Читать книгу The Picts & the Martyrs - Arthur Ransome - Страница 17

CHAPTER VII

SECONDHAND NEWS

DOROTHEA WAS waked by the squawk of a cock pheasant in the wood. There was a feeling of stiffness in her back. Her bed seemed to have sagged in the middle. She opened her eyes and saw that the high ceiling of the spare room had dropped and turned into a dark oak beam. And the skull and crossbones from the head of her bed had gone. And what had happened to the wallpaper? No. There was the skull and crossbones, fastened against a stone wall. She remembered where she was and looked out past her feet through a great hole in the wall to green leaves and the trunks of trees. That tinkling noise was water dripping down into one of the little pools of the beck.

She remembered everything now. The Great Aunt of whom everybody was so much afraid was sleeping in that spare-room bed where she herself had slept the night before. Life at Beckfoot was going on without herself or Dick. It was as if they had slipped through a hole in the floor. They had fallen out of that life into another, in which, for the first time, she, Dorothea, had a house of her own. Nobody was going to say, “Buck up, Dot. Breakfast’s nearly ready.” If there was going to be any breakfast, she ought to be getting it now. She looked across at the other hammock. Dick was still asleep. Getting down was not going to be too easy. She pulled loose the edges of the rugs that she had tucked in under herself, swung her legs over the side, felt for the chair and kicked it over, held firmly to the hammock, kicked again, let herself slide and found herself standing on the earthen floor.

She put on her sandshoes, took soap, toothbrush, towel and kettle, opened the door and went out into the morning sunshine. There was that pheasant again. And now a new noise, the tap, tap of a hammer on a tree-trunk. For a moment Dorothea stood still, listening, half thinking that there might be someone working in the wood. Then she remembered that she had heard that noise before, last summer, in the woods below High Topps, and Dick had told her what it was. A woodpecker. No. There was nobody about. She and Dick were the only people in the world. And Dick was asleep. She had the world to herself.

She filled the kettle at the pool in the beck, washed her face and hands and cleaned her teeth. She thought of a new name for a story. “Ten Thousand Years Ago … a Romance of the Past,” by Dorothea Callum. No. No. With breakfast to get, this was no time to think of stories. She gave her face a last towelling, took the plates and mugs and spoons from under the waterfall and set off back to the hut to light the fire. As she came out into the clearing she saw a wisp of blue smoke above the huge old chimney. The smoke thickened and climbed straight up in the still air. And there was Dick, in his pyjamas, coming out to look for her.

“Hullo, Dot. Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I’ve only been to wash and fill the kettle. I say, you’d better wash, too, and get dressed. What have you been doing to your face?”

“I started the fire with some of the sticks that hadn’t burnt away last night. Some of them were almost charcoal. And then I went and rubbed my eyes by mistake.”

“Here’s the soap and towel. Get your toothbrush. Take your clothes with you.”

“All right. I only used one match for the fire. Dry bark makes splendid stuff to start it.”

“Good. Hurry up and get dressed and I’ll have breakfast ready by the time you come back.”

Dorothea put the kettle on, dressed in two minutes and was laying plates and mugs on the sugar case that was the Picts’ table before she remembered that they had used the last of the milk the night before. That meant no cornflakes and milk as usual. And no tea. “Oh bother,” thought Dorothea.

“I ought to have kept some from yesterday and kept it in a cool place.” Housekeeping was not as simple as people thought who had other people to do it.

Dick came back dressed, looking a different colour with the charcoal washed from his face and hands.

“No milk,” said Dorothea. “Not till one of them comes. I expect they’ll bring it.”

“Let’s be all ready before they come,” said Dick. “They may want us to do something about stopping Timothy. If they go out in the boat and we go along the road … ”

“Oh, I say,” said Dorothea. “I’d forgotten Timothy. We won’t wait for milk. We’ll be all right with cocoa. It says on the tin it’s cocoa, sugar and milk all in one. It only needs hot water. And we can have eggs and bread and butter and there’s a pot of marmalade.”

“There’s all that apple pie,” said Dick. “We can eat it out of the dish and it won’t be so sticky to wash up.”

The woodpecker spoilt the eggs for them. Dorothea had put them in the saucepan of boiling water and pushed it in at the side of the fire. She was hard at work stirring the cocoa first in one mug and then in the other and Dick was timing the egg-boiling with his watch, when he heard that tap, tap, close outside the hut. “A minute and a half gone,” he said. “I’m sure that’s a woodpecker … Two minutes … ” He moved quietly, watch in hand, to the doorway. The tapping seemed to come from a tree behind the hut … Dorothea added more water and went on stirring, wondering if breakfast was over at Beckfoot and how soon one or other or perhaps both the martyrs would escape and come racing up through the wood. “It must be four minutes now,” she thought, and was not at all sure whether Susan boiled eggs for four minutes or for three. “Dick,” she called. There was no answer. She went out and could not see him. “Dick!”

