Grand Affair

A magical discovery was made by Ottilie over the next weeks. Ladybirds would sometimes land on her outstretched arms if she stood still enough, and they could be put into a jam jar with a lid which her second brother Joseph had pierced with his treasured penknife. The insects made fascinating viewing as they climbed about the grass inside the jar before being released when evening came. And this was only one of many entertainments, for there were spiders’ webs to be watched and nests to be made from straw and grass for ungrateful wild birds who never seemed to be tempted to use them. These delights soon became more than adequate compensation for the darkly frightening nights that Cornwall had brought to Ottilie’s life.

Just lying in the grass and listening to what seemed to her fanciful imagination to be armies of ants in hobnailed boots marching towards her was happiness itself. And the sky above her that first summer, it was always, always blue, so blue that because it was reflected in the sea Ottilie came to think that blue was the sea’s natural colour and it would always stay like that, little realizing that when the sky turned grey, so too would the sea.

There was so much to do at the cottage it was just as well that the early summer weather continued hot and cloudless. Even Mrs Burgess was reluctant to go back to London, although she finally did.

She had hardly departed before Lorcan and Joseph, with the aid of books borrowed from the St Elcombe library, started on the rebuilding of the cottage, Sean acting as an unwilling builder’s mate. And so it was that a new routine established itself, a routine that seemed to make Ma look younger and happier with each day that passed, and as the days turned to weeks it seemed that the move from Number Four could only be deemed a success.

For Ottilie there were still more unlooked-for joys in keeping watch for field mice, in seeing her feet and legs, day by happy day, turning a richer and deeper brown – a colour which at evening she noticed was gloriously emphasized by the white marks made by her bathing suit – in the seemingly endless golden afternoons during which, while the boys worked on the cottage, Ma would take her down to the sea to paddle. It was not so far to the shore that they could not walk the whole way, Ma strolling in the sunshine, her hips swaying comfortably, Ottilie beside her carrying her newest most precious possessions which were a tin bucket and a small plastic spade that Ma had bought for her at the shop near the beach.

Most days Ma and she took their tea in a basket so that Ottilie’s skill in building some new and even more elaborate sandcastle was rewarded by sitting back and biting into mildly gritty tea time sandwiches and sponge cakes whose icing ran a little from being in the sun. Then Ottilie watched with satisfying contentment the incoming tide slowly flood first her castle’s moat, then its inner courtyards, before eventually drowning the whole edifice, a signal for her and Ma to turn for home, the cottage and the boys.

‘It’s too hot for sandwiches. We’ll go up to the shop and buy you a cornet.’ Ma pulled Ottilie to her one afternoon and retied her sun bonnet before kissing her and coaxing her feet into her beach shoes with their long shoelaces that tied round and round her ankles. ‘Come, pet, take Ma’s finger, and we’ll go on up. We may not be millionaires, darlin’, but we can afford to buy you a cornet today, and maybe take a block in some newspaper back to the boys, for they’ve been slaving on the cottage so they have and they deserve a little treat.’

Ottilie did not notice the silence in the shop when Ma and she walked in that afternoon, but she did notice the bright shiny beach balls hung in nets above her, blown up ready to be played with on the beach. She gazed at them mesmerized as Ma went to the counter and asked for a cornet. The ice cream had to be scooped out with a special spoon from a big container. Ottilie longed for a beach ball, but knew, without being told, there was no money for such a thing.

The woman took down a cardboard box for carrying their purchases as Ma carefully counted out the money from her old red leather purse, exactly the right amount for the ice creams in pennies and halfpennies. Ottilie remembered that, because Ma had such a thing about change. Once the boys had found a shiny new shilling on the road. They wanted to keep it, but Ma would not let them, although she stared at it with reverence as if imagining just how nice that little shilling turned into a fresh-baked loaf might taste. But no, they had to leave it on the wall beside the road, in case the person who owned it came back looking for it and was in greater need than they. The boys had found that hard, a whole shilling was after all a whole shilling, and they would have dearly loved to buy some sweets with that money, but what Ma said went, so the shilling stayed.

