Grand Affair

Ottilie’s day always began with climbing into bed to lie beside the woman she would always know as ‘Ma’. Here, with Ma’s body in its clean but much-mended white cotton nightdress warming her, and the pleasant smell of the early morning tea Ma was sipping, she was certain that she had once again awoken to her own safe little world, a world where Ottilie was the star.

Here too, lying beneath the old faded flowered quilt, her blissful sense of being loved and wanted was emphasized by the distant sounds of all her brothers leaving for school, Ma’s radio playing, and the noise of the London buses pulling slowly past their flat window. All these outside disturbances only underlined Ottilie’s feelings of contentment.

Sometimes she would slide right down beneath the sheets and blankets, almost to the bottom of the bed, pretending that she wasn’t there, trying to avoid all her older brothers kissing her goodbye. Other times she would lie against the thin old pillows in their coarse hand-sewn cotton pillowcases waiting for the boys’ farewells and their murmurs of ‘Lucky thing, wish I was staying at home.’ Always answered by Ma’s saying, ‘Get on with all of yous, best years of your life, school.’

This morning was different, though. Not that there were not shouts from the kitchen, and Lorcan the eldest as always bringing Ma her cup of tea with ‘There you are, Ma’ as Ma listened to Housewives’ Choice on the grand old mahogany radio that occupied pride of place in the corner of their bedroom. This morning was different because the boys were up and shouting not because they were going to school, but because they were all moving to the country.

It had finally all seemed to happen so quickly. First a letter from Da in America and talk of money’s being sent, finally Ma giving a little scream and sitting down in the kitchen very suddenly as she opened a letter. And then instead of just talk of getting out of London to what Ma always called ‘a land of milk and honey’ – now, all of a sudden, this was it, they really were moving, leaving Number Four and going far away into a foreign country that Ma and the boys called ‘Cornwall’.

They were going somewhere where, Lorcan kept telling Ottilie, they could all learn to swim and fish, and there would be sandcastles and he would buy Ottilie a spade with which she could dig on those sandy beaches that she could see in some of the pictures on Ma’s kitchen walls. In ‘Cornwall’, Lorcan told Ottilie, the sun always shone just like the pictures.

‘But where ’xactly are we going, Ma?’ Ottilie wanted to know, clinging hard to her mother’s index finger as they walked down to MacDonagh’s for the bread and potatoes. ‘Where is Cornwall, ’xactly?’

Mrs Mac looked down at her youngest, and hearing the anxiety in Ottilie’s voice she said, ‘You know where Cornwall is, Ottilie pet, you’ve seen the pictures in the kitchen, that’s Cornwall, dotie. Cows and fields, and little houses with thatched roofs where you can sit out in front of the door when the weather’s fine, not like here with the smog and the buses going so close to the bedroom windows you could shake hands with the passengers. And we can take all our furniture. Sullivans is helping move us. You know, Mr Sullivan, the undertaker?’ She stopped momentarily, frowning in remembrance of something, and then went on, ‘You’ll love where we’re going, pet, you wait and see.’

But Ottilie still felt uneasy and strange about the idea of leaving Number Four, although when she stared at the pictures she could see that this place called Cornwall did look a great deal prettier than the main road outside Number Four where the rubbish lay listlessly in the gutters on a hot afternoon, or pieces of torn newspaper blew about under their feet on winter mornings, and all night long traffic moved past the window and babies cried. And yet, now that she knew they were really moving, going away from Number Four, she was only really happy under the kitchen table with her toys.

Ottilie turned over the postcard before looking at the picture on the front. There was no writing on it, but when she turned it back there was a picture of an old house with gardens running down to the sea. At six Ottilie’s reading was not so perfect that she could understand all the words underneath the picture but she did understand ‘The Grand’, although the rest eluded her.

‘That’s right, pet, that’s exactly it,’ Ma said from above the table where she was making pastry and not really listening to Ottilie. ‘It’ll be grand, just grand, so it will. A home of our own, with our own front door, and summer coming, nothing could be more grand than that, I’d say. Away from streets and noise and dirty people, just flowers and fields, and air so clean you can hang your washing in it.’

Mr Sullivan gave them the loan of one of his oldest hearses to move themselves, and Lorcan’s friend Charlie the young greengrocer on the corner offered to drive it for them because he said he could do with some sea air. Ottilie watched with interest as all the boys heaved and pushed everything they owned, and some things Ma joked she was sure they definitely should not own, into the back of the great black empty limousine.