“He’s gone. But I saw him all right. Great Spotted. Black and white with a red patch.” Dick slipped his watch back into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulled out his notebook.

“But the eggs,” said Dorothea.

He looked at his watch again. “I can’t remember where the minute hand was when we started. I’m awfully sorry.”

She darted back into the hut and took the eggs out with a spoon. “I expect they’re ready now,” she said.

The eggs when opened were as hard as bullets.

“Perhaps even four minutes is too much,” said Dorothea.

“They may have been in much more than that.”

“They make an awful mess when they’re runny.”

“These aren’t runny, anyway,” said Dick.

“Hard-boiled,” said Dorothea.

“Steel-boiled,” said Dick. “My fault, watching the woodpecker.”

They washed the eggs and bread and butter down with the cocoa, but were glad to get to the last course (the Beckfoot apple pie. It had been baked in a deep oval dish, with an egg-cup upside down in the middle of it to keep the pastry from sagging down. Yesterday, in the Beckfoot dining-room, the Great Aunt had opened it carefully with a knife, and served small slices from it for Nancy, Peggy and herself. Dick and Dorothea, with the pie-dish between them, set to work at opposite sides of the neat three-cornered hole she had left. They could have finished it, but kept a little for dinner in the middle of the day.

“It’s just the thing after eggs and cocoa,” said Dorothea. “Cool and wet and not sticky at all.”

They washed up by the beck, with a kettleful of hot water that made things much easier. They rolled up their rugs, unslung the hammocks and hung them against the wall. They decided to put no more wood on the fire and to light it again in the evening. Every now and then they listened for footsteps coming up through the wood.

“I wonder why they don’t come,” said Dick.

“Perhaps they have breakfast later with the Great Aunt here.”

“It’ll be too late to do anything about Timothy now.”

Dick sawed and broke up a lot more of the firewood they had cleared out of the hut. Dorothea made a neat pile of them at the side of the fireplace. There was no sign of either of the martyrs from Beckfoot.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t wait for the milk,” said Dick.

“Let’s go down and wait for them at the bottom of the wood,” said Dorothea.

They had left the coppice and were going cautiously down through the larches when they heard a rattle. A man got heavily off his bicycle by the gap into the road. He had come so suddenly that he was already looking up the path at them before they had time to dodge back out of sight. He swung a bag round from his shoulder, put his hand into it and brought out a letter.

“It’s the postman,” said Dorothea. “If he’s been to Beckfoot with a letter for us we’re done.”

“I’ve a letter for you,” said the postman. “Addressed to Beckfoot. Miss Turner at Beckfoot wouldn’t take it. She wrote on it too.” He gave Dorothea the letter, and on it, pencilled in a clear sloping hand were the words “Not known here.”

“It’s from Mother,” said Dick.

“You didn’t say you’d seen us yesterday?” asked Dorothea.

“It was on the tip of my tongue,” said the postman. “But I saw Miss Nancy. She was there making faces at me, and I could see she meant me to say nowt. So I said nowt, and took the letter. Least said soonest mended I thought to myself. ‘Not known?’ All right. Take it back to the Post Office.”

“But … ”

“I’d nobbut got back to my bike when a stone come by my ear as near as nothing, and there was that young limb beckoning at me over the garden wall. She’s a terror, Miss Nancy. ‘About that letter,’ she says. ‘And whatever you do don’t bring any more letters for them to the front door.’ ‘But Miss Turner says they’re not here,’ says I. ‘They are here,’ she says, ‘but Aunt Maria mustn’t know. Mother knows they’re here. She invited them. But Aunt Maria doesn’t.’ And then she says where you was at, and she says I’d better bring you the letter to make sure. ‘What if Miss Turner asks me what I’ve done with it? There’ll likely be trouble for me,’ I says, ‘if I do as you say.’ ‘There’ll be much worse trouble for us if you don’t,’ says Miss Nancy. ‘And don’t you talk so loud. And there’ll be much worse trouble for Mother. That’s why they’ve gone. You ask Cook,’ she says. ‘Well, I’ve had trouble with Miss Turner myself,’ I says. ‘I’ll take them the letter. But you’ll have to clear me if there’s questions asked.’ ‘There won’t be,’ says she. Here’s your letter. But what am I to do if there are any more?”

“You mustn’t take them to Beckfoot,” said Dorothea.

