by Lucy Strange
‘But what?’
‘I’m afraid nobody ever stayed for long.’
‘Why not?’
Mr Pickersgill shrugged.
‘Perhaps it’s haunted,’ I said, thinking of the books and ships moving around in the dusty attic room.
There was a pause. ‘Nonsense,’ Mr Pickersgill said, with an odd laugh.
‘Was there a little boy?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The Young family – was there a little boy?’
‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘Yes, there was. Alfred.’
Alfred, I thought. A. Young.
‘As a matter of fact, he—’ Mr Pickersgill stopped himself. ‘As a matter of fact, I really ought to be getting on with my work now, Miss Abbott. It has been such a pleasure to meet you. Goodbye.’
As I walked back through the village to meet Nanny Jane, I was aware of a strange kind of pressure in the air – as if it needed to rain. I felt exactly the same pressure inside my head – a thundercloud was rising, swelling and threatening to burst. I thought of Piglet and Mama and Moth, of Robert, and John Keats, and a little boy called Alfred. I felt as if the weight of all these souls was pressing down on me.
It seemed that not everyone was prepared to follow Doctor Hardy’s orders. While Nanny Jane was in the garden that afternoon, Mrs Berry called me quietly into Mama’s room.
‘See if you can coax her into eating a bit of soup,’ she whispered.
Mama was sitting up in bed. Her eyelids were swollen and heavy and, as I came into the room, she smiled a slow, sleepy smile.
‘Hen,’ she said softly. I sat beside her and stroked her hand. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said. ‘Where have you been?’
I didn’t know what to say. ‘Exploring,’ I said. ‘Exploring the village, and the house, and Nightingale Wood.’ I stroked her hand.
‘Nightingale Wood,’ she said, dreamily.
I managed to feed her a few spoonfuls of soup before her heavy eyes started to close. It looked as if she was trying to stay awake, but she couldn’t fight it. Doctor Hardy’s pills, I thought. She wants to talk to me but the pills are making her too sleepy. I remembered Moth’s words – ‘one prison within another . . .’
Mrs Berry and I helped Mama to lie down. I tucked the white counterpane around her.
Mrs Berry tidied up. Then she looked at her watch.
‘Make sure your mother takes these with a sip of water, please, Miss,’ she said, putting two round yellow pills in my hand. Then she picked up the soup bowl and left the room.
I stared at the yellow pills in my palm. I looked at Mama, sleeping like a china doll. I stroked her hair and sang Moth’s strange song to her: ‘Asleep . . . O sleep a little while, white pearl . . .’ Mama smiled and muttered something softly.
When I heard Nanny Jane’s voice downstairs, I left the room, taking the pills with me, buried in my tight fist.
The air that night was thick and thundery. I turned over and over in my bed, tangling myself in the sheets, desperate to find a cool spot on my pillow. When I did sleep, I dreamt the gigantic figure of Doctor Hardy was peering at me through my bedroom window – as if I were a doll in a doll’s house. His wet, gleaming eye was the size of a carving dish. ‘The man of the house?’ the giant doctor boomed. ‘You’re not the man of the house! You’re just a silly little girl!’ He reached in through the window and tried to pluck me out of my bed with his fat, purple fingers. I ran on to the landing to discover that Hope House was on fire, and I woke myself up shouting out loud.
Later – it must have been after midnight – I was awoken again, this time by hurried footsteps up and down the landing, up and down the stairs. What was happening? My head still swimming with nightmares, I opened my bedroom door to find all the lights of the house blazing and Nanny Jane in a long blue dressing gown, her eyes wide with panic.
‘Go back to bed, please, Henrietta,’ she whispered when she saw me.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘Just go back to bed, please.’ It was more urgent this time.
I looked past her, down the corridor, to see Mama’s bedroom door standing wide open. ‘Where is Mama?’ I asked.
Nanny Jane pointed her nose at me. ‘I am looking for her,’ she said. ‘She seems to have – escaped from her room . . . I’ve called for the doctor. Everything is all right, Henry. But you need to go back to bed right now.’
