by Joan Aiken
‘How do you know that?’ Cosmo asked, amazed.
‘Richard and I have been looking at family records. Wait and I’ll show you.’
She went away and came back with a large, creased roll of paper, which, spread out, proved to be covered by a network of lines and names, like a spiderweb sagging from the top of the page. A family tree.
‘Richard had this among his stuff – it goes back to thirteen hundred. He copied it out from the Dorchester records last time he was in England. Look here – Rosamund Curtoys and her son Osmond both died in the same year, 1768. But there was a younger son, Francis, born in 1762 and apparently not reared at home – there’s a note about him here: “Sent away as a babe to be brought up by Thos. Hendread, Yeoman. Returned in 1780 to claim his inheritance.” ’
‘I wonder why he was sent away?’
‘Perhaps his mother took a dislike to him.’
‘Or his elder brother couldn’t stand him … I wouldn’t like to have been Osmond’s younger brother.’
‘It’s curious about that pair, though,’ Eunice said. ‘Twenty years ago – one very dry summer, when your father and I were young – the river was extra low, and they found two skeletons downstream from the weir, embedded in the clay bank. A man and a woman. They had forensic experts out from Oxford who said the bones were at least two hundred years old. And the woman was much older than the man.’
‘So that was what happened to them. I suppose you could say he died fighting.’ Cosmo shivered. ‘He was certainly no loss …’ Something cold shifted against his chest as he drew himself under the bedclothes; he put up a hand to feel it and found his George III penny, slung on the piece of binder twine.
‘We didn’t like to take it off you,’ Eunice said, ‘because you kept clutching it and saying that it was your luck.’
‘It certainly was … I’m sorry about the mill floor,’ he said, remembering that moment when he had seen the tip of Osmond’s sword driving straight for his chest.
‘Oh, it was in a shocking state. Ready to go. We’re thinking of applying for a grant to restore it and turn it into a workplace for Richard; he’ll need a studio or a lab out here. It’s scheduled as a building of historic interest so you never know, we might be lucky. Finished? Okay, now have a good rest. There’ll be lots to do when you start getting up …’
She took the tray away.
Later that day Cosmo was allowed downstairs for a couple of hours, to sit in the sunny garden room. He was glad when his father came back from Oxford; the big hearth, when he passed by, had seemed strangely bare and forlorn without the tousled black-and-white heap of Lob, stretched out on the warm stone.
‘Do you feel up to seeing your friend Paul tomorrow?’ Richard said. ‘I was talking to his father this afternoon. Norman said he could bring him out if you like; it’s Saturday so there’s no school.’
‘School? What’s the date today?’
‘May the fifth. You’ve missed a week’s school already,’ Richard said. ‘You’d better hurry up and get back on your legs – you won’t want to miss too much tennis.’
‘Gosh, no.’ Cosmo loved tennis. ‘Yes, I’d like to see Moley if he wants to come. He’ll be disappointed if the furniture doesn’t slide about, though.’
‘He’ll just have to put up with his disappointment, then,’ Mrs Tydings said, coming in with a pot of tea. ‘The furniture’s all settled down again, I’m glad to say. We don’t want no more of that nonsense.’
On the following day Professor Molesworth brought along Meredith as well as Moley. Cosmo was still not allowed out of doors – it was a cold, gusty May day – so he stayed in the garden room while Moley showed Meredith round the farm and the island and the mill. They were reluctant to leave him at first, but Cosmo said, ‘Oh, go on. It’s a shame not to show her while she’s here.’
When Meredith came back her eyes were shining. ‘Your lookout tree. Wow! What a place.’
Richard had carefully vetted all the guard rails the day before, and replaced the rotten one.
He had also, it seemed, told Professor Molesworth a certain amount about the family curse, and Professor Molesworth had told his son.
‘You really are a lucky so-and-so, old Cosmic,’ said Moley enviously. ‘A family curse! That’s a dickens of a lot better than having a stepmama and two dear little step-siblings. I’d swap, any day.’
‘I dunno, Moley,’ Meredith said. She looked thoughtful. ‘After all, you’ll get away from your step-siblings in the end. But Cosmo will have the curse hanging over him to the end of his life. You’ll never know, will you, Cosmo, whether it would be safe to marry and have children or not.’
‘No, I suppose I never shall – not for certain.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to think of other things to do,’ Moley said robustly. ‘Children? Who wants them? Horrible little pests. I say, Cosmo, do show Meredith Flatland. I’ve been telling her about it.’
Meredith was fascinated by Flatland and started reading it aloud: ‘ “Down, down, down! Then a darkness, then a final all-consummating thunder-peal!” This sounds just like you, Cosmo, falling through the floor of the mill. “And when I came to myself, I was once more a common, creeping Square, in my Study at home, listening to the Peace-cry of my approaching Wife.” Oh, this is marvellous stuff! A common, creeping Square! Isn’t that a perfect description of Mr Gabbitas.’
Mrs Tydings brought them in their tea.
