Blackthorn Winter (5 page)

"Thanks to Liza?" Mom asked in surprise.

"She was sharp-eyed, and angry enough to go to the police with what she saw. Which was Simon Jukes shoplifting from the Emporium. A couple bottles of wine, some packets of crisps and cakes, and a pork pie from the delicatessen section. When she and Oliver shouted out to stop, old Simon raced for the door, trying to get away, knocking
over several customers. Elderly Mrs. Parker broke a hip, thanks to Simon—and from what I hear, it never did heal properly. Anyway, Liza and Oliver caught him, with help from their customers. Oliver might have let him off with a warning, but Liza insisted on pressing charges. She said it wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last if she didn't see him stopped. Simon ended up doing six months in jail, which he richly deserved, to my mind. But now he's just out, and he's plenty mad."

"What did the other brother do?" I asked. "Did he straighten up and get a job?" I watched the pair at the bar, now well on their third beer, and doubted it somehow.

"Poor Henry wandered the village like a lost soul for the whole time his brother was away," said Quent. "He's a slow sort of bloke. A dim bulb, if you get my meaning. But he wouldn't be so bad, I think, if he didn't hero-worship his awful older brother."

"I guess Simon's the only family Henry's got, though," said Duncan quietly. "Sometimes you've got to just stick with what you have."

Quent winked at him. "Like you're sticking with me, eh, Dunk-o? Well, I'm the lucky one, I'll say that much. Anyway, I don't know if there's any other Jukes relations around town, do you? I think the two of them live alone in a squalid council flat over by the Fields."

"I heard they ditched their parents years ago and moved here from London," Duncan said.

"Or maybe their parents ditched them first, and who could blame them?" Quent laughed.

We finished our dinners and left before the surly Jukes brothers did. I could hear Simon, the older one, shouting for another lager as we left the Old Ship and started our
walk back. I walked slowly, trailing behind everybody. My body ached with tiredness.

But then, even though I was totally exhausted, it took me a long time to get to sleep that night. I was used to the sounds of the city outside my window at home, and the unfamiliar quiet here roared more loudly than any traffic noise. The bed in my new little bedroom was much narrower than my big bed at home, too. Every time I turned over, my arm either hit the wall or flopped off the side of the mattress. I heard Mom come upstairs and go into the bedroom across the hall from mine. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed that Liza Pethering, witchy black hair streaming, was standing by the stove in our little kitchen, stirring a big pot with a wooden spoon and asking Mom over and over again: "So, which are your
real
children? Which are the
real
ones?"

 

I
N THE MORNING
, a wavery gray sunlight filtered through my bedroom window. A drizzly rain was falling outside. I slid out of bed, shivering in the chilly room, and pulled on my warmest sweatpants, sweatshirt, and fleecy socks. I could hear the Goops arguing about burned toast as I walked in for breakfast.

I sat at the small round table in the kitchen, braiding my hair, and Mom set a mug of steaming tea in front of me. I didn't usually drink tea, but on this cold morning England's national drink seemed just right. "Put in plenty of milk," Mom advised, setting a glass bottle in front of me. "That's how they drink it here." But I kept mine black and strong and it tasted good that way.

Ivy and Edmund drank their tea so white it might as well have been plain milk, but they felt they were being
authentically English. They talked in silly, fake English accents as they ate, and Mom laughed at them. There wasn't a toaster, but she made us toast the way Grandad had, by laying slices of bread under the broiler—the
grill,
Mom called it—which accounted for the many burned pieces. Just as we were getting the process down to a science, and turning out perfect toast with lots of butter and marmalade, Liza Pethering tapped on our door. I remembered my dream as she pushed it open and stepped inside. "Which are your
real
children?" I half expected her to ask, but "Ready for your tour?" she trilled instead, shaking her streaming umbrella all over the rug.

"In this weather?" Mom shook her head. "Why don't you sit down and have some toast and tea with us, and we'll wait it out."

