by Pauline Fisk
She stared at him. He didn't seem to know her. 'The telescope… ' she said.
'I never use it,' he replied. 'Don't know what to do with the thing. Are you feeling better?' He peered through the gloom as if she were a perfect stranger. 'You certainly needed a lot of sleep.'
'Y-yes,' she said. She put the beads back down. 'I don’t know why, but there’s nothing to worry about. I'm fine now.'
He stood, head bent beneath the ridge of the roof, running his fingers through his rumpled hair. 'We were really worried for a while,' he said. 'But Mum thought that rest would do the trick. She sat with you. You couldn't have been in better hands.'
Bonnie looked at him through the dusty air. 'You ought to have some breakfast,' he said. 'You still, if you don't mind me saying, look very pale.' He wore workman's overalls and shabby carpet slippers, and his hands were pitted and dark like well-worn tools. Michael's hands were like that too, but this man was different from Michael. Bonnie couldn't explain how. He wasn't the man who'd watched her escape in his balloon. Just as the Mum wasn't really Maybelle and the girl wasn't herself.
'We can talk more after breakfast,' he said.
'W-where are we?'
'Highholly House,' he said.
Bonnie had heard that name before.
9
Arabella woke excited and didn't know why. It was the same bedroom as usual. Nothing had moved, nothing changed.
Why was her heart beating so fast? Why did she have that birthday feeling, as though there'd be presents at the breakfast table, cards on the mantelpiece, a cake waiting in the pantry?
Then she remembered. There was a strange girl in Mum and Dad's bed. She'd come out of the sky. That falling, blue moon hadn't been a dream - it had been a hot air balloon. A strange girl… Mum had said - if the girl was interested and up to it - that Arabella could show her over the hill. She’d even agreed that they might end up friends. At the thought of it, Arabella's excitement shrivelled to awful, ordinary shyness. It was a lonely life on Highholly Hill. She didn't know how to make friends.
'I'll go and see if she's awake. I won't talk to her. I'll just peep at her through the crack in the door. I don't have to talk to her if I don't want to.'
Arabella got out of bed, struggled into shorts and T-shirt and tiptoed to the room next door. She pushed the door till she could see through the crack. The bed was empty. Suddenly, awfully, she thought, 'Something's gone wrong. She's run away or died in the night.'
But then she heard a burst of voices below her in the kitchen. The stair door swung open as a cat pushed its way through. Breakfast smells rose to greet her, bacon, sausages, fried tomatoes. And everything had to be all right. Mum would never be cooking breakfast and singing and laughing if the girl had gone and died.
Shy again, Arabella climbed down the stairs. At the bottom she pushed open the door.
'Ah, there you are,' said Dad. 'Awake at last. Come and meet Bonnie.'
He took her elbow, as if he knew how hesitant she felt, and led her in. The girl was sitting at the table picking at her food. Arabella nodded at her, feeling foolish. She couldn't think of a thing to say. The girl nodded back. She was pale-skinned and fair-haired like herself, maybe her own age. Arabella sat down opposite her. The girl lowered her eyes. Arabella realized that she was nervous too.
'She's shy like me,' she thought.
Mum brought her some breakfast. 'Eat it quickly, won't you, Arabella? Then you can take Bonnie out.'
Arabella cast Mum a silent, appealing look for help. But Mum ignored it. She turned her attention to Florence, who was agitating for her feed. The girl glanced at Arabella again. It was a strange, searching, awkward stare. She seemed to take her in from head to foot. She looked now at her hair, now at her eyes and nose and mouth, now at the way her hand lifted her fork.
'What's so strange about the way I look?' Arabella thought. 'Why's she staring at me like that?'
She pushed her food around her plate and stared back at the girl, who looked away again. Neither of them could think of anything to say. The silence, as they fiddled with their food, became uncomfortable.
'I can't take her out. I won't know what to say,' Arabella thought. She pushed her plate aside and followed Mum into the pantry where she was looking for jam.
'Can’t you come with us?' she said. 'You know the old stories about the hill. You’d make a far better guide than me. I won't know what to talk about.'
'You’ll manage,' Mum said. 'Don’t worry. You'll think of things to say. It’ll come to you.'