‘Now you look a bit more like a human being, I must say,’ she remarked, fixing Cosmo with a sharp eye. ‘But don’t you get overexcited now, with them squares and triangles.
‘Flapjacks!’ said Moley ecstatically. ‘Oh Mrs Tydings, you do know the way to a person’s heart.’
‘We were wondering,’ said Meredith, after tea, ‘what you’d think about sharing a study with us next term, Cosmo?’
‘Sharing a stu–? Good heavens! But – won’t you want to be sharing with Charley?’ Cosmo asked Moley.
‘He’s leaving at the end of term. His father’s taken a job at the University of Santa Barbara and he’s moving the family to California. So we thought – perhaps you – and us – and Sheil –’
‘Sheil’s awfully nice when you get to know her,’ Meredith said seriously.
‘Well – yes, I’d like that. Very much.’ Cosmo thought, and said, ‘Who’s going to share with poor old Bun?’
‘Poor old Bun. He’s not getting moved up. And it isn’t because he doesn’t take snuff,’ said Moley with an irrepressible chuckle. ‘Old Gab just told him he might be happier in the form below.’
‘I expect they’ll be quite decent to him,’ Cosmo said, thinking of Tim and Frances.
And for himself he had a sudden flash of standing in Miss Gracie’s line, buying four whipped-cream walnuts. ‘For you and your three friends, Cosmo?’
‘That’s right, Miss Gracie.’
‘How were your holidays, Meredith?’ he asked.
‘Well, they were pretty horrible. Except for the last week. One thing: it’s not so bad coming back to school.’
‘There’s Father,’ said Moley. Professor Molesworth was strolling over the lawn with Eunice and Richard. ‘I guess it’s time to go. Thanks for a super tea, Mrs Tydings.’
‘You haven’t eaten the half of it!’ she scolded. ‘Wait while I put it into a bag for the pair of you to take back to school.’
‘See you soon, Cosmo. Hurry up and get well now!’
They said goodbye, he waved to them through the glass panels of the garden room, and then the car drove off. Eunice and Richard turned and strolled over the meadow to the bridge, where they stood leaning on the rail, shoulder against shoulder, looking down at the water. Where I stood when I first saw Sim in the boat, Cosmo thought. And he remembered that other leave-taking, as Sim clanked off to join his uncle, valiantly singing:
‘Gallant are they
Who now have gone
With helmet and sword
To Ascalon.
If he be not
>
In battle slain
He will be a hero
When he comes again.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Aiken
1924 Born 4 September in a haunted house on Mermaid Street, Rye, East Sussex
1936 Joan goes away to boarding school age 12, after being taught at home for many years
1940 Joan has a series of wartime jobs, meanwhile writing lots of stories. She sends one in to the BBC for their radio programme, Children’s Hour, and has it accepted!
1953 Married with two small children, Joan finds an old bus for the family to live in, as many houses were bombed in the war. Her first book of stories is accepted and published. She has an idea for an exciting adventure about a girl called Bonnie Green …
1955 Joan’s husband dies, and she has to put her book aside and go to work for a story magazine
1962 Finally completed, her book about Bonnie is published as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. It is a great success, so at last Joan is able to work from home as a full-time writer
1967 Joan begins to meet many of her readers through the Puffin Book Club, with Puffin making a film about her life and story ideas. You can see the film on her website www.joanaiken.com
1969 Joan receives the Guardian Award for The Whispering Mountain and The Wolves series, as well as the Lewis Carroll Award for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
1972 Joan creates a new series about a girl called Arabel and her unbelievably crazy pet raven, Mortimer, and the stories appear on CBBC with drawings by Quentin Blake
1981 Asked to write a guide for budding children’s authors, Joan produces a book called The Way to Write for Children, and dedicates it to her friend Kaye Webb, the editor of Puffin Books
1989 The film of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is released – it was filmed in Poland where there was more snow!
1991 Joan works with Quentin Blake again on a collection of stories called The Winter Sleepwalker. By now she has written over eighty books including ten more books in the Wolves Chronicles series …
1996 Black Hearts in Battersea, the sequel to Wolves, is filmed and shown on the BBC
1999 Joan is presented with an MBE from the Queen for her contribution to children’s literature
2004 Joan completes The Wolves series and dies on 4th January at the age of 79
Interesting Facts
Joan’s father was an American poet called Conrad Aiken and her mother was Canadian. Her older brother and sister were American, but the family moved to England before Joan was born, and they forgot to register her as an American citizen, so she is the only English member of the family. See Joan’s Puffin Passport on her website www.joanaiken.com/pages/puffin_passport
At the age of 12, Joan was sent away to boarding school. It was such shock that she stopped growing! She always put her height on her passport as 4ft11¾. Although she wasn’t very happy at school, Joan was very proud to have poems and short stories published in her school magazines. Here’s one she wrote in her first term – maybe while feeling homesick?
In the 1950s, while waiting for their house to be built, Joan, her husband and two young children lived in a bus! You can see the pictures of her unusual home from Housewife Magazine on her website www.joanaiken.com
Later in life Joan married an American painter and went to live with him in New York – she loved living there, and eating all the American food her brother and sister used to tell her about when she was little.