This afternoon there were no such lucky finds, just Ma taking the wrapped ice cream that the lady behind the counter handed to her all tucked up neatly in an old grocery box, and then they were outside the shop, and Ma had just leaned down to wipe Ottilie’s mouth with the corner of her small flowered handkerchief, saying in a low voice, ‘One day that woman will think to smile at me while I’m spending my hard-earned in there.’

She had hardly finished speaking when the woman who had sold her the ice cream and the extra wafers for the boys came out of the shop, closely followed by her daughter and one of the other customers.

They stood round her and Ottilie, very close so that Ottilie could smell a faint scent of onions on them, while Ma as if in a trance handed back the still closed cardboard box into which the woman had put the ice cream wrapped in newspaper and the extra wafers for the boys.

The shop owner, a small woman in a flowered apron, stared accusingly from Ma to the small cardboard box as she lifted out not just the newspaper parcel but a small packet of biscuits and a packet of tea.

‘You ben stealin’ my goods again you ben, and we’m all seen ’ee this time. Seen ’ee with our own eyes we’m did! And ’tes not the first tem, ’tes not, we’m noticed you afore!’

‘Those have been put in there by mistake,’ she said in a voice that Ottilie recognized was strangely constricted and yet determinedly calm. ‘We – we don’t drink that kind of tea, and I always bake our own biscuits of a Sunday, so I do.’

‘I tell yous I would not steal from yous, madam, not if I was starvin’ and my childer too, but if you want payin’ for these t’ings I’ll pay, and there’ll be an end to the whole unfortunate matter.’

‘We’m poor folk round ’ere, but we’m honest folk, not like ’ee,’ one of the other witnesses said, adding, ‘You been stealin’ from ’ere regular, we’m thinking.’

‘I haven’t been into the shop more than a dozen times all the time we’ve been at St Elcombe, and we’ve brought our own tea with us to the beach most days we’ve come,’ Ma said, her voice now starting to tremble. ‘As God is my witness, I’d no more steal from anyone than cut the throat of one of my own childer.’

‘You’m Irish. Irish’s always thievin’, ’tes what we’m heard, an’ ’tes true. We’m heard you’m like Irish lempet-pickers from the old time, they wus allus stealin’.’

Ottilie did not know quite what was going on but she knew about policemen all right, from living at Number Four. No-one who lived at the flats liked policemen, and no-one ever called one or took anyone else down to a station, so that long before Ma said, her voice still trembling, ‘Don’t be frightened, Ottilie pet, just hold on to Ma’s finger and we’ll soon sort all this out,’ she knew that something terrible must be happening, more awful even than when Ma had pushed the man over when Ottilie was playing in the stream.

‘If only we knew where there was a telephone or we had one our own selves I could call Lorcan and he would come down and he would know what to do,’ Ma went on, as Ottilie trotted beside her, clutching her index finger for dear life. ‘Mebbe the policeman will let us call the neighbour to tell Lorcan, Ottilie pet. Say a prayer, dotie. Why do they think we’re like the lempet-pickers? We’ve no business with lempets, no and never would. This is all such a terrible mistake.’

Ma made a sound that was something between a sob and a sigh, but the women did not seem to hear her, and certainly showed no pity for her. Within minutes, they had shepherded Ma and Ottilie up the steps of St Elcombe police station.

Clinging to her mother’s index finger Ottilie prayed with all her heart for Lorcan to arrive. His handsome young face and tall figure would be such a blessing at this point, and his measured manner, always so comforting to everyone, but most especially when Ma was in what Lorcan always called ‘one of her stews’ as she was now, telling the policeman over and over again in her soft Irish voice, ‘But tell me why should I do such a thing when I have plenty of money to pay and plenty of tea at home in the tin?’ as the women all crowded round explaining what they had seen and putting the packet of tea and the biscuits too in front of the constable.

