Out on a Limb (20 page)

Another thing Miss Rankle taught in personal skills was visualization. The idea is that by picturing yourself achieving a goal, you help it to come true. I decided to give this advice a try by picturing myself holding a rummage sale at Grand Oak Manor. This turned out to be really hard. I couldn’t imagine what Great-great-aunt Lydia and I would be saying to each other; or how she’d be behaving to the visitors; or what stuff we’d be selling or anything. My mental picture was totally lacking in detail, like a bad piece of creative writing. I just couldn’t visualize, and according to Miss Rankle, if you don’t visualize what you hope for, it’s probably not going to happen.

It must have been my determination to visualize that drew me toward Great-great-aunt Lydia’s mansion. When the drizzle stopped one cold Monday afternoon in March, I left the treehouse, crossed the meadow and climbed the big cherry tree. From my favourite branch I had a good view over the so-called electric fence. I sat looking through the pale-pink blossoms at the dark grey mansion and the matching dark grey clouds beyond. I sat for a long time, until the damp bark soaked right through my back pockets, but I got no closer to visualization.

I climbed down from the cherry tree and walked through the wet meadow grass toward Grand Oak Manor. I reached the loose board in the so-called electric fence and swung it aside. The turrets loomed above me. I hoped that being so close would make my plan to hold a rummage sale there seem more likely, but it did just the opposite. As I stood outside the fence in the chilly shadow of the Manor, the whole idea seemed impossible. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to turn away and give up on it. I couldn’t accept that I had no strategy whatsoever for Panther-Lamp Day. I couldn’t go back to the treehouse and just wait for the day to arrive. I couldn’t. I’d be surrendering myself to Kendra. I’d be surrendering myself to Devo. And Bridget ...Bridget and Paige ...I blocked the thought. I stood at the gap in the fence, putting off the panic that would fill me when I turned away. I don’t know how long I’d been there when I heard, over by the stable, the sound of car wheels on Grand Oak Manor’s drive. It sounded like the Bentley leaving.

With Great-great-aunt Lydia gone, it was safe to go inside the Manor garden. Maybe entering her space would help me visualize. I was not hopeful, but I was willing to try anything to get back some belief in my stupid Panther Lamp-Day-at-Grand-Oak-Manor idea. I slipped through the gap in Great-great-aunt Lydia’s fence. I squelched down her mossy path, past the fishpond and the deer tree, onto the concrete walkway that outlined the Manor. I skulked along the walkway, my fingers grazing the Manor’s rough grey stucco, until I reached a basement window. Kneeling there, I rubbed a patch clean with the sleeve of my fleece jacket. When I stuck my nose up to the cold glass it misted over, and I saw nothing but murk on the other side. I was crouched, waiting for the mist to clear, when I heard heavy breathing. I froze. Behind me, the breathing came closer. My heart beat at hummingbird speed, but I didn’t move a muscle.

There was a sickening meaty smell and, an instant later, warm, wet breath on the back of my neck. I turned. Inches from my own were the cloudy brown eyeballs of Great-great-aunt Lydia’s old basset hound. It was a moment before I realized that Great-great-aunt Lydia was standing there with him.

“Stand up,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Stand up, Rosamund, and come with me.”

I did as Great-great-aunt Lydia told me. I stood up and I went with her.

I was scared, and I thought about running. Great-great-aunt Lydia was extremely slow, so I could obviously outrun her. But maybe, I thought, I was
meant
to be found by her there, outside the Manor. Maybe this was visualization turning things into reality! Great-great-aunt Lydia led me along the concrete walkway, her sensible shoes crushing the little yellow weeds in the cracks. At old-lady pace we went up the big front steps, and across the threshold. As I stepped into the unknown space of Grand Oak Manor and heard the door close behind me I had a sudden sense of captivity, as though I’d been swallowed by a whale. I fought an urge to leave. I would get no other chance, before Panther-Lamp Day, to befriend Great-great-aunt Lydia.

She brought me down a long, long hallway to a gigantic room, deep within the Manor. At the doorway she paused and changed direction. “This way,” she said, and led me up a castle-type staircase. She opened the door to a small room that had six walls, like the treehouse. I realized it was the turret. “This will do,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Sit down.”

