Cold Shoulder Road (6 page)

Is studied her cousin with dismay.

When she had agreed to travel south with him on the
Dark Diamond
, her plan had been to stop for a night with Arun and her aunt Ruth in Folkestone, and then make her way north-westwards to her own home with her sister Penny and cat Figgin in Blackheath Woods. By now she was longing to rejoin her own family.

But the arrival in Folkestone to the mystery of the empty, wretched house had given this plan a decided check. Is felt that she could not leave Arun with such uncertain prospects. He did not seem fit to face them on his own.

“
Oh, what’s the use of it all
?” he burst out, flung down his scrubbing brush, and strode off to the shingle ridge. There, between two upturned fishing boats, he sat down heavily, and stared out to sea.

He seemed quite overthrown by all these happenings.

I only hope he won’t want to go back to being a cat again, thought Is, deeply worried.

She was fond of cats – particularly her own cat Figgin – but she did not feel it would help matters just now if Arun should choose to eat nothing but fish and stop speaking to humans.

She, too, left off scrubbing (really it did seem a waste of time if they were not going to stay), went slowly upstairs, and stared for a long time at Ruth Twite’s amazing pictures.

Seen in daylight, they were like an explosion. Vermilion red, black, olive green, lime yellow, sapphire blue, peony pink. Solid shapes and thick black lines scrambled and rioted and twisted.

“Croopus, Auntie Ruth, you musta had a whole lot of fun painting ’em,” breathed Is, staring at each in turn. She studied all the ones in the bedroom, then pulled out the ones from the closet which had been Arun’s room, and looked at those.

Some of them were almost recognisable as flowers: arum lilies, honeysuckle, anemones, bee orchids. Others were wholly unfamiliar.

Maybe Aunt Ruth just made ’em up, Is thought, studying some green, black, and salmon-pink star-shaped flowers the size of horses’ hoofs, which were being visited by giant bees.

At the very back of the closet, under the last pile of pictures, she found a slip of paper. It was grubby and dusty, folded into a concertina shape, tucked under the skirting-board.

Is carried it over to the window, for she could see faint writing on it. She read:

“
Well!
” said Is.

The lines were in Arun’s handwriting, but in a childish script that was rounder and larger than his present style. They must have been written years ago, before he left home.

There was writing on the other side of the paper as well; she turned it over and read,
Somewhere in the woods
.

Is pondered over this for a long time. Then she slipped the paper into her pocket (she wore breeches like a boy, a habit she had acquired from life in the woods, where it was often necessary to run very fast or climb trees to escape the wolves). She left the house, shutting the kitchen door behind her, and found her way to the steep and narrow High Street.

The town was very silent. Few people were about. The ones that were eyed each other suspiciously and had nothing to say. Is received many hostile looks and some muttered remarks were flung after her.

“Who’s that little skellum?”

“One o’ those Silent Folk, maybe.”

“We don’t want her sort round here.”

Ignoring these comments, Is brought two hot faggots at a ham-and-beef shop, and, at a baker’s next door, two large slabs of thick, pale pudding studded with large flat raisins. These things she carried to the shingle ridge, where she found Arun sitting in exactly the same position.

“Here,” said Is, “have a bit o’ dinner.”

Arun silently accepted the food and ate it. He was already beginning to take on the look of a cat, Is thought, sighing; his eyes were slitted and his cheeks were drawn in. But perhaps that was just lack of food. He seemed very hungry.

“We gotta find some way to earn a bit o’ blunt,” Is remarked when the meal was done. “That was my last brown. You got any mint sauce?”

“Not much.” He turned out his pockets and produced a sixpence and a few pennies.

“How did you go on for cash when you was living in London?”

“I sang songs in the streets.”

“Make ’em up?”

He nodded listlessly.

Is knew that he had not sung any songs, or made up any new ones, since his time spent in the mines and the death of his friend Davey.

“You make this one up?” she asked, passing him the scrap of paper.

As he read the lines, a faint spark of interest and recognition came into Arun’s eyes. He frowned, and looked about him as if he urgently needed a pencil to make some improvements.

