Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows, One Witch (Maybe)

by Siobhán Parkinson

  There was an old oil-cloth on the square kitchen table. It had little orange flowers on it, like the montbretia you see growing wild at the seaside, only without the foliage. There were rings on the cloth, where somebody’d put a cup or mug down.

  Beverley put out a disapproving finger and traced one of the rings. It was sticky. She looked at the gunge it created on her finger tip for some time before the significance of this struck her.

  ‘This is a fresh ring,’ she said loudly, waving her brown-tipped finger about excitedly.

  The others looked at her blankly.

  ‘I mean, somebody put a cup down here not too long ago. Or maybe it was a jar of honey or jam. Anyway, whoever lives here can’t be far away.’

  Beverley was moving around the room now. She put a tentative hand out to the range. It was stone cold. Well, it was June after all. There was a gas stove too. Also cold. Of course, gas stoves don’t retain heat for long. Then she looked in the sink, which was brown with age. There were no taps, only a dangerous-looking contraption that might or might not be a pump. A mug with tea in the bottom sat in the middle of the sink, with a plate of crumbs tilting against it. There were streaks and blobs of honey on the plate too.

  Beverley stuck her finger into the dregs of the tea. Not quite stone cold, but not what you could call warm. Luke-cold, she decided. Yes, somebody had definitely had tea not very long ago. The occupant of the house couldn’t be far away.

  The sash window over the sink, which was overgrown with some sort of climber, was thrown up to let the summer air in. The climber explained why it was so dark in here, that and the glowering clouds outside. Biggish chinks of grey-black clouds showed through the foliage curtain. Beverley peered out of the window, half-convinced she’d heard a shuffling sound outside.

  ‘Hello,’ said Beverley suddenly.

  The others jumped, but it was only a very large cow that Beverley was talking to, a cow that was making her way towards the house, swaying her tail and making slow, wet, snuffling noises as she waded through the garden.

  The cow looked lugubriously in at Beverley through the leafy curtain and made that hypnotic movement with her jaws that cows do, like a large, insolent, thoughtful child chewing gum.

  ‘I suppose we could milk her if the worst comes to the worst,’ came Elizabeth’s voice from the sofa.

  ‘Oh!’ said Beverley. ‘Yes, I suppose we could.’ But she didn’t like the idea. ‘Kevin, do you know how?’

  But Kevin didn’t reply. He was sitting quietly in the half-bockety chair, wondering what to say if she came back, the witch, the madwoman, whatever she was, and found them all here, lolling about in her kitchen.

  After a while, the cow turned away and started to munch the garden. The children sat and listened to the wet, munching sounds, and their tummies rumbled.

  Chapter 14

  WHO’S BEEN SITTING IN MY CHAIR?

  RIGHT, THOUGHT BEVERLEY, the thing now is to see to Elizabeth’s foot. The whole expedition had been a bit of a disaster, she had to admit, and it was time just to cut their losses and make good their escape. But they couldn’t do that with Elizabeth laid up. Somehow, they had to get the foot better – and quickly.

  The sink was the best prospect, but Beverley couldn’t see how they were going to get Elizabeth’s foot into it. It wasn’t so much the foot that was going to be the problem as what to do with the rest of Elizabeth while her foot was in the sink. Beverley was so absorbed in this problem that she didn’t hear the footsteps outside in the garden.

  Kevin heard them, though. He’d been straining and listening for this very sound ever since they’d arrived at the house. He thought he’d heard the faint click of the gate closing. It was the merest suggestion of a sound, but he was almost sure he’d heard it. Why hadn’t he heard it screech open? Maybe they’d left it hanging open. Yes, yes he thought they had. The closing of the gate was followed by soft, shooshing steps, the sound of someone wading through lush grasses and wildflowers in the garden.

  He swung a glance around the room. Elizabeth and Beverley were apparently deep in consideration of Elizabeth’s swollen ankle. But Gerard was sitting slightly apart and staring out of the window. At the sound of the footsteps, his head swivelled around and his eyes met Kevin’s. Kevin could swear he’d heard it too, but neither boy spoke. They just held each other’s stares and sat very, very still.

