The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood (6 page)

“I spoke to Rollo,”
Ridley said glumly.
“He offered to punch my nose.”

Rosabelle gave him a sympathetic look.
“I urge you to try again,”
she said, ever the peacemaker.
“I’m sure he—”

“I invite you to allow Rollo to punch
your
nose.”
And with that pained retort, Ridley stalked off to his private apartment, where he closed and locked the door and began to pace back and forth, feeling deeply injured.

But the sense of injury was soon overtaken by a growing sense of . . . well, shame, that’s what it was. Rosabelle had been too kind to call him a coward, but she didn’t need to, for he knew himself all too well. He was a rat of no courage, a rat who was too meek and mousy to do what had to be done. He was a coward, and the knowledge cut like a sword to the heart.

Ridley stopped pacing and stood very still, trembling, until finally the dark shame of his cowardice began to transform itself into something like resolve. What was needed in this situation was not brawn, but brains; not muscle, but mental acuity. Surely, if he put his mind to it, he could think of a way to rid the Hill Top attics of this infestation of uninvited, unwelcome, and unruly rats. He could think of a solution.

Now, if you have ever been acquainted with rats (and most of us have, in one way or another), you know that they are astonishingly intelligent along practical lines: where to find the best cheese and bacon, how to be stealthy when stealth is required, and which is the quickest means of escape when danger threatens. But you may also know that rats are not among the most intellectual of animals. Disciplined thought is a challenge for the entire species. Their minds are apt to wander off into pleasant topics, having to do with crumbs in kitchen cupboards and corn in feed bins and bright trinkets lying in a dish on the bureau top—crumbs and corn and trinkets that might be put to better use by an enterprising rat. In fact, their rat brains are full of a great many things all tumbled about with no particular order or method, so finding anything specific in them is even more difficult than finding a needle in a pile of hay.

Nevertheless, within the hour, and by dint of applying himself with rigorous and exhausting mental effort, Ridley Rattail had come upon the solution to his problem. He felt at once proud of having thought of it and foolish that he had not thought of it before.

What was needed to rid the Hill Top attic of the plague of unwanted rats was, quite obviously and simply, a
cat.

A cat unlike Miss Felicia Frummety, who disdained to chase rats and spent her time either asleep on the hearth or admiring herself in the mirror.

A fierce and stalwart cat who had an insatiable appetite for rats.

A cat who had enough fortitude to face an army of rats if necessary.

A cat who—

And then, just as Ridley was getting well started on the list of important feline qualifications required to deal with this unfortunate situation, he heard a commotion in the hallway outside his rooms, and a loud shrieking and wailing.

Startled, he opened his door and put out his head.
“What’s happened?”
he inquired anxiously.
“What’s wrong?”

“There’s been a murder!”
a rat shouted, tearing at his ears and running in frenzied circles.
“A foul, filthy, fiendish murder! Oh, it’s too horrible, too hideous for words!”

A shiver started between Ridley’s ears and quivered all the way down to the tip of his tail.
“A murder, you say?”
he whispered.
“Who was murdered?”

“Rollo,”
the rat cried.
“Our wonderful, hospitable host! He was killed by a vicious cat when he went to fetch a bun from the kitchen, not five minutes ago. Oh, horrors, oh, woe! Oh, dear, departed Rollo!”

“Oh, really,”
murmured Ridley.

Now, we all know that we are supposed to forgive our enemies, even those who have kept us awake until all hours and offered to punch us in the nose when we complained, and to be sorry when something bad has happened to them.

But I am afraid that Ridley was not so sorry as he ought to have been. Instead, hiding a rattish sort of smile, he went back into his apartment, shut the door, and danced a jig of pure delight.

4

At Sawrey School

The village of Sawrey is made up of twin hamlets, the two separated (or joined, if you will) by a lush green meadow with Wilfin Beck threaded like a long silver ribbon through the middle. The hamlet nearest the market town of Hawkshead (some three miles to the northwest) is called Near Sawrey, logically enough, whilst the hamlet a half-mile farther along the road to the east, closer to the ferry crossing over Lake Windermere, is called Far Sawrey. Near Sawrey, its inhabitants have always judged, is the more important because that’s where the Tower Bank Arms is located, and the smithy and joiner and bakery. It is also where the Justice of the Peace lives, and John Braithwaite, the village constable. Those who live in Far Sawrey, on the other hand, consider that hamlet to be the more important, because they possess St. Peter’s Church, and the vicarage, and the Sawrey Hotel, and Sawrey School. (Both hamlets boast a post office and a shop, so these are generally left out of the calculation.)