‘Now isn’t that a fine sight if you like, pet?’ Ma said, her usual deep optimism reflecting in her voice as she saw her proudest possession, the great old mahogany radio-gram, being placed reverently beside the cardboard boxes of toys and books, old tea tins, towel rails and saucepans, all taped up with Mr Sullivan’s special string and labels that said SULLIVAN across them. ‘Have you Mrs Teddy safe, Ottilie pet? No you haven’t? You’ve left Mrs Teddy? Well now, run back quickly before we all go without you. Imagine leaving Mrs Teddy, that’s terrible for her, wouldn’t you say? She’ll cry her eyes out without yous.’

Quickly Ottilie ran back up the steps into the big dark hallway that had been the first place she had learned to recognize outside her own small world, back into the now empty flat, its door still swinging open as always, back to find Mrs Teddy.

There she was, in the corner of the boys’ bedroom, a strangely forlorn sight, a small bear clothed in a blue dress and a hat sitting alone on the window sill. Ottilie snatched up her toy and then, feeling a little panic-struck at the sound of her sandals echoing on the stone floors, she ran into the kitchen searching for the dear familiar sights of her first home. But they were gone. Now there were no rows of green tea tins to stare up at, and no washing horse drying what Ma always called ‘gansies’ by the old gas stove, and when she peered into Ma’s bedroom no mahogany radiogram, no bed, no piece of curtaining with small elephants on it to cover the window looking out onto the street where her family were patiently waiting for her to reappear. Clutching Mrs Teddy all the more tightly she bolted out into the street again. Whatever happened they must take her with them, they mustn’t leave her behind at Number Four, because Number Four had quite gone.

‘Just wait till you see the lovely green fields and feel the warmth of the sun on your face, pet,’ Ma sighed, sitting back with her arm round Ottilie while in the front seat their neighbour Mrs Burgess gaily crashed through the gears of her new Morris Minor, doing her best to take off after Charlie in Mr Sullivan’s hearse at a faster speed than was thoroughly normal for her.

Ottilie was sick seven times on the first leg of their great journey to Cornwall. She actually became quite proud of how many times, but after they had all stopped off to stay over at a pub called the Three Horseshoes, her sickness quite disappeared and she fell happily asleep with her ears full of the sounds of people laughing and talking in the bar below, her tummy at last having righted itself with a bowl of bread and milk and brown sugar. She only woke momentarily when Ma came in much later, rolled into her own bed under the window and fell asleep, soon snoring loudly as a result of drinking a great deal of her favourite stout.

It was only the next day, as they neared the village where Ma had bought their cottage with the money sent from America, that Ottilie started to feel the strangeness of the new country into which they had driven. To her childish eyes the hedges that shielded the little winding country roads appeared enormous, and the grass beyond them strangely uninteresting because of the lack of shops or lights. And the quiet, the very peace of it all, seemed so frightening that she found herself once more clinging to Ma’s index finger.

‘Well now, will you look at that, Mags Burgess?’ Ma exclaimed as they pulled up behind the hearse in front of a cottage with a dark green front door. ‘Will you look at what I’ve bought? It’s even nicer than the man in the estate agent’s promised, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Of course not, Mags,’ Ma replied, tossing her red plait behind her and pinning it up to the top of her head with a kirby grip as she always did in times of stress, ‘sure didn’t I see it all in the details that Lorcan and I sent for? And in the window of the agency? Of course it’s not the first time I’ve seen it.’

Without another word Ma opened the car door and stepped out into the midday sun. She strode up to the front door and opened it, Ottilie closely following. The two younger boys began to run wildly around the garden, shouting and yelling for no other reason than that they had arrived, while Lorcan and Charlie threw open the back of the hearse and started to unpack their few possessions.

‘I did too know what it was like.’ Ma stepped into the small flagstoned hall and turned to Mags Burgess who had followed her out of the car, inquisitive as always. ‘See, it’s lovely, isn’t it?’

But that was before they stepped through into the other rooms. Water, damp, walls bulging, a tap dripping non-stop in the downstairs bathroom. There was a long silence as the three of them tiptoed gingerly through not just the darkness of the low-ceilinged rooms but the large pools on the old flagstoned floors. It was broken finally by Ma, who said with her customary good humour as she stared at all the water, ‘Well now, isn’t it just as well that the first thing the boys want to do is learn to swim?’

