by Gina Wilson
“Well, Mrs. Phillips has a daughter, Hermione, at Okington School and she’s your age, so you’ll probably be in the same class. She’s suggested that you go there for tea tomorrow so the two of you can meet.”
“Just me? Or all of us?” I felt nervous of going by myself.
“She asked us all but I thought it’d be silly to take the boys. There’s nothing there for them and they’d just interrupt and probably spoil things. So I said you’d go on your own.”
“Oh, Mummy! What if she doesn’t like me? Oh, I really think it’d be better if we all went …”
“Well, I don’t. Honestly, Becky, I was thinking of you. I’d quite like to see Sylvia Phillips again, but I just thought we’d all cramp your style. Now, it really is time you began to stand on your own feet a bit. It’ll only be a couple of hours or so. And I’m sure Hermione will be awfully nice—her mother is.”
The next afternoon it was sunny again; we were having a beautiful summer that year. I put on one of my two non-school summer dresses and hoped that Hermione and her mother would like me in it. Mother said she thought it’d be more suitable than shorts for meeting them the first time. It was Saturday and she said she’d walk the boys round to the Phillipses’ with me just to show me the way. Father would stay behind to tidy up the garden. I said I thought I’d look a bit babyish being delivered at the door but Mother said there wouldn’t be a chance of them being seen. I saw what she meant when we arrived. The Phillipses’ house, which was actually quite near ours, was out of sight from the village street, up a private drive bordered by rhododendrons. There were huge stone gateposts on either side, though the gates had long since been taken away, and a discreet wooden sign to one side bore the inscription: “Stansfield House.”
“Mummy! You didn’t say they were grand …”
Mother smiled. She had known I’d falter at this point and that’s why she’d come. “They’re not that grand,” she said, laughing at my dismay. “They’ve just got a bit of money, that’s all. Now, in you go, love, and have a good time. You look very nice.”
She gave me a prod and I started off up the sandy drive, which curved away to the right so that Mother and the boys couldn’t stare after me for long. I was glad; I felt very awkward and shy and didn’t want to be watched. I half expected an irate gardener to step out of the bushes and order me off the premises. Instead, a girl on a red bicycle suddenly wobbled into sight along the bumpy track. I stopped and she stopped and said: “Are you Rebecca Stokes?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Hermione Phillips.” She got off the bike and turned it round and we carried on up the drive together in silence.
“What a lovely house!” I said when it came into view. It was enormous—three storeys high, with an arched front door and huge windows on either side. To right and left were low outhouses—stables, garages, greenhouses, As we got nearer, the rhododendron drive gave way to a stony forecourt where a land rover and a sports car were parked.
“Are you one of a very huge family?” I asked.
“Five children.” She parked her bicycle and pushed the heavy oak door open with her shoulder. “I’ve got four brothers. I’m the youngest.”
I followed her into a small lobby and we were instantly confronted by an inner door which she pushed open, using most of the strength of her small frame. She was very slender and fair, with masses of tight curls all over her head. I didn’t feel very pretty in comparison and thought I should be doing all the pushing and shoving at these massive doors. She led me across a big panelled hall with a polished floor dotted with foreign-looking rugs; the stairs, with their carved banisters, ran diagonally up the far wall.
“Mummy, I’ve got Rebecca,” she called, and took me into a wide, bright kitchen. Mrs. Phillips was reaching tea things down from the Welsh dresser and laying the table for quite a number. I was horrified. This was all going to be a tremendous ordeal—four big brothers and Hermione and her mother and father all at once.
“Hello, Rebecca,” said Mrs. Phillips. “How nice to meet you, dear. Sit down for a minute till you feel more at home. How are you liking life in our little village?”
“Very much, thank you, Mrs. Phillips,” I said, all pink with confusion. I sat down on one of the pine chairs as she’d said, but wished I hadn’t as Hermione wandered round the room restlessly and seemed to want to be elsewhere.
“When’s tea, Mummy?”
“Another half hour or so, dear. Daddy’s taken the car in for a service and he’s walking back with Hector and James. Shall we wait till they get back?”