“Couldn’t you put them in a hole in the wall?” said Dick. ‘“And we’ll come down and collect them.”

“If they’re addressed to Beckfoot it’s to Beckfoot I should take them,” said the postman.

“It’s just till Mrs. Blackett comes back,” said Dorothea.

Dick had gone down to the wall. “There’s a good place for letters here,” he said.

“It matters most awfully,” pleaded Dorothea.

“So she says, that young limb,” said the postman. “Well I’ll do it, but it’ll go hard with me if it all comes out. Nobbut what the letter’s for you. Nowt wrong but the address.”

“We can’t give another address,” said Dorothea. “It’s got to be secret till Mrs. Blackett comes back.”

“I’ll do it,” said the postman. “But I don’t like it. And that’s what I says to Miss Nancy. ‘And lucky it was,’ I says, ‘you didn’t hit me with that stone.’ ‘It wasn’t lucky at all,’ says she. ‘I could hit you every time if I tried, but I didn’t.’ She’s a limb, is Miss Nancy, but if it’s to save trouble for Mrs. Blackett I’ll take the risk and say nowt about it.”

“Thank you very much,” said Dorothea.

“The hole between these two stones will be the letter-box,” said Dick. “And this smaller stone will do to shut it up with when there’s a letter inside.”

The postman nodded, mounted his bicycle, and rode away.

“That letter might have spoilt everything,” said Dick.

“It’s not going to be half as easy as Nancy thought,” said Dorothea opening the letter. “We never thought of the postman.”

“And now there’s Timothy,” said Dick. “He may be charging in any minute to take us up to the mine. And he’s sure to ask for me straight off because of the work we’ve got to do in Captain Flint’s study.”

“One of them’ll be coming along soon,” said Dorothea.

“If she was coming, why didn’t Nancy keep the letter?”

“She had to let the postman see for himself that we were really here,” said Dorothea. “Let’s get a bit back from the road, so that we can dodge out of sight if there’s anyone else.”

They sat down to wait under the larches close to the place where the path climbed into the coppice. Two steps up that path and no one would be able to see them from the road.

Dorothea read her letter aloud, a pleasant cheerful letter from their mother, hoping that they would both have a happy time at Beckfoot, hoping that the new boat was ready, and that they would presently be teaching her and their father how to sail, urging them not to take risks at first, and saying that she was really rather glad that while that sensible Susan was not there to look after things they would be sleeping in a house and not miles from anywhere in tents on an island or up in the hills.

“Well, we are in a house,” said Dick.

“There’s a postscript,” said Dorothea. “Whatever you do, I’m sure you’ll try to do nothing to make Mrs. Blackett wish she had not let you come while she was away. It’s all right. Mother would have done just the same. We’ve just got to be Picts to save Mrs. Blackett from the Great Aunt. Anyway, we couldn’t say No when even Cook thought it would be better if we did.”

“I wish there was some way of reminding them about Timothy,” said Dick. “Shall I scout along towards the house?”

“No good,” said Dorothea. “One of them’s sure to be here in a minute, because of bringing the milk.”

“I’m going to look for a goldcrest,” said Dick. “Larches are always likely trees for them.”

Five minutes later he came hurrying back.

“Quick. Quick,” he whispered. “There’s someone in the wood. Coming this way.”

There was hardly time for them to get into the cover of the coppice. “Don’t move,” whispered Dick. “You can’t help making a noise on the stones … Look. I can see his legs.” Dick was crouching low, looking out below the leafy branches.

“It’s Squashy Hat himself,” said Dorothea. “It’s Timothy. Hi!”

The tall thin man hurrying through the larches stopped short as they ran out.

“Hullo!” he said.

“You mustn’t go to Beckfoot,” said Dorothea. “Or have you been?”

“You mustn’t say anything about us,” said Dick.

Dorothea was not sure whether Timothy was blushing or whether it was that he was hot. His lean face was much redder than usual.

“What’s going on at Beckfoot?” he said. “I was just turning the boat to row into the boathouse when I saw Nancy and Peggy with an ancient dame. And the clothes! I hardly knew them. The old lady didn’t see me. No more did Peggy. But Nancy did and looked scared out of her life. She waved me away down the river. So I went out round the point and landed there close under the road. I really did not know what to do. But I’ve got to get up to the mine. So I came along the road, and bless me, as I was turning the corner by Beckfoot there they were again. Nancy, Peggy and the old lady, all three together.”

“What did she say to you?” asked Dorothea. “You didn’t ask about us?”

Timothy turned a little redder. “I … Well, you know how it is. I never can stand meeting strange people. I just nipped over into the wood and dodged past them through the trees. Only thing I could do … ”

“Thank goodness,” said Dorothea.