“It’s not much good – hopeless, really. Must have been when I was ten or eleven; I can just remember writing it—”

“What about what’s on the back?”

He turned over the paper. Then he said, “But that’s
Mum
’s writing . . . How can she have got hold of this? Where did you find it?”

“Tucked way in, right at the back of the closet, where you slept. Under all them pictures.”

She paused, as he still intently studied the single line of writing, then suggested, with caution, “You think maybe that’s a message? From your Ma?”

Arun flung down the paper impatiently. “If it is, what’s the use? Somewhere in the woods? What good’s that?”

“She dassn’t make it any plainer,” said Is, “case somebody else come across it.”

Somewhere in the distance a cat mewed. Is turned her head sharply.

But the cat – she saw it in the distance, rubbing its back against the keel of one of the upturned fishing boats – the cat was not her own dear Figgin. It was a fat black-and-white animal with pale eyes. Still, she threw it a piece of faggot.

Turning back to Arun she was dismayed to see what looked like a tear push its way down his dust- and salt-caked cheek. Angrily he rubbed it away and pinched his lips tight together. But it was plain that he was in very low spirits; very low indeed. This return to an empty house had upset him badly.

“Maybe we should ax about in the town?” Is suggested. “We ain’t seen no one yet. We might meet some old pals of yours. Maybe arter your Dad died your Mum made friends we don’t know about. She mighta said summat about her plans to one or another. How about that?”

“I don’t see the point,” said Arun listlessly. “Ma never had friends. Dad said a wife’s place was in the home. How could she talk to folk, anyway? She wasn’t allowed.”

“Still, I think it’s worth axing around a bit,” Is persisted.

“Suit yourself . . .” Arun drew his arms round his knees and rested his chin on them. “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep last night.”

Is sighed and left him. She had slept badly too, but now she felt restless and longed for action. She set off for the centre of the town, clumped around the steeply climbing High Street. On the way she noticed various notices stuck on doors and lampposts.

If the Handsel Child is not returned within 20 days, Punitive Measures will be taken
, said one. Another said,
A Reward is offered for information relating to the whereabouts of Tabitha Howe, aged 7
.

The air of the town was silent and gloomy. Is received a number of sour looks.

Small shops faced each other across the High Street – fishmongers, bakers, chandlers, gin shops, barbers, cobblers. Towards the top of the hill the shops were of a higher class: there were drapers, hatters, even a circulating library with books and papers and notices on a board. The two about Tabitha Howe and the Handsel Child were displayed here, too.

Few people were about. Of those she met, Is asked, “Did you know a Mrs Ruth Twite?”

Sometimes people said, “Why do you want to know?”

“She’s my auntie.”

Some spat and looked angry: “She was one of that Silent lot. Think themselves better than their neighbours. Went off to Seagate. Good riddance. Some said she was a witch.”

Some asked, “How is it that
you
talk?”

“My Dad didn’t belong to the Sect.”

“Mrs Twite used to do nursing,” somebody said. “She nursed old Mr Lillywhite when he was took bad. You could ask his widder.”

“Where’s she live?”

“Next to the paint shop.”

Aha! thought Is. Maybe that’s where Aunt Ruth bought her paints.

“Is you Mrs Lillywhite, beg pardon?” she asked a plump old lady carrying a jug of milk, who was about to climb an outside flight of steps alongside the paint store. At the foot of the stair stood boxes and barrels and pans of brilliant powders and liquids.

Bet this
is
where Aunt Ruth got her stuff.

“What did you say, my dear? I am a little hard of hearing.” The old lady cupped a hand round her ear.

“Is you Mrs Lillywhite? I wanted to ask about my aunt Ruth Twite?” Is bawled.

A man passing on the other side of the street halted and looked up attentively.

Mrs Lillywhite shook her head vigorously. “Come up if ye like, love. But I can’t tell ye anything to signify.”

However, once she was back in her small room – which was kept neat and clean as the inside of an eggshell and held little beside a bed, a table, chair, and about forty blooming geraniums, all different colours – Mrs Lillywhite said, “Ah! She were a right one, your auntie! I was sorry when she had to go. Looked after my old man like a haingel, she did. But she was one as had to do what she thought right.”

