The Cuckoo Tree Page 7

  ‘Shiver my timbers!’ She stared again at the peas in her hand, was about to throw them on the ground, but in the end tipped them back into her pocket and ran fast and quietly away from the house. Suddenly the night seemed full of noises: a cold, liquid call – some bird maybe; a soft drumming tick; a rattle – or was it a chuckle? – coming from the yew hedge. Dido darted across the tilting-lawn, where the pairs of yew trees seemed to be shifting just a little, changing their positions after she passed them; she did not look back but had the notion that they were moving together behind her, perhaps coming after her, as in the game Grandmother’s Footsteps.

  ‘Rabbit me if I ever taste another o’ them perishing Joobie nuts,’ Dido muttered. ‘No wonder Tobit and his granny both seem a bit totty-headed if they keep a-chawing o’ the nasty little things.’

  Ahead of her now lay the beech avenue, with its bands of moonlight and shade. She felt some reluctance to go down it, but shook herself angrily and ran on at top speed. Then, coming towards her, she saw a black figure. It seemed to vary in size – wavered – grew tall – shrank again.

  Dido gulped.

  ‘This here’s nothing but a load o’ foolishness,’ she told herself, and went on firmly. The figure seemed now to have no head and three legs. But of course when she came closer she saw that it was merely old Gusset, hobbling back from his evening off, wearing a sack over his head, helping himself along with a stick.

  ‘Hey there, Mister Gusset!’ Dido greeted him warmly when they were within speaking distance. ‘I’m tickled I didn’t miss you – wanted to say thanks for the basket o’ vittles – Tobit said as how likely you’d sent ’em your own self.’

  ‘Oh, no trouble, missie.’ The butler seemed embarrassed. ‘Glad to do it for the poor sick gennleman – I heerd tell as how he’s a naval captain? And you’ve been a-visiting Mas’r Tobit, have you, missie? That’s good that is – he can do with a bit o’ young company.’

  ‘That he can,’ Dido agreed. ‘Ask me, he has his head in the clouds most o’ the time, he’s got some right cork-brained notions. And that old witch as sees arter him – Sannie or whatever she calls herself – it’s a plaguy shame she couldn’t be shipped back to Thingummy Island, her and her Joobie nuts.’

  Gusset glanced round him warily. ‘You’re right there, missie,’ he said, sinking his voice.

  ‘What are those Joobie nuts, anyways?’

  ‘Summat she brought with her from Tiburon, Missie Twido. She grows ’em from seed, up where the old asparagus bed used to be. She allus has aplenty of ’em. Don’t you go a-swallowing they hampery things, missie – they’ll’ give you the hot-chills, don’t they give you wuss.’

  ‘What happens when Tobit comes of age next week?’

  ‘Why, nothing much, missie. I reckon things’ll goo on pretty much as usual.’

  ‘He doesn’t come into any cash, so’s he could go off to school?’

  ‘No, missie. Only the Heirloom.’

  ‘What’s the Heirloom?’ Gusset had spoken as if everyone would know of it.’

  ‘It be a liddle painting, Missie Dwite. Only small, smaller than the palm of your liddle hand, but it be painted on ivory, and I’ve heered tell as it be worth thousands and thousands – enough to put everything to rights round here.’

  ‘Fancy! What’s it of?’ Dido asked curiously.

  ‘’Tis a picture o’ the Tower of Babel, missie. ’Tis painted by a famous painter, I’ve heered tell. Anybody can see it – they keeps it at Perrorth, at the lawyers’, a-set in a glass case in the wall.’

  Mention of Petworth recalled Dido to her own problems.

  ‘Mister Gusset, I’ve got to get a message to London, urgent. How can I send it? I gave a letter to that Jem, but he don’t look reliable to me.’

  ‘Jem Hoadley, missie? No, he ain’t noways reliable.’

  ‘Well, then, what’d I best do? The message has to get to London before the – before the middle o’ next week.’

  ‘Best to goo yourself, missie.’

  ‘But I didn’t oughta leave Cap’n Hughes while he’s sick.’

  Gusset pushed back the sack in order to scratch his white head. He reflected.

  ‘Well, missie,’ he said at length. ‘There’s some chaps I know as gooes up and down to London regular. Trading chaps they be. Some mightn’t say as how they was reliable, but I speak as I find, and I’ve allus found ’em trustable.’