Miss Margaret Nash, the new headmistress at Sawrey School, was one of the fortunate people who lived in Near Sawrey and worked in Far Sawrey, and thought this arrangement gave her the best of all possible worlds. At half past three on Wednesday afternoon, as she stood at the school door and watched as her jubilant charges skipped out of the school yard, the girls in companionable pairs and trios, the boys leaping and shouting from sheer joy, she thought again how singularly fortunate she was to live in such a beautiful place and to have work that gave her such an enormous sense of satisfaction. She had been appointed head teacher upon the retirement of Miss Myrtle Crabbe, although Margaret herself had at one point given up hope of having the position. If it had not been for Miss Potter’s discovery that Margaret’s chief competitor for the post was a sham and a fraud, she was sure she would not have had it.

But all’s well that ends well, Margaret reminded herself cheerfully. She picked up Jane Jackson’s blue hair ribbon, Tommy Tyson’s grimy sweater (recognizable by the hole in the elbow), and an arithmetic exercise paper with Willie Adams’s name printed crookedly at the top. She placed all three articles prominently on the Lost and Found shelf, where their careless owners might see and claim them. Then she picked up the broom and applied it industriously to the patch of dried mud in front of the boot-box.

Things could not have turned out better, she thought happily, as she finished her sweeping and replaced the broom in the teachers’ pantry. The members of the school board (which included the vicar and Captain Woodcock) were entirely supportive. Margaret’s junior pupils were all that she might have wished in the way of interesting academic challenges. And Mrs. Daphne Holland, who had assumed Margaret’s place as teacher of the infants class, was an energetic and highly qualified young lady who had been widowed the year before and was glad of a job and a little money coming in. Mrs. Holland always presented a bright, cheerful countenance to her small charges and (perhaps because of her youth) seemed to like nothing better than to romp with them at the recess interval.

Just now, Mrs. Holland joined Margaret in the pantry, for the cup of tea and the bit of talk they always shared after the children had gone home for the day.

“Oh, Miss Nash,” she said, “I wonder if you and your sister will be going to tea at Raven Hall on Saturday. I’ve been invited and thought perhaps the three of us might go together.” She smiled. “Not that I’m shy, of course. But I did think there might be strength in numbers.”

Margaret filled the kettle, put it on the gas ring, and reached for the biscuit tin. “Annie and I should like that.” She smiled. “I suppose I’m as curious as the next person to see the inside of Raven Hall, which has always struck me as a gloomy, forbidding old place.”

“It’s the new Mrs. Kittredge I’m dying to see,” Mrs. Holland confided gaily. “You know what they’re saying in the village.” She leaned closer, her eyes sparkling in her round, girlish face. “They’re saying the lady’s a
witch.
Or maybe she’s the ghost of Raven Hall, come to life.”

“Mrs. Holland!” Margaret exclaimed in a scandalized tone. “You shouldn’t repeat such wicked things.”

“Oh, pooh,” Mrs. Holland said breezily. “It’s all balderdash, and of course one doesn’t believe it. But it’s what the villagers are saying.”

Margaret gave her a severe look. “You and I, as teachers, are supposed to be above common superstition. And if we are heard to repeat such idle nonsense, the children and their parents might think we’re giving them leave to do the same. We have to set an example, you know.” And then, because she sounded like a scold, and since she hadn’t heard the gossip herself, she added, in a softer tone, “Who’s saying this?”

“Bertha Stubbs,” Mrs. Holland replied, getting down the cups and saucers from the shelf.

“Oh, Bertha,” Margaret said dismissively. “She’s liable to say anything that comes into her mind.” Bertha Stubbs was the school’s daily woman, and an inveterate gossip. Even worse, she was a cantankerous complainer. No part of her work suited her, from scrubbing the floors to stoking the stoves and cleaning the blackboards. Margaret often found herself wishing that Bertha would give in her notice (as she regularly threatened to do) so they could find someone more compatible.

“And then I heard it again on my way home from school yesterday,” Mrs. Holland added, “when I stopped at Lydia Dowling’s shop to get some apples. I suppose it’s because she—Mrs. Kittredge, that is—has red hair. She’s said to be frightfully smashing.”

