Double Spell

by Janet Lunn

  Aunt Alice didn’t laugh. She sat deep in her chair pushing her hands open and shut, open and shut against each other while she thought. It wasn’t that she truly believed the doll had a memory and was sending the twins on a hunt for a long ago house. But she did believe that the world was full of things that didn’t appear to make sense.

  Mr. Hedley didn’t laugh either. He nodded his head and thought.

  “Aunt Alice has a brooch like that,” said William, looking up again from his spot on the rug.

  The answer he got was four blank stares. Finally Aunt Alice put down the teapot she had been busy with and said, with a brilliant smile, “You’re right William, I do have a brooch like that. But how on earth did you know that?”

  “You had it on when you came to see us in the old house.”

  “The old house?”

  “Before we came to your house.”

  Suddenly everyone (except Mr. Hedley, of course,) remembered the day, months ago now, when Aunt Alice had come to visit them in Spring View Acres.

  “My goodness,” said Aunt Alice, “what a memory you have.”

  “When William grows up,” said Jane sourly, “he’s going to be an encyclopedia.”

  “Can we see the brooch?” Elizabeth asked eagerly.

  “It’s in the jewel box. Top drawer of my dresser in the bedroom, Elizabeth. We’ll all have a look. Give you a good idea what you’re looking for.”

  “Oh, we have a close idea,” said Jane, a bit grimly.

  Elizabeth was gone such a long time that Aunt Alice sent Jane after her. Jane found her sister standing in front of the high old dresser looking at something in her hands. Her face was the color of the gray wall behind it.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” she said, turning and holding the brooch out for Jane to see, “but this is Hester’s brooch.”

  Elizabeth Makes Up Her Mind

  Aunt Alice plainly didn’t believe the twins when they said the brooch was the brooch in their dreams. If there had been something about their story that had caught her attention when they had first told it, it was easy to see that she now felt the way Joe had about the sick basket dream – it was just one of those twin things.

  All the same, she gave them the brooch. “Not my style,” she said as she put it into Elizabeth’s hand. “Remember it was my mother’s, your great-grandmother’s. So take good care of it. No matter whose it was before that,” she added and the twins couldn’t help noticing that her eyes twinkled when she said it.

  Mr. Hedley, like Aunt Alice, wasn’t too interested in the brooch. But he was interested in the doll.

  “I shall enquire for you,” he offered, “from Miss Air or Miss Sky or whatever her name is at the antique shop, then from the specialists in dolls at the museum – I shall have to have the doll, of course, but you won’t mind that, will you?” He turned a comfortable smile on the twins and Elizabeth said, “No, you can have it if we can have it right back.”

  “You can have it, Martin,” said Aunt Alice, biting off a thread from sewing she had begun, “when its face and its clothes are done. You leave it here a while. I want to work on it …”

  “But Alice,” Mr. Hedley was outraged, “I must have it unchanged, before it is restored. Don’t you see …”

  “But we really have to take it home,” said Jane picking it up from Aunt Alice’s lap and holding it firmly.

  Elizabeth looked at her sister in astonishment. What was Jane thinking about. Here was Aunt Alice ready to help them fix Amelia. Here was Mr. Hedley dying to take her to the museum and find out what he could about her, maybe solve the whole mystery. What did Jane mean?

  “I’ll have to have the doll in order to find out anything. You can trust me,” he said gently. “I’ll be most careful of it, most careful.”

  Jane knew he would. She liked Mr. Hedley. “It … it’s not that,” she said stammering a little.

  “What’s the matter with you,” hissed Elizabeth. Jane wished she knew. She felt she had to have the doll with her. She didn’t know why.

  They tried to talk her out of it, but Jane wouldn’t budge. (Aunt Alice wondered afterward why it was the twins’ mother had told her, “You’ll get on with Jane, she’s like you, practical.”). Finally they gave up.

  “If you should change your mind,” said Mr. Hedley as they were leaving, “you will get in touch with me, won’t you?” Jane assured him they would, but it was Elizabeth who put his address and phone number in the pocket of her dress.