Then Piglet’s voice wailed unhappily from the nursery. Nanny Jane closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. She turned quickly towards the nursery. ‘Please, Henry,’ she said, ‘I need you to go back to bed.’ And she vanished inside. I heard her trying to shush and comfort the baby.
Nanny Jane’s panic was infectious. Where was Mama?
I listened as Moth had taught me to listen, for the things that couldn’t be heard. My breathing slowed. I heard water cooling in the pipes, the house sighing with sadness and the moon sailing through the night. Somehow, I knew Mama was not downstairs, and I knew Nanny Jane would have checked the upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms. I walked swiftly and silently, straight to the secret door and climbed through.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom of the dusty stairwell. I crept up the stairs and then looked up, and stopped. I held my breath. The cartwheel window in front of me was alight with stars: it looked like a gigantic astronomer’s star globe, lit magically from within. And standing in front of the window, staring out to sea, was a figure. A figure in a moon-white nightgown, her arms outstretched, her pale fingers spread like starfish. It was Mama.
I stepped closer, but she didn’t notice me at first. She was transfixed by something that beamed in the distance, and cast a quivering path of light out over the black sea. The lighthouse. She watched the light as it swept back and forth over the waves.
‘Mama,’ I whispered softly. I didn’t want to startle her.
She turned towards me then. She was awake – more awake than she had been for weeks – but her eyes were still glazed and confused.
‘We need to tidy his room, Hen,’ she whispered helplessly. ‘It’s my fault – I’ve been asleep for a hundred years . . . We need to tidy his toys away.’
She meant Robert. She thought these were Robert’s things. She stumbled towards the bed and picked up the model ship with the broken mast. She tried to straighten it. She sobbed. I saw that a skein of cobweb was caught on her hair.
‘Let me help you, Mama,’ I said.
I took the boat from her very gently and used the hem of my nightdress to wipe the dust off it. Then I put it up on the shelf alongside the rest of the ghost fleet. We sat down on the bed and I brushed the cobweb from her hair. She smiled sadly through her tears. I couldn’t tell if she really saw me or not. I couldn’t help myself – I buried my head in her neck and hugged her. She sat quite still for a second, then she slowly put her arms around me. Tears ran down my neck and her neck too. I felt wet hair against my cheek and I didn’t know if it was hers or mine. She held me tightly and I clung to her. The stars turned slowly in the cartwheel window.
I don’t know how long we sat like that but, after a time, I heard Nanny Jane’s voice on the landing below: ‘Henry! Oh, dear God . . .’ And her footsteps pelted down the main staircase to the hallway in a panic. I thought of my bedroom – just like Mama’s – empty, with the door standing open. Poor Nanny Jane . . . I had to get Mama back to bed. I stood up and helped her to her feet. We made our way down the narrow stairs and into her room. I held on to her arm. How thin she felt, how light and fragile – like a bird.
I remembered what Moth had said about the things that might comfort Mama – little bits of life to lighten the darkness. So I talked to her quietly as I wiped her face and tucked the white counterpane around her, just as I had a few hours before. I told her about Moth and the nightingale that sang when she whistled, and the book of poems by John Keats. My voice seemed to soothe her, so I kept talking. I told her that, when she felt stronger, I would take her to Moth
’s home in the woods, and the nightingale would sing for us both. I described Moth sitting beside her fire – like a forgotten fairy-tale princess – with her wise, wild eyes and her pale face . . .
‘Well, all this nonsense isn’t going to help anyone.’
Doctor Hardy. He filled the doorway like an ogre, all bulging stomach and bulging doctor’s bag. How long had he been standing there, listening? He opened the bag and took out a vial of liquid and a syringe.
‘Not a good idea, young lady,’ Doctor Hardy went on, as he prepared the syringe, ‘filling up Mummy’s head with that sort of codswallop.’ He felt Mama’s pulse and shook his head at Nanny Jane, who had also appeared, taking Doctor Hardy’s place in the doorway.
‘Where have you been, Henry?’ she said. ‘Was it you who unlocked your mother’s door again?’
‘No, Nanny Jane – I promise . . .’
