Kezzie at War

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Kezzie at War Page 11

by Theresa Breslin


  Kezzie surveyed the farmstead to which the hired waggon driver from Dalton was pointing with his buggy whip. It was a very run-down-looking homestead, she thought. The paint on the wooden slats, which made up the walls, was bleached and flaking. The curtains in the windows were torn and dirty. There was no garden to speak of, just weeds and broken bits of crockery and tools lying about the yard.

  ‘You are sure this is the place?’

  ‘Yup. That’s the Tchekov’s section. Beats me why someone like you is visiting with folks like them.’ He spat a long squirt of tobacco juice on to the side of the road. ‘Ain’t none o’ my business though.’

  Kezzie climbed down from the waggon.

  ‘Will you wait here for me please? I won’t be long.’

  She picked her way towards the front door. There was a faint trace of smoke coming from the chimney, but apart from that she could see no sign of life. Kezzie rapped on the door. Nothing happened. She knocked louder, and glanced back at the waggon driver. He was staring at the horizon. She rattled the catch and the door fell open. Kezzie’s first reaction was to turn and leave, such was the scene of squalor which met her eyes. The room was filthy, the floor unswept for many months, the chair covers and linen unwashed. Food, clothing, pots and pans lay about everywhere. She stepped inside.

  ‘Here, what do you think you’re doing?’

  There was a woman stirring a pot on the fire in the corner.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Kezzie. ‘I knocked on the door. No one answered so I came in …’ She trailed off and looked around her. Could Lucy possibly be in a place like this?

  The woman’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Kezzie.

  ‘What do you want here?’ She advanced on Kezzie with the ladle still in her hand. ‘What call has the likes of you got to come around here?’

  Kezzie stood her ground.

  ‘I’ve come from the children’s home in Dalton,’ she said. Well, it wasn’t quite a lie. ‘I’ve come to see the little girl you took.’

  The woman relaxed her grip on the ladle.

  ‘The home child,’ she said. ‘That was a bad deal we got there, not much work in her, always poorly, needin’ feed.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘Ain’t able to talk, not right in the head neither.’

  ‘Where is she?’ asked Kezzie as calmly as she could. Her heart was pounding.

  ‘Out in the lean-to.’ The woman stared at Kezzie. ‘What do you want to see her for? What business is it of yours?’

  Kezzie smoothed her gloves into her fingers and held her head up and stared back at the woman.

  ‘I told you,’ she said firmly, ‘I am from the home. Now take me to her at once.’

  The woman led the way through the yard to a lean-to at the back of the house. Here, scraggy chickens pecked in the dirt and an old cat with matted fur slunk away under the house.

  The woman pushed the door of the shed open.

  ‘She ain’t been well the last few days,’ she whined. ‘I’ve been having to nurse her. That was soup I was making her, extra work for me on top of everything else I have to do.’

  Kezzie barely heard her. She had stepped past her into the darkness. By the light from the door she could see a straw mattress on which a small figure lay huddled, half-sitting against the wall. The air was foetid, it was a place one would not have kept animals in. The stench of urine and vomit made Kezzie gag. She went forward slowly and looked at the child in the bed. She was smaller and thinner than Lucy had been. Her hair was coarse and tufted and moving with lice. Her face was sallow and sunken, her skin was lacerated and covered with scabs. But worse, much worse, were the child’s eyes. They stared blankly out at nothing. The woman was right. This child was indeed an idiot.

  Kezzie felt anger. Anger at the woman who had treated a child so badly, and anger at the authorities which had allowed a child to be placed with people such as these. She would go straight back to Dalton, but not to the home. She would go to the police and report this. She turned towards the door. And then the fact of the matter hit her.

  If this child was not her sister, then where in the wide world was Lucy? She had followed the trail very carefully and had not found her. Where could she be? Not in Scotland, not in Canada. Where? There was nowhere else left for Kezzie to search. Lucy was lost to her for ever.

  Kezzie paused with her hand on the door. A feeling of the greatest despair came over her. The woman was watching her. Kezzie put her forehead against her hand and bowed her head in defeat.

