Sea Glass Summer (25 page)

‘I wouldn't have hung around wondering. Is your uncle still creeping into your bedroom at dead of night?'

‘Sometimes, but I've kind of gotten used to that. I realized the second time that he was sleepwalking. He just stands there looking down at me and then goes away. I've tried asking what he wants, but he doesn't answer.'

‘Creepy! Maybe this house had gotten inside his head. I already get the feeling something wicked is creeping up on us, getting ready to pounce and watch us squirm.' Brian gave an exaggerated shiver as he looked around. ‘Talk about horror movies! Who's that spooky old guy?' He pointed at the dark oil portrait on the wall across from the tombstone fireplace.

‘Elizabeth and Gerard didn't know, but Mrs Poll told me. She knows a lot from being here working for Miss Emily. He's the one who built the house. Father of Nathaniel Cully and his two whaler brothers. His wife was so scared of him she used to hide in the attics. I went up the back staircase the other day and looked round. There was loads more old furniture but not what I was looking for. I had the idea there might be a painting of Nathaniel Cully as a boy, or some really old photos, but no luck. I'd already asked Gerard and Elizabeth if they'd come across any. Both said they hadn't and couldn't be bothered looking for needles in a haystack. Guess I'll have to try the historical society next.'

‘But I thought you decided you only thought you were awake when you saw and talked to Nathaniel; that it was really just the end part of a dream. Remember, I was the one who told you that he had to be a ghost, or how do you explain that book you found in the morning? You said Gerard and Elizabeth acted like they truly didn't know anything about it.'

‘I guess I didn't want to believe he was really there. But he did seem so real. If only there was some way to at least prove my bedroom was his as a kid.' Oliver shrugged. ‘You're still the only person I told. Saying you see and hear things no one else does makes you sound whacko. And Gerard and Elizabeth already seem to think I'm weird enough to be dragged off to a psychiatrist.'

‘Lots of people go to them,' countered the worldly-wise Brian. ‘My Mom's friend went and it just had to do with thinking she'd never learn how to text on her phone as fast as everyone else. Besides,' he drew out his trump card, ‘Aunt Nellie and the people at that church of hers think having contact with the spirit world is perfectly normal. By the way, that's why I walked over here. I stayed over last night with her and don't have to go home until this afternoon. She wants me to bring you back over so we can hang out.'

‘Cool!'

It was Brian's first visit to the Cully Mansion. Oliver hadn't suggested his coming over because he'd been afraid the answer would be no, forcing him to look deeper into the half-formed fears that swirled murkily beneath the surface of his relationship with Gerard and Elizabeth. Theirs wasn't clear to him. He'd never heard them arguing. They just seemed to move around each other, when they weren't sitting staring into space. He'd been told not to interrupt his uncle when he was in one of the back rooms working, but when he'd pass the door he always heard a television, or it could be a radio, going. What Oliver tried to do was think about them as little as possible. It seemed a long time ago that he'd planned to make them so sick of having him around that they'd be glad to let Twyla come and take him, but he'd quickly grasped that wasn't going to work. When he'd tried acting up they'd said it looked like he'd been allowed to get out of hand since Grandpa was ill and they hoped Twyla wouldn't continue to be a negative influence. He had been left struggling to come to terms with the realization that there wasn't going to be a miracle resulting in Grandpa's recovery. This house did not allow desperate hopes to survive. Or maybe love had more to do with it. Each time Oliver went to Pleasant Meadows he became more aware that for Grandpa staying alive was an exhausting effort. Tired to the bone. They both knew he was ready to go home, not to the one they'd shared in Ferry Landing, but to his long forever home where Grandma Olive and Mom and Dad and all the other people he'd loved would be waiting for him. It was so clear the only thing keeping him here was the worry of leaving Oliver behind in the wrong hands. And for whatever reason Elizabeth and Gerard weren't going to give him up. He would have to talk positively about the piano lessons and any other opportunities that offered temporary escapes into happiness.

‘I'll go find Elizabeth and Gerard and tell them you're here and that I'm walking back with you to Aunt Nellie's.' He stepped into the hall.

‘You think they'll say yes?'