  Elizabeth was getting cross. It was so hot – so heavy hot – the doll dreams were getting worse, so bad she was tired of them and a little frightened. For some reason, which she did not understand, she did not have the same feeling of real dread that Jane had. But she was worried and anxious to have the problem solved.

  “Why,” she asked as they walked down Hayberry Street, “won’t you let Mr. Hedley have the doll?” It was the fifth time she had asked the question since they had left Aunt Alice’s apartment. The answer she got was still the same – a shrug.

  “But, Jane, maybe he can find the next clue. We can’t do anything without that. Whatever’s going to happen is just going to go right ahead and happen if we don’t do something. We’ll get so mixed up with that other memory we’ll go plain crazy. You sure are funny!” She kicked out at a pebble that was lying loose in the street. “First you want lists and organizing and action. Now, when we get some help you won’t have anything to do with it.”

  “I know,” said Jane miserably, “I know but I can’t help it. Run along William.” William was looking from one twin to the other as though he were watching a tennis game.

  “Yes, do,” agreed Elizabeth. “You’re the worst, nosy boy …”

  “I found the brooch,” said William.

  “Yes, you did,” Jane leaned down suddenly and gave him a tight hug. “You found the next clue William. You’ve been a very great help and we thank you.”

  Completely taken aback by the unexpected approval, William did what he always did when he was embarrassed. He began to make car motor noises, louder and louder and when he thought they were loud enough, he took off down the street toward home running his motor at top speed all the way.

  “He did find the next clue, even if we don’t want it,” Jane said when William had rounded the corner of Sabiston Court.

  “I guess so. I don’t want it, that’s true. But, like it or not, I guess you’re right. It’s our next clue.”

  That night was a series of nightmares for both of them, and morning brought no comfort. Jane woke quickly in the early heat with Hester’s face fading away from the light. Elizabeth, seeing the look on Jane’s face, dragged her down to the beach. She tried once more to convince Jane to let Aunt Alice and Mr. Hedley have the doll. It was no use.

  Elizabeth had never felt so frustrated. She understood Jane’s mood so well. Hadn’t she often been in black moods, moods Jane had never had any patience with? She knew now how Jane must have felt about them.

  “Let’s go home,” she said with resignation. And they left the ducks to eat somebody else’s toast crusts.

  Their mother, seeing them come up through the garden as she was making breakfast, said to their father, “I’m worried about Jane.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she seems so pale and jumpy. Not a bit like Jane. And another thing,” she handed Papa a piece of toast, “have you ever seen Jane so wrapped up in a doll?”

  Mr. Hubbard admitted he hadn’t.

  “Even when the twins were tiny,” Mama said, “they, especially Jane, seldom looked at dolls, and now neither one of them can leave that antique alone for a single minute.”

  “They’ve developed an interest in history and antiques. They’re growing up.” Papa looked pleased.

  “Maybe,” said Mama. “But I think there’s something strange about it and I don’t like it. I’m going to try … Hello,” she said as the twins came in the door. “Fried or scrambled?” and whatever it was Mama intended to say about
the twins’ strange behavior never got said. She put them to work that morning – to try to work out of the twins whatever it was that bothered them.

  Obediently they swept and dusted, but the things that happened only made them more frantic. Jane’s heavy black mood clung to her tighter and tighter as the morning progressed. She couldn’t help herself. And the heat of the last week seemed, this morning, to be gathered altogether in one lump, settling over their edge of the city. The sun was barely visible through the heat haze, but its effect was in no way diminished. It was too hot to move. But Jane tried. As she worked things got worse.

  She was sweeping out the fireplace in the dining room when she heard a voice behind her say, “Sweep the corners, Nan, it’s bread day,” and thought she saw the edge of a long green dress disappear into the kitchen. But when she went into the kitchen there was only Mama there, not making bread but washing dishes. She gritted her teeth, finished her sweeping, and went into the garden to weed around Aunt Alice’s kitchen vegetable patch.