  There was a silence in the room. Nothing. Kezzie felt a breath against her cheek. She sensed something … an echo. She raised her head. The woman had not moved. She glanced in the corner of the shed. Neither had the child. Then what? Kezzie looked at the woman.

  ‘Did the child say something?’ she asked her.

  ‘I told you,’ said the woman. ‘She be dumb …’

  Kezzie held up her hand to silence her and walked towards the bed.

  ‘Did you speak, little girl?’

  The child gazed at her vacantly.

  Kezzie knelt down beside the child’s bed. She took one thin hand in both hers.

  ‘Little girl,’ she said gently. ‘Did you say something?’

  There was a terrible empty silence in the room. Kezzie felt as though the world had stopped turning. She moved her head slightly to try to catch the child’s gaze. Was there something there? Was her imagination playing tricks? A gleam of light in the eyes. Was it a reflection of something? Kezzie felt at her throat for her little silver locket. She held it up before the child’s eyes.

  ‘See,’ she said.

  Nothing.

  Kezzie sat back on her heels. She closed her eyes. She could feel the warm tears beginning to trickle through her lids.

  ‘Oh, Lucy, where are you?’ she whispered.

  Then she heard, no more than a breath on the air, a sigh. One word.

  ‘Kezzie.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Papers

  KEZZIE OPENED HER eyes very slowly. The child was staring at her fixedly. Kezzie reached out her arm and the child seemed to shrink away from her. Kezzie longed to hold her sister and hug her, and cry and shout with joy, but something told her that it would be the wrong thing to do.

  ‘Lucy, Lucy,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve come for you. I’ve come to take you home.’ And very gently she stroked her sister’s cheek with the back of her hand.

  Lucy looked around her with wide frightened eyes. She struggled to speak again.

  ‘Home?’ she said. She closed her eyes.

  Kezzie stood up and brushed her skirt down.

  ‘I want to take this child away now,’ she said to the woman.

  ‘You can’t,’ the woman said. ‘You need papers, or something.’ She had a sly look on her face.

  Kezzie thought quickly.

  ‘I have them,’ she said. ‘In my bag.’

  By the Lord God, she decided, I am taking Lucy away from here if I have to knock this person down.

  ‘Show me,’ said the woman.

  Kezzie looked at Lucy lying on the mattress. Her eyes were half-closed. She appeared to have lost consciousness.

  ‘We will discuss it in the house,’ said Kezzie and walked out of the lean-to.

  They went round the side of the shack.

  ‘I’m going to speak to the driver for one minute,’ said Kezzie. She went to the buggy. ‘I have some business to discuss with that woman,’ she said to the driver. ‘While I am doing that I want you to take the travelling rug, go to the lean-to at the back and wrap up the child who is there and put her in the buggy.’

  The driver looked at her for a long minute.

  ‘It is quite legal,’ said Kezzie, ‘she is my sister.’

  The driver hesitated.

  ‘I’ll double your fare,’ Kezzie pleaded. Then she said, ‘She is my sister. She was put up for adoption by mistake. I have come from Scotland to find her.’

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  Kezzie went back to the
house.

  ‘Show me your papers,’ said the woman.

  Kezzie took out the letter written by Lady Fitzwilliam. The woman glanced at it, and something in the way she did caught Kezzie’s attention.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the woman, ‘doesn’t seem right to me.’

  Kezzie saw her ship’s boarding pass lying at the bottom of her bag. She placed it in front of the woman.

  ‘This is the official form from the home which we both sign, and you may keep it as proof that you handed the child over to me.’

  Kezzie held her breath. The woman stared at it for a second or two.

  ‘That’s official then?’ she asked.

  Kezzie let her breath out slowly. She had guessed correctly. The woman could not read. She took the fountain pen which William had given her and signed the boarding pass with a flourish.

  ‘You sign the bottom or make your mark,’ she said. Then with a flash of inspiration, she added, ‘And of course you are due payment. I am authorised to give you twenty dollars.’

  Kezzie counted the money out on the table. Any reservations which the woman might have had vanished completely. She picked up the money quickly.

  Kezzie stood up.