'But she makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't know who she is,' Arabella said.
Mum looked out of the tiny pantry window up the back of the hill. 'For now, it doesn't matter who she is,' she said. 'The thing that matters is that she's what you wanted. Isn't that exciting? You were looking for change, and this could just be it.'
Arabella frowned. 'What do you mean?'
Mum turned her gaze from the hill and looked at her daughter. 'I know what it's like to watch the still dust hanging in the air, and to be lonely and to think that nothing's ever going to change. I know what it's like to want a friend.'
Dad pushed his head round the pantry door. 'Mr Onions is here,' he said. 'I'm off. I'll see you later.'
He kissed Mum and Arabella and then disappeared, slamming the kitchen door behind him. 'When I first met Michael, I was too shy even to speak to him,' Mum said. 'It's hard making friends at first, but you'll be all right. Shyness goes away. Now stop making a fuss, and get on with it.'
They did the house first. Arabella showed Bonnie the dusty living-room with its inglenook fireplace full of cobwebs and dried flowers.
'We hardly ever use this room in summertime,' she said.
Bonnie stooped and peered through the cobwebs. Benches were fixed to the wall on either side of the hearth. A great beam held up the weight of the chimney-breast. A mantelpiece sagged beneath plates and candlesticks.
'Mum says chimneys were always built first in the olden days,' Arabella said. 'If you got your chimney up in a day, then the land you built on would be yours.'
Bonnie hardly heard her words. She'd never seen such an old house. She stared up at the criss-crossing of oak beams above her head. Arabella crossed the room and opened a door which led into a lighter room. 'This is where I have my school lessons.'
'You mean you don't go to school?'
'It's so far down to the village. You wait and see. It's just impossible getting in and out in winter, unless you walk. Mum was taught up here too when she was a girl.'
'But what about other children?'
'Other children?'
'Don't you have friends?'
Arabella shook her head and looked uncomfortable. 'I see people when we go down for the Bank Holiday Show and when we have our harvest supper or go to market. But it takes so long getting up and down, and there aren't other children up here any more. Mum says the cottages at the back of Roundhill used to be full of families. They worked up here and over the back in what used to be the mines. Mum says all the children used to come for school here. But now there's only me.'
'It must be great, having school at home.'
'It does get lonely.’
They worked their way back through the kitchen and along the upstairs corridor. Arabella paused at the attic stairs. 'There's nothing up there,' she said. 'Just an attic, and the floor's not safe. I'll show you our bedroom.' She led Bonnie on to the room at the end. Bonnie looked at her suitcase on the bed.
'Mum says you can sleep in here with me,' Arabella said.
They stood side by side, their reflections caught in the dressing-table mirror. 'Don't you think,' Bonnie said nervously, 'that we look a bit… alike?'
Arabella peered at their reflections. ‘A bit, I suppose,’ she said. 'We're the same height and have the same colour hair, but that’s all. Why do you ask?'
'Oh, I just wondered,’ Bonnie said.
They came down the main stairs. 'We never use the front door,' Arabella
said. 'Or the hall.' She opened a door at the back of the hall. 'This is the last room you haven't seen. This is Mum's sewing-room.'
They stepped into a neat little sitting-room with flowers in vases and velvet curtains tied back from tall French windows and a beautiful treadle sewing-machine inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A dressmaker's dummy was half-draped with a calico frock. In a corner sat a spinning-wheel, beside a basket of oily fleece. A couple of sinking armchairs were set before a shiny, tiled fireplace.
'It's Mum's special room,' said Arabella, making for the French windows. 'She spins in here as well as sewing, and knits us sweaters by the fire in the winter. You can shut your eyes and almost feel that she's present. Come on. We'll go through here. I'll take you up the hill now.'
They climbed up the garden meadow behind the house. The holly grove loomed closer. Long strands of fleece shook like bony, white fingers in the breeze. Bonnie stared. It reminded her of other, different hollies somewhere else. 'What is that place?' she said.
'It's the holly grove,' Arabella replied. 'It's where we found you.'
Bonnie pictured the trees between the tarmac forecourt and the old wall. 'More hollies,' she thought. She followed Arabella up, and into, and across the grove. The air in it was hot and still. The breeze had died but Bonnie shivered.