There was just one more second of silence, and then Mags Burgess and Ma started to laugh uproariously before turning back to the warmth outside, to the tall grass of the garden, to the unpacking of the hearse, and most important of all to the finding of the old brown teapot from Number Four. Once they had that everything would start to be right again, Ma said, while Mrs Burgess lit a cigarette and said, ‘Well, you can always come back to London when you want, love, don’t forget that. The landlord hasn’t found anyone for Number Four yet.’

At which Ottilie’s heart gave a little leap and she thought, ‘Yes please let’s all go back,’ because secretly, deep down, that was what she wanted more than anything in the world, to go straight back to their safe life at Number Four with the noise of the traffic thrumming past the outside door and the half-open windows and everyone and everything that they knew so well, the manager who ran the pub and always slipped her chocolate, Mr North the manager of MacDonagh’s who gave Ma the end-of-day loaves, Charlie’s uncle in the greengrocery who set aside the cabbages. They were all her friends, and she knew now that she might never see them again, because of being in Cornwall, just because Ma wanted everything to be the way it had been when she herself was small and lived in somewhere called County Kerry.

‘Ah, once we get the beds put up, and the water brushed out of the downstairs rooms, it’ll be more like home than home, you’ll see. At least the electric’s on for us,’ Ma said brightly to Ottilie after they’d managed to boil the kettle for some tea. ‘All this place is in need of is a bit of a lick of paint, Ottie darlin’, and some love. That’s all this place needs, pet. Really. We’ll have it like new in no time.’ And she gave Ottilie a quick hug, as if she sensed the little girl needed reassuring.

It was the pitch-black darkness of it all. The deep, deep black of the night, no comforting street lighting, no feeling that outside there were human beings to whom you could run, recognizable people who walked or hurried towards shops and away from buses, or away from buses towards shops. Here on Ottilie’s first night in this place called ‘the country’ there was nothing but black.

Ottilie closed her eyes, terrified of the density of the darkness, only to find that it was black behind her eyes too and that shutting them against the dark did not send the fear away. All she wanted was to go back to Number Four where happiness was street lighting outside the window all night, and the gentle hum of the evening traffic soothing her to sleep only to wake her once more in the morning. She put her head under her pillow. She thought she was going to hate this place called Cornwall.

But in the morning everything was better. Ma laid out the old kitchen table in front of the cottage door, and although the grass was long and tufty in places Lorcan put stones under the legs and banged it down, and after a while it stopped wobbling. Then they all sat outside while Ma buttered bread and poured the milk she’d brought all the way from London into a blue and white striped jug, and set out a great slab of yellow butter, and what with the old brown teapot and their old nursery mugs to drink from, and being able to watch the birds come and feed when Lorcan threw the crumbs from their plates towards them, Cornwall suddenly seemed a great deal better to Ottilie than it had the night before.

‘With a little help from God and the weather, we surely must be able to mend the roof and the plumbing before winter?’ Ma asked of no-one, as the two younger boys started to climb trees and Ottilie wandered over to the little stream that ran between the cottage and the road. ‘I should say so,’ she finished, half to herself, as she walked to where Ottilie was trying to see past the weeds down to the stones where she thought there might be fish. ‘Mind yourself now, pet. Just until you can swim.’

Ottilie turned to make sure Ma was watching, and then carefully removed her socks and shoes and stepped down the shallow bank into the stream. She wrinkled her face at the aching cold of the water and the feel of the sharp stones, but she did not attempt to climb out, so suddenly soothing was the sensation of real water in a real stream. With the sounds of the birds around, the smell of the fresh grass and the murmur of a bee busy somewhere near, she felt thoroughly happy.

‘You’re bold, you are,’ Ma murmured and left her to refill her enamelled mug with tea while Ottilie stared fascinated at the wildlife that was swimming past her feet and ankles. She saw a toad further up the bank, and a butterfly. Eventually, with Ma still gone, she stared up into the air around her, at the blue sky, the clouds, the birds, the sun which was already starting to warm her, and as she did so the picture that she saw above her, her picture, was suddenly filled with a red face, narrow eyes, bearded chin and a cap set on top of thick white ill-cut tufted hair.