“All right.” But Hermione tossed her head as if that idea didn’t suit her at all. Then she began to bite a thumb nail.
“What is it, sweetheart?” said Mrs. Phillips gently. “Do you want to show Rebecca the garden?”
“Mmmm. I was just thinking it’d be difficult for us to talk with the boys and Daddy milling round cracking jokes. Couldn’t we have tea on our own?”
Mrs. Phillips was so understanding then. She didn’t insist on our fitting in with her arrangements but suggested making us a little picnic tea and, in no time, Hermione and I were out through the back door with sandwiches and orange juice and meringues in a basket. I thought disloyally of how my own mother would have put her foot down and made us wait in the kitchen. “Your mother’s really nice,” I said to Hermione.
“I know,” she said. She looked at me intently and paused in the middle of the lawn. “Do you think I’m spoiled?”
“Oh, I’ve no idea,” I said. “I suppose you might be—being the youngest and the only girl. But I didn’t mean that. I just thought it was kind of her to make us a picnic.”
“Yes, it was,” agreed Hermione, “but I didn’t really think twice about it till you mentioned it.”
We walked across the grass towards some big trees at the end of the garden. A swing and a rope ladder hung from the thick branches of one of them. The sun shone down on us. I felt warm and happy in my light cotton frock with my new friend. “It’s perfect here, Hermione.”
“Do you think so?” she said. “I’m glad. I love it too. We’re so lucky. Do let me show you the whole garden—it’s really beautiful.”
It was—big and beautiful. Beyond the trees there was a sunken rose garden with crazy-paving pathways running between the beds. Then there was a spinney of silver birch trees and finally a paddock where two horses were grazing. We sat on the gate watching them and trying to tempt them over with bunches of grass, but they were content to stay where they were, eating the grass at their feet and flicking the flies away with their long tails.
“They’re not ours,” said Hermione. “Someone from the village rents the paddock and stables from Daddy. He says he’s pleased to have them in use.”
We sat in the sunshine and began to talk about schools—the one I’d just left and Okington, where it seemed more than likely we would be form-mates next term. She told me about her two friends and the teacher we would be having and rules that were strictly upheld and lunch-time arrangements and the school uniform. She seemed to enjoy the school very much and I became quite excited at the prospect of starting there.
“It all sounds very nice,” I said. “Actually I’ve already met someone who’s probably in the same class.”
“Who’s that?”
“A girl called Cora Ravenwing.”
“Oh her!” said Hermione. I waited for her to say something else but she didn’t.
“She seems quite nice,” I persisted, “but difficult to get to know and a bit odd in some ways.”
“Mmmm,” said Hermione. “Well, I don’t know her really. She is in our class but … Are you very friendly with her?”
“Not very,” I said. “We haven’t been here all that long, so I couldn’t know her very well yet. But she’s always coming round for me. Actually, she seems a bit lonely. She says she hasn’t got any friends at all—is that right?”
“I suppose it is,” said Hermione.
“Why not?�
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Hermione didn’t seem to want to answer. She shrugged and screwed up her eyes as if it was a terribly difficult question. Then she jumped down from the gate and said: “Look. I want to show you something else, something very special. It’s a secret place of my own. Let’s have our tea there. And I’ll tell you a bit about Cora Raven wing, though I don’t really know if I should.”
Not far from the paddock was a thicket of slender new saplings covered with silky pale green leaves. Hermione dropped to her knees and began to crawl along a little passage. “Isn’t it super?” she said, “I call it Paradise—that’s from What Katy Did. Have you read it? She had a special place of her own called that.” We crawled along for quite a way and then came out into a tiny, circular clearing. “Isn’t it odd,” said Hermione, “how none of the saplings have rooted themselves just here? I don’t understand it at all. But it makes a perfect, secluded little den.”
“It’s lovely,” I agreed. Above us the sky was bright blue and all around the saplings encircled us with a fluttering leafy screen.
