Clara was confused. All these months living in solitude, and suddenly her little front garden was crowded with people she hadn’t invited, all talking at the same time; her neighbour Ben and a policeman, and the girl who was always hanging around the Sparrowhawk, who had stolen the chihuahua. Clara didn’t want them here, but how could she get rid of them? In the background, she heard the five o’clock train whistle as it pulled into the station. She had a sudden vision of Max on the train, Max walking from the station, Max arriving while all these people were here quarrelling, when she had waited for him all this time in perfect isolation. Perhaps if she cried they might go away. But Clara, in her former life as a student, had agreed with her friend Kitty that women who cried to get what they wanted were despicable.
‘Better to be very, very haughty,’ Kitty had said.
Clara pushed her glasses back up her nose.
‘I have no idea what you are all doing here,’ she announced, as grandly as you can in a jumper worn back to front, and a moth-eaten one at that. ‘But I’d be much obliged if you would leave.’
Albert, shouting above Lotti in a not very dignified attempt to be heard, informed her that children had to go to school.
‘But what does that have to do with me?’ asked Clara.
‘Nothing,’ said Albert, whose headache was getting worse.
‘Tell him the law’s wrong,’ ordered Lotti.
‘What law?’
‘The law that says they have to remain in education until they are fourteen,’ grumbled Albert Skinner.
‘Is there such a law?’
‘You see?’ Albert turned to Lotti. ‘She doesn’t know.’
He felt triumphant, and at the same time also a little ashamed of being so pleased at having proved a child wrong, but both feelings turned to aggravation as he realised Lotti didn’t look the least bit defeated.
‘Remain in education until they’re fourteen,’ she repeated. ‘That is what you said, isn’t it?’
Albert wrinkled his brow. She was up to something, he could tell, but what?
‘What I mean,’ Lotti continued, ‘is could someone educate us at home? Or at their home? Or even on a boat? Someone who knew what they were doing, like a tutor?’
‘I suppose they could, yes.’
‘Someone like Miss Clara, who is a writer and so must be very educated?’
Ben gazed at Lotti in wonder. Clara Primrose stared at her aghast. Albert Skinner scratched his head.
‘Someone like Miss Clara. Yes, I suppose she could.’
‘But I don’t want to be a teacher!’ protested Clara.
Lotti turned to face her. Albert, foreseeing another battle, decided to beat a retreat while his dignity was still salvageable, and announced that he would return soon.
As he walked away, he was conscious of an uncomfortable feeling that he had been outplayed.
When it came to Ben and Lotti, it was a feeling he was going to have to get used to.
*
The little crowd, minus Albert but including the dogs whom Ben had let out of the Sparrowhawk, were making their way into the cottage, and Clara was feeling even more confused.
‘I don’t want to be a teacher,’ she repeated. ‘I’m a writer. I need peace, quiet. I need solitude. I want you to go.’
Ben, never one to willingly cause trouble, glanced uneasily at Lotti. Lotti, unconcerned, bounced on one of the two sagging armchairs by the fire.
‘You have a lot of books.’ She picked up a volume of poetry from the floor and spelled out the author’s name. ‘G-O-E-T-H-E. Goaty! Goat?’
‘It’s pronounced G-E-R-T-E-R. It’s poetry. It’s German.’
‘I didn’t know Germans had poetry,’ said Lotti.
‘Well, they do, beautiful poetry.’ Clara flushed, and resisted the urge to throw a book at Lotti’s head.
‘But why are you reading German poetry?’ demanded Ben. ‘When we have just fought a war against them?’
‘Poetry has no frontiers,’ Clara informed him frostily.
Ben sniffed, unconvinced. Lotti put down the Goethe and picked up another volume. ‘Is this one German too? Look, it’s got your name in the title. Für Clara. For Clara?’
‘Give me that!’ Clara snatched the book from Lotti’s hand.
‘You should tell my uncle about Germans and poetry. He thinks all foreigners are savages. Including me, because I’m half French. Will you teach us German poetry?’
‘Not German,’ said Ben decisively.
‘Not anything!’ cried Clara.
‘But it’s the perfect solution!’ said Lotti.
‘Solution to what?’ asked Clara, practically shrieking.
‘Your uncle would never let you have lessons with me anyway,’ said Ben, ignoring Clara. ‘He’s too posh.’
‘He’s mean though too, and I bet Miss Clara wouldn’t cost as much as school. No offence, Miss Clara.’
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half hour, and Clara felt suddenly exhausted. It took ten minutes to walk here from the station, twenty at the most if the bridge was open and you had to go the long way. Max wasn’t going to come tonight. She sank into the armchair opposite Lotti’s and closed her eyes.
‘Perfect solution to what?’ she asked.
‘Ben has his job,’ explained Lotti. ‘And I have a problem with my dog Federico.’
‘The dog you have stolen.’ Clara opened her eyes and, seeing Lotti’s expression of terror, felt sorry that she had spoken. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.’
‘The thing is,’ said Lotti, sounding more subdued, ‘when my uncle hears about this law, he’ll send me away. He’s much too much of a snob to let me go to the Barton school. So you see, a tutor’s the only way. It’s worth a try. Honestly, even if it weren’t for Federico, I couldn’t bear boarding school again.’
‘They shut her in the coal cellar,’ said Ben. ‘All night.’
Clara, remembering her own miserable school days, pressed her lips together.
‘Will you teach us?’ All of Lotti’s bravado was gone now, and she was almost pleading. ‘I promise I’ll be good. I would actually like to learn. I had this idea yesterday that I could be an animal doctor. I took a thorn out of Federico’s foot and he looked at me with these big, grateful eyes – he has such beautiful eyes – and I thought imagine doing this all the time! I’d need a proper education for that, wouldn’t I? What would you like to be, Ben, if you had time for an education and you could be or do anything you wanted? Like Miss Clara being a writer and me being an animal doctor, what would you …’
‘I’d build bridges.’ The answer came from nowhere, but as soon as he said it Ben knew it was true. ‘And boats. Like Mr Brunel, the engineer. Nathan took us to Bristol once, to see the suspension bridge he built there over the gorge, and it was …’
He trailed off. Words couldn’t do justice to how Ben had felt, the first time he saw Mr Brunel’s bridge suspended two hundred and forty-five feet above the Clifton gorge.
Lotti smiled. ‘That would be a good thing for you, Ben.’
A moment’s quiet settled over the room, and Clara was reminded of the first time she had seen these two, sitting together on the roof of the Sparrowhawk, and the feeling she had had then that anything was possible. Max would like these two, she thought. I like them.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’