"Nonsense, there's no time like the present, as my grandmother used to say," Liza said firmly. "She was a painter, too, in her time. Landscapes, mostly. Some pretty good. Artistic genes must run in the family! Anyway, if we sit and wait out the rain we might well be waiting six months, Hedda. Have you forgotten
everything
you know about England while you've been over there in sunny California? Besides, I want to get some painting done this afternoon, and I've had to promise my lazy husband to help him out in the shop today—we own the Emporium now, did you know? Best place to buy all your groceries, and no need to go rushing off to the markets in Lower Dillingham or Portsmouth, thanks to me for keeping the upscale items in stock. Oliver is so deathly old-fashioned and such a stick-in-the-mud that it's all up to me. Left on his own, I daresay Oliver would have us bankrupt and out on the streets. He managed to get up enough money to buy the
place, but at heart he's really still just the butcher, like he was for years. All I can say is that it's a good thing we've had all the sales I've been getting for my paintings." She lowered her voice and spoke confidentially, "I don't mean to brag, Hedda, but I do a wonderful likeness and the market for my portraits has been excellent." She tossed back her head, preening herself like some famous film star or something. "Oliver resents my success, though. Always on at me to stay home or help out in the shop. And a lot of artists around this town are jealous, I can tell you that! And who can blame them?" Her trilling, self-satisfied laugh made me wince, but Mom smiled.

"I'd like to see your work very much," she told Liza. "Why don't we do a quick tour of the village and end up at your gallery?"

Liza agreed this was a good plan, so off we went along the path through the Carringtons' wet garden, through the red door in the stone wall, and out into the gray streets of Blackthorn, with Edmund, Ivy, and me trailing along like ducklings behind our mother duck.

I stopped at the entrance to Dark Lane and stood there, just looking, sniffing the air and taking in the feeling of the place. Ivy stood next to me and reached for my hand. "Isn't it wonderful?" she whispered. "Everything here is
so old.
"

I shrugged, but she was right. The village
was
so old. So much older than anywhere I'd been in California. The high walls rising on both sides of me were ancient, built of damp gray stone. And what was on the other side of these high walls? What secrets, what hidden lives? The back of my neck prickled a little as if someone were watching me from a chink in the stone. The path under my feet was gray stone. How many feet had worn it smooth over how many
centuries? The sky above was all heavy gray clouds, weighted further with the woodsmoke that spilled, as Liza had said, from half the village homes. And nearby, though I could not see it from where I stood, churned the sea—no doubt also cold and gray. I was struck by how right now could have been any time at all, any year, almost any century. Did things ever change in Blackthorn?

"Can you feel it, too?" asked my little historian sister, and for a second I thought she'd also felt a prickle of unease. "Isn't this place totally awesome?"

I squeezed Ivy's hand. I didn't know about totally awesome, but it was something totally different from what I was used to.
I'm going to remember this moment forever,
I thought, and shivered.

To get up to the main street we took a shortcut through Dark Lane, then crossed a little footbridge across a stream called Shreenwater, which Liza also referred to as the "Shreen" for short. We passed the newsagent's, which also housed the village post office, then stopped briefly at the ironmonger's to have the cottage key copied so that I would have one, too. There was no use getting keys for the Goops, Mom and I both knew from experience. They always lost keys.

We passed the bank and some stores (
shops,
Mom reminded us they were called here): two antique shops, another called Seaside Treasures that had a very unseasonable display of beach balls and brightly colored, plastic sand pails and shovels (
buckets and spades,
Mom informed us) in the window, and a shop Liza called a fishmonger, which kept Ivy giggling for at least half a block. We passed the chemist's (which was a drugstore, I hated to inform Edmund, and
not
a mad scientist's chemistry lab), and then
finally stopped at the Emporium, the large grocery store on the main street, owned by Oliver and Liza Pethering. It was bustling with shoppers.

Liza strode in like a film star, bestowing greetings on everyone she passed and introducing Mom but not us kids. When we got to the back of the shop, Liza pointed out her husband, Oliver, a bulky, balding man who was working behind the "Quality Meats and Cheeses" counter. His smile was big and yellow-toothed. She waved energetically at him, then turned back to Mom with a sigh. "See?" she murmured to Mom. "A butcher at heart, that's all he is. Just a butcher in his soul."

"There's nothing wrong with butchers," Mom said mildly. She didn't like when people put other people down, and she never let us kids get away with doing it. I was sort of glad to see she didn't let her old friend get away with it, either.