Ottilie stared up at the angry face above her, and then turning quickly attempted to scramble up the steep sides of the bank down which she had slipped a few minutes earlier with such success. But now her bare, shoeless feet were so wet they slid uselessly, just as her hands proved useless when she tried to pull at the tufts of grass that grew what seemed yards above her on the steep sides of the stream. The man started to lean towards her, his own feet slip-sliding down the sides of the bank. Ottilie opened her mouth to call to someone but no sound came out. She wanted to shout for Lorcan and Ma, and Joseph, and Sean – for everyone, for them all, but she couldn’t, even though she had opened her mouth wider and wider as he reached out and grabbed her, and anyway the sight of this large man slip-sliding down towards her froze her with fear. Finally a scream did emerge, but it was not hers. Ma was plunging down the bank towards the man.

But the old man’s angry words of justification were wasted on Ma. All she could see was the stranger’s hands on Ottilie’s shoulders, pulling her towards him. Without a moment’s hesitation she hurtled forward, and reaching up she punched him as hard as she could. He stepped back, his eyes registering astonishment at the woman’s primitive fury, but as he did so his old wellington boots slipped suddenly out from under him on the watery base of the stream, and he staggered backwards before falling with a sudden, frightening force.

Ottilie watched with fascination from behind Ma as he just lay there while Ma looked down in amazement at his extraordinary and very prompt state of unconsciousness, as visibly astonished as he had been when she had punched him in the shoulder with such force.

Ottilie, realizing that she was the cause of all the trouble, promptly stuck her thumb in her mouth as Ma let out another great scream, this time for someone to come and help her drag the old man up the bank before he ‘drowned in the water, God help him’.

‘I think you’ve killed him, Ma,’ Lorcan announced when he joined his mother in the stream, watched closely by Mrs Burgess and the other two boys from the bank above them. ‘Hey. Someone help me, will ya?’

Between them all they dragged the old man as best they could from the stream and up the bank, until they finally placed him on the grass. Mrs Burgess ran inside for a jug of cold water from the kitchen to throw over him.

The water must indeed have been cold, because within seconds the old man was starting to sit up, and then cursing and swearing and holding the back of his head, not to mention his sodden cap, while Lorcan and Joseph and Mrs Burgess fussed over him and apologized what seemed to Ottilie to be a hundred times for the accident.

‘Ah, Ma, what did you want to go and do that for?’ Lorcan groaned, and he shook his head disbelievingly at his mother as the rest of them watched the angry old figure disappearing into the distance, the sound of his footsteps still reverberating in the quiet air long after he had become a far and distant figure. ‘I mean, what in heaven’s name possessed you? You’ve made an enemy before we’ve even hung up our trousers on the bed rail.’

‘Sure ’twasn’t my fault the silly old man fell over, Lorcan, and never say I’ve made an enemy,’ Ma said without much conviction, still looking after the damp figure staggering down the hill. ‘Any man touches my children I give them what’s coming to them, Lorcan, you know that. Didn’t he have his hands on Ottilie’s little shoulders? One second later and she could have been taken from us and we would never have seen her again. I’ve known that to happen before. Tinkers and gypsies and old men of no fixed abode, they steal children to help them with their own stealing. And didn’t my own father used to say that you have to swat them like flies as soon as they land near you?’

Lorcan sighed and shook his head. ‘We’re not in Ireland now, Ma, we’re not even at Number Four. That man is not a tinker or a gypsy, he’s probably some local character. And he’s not likely to take this lying down, I tell you. The postman warned us, people round these parts are very clannish, St Elcombe particularly. The postman said we’re foreigners here, as much as if we’d come from abroad, and that’s the truth, Ma. That’s why we’ve got to be careful, because of being foreigners in St Elcombe.’

As Lorcan spoke the whole family listened, silent and suddenly worried. Lorcan was after all the eldest. Lorcan was the most sensible too. He was in Da’s place, and they all knew it. Ma looked across at him, shamefaced, knowing that he was speaking the truth. She never liked upsetting Lorcan, the quiet one, the good one. Lorcan was a shoulder to lean on, a man already in his mother’s eyes.

‘You must be careful, Ma. We don’t know anyone here and there’s no-one likely to be on our side,’ he reminded his mother more gently, before starting back towards Charlie and the hearse to resume the unpacking. As he went he tried to shrug his shoulders, but his face still reflected his worried state of mind.

‘Ah, you did what you did, and what you did you did for the best reasons, Ma, and nothing at all to be done now. Let’s just hope that the man is not some sort of great huge power in the village, because then our goose will be well and truly cooked. And eaten for that matter.’

‘If he’s a power anywhere except in his own mind, I personally would be flabberstruck. I mean, an old man like that, he’s no more than just a local nobody, surely?’ Ma looked round for reassurance.