by Pauline Fisk
‘Tomorrow just won’t do!’
Abren got dressed, crept past Pen and Sir Henry’s door, taking comfort from the fact that she could hear them snoring, crept downstairs and slipped out, leaving the front door on the latch.
Outside she found the town walls silent, not a car or house light in sight. She headed for the railway bridge, taking the quick route across town rather than the long one following the river. She passed the high town cross and plunged down the road between the library and the castle, reaching the station to find its sliding front doors locked and its forecourt empty. The taxi rank was empty and the station’s windows were dark.
Abren stared up at them, feeling foolish. Why couldn’t she have waited until morning, she asked herself? Waited until she could have told Pen and Sir Henry about the blanket, and then they could have helped her find it? Why did everything always have to be a secret? Why couldn’t she ever trust anybody? And why was she always running off?
With no answer to her questions, Abren started up the footpath between the station and the castle. She was sure that the side gate would be locked, just like everything else. But when she tried it, she found it open. Maybe nobody ever came up this dead-end path any more, or maybe the gate had been forgotten, just like the waiting rooms beyond it.
Whatever the reason, Abren slipped through the gate and started down the platform, heading for the Guinness hoardings. She couldn’t see the old abandoned station rooms behind them yet – couldn’t even see their roofs and chimney pots – but she could feel them waiting for her.
She reached the end of the platform, where railway tracks snaked off into the distance leaving Pengwern behind. Only yesterday Abren would have seized the chance to follow them to Birmingham or London, but now all she could think about was her blanket. Nothing else mattered – nothing felt as real to her as embroidered flowers and birds, rivers and mountains, streets and houses, trees and boats. Nothing as real as a feathery edge against her cheek and a knot under her chin.
Abren reached the hoardings and squeezed between them. The waiting rooms sat at the bottom of the bank, dark and hidden, with the river running underneath them. There was no hint of light down there, but there was a twist of woodsmoke rising from a chimney pot.
Someone was at home in those waiting rooms, hiding in the darkness! And that someone had to be Old Sabrina. Abren stared at the smoke, glad that the old woman hadn’t stumbled on the girders and fallen to her death, but wishing her anywhere but here – at least for now. She slid down the bank and started looking for a way in that wouldn’t bring them face to face.
Finally she found it, squeezing through a broken window into the toilet, then making her way into Phaze II’s room, looking for the light switch. But the moment she started across the room, she knew that something was wrong. And when she found the light, she realised what it was.
Everything had gone. The bags and boxes on the floor, the horse-hair mattress and the blankets, the camp bed and the plastic icicle fairy lights. Even the stacks of china cups had gone, and the tea bar had been yanked off the wall, leaving only a row of gaping holes.
Abren could have cried. Not just because she couldn’t see her blanket in this room swept clean of everything. But for Phaze II. Once this bare, dark place had been a home – maybe not most people’s idea of home, but his all the same. But now if he ever wanted to come back, he’d have to start again. Start turning nothing into something, always knowing that someone might come back and destroy it again.
Sick to her stomach, Abren turned away – only to find herself standing in front of the door to Old Sabrina’s room. She caught a whiff of woodsmoke coming from it, and imagined the old woman in the ruins with not even a chair to sit on, staring at the door as if she knew that Abren, yet again, was to blame.
Abren felt even more sick. She would have run away if she could, but something drew her to the door. She peered around it – only to find that everything was as she had left it. Exactly the same! The carpets on the floor, the piano with its polished brasses, the mirror with its gilt frame. Even the chandelier with its cut-glass droplets was the same, and so was the marble fireplace. Old Sabrina’s chair was pulled up in front of it, and the only difference was that a fire now burned again in the grate – and old Sabrina had returned.
Abren felt herself turn cold all over. What had kept this grandeur safe while even the chipped cups been taken from next door? Why had all these treasures been left behind, and what did the mysterious Old Sabrina have to do with it all?
