by Lynn Austin
He gave her a quick squeeze, then wriggled free. “Don’t take it so hard, Sis. We knew this day was coming.”
“I didn’t!”
“I’m nearly fourteen, Audrey. That’s a bit old to take lessons in the nursery with a governess, don’t you think?”
“But you’re my best friend!”
“Listen, you’ll make plenty of new friends in no time.”
The thought of making friends frightened her. She didn’t know how to do it. Father had recently turned sixty, and none of the men who came to Wellingford Hall for his shooting parties had children her age. Mother’s friends, all in their early forties, never brought their children when they visited from London. “I don’t want to leave and go away to school,” Audrey said. “I refuse to go.”
“I really don’t want to, either,” Alfie said. “But Father is quite set on it. He wants me to have all the advantages he never had. All the upper-crust boys go to this school. And he donated a lot of money to get me admitted.”
Audrey sat on the edge of her bed, exhausted after crying so hard. “I’ll miss you, Alfie. It’ll be so quiet around here without you.”
“I’ll be home on holidays. And we’ll still vacation by the sea every summer and sail on Father’s boat. I’m old enough to captain it myself now. I’ll take you out, just you and me. I’ll even teach you how to sail it. Would you like that?”
“I would!” The idea terrified her, but she wanted him to think she was brave.
“Good,” he said with a grin. “That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”
Alfie left for boarding school a month later. It was the worst day of Audrey’s life. She watched him climb into Father’s automobile, piled high with trunks and suitcases, then couldn’t bear to watch him drive away. She fled up the curving stairs to her room without looking back.
The school she was to attend didn’t start for another week. She’d had a month to adjust to the idea but Audrey still didn’t want to go. And yet Wellingford would be unbearable with only dreary Miss Blake to talk to all day. She stared out her bedroom window at the settling dust cloud from the auto. The distant woods at the far edge of the lawn beckoned to her. She would run away.
Audrey tiptoed down the stairs and into the lounge, careful to listen and look in all directions. The French doors stood open to let in the late-summer breezes, and she hurried outside, avoiding the crunching gravel walkways in the formal gardens and crossing the lawn to the woods as if chasing a ball that had gotten away. They would find her too easily if she took the road into town, so she would simply vanish into the woods. Anger and sorrow propelled her steps at first, but the deeper into the woods she walked, the harder she struggled to make her way through the tangled underbrush. The trees grew closer together, their branches snagging her clothing and scratching her bare arms and legs. Her flight halted when she came to a brook, the water gurgling like a fountain as it rushed over rocks and dead limbs. She had no idea how to cross it. Tears of frustration welled and overflowed.
“Hello down there!”
Audrey cried out, startled. She clutched her heart as if to keep it inside her chest as she looked up. A girl in a faded cotton skirt and blouse sat on a tree branch above her, bare legs swinging.
“You frightened me!” Audrey said.
“I know!” the girl said, laughing. “You should have seen your face. You jumped straight up in the air like a scared rabbit.” Audrey watched her climb down, as strong and nimble as a boy. She landed in front of her, grinning as she brushed moss and bark from the front of her clothes. Her gray eyes danced with amusement. Freckles covered her nose and cheeks like gold dust. “You’re Audrey Clarkson, aren’t you?”
“How did you know?”
“I know everything about you.”
“You do not.”
“You’re twelve years old, like me, and you live in Wellingford Hall with your father, Alfred, your mother, Rosamunde, and your older brother, Alfie.” She ticked off each item on her fingers as she spoke. “Your father didn’t have to fight in the Great War like everyone else’s father because he was rich and—”
“No, his job was too important. He owns coal mines and railroads and things. That’s why he didn’t fight.”
“Oh, right.” Her mocking tone told Audrey she didn’t believe her. “Your ‘important’ father stayed home while mine fought and died in the Battle of Amiens. I never even got to meet him.” Her golden-brown hair was coming loose from her braids and had bits of leaves and pine needles stuck in it. It had a reddish glow when the sun shone on it.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Audrey said. She couldn’t imagine such a terrible thing. “I hardly see my father—” she began, by way of apology.