Margaret frowned at Mrs. Holland’s schoolgirl slang. “I suppose it’s because she’s a mystery. People don’t know her, so they make up all sorts of things about her.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Holland said. She turned a serious face to Margaret. “It’s all rubbish, I grant you, and people ought to know better. But there is quite a lot of talk, silly or otherwise. And Deirdre Malone, poor child, has flaming red hair. She’s being tarred with the same brush.”

“Oh, dear,” Margaret sighed. “So that’s what it’s all about. I saw Harold teasing the girl. She seemed to be holding her own, though.”

Deirdre Malone was the young orphan who had come to help out in the Sutton household while Mrs. Sutton was entering the last months of her . . . seventh pregnancy, was it? or was it her eighth? It was hard to keep count of the burgeoning Suttons, who, when they were all old enough to go to school, might fill an entire classroom on their own. Deirdre had an abundance of bright red hair, flashing eyes, and a great many freckles—an Irish inheritance, Margaret suspected. And although she was a dreamy child, she knew how to stand up for herself.

Mrs. Holland chuckled. “Deirdre gave some of it back to him, didn’t she? I saw Harold take a tumble and didn’t regret it a bit. One hates to say it, but he’s an awful bully.” She opened the biscuit tin and took out two for each of them. “It’s good to see that Caroline Longford has befriended her. And Jeremy Crosfield, too.”

“They are all three orphans,” Margaret said. “Perhaps that’s their common bond. And Jeremy’s had his own taste of Harold’s bullying.”

Mrs. Holland poured hot water over the tea in the chipped Brighton teapot, a souvenir of one of Miss Crabbe’s long-ago summer holidays. “Caroline is rather a surprise, isn’t she? One would think she’d be doing better.”

“Yes,” Margaret said. “It’s a puzzle.” Caroline’s school in New Zealand, where she had come from, had not given her a very good start. She should have been able to catch up easily, but something—Margaret had no idea what—was holding her back.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Holland was going on, “you’d think that Lady Longford’s granddaughter would have a governess, or be sent away to school, rather than attending here in the village. One wonders why.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard that story?” asked Margaret. “It’s all on account of Miss Potter.”

“No, I didn’t know,” said Mrs. Holland, with interest. “Tell me about it.”

And as their tea brewed, Margaret told what had happened the year before, when Miss Potter had helped to persuade Lady Longford that Caroline should be allowed to attend the village school for a year. Now, though, Margaret understood that her ladyship was dissatisfied with Caroline’s performance and had decided to obtain a governess for the girl. Caroline would not be coming back to school after the end of term.

Margaret sighed. That was the worst part of being a teacher. Just when one became attached to the children, one had to say goodbye.

5

Caroline and Deirdre Make a Plan

Caroline Longford was at that very moment relating the same story to Deirdre Malone as they walked up the road between banks of blooming hawthorn and verges bright with buttercups. Caroline, whose mother and father were dead, had come to Tidmarsh Manor the previous summer from a sheep station in New Zealand. Her grandmother, Lady Longford, had disowned Caroline’s father when he stubbornly refused to marry the young woman she had chosen for him, ran off to New Zealand, and married for love. Her ladyship, an elderly autocrat with the unfortunate habit of expecting everyone in the world to follow her orders, had at first refused to take Caroline in. When she finally agreed, it was on the condition that Caroline be sent away to school as soon as a suitable place could be found.

But Miss Potter had intervened—quite miraculously, it seemed to Caroline—and persuaded Lady Longford to allow Caroline to stay on at the Manor and go to school in the village, at least for a year. Things weren’t perfect, by any means. Grandmama was as ill-tempered and dictatorial as ever. She had recently forbidden Caroline to play with the village children, who were a “bad influence” over her, and kept her from doing well in school—in Grandmama’s opinion. And Tidmarsh Manor was a cold, stiff house, crowded with heavy furniture and fragile bric-a-brac. It was the kind of place that makes laughing or playing, or any other kind of ordinary enjoyment, utterly impossible, and was fit only for reading, or embroidering, or doing lessons. Worse yet, it was the kind of place that makes you feel as if somebody is looking over your shoulder all the time. But Caroline had a pair of guinea pigs and a private journal where she could say anything she felt like saying because she wrote it all in her own secret code. Even if somebody was looking over her shoulder, the words would look like alphabet soup. The little animals and her journal were her dearest companions, always ready to listen to her when she was feeling sad or lonely.