Ottilie sat down on a chair and stared at the picture on her tin bucket. She had never seen Ma in such a state. It was frightening for Ottilie to notice that Ma’s normally composed face had turned all blotchy, and her hand clutching the red leather purse shook and shook as if she was suddenly old and needed a stick to support her. Ottilie had rather not look at her, just wait for Lorcan to arrive. Once Lorcan arrived everything would all be all right, because it always was all right when Lorcan was there.

‘Would you like to get in touch with a solicitor, once you’ve been charged?’ asked the policeman at one point, in answer to which Ma shook her head, hardly able to frame an answer to his question because her lips were trembling so much.

‘Sure I’ve no business with a solicitor, how would a woman like me have a solicitor? It’s my son Lorcan I want to talk to, he’ll know what to do. These women – they know as well as I do that I never stole from them, Constable. On my life I – I would rather die than steal from them. I’m a woman alone, my husband in America, and who would there be to look after me childer, Constable, if I’m to be charged and I might end in prison, and no-one to speak for me?’

After some more of such talk, with the policeman’s voice becoming more and more measured as Ma grew more and more hysterical and Ottilie concentrating on the picture of the children playing on the side of her bucket, the policeman indicated to Ma that since there was no telephone, at their cottage he would send someone on a bicycle to fetch Lorcan.

‘These people must really hate us, Ottie darling,’ Ma murmured over and over again as they waited for Lorcan to arrive. It seemed to be hours later that he eventually appeared, dressed in a clean white shirt and a dark tie, his hair brushed tidy and flat as if he was about to go to church. ‘Oh, Lorcan, at last you’re here! Lorcan, these women, they say I’ve taken tea and biscuits from their shop. Tell them I would never do such a thing, tell them.’

‘And a right load of old jaw-crackers they usually turn out to be,’ Lorcan agreed, trying to joke. ‘Come on, Ma, don’t cry, please. We’ll go home and think of something, like we always do.’

But Ma could not help herself, what with the relief at seeing Lorcan and the awful fear brought on from being in a police station accused of something that she had obviously not done. Ottilie turned away at the sound of her mother’s sobs, her eyes filling with tears, the sound of her happy mother crying bringing a lump to her throat so large that it was as if she was trying to swallow away one of those jaw-cracking biscuits about which Lorcan and the boys were always teasing Ma.

Ma continued to sob while Lorcan tried hard to stay calm and listen to what the policeman was saying. Ottilie, hardly able to contain her fear at seeing her mother so distressed, also strained to hear. Words like ‘first offence’ and ‘magistrates’ court’ and ‘bound over’, and then at last there was the fresh cold air of outside and Ma had stopped crying and they were all walking home together, heading for the cottage, where Ottilie imagined they would all be safe once more.

It was only as they reached the freshly painted green door that Ma suddenly gasped, ‘Oh, Lorcan, dotie, imagine.’ She started to cry again. ‘After all that, after all that, I’ve only gone and left your ice cream in the police station.’

Joseph had his theories about the people in the shop and Sean agreed with him. They were obviously relatives or friends of the old man Ma had pushed over by mistake that first day. He had gone back and told them all about the nasty woman who had punched him in the shoulder, as a consequence of which they had waited and waited until that hot afternoon to plant the tea and the biscuits among Ma’s shopping.

‘I mean you know Ma, she doesn’t usually need a box but they gave her one that afternoon and she took it because of wrapping the ice cream in the newspaper to get it home, see? They must have thought it was Christmas. All those weeks waiting for Ma, and then – bang, they had her!’

The idea of such a wicked conspiracy in the town would have been thrilling to the two younger boys had it not been their mother who was the innocent victim. There was no doubt in the minds of Joseph and Sean that had Ma not pushed the old man in the stream over that day all would have been well, and no-one would have planted the tea or the biscuits in her box. Only Lorcan felt differently.