Liza rolled her eyes. "I'm a vegetarian," she said wiltingly. "Yet he comes home with a bloodstained apron still wrapped around him, and I'm supposed to be happy to see him? Not bloody likely!" She giggled at her own wit.

We set off again, and she darted here and there, showing us the plant nursery, the bakery, the fish and chip shop, the Chinese takeaway, and St. Michael's, the ancient church.

The drizzle had stopped for the moment, and it seemed the sun was trying hard to shine out from behind the heavy cloud cover. We all closed our umbrellas and pulled off our hats. Ivy wanted to stay and explore the graveyard behind the church, and Edmund was clamoring to go down to the beach, and I would have liked to climb Castle Hill, the high green hill rising above the village, even knowing there wasn't a castle up there anymore, and even though the path might
be muddy. But Liza turned left off the main road. She led us up to the top of a hilly side street and stopped outside a gray stone rowhouse (
terraced cottage,
Mom told us such houses were called).

"Just a quick stop here," Liza said, fishing in her coat pocket. "I need to drop something off here for a gentleman who couldn't make it to our drama meeting yesterday evening."

Her brisk knock on the black-painted door was acknowledged by a beady blue eye peering out the little glass window set into the door, and then the door slowly opened. An elderly, rather stooped man stood there, wearing brown pants and a buttoned-up brown cardigan, and brown bedroom slippers on his feet. His thinning hair was gray, but still held a trace of ginger. "Well, well," he said dourly, "it's the Grand Lady President herself, is it? But—out in the rain? Now how can that be? I thought wicked witches melted when they got wet." He let out a cackle.

"Oh, Dudley, don't take on," snapped Liza, holding out a booklet to him. "Here's your script. Since you, ah, couldn't make it to the meeting last night, I've been kind enough to bring it to you. Door service! What more could you ask for?"

"I could ask to be given the part I tried out for," the old man snapped right back, not taking the script. "I could ask for a little respect!"

"Please, I beg you, do
not
confuse drama with melodrama," Liza returned witheringly. "I assigned you the part for which you are best suited. A part that won't be too taxing on you. You know how your health has suffered this past year. I don't want you overstressing, Dudley. Trust me on this, can't you?"

"
Trust
you? And I suppose I should be thanking you for your thoughtfulness as well?" He laughed bitterly. He seemed only then to become aware of the rest of us shifting uncomfortably on the sidewalk behind Liza. "Who've you got out there with you? More newcomers you're going to hand out lead roles to, just like you did the other night?" His angry gaze met my eyes, and he blinked. I guess I blinked, too.
What a geezer,
I was thinking.

"Nonsense, Dudley. Now you're being quite rude," Liza chided the old man. "This is Hedda Martin-Drake, a famous painter, and her children, just arrived yesterday afternoon from America. Hedda, this rude person is Mr. Dudley Cooper. Hedda's living in Quent Carrington's garden cottage, Dudley. In fact, Duncan met them last night."

As if her speaking his name had made him appear, Duncan himself stepped out of the room on the old man's right. I was totally surprised, and felt a stupid flush start in my cheeks.

"What is it?" Duncan asked. "Who's here? Oh—Liza!"

"Hello, lad. Yes, I've just come to give your old curmudgeon of a grandfather his script."

Ivy and Edmund surged forward and were grinning and talking to Duncan a mile a minute, while I just tried to look cool and casual. He fended the Goops off good-naturedly, peering around Liza to where Mom and I stood on the pavement. "Um, good morning," he said to us. "Are you out on your village tour?"

"Yes," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"Visiting with Granny and Grandad," he said. "I'm often here."

I could see now that the gingery tint to the old man's hair might once have been a fiery red like Duncan's.

"It's his home away from home," Mr. Cooper said in a friendlier tone, opening the door a bit wider. "Now, come in, come in. Hazel would never forgive me if I didn't ask you to come in for a cuppa, Mrs. Drake. Anybody who's a friend of our Duncan is always welcome here."

"Why, thank you—," began Mom, but Liza cut her off.

"It's
Martin-Drake
" Liza interrupted, "and I'm afraid we don't have time for tea just now, Dudley. I must get to my gallery. I'm setting up a new exhibit. Local portraits."