Isabella: A sort of romance

by R. A. Bentley

  Mrs Dunnock, who is sensibly wearing wellingtons, wades into the flood and rescues a couple of wreaths and a handful of flowers. "Those blessed gargoyles, they're nothing but a nuisance! I don't know why we can't have nice lead down-pipes, like St. Agnes." Taking Bella by the arm she attempts to draw her to her feet. "Come on, my love, you can't stay here. You'd better come back to the farm and dry out."

  "I . . . I don't want to leave," says Bella, nervously eyeing the half-submerged spade.

  "I know, my love, but you're soaked. You'll catch your death. I mean . . ." Mrs Dunnock hastily corrects herself, "you'll get pneumonia or something. Is this your carrier bag?"

  Bella nods miserably. "It's my lunch."

  "You've never been here since lunchtime!" exclaims Mrs Dunnock.

  "I just wanted to say goodbye to Mummy," sobs Bella, "and now it's all ruined."

  *

  "Come on Miranda," cries Bella. She is jumping up and down on the altar stone and waving her arms. "Look at me, I'm the king of the castle! She's always so slow, isn't she, Mummy?"

  "Don't be unkind to your sister," says Hester. "She's only got little short legs, she's not a great long streak like you." She turns and watches Miranda toiling up the last few yards of stony track, half hidden by the dense, bottle-green furze that clothes the side of the hill. "Come on, you old slowcoach," she says, her hands on her hips. "You should have let me give you a piggyback."

  "Gosh, isn't it hot!" says Bella, shielding her eyes. "It's so hazy you can't even see the Point."

  "I suppose I ought to have covered your heads or something," says Hester, doubtfully.

  Miranda, pink and blotchy with exertion, throws herself on the ground. "I said I was going to climb right to the top and I have!"

  "No you haven't," says Bella. "You haven't climbed right to the top until you've climbed onto the altar stone."

  Miranda puts her head on one side and gravely considers this. Then, struggling wearily to her feet, she gets a podgy knee onto the great stone and reaches up for a helping hand.

  "I'm the king of the castle," says Bella, and pushes her off.

  A hot, hot day under a pale, cloudless sky, with never a hint of a breeze, not even here, a hundred feet above the mist-shrouded harbour. The low, springy heather that grows around and among the Stones is tinder dry and the few patches of tussocky grass bleach slowly white under the blazing sun. It is very quiet; nothing to be heard but the buzzing of crickets, the distant song of a wood-lark and, close at hand, a light popping, which Bella knows is the ripe seedpods of the furze, bursting and curling in the heat. She is lying prone on the altar stone, pressed very close, with even her cheek upon its scabrous surface, tracing out with a twig the interpenetrating circles of red and orange-brown and minty-green.

  "Lichens are very old, aren't they?"

  "Yes, sometimes," says Hester. She is throwing a tennis ball to Miranda, teaching her to catch.

  "I wonder which is the oldest," says Bella. "I wonder if they'll die one day or if they just go on forever. Uncle says they can take hundreds of years to grow to the size of a half crown."

  "Are they as old as me?" says Miranda. She drops her ball and kneeling down, lays her head on the broad, flat stone beside Bella's.

  "Don't be silly," says Bella. "They're trillions and grillions and zillions of times older than you. I can remember when you didn't even exist."

  "But they're only small," protests Miranda. "They're smaller than me, aren't they, Mummy?"

  "Yes, sweetheart, but they're very old, all the same."

  "Oh, she's so stupid," says Bella scathingly. She turns over on her back and spreads her arms and legs wide, closing her eyes against the sun. "Look, I'm a sacrifice. I'm a human sacrifice and they're going to sacrifice me to the Sun God. They're going to cut me open with a golden dagger and read my entrails."

  "Ugh," says Hester. "Don't be horrid."

  Bella lies quite still. It feels nice on the hot stone, like being toasted on both sides. The sun burns her legs; it burns through her light summer dress. She wonders how the dagger would feel as it went in and if it would hurt much and how long it would take to die and whether you would have time to watch them reading your entrails and find out what they said and what it would be like to be really, really dead and what they did with you after they'd finished.

  "Mummy."

  "Yes?"

  "What are entrails?"