Abren turned and fled, stumbling her way back through the toilet window and out on to the old track. She scrambled up the bank and, as if something was coming after her – old and terrible with birds’-nest hair and swollen feet – Abren tore between the hoardings and along the platform, heading back to Compass House without daring to look round or stop.
Even when she reached the house, she didn’t feel safe. She slammed the door behind her and shot the bolts, glad for iron studs and thick stone walls. Then she ran up to her bedroom, rammed a chair under the door handle and climbed under the bedcovers. And even then she didn’t feel safe, tossing in the bed as she asked herself, who was this Old Sabrina who never looked in anybody’s face, who shared the river’s name, and who sat like a queen, with powers of enchantment to keep the world at bay?
It was a question that nagged Abren for the rest of the night as she lay sleepless without the comfort of her blanket.
What swans do
In the end Abren must have fallen asleep because when she heard the screaming she thought that it was a dream. Only when she awoke properly did she realise that it came from outside. It was morning. The light was seeping coldly through her windows – and something terrible was happening.
Abren tumbled from her bed and tore out on to the balcony. And there beneath her on the river, in the grey morning light, a pair of swans were locked in battle. It was they who were doing the screaming. Their necks were knotted in mortal combat, and the bigger swan was winning. It was flapping at the younger one, churning up the waters as it tried to get on top of it. Tried to drown the younger swan by biting it and holding it down. And the younger swan was fighting bravely, but it was losing. The bigger swan was screaming in triumph, but the younger swan was screaming for help.
And Abren cried in answer, ‘I’m coming! I’m coming! OH, I’M COMING!’
She tore down through the house without bothering to get dressed. Why the two swans were fighting, she didn’t know. All she knew was that the younger swan was screaming for her. Through the kitchen she tore, past Pen who called, ‘What’s going on?’, and down the terraced garden, praying not to be too late. Finally, she reached the jetty.
And she was too late.
Abren watched, horrified. The bigger swan was right on top of the younger one, holding it down with the full weight of its body. It was thrusting the young swan’s neck under water with its hissing beak. The young swan’s struggles were getting weaker and weaker. Abren sensed it giving up.
‘You can’t!’ she cried. ‘You’ve got to live! You’ve got to fight! Fight for your life!’
Scarcely knowing what she was doing, Abren went to jump into the river, slippers, pyjamas and all. It meant everything to her that the young swan should live. She couldn’t have explained why. It just did. Before she could do anything, however, Sir Henry came tearing down the garden in his dressing gown.
‘What d’you think you’re doing? Get back from there! Don’t you know how dangerous swans can be?’
He tried to grab at Abren but she tore out of his grip, yelling, ‘I don’t care if they’re dangerous! We can’t just let them kill each other!’
‘We can’t change nature!’ Sir Henry yelled back. ‘It’s territorial – they’re always killing off their young! It’s what swans do!’
What swans do! Abren braced herself to plunge into the water, regardless of Mr Henry Stupid Scud-Morgan. She would have separated the swans with bare hands if she had to, but Pen
came rushing down the garden too, clutching a broom. She thrust the two of them aside and had a go herself, getting the broom between the swans and trying to prise them apart.
But by now it was far too late. Abren turned away – she didn’t want to see the young swan floating limply on the water and the bigger one gliding off, its neck held high as it hissed in triumph. She started up the garden. Pen called after her, ‘Abren – Abren, are you all right?’ But Abren didn’t answer. Sir Henry called as well, but she couldn’t trust him any more. He’d been her friend, her bold Sir Henry, but he’d stood aside and let it happen.
Abren began to cry – not with tears that anyone could see, but deep inside. There was more to what she’d seen than just a swan fight, dreadful though it was. She reached the house and slammed the door behind her. There was something deeper here. Something personal. She had remembered something, hadn’t she? Another terrible half-memory.