‘Then where on earth—?’
‘Miss Button!’ the doctor interrupted. ‘Mrs Abbott needs quiet. Rest and quiet. She cannot be allowed to wander like this.’ He shook his head again. ‘Her pulse is absolutely racing.’ He went back to his bag to rummage for something. I felt my pulse racing too. I sat beside the bed and held Mama’s hand. She looked at me, and her eyes were clear and steady. Then she spoke.
‘My nightingale,’ she whispered.
The doctor and Nanny Jane both looked at Mama strangely.
‘Delirious,’ he said in a low voice to Nanny Jane. ‘The pills can give some patients hallucinations . . .’
Nanny Jane manoeuvred me from the room and put me out on the landing as if I were a naughty cat. She closed the door. I immediately put my ear against it. ‘I’m going to try a stronger sedative,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Her hysteria is bordering on psychosis, Miss Button. I’m afraid we will have to proceed with further treatment very soon. Doctor Chilvers is keen to start the experimental treatments.’
What experimental treatments? What are they going to do to Mama?
‘Can we discuss this tomorrow, Doctor Hardy?’ Nanny Jane replied. She sounded tired, anxious. ‘I’m afraid it’s been a rather long night.’
It was as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘We ought to press on as soon as possible. In the meantime you’ll have to keep that one away from her . . .’ Me? Does he mean me? ‘Talking to her mother like that is not going to aid her recovery at all – it’ll make her even loopier. I’ll come over as soon as I’ve heard from Helldon to make arrangements for her transfer. Until then – absolute rest and silence, please. And for heaven’s sake, keep that door locked, Miss Button.’
I stepped away from the door as his heavy footsteps approached, but I did not have time to get to my bedroom. He ignored me anyway, bowling along the landing and down the stairs like a tweed-clad juggernaut, and strode out to his motor car in front of the house.
Nanny Jane emerged from Mama’s room and locked the door behind her. Helldon, the doctor had said. Helldon! But Nanny Jane had promised . . . I waited for her to say something but she looked like she didn’t have the strength. ‘Come along, Henry,’ she muttered. ‘Straight to bed for you. I’m sure your mother will feel better in the morning. Doctor knows best.’ And her words sounded oddly like a prayer.
‘You won’t let them send Mama away, will you, Nanny Jane? You won’t let them? You said no one was going to Helldon . . .’
‘Shhh, Henry,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll wake the baby. You’ll wake Mama.’ And she steered me into my bedroom. ‘What would your father say if he knew you were up and about at this hour of the night?’
What would Father say? How I wished he was here to sort everything out . . . I climbed into bed and buried my face in my pillow. Perhaps if I thought about Father hard enough, with all of my heart and all of my imagination, he would hear me somehow, and it would work like a magical spell to bring him home . . . I managed to conjure his voice. Only his voice. He was reading to me from the chair by the window. Father had read The Jungle Book to Robert and me once when we were very small, and I had read it so many times since that I knew it almost by heart. Father was reading the part of the story where Mother Wolf saves baby Mowgli from Shere Khan the tiger – her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan. ‘It is I, Raksha, The Demon . . . The man’s cub is mine, Lungri – mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs, frog-eater, fish-killer – he shall hunt thee!’
I saw the wolf and the tiger snarling at each other, their bodies taut, ready to fight. I felt the dry heat of the night, smelt the strangeness of the cave – an animal smell of damp fur and dried bone-marrow, the sharp-toothed breath of creatures that eat the flesh of others. I felt the fierce strength of Raksha’s anger – the fury of a mother who is ready to kill, or die, to protect her young.
Half awake, half asleep, I felt my throat tightening painfully. If only I could protect Mama and little Piglet like this . . .
I woke up early, knowing exactly what I needed to do.
Still in my nightdress, I ran softly down the stairs and into the study. It was cold and dark in there. I opened the curtains and the room filled with saffron-yellow light.
I sat down at the desk, took a pen and a piece of writing paper, and began a letter to Father. I had the idea that I could perhaps find his address in Italy on one of the letters in Nanny Jane’s room . . .