  ‘My driver has taken the little girl out to the buggy. I will take my leave of you.’

  It required all of Kezzie’s willpower not to run down the path. She climbed in the back where the driver had laid Lucy and stroked her hair and talked to her all the way back to town.

  ‘Dearest child, beautiful child,’ Kezzie murmured, stroking Lucy’s hair.

  ‘Which room you in?’ asked the driver as they stopped outside the hotel.

  Kezzie told him and he carried Lucy straight up.

  ‘I’d say that child needs a doctor,’ he said.

  ‘I intend to find her one right away,’ Kezzie answered him. She opened her purse. ‘I have another three dollars to give you.’

  He shook his head. He looked at Kezzie.

  ‘You come all the way from Scotland to get her?’

  Kezzie nodded.

  ‘Ain’t no more’n a child yourself,’ he said and went out closing the door behind him.

  Kezzie bathed Lucy gently with a cloth as she waited for the doctor’s arrival. At first she had thought to get on the first train and put as much distance between herself and this town as she could, but Lucy’s condition seemed to worsen. Her breathing was shallow and she could never have travelled in the condition she was in.

  There was a rap on the door.

  ‘Dr McMath. There is a sick child here?’ The man was about sixty with silver hair.

  ‘My sister,’ said Kezzie.

  The doctor put on a pair of glasses and examined Lucy. He gave Kezzie a severe look.

  ‘What exactly is going on here?’

  ‘She was put in an orphanage in Scotland by mistake when I was involved in an accident. They sent her to Canada, and some terrible people adopted her, and I got her back today.’ Kezzie could hear her own voice begin to shake. ‘I … I … is she very sick?’

  ‘She will need to go to hospital,’ said Dr McMath. ‘There is more than physical sickness here. What you tell me explains it a little. She is deeply traumatised, shock, you know.’

  He took off his glasses and put them in his top pocket.

  ‘No hospital,’ said Kezzie at once. ‘I will nurse her here. She is not going to hospital. She is not going anywhere away from me.’

  ‘Young lady …’ began the doctor. He was interrupted by a loud knocking on the door.

  Before either of them could move the door was opened abruptly and a man in blue soiled work overalls stood there.

  ‘You,’ he shouted, pointing at Kezzie. ‘You were at my place today and took my girl. Well, I’ve come to take her back. This ain’t legal.’

  And to Kezzie’s horror she saw that he was holding in his hand her ship’s boarding pass.

  CHAPTER 27

  The doctor’s house

  KEZZIE STEPPED BETWEEN the man and the bed where her sister lay. She felt herself go rigid with fright. She looked down at Lucy lying so still, barely making any indent on the bed. Kezzie felt as though Lucy was almost unreal, a frail little spirit caught into its body only by her, Kezzie’s will … and now, she felt herself faltering.

  Dr McMath’s voice when he spoke surprised her. It was polite and gentle, very gentle.

  ‘What’s the matter, John?’ He went towards the farmer. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘I got that girl, fair and square from the home. You know the trouble we’ve had, we’ve got no help on our place. Now, she ain’t been much use, but she’s ours. I don’t know if this is legal.’ He waved the boarding pass again in the doctor’s face.

  Dr McMath took Kezzie’s boarding pass from John Tchekov’s hand.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  Kezzie held her breath.

  ‘It’s her authority, she says.’ The farmer pointed at Kezzie. ‘She come and took the child and this gave her leave to do it, she says.’

  The doctor looked at the card.

  ‘I …’ he started.

  ‘Fifteen dollars ain’t enough,’ said the farmer.

  ‘Fifteen dollars?’ said Dr McMath.

  ‘Twenty,’ said Kezzie immediately. ‘I paid twenty.’

  ‘Twenty?’ asked the farmer. ‘She only said fifteen.’

  ‘Twenty,’ said Kezzie. ‘That’s what the children’s home told me,’ she added quickly.

  ‘The home told you?’ Dr McMath raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Twenty?’ said the farmer once again. ‘She said fifteen.’

  ‘I paid your wife twenty dollars,’ said Kezzie, thinking to herself, you are not going past me.

  Dr McMath groped in his pockets for a minute or two.