  "Oh, I don't know . . . your dinner bits."

  "Dinner bits!" Bella laughs.

  "When are we having dinner?" demands Miranda. "I'm hungry."

  "You're always hungry," says Hester. "We'll go back soon."

  "We can't go yet," says Bella. "You haven't told me the Story of the Stones."

  "What again!" cries Hester. "You must know it by heart." But standing against the tallest stone with her hands cushioning her bottom, she launches into the familiar catechism.

  "The Stones are very ancient," she intones. "They have been here since the dawn of time. They have seen many conquering races come and go – the Durotriges, the Romans, the Angles and Saxons, the Normans – and will see many more. One day we too will pass away, but whoever comes after us, the immortal, unchanging Stones will be here to greet them and teach them wisdom, if only they will learn."

  Bella sits with her hands clasped round her knees and listens enthralled. She thinks her mother very lovely, standing there so tall and slender in her pretty, flowery dress, with her huge violet eyes, and her jet-black hair tumbling over her shoulders and her shimmering violet aura all round her. She knows that one day her own childish aura will be like that. She knows that she too will be tall and darkly beautiful, unlike Miranda, who will be short and stupid and fat. Miranda's aura is the colour of snot.

  "Who put them here?" she says. "Who built them?"

  "I don't know who built them. No-one knows. Some say the Forest People did. It was all forest then: a dark and wild wood, filled with savage beasts. Even the men were beasts, not truly human at all. I don't believe they can have built anything so magical, unless they had help."

  "And then what happened?"

  "Our first ancestor came from over the sea, a Wise Woman named Figg. She felt the power of this place from far off. It drew her."

  "I thought you said she was called Fint."

  "No, Fint was her daughter. She was the first child of this new land, the first Priestess of the Stones."

  "And she cast the Forest People out?"

  "Yes. They were ignorant and savage and cruel. She banished them all, except one, a man named Hewn, and him she married. We are the direct descendants of Fint and Hewn."

  "Was it they that made the human sacrifices?"

  "The Forest people? Yes."

  "Tell me about being a Priestess."

  "All right. I am the two hundred and twenty-second Priestess of the Stones and when I die you will be the two hundred and twenty third. You must care for them and protect them, just as I have, and in return they will give you many powers."

  "What sort of powers?"

  "Oh, how to leave your body and fly wherever you want; how to talk to the sprites and fairies; how to enter the minds of men and bend them to your will; how to bring two lovers together or put them asunder; how to engender fevers and murrains and warts and boils, and how to cure them; how to destroy your enemies with a curse."

  "Gosh! What else?"

  "Goodness, I don't know," laughs Hester. "How to charm wild beasts and ride them; how to make yourself invisible; how to find things that are lost; how to . . ." She pauses to think. "How to make jolly good pastry."

  "Now you're being silly," says Bella.

  "No I'm not. Pastry is very tricky stuff."

  "But you don't cook," protests Bella. "You never cook anything, let alone pastry."

  "That doesn't mean I don't know how to."

  "I'm hungry," wails Miranda, tugging impatiently at her mother's hem. "I want to go home."

  "Wait a minute, I nearly forgot!" says
Hester. "I bought you a KitKat each." She stoops and roots about in her bag. "Yes, here we are. These'll keep the worms from biting. Oh damn, they've gone all soft. I suppose it's the heat. I can't get the silver paper off."

  "Mummy, honestly!" says Bella.

  "It's not my fault! It's the heat."

  "Can't we eat them anyway?" says Miranda plaintively.

  "Not with the silver paper on, dahling. It'll make your teeth go all funny."

  "But I'm hungry. And I'm thirsty."

  "I'm thirsty too," says Bella. "Did you bring any drink?"

  Her mother shakes her head apologetically. "No, I'm afraid I didn't."

  "Surprise, surprise," sighs Bella.

  "Tell you what," says Hester. "We'll go down to Keeper's Cottage. That'll be a bit closer than going home. I expect Aunty Doreen will be able to give us something. Would you like that?"

  "Yes please!" cries Miranda, jumping up and down.

  "I don't want to go to Keeper's Cottage," says Bella.

  "Why ever not?"

  "I just don't want to."