  Now there was another sound. It was like humming. No, no, it wasn’t humming. It was more like somebody talking. Or maybe it was sort of half-way between talking and singing. Yes, it was like someone murmuring, crooning, in the soft, sing-song tone a woman might use to her baby. She was talking, crooning to herself. She must be off her rocker.

  The murmuring and the shooshing steps came nearer. Surely the girls must hear it now? But neither Elizabeth nor Beverley looked up. Kevin saw Gerard’s eyes grow wide, but he willed the younger boy not to scream or flinch. Now there was a hand on the doorknob. It creaked in its socket and turned with a moan.

  Oh my God! thought Kevin. I should never have let them come here. I should have put them all somewhere safe, in a cave or behind a sand-dune or something, and I should have swum back to the mainland for help. Except I can’t swim. Oh, why did I never learn to swim?

  The door inched open.

  What sort of monster was going to appear, and what was she going to say to them? Would she have a wart on her nose and a pointy chin? Frantically, Kevin searched his memory. Had he ever actually seen the madwoman of Lady Island? He couldn’t remember that he had. Would she have an evil black cat and a wicked wand? Would she shoo them all out of her house and threaten them with the law? Could you actually be sued for trespass anyway? Or would she take them hostage and blackmail their parents? Or fatten them up for her dinner? Nonsense, Kevin told himself, that was utter nonsense, but even so, an eerie, fearful feeling crept along his skin and made the little hairs on his arms shoot up like a hedgehog’s quills.

  The kitchen door opened fully, and in walked a stoutish woman in a beige raincoat tied around the middle with blue twine, and with a funny squashed-looking, battered brown velvet hat on her head. She had an off-white cat in her arms.

  Gerard gave a yelp of surprise, dismay, terror and delight. Fat! He leapt to his feet, his arms outstretched. But he stopped short of actually wrenching the cat from the woman’s arms, and stood, waiting for her to hand Fat over.

  Beverley and Elizabeth looked up in surprise at the sound of Gerard’s yelp and saw the woman. A hand flew to Beverley’s mouth and clamped it shut. Screaming now would never do.

  For a long time the woman didn’t speak. She just stood there in the doorway in her three-quarter-length wellingtons – the tops had been hacked off – and stared at the children, as if drinking them all in. Another cat had followed her into the kitchen, waving its tail high in the air and lifting its paws daintily in an elegant dance in and out between her legs, over her wellington-booted feet. The woman seemed almost ordinary, apart maybe from the wellingtons and the blue twine. She looked at the children curiously, but she didn’t seem surprised to see them. The four children stared back at the woman, silent, apprehensive, curious.

  The only one who made any attempt at conversation was the cat in the woman’s arms. He was purring loudly. He had his forepaws around the woman’s neck in an unusually familiar gesture, and his head was stretched up to nuzzle her cheek, in a loving hug.

  The silence stretched on, and still the woman stood and stared. A thought struck Kevin. He leapt up, meaning to say, Would you like to sit down, Ma’am?, but although he opened his mouth and moved his tongue against his teeth and lips, no sound came out. But the woman understood his gesture and stepped forward to take the chair he was shoving forward. Kevin was so eager to seat this strange hostess in her own house that he gave the chair too strong a push in her direction, and the crossbar came away again in his hand. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and tried to fix it back in place, but he couldn’t seem to manage it. The more he shoved, the l
ess able he seemed to fit the chair back together. In desperation, Kevin pushed at it too hard, and one of the uprights forming the back came out as well and rattled to the floor. Kevin looked up to see how the woman was taking all this.

  She was just standing there, coolly watching him. Suddenly she tumbled the cat out of her arms and took off her funny old hat, to reveal surprisingly youthful chestnut hair, which she shook out with some pride. As soon as the cat turned around to land gracefully on his feet, Gerard saw that it wasn’t Fat. It was a longer, thinner, taller cat, but with the same dirty-cream fur. Disappointment wrenched at him and made his eyes prickle and his throat ache.

  The woman put her hat on the table and then she said in a high-pitched, stagey voice: ‘Who’s been sitting in my chair?’