“But at least you have one.” The girl crossed her ankles and sank to the ground, as graceful as a wood sprite. She took off her shoes and socks. Audrey had never seen such worn footwear before, or socks that had been patched and darned so many times. “Your mother is the daughter of a duke or an earl or some such title,” the girl continued, “but she married your father for his money, even though he’s ages older than she is. And now she’s a socialite who stays in London most of the time and loves parties and dancing.”
Audrey’s cheeks grew warm at such an unkind summary, yet she couldn’t deny that the gist of it was true. “Who told you all this?”
“My mum. She works for your family in Wellingford Hall. She wanted to stay home and take care of me after I was born, but she had to go to work because my daddy was dead. Granny Maud looks after me. The only time I ever see my mum is on her day off.”
“Where do you live?”
“In a cottage in town. Your father owns it—along with everything else in town. His man comes to collect our rent, rain or shine. I saw your family in church last Christmas. I go every Sunday with Granny Maud. I’ll bet you never even noticed me, did you?”
Audrey shook her head, embarrassed. She wanted to change the subject. “What are you doing way out here in the woods?”
“I’m about to have a picnic.” She stood again, leaving her shoes and socks beneath the tree. “It’s a beautiful day for one, don’t you think? But it’s not going to be like one of your picnics.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your servants lug tables and chairs and fancy white cloths and china out to your lawn so your maids can serve tea.” She gave a mocking curtsy, then shook her head. “That’s not a real picnic!”
“What’s a real one like?”
“Come on, I’ll show you. Take your shoes off so you can wade out to that little island in the middle of the brook. It’s the perfect place for a picnic.”
Audrey hesitated, then dusted dirt off a rock before sitting on it to remove her shoes and socks. “I suppose I may as well accept your invitation. I’m leaving home, you see.”
“Really?” The girl smirked. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure yet. But they sent my brother away to boarding school, and now they want to send me away, too. I won’t go! I just know I’ll be dreadfully homesick.”
“Won’t you be homesick if you run away?”
Audrey hadn’t thought of that. She felt tears brimming again. “I just don’t know what else to do to make them listen to me.”
“Well, while you’re deciding, let’s have our picnic. Come on.” She skipped across the stream, hopping from one stone to another as if she had wings on her feet, then turned and beckoned to Audrey from the tiny island, midway across. “Come on!”
Audrey couldn’t do what the girl had done. The stones looked slippery, and besides, some of them teetered when the girl stepped on them. The water didn’t look very deep, so she decided to wade across. The shock of the ice-cold water made her suck in her breath. The girl laughed. “Cold, isn’t it?”
After two steps, Audrey wanted to retreat. The current tugged at her ankles and the tiny stones on the streambed bit into her feet. But she kept going. She wanted to impress this girl fo
r some reason. She took a few more steps, shivering in the chilly water, and then she was there.
“You made it! Sit down.” The girl gestured to a patch of weeds and dirt and sat down on the ground, cross-legged. She unfastened a napkin that was pinned to her waistband and opened it to reveal a plump sausage roll and a scone. She carefully broke each treasure into two pieces with her filthy hands and laid them on the napkin. “Help yourself,” she said. Dirt rimmed her bitten fingernails.
Audrey didn’t want to seem rude. And the food did look good, the sausage roll golden and crispy, the scone studded with plump currants.
“This was supposed to be my lunch but I skipped school today.”
“Skipped? Why?”
“Because the sun is shining for the first time in days, and I needed to be outside.”
Audrey bit into the roll. She couldn’t identify the spices but it tasted delicious. “Won’t you get into trouble for skipping?”
“I don’t care,” she said, lifting her shoulder in a shrug. “I already know as much as the teacher does.”
“You don’t really.”
“It’s true!” She laughed and leaned closer. “If I tell you a secret, will you give me your solemn promise not to tell anybody?” Audrey hesitated before nodding. “No, no, no,” the girl said, laughing again. “You can’t make a solemn promise like that! Don’t you know anything about sharing secrets?” Audrey shook her head. “You have to put your right hand over your heart, like this, and say, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die. I swear by my very life not to tell.’” She scooped up a handful of leaves and crushed them in her fist, letting the bits drift to the ground.
