling, and I imagined her eyes opening, and I was thinking about her face.
“Hello, sir. My name is Maggie. Maggie McGuire.”
She always cast a spell on people—at least that’s what I think always used to happen. Soon I could hear his voice softening and sounding a hundred percent gentler. He went on then about how there once was a person who used to sleep in this bed and who had curly hair too. And at first I wasn’t sure what the sound was, but I realized that what I was hearing was George Corporamore starting to cry.
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