  "I expect she'll give us some of her homemade lemonade if we ask her nicely," says Hester, encouragingly. "And afterwards you can play with John."

  "I don't like that stuff. I like proper fizzy. And I don't want to play with John, he's too rough."

  "But he's your boyfriend. You've promised to marry him. You mustn't be fickle, you know."

  "That's stupid, I didn't ask for him to be my boyfriend; I don't even like him. And I don't want to go there."

  "I do," says Miranda, looking anxiously from one to the other.

  "All right then, we'll go home and go to the stables," says Hester. Mrs Bunting can bring us something out on a tray and you can take turns to ride Percy.

  "Oh yes!" says Miranda, clapping her pudgy hands. "I'd like that."

  "I don't want to do that either," says Bella, leaping to her feet. "I'm sick of Percy. He's fat and stupid and won't go. And Mrs Bunting's fat and stupid too. If that's all you can suggest, I'm going."

  Not caring if she trips or falls, Bella flings fiercely away down the hill, pushing among the high prickly furze. At last, throwing herself to the ground, she allows herself to be found, guiding them in with noisy sobbing. "You're going away again, aren't you," she says as Hester kneels beside her. "You're going to go and leave us again."

  "Hester glances back at Miranda who is once again struggling to catch up. "Whatever makes you say that?"

  "Because it's true. I expect you're going off somewhere with that stupid Hélèn."

  Hester's expression becomes at once sheepish and sulky, so that she suddenly appears not much older than her eldest daughter. "How did you know? I haven't told anybody."

  "Because you always bring us for walks and buy us chocolate and things if you're going away. You never normally bother."

  "That's not true!"

  "Yes it is."

  Hester sighs. "Look, all right, I am going away, but only for a week or two. Aunty Hélèn is going to be on her own and she's asked me to come and keep her company. It'll be like a little holiday. You wouldn't begrudge me a holiday, would you?"

  "Then why can't we come too?"

  "Hester bites her full, lower lip. "There'd be nothing for you to do there, dahling. It's not like Paris or the house at Antibes. It's just boring old vineyards and things. Anyway, it'd be a bit difficult with Miranda."

  "Just take me, then. You can leave her here."

  "Well that wouldn't be very nice, would it?"

  "I don't care. I want to come with you."

  Hester shakes her head. "It's only a couple of weeks, and you'll still have Aunty and Uncle. You love Aunty, don't you? She's much better at looking after you than me."

  "But I want to be with you," sobs Bella. "You're my mum."

  Hester glances behind her again. "Hush now, here's Miranda coming. You don't want to upset her do you?" She looks imploringly at Bella. "Don't make me feel rotten, dahling. I'll be back before you know it and then we'll do something really nice together. Anyway, I'm relying on you to look after my Stones while I'm away. I can't trust anyone else, you know. It'll be good practice for when you're the Priestess. Will you do that for me?"

  "What's the matter with her?" demands Miranda, pointing at her red-eyed sister. "Why did she run away?"

  "Nothing's the matter," says Hester, standing up. "Come on, we're going home."

  "But you said I could ride Percy!"

  *

  The sun is now well above the horizon, and Bella, who has kept a silent vigil since dawn, stretches, sighs and prepares to scatter in their rightful place her mother's mortal remains. Crouching, she retrieves the hard-won urn, concealed overnight under a furze bush, notes with relief that the top appears to unscrew, and wiping away the drying mud peers curiously at the inscription engraved thereon. Winifred Mabel Weaver, she reads. Born 9.2.1888 Returned to Jesus 19.4.1985. Rest in Peace.

  "Shit!" snarls Bella. "Shit, bugger and fuck!"

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It is a spring tide, and the shallow waters of the harbour have retreated so far beyond the marshes and the mudflats as to appear no more than a glittering band around the distant islands. The dozen or so yachts, moored in the frugal shelter of Windy Point, lie tilted at unaccustomed angles or trapped in little pools of their own making, while the old iron jetty stands unnaturally high, its lower parts dark with barnacles and dripping seaweed. Bella, who has been lounging far out upon it, enjoying the peace and the sunshine, glances at her watch and begins to wander slowly shoreward, the diamond patterned metal plates warm beneath her bare feet. Reaching the slipway she is forced to leap sharply backwards as Narcissus, in a battered go-cart, comes hurtling down the steep concrete slope, executes a skilful handbrake turn and stops broadside on, just inches from the trickling ooze at the bottom.