‘I don’t know,’ was all he would say whenever the subject came up at night, and then he would take himself off to study more books on building and plumbing. ‘I just don’t know.’

Cornwall, St Elcombe, the cottage, even walking to the seaside with her bucket and spade, it all changed after that and became dull and sad. Once more Ottilie found herself longing to be back at Number Four where no-one had ever pushed anyone, and everyone in the neighbourhood loved Ma, and she had not taken to suddenly bursting into tears as she did now whenever they went walking all alone along the beach, saying ‘I’ve too much on my mind, pet’ to want to build castles with Ottilie any more. Worse than that, she no longer wanted Ottilie to paddle or run about while she sat on the sands watching her. All she wanted now was to walk and walk, and walk, until eventually they were so tired that when they returned home they had hardly enough energy to eat their tea and put themselves to bed.

And when the day came that Ma had to go up in front of the magistrates in Branhaven the boys joked and laughed too noisily in the station taxi all the way there, because they were so frightened that Ma would be taken away from them. And there again, once they were in the magistrates’ court, as Lorcan said afterwards on the cab-ride home, ‘She might as well have whistled as plead not guilty. I mean, you could see the magistrates looking up and seeing Ma’s flaming red hair and thinking that no shopkeeper wouldn’t spot her taking something. And they certainly couldn’t muddle her up with someone else, not at all. I mean red hair. It’s a dead giveaway. Never mind – could have been worse, Ma. A great deal worse.’

‘That solicitor. He was worse than useless. A bucket with a hole would have held more water than the case he made out for me. And it could not be worse, Lorcan, and well you know it,’ Ma muttered as she stared out of the window into the gathering dusk. ‘It could not have been worse if the wretched woman in the shop had murdered me. Never mind the ten-pound fine and the humiliation, what about my reputation? Where am I now in a place like St Elcombe, unable to go shopping for anything without everyone staring? Places like this, they never forget what they think you’ve done, not if you live to be a hundred. Where am I now, a woman alone and without a reputation?’

‘You’ll still have a reputation, Ma, of course you will. Everyone who knows you already won’t believe you took those things, will they, Mr Martin?’ he asked the taxi driver. ‘No-one will believe you would be bothered to take a packet of tea you never drink and biscuits you never eat. People are a great deal nicer than that, aren’t they, Mr Martin?’

The taxi driver glanced at Lorcan in his driving mirror and nodded. Mr Martin was the postman’s brother, and already the postman had proved more than friendly to Lorcan and the boys, helping them out with tip-offs as to where to find cheap or second-hand building materials for the cottage.

And so the children arrived back at the cottage in a much more cheerful mood than they bad imagined possible, which was more than could be said of Ma, who continued to stare out of the taxi window a sullen and forbidding expression on her face. When they all tumbled out of the car thrilled to be home once more, she merely gave Lorcan the door key from her coat pocket and sat down on an old chair on the grass outside, saying, without any of her usual grace and kindness, ‘Just don’t bother me for a while, will you?’

Lorcan swung his young sister behind him, and making horse sounds he trotted her up to the front door. But the moment the door creaked open in response to the large old-fashioned key with its three great teeth, and long before Lorcan had put a light on or even stepped into the hall, he knew something was wrong.

It was the smell. It was the awful overpowering sickening smell. And when he put Ottilie down and she ran past him and slipped and fell on something dark and damp and Lorcan heard an unmistakable snorting sound, he knew exactly why there was such a stench. He put on the sitting room light and saw the reason standing in front of them, a piece of wool hanging out of its mouth, looking twice its normal size due to the low ceiling and the cramped room.

Lorcan gestured round at the freshly painted walls in despair before they all dashed into the next room where the precious old radiogram stood, to see if what they now dreaded was really true. It was. The place had been wrecked. There was dung everywhere, or mess of one kind or another. It would take hours just to scrub the place down, let alone redecorate. Even Ma’s knitting had not escaped unscathed.