“Did you know her well, then? What
did
she think right? Did she talk to you, Mrs Lillywhite?”

“Used to fetch along her bit o’ slate, and we’d have a chat, once in a while, her writing, me talking. And a good cup of tea. She liked that, did your auntie.”

“When did she go?
Why
did she go?”

Mrs Lillywhite looked vague.

“A fair old while back, it was. As to a week or so, I couldn’t say. ‘Mrs L,’ she writ on her slate, ‘there’s summat terribly wrong. And I can’t stand it no longer.’ Those were the words she writ clown. ‘I gotta do summat’, she writ.”

“But what was the trouble?” cried Is, deeply interested. She wished that Arun were there.

“Ah. That, dearie, I can’t tell ye. ’Twas summat to do with her Sect. That Reverend Twite, as he calls hisself. Twite, blight! I’d give him Twite. A powerful good thing it is they’ve all gone to Seagate. Better if they went right away to Ameriky.”

“My Aunt Ruth, though –
she
didn’t go to Seagate?”

“Not as I thinks on, dearie. Going with her friend, I bleeve she was.”

“Friend?” Is pricked up her ears. “What friend?”

“A lady. A lady with a funny name. Cashy? Minty? Pinky?”

“Not Penny?” cried Is, electrified.

“Penny . . . ay, ay, that might ha’ been it. Skinny kind o’ woman – had a rare sharp way with her.”

“Had she a
cat
with her?”

“As to that, dearie, I couldn’t tell ye. I only saw her the once, in Cold Shoulder Road, a colloguing with yer auntie.”

“I’ll lay it
was
my sister Pen,” muttered Is with deep satisfaction. “The very minute we’ve dropped off Aunt Ruth’s pictures with the Admiral, I’m a-going to make Arun come with me to Blackheath Edge, to Penny’s and my place.”

She was talking mostly to herself, but Mrs Lillywhite caught the words.

“You going to do what? Leave y’auntie’s pictures with the Admiral? Admiral Fishskin? The dentist feller’s cousin? The old ’un as flies the kites?”

“Yes, why not?” demanded Is, suddenly caught by some note of warning in the old lady’s voice. “He’s straight enough, ain’t he? The Admiral?”

Mrs Lillywhite shook her head doubtfully.

“A rare rum bird, he be, the owd Admiral. Like a magpie. Once he latches on to summat . . . I dunno. They say that house of his is like a jackdaw’s nest, since his wife passed away. Got treasures there from all over. Locked up at night like a prison, they do say.”

“Well,” said Is, “we ain’t putting Aunt Ruth’s pictures exactly in his house. In a cave, they’re going. Safer there, he said they’d be, than in Cold Shoulder Road, where Mrs Boles says the neighbours are ready and raring to burn the house down.”

“An’ I don’t say she tells a lie. (Though I dessay lies comes easy as breathing to Winnie Boles.)”

“Better in a cave than all burned up. Have you seen my auntie’s pictures, Mrs Lillywhite?”

“Ah,” said the old lady thoughtfully. “I have, then. Right purty, they are. She give me one—” nodding towards a bit of board lodged among the geraniums. It blended in so perfectly with their dazzling hues that Is had not noticed it.

“Ay, that’s one of hers, sure enough.”

“Real naffy they are; real nobby,” said Mrs Lillywhite. “I tell her, she oughta show them to some genelmun in Lunnon Town, they fare to make her fortune. But, ‘No, Mrs L,’ she writ on her slate, ‘I does them for the good feeling I get. Not for money.’ But – mark you – what she done that was even cleverer – to
my
mind – was her likenesses.”

“Likenesses?”

“Folk’s faces; y’auntie Ruth is a rare hand at that. Maybe,” said Mrs Lillywhite, shaking her head, thinking it over, “maybe a sight
too
clever. Maybe that had its part in why she run off.” “What do you mean, Mrs L?” Is asked with a beating heart, for she believed she had some notion.