'Are you all right?' Arabella said.
'I... I feel, oh I don't know… like someone's watching me,' Bonnie replied.
'I feel like that sometimes, as well,' Arabella said. 'I usually run as fast as I can.'
They both broke into a trot, only stopping, breathless and hot, half-way up the top field. Arabella led Bonnie through the gate onto the open hill. Here there were no more fences and walls. The sheep's path led them up through a mass of bracken and heather, brambles heavy with green berries, and whinberries.
'What's that?' Bonnie asked. She stared at a decrepit, broken sign that said DANGER! KEEP OUT!
Arabella pulled away the brambles in front of the sign to reveal the dark mouth of what seemed to be a cave. 'It's called Batholes,' she said. 'There used to be mines here. I told you that, didn't I? They say one of the passages came out here. I'd love to see what lies beneath this hill, but no one'll come with me.'
She looked at Bonnie almost hopefully, but Bonnie was looking above Batholes now, to the standing stones on top of the hill.
'And what are those?'
'We call that Edric's Throne,' Arabella said. 'There's a smooth stone in the middle of it. It's like a seat. You can sit up there and see everything. It's the highest point for miles around.' They began to climb again. 'It's very old,' she said. 'Mum says it's the oldest bit of the hill.'
The sheep's path divided. 'That's Roundhill,’ Arabella said, pointing away from the stones. 'Over the back's where the cottages are. Some of them are ruined now. The Onions live down there, and Ned and Henry. This hill's Highholly Hill.'
'Highholly Hill, with Edric's Throne on top of it,' said Bonnie. She stopped and looked down upon the farmhouse roof and the smoking chimney between trees.
'Look,' Arabella said. 'You can see why I don't go to school.' She pointed out the long snake of a track that started at the farm gate and wound its way down between fields and hedges towards a distant cluster of roofs and a church spire. 'It's terribly steep,' she said. 'And so long. It goes down into the Dingle. Do you see? It's very rough down there. And then it goes over Hope Brook, up the other side, and all the way beyond it, carrying on for miles.'
Above them, a skylark sang. 'This is the quietest place I've ever been,' Bonnie said. 'I've never seen a real farm before. I've never been anywhere so… empty.'
'Sometimes you can hear the hill humming,' Arabella said. 'If you listen carefully.'
They both listened. All Bonnie could hear was Dad's tractor somewhere on the hill. 'Come on,' Arabella said. 'Mum says I'm not to take you on to the top. She says I'm not to tire you. Let's go down to the barns.'
They picked their way down, down, down to the side of the house at last, where Arabella led them over the stile into the orchard. 'Do you see that there?' she said. 'It's blocked up now. It used to be our well. We have mains water now, but we didn't even used to have electricity. The well water was wonderful. It's a shame it's blocked up. Dad did it when Florence was born. He said it wasn't safe.'
She led Bonnie through the gate onto the terrace. They both looked across the yard at the barns. 'Come and see where we've put your balloon,' Arabella said.
Bonnie hadn't expected it. You could tell that from her voice. 'My balloon,' she said. 'You've got my balloon?'
'Of course we have. Don't just stand there. Come and see.'
Arabella unbolted the barn door and led the way in. It took a minute in the musty light to see anything clearly but when they did there was the balloon, spread-eagled upon the straw. The ropes hung loosely down it. The gondola lay on the ground.
Bonnie pushed past Arabella. She took up handfuls of the material and held it as if it was a distant memory from another world. Arabella watched her curiously. From across the yard, Mum's cool, fresh voice cut through the heat and mustiness of the barn.
'Arabella, Bonnie, lunchtime…'
'We'd better go,' Arabella said. 'Mum'll be cross if we're late.' She heard the tractor in the yard, and men's voices and Jake's bark. The two of them made their way back to the door. 'They can't afford to waste time when they're harvesting.' Arabella explained.
Bonnie put the cloth back on the bales. Together they came out into the sunlight. Suddenly Arabella realized she wasn't shy any more. Mum had been right. It had gone away. She looked at Bonnie by her side.
‘She's not shy, either. We're both all right,’ she thought.