“They may turn round and come this way,” said Dick.

“I’d better get on,” said Timothy. “If she comes along here … ”

“We’ll keep out of sight. Come and look at our house and we’ll explain.”

“What house?”

“We aren’t at Beckfoot any more,” said Dorothea.

“What?”

“We don’t exist. That’s why it’s so important that when you go there you mustn’t ask about us. That was Nancy’s and Peggy’s Great Aunt you saw. She’s turned up to look after them and Nancy thought we’d better clear out.”

“But bless my soul,” said Timothy. “You’re staying there.”

“Not now,” said Dorothea. “You see the Great Aunt found out that Nancy and Peggy were by themselves at Beckfoot and she’s furious with Mrs. Blackett. Nancy says she always is about something or other, and it would be much worse if she found out that Mrs. Blackett had let them have visitors while she was away. So we’ve just moved into our own house. You’d better come and see it, and then we can talk without so much danger of people hearing. If she’s out walking, she might turn back and come this way any minute.”

“It’s up here,” said Dick, and led the way up the path.

“So that’s Miss Turner is it?” said Timothy. “Jim’s told me about her. And that’s why I hardly knew them when I saw them looking at the flower beds. Dressed up like that. Not much of the gold prospector about Nancy when she’s … Yes, I know. Of course it isn’t her fault. But look here, if that old lady’s staying at Beckfoot, how can I ever go in there to work in Jim’s den?”

“It’s all right for you,” said Dorothea. “You can just walk in and be introduced.”

“Not after she’s seen me shinning a wall to get away from her,” said Timothy. “No, thank you.”

“All that matters is that you mustn’t let out anything about us.”

“Well, let’s have a look at your house,” said Timothy.

They walked up the rough path, where Timothy had to stoop and push his way through the branches. He seemed only half to hear what was said to him. He kept on muttering to himself.

“This is the house,” said Dorothea as they came out into the clearing before the old hut. She looked anxiously at Timothy, half expecting that he would disapprove.

“I’ve slept in much worse places,” he said. He went in with them and looked round. “You want a bit of moss in those holes,” he said, looking at the roof.

“I thought of that,” said Dick.

“But you’ve a good fireplace and hammocks and not too far to go for your water … No, you might be much worse off. It’s not that. But hang it all, I promised Jim I’d keep an eye on you. And we’ve work to do in Jim’s den before he comes back.”

“Dick can’t go there now,” said Dorothea.

“We’re badgers,” said Dick.

“Picts,” said Dorothea. “Chased out, you know, but keeping alive underground. At least not exactly underground, but in secret.”

Timothy shook his head. “How long do you think you can keep a secret like that? You can’t. The old lady’ll hear of it, and things’ll be worse than if she’d found you the moment she arrived.”

“She’d have had a fit if she’d seen the spare room as it was,” said Dorothea. “There was this over the top of the bed.” She pointed to Nancy’s skull grinning on the wall above its crossed bones.

“How many people know already?” asked Timothy.

“Nancy and Peggy,” said Dick.

“And old Cook,” said Dorothea. “And the postman. Nancy had to tell him this morning … ”

“The whole countryside will know if the postman knows,” said Timothy.

“It’s only for ten days,” said Dorothea.

“She’ll find out in two,” said Timothy. “And then there’ll be the dickens to pay. I wish Jim were here to deal with this.”

“Nancy’ll manage,” said Dorothea. “Of course the other way would have been to do some of the things Nancy said she’d like to do … You know … Putting gravel between the sheets and the mattress, putting a drop of paraffin in her morning tea, cutting the butter with an oniony knife, and so on, till she boiled over and went home. Only that way, she would have worked out her rage on Mrs. Blackett. This way, Nancy’s going to keep the Great Aunt happy, so that she won’t have any excuse for being down on anyone. All we’ve got to do is to keep out of sight. Nancy and Peggy and Cook are going to deal with the Great Aunt and do every single thing she likes. It’s the velvet glove instead of the iron hand.”

“The trouble with Nancy’s velvet glove is that it’s usually got a knuckleduster inside it. And you never know who’s going to get hit. When Miss Turner finds out about this, it won’t be only Nancy who gets into trouble. It’ll be you and me and Cook at Beckfoot and the postman and everybody else who happens to get dragged in and Mrs. Blackett most of all.”

“What about those assays for Captain Flint?” asked Dick.

“Can’t do them at Beckfoot, that’s one thing. I’ll have to do them in the houseboat. I’m not ready for them yet.” He saw the disappointment in Dick’s face. “You’ll have your own boat, won’t you? You’ll be able to come.”