I sat in an armchair that rose about a yard above my head. It had a cushion like a sack of concrete. I folded my hands in my lap. Obedience was my strategy. I hoped that my perfect behaviour would demonstrate to Great-great-aunt Lydia that I was nothing like my maniac murderer of a great-grampa. The basset hound lay down beside me, rested his head on his front paws, and shut his eyes. “Wait here,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said, and she left the room, clicking the door shut behind her.

I waited with the patience of the obedient. On the table beside me were a pair of binoculars, and a pen, and a box of blue stationery.

From the Desk of

Lydia Florence Augustine McGrady

Grand Oak Manor

Number 9 Bellemonde Drive

On the other side of the turret was the desk that the stationery was talking about. I wanted to tiptoe over to look, but I didn’t want to risk my obedient image. I could see the treehouse through the spring foliage of our far-off oak tree, and I wished I was there.

Great-great-aunt Lydia was gone a long time. I started to wonder what was going on. Then I thought of something.
Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted
. I’d never taken that sign any more seriously than the one that said
Warning— Electric Fence
, but I began to take it seriously then. Was it possible, I wondered, that when Great-great-aunt Lydia had told me to come with her, she was conducting a citizen’s arrest? Had she gone to call the police? She
had
, I thought, and she was waiting for them to arrive. They would take me to the police station, and after that I would be prosecuted in Youth Court, where I had been warning Tilley that she and Eveline would end up. At Youth Court, there would be a crime reporter from the local newspaper, and then when we studied current events in social studies my whole class would read about how I had a criminal record for trespassing at the house I claimed to live in. It would be even more humiliating than Panther Lamp Day.

Should I leave, I wondered. If I left and managed to find my way out of the mansion, Great-great-aunt Lydia would not be able to prove my trespass beyond a reasonable doubt. But
could
I leave? I remembered that click of the turret door. Had it been the click of a lock? Was I imprisoned there, among the worn out fancy furniture, in the dim afternoon? Had Great-great-aunt Lydia’s basset hound been left behind to guard me?

At my feet the basset hound breathed slowly. “Hey boy,” I said, stroking his neck in a careful test of ferocity. “Hey there! Hello boy! Good dog!” I said, scritching under his collar. Without lifting his head, the basset hound opened one eye, then shut it again. I felt better for a moment, until new thoughts formed.

I had come inside with Great-great-aunt Lydia to show that, unlike my violent great-grandfather, I was nice and she didn’t have to be nervous. But if Great-great-aunt Lydia was nervous, would she have brought me inside the Manor all by herself? I had written Great-grampa Tavish’s letter out in normal format, and I took it from my wallet.

I did not ever think a pair of scissors could do

so much harm. I have to leave this bloody house.

A bad destiny awaits me here.

A life is so easily lost.

Let us escape. Let us elope.

Isobel meet me: the treehouse at ten.

X.

I had interpreted the letter the way Bridget did, because Bridget was smart. But I had not given Bridget all the facts. Come to think of it, some of the facts that I had given her were wrong. There was another way to read the letter, I realized. Maybe Great-great-aunt Lydia was the one wielding the scissors. Maybe she had done the harm. Maybe Great-grampa had escaped to save himself. Maybe his own murder was the bad destiny awaiting him at Grand Oak Manor. My scalp prickled. Maybe, I thought, I should get out of here.

NOTEBOOK: #26

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: Footprints

Just as I’d decided to flee
the doorknob turned. In the turret doorway stood Great-great-aunt Lydia, in her tartan skirt and her knit stockings that were like athletic bandages. She looked so old and incapable of harm that my fears suddenly seemed crazy. Fleeing seemed rude. I stayed in my chair.

Great-great-aunt Lydia crossed the room. She took small, careful steps, as if checking the floor for booby traps. Finally she reached the armchair opposite mine. She sat down in ultra slow motion, all except for the last couple of inches, which were speeded up by the force of gravity. She gave me a long look. Her face had no expression at all, only wrinkles.

