Celandine (46 page)

Chapter Nineteen

SHE WAS A
pine marten in a glass case – a weasel, a stoat, an otter – and even though the world might peer in at her, and poke and pry, she was protected by an invisible wall and they could not reach her. If she stayed quite still, and said nothing –
nothing
– then eventually they would have to go away and leave her alone.

Her mother, her father, her Uncle Josef – they were all at her bedside, just as they had been the first time. But now there was a fourth figure also. Another doctor.

Their mouths were moving. Celandine could see them out of the corner of her eye. She could see the shapes of the words that came out of those mouths, and the colours of them. And she could hear all the questions – Where had she been? What had she done? What had happened to her hair? – but the questions were just shapes and colours and sounds. If she stared for long enough, and didn’t blink, then she could see right through them and through her bedroom wallpaper, the ceiling, and the roof. She could just drift
upwards
into the blue stillness of the sky and continue to say nothing.

‘Some concussion, certainly, but perhaps shock also. It’s difficult to say how severe. What do you think, Wesser?’

‘Um. I am not yet sure. She seems comfortable at the moment, but I am afraid that the leg will be quite painful. Try to move her as little as possible, Lizzie.’

‘Of course. But Josef, it frightens me that she will not speak. I must know what is
happened
here. Where she has been so long . . .’

‘Give her a little more time. This is a very bad fall, and she needs rest. Doctor Lewis and I have both examined her, and . . . well . . . we can find no damage apart from the leg, and bruising on her head. The leg will be in splints for some weeks. But this is an accident, we think, rather than any attack, or . . . assault upon her. As for not speaking, she is perhaps in some shock, as Doctor Lewis has said, and it might take a while for her to recover. Erstcourt – this boy who found her – William, did you say his name was . . .?’

‘Young Wilfrid, the carter’s boy. What the devil he was doing up on the hill at that time of night, I can only guess at. Says he was out with his dog, and got caught in the hailstorm. After a rabbit, if I know anything about it. Anyway, it was the dog that found her, for which we must be grateful I suppose, and so I didn’t press the matter further. I’ve already spoken to the local constable and got the search called off, but I daresay the police will have some questions that need answering – and so shall I, for that matter. When do
you
think she’ll be in a fit state to tell us what she’s been playing at, Josef? Lizzie and I have been worried to death.’

‘Try not to be too impatient with her, Erstcourt. She will tell us in her own time, and I’m sure there will be an explanation for all this. Lizzie, you must stop crying. She is safe. That is the only important thing.’

‘But her beautiful hair . . . and what are these
clothes
that she was wearing? Trousers for cricketing? Yes, and a man’s shirt! What
can
be the explanation for this? And she is so thin! For
weeks
she has been gone. Where?
Where?
I must know. Celandine, do you hear me? Were you taken by the gypsies? You must
tell
Mama what has been happening to you . . .’

‘Now, Lizzie . . .’

The shapes of the words bounced about the room, and it was curious to see the different colours of them – her mother’s a kind of orangey-pink, her father’s blue-grey, like the smoke from his pipe. She had never noticed that words had colours before.

And it was so simple to hide from them. The shapes and the sounds could not reach her. Nothing could touch her, because at last she had found the perfect place to hide – the best hiding place of all; inside herself. The invisible wall was all around her, and she was hidden inside herself. Nobody could find her here, and nobody could make her come out if she didn’t want to.

They fed her, and they bathed her and they brought her books to look at. Celandine opened the books,
one
or two of them, and looked at the black and white patterns that the words made. If she made a circle with her finger and thumb, and looked through it, like a telescope, then she could move the telescope over the page and watch the patterns. The black shapes looked like fuzzy caterpillars, but the white spaces in between were more interesting – like a maze. Sometimes she could see white wavy lines, running from the top of the page to the bottom, that reminded her of twisted vines or brambles.

Pencils and paper they brought her also, and the pencils were useful to poke down the inside of the heavy bandage on her leg in order to reach an itch that she couldn’t otherwise get to. She tried to find a way of folding the pieces of paper in half eight times, because she knew that it couldn’t be done.