‘I'm not going to ask them if it's OK, I'll just tell me that's what we're doing. It's not like they can make out you're a bad influence. Your name's not been in the paper for robbing banks.'

‘I see them as jailers; but Aunt Nellie says that with school out could be they won't be so keen to have you underfoot all day.'

‘Right.' Oliver was about to head up the stairs, not all that keen on knocking on Elizabeth and Gerard's bedroom door, although he couldn't imagine them in there kissing, when he saw them coming down. No need to have worried. They said it was fine for him to go off with his friend. Elizabeth smiled quite brightly at Brian, and Gerard remarked that it looked like it was going to be one of the first really hot days, so it was good to make the most of it.

‘We're going out ourselves this morning, Oliver, and when you get back we should have a surprise for you,' said Elizabeth, ‘so we'd like you back here by twelve thirty or one.'

Could it possibly be they'd changed their minds about getting him a dog or a cat?' Oliver told himself not to get his hopes up, but there was nothing else he'd asked for. He went out the front door with Brian into bright sunshine under clear blue skies. Lupines, blue, pink and corn-colored, sprang tall along the edges of Salt Marsh Road. His aunt and uncle had not asked if he'd had breakfast. Neither of them seemed much interested in food. Dinner was usually something bought frozen, although there was always a salad and fruit.

He and Brian said goodbye to Elizabeth and set off. ‘It wasn't like his name was in the book,' Oliver said, as they turned onto Wild Rose Way. Brian stopped to look at him.

‘Whose wasn't?'

‘Nathaniel Cully's. So even though it was an old leather book there's no way to say it belonged to him.'

‘But you can't pretend it wasn't weird that it was
Oliver Twist
. Have you started reading it?'

‘No. It just seemed too . . . well, you know. The next time I saw Grandpa I asked him if he liked it and he said he did, that it had some of Dickens' best characters – some named Fagin and the Artful Dodger, but he hadn't been sure about talking to me about it, or having us watch the movie because Oliver's mother died when he was born and it might make me too sad.'

Brian's eyes widened behind the glasses. ‘You should look through all the pages; maybe Nathaniel wrote something on one of them, and that would prove it was him.'

‘I did and there wasn't. Tucked in at the back, between the last few pages, there were two folded sheets of paper with boats drawn on them in ink, mostly sloops and frigates. I wondered if one of the brothers did them. Remember they're the ones that did the scrimshaws that were left to the historical society. But it could have been anybody, even Miss Emily.'

‘You didn't tell me about the drawings.'

‘Like I said, I've been telling myself it was just a dream. I asked Mrs Poll if she knew whether my bedroom was Nathaniel's when he was a boy, but she didn't know.'

‘Well, he said it was and I believe it,' Brian replied firmly. ‘I think he'll come back because he wants to help you somehow.'

‘Right.' Oliver wasn't looking at him. His eyes were on the small white house with the steep green room and picket fence. For some reason – nothing in particular, just a friendly look – it brought stingingly to mind his old home that would sometime soon have to be sold so the money could be used to pay for Pleasant Meadows.

‘Why don't you talk to Aunt Nellie about seeing Nathaniel?'

It was a sensible suggestion. She of all people wouldn't think he was nuts, but did he want to share the boy he'd seen and spoken to with anyone but Brian? Dream or no dream, Nathaniel was the one thing in recent weeks that Oliver could think of as his very own. With Brian it was different; talking to him was like thinking out loud.

‘Not this time.'

When they reached Aunt Nellie's cottage, she welcomed them into her overcrowded interior. There was too much of everything, from furniture to her collections of pickle crocks, patchwork quilts and colored bottles. But unlike the Cully Mansion it all made for a cozy muddle that made you feel right at home before you even worked your way through to the kitchen where three places were set at the table for breakfast. This turned out to be toaster waffles, but with real maple syrup, tall glasses of milk and what she called a fruit compote.

‘Can't remember who gave me the recipe, but it's good. Least I think so. If you don't then leave it. No points gained under my roof for being members of the clean plates club.' Nellie set her cane aside and sat down with the same enthusiasm that she did pretty much everything else. I heard from your Twyla, Oliver, that you're starting piano lessons with Mrs Garwood. A real nice woman and seems happier about her son these days. Says she's never seen such a change since Twyla came. By the way, I appreciated your note thanking me for making the suggestion. Of course it was my spirit guides who put the idea in my head.'