  "Haven't you got a horn on that thing?" she says, feigning annoyance.

  "Sorry, Aunty Bella."

  "My turn, my turn," cries Primrose, jumping up and down.

  Veronica is on the balcony, shaking out a duster. "If you two go into that mud again your mother will skin you alive."

  "Mum said we could do it."

  "Don't tell fibs."

  "She did too."

  "Have you seen McNab this morning?" asks Bella. "He was supposed to be meeting me here."

  Veronica looks suddenly sombre. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your uncle got him: dragged him into the boatshed."

  Bella sighs. "That explains it, I've been hanging around for ages. Poor little devil, I'd better go and rescue him, if it's not too late."

  "Ah! Now wait a minute. I'd like a word with you, Madam, before you disappear." Spinning her chair she waits for Bella to climb the wooden steps to the balcony and leads the way into the kitchen. "I don't suppose you can throw any light on the origin and function of this object, by any chance? And what it might be doing on my Aga?"

  Bella peers at the curious construction of copper and plastic tubing and grins. "Well I've never actually seen it, but if I'm not mistaken it belongs to our kidnapped friend."

  "Surprise, surprise. He's already got his tent canvas spread all over the summer room floor and now he wants to take over my kitchen as well. What's it for?"

  "It's a still: he makes his hooch in it."

  "You mean we're now an illegal distillery as well as a tentmaker's?"

  "Is it illegal?"

  "I believe so." Veronica peers suspiciously up at the tall, unstable-looking structure. "Listen, I think it's starting to boil." There is, indeed, a low rumbling sound and, even as they watch, little puffs of steam begin to escape from the many joints and seams. A strong yeasty smell fills the air, mingled with something more fugitive: henna, perhaps, or the rich, heterogenous aroma of one of the twins when their go-carting skills fail them. "I don't like the look of it," she says. "I'm going to turn it off."

  "How? You'd have to move it off the hotplate."

  Veronica looks doubtful. "I
don't fancy that. It might fall to bits, or blow up."

  "I expect it's perfectly harmless," says Bella, reassuringly. "It's just like a kettle boiling, really, except it's condensing the vapour."

  "I do know how a still works, dear."

  "There you are," says Bella, pointing. "It's starting to come." Bubbles can be seen moving round a convoluted polythene tube and a clear, brownish liquid begins to drip slowly into an empty coffee jar, placed ready to receive it.

  "What is that stuff, some sort of whisky?"

  "I don't really know. Whatever it is, it packs a hell of a punch."

  Veronica frowns. "You've tried it?"

  "Not flippin' likely; look what it's done to McNab. He was six foot two once, you know, and handsome, a real hunk."

  "Och awa!" cries Veronica, screwing up her face and half closing her eyes. "Awa wi ye, wumman!"

  "Very good," laughs Bella. "Can you play the fiddle too?"

  "No, but then neither can he."

  "Oh come now, that's not fair."

  "No, I suppose not. As long as he's well tanked-up, he's pretty good, though I hate to think what his liver looks like."

  Bella smiles fondly. "It's funny. Once you've encountered McNab, it's difficult to imagine life without him."

  "Ah! That reminds me," says Veronica, backing away from the steam and the smell. "Two things actually. One, Rat's got a lift for him. If he wants to go looking for that friend of his there's a yacht going to Plymouth."

  "Gosh, when?"

  "Friday, probably."

  "Oh dear, so soon?"

  "And the other thing is, we've been asked to dinner."

  "Really? By whom?"

  "Pat. Return match."

  "In Roz? That'll be a squash."

  "No it won't. That's why McNab is repairing his tent."

  "We're going to dinner in a tent?"

  "Never a dull moment."

  "Do we dress?"

  "Of course. It'll be like the Hunt ball."

  "It's nice to see you laughing," says Bella, pleased.

  "Yes, well you'd better go and tell Mr McNab to come and sort this thing out before it goes critical. That's if the Customs and Excise don't descend on us first."