It got dark, and then it got light, and then dark, and light again. Sometimes she slept when it was light, and sometimes she lay awake when it was dark, listening to the mouse in the attic. Once she heard a squeal, and Cribb’s savage snarl, in the dead of night. An awful, gurgling rattle of a sound. The dogs had caught something . . .

‘Lizzie, I think perhaps it would be good if Celandine came to stay with Sarah and I, for a week or two. A holiday, yes?’

‘A holiday? Do you mean at the clinic? Oh Josef! Do you mean as a . . . a patient? I don’t know. I am so
worried
about her. She says
nothing
. But really, she has not been so many days at home – and now for her to
go
away again . . . and to a hospital . . . with all those . . . and now that Freddie is gone, she is all that I . . . she is . . .’

‘Yes, I know this is very hard for you, Lizzie. But I think it might be for the best. And the children – they might cheer her up a little. Perhaps it is not good for her to be so much on her own. No, she would not be a patient as such . . . not really . . . but she does not progress as I had hoped, and I should like to keep a closer eye on her.’

‘Is she so bad? Perhaps just a little more time.’

‘Yes, I am sure that a little more time is all she will need. But Lizzie, I am seeing this with many of the injured soldiers who are my patients. They suffer a very deep shock, from the constant bombardment. Whatever it is that has happened to Celandine seems to have had an effect very similar. She has become entirely withdrawn, and I need to be able to watch her more carefully.’

‘But you won’t put her with those poor men . . .’

‘No, of course not, Lizzie. This is just a little holiday with us – a change of scenery, and some younger company. Peter and Samuel would love to see her again, and of course her Aunt Sarah will enjoy having a girl to make a fuss over . . .’

Later they lifted her into Uncle Josef’s smart gig, with a rug over her knees, her walking sticks propped up beside her and a basket for the journey. She felt nervous. It was not so easy to keep the world away from her now that she was out in the open air, and
there
was so much of the world that she did not wish to see . . .

But as they pulled out of the gate Uncle Josef turned to her and said, ‘Celandine, let me make you a promise. I shall never try to make you tell me where you have been or what has happened to you. When you feel like talking again, you will do so – and I shall be happy to listen. Until then I am equally happy with silence.’

She turned her head away from him, partly so that he should not see the sudden tears in her eyes, and partly so that she could avoid looking at Howard’s Hill. As they passed through the farmyard gate, Celandine saw a scrap of dark-stained material lying beside the grass verge. It was blue and white spotted, or it had been once. She thought that she had seen it before, but she couldn’t remember where.

Her cousins had wandered away from the dining table, bored with their jigsaw, and bewildered at her lack of communication.

‘But
why
won’t she speak?’ Celandine heard Peter whispering to Aunt Sarah.

‘Because she prefers not to,’ said Aunt Sarah. ‘And please don’t whisper. It’s not polite.’

The jigsaw pieces were spread out over the table, a great sea of them surrounding the pitiful little island that Peter and Samuel had managed to assemble. Celandine looked at the picture on the lid of the box. It was quite a famous one – of a horse and wagon, standing in the middle of a stream, with trees and sky,
and
an old farm building in the background. A mill. She began to push some of the pieces around, but then realized, out of the corner of her eye, that Aunt Sarah was watching her. Celandine took her hands off the table and put them back into her lap.

Later she sat with the family at the same table for supper.

‘The whole business is quite pointless.’ Uncle Josef was talking. He sounded unusually cross and gloomy. ‘They send them to me, I help to patch them up, and then what do they do? Why, they post them straight back to the battlefront, of course. As long as a man is able to stand and see, then as far as they are concerned he is fit for fighting. A week later that same man is either missing a trigger finger, or deserted. Or dead. And in the meantime they send me more of them to “cure”. How ignorant they are.’

‘Perhaps
not
whilst we’re at supper, Josef,’ said Aunt Sarah. ‘And particularly . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

‘You can’t cure Olive though, can you Papa?’ Samuel’s voice was sad and faintly accusing.

‘No, darling. I can’t cure Olive.’