  For a moment nobody breathed a sound. Then, as if at a signal, the four children all laughed, a short, experimental sort of laugh. Then they laughed a bit more. They laughed and laughed. Their laughter became hysterical. They doubled over with laughter and tears flowed down their cheeks. It wasn’t all that funny, really, but somehow it was as if they couldn’t stop laughing. Miraculously, the woman laughed with them.

  When his laughter had finally settled into sporadic, gusty sobs, Kevin fixed first the upright and then the crossbar into place, and then offered the chair again. The woman came forward and sat down. For a moment there was another fraught silence.

  ‘You’re a Mulrooney, from the shop at Tranarone,’ said the woman at last, to Kevin, in an ordinary sort of voice, not the squeaky baby-bear voice she’d used earlier.

  What a relief! thought Beverley. What an ordinary thing to say! Maybe she wasn’t anyone to be scared of after all. Well, for goodness’ sake, what had they expected? A witch? Hardly! How could she be? What nonsense!

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Kevin. ‘Kevin. I’m the oldest.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Kevin,’ said the woman. ‘I knew your father, before he – well, in the old days. I know your poor mother too, of course.’

  Kevin smiled faintly in acknowledgement of the family acquaintance, but he said nothing more.

  Again, silence filled the kitchen, broken only by the cats’ continuous purring. Beverley started to fidget. Kevin looked ill at ease again. Elizabeth was pale with pain or apprehension. Gerard looked distraught. Only the woman seemed unperturbed by the situation.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, to everyone’s relief, and, looking at Beverley for some unexplained reason, she went on: ‘You might at least put the kettle on.’

  The kettle! That meant tea. There might even be bread and butter, or biscuits. In spite of themselves, the children perked up at the thought, though they didn’t dare to show their eagerness for food – not so much out of politeness, but out of something more like wariness. The woman seemed friendly enough, but they didn’t want to push their luck.

  Beverley jumped up and ran to the sink, snatching the dirt-encrusted kettle from the stove as she passed. Confronted by the strange-looking contraption that might or might not be a pump, she touched it speculatively, wondering what to do.

  ‘It’s a pump,’ said the woman. ‘You have to work the handle up and down.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Beverley. Really, she was perfectly ordinary, a perfectly ordinary woman. Nothing to be afraid of, Beverley told herself.

  Beverley applied some strength to the pump handle, and sure enough on the second or third pull the water came rushing out, straight onto the dishes in the sink, which made it splash back up and all over Beverley’s clothes. She flinched, and then moved the dishes aside and placed the kettle in the stream of water. It filled with a musical gush. With shaking hands, Beverley took the kettle to the stove.

  ‘Matches!’ she hissed at Elizabeth, who had to wriggle to get them out of her pocket. The gas lit with a smelly blue fizz, and Beverley put the kettle carefully on top of it. All the while, the woman watched her intently, not saying a thing.

  When she’d finished, Beverley stood with her hands behind her back, as if waiting for more orders. She wondered if they should apologise for being here, or explain. But their hostess didn’t look the sort who expected or wanted apologies.

  ‘The cups are on the dresser,’ said the woman, who seemed to be enjoying having someone to order around. ‘And there’s a few packets of shortbread under the dresser. And honey. I’ll have honey with mine. I’m afraid that’s all I can offer you, though, I’m out of food.’

  Out of food? thought Kevin. How could she be out of food? He’d delivered her groceries to the pier that morning, and there’d been powdered milk, sardines, baked beans, fresh vegetables and fruit, packets of soup, custard powder – any amount of food. There’d been shortbread too, of course, and loads of honey. There always was.

  ‘Hell’s bells!’ said Beverley under her breath, peering into the cupboard that formed the lower part of the kitchen dresser. It was stuffed with packet upon packet of shortbread, and there were pots and pots of honey, and nothing else. But she didn’t comment, just brought the things to the table and laid them out – the shortbread, the honey, a cup with the Indian tree design on it and a chip out of the goldy bit at the top of the handle, two blue-band mugs that were a bit brown on the inside, a mug that said I’m the Boss in large bold letters and was crazed on the inside, an empty honey jar to do for a fifth cup, a teapot without a lid, a yoghurt carton half full of sugar and with a sugar-encrusted spoon sticking out of it, and the tea-caddy, which had some partially rusted red roses on it.