PART THREE
Wild Edric
10
The sun climbed down the sky and the hill cooled. Up on the field, the workers carried on, but Bonnie crept away from them. She followed the teatime shadows along the bare ground behind the harvester and down the meadow. There was so much to think about, so many questions, so many feelings to understand.
Standing up above, Mum saw her go. The silky dog began to follow, but Mum called him back again. She heard her say, 'No, Jake,' as if she knew Bonnie wanted to be alone. The harvester began to whirr again. By the time she reached the back of the house, it sounded very far away.
Mum's French windows were open. Bonnie slipped between velvet curtains into the shade of the sewing-room. As she moved through it, different smells rose up to greet her. Here tea roses, here polish, here sunshine, woodsmoke from the ashes of the fire, the earthy dankness of unspun fleece.
Bonnie stood in front of a mirror on the wall. 'Why don't they ask me who I am and where I come from?' she asked herself out loud. 'I don't know how I'd tell them — I don't think I want to tell them — but they seem to take my being here for granted. My suitcase is unpacked. My bed's made up. No questions asked.
'Why can't they see I look like Arabella? And like all those people in the paintings down the stairs? Why do I look so much like them, and why've they got the same clock in the bedroom, the same cream cats, the same telescope and holly trees, and even the same name of the house?
‘What is this place? Why did I come here?’
Bonnie thought of the balloon falling through the sky, of it out in the barn. The shadowboy flickered through her memory. The shadowboy. Until now she’d forgotten all about him. 'Where are you?' she said out loud. 'You must be here somewhere. You brought me to this place. You must know all about it, and where we are and why.'
Bonnie looked about the room as if she expected the boy, having been remembered, to appear. But he didn’t. 'Perhaps you've done your job and gone,' she said, wondering if he’d ever come back. Would he take her home again? She didn't know. Bonnie didn't know anything.
Wearily she sank into an armchair. Tucked down the side of it, she found a bag of knitting. She pulled it out and held it on her lap and imagined Mum sitting in this chair knitting through the winter afternoons. Sudden
ly, briefly, she imagined Maybelle too. Maybelle in this pretty room with its French windows and velvet curtains, with its decorated sewing-machine and spinning-wheel and sinking, lazy chairs. Oh, how Maybelle would have loved all this – a man to share her life with, and a baby, and a big, old house and Mrs Onions, to help her with the things she had to do.
'Poor Maybelle, life's not fair.'
Above the mantelpiece, a painting of a man and woman looked down at Bonnie. Their hair gleamed, their clothes foamed about them like fairy wings and their jewels glittered. They sat on white horses beneath a haloed moon. Bonnie stared at them and forgot Maybelle. She wondered how she hadn't noticed them before.
'Hello,' said Mum. 'Don't let me disturb you. I've just come down to make some thermos flasks of tea. We're going to carry on while it's still light.'
She stood by the French windows shaking straw out of her hair and fanning herself with her sunhat. Jake padded past her, looked up into Bonnie's face and wagged his feathery tail. Bonnie stretched out a tentative hand and Jake allowed himself to be stroked.
'He likes you,’ Mum said. 'You're honoured. He doesn't often make new friends.' She looked up at the painting too. 'Do you like it?' she said.
'Like what?' said Bonnie.
'My painting,’ Mum said.
'I think it's great,' Bonnie said.
'I do too. My grandfather painted it. Michael doesn't like it much. That's why I keep it in here. It's rather sentimental, isn't it? Hardly a farmer's painting.'
'Who are those people?' Bonnie said.
'That's Lady Godda,' Mum said crossing the room. 'And he’s Wild Edric and that’s his Throne. See, there in the background. That mound of stones.'
‘Yes, but who is Wild Edric?' Bonnie said.
‘He and Godda are supposed to be the guardians of Highholly Hill,’ Mum said. 'The old miners used to say they could hear them knocking in the darkness underground. They live down there, you see. Only come out to sit on the Throne when it's covered in clouds. Or when the hill's in danger and they've got to warn us. The story goes that the thunder roars and the lightning cracks and the very hill itself shakes when they appear.' She smiled. 'We say they keep us safe up here,' she said. 'All these years, just the one family. We say they keep us on this hill.'