“I write poetry here,” said Hermione, stroking a leaf between finger and thumb. “I write quite a lot of nature poetry. I love nature. A lot of lines seem to come into my head when I lie in here alone on days like this and listen to the birds and watch the leaves. And, if you really look around you, you see such brilliant details—Look at this moss, for instance. It grows round the roots of nearly all the saplings but you don’t notice it at first.”
I didn’t say that I’d seen it all the way along the passageway as we’d crawled in. But I remembered Cora’s scorn of Hermione’s verse. “I’ve tried to write poetry myself,” I said, hesitating to invade her domain.
“How super, Rebecca! I’ve been dying to meet someone who was really interested. My other friends at school think it’s a bit arty-crafty.” She seemed genuinely pleased and wanted me to recite a specimen of my work.
“I’ll let you read some of it next time I see you,” I said, delaying an embarrassing moment. “And I’d like to read some of yours too.”
It was the discovery of this shared interest that seemed to decide Hermione that I was really all right. She’d been tense till then, trying to sum me up, but now she seemed to accept me. We sat up and divided the picnic and, as we ate, she began to tell me about Cora Ravenwing.
“She’s very unpopular at school and in the village generally,” she said. “None of the mothers like her, so nobody ever talks to her much or asks her home to tea or anything like that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we’re not supposed to talk about it all really. You won’t say I told you …?”
“No, no. I won’t.”
“Well, there are stories about her. People say she’s peculiar …”
“Peculiar!”
“Well, they say she was born odd.” Hermione was in difficulties, it seemed, not wanting to say more than she had to, but I was insistent.
“What do you mean—‘odd’?”
“Oh, dear,” said Hermione. “I shouldn’t say. I promised Mummy I wouldn’t gossip about her …”
“Please tell me,” I pleaded.
“Well, they say she killed her mother,” said Hermione suddenly. And once she’d said this much she just went on and spilled out the whole weird tale in a rush. “Her mother was apparently a very beautiful gypsy sort of woman—very young. She and Mr. Ravenwing came to live in Okefield a year before Cora was born and everyone really took to Mrs. Ravenwing. The husband was a bit quiet and retiring but people just assumed that went with his job somehow—he’s a grave-digger. And Mrs. Ravenwing always seemed so happy that people were sure he must be very nice really. She used to wander round in all weathers, singing all the time and gathering flowers, which she used to press and paint and make medicines out of and all sorts. She did all the floral decorations in the church and used to do marvellous displays for weddings and very pretty funeral wreaths. She used wild flowers nearly all the time and even in winter she managed to find evergreens or attractive twigs—things you wouldn’t usually notice.”
“Cora did tell me she was a great naturalist. Apparently she wrote diaries about plants and things.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Hermione. “But lots of people actually bought her flower paintings. We’ve got two up in the house … Anyway, she seemed to be in perfect health all the time she was expecting Cora, absolutely blossoming and looking forward to having her baby. Then, the next thing that was heard, she was dead—died in childbirth at home—no midwife there or anything—just Mr. Ravenwing and the new baby.”
“Well, that’s very sad—but I can’t see why it’s made all the mothers dislike Cora.”
“I know. It does seem queer, but there’s lots more to it than that. Mummy tried to explain it all to me ages ago, when there were an awful lot of strange rumours circulating about how Cora was turning out, and they seemed to fit in with the dreadful things that Mrs. Briggs had said about her when she was a baby.”
“Ooh, that Mrs. Briggs!” I said. “She says an awful lot sometimes. I don’t really like her very much—she helps Mummy in the house, you know.”
“She comes here too sometimes. We’ve got Horti, actually; she lives up on the attic floor—she’s our au pair. She does quite a lot of cleaning, but sometimes Mummy gets Mrs. Briggs in to lend a hand. She frightens me, you know; she gets so carried away about certain things, including Cora, that I just go away rather than listen. Mummy says it’s mainly hysterical nonsense anyway. She doesn’t like me to hear. Horti can’t stand her either; she won’t work in the same room. All the same, I sometimes wonder if Mummy does half believe some of the stories against Cora, because she certainly doesn’t want me to have anything to do with her.”