Audrey swallowed. Her heart drummed very fast. A thrill of fear shivered up her spine as she covered her heart. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said. “I swear by my very life not to tell.”
The girl inched closer. “My mum borrows books from your father’s library. She brings different ones home for me each time she comes and then returns them. I’m very careful with them. But that’s how I know as much as my teacher.”
“Don’t you have books at your house?”
“Ha! We don’t even have books at my school!”
“I can’t imagine a school without books.” Audrey swallowed the last bite of sausage and wished she had a serviette to wipe her hands. It had been delicious but a bit greasy. The girl wiped her fingers on her skirt.
“Well, I’m sure the fancy school you’re going to will have plenty of books.”
The reminder dimmed Audrey’s delight with the picnic, as if the sun had crept behind a cloud. “I don’t want to go away and leave Wellingford Hall. I miss being home even when Alfie and I are on holiday at the seashore.”
“Then why are you running away?”
Audrey didn’t reply. She didn’t know.
“They’ll come searching for you, you know.”
“I know.”
“Here, eat your scone.” The girl handed it to her. Audrey took a bite. It was as good as Cook’s scones. Maybe better. She wished she had a cup of tea to go with it.
“Why don’t you go to day school, like I do,” the girl asked, “and then go home at night? I walk to my school, but you could ride in your father’s automobile.”
Audrey stopped eating. “That’s a very good idea.”
“Don’t look so surprised. I’m just as smart as you are. I’m just not as rich.” She shook the crumbs off the napkin and repinned it to the waistband of her skirt.
“I feel bad for eating half your lunch.”
“Well, the next time you decide to run away, you can bring your lunch along to share with me.”
“The next time?”
The girl rolled sideways on the ground, laughing. “You’re so thickheaded! It’s a joke, Audrey Clarkson. You aren’t really going to run away this time, and so there won’t really be a next time. And they aren’t going to invite me to a picnic on your lawn, are they?”
“I’m sorry. I would like very much to invite you.”
The girl stood in one smooth movement and brushed off her skirt. “Come on, let’s wade to the other side and I’ll walk you as far as your lawn. You can tell them what you decided about school.”
Audrey waded through the icy water again, the stream tugging at her steps. The back of her dress was damp from where she’d sat on the ground. She would be in trouble with Miss Blake but she didn’t care. They put on their shoes and the girl led the way down a path that Audrey hadn’t noticed. She halted at the very edge of the woods as if hesitant to step onto the thick, manicured grass. “Bye, Audrey Clarkson. Good luck!”
“Thank you. And thank you very much for the picnic.” She turned toward home. The sun lit up the windows on the west wing of Wellingford Hall as if setting them ablaze. Audrey took a dozen steps, then turned back. “Wait! You never told me your name.” But the girl had vanished into the woods.
Eve followed the narrow path through the woods, her excitement building. Wait until Granny Maud heard about her picnic with the girl from Wellingford Hall! The ninny had been running away from home. Imagine! Who would ever run away from a fairy-tale place like Wellingford Hall with dozens of servants to grant her every wish?
Granny would be waiting with a pot of tea brewing beneath the tea cozy and a bite of pastry, warm from the oven. She would fold Eve into her soft arms as if it had been ages since she’d last seen her instead of just this morning. She would tut-tut over Eve’s rumpled dress as she picked bits of leaves from her hair with her knotted fingers and then ask about her day. Granny wouldn’t care that she’d skipped school, but she would be very surprised to hear that she’d met the rich girl from Wellingford Hall. Granny read the Bible aloud to Eve every night before bed, and it seemed like Jesus had a lot of grim things to say about rich people who didn’t share what they had with the poor.
A blue jay scolded Eve from the treetops as she emerged from the woods to cut through the cemetery. Granny was teaching Eve the names of all the birds and the songs they sang. Granny talked to the little wrens who nested in the back garden as if they were her children.
Eve ran the last few yards to their cottage and burst through the door calling, “Granny Maud! I made a new friend today, and you’ll never guess who it was. Never in a million years!” Her granny was asleep in her chair by the range, her knitting limp in her lap. She didn’t stir, even when the wind slammed the door shut behind Eve. Granny’s hearing, like her eyesight, was becoming worse and worse. Eve crossed to the range to put the kettle on for their tea, but the fire was barely warm.