  ‘I can’t find any milk,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘There isn’t any,’ said the woman. ‘I’m always running out of milk.’

  ‘No milk?’ asked Beverley. ‘But what about the cow?’

  ‘Oh, she doesn’t mind,’ said the woman. ‘She doesn’t drink tea.’

  ‘No,’ said Beverley, suppressing a smile, ‘I mean, do you not milk her?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ said the woman in a shocked voice.

  ‘This is like a proper pilgrimage,’ said Elizabeth happily. ‘Black tea is just perfect.’

  There she went again, with her blessed pilgrimage!

  ‘So, who’s going first?’ asked the woman unexpectedly, as she lined the cups up in a neat row on the table.

  The children started. Going? So she wasn’t friendly after all! She wanted them to go! They looked sadly at the little tea-party laid out on the table and they thought about how hungry they were. But they thought they’d better get out of here before she turned nasty.

  ‘We’ll all go together,’ Gerard spurted out.

  ‘No, no, I don’t mean that,’ said the woman, waving her hand in a sit-down-and-don’t-be-annoying-me gesture. ‘I mean with the story. Who’s going first with the story?’

  Elizabeth gulped. How did this woman know about the stories?

  ‘What story?’ she asked, in a small, shaky voice.

  ‘Your story,’ said the woman.

  ‘I’ve already told mine,’ countered Elizabeth.

  ‘Yes,’ she said mysteriously. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  In a flash, Elizabeth remembered a sneeze on the beach. A sneeze none of them had sneezed. She remembered a snort too. She’d thought it had been the sheep. And she remembered an eerie sense she’d felt all day that someone was watching them and listening to them. Surely the woman hadn’t been sneaking around and spying on them? Elizabeth shifted uneasily on her sofa. What exactly was going on here? And how come the woman was so keen to hear a story? Was she some sort of collector of stories, or what?

  ‘It’s my turn,’ said Beverley, jumping in bravely. ‘I’ll tell.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said the woman. ‘But first, the tea.’ And she reached out, opened the teacaddy and tipped a large quantity of fine black tea into the lidless teapot. Then she gestured to Beverley to pour hot water on it, and, when it was filled, she plonked the honey jar on top, instead of a lid. ‘Keeps the steam in and melts the honey,’ she remarked to no-one in particular.

  ‘So it does!’ agreed Ge
rard, smiling at the woman’s simple cleverness. She smiled back, a wide, warm smile, or so he thought at any rate.

  Chapter 15

  BEVERLEY’S TALE

  ‘ONCE THERE WAS A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG GIRL with long legs and wonderful long golden hair,’ Beverley began, after everyone had got steaming cups of hot red tea and thick fingers of shortbread, dripping with honey.

  ‘No, no,’ the woman interrupted. ‘That can’t be right. Stumpy little legs and wiry black hair, I think would be a more accurate description.’

  Beverley didn’t quite know how to respond to this. She wondered if she should humour the woman, to be on the safe side, or whether she should just tell the story her way. She thought for a few moments and then said: ‘No. This girl had long slim legs and long golden hair.’

  ‘Well, it can’t be the same girl then,’ said the woman, sounding satisfied with her own explanation.

  ‘Maybe not,’ agreed Beverley warily. ‘Anyway, this beautiful girl –’

  ‘But in that case,’ went on the woman, ‘I think you must be telling the wrong story. I want to hear your story.’

  ‘This is my story,’ said Beverley.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I’m telling it, aren’t I?’

  ‘Hmm.’ The woman didn’t seem convinced.

  ‘So anyway, this beautiful young girl lived deep in the forest.’

  ‘What forest?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Just a forest,’ said Beverley.

  ‘But there aren’t any forests hereabouts.’

  ‘It wasn’t hereabouts.’

  ‘I don’t think I understand this story at all,’ sighed the woman.

  ‘You don’t have to understand it,’ said Beverley with sudden authority. Now that she was telling a story, she felt in charge of things again. ‘You just have to listen. And don’t ask so many questions. It only confuses the issue.’ She surprised herself by sounding so positive, but she had an irresistible urge to shut the woman up and get on with the story. She felt almost compelled to tell it.