‘Olive is Samuel’s kitten,’ Aunt Sarah turned to Celandine. ‘He dropped her in the bath-tub, and now we think she has influenza, or pneumonia, poor thing. But speaking of bath-tubs, you two boys, it’s time you were both in yours. Yes, you may get down. Say goodnight to Celandine.’

‘You will try though, Papa, won’t you? To make Olive better?’

‘I’ll try, sweetheart. But really, we can only wait and see.’

‘Can I take her upstairs with me?’

‘No, leave her in her box by the fire. She’ll be warmer there.’

Aunt Sarah shooed the boys off for their bath. Uncle Josef rose from his chair and went over to the bureau. He took out some papers and said that he had some work to do before he began his rounds. Then he left the room also, gently closing the door behind him.

Celandine remained at the uncleared table, aware now of her solitude. The clock ticked on the mantelshelf. From upstairs came vague bumps and thumps, muffled voices and footsteps, but then she picked out another sound, quite close by. There was something else in the room after all. Of course – the kitten, in its little box near the hearth. She could hear its snuffly breathing.

By using the furniture as props, she was able to lurch over to the fireplace without the aid of her walking sticks. She awkwardly lowered herself to the floor and peeped into the box. A small bundle of tabby fur lay curled up on an old woollen scarf. Beside the box was a baby’s bottle with a little milk in it. Celandine looked at the kitten for a while and then leaned closer, listening to the feeble rattle and wheeze of its breath. How helpless and fragile it was. Another casualty. Another sufferer, in an unsafe world. Like Uncle Josef’s poor soldiers. Like she . . .

The fur moved beneath her hovering hand as if
blown
by a breeze, or as though a magnetic current was passing over it. Yes, as though her palm was magnetic. Celandine slowly moved her hand back and forth, stroking, but not stroking, watching the fur rise and fall. She bent her head as close as she could, to watch how the tiny hairs shimmered gold in the firelight, drawn towards her palm. A waving field of corn that reached up for the sun.

Come out, then
, she whispered.
Come out of there, and be gone
 . . .

The chink of crockery made her jump. Aunt Sarah had come back into the room and was beginning to clear away the supper dishes. How long had she been there?

Celandine sat up, and took her hand away from the box. Aunt Sarah smiled at her, but there was puzzlement in her eyes.

The next morning, Samuel was ecstatic. He hugged his father’s leg and said, ‘See? You
did
make her better!’

Olive was out of her box and making shaky progress around the hearthrug. She mewed and mewed – or rather she croaked and croaked – and Uncle Josef remarked that any kitten that could make as much noise as that was probably capable of tackling a dish of milk.

‘You’re so
clever
!’ said Samuel. ‘I knew you could do it, really.’

Uncle Josef shrugged modestly.

Celandine smiled as she watched the kitten. She avoided looking at her Aunt Sarah.

* * *

‘Your aunt has to take the boys to school tomorrow morning,’ said Uncle Josef. ‘It’s the first day of their new term, and she may stay there to help for an hour or two. I thought that perhaps you might like to walk over to the clinic with me, if the weather stays fine. The grounds are very pleasing, and there’s a small private garden that I think you would enjoy. There would be nobody there who would see you. And you could take a book, or do some sewing, or make a drawing . . . or none of those things. Whatever you prefer. Then I should bring you home at midday, and Aunt Sarah would be back by that time.’

Celandine said nothing.

Just before bedtime, she heard her aunt and uncle talking.

‘Will it be all right, Josef, do you think – to take her to the clinic? She won’t see anything that might . . . upset her?’

‘No. There is nothing there
to
upset her, my dear. There are only a few of my patients who are able to get about by themselves. She will not be seen by anybody in the Hart Garden at that time of day, I promise. She can come to no harm, and I should prefer it to leaving her here alone. And besides, it will do her good to be in the fresh air. It’s only for an hour or two, don’t worry.’

The Wessers’ house turned out to be quite close to the clinic where Uncle Josef worked – just a short walk through the walled grounds – but Celandine was once
again
feeling nervous about being outside. She didn’t like the winding pathways with their high rhododendron bushes and tall overhanging trees . . .