Oliver pretended not to notice when Brian gave him a pointed look. He told Nellie that he'd started his piano lessons yesterday afternoon and that he really liked Mrs Garwood and her son. ‘Twyla likes being there a lot.'

‘Those two women were born good. Some of us have to work real hard at getting there and others just can't be bothered putting shoulders to the wheel. They're not what you can call bad; just want the easiest path to what suits them.' For emphasis Nellie reached for her stick and pounded on the floor. ‘My old mother used to say you can learn yourself out of some habits – telling lies, making free with other people's things, a lousy temper – but selfishness is different because you just can't fathom there's any side but your own. Take Willie Watkins. Saw himself entitled to live off his daughter while drinking himself into the grave, if not fast enough to my mind. All that business of him holing up in the Cully Mansion last winter and worrying her half to death with his absence.'

Oliver nodded. ‘She's put up with a lot and keeps right on going.'

‘Not a word out of your aunt and uncle about Willie being found in the cellar? Why, that's what brought her up to Sea Glass for the first time ever – to check out that he hadn't robbed the place and talk the situation over with the police. Maybe it points to them,' she said as if begrudgingly giving the devils their due, ‘that they kept that from you for Robin Polly's sake. All the talk couldn't have been easy on her, but on the upside it did end with his being taken into Pleasant Meadows.'

‘He's Grandpa's roommate there.'

‘Is he now? And I hear Robin Polly's back working at the mansion after all her years with Emily Cully. Wonder what's behind that? Her idea of restoring what she'd see as her tarnished good name after what Willie pulled, or because no one else would break their backs digging through all that rubble? How'd you like her, Oliver?'

‘She's great.'

Nellie nodded. ‘Her size could put some folks off hiring her. Hard to boss around a woman that can look down her nose at you from the clouds. Emily told me straight out that's how she got her on the cheap. And maybe she's felt obliged to cut her rate even lower for your aunt and uncle, if she thinks she owes them.' The dark eyes, well-padded face with its mesh of cobwebby lines turned thoughtful. ‘Dora Jones who comes in to clean for me one morning a week is off to spend a month in California with her daughter. So maybe I'll talk to Robin Polly about filling in for her. Well,' she got nimbly to her feet, ‘no point in sitting here wasting the day. You boys go off and amuse yourselves while I talk this over with my spirit guides. If I ignore them for more than a day or two they get uppity and threaten to go where they're appreciated.'

When they'd finished doing the dishes, over Aunt Nellie's protests, Brian asked her if it would be OK if they went off on their bikes for an hour or so.

‘Suits me, so long as you ride safe.'

‘What bikes?' Oliver followed him out the door.

‘Yours and mine. Dad brought them over in the back of the truck last night. You can take yours home if you want to, or leave it here in Aunt Nellie's garage. Whatever. How 'bout we ride over the historical society to see if they have pictures of Nathaniel Cully as a boy?'

‘Right. Tell your Dad thanks for bringing over the bikes,' Oliver said as he and Brian pedaled back to Salt Marsh Road. The water shimmered a deep blue and there were quite a number of sail boats drifting sleepily under the sun's gold haze. Oliver found himself thinking of the drawings tucked at the back of
Oliver Twist
. They had been really good. If only he could know if Nathaniel, or someone else, had done them.

‘I expect that's why Gerard and Elizabeth keep the door from the hall to the cellar locked,' he spoke the thought out loud as he and Brian glided down an incline.

‘What?'

‘Because of Willie Watkins hiding out there last winter and wanting to be sure no one else could get in them and up the stairs. When I couldn't find a picture of Nathaniel as a boy in the attic I thought I'd go search the cellar, and when I asked them at dinner the other night that I'd like to check them out to make sure there's nothing scary down there so I wouldn't be nervous at night, Elizabeth said she didn't have a clue where the key was and didn't care because nothing would make her go down there – the rest of the house was bad enough. And she wouldn't want me doing so either because there could be a well or something equally dangerous.'