  ‘D’you reckon they’d help me, mister?’

  ‘I’d hatta ask,’ Gusset said cautiously. ‘I couldn’t promise, see?’

  ‘When will you see them?’

  Gusset seemed unwilling to commit himself, but said he’d see them by Friday, maybe, and would try to let Dido know on that day.

  ‘Now I’d best be getting in, missie. ’Tis turble late.’

  ‘Good night, then, Mister Gusset, and thanks.’

  The old man hobbled off, and Dido ran on down the avenue towards Dogkennel Cottages. Her talk with Gusset had cheered her, and the queer visions and sounds that had troubled her before seemed to have died away; she whistled as she ran, and jumped over patches of shadow in the chalk cartway. But just this side of the cottages she came to an abrupt stop. Something – surely it was a dragon? – lay on the weedy grass in front of the little row of houses. Its eyes glittered. When it saw Dido it stretched slightly and spread out its wings.

  Dido bit her thumb, hard. Then she stooped, picked up a sizable chunk of flint from the track and hurled it at the monster, which broke into about seven different sections. Three of them were sheep, which trotted nervously away. Two or three more were chickens, flapping and flustered. One, which might have been a rat, scurried into the shadow of Mrs Lubbage’s cottage.

  Mrs Lubbage herself was sitting by her door on a broken-backed chair, gazing, apparently, into a pail of water.

  ‘Evening, missus,’ Dido said civilly as she passed.

  The wise woman lifted her head and gave Dido a long, expressionless stare. But she said nothing.

  Utchy old besom, Dido thought, taking her key from under a stone, where Mr Firkin had left it. Anyone can tell as manners weren’t thought much of where you was reared!

  Rather more clumsily than usual, she fitted the key into the lock.

  And all the time, as she turned it, opened the door and let herself in, she could feel Mrs Lubbage’s malevolent stare boring into her shoulder-blades.

  4

  ‘CONSARN IT!’ EXCLAIMED Dido, as the bucket of chicken-food slipped out of her hand, falling heavily on her toe.

  ‘What’s to do, darter?’ mildly inquired old Mr Firkin, coming out of the cowshed with his two pails of milk.

  ‘I dunno why it is – my fingers is all thumbs today. I spilt a bowl o’ hot water on the Cap’n’s bed, and I dropped our breakfast eggs in the fire, and hit my thumb with a hammer when I was a-fixing the leaky window, and caught the other one in the rattrap you lent me, and broke my tortoiseshell comb that a friend in Ameriky gave me, and now I’ve bin and dropped the hens’ grub all over my feet – not that the hens care.’

  Dido was standing in a sea of chickens, who were vigorously pecking her toes and ankles.

  ‘My hands feel greasy all the time,’ she grumbled. ‘I wash and wash, and it don’t right ’em.’

  ‘Sounds to me like Mrs Lubbage overlooked ye,’ Mr Firkin said gravely. ‘Have ye got on the mouldiwarpses’ clawses?’

  Dido clapped a hand to her neck and remembered that she had taken off Mr Firkin’s protective charm when she went to bed.

  ‘My stars! Do you really think – ’

  But she remembered the wise woman’s long, angry stare as she sat before her door in the moonlight.

  ‘I’ll fetch those claws right away,’ Dido declared, and did so, before sitting down to breakfast with Mr Firkin. And whether it was because the claws gave her more confidence, or really had power against bad wishes, her run of ill luck seemed to have ended for the time. She gave the Captain his breakfast, made up his bed,
and had the satisfaction of hearing him say that he felt somewhat better and thought his leg was mending.

  ‘I fancy that by tomorrow or the next day I could walk with a crutch, if one could be procured,’ he said.

  Mr Firkin, when asked, said he could fettle one up, but it would take him two-three days. Or there was a chap in Petworth, Godwit by name, who generally had one or two crutches and such gear in his shop.

  ‘The lame grey coach-horse is a-mending, too,’ Dido said. ‘Reckon if the doc agrees it’s all rug for Cap’n Hughes to walk a bit, I could ride in to Petworth, tomorrow maybe, and see what this Godwit has in stock.’ Godwit, she thought. I heard that name somewheres just lately; where was it now?

  Dr Subito did not come that day, however, and meanwhile the Captain, really not as strong as he made out, was glad enough to lie and doze, wake for a short time, eat or drink a little of the invalid fare provided by Gusset, and sleep again.

  During the afternoon, when the invalid was in a sound slumber and seemed likely to remain so for some time, Dido, first carefully locking him in, slipped away to the Cuckoo Tree, taking a roundabout route in case anybody was watching. Mr Firkin was off with his flock at a distance, Mrs Lubbage nowhere to be seen. There had been no sight or sound of Cris all day either, though Dido had once or twice stuck her head through the loft opening and listened intently. She could not help feeling a bit anxious about Cris. Mrs Lubbage had seemed so very angry about the basket of food – and Cris was the nearest scapegoat at hand, unless you counted the brindled rat.

  But when at length she reached the Cuckoo Tree, on its steep slope of grassy hillside, Dido thought at first there was nobody in it.

  ‘Cris? Are you there?’ she called softly.

  No sound came from the dark, thickly massed foliage above.

  Might as well climb up, though, Dido thought, noticing that the corkscrew with its bit of ribbon had been removed from the trunk. Looks like someone’s been here.

  Up she went, quick as a squirrel – and found Cris, lying in a bushy hammock of yew needles.

  ‘Hey, didn’t you hear me – ’ Dido began, and then saw that Cris was fast asleep, curled up, knees to chin, one cheek pillowed on a fold of dirty sheep’s-wool jacket which he had thrown round him and clutched like a comforter. His cheeks were streaked with tears and one had a mark on it, half bruise, half cut.

  Blame it, Dido thought angrily, that old scrow has been a-larruping of him and it’s my fault, partly; I ought to a waited till she came home, ‘stead o’ taking the basket. But the Cap’n was that hungry – how’s a body to act?

  Troubled, uncertain what to do for the best, she sat and watched the sleeping Cris. Time passed, and the pale November sun moved towards a furry shoulder of hill behind which it would soon dip. Hadn’t I best wake him? Dido wondered. It’ll be right parky soon – and the Cap’ll be stirring presently. But Cris does sleep so sound.

  Presently, though, the sleep began to be broken by little whimpers and twitches; letting go of his sheep’s-wool jacket, Cris started to suck his thumb; a tear trickled from the corner of his closed eye; then the eyes opened, and he was awake and terrified.

  ‘Easy there, easy!’ Dido arrested his first frantic scramble for the trunk. ‘It’s only me – Dido, remember? We was talking here afore. I brought you some vittles. Mr Gusset fetched some down from the Manor, and I reckoned as how you might be glad of a bite. Here – it’s only bread and cheese, but it’s good.’

  She went on talking calmly while she pulled out the packet of food and handed Cris a large slice of brown bread and hunk of cheese. ‘You get that inside you, you’ll feel better. There’s apples, too, for afters. I didn’t like to carry a bottle o’ drink in case old Madam Lubbage was a-looking out her back window.’

  Cris took one or two cautious bits and then bolted the food down ravenously, eating all the cheese first, and the bread next. His trembling quieted and presently he gave a deep sigh.

  ‘Did the old girl beat you much?’ Dido asked quietly.

  Cris nodded. ‘She was in a rage last night when I got home. She asked me where I’d been and I wouldn’t say, so she beat me. Being beaten’s nothing. But she said she was going to listen to my dreams all night and then she’d know where I’d gone. I don’t know what I’d do if she found this place.’

  ‘Croopus,’ muttered Dido. ‘D’you reckon she could listen to your dreams?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cris said. ‘I stayed awake. I stood up all night and pricked my arm with a bramble-thorn so I wouldn’t fall asleep. That was why I was so tired today. Auntie Daisy went off at noon to physick someone’s sick cow, so as soon as she left I came here.’

  Between sentences Cris was taking bites from the second apple; he finished by chewing and swallowing the core. Then he sighed again.

  Dido gulped and said gruffly, ‘Cris, it was my fault the old girl beat ye, acos I nicked a basket o’ groceries outa her nasty dirty kitchen and that riled her. So I feel right bad about it and this is to say I’m sorry. – Well, go on, take it: it’s for you!’

  Cris stared wonderingly at the little object that Dido held out in the palm of her hand. It was a tiny whale, carved from ivory.

  ‘I brought it back from Ameriky,’ Dido explained. ‘The sailors make ’em on the whaleboats when they’ve nowt else to do.’

  Timidly Cris took it and turned it over and over. ‘It’s pretty.’

  ‘You could wear it round your neck on a string – there’s a loop on the tail, see? Maybe it’d keep off bad luck – like Mr Firkin’s mouldiwarpses’ claws.’

  Cris made no answer.

  Dido, rather hurt, was beginning to wonder if he didn’t think much of her gift – which she had really hated to part with – when he suddenly said,

  ‘It is lucky. Aswell says so. It will help me find – something I never knew – that I had lost.’

  He spoke in a dreamy, listening way as if he merely passed on the words of someone else, and then lay back, relaxed and peaceful in his thickset hammock, smiling at the twilit sky. ‘Thank you for coming, Aswell! I was afraid you wouldn’t today, I was so tired.’

  Dido shivered. All at once the place felt unchancy to her.

  ‘Guess I’d best be going,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Isn’t the sky beautiful up there,’ Cris went on without heeding her. ‘Look, there’s the first star. When I lie here I seem to be looking down into the sky, not up – it’s like a huge well, don’t you think? I feel as if I could jump right into it.’

  ‘Cris!’ Dido exclaimed. ‘You hadn’t oughta talk that way! It’s not sensible.’

  ‘What is sensible, then?’

  Cris turned his filthy, bruised face inquiringly towards Dido, who found herself at a loss.

  ‘Oh, I dunno! Ask me, this is a right spooky part o’ the world – nothing’s sensible round here. Well, keep your pecker up, Cris, anyhows – if the old baggage wallops you any more, holler out, and I’ll come and give you a hand – the two of us oughta be a match for her.’

  With a sad smile, like the wind-ripple over a field of long grass, Cris said.

  ‘All right. I’ll remember.’

  Dido slithered down the trunk. Powerful scent o’ honeysuckle or summat round hereabouts, she thought. Didn’t know you got honeysuckle at this time o’ year, but there’s no telling what you’ll get in these cock-eyed parts. The mischief is, there’s too many wrong ’uns and not enough right ’uns. And what right ’uns there is, is blind like Mr Firkin, or in poor twig like my Cap, or too old to be very spry like Mr Gusset. And the young ’uns is next door to addle-pated: Tobit a-playing with them unnatural peas, and Cris a-talking to somebody in the sky. There’s hardly an ounce of sense betwixt the pair of ’em. Pity they couldn’t meet, they’d deal together like porridge and cream.

  Thinking about them as she trotted over the hill, she was struck by the similarity between the situations of Tobit and Cris: both of them forced to live so lonesome and mopish, their lives made a burden to th
em by queer-natured old crones. And that spooky Tante Sannie is friends with Mrs Lubbage – wonder if she knows about Cris? If I hadn’t enough to worry about, getting Cap’n Hughes’s Dispatch to London, Dido thought, there’s an awful lot wants setting to rights round here.

  Mrs Lubbage had returned from her cow-doctoring, and was picking herbs from a tangled, nettle-grown patch under her kitchen window.

  ‘Oh. So you’re back, are you?’ she said, giving Dido a hard stare with her little sharp eyes. ‘Well? Do ye want me to have a look at the sick chap or not? ’Tis all one to me.’

  Dido conquered an impulse to refuse. Best be polite, she thought.

  ‘Yes, please, missus.’

  ‘I’ll get my things, then.’

  While Mrs Lubbage was dressing the Captain’s wound, Dido noticed the brindled rat slip through the open door and along the angle of the wall and floor. Without pausing a second, Dido grabbed a heavy beech root from the firewood heap and slung it hard at the rat, which squealed indignantly and scurried out, limping.

  ‘What was that?’ exclaimed the Captain startled.

  ‘Jist an old rat, Cap. If he shows his snout in here again I’ll pepper his whiskers,’ Dido said cheerfully. Mrs Lubbage darted a black look at her but said nothing.

  When she had finished her doctoring – it took less time today, for the wound was better – she said to Dido, ‘You step outside with me, missie!’

  ‘Back directly!’ Dido told the Captain.

  Outside it was quite dark. A ray of lantern light from the doorway illuminated Mrs Lubbage’s broad face. Dido did not care for its expression.