Ottilie climbed out of the way as her brothers shooed the pig out of the cottage and down the road and Ma, half laughing and half crying from the shock of it all, as always went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Ma’s answer to everything that happened, in sunshine or in shadow, was a cup of tea so strong and dark that it could have been mistaken for gravy.

But she could hardly have been in the kitchen for more than a second when she came straight out again, shouting for the boys to come and see what she had just seen, her face red with fury and her mouth working to get out the words.

‘Who would do something like this?’ Sean demanded of no-one when he returned with his brothers, and he pummelled his head with his fist. ‘I mean who would write that on the walls of someone’s kitchen?’

‘Who’d you think?’ Ma asked, once more seated on the old kitchen chair in front of the cottage. ‘Who else but one of the friendly local people such as the postman and his brother, or the friendly farmer down the way, all these nice friendly souls we’re surrounded by – the ones Lorcan’s always telling us are so nice and kind? That’s who did this.’

‘Hang on, Ma, the pig didn’t come from the farm, they only keep cattle and sheep. Even so they’re going to hold on to it and try to find out where it does belong. They were really very kind, Ma. Most upset for us. I mean they really had no idea of who would do such a thing.’

‘Never say so, Ma. Come on, Joseph, Sean – Ottilie too, you can help. Empty your bucket of those shells and bring it in. We’ll show Ma just what a good job we can make of the cleaning up. The place will look like a painting before the night is out we’ll have it that clean.’

‘Just remember the one thing a person can’t do is clean up their reputation, Lorcan. Once you’re guilty in a court of law you’re guilty for ever and no amount of scrubbing will take away from that. No carbolic, no cleaner, nothing. Once your reputation goes that’s it, for ever and ever, amen.’

Lorcan answered dutifully enough but once they were all inside and he was directing the clean-up operations, and they were beginning to sweep out the breakages from the side tables in the sitting room that the pig had charged into in its fear, not to mention the droppings everywhere on the flagstones, he said to Joseph and Sean in a low voice, ‘Never mind Ma, she’s only got this thing because of Da, you know? She’s never forgotten the business with the police planting that, money in his car and his having to go to America. But this time it was only a fine, not prison, that and the solicitor’s fee, and if we put our shoulders to the wheel I reckon we’ll all earn that back soon enough.’

‘Of course we will,’ Joseph agreed, nudging Sean. ‘We’ve plans all right, haven’t we, Sean? Plans to earn money any way we can to help Ma and you, and Ottilie,’ he added, picking her up and giving her a twirl. ‘Even Ottilie who was sent to us by the Little People.’

Only when Joseph and she were alone in the kitchen and she asked him over and over, ‘Please, please, please tell me, I won’t tell Lorcan you told, please, please tell me, Joseph. What did it say, Joseph, please tell me?’ did Joseph, who was already tired out from helping to paint out the writing, finally look down from his stepladder and give in at last, thinking that really he would do anything for a quiet life.

‘Oh, Ottie, if you really want to know, it said “Irish Pigs Go Home”,’ he told her, carefully dipping his brush in the white paint they were busy putting up all over the cottage. ‘But don’t you worry about it, because we’re not going to,’ he finished, frowning at the daub he had just made on the wall with more than usual vigour.

Ottilie turned away. She could not tell Joseph how much she longed for the old days at Number Four, those days she remembered as golden and warm, now gone. She would give anything to swap the singing of the birds for the sound of buses pulling slowly past the windows of the flat. Sometimes she would lie awake in the darkness of the countryside imagining she could hear the sounds of other children playing in the street, laughing and happy as they tore up and down on their fairy bicycles, narrowly avoiding pedestrians who stepped aside with tolerant expertise as they all raced each other to some lamp post in the distance, or set off for the park with their roller skates hanging from their handlebars. In contrast Cornwall seemed peopled by enemies, making them unhappy, telling them to go home.