Dear Father,
I hope you are well and that your work is progressing smoothly. I am quite well too, although I am rather worried at the moment.
Was that the right word to use – ‘worried’? I wanted him to know how troubled things were here at Hope House, but I did not want him to think that I was being hysterical in any way – I needed him to take my words seriously.
I have found out that Piglet is to be looked after by the Hardys, and this is of course very kind of them, but I do not feel that it is necessary, or the best thing for Piglet – or for any of us. Doctor Hardy is also talking about Helldon (is this some sort of hospital? They won’t tell me), and experimental treatments for Mama. I am sure you know all of this, but I felt compelled [that was a good, grown-up word] to write and let you know that I am very concerned. I do not trust Doctor Hardy or his wife. Nanny Jane is doing her best but she is simply not . . .
And then a floorboard creaked behind me.
‘Would you like me to post that for you, Henry?’ Nanny Jane asked. She was looking over my shoulder and her eyes were cold.
‘No, thank you, Nanny Jane,’ I said with a cheerful smile, doing my best to cover the letter with my arm.
‘I think I’d better take it, don’t you?’ she said. It wasn’t a question.
She reached beneath my arm, took the letter and scanned it – her eyes moving rapidly back and forth like the carriage of a typewriter. I felt a rash of heat spreading up my neck. It wasn’t just what I had started to say about her that embarrassed me, it was my mock-adult tone, and the fact that my words exposed me as an eavesdropper, an envelope-steamer, a snake in the grass . . . Nanny Jane folded the letter in two and put it in her apron pocket.
‘We don’t need to worry your father unnecessarily, Henry,’ she said. ‘He has more than enough to think about at the moment.’
I nodded dumbly.
‘Perhaps you could write to him about something else—’ She was interrupted by the rolling crunch of tyres on the driveway. ‘That will be the Hardys,’ she said. ‘I would like you to stay in here, please, Henry. You can use the time to think of something nice to put in a letter to your father.’
She left, closing the door behind her rather forcefully.
Something nice? What could I possibly write? I needed to tell Father how dark and frightening things were here at Hope House . . . But Nanny Jane was going to check every word that I wrote. There was no way I could mention anything about Piglet or Mama or Doctor Hardy without her tearing it up and insisting I start again. Nanny Jane felt that I
had betrayed her. Well, she had promised me that nobody would be going to Helldon. She had betrayed me too.
I was in a sort of trance now, staring helplessly at the blank page in front of me. I thought of blizzards, snow blindness . . . Then my hand picked up the pen and started writing again. But I didn’t write a letter this time, I wrote a story – a fairy tale about a queen who had been captured by a wicked goblin called Despair. There was a witch in my fairy tale, and a moth, and a nightingale who sang from the summit of the Impossible Mountain . . . I looked at what I had written and my head sank into my hands. I remembered Father’s words to me on the night before he left: ‘You’re too old for fairy tales now, Henry.’ What use was a story? Stories couldn’t change anything.
Muted voices were drifting from the sitting room.
‘There was another case in the papers last month,’ Mrs Hardy was saying. Even her voice sounded reptilian to me now – dry-mouthed and coldblooded. ‘A neurotic mother – poor thing – so confused after the birth of her twins that she drowned them both in the bathtub.’ She sounded thrilled by the drama of this terrible story. ‘Given the circumstances in this household and the severe condition of poor Mrs Abbott (my husband has told me about her delirium) – given these circumstances, I consider taking little Roberta under my wing as no more than my duty as a neighbour and a Christian.’ She sounded very pleased with herself. I tried to picture her face and wondered if she was looking at Piglet hungrily again, as she had the other day.
I heard Nanny Jane’s voice then – low, defeated: ‘Well, all her things are in the bag, Mrs Hardy, along with clothes for the week and some of her favourite toys and books. Please let me know if you need anything else. She’s generally an easy-going little thing.’ I heard a well-timed grumble from Piglet, as if to prove Nanny Jane wrong. ‘And please do let us know how she’s getting along. Her sister is very anxious about this and we will all miss her terribly . . .’