Abren crept upstairs, bowed beneath the weight of her hidden past. She barricaded herself in her room, as if a chair under the door handle could keep her memories at bay. She refused to open up when Pen came knocking. Refused to answer when Sir Henry came too, calling through the door that he was really sorry for what he’d said – that he hadn’t meant it to come out that way.
Abren didn’t care what he’d meant. She lay on the bed, staring at the red paper banners. There were no sweet dreams for her, whatever they might say, only a nightmare which started with her name and ended with the memory of a hand upon her neck, pushing down, down down. A nightmare which had brought her to this town and trapped her in it. And now her memories were stalking her. She couldn’t get away from them, however hard she tried. They were even here, at the door.
Downstairs, Pen and Sir Henry started arguing. Pen wanted to try again with Abren, but Sir Henry wanted to leave her alone. Abren would talk to them when she was ready, he said. And all the more so if they didn’t force the issue.
He must have won because Pen went out, taking the car, and Sir Henry went down to the boat shed where Abren heard him drilling and hammering. She was on her own again. She stared at the doorknob, feeling a fool. Nothing was beyond that door, waiting to get her. What had been the matter with her? She removed the chair, and the landing was empty, of course. She started down it, opening doors as she went just to prove the point.
But no matter how many doors she opened, the sense of being stalked wouldn’t go away. It was ridiculous, of course, but Abren never knew where another half-memory might be waiting. She even checked outside the front door, armed with Sir Henry Morgan’s cutlass, which the plaque beneath it said had been a killing implement in its day.
But nothing nasty lurked outside on the pavement and standing, clutching a cutlass blunted with the lives of men, Abren felt a fool. The things she feared most could never be held at bay – not even by the sharpest weapon. They weren’t outside the door. They were in her mind.
But Abren clutched the cutlass all the same, returning into the house and roaming through it like a pirate on the night watch. She checked round every door – and there were plenty of them in Compass House! Behind them she found shelves crammed full of books, baskets full of ironing and dirty washing, windowsills full of model ships, tables full of paints and brushes, walls full of maps. And everywhere she went, like a theme which held it all together, she found old photographs.
Compass House was full of them. Many were of Pen and Sir Henry having fun, looking young and growing up. But some were of the river. On one wall Abren found an old man sitting in a coracle. On another she found a square-rigged little boat which reminded her of the embroidered one on her missing blanket.
She found it again later, on the cover of a book. She picked it up and turned it over. The book was about Pengwern, with pictures comparing the old town with the new. Abren started thumbing through, fascinated by the changes, reading snippets of the town’s history as she went along.
Behind the boring stuff about medieval drainage, Elizabethan traffic problems and trouble with the high street’s sinking cobbles, she found a town she’d never known existed. Right here in this town, there had been plagues and fires, fairs and masques, power struggles and bitter feuds. There had been great battles. There had been betrayals. There had been fortunes made by merchants whose family names still remained in the town’s forgotten mansions. There had been hangings and fights. Incarcerations in the debtors’ gaol. Moments of horror in the town infirmary, and moments of healing too.
All human life was here, and all human death. And the river wove its way between it all.
Abren stared long at the book. Finally she went to put it aside and it fell open at a page with an illustration. A watercolour girl stared up at her from a watercolour river where she leapt over waves as white as wild horses.
And the girl was Abren.
Abren stared at the page, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing. But the girl was her, without a doubt. She had her black eyes, her face and even her little shift-dress. And tied around her shoulders, with the jade-green river washing over it, she even had her little comfort blanket. And underneath it all, daubed in bold black letters, was the title of the painting:
RIVER SPRITE
Abren was still staring at the book when Pen came in. She called that she’d brought Phaze II home, but Abren didn’t hear her.
‘Are you all right?’ Pen said, sticking her head round the door.
Abren didn’t see her either. She had closed the book, but she could still see the girl. She mightn’t look like her to anybody else, but Abren knew who she was. This was more than just a memory. It was the truth about herself. Maybe she only glimpsed it from afar, but there was a story in that girl’s black eyes – and one day she would know it! A story in those waves like wild white horses. A legend waiting to be found, and the legend was hers.