Joan was a talented artist as well as writer. Throughout her life, she produced pastel and pencil drawings, and sketches of her travels and holidays which often helped her remember good locations for future stories. Maybe this one was an inspiration for The Shadow Guests …
Where Did the Story Come From?
In 1974, a few years before she wrote The Shadow Guests, Joan came across an old derelict house with a beautiful garden, hidden away down a lane in the small town where she lived. The house was situated between two graveyards and, even though it was said to be haunted by a monk in black robes, Joan decided to buy it. After all the repairs and renovations had been done, she moved in, but she said the works must have disturbed the ghost as he never came back! Joan then discovered that there was a secret tunnel under the garden! The whole place gave her plenty of inspiration for her scary stories …
Morningquest School is based on Joan’s own boarding school in Oxford, and rather like Cosmo in the story, she didn’t enjoy being there at first. During her first term she was ‘sent to Coventry’ – this was what it was called when no one would talk to you. Later she used these feelings of loneliness at school to write about the ghostly relationships and battles in the story of The Shadow Guests.
But, like Cosmo, Joan went on to make three very good friends at this school, who stayed in touch with her all of their lives. Even some of her teachers continued to write to her over the years, often to say they had enjoyed her latest book!
Guess Who?
A With his thinness, pale eyes, white hair, brows and lashes, and his quick, whipping movements, he looked like a white-coated ferret or … some thin, dry, white, venomous furry snake …
B … a stocky, active shrew-mouse in a blue-and-white print apron, with black strap shoes and bobbed white hair kept fiercely back by one grip …
C He was a big, heavy boy, clumsy in his movements and always in a muddle; he was never able to answer a single question correctly …
D She was tall, with big hands and feet, and her hair pulled back in some kind of elaborate bun, but there was a lot of hair, a bright, fair colour, almost lemony, like evening-primroses, and more of it hung over her eyes in a fringe …
E A small stocky boy, pudgy-face, with short dirty fair curls, a scowling pugnacious expression, dressed in grubby ragged clothes that were much too small for him …
F He had a rough, uncared-for appearance – greyish skin, fuzzy, no-coloured hair, bony hands, a few spots – no one would ever pick him out of a crowd for his promising looks …
ANSWERS:
A) Mr Gabbitas
B) Mrs Tydings
C) Bun
D) Cousin Eunice
E) Con
F) Sim
Words Glorious Words!
We often come across new or unfamiliar words when we’re reading. Here are a few unusual words you’ll find in this Puffin book. Did you spot any others?
Twinset a cardigan worn over a matching jumper
Coach-and-six a coach led by six horses
Swank show off
Palisade a fence or enclosure
Habet! you got me!
Woad and madder types of plant used to dye clothes
Eyrie a large nest or a high up hidden place
Ticker heart
Piton a spike that can be hammered into rock or wood for support
Moither to ramble incoherently
Tumbril cart
Mangold a root vegetable similar to a beetroot
Sycophantic acting nice towards someone in order to get something you want
Catechizing interrogating someone
Propitiating soothing
Snuff powdered tobacco
Quiz
1 What type of dog is Lob?
a) A spaniel
b) A German Shepherd
c) A St Bernard
d) A Jack Russell
2 What dormitory is Cosmo put in?
a) Rabbit dormitory
b) Ruskin dormitory
c) Remove dormitory
d) Ransoms dormitory
3 What did Mark collect?
a) Mars bars
b) Kangaroos
c) Stamps
d) Butterflies
4 Who does Cosmo write to in the Easter holidays?
a) Meredith
b) Bun
c) Moley
d) Charley
5 How does Cosmo evade Osmond Curtoys?
a) He throws his mother’s coat over him
b) He runs him through with a s
word
c) Osmond falls under the coach-and-six
d) The mill floor gives way beneath them
6 What’s the first unexplained occurrence mentioned in the book?
a) ‘Something whitish, about the size of half a banana’ falling out of Cosmo’s sleeve
b) Con appearing at the bottom of the pitons
c) Cosmo’s Mars bars going missing
d) The wardrobe falling on Cosmo
ANSWERS:
1) c
2) b
3) d
4) a
5) d
6) a
The UK has its first ever female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. She becomes the longest-serving British Prime Minister.
The Rubik’s Cube toy puzzle makes its international debut in toy fairs across the world.
The deadly disease of smallpox is thought by the World Health Organization to be wiped out.
Mount St Helens volcano in the USA erupts, causing many deaths. It is the deadliest volcanic explosion in the history of the United States.
At the CERN physics laboratory Tim Berners-Lee creates Enquire, a networked hypertext system that can be read by computers as well as people. He names the program after a Victorian encyclopaedia he had loved as a child: Enquire Within Upon Everything. Berners-Lee will go on to invent the World Wide Web, partly based on Enquire.
Make and Do
Rustle up some tasty potato-scones – just like the ones Mrs Tydings makes for tea!
Please ask an adult to help you and wash your hands before you begin.
YOU WILL NEED: