E-m-i-l-i-a. She can do it – just look, she is writing it with her finger on the tablecloth. She also learnt M-a-r-t-h-a in no time at all, and L-e-n-n-y, with two Ns. You see? She writes it down for him and even though he cannot read it himself, he looks at it as if it is one of the wonders of the world.
F-i-s-h, she writes.
“Edward,” says Edward.
By the next day, she has learnt how to spell that too. As if the letters were ready and waiting inside her head. All she had to do was learn them.
She quickly grabs Lenny’s newspaper, while it is still in one piece. A whole new world opens up: Rob-ber-y, she reads. Cow dead. Fair com-ing to town.
Lenny sits there with his scissors, looking bewildered. What is he supposed to cut up now?
*
But then, one afternoon, Nick comes into the kitchen at lunchtime and walks up to Lenny. His shoes are muddy and he is carrying something wrapped in a dirty cloth.
“Not on the table,” barks Martha. “What on earth is it anyway?”
Nick puts a finger to his lips, unwraps the cloth and places the contents in Lenny’s lap. “For you.”
“Oh,” says Martha. “Just look at that, son.”
Lenny does not look though. New things are far too scary. He looks up at the ceiling, where there is nothing. Nothing new in any case.
“Go on, Lenny. Take a look,” says Lampie. “It’s a pair of scissors.”
Lenny takes a peek. Yes, scissors. But these are very big scissors indeed. Nick lays a hand on his shoulder.
“They’re shears, Lenny. You’ll be able to cut lots and lots of things with them,” he says. “You have no idea.”
With frightened eyes, Lenny follows Nick to the garden. The dogs go too, with Martha anxiously following. She does not know what is going on. Whatever is Nick up to? Lampie quickly slurps down the rest of her soup and runs after them.
In the garden, Lenny is already snipping away at a blackberry bush. Gently at first, one branch at a time, but before long the shears are taking great big bites. After all, cutting is what Lenny does best. Nick points out where: brambles, nettles, big prickly bushes and then the green hedges behind them, taller than two men put together. Branches fly everywhere, and the dogs run around with big pieces in their mouths.
When Lenny sees what they are doing, he throws the shears onto the ground, runs after the dogs and takes back the branches. With the branches in his hand, he searches for the right spot. He takes hold of a twig, a leaf, and tries to match it to what he is carrying. Where did it go? Was it here? Or there? He looks despairingly at the mountain of green. How is he ever going to put it all back together again? How can he solve this puzzle?
Lampie places a hand on his arm. “There’s no need to do that, Lenny. A hedge isn’t the same as a newspaper,” she says. “It can just stay as it is.”
The boy looks at her in surprise. There’s no need?
“It’ll grow back by itself,” Lampie explains.
Nick nods as well. “Go on, Lenny. Cut it. You can cut whatever you like.”
And Lenny cuts.
The weeds around the Black House are blooming in so many different colours: pink, yellow, the white flowers of the blackberry bushes, the purple spikes of the thistles. The soft plumes of grass scatter their seeds all around and even the nettles are wearing crowns.
Lampie has been given her new dress and she is so pleased with it that she only wears it when she is sitting quietly at the kitchen table and not touching anything dirty. And as she sits there, learning the whole world, one letter at a time, Lenny is outside, clipping the tall hedges around the house. They become rounder and smoother, developing bumps that look like backs, and like heads. Slowly they turn into animals: two dogs, a rhinoceros, a swan.
All day long, everything smells of grass and cut leaves, and Lenny takes wheelbarrows full of clippings to the compost heap. The days grow longer and warmer.
Martha notices that she sometimes bursts into song as she is doing the dishes, and that she feels like making complicated soups. The kitchen belongs to her all day. And in the evening, when her son has drowsed off over his dinner and so she has sent him to bed, Nick no longer runs away straight after eating, but stays at the table to talk. Sometimes they even play a game or two of cards. Because she asks so nicely, Lampie is allowed to join in. However, you can’t spend half of your life around pirates without learning how to play poker like a champion, and she bluffs brilliantly, making mincemeat of them and winning all Martha’s savings that very first evening. She gives the money straight back though, and after that they play for matches.
Martha pushes a quarter across the table to Lampie. The girl can take it to the fair on Wednesday afternoon, she says, feeling unusually generous. And then she sends Lampie to bed too.
Lampie creeps up the stairs and heads to the room in the tower to look out at the lighthouse. She opens the window just a little way, closes her eyes and listens. Down there, at the foot of the cliff, she can hear the sea gently splashing.
“Goodnight, Father,” she whispers. Then she tiptoes out of the room and back down the stairs. She does it so quietly that Fish does not wake up. Or so she thinks.
So that’s it, he thinks. Her father is out there somewhere, and that’s why she always goes to that window.
The boy is lying in the darkness, looking up at the underside of his mattress. His own father is out there somewhere too, far away at sea. Cutting through the ocean on his white ship, defying the waves and so on. He has no idea where. But no matter how far away he is, his eyes always find Edward, even in the darkness under the bed.
What are you doing there? Resting? Why? After all your hard work? All your progress? And what progress would that be, boy?
He can picture him so clearly, sitting at his desk, like the last time he was at home.
“Just a little progress. That is surely the least a father can expect of his son. For him at least to try his best.”
The way his father had looked at him… He was not even angry. If only it had been anger.
“But it would seem that I was mistaken about you. You are not made of the right stuff after all.”
“Stuff?” Edward had feebly replied. “What kind of stuff?” He honestly did not understand what his father meant.
“Oh, goodness, boy! Don’t always take things so literally.”
The rusty springs coil up into the darkness to where he can no longer see them. He can smell the summer night; she forgot to close the window.