  ‘I don’t seem to have my reading glasses with me,’ he said. He held up the pass to the light and squinted at it. ‘It’s certainly an official document of some sort, John,’ he said. ‘What I’ll do is this. I’ll hold on to it just now and investigate this properly for you. In the meantime, you couldn’t take this child back with you anyroad. She is quite ill. I will have to take charge of her.’ With that the doctor put the boarding pass in his bag and led the farmer to the door.

  ‘She was poorly when she came to us,’ said the farmer. ‘It’s not our fault.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not,’ said the doctor soothingly. ‘You never ill-treated a living thing in your life, John.’ He saw the farmer out. ‘I’ll call by later in the week and see you.’

  Dr McMath came back into the room. He took his glasses from his pocket and studied Kezzie’s boarding pass. Then he said, ‘Now, young lady, I’d like you to tell me exactly how you and your sister got here.’

  Twenty minutes later Kezzie and Lucy, wrapped in a travelling rug and several blankets, were on their way in the doctor’s car to his house in the nearby village of Waterfoot.

  His wife, Sarah, a plump grey-haired woman, came to meet them. Kezzie liked her at once. She asked no questions but only took Lucy from her sister’s arms, carried her upstairs and put her to bed. Dr McMath followed. He gave Lucy some clear medicine and then they all went downstairs to the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t know how people can behave like that to a child,’ said Kezzie, pacing up and down.

  ‘Ignorance,’ sighed the doctor. ‘True ignorance, and of course the Depression.’

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ fumed Kezzie. ‘The place was not clean. We were as poor but we did not let ourselves get into such a state.’

  The doctor’s wife said nothing as she set out a meal of potatoes and pie.

  The doctor regarded Kezzie gravely.

  ‘Perhaps you do not appreciate exactly what it is like to live through hard times. Farming in Canada has suffered from real drought. Plagues of grasshoppers and a lessened demand for wheat. At one stage the Prairies were in total financial collapse. The amount of small farms lost to mortgage companies was colossal. All over Canada men were riding
the rails. Travelling on the roofs of the freight trains in freezing cold looking for jobs that did not exist.’

  Kezzie was silent. She remembered the bothy they had stayed in, and how she had felt the start of their slow slide into misery. Only having a sliver of soap and no hot water. Being utterly tired, day after day. The amount of energy needed to wash and dress oneself, when lack of food and lack of purpose was ever present. What would have happened to them if their fortunes had not changed? She recalled the people in some of the areas in Glasgow, the hopeless and helpless slouch of the men on the street corners.

  ‘Britain is rearming,’ continued Dr McMath, ‘and whatever you may think of that, it does provide employment.’ He paused. ‘Besides which …’ He got up and went to look out of the window. ‘I helped John Tchekov bury eight children in the field behind his farm, not one of them lived more than a year. I reckon his wife was looking for something to love and just couldn’t cope when it went wrong on her.’

  Kezzie put her head in her hands. She felt ashamed, instead of triumphant at having found Lucy. She was overcome with weariness and worry.

  Mrs McMath brought a cot bed for Kezzie and placed it beside the bed in which Lucy lay. Kezzie drifted into a troubled sleep gazing at her sister and woke in the morning still tired. Lucy was no better.

  Kezzie wrote to Grandad via Bella telling him where they were but not giving much detail of what had happened. She said that Lucy was improving. She could not bear to write the truth.

  Another day passed the same way. Dr McMath was worried. Kezzie could see that. He had dosed Lucy regularly and at least her breathing seemed easier. Kezzie, who scarcely left Lucy’s side, mentioned this to him.

  He frowned. ‘It’s not her bodily health which concerns me the most,’ he said. ‘It is the child’s spirit. She has put a barrier between herself and reality because life became too painful for her. We have to work at removing it. If we can,’ he added.

  It was true, though Kezzie. Even though Lucy spoke now, it was only a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ and that very reluctantly. Mostly she lay propped up in bed in a half-dream. Kezzie could have wept when she thought of the little girl who had screamed with delight on the roller coaster or gone with her jam jar to search for tadpoles in the burn.

 

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