  Someone rushed past her, laughing, and whispered, “Whist! I’m for the barn. Here she comes.” Footsteps retreated in haste down the stone walk and when she looked up there was Hester coming toward her. She dropped the trowel from her perspiring hand and forced her shaking legs to stand. Hester vanished. Jane leaned weakly against the side of the house, pushing her wet hair from her hot forehead. She was shaking. I’m going to be like old Mrs. Van der Zande, she thought, poor old Mrs. Van der Zande who could never remember if she was Mrs. Van der Zande or Mary Queen of Scots about to have her head cut off. She tried to smile at the idea, but it wasn’t funny and her lips trembled at the attempt.

  Leaving her trowel where she had dropped it, she walked toward the house.

  Elizabeth watched her from behind the living room curtain. She was a bit shaken herself – and for the same reason. A few minutes earlier she had been cleaning the dining room windows when she heard someone singing. It had sounded like Jane, and since the song was “Barbara Allen,” a song Jane very often sang, she hadn’t thought anything of it at all. In fact she had even hummed along with it a way. The song had stopped and a voice, not Jane’s, had said, “If they come you’ll stay this time,” and then quite sternly, “do you hear, Liss?”

  She had felt an answer come to her own lips when Mama had called from the next room, “Elizabeth, Aunt Alice is on the phone and wants to know how high your doll is.” Elizabeth nearly cried. She had been so near something, she was sure she had, so near understanding something terribly important. She tried to get back into the memory but without success. It was at that point she saw Jane outside, leaning against the stone wall of the house. She put down the window spray and made up her mind. She marched out of the house.

  “Why don’t you go for a swim?” she asked Jane. “Maybe you’ll feel better.” Jane looked at her from frightened eyes.

  “Come on, go get your suit, I’ll finish the weeding.” Jane told Elizabeth about Hester. “Never mind,” said Elizabeth. “I’ll take a chance. You go on.”

  Relieved to have moral support, Jane agreed. Elizabeth watched her go into the house and waved her away a few minutes later when she came back out again on her way to the lake. As soon as she was out of sight, Elizabeth dropped the trowel and, disregarding the heat, raced into the house and up to the tower bedroom. She grabbed the paper with Mr. Hedley’s address and phone number from the pocket of the dress she had worn the day before. She dashed back downstairs and phoned the number, praying with every turn of the black dial that he would answer her call. He did. Would he be in that afternoon, Elizabeth asked, and could she bring the doll to him? He would and would be delighted.

  Quickly telling Mama where she was going, Elizabeth ran back up the stairs, changed her clothes, and took the doll from its hiding place.

  “There,” she said, smoothing down its tattered clothes, “we’ll know now, we’ll find out for you, you’ll see.” She put Amelia in her box and left the house, feeling only a twinge of guilt at playing this trick on her sister.

  “She’ll be all right, though,” Elizabeth told herself. “After all, the whole family’s there. And we have to find out, we just have to.”

  Hester

  Elizabeth hadn’t been gone ten minutes when Papa emerged from his study, came into the back garden, and flopped down on the grass. Mama followed him minutes later with two glasses of iced coffee.

  “It’s too hot to breathe. This is a devil’s day, a real devil’s day. I move we all go to the show,” Papa said between sipping his coffee and mopping his forehead.

  “What’s playing?” asked Mama. But Papa said he didn’t care as long as the movie theater had air-conditioning.

  They found Joe lying on his bed listening to the radio, eagerly keeping track of the weather reports.

  “Boy,” he said, “it hasn’t been this hot in July since 1838. Wow!”

  Pat was in the coach house and William was retrieved from the basement, where he had made an underground car park.

  “Where are the twins?” asked Papa, and Mama, thinking they had both gone to see Mr. Hedley, told him so.

  “Very well, leave them a note saying we prefer the cool of – what is it we’re going to see?”