“Well, I think Mrs. Briggs is absolutely foul,” I said. “saying horrible things about a tiny baby and trying to make everyone hate her.”
“She took Cora in, you know,” said Hermione. “She had a new baby herself just about the same time as Cora was born. But it died—never really had a chance, apparently—there was something wrong with its heart. The doctor thought it might help her a bit if she could mother another baby, so he arranged for her to have Cora. It solved Mr. Ravenwing’s problem about what to do with Cora, too.”
“You’d think she’d be specially close to Cora then …”
“I know. But something went dreadfully wrong. It was to do with her husband, I think. When Cora was about eight months old he suddenly up and left Mrs. Briggs, and she took to blaming it all on Cora.”
“How on earth …? How could it have been Cora’s fault?”
“I don’t suppose it was. But Mrs. Briggs just seemed to turn on her—said she’d been a screaming brat from start to finish and that she’d driven her husband away …”
“But Mrs. Briggs has still got a husband—I’ve seen him—a little, thin, pale old man …”
“I know. He came creeping back again after a bit. But not before Mrs. Briggs had dumped Cora back on her father’s doorstep at dead of night. She left her there, wrapped up in an old black-out. The milkman found her screaming her head off at crack of dawn. There was the most almighty fuss, apparently, with police and everything. But Mrs. Briggs wasn’t arrested because they said she was temporarily deranged because of losing her own baby. And her husband came back then—I suppose he felt to blame.”
“He looks such a weak, ill sort of man.”
“Mrs. Briggs has always hounded him to death—that’s one theory. Bullied the life out of him. But Mummy says he’s never had good health. It’s hard to know what Mrs. Briggs is like really. Anyway Mr. Ravenwing took Cora back and has looked after her ever since. She has more or less been brought up in the graveyard, Mummy says. First she used to lie there in her pram, watching her father digging graves and gardening, and later she used to potter round behind him, playing in half-dug graves and so on. Don’t you think that’s unnatural, somehow? People said she was always appearing at funerals, creeping up during t
he graveside service and peering out from behind gravestones. And when the mourners went away she used to dance round the new grave and fiddle about with the wreaths and sprays, pinning the flowers in her hair and just seeming to delight in it all.”
“I must say I think that side of her can be a bit frightening,” I said and I told Hermione about the times I’d been in the graveyard with Cora. “But I think it’s understandable after the kind of life she’s had.”
Hermione looked surprised. “Oh, well,” she said, “there’s more to it than that. There’s some sort of badness in her, you know, even if she isn’t absolutely evil, as Mrs. Briggs says. She’s not like the rest of us. It’s definitely true.” She seemed to want to persuade me, to have the matter closed and my decision safely made in favour of repudiating Cora completely. “Mrs. Briggs is quite sure she’s a changeling. She thinks Mrs. Ravenwing couldn’t possibly have given birth to a creature like that and that Cora was somehow substituted.”
“Oh, that’s completely mad!” I said. “I’m surprised people have put up with that sort of wicked nonsense. It sounds as if she just blames Cora for simply being alive when her child isn’t—but that’s no excuse for persecuting her.”
Hermione became a little distant when she saw I wasn’t impressed with her horror story. “Oh, well—you’ll see,” she said. “It probably sounds crazy to you because you’re a newcomer here. But when you’ve lived here longer you’ll see what I mean. I’m not saying Cora is a changeling; I’m not saying anything about her, one way or the other; I’m just explaining the background because you asked.”
“Oh, I know, Hermione,” I said quickly. “I did want to know. I’m sorry to seem rude …”
“You’ll find the others at school won’t like it if you’re friendly with Cora.”
“Well, I’m not particularly. In fact she scared me out of my wits the last time I saw her.”
“There you are, you see. And she’s been terribly naughty, you know. She used to steal—people’s flowers mainly. She used to sneak into gardens at night and pick whole bunches, even dig plants up by the roots. People never got the police because they were sorry for her. And, in any case, Mrs. Briggs’s stories about her being evil used to scare some of the old villagers and they thought if they crossed her she might bring heaven knows what sort of curse down on their heads.”