A man entered the turret. He was not a police officer. He was old, and he was wearing a cardigan and a tie. It was the same man who had been with the workman putting up signs on the so-called electric fence. I recognized his hair, gushing out of his head in big grey waves. He advanced on us with two mugs and a stout brown teapot.

“Not
that
one, Mr. Bickert,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. This time she did have an expression, which was annoyance. “The good teapot! The good one! And teacups, not mugs!”

Mr. Bickert pursed his mouth, nodded once, and disappeared with his tray.

Great-great-aunt Lydia looked at me. “I’ve been waiting for you Rosamund.”

“Waiting for me?”

“Waiting for you to come back.”

“Come back?” I repeated.

“You left so suddenly, that time you were here,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Just an introduction, and then you were gone. I expect I scared you away somehow. I’ve thought and thought, but I never could determine how. I expect I was curt, was I? I know I can be curt. Heaven knows, I’ve been told.”

She meant the time that Paige had driven me home and I had hugged her at the front door of Grand Oak Manor. “No,” I said. “No, you weren’t curt. I just— dropped by to say hello. That’s all.”

“Ah,” said Great-great-aunt Lydia. “I’d hoped you were accepting my invitation.”

“Invitation?” I asked.

“Yes. My invitation to afternoon tea.”

“I never got an invitation to afternoon tea,” I said. “I would have come if I had.”

“You most certainly did get an invitation to afternoon tea,” she said. “With the flowers, on the day you moved in.”

“We got the flowers,” I said. “And thank you, they were so pretty. But there was no invitation with them.” Before I could mention the torn letter in the stream, Great-great-aunt Lydia spoke again, the turkey wattles of her neck swinging with her words. “Nonsense! There was. I attached it to the arrangement myself. My memory may not be what it was, but that I am sure of.” She pushed herself out of her hard throne. At her desk she picked up a file. She turned toward me, a shaking paper in her hand. “Just as I said. The invitation. I keep a copy of all my correspondence, Rosamund, and I’d advise you to do the same. It’s useful when disputes arise, as they so often do.”

She handed me the paper. It was a photocopy of a letter on her stationery.

From the Desk of

Lydia Florence Augustine McGrady

Grand Oak Manor

Number 9 Bellemonde Drive

June 30

To the McGrady family:

I must confess it was a shock to hear from family lost so long. I had forgotten the clause about the treehouse, if I ever knew of it. I am afraid that I felt some suspicion, and called my lawyers. I do hope you won’t be offended. They took the will from archives. It turns out to be authentic, the copy that you unknowingly possessed all these years. They considered whether in law the treehouse is indeed yours, as you four now claim that it is. It turns out that it is. They checked also to see whether in fact you are who you say you are. Of course, as you know full well, it turns out that you are. So, finally, I am in a position to reply. Please forgive my tardiness. To the treehouse, meadow and woods, you are welcome. I’ve not been there in many long years in any case, since old bones like mine are broken easily in a fall on rough ground. I nonetheless hope we’ll become acquainted. Please accept my invitation for lunch or afternoon tea here at Grand Oak

Manor someday soon. Please write or ring me at (406) 189 4666.

Yours truly,

Lydia McGrady

I recognized some of the words from the torn blue strip we had found in the stream. Great-great-aunt Lydia lowered herself carefully back into her chair, free-falling the last couple of inches. “There. That’s one invitation we’ve confirmed that you received. As well as the verbal one my manservant delivered the time I saw you and your sister by the hedge. Perhaps you’ll be so good as to tell me why you chose not to come.”

I was too scared of Great-great-aunt Lydia to insist that we’d never received her letter, and that Mr. Bickert had never spoken to Tilley and me. “I just—got the feeling that you didn’t want to know us,” I said.

“Why ever did you think that?”

“Um. Well. I guess maybe because you didn’t answer our party invitation.”

“Your party invitation! What party invitation? I got no party invitation. I don’t receive so many that I could have forgotten, I’m quite sure of that.”

“Well, we mailed it. Mom said she mailed it. And then there were the signs.”

“The
signs
?”

“The signs telling us to stay away.”

“What are you saying? That some silly omen told you to avoid Grand Oak Manor?”