  “Captain Belmish Returns,” said Joe gleefully. Papa gulped, “Captain Belmish returns to the heat of Number Five Sabiston Court. Tell them if they care to come and meet us at the restaurant across the street from the theater – it is air-conditioned, isn’t it Patrick?”

  Joe, who always knew these things, said it was and had neat french fries besides. Mama wrote the note, put it on the kitchen table, and they left.

  And so, when Jane came up from her swim not in the least soothed, she found silence. Marble had sought relief from the heat under the kitchen window. Horse was in his favorite spot under the lilac bush. No leaf stirred on the cherry tree and the heat hung heavy over everything.

  Inside, the house was empty and still. She found the note on the kitchen table and went upstairs to change. In the mood she was in, the silence upstairs seemed ominous. No breeze disturbed the curtains at her window. Only the floor creaked as she walked across it. The feeling of being watched she had had that day in the attic came back now. Quickly, nervously, she put on her red shorts and top. Barefooted, she went back downstairs and out of the house. She couldn’t stay in it. It terrified her. She hated Elizabeth for going off to the movies and leaving her like this. When she saw Horse it made her feel better. Bolstered by his presence she said out loud (to whom? to the watching eyes?), “I’ll ignore the whole thing, the way Liza does. I’ll just pay no attention,” and she turned her back to the house and tried to rouse Horse to play a game. He only opened one eye, looked at her, and closed it.

  After a few minutes she couldn’t bear not looking at the house – in case someone was there ready to come out at her. She lectured herself again, “Don’t be foolish,” she said sternly, “why should you ignore it. Just go right in there. Get yourself some lemonade and a book or something.” And, obeying her own orders, she did that walking carefully into the kitchen whistling “Barbara Allen” under her breath, and then into Papa’s study whistling a little more loudly, and pounced on the first book that came to hand – the one open on Papa’s desk. It was City on the Lake: Being a Brief History of Toronto 1793-1864, by William Sabiston.

  “Why didn’t we think of this,” she said to herself, “when we were looking for books? Maybe Great-Great-Uncle has something in his book we can use.” Feeling a trifle guilty about taking it from Papa’s desk, she shoved it under her arm and walked with great speed back to the garden. There she settled herself – not too far from Horse – to try to read the book and drink her lemonade.

  “When my grandfather, Patrick Sabiston, set sail from far off England,” she read, “accompanied by his wife, his twin daughters and his two sons, for this untrammelled wilderness by the lake, this shining big sea water as it was then called by the native Indians who had lived savage by its shore for
so many centuries, he little dreamed how successful would be his venture, or what triumphs and griefs there were in store for him and his family. Muddy little York (for our now fair and burgeoning city was then known all over the world as ‘muddy little York,’ a town to be ridiculed and scorned by visitors from older cities on the other side of the great ocean) was then in …”

  Jane’s attention slid off Great-Great-Uncle’s endless and tedious sentences. The book was no help. The fear she was trying so hard to keep down rose again in her throat.

  “Oh Horse,” she whispered, rolling over and nuzzling him closely, “I’m so glad you’ve grown so nice and big.” She sat up and forced her attention back to the book, her eyes touching bits of sentences up and down the pages. It didn’t seem to be a history of Toronto as much as of the Sabiston family and their house. “Houses,” she muttered, “I know all about them,” and went skipping through, “homestead by the lake … log house … later additions obscured the original shape … tower my father appended to the northwest corner, fine view of the lake and the cherry tree garden below …” Jane put down the book in surprise.

  “Why, he means this house.” She looked at the house, curiosity for the moment getting the better of fear. “I wonder what it looked like?” Then it occurred to her, “I suppose it looked like all those other houses we’ve been looking at. When was it built first, anyway?” She picked up the book and leafed quickly back through it. “Here it is, ‘The first log house was constructed in 1833 to be replaced in two years by a more substantial brick structure of the kind fashionable at that time.’ ”

  “Well I know what that was,” said Jane, and began trying to puzzle out the old house inside the shape of the new.