‘I said are you all right?’ Pen asked again.
‘I’m fine,’ Abren replied, but she clutched the cutlass tight.
In the library
Later, Abren went in search of Phaze II. She found him almost unrecognisable, with scrubbed skin, shampooed hair and new clothes. He smelt of hospitals and looked like an ordinary boy. It was as if the stuffing had been knocked out of him. He wasn’t a wild boy any more, slipping through the darkness in his ragged black coat. Nor was he the nearest Abren had to a friend, propping her up when she was sick, making her eat when she didn’t feel like it, living through the winter with her when she scarcely knew that she was alive.
He was just a boy, who probably had a home somewhere, and a family and an ordinary life which he had run away from. He was a stranger.
‘How are you feeling?’ Abren asked awkwardly. ‘Are you better now?’
Phaze II looked at her with his good eye. The other one was newly bandaged; he had medicine for his ear infection, antiseptic cream for his cuts and bruises and inhalers for his cough. He had an appointment to see a dietician about his strange toleration of the wrong sorts of food and his inability to hold down the right ones, and a specialist in bronchial diseases about his thin chest.
‘In other words, I’m just fine!’ he said.
They didn’t speak again. What was there to say? They picked at their lunches in silence and avoided each other’s eyes. Later, Phaze II half-apologised for being sharp with Abren. But she turned away. She would rather have a sarcastic Phaze II than a tame one, trying to be friendly because Pen had told him not to be so mean. She wanted the old Phaze II back again. The one who ran along the girders and was never afraid of anything.
In the end she left him looking like a lost puppy, hanging around the water’s edge with Sir Henry, as if he didn’t quite know what had happened to him. She went to find the book on Pengwern, but it had gone and for all her scanning the bookshelves and rifling desks and tables, she couldn’t find it.
Abren turned back through the house, looking for Pen. But she had gone too, nipped out to the library, according to Sir Henry, with her stack of overdue books.
‘She asked over lunch if you wanted to go too, but you didn’t answer,’ he said.
Abren borrowed Phaze II’s coat, without bothering to ask, wrapped it around her as if it made her invisible, and sneaked across the town, head down like a fugitive. The library, when she reached it, was a massive, cathedral-like building with tall, arched windows and ceilings ornately ribbed and moulded. She lurked about in the main entrance, between old columns carved in stone, and a pair of statues in Elizabethan dress. A plaque in Greek and Latin hung over the door, and Abren hoped it didn’t say that children were forbidden. Certainly children were going in and out, looking perfectly at home. Perhaps the words said ‘Welcome’.
Abren plucked up her courage and slipped through an electric door, which opened for her as if by magic. Inside she found no cold cathedral but a warm, bright fairyland. Appearances had yet again proved deceptive. She wandered along shelves bulging with books, videos, tapes and CDs. Past tables crammed with computers, aisles busy with borrowers, and nooks and crannies full of browsers tucked away for a good read.
All around her were arrayed thousands of books, and it was impossible to guess where the one on Pengwern might now be. So Abren started where she was, with ‘Modern Lives’, and worked her way through ‘History’, ‘British History’ and ‘Military History’, ‘Geography of Britain’, ‘Architecture and Town Planning’, ‘Photography’, ‘Earth Sciences’ and even ‘Novels A–M and N–Z.’
But she couldn’t find the book.
Even when she came across a section devoted to local history, she still couldn’t find the book. Perhaps someone had taken it out again. One of the school-children maybe, who were working at the tables with piles of books stacked around them.
Abren mooched along behind the tables, the black coat pulled around her tightly as she glanced over shoulder after shoulder. But the schoolchildren started noticing her, and turned round and stared. She returned to the shelves, rifling through them, trying to make it look as if she had as much reason to be here as anybody else. Suddenly, a librarian came walking straight towards her with a purposeful air.