“Granny!” she said, speaking loudly enough to wake her. “You let the fire go out.” She still didn’t move. Eve knelt beside her chair and shook her shoulder, gently at first, then harder and harder, shouting her name. “Granny Maud! Wake up!” Her knitting needles and half-finished sock fell from her fingers. Something was very wrong.
Eve scrambled to her feet and raced to their neighbors’ cottage, her legs like clumsy logs. She didn’t knock. “Mrs. Ramsay! Come quick! Something’s wrong with Granny. She won’t wake up.”
Mrs. Ramsay wiped her hands on her apron as she hurried after Eve. “Wait out here, child,” she said when they reached the cottage door. Eve shook her head and followed her inside. Mrs. Ramsay crouched beside the chair and covered Granny Maud’s wrinkled hands with her own. Tears filled her eyes as she gently stroked Granny’s face. “She’s gone, Eve. I’m so sorry.”
“No! She . . . she can’t be! She wasn’t even sick!” Eve’s heart tried to squeeze out of her throat, choking her.
“She passed on peacefully, dear.”
“But she was fine when I left this morning!” Eve’s thoughts whirled like windblown leaves. She longed to start the day over again and do everything differently so it would have a different ending. This was her fault. “I—I should have come home sooner! I shouldn’t have left her all alone!”
“I don’t think it would have mattered. It was her time, Eve.” Mrs. Ramsay reached
to take her hand but Eve pulled away. She dropped to her knees in front of the chair, resting her head on Granny’s lap as she loved to do. It no longer felt soft and warm. Eve buried her face in Granny’s skirt and sobbed.
Mrs. Ramsay stroked Eve’s hair. “I’ll send Charlie up to Wellingford to fetch your mum. Come to my house and I’ll fix some tea.”
Eve shook her head. “I need to stay here with Granny Maud. The fire went out. I need to take care of it.”
Mrs. Ramsay opened her mouth as if she might argue, then closed it again. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Everything seemed unreal. Mum arrived home and it wasn’t even a Sunday afternoon. She cried with Eve and rocked her in her arms. For as long as Eve could remember, Granny Maud had taken care of her while Mum worked up at Wellingford Hall. Granny kept house, cooked Eve’s meals, darned her socks, mended her clothes, took Eve to church, and made sure the cottage was warm all winter long. Granny told Eve how much she loved her every day of her life. How could Eve live without her?
Everyone came to Granny Maud’s funeral in the village church. They loved her as much as Eve did, and they talked about how quick she’d been to help anyone in need, even if it meant going without herself. The sun shone as they buried her in the graveyard, and it seemed unfair that the sky didn’t rain down tears. She was laid to rest beside her husband, the grandfather Eve had never met. Mum picked up a fistful of dirt and dropped it onto her coffin but Eve couldn’t do it.
The villagers gathered in Granny’s cottage afterwards, sharing food and stories. “You’ll always have us as your family,” the vicar said. But nobody’s hug was as wonderful as Granny Maud’s. When the last person left and Eve and Mum were alone, the cottage felt dark and empty, as if Granny had been the source of light and warmth.
“Do you think she’s in heaven, Mum?” Eve asked.
“Of course she’s in heaven. She loved Jesus—you know that.”
“So she’s with my daddy now?”
Mum nodded. “Yes. And they must be so happy to be . . .” Tears choked her voice before she could finish. She sank down in Granny Maud’s chair as if she lacked the strength to stand. Eve lifted the framed photograph of her mum and dad from the dresser and sat on the floor with it beside Mum’s chair. Mum looked young and pretty, Daddy handsome in his uniform. “You get your love of the outdoors from your father,” Mum said. “You’re so much like him. You have the same color hair and freckles just like his.” Mum brushed her fingers across Eve’s face as if she could feel them. Granny Maud said each freckle marked a spot where an angel had kissed her. Pain twisted through Eve’s stomach. Granny was gone. Gone! Just like her daddy.