Playing Beatie Bow (6 page)

Then she became aware that a tall old woman stood beside her, holding her hand. She wore a long black dress and white apron, and on her head was a huge pleated white cap with streamers. Afterwards Abigail realised she looked exactly like a fairy godmother, but at the time she thought nothing. She said wonderingly, ‘Granny!’

‘She’s no’ your granny, she’s ours!’ snapped Beatie. Dovey hushed her, smiling.

The old woman put her arms round Abigail, and rocked her against a bosom corseted as hard as a board. Terrified as she was, she was at once aware of the goodness that dwelt in this old woman.

She stole a look upwards, saw the brown skin creased like old silk, a sculptured smile on the sunken mouth. It was a composed, private face, with the lines of hardship and grief written on it.

‘There, there, lassie, dinna take on so. Granny’s here’

Abigail pressed her face into the black tucked cloth, and held on tight. Something strong and calm radiated from the old woman.

Never in your whole life could you imagine her addressing snide remarks to her bonnet, or the grey silky hair that showed beneath it. She was a real grandmother.

Above her head she heard the grandmother murmur, ‘Fetch Judah, Beatie, pet. I think I heard his step. He’s that good with bairns.’

‘I want my mother,’ moaned Abigail.

‘Rest sure, my bonnie, that you’ll have your mother as soon as we know where she lives, and what you’re called.’

A tall young man entered the room. She had a glimpse of fair hair, cut strangely, a square-cut jacket of black or dark blue, with metal buttons, crumpled white trousers.

‘Faither’s in a state, fair adrift with fright and sorrow. You’d best sit with him, Dovey, till he comes out of it.’

‘I’m frightened, I’m frightened,’ Abigail whispered.

The young man sat beside her. She could not see his face because the light was in her eyes. Instead she saw a big brown hand, on the outstretched forefinger of which perched a bird as big as a thimble, its feathers a tinsel green.

‘Would you know what that is, Eliza?’

‘My name isn’t Eliza,’ whispered Abigail, ‘it’s Abigail. And that’s a humming-bird. But it isn’t alive, it’s stuffed.’

The young man stroked the tiny glittering head with one finger.

‘She came from the Orinoco. I got her for a florin from a deepwater man. Did ye ever see aught as fine?’

He turned the finger this way and that, and the little bird shone like an emerald.

‘Will you listen to the way she speaks,’ murmured the old woman to Beatie. ‘I fear your dada will be in desperate trouble if he’s injured her, for she’s a lady.’

‘I’m not a lady,’ muttered Abigail. ‘I’m just a girl.
You’re
a lady.’

‘Not me, child,’ said the old woman. ‘Why, we Talliskers have been fisherfolk since the Earls of Stewart.’

Abigail could make no sense of any of it. She buried her face in the chickeny pillow. Maybe when she opened her eyes again she would be in her own bed, her own bedroom. But clearly she heard the young man blowing up the fire. It was with a bellows. She knew the rhythmic wheeze, for bellows were a popular item at Magpies. There! She remembered Magpies, even where things were put; Mum’s crazy sixty-year-old cash register with all the beautiful bronze-work, the green plush tablecloth draped over the delicate rattan whatnot.

She forced her eyes open. The room was now much brighter. The firelight leapt up, reflecting pinkly on a sloping ceiling. On the table was now a tall oil lamp, and Dovey was carefully turning down the wick.

There was a marble wash-stand in the corner, with a blue flowered thick china wash-basin set into a recess. Underneath stood a tall fluted water jug, and a similarly patterned chamber-pot. The fireplace had an iron hob and on it was a jug of what Abigail thought, from the delicious smell, was hot cocoa. The jug was large and white, and in an oval of leaves was imprinted the face of a youngish man with long dark silky whiskers. She had seen him before in Magpies, too.

‘That’s Prince Albert, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, God rest him. He was taken too soon,’ replied the old woman.

Judah brought something out of his pocket and proffered it to her on the palm of his brown hand. It was a pink sugar mouse.

‘Our faither makes them. Do you fancy a nibble?’

Abigail did not even see it. She sat shakily up in bed. She saw over the mantel a picture of a middle-aged woman in black, with a small coronet over a white lace veil.

How many times had Abigail seen that sulky, solemn face – on china, miniatures, christening mugs?

‘Why ever have you a picture of old Victoria on the wall?’ she asked.

‘You mustn’t speak of our gracious Queen in that way, child!’ said Granny severely.

‘But our queen is Elizabeth!’

They laughed kindly. ‘Why, good Queen Bess died hundreds of years ago, lass. You’re still wandering a little; but don’t fret: tomorrow you’ll be as good as gold.’

Abigail said nothing more. She stared at Queen Victoria in her black widow’s weeds and her jet jewellery. Once again, deep inside her, she was saying, ‘I must be calm. There’s some explanation. I mustn’t give myself away.’

Out in the darkness she could hear ships baa-ing on the harbour. ‘Is it foggy?’ she asked.

‘Aye, so maybe I won’t be leaving in the morn,’ said Judah. ‘I’m a seaman, you see, lass.’

Quite near by a bell blommed slow and stately. Abigail jumped.

‘It’s naught but St Philip’s ringing for evensong,’ said Dovey softly. ‘Ah, she’s all of a swither with the shock she got when Uncle Samuel ran into her, poor lamb.’

Abigail tried to still her quaking body. She said to the young man, ‘I want to see where I am. Would you help me to the window?’

‘Sure as your life, hen,’ replied the young fellow heartily. Abigail had expected only to lean on his arm, but he gathered her up, bedclothes and all, and took her to the window. He had the same dark-blue eyes as the old woman.

‘What are ye girning about, Beatie?’ he chided. ‘Open the shutters, lass.’

Sulkily and unwillingly, the little girl unlatched the shutters and threw them wide. Abigail looked out on a gas-lit street, fog forming ghostly rainbows about the lamps. A man pushed a barrow on which glowed a brazier. ‘Hot chestnuts, all hot, all hot!’ His shout came clearly to Abigail. Women hurried past, all with shawls, some with men’s caps pulled over their hair, others with large battered hats with tattered feathers.

But Abigail was looking for something else. She was upstairs, she knew, above the confectionery shop, and she had a wide view of smoking chimneys, hundreds, thousands of smoking chimneys, it seemed, each with a faint pink glow above it.

Mitchell should have been standing there, lit like a Christmas tree at this time of night. The city should have glittered like a galaxy of stars. The city was still there – she could see dimmish blotches of light, and vehicles that moved very slowly and bumpily.

‘The Bridge has gone, too,’ she whispered. No broad lighted deck strode across the little peninsula, no great arch with its winking ruby at the highest point – nothing. The flower-like outline of the Opera House was missing.

She turned her face against Judah’s chest and buried it so deeply that she could even hear his heart thumping steadily.

‘What is it, Abby? What ails you, child?’

For the first time she looked into his face. It was brown and ruddy, a snubbed, country kind of face.

‘What year is this?’ she whispered.

He looked dumbfounded. ‘Are you codding me?’

‘What year is it?’ she repeated.

‘Why, it’s 1873, and most gone already,’ he said.

Abigail said no more. He took her back to the bed, and Dovey gently folded the covers over her.

‘It’s true then,’ she said uneasily to the old grandmother. ‘She’s lost her memory. Dear God, what will we do, Granny? For ’twas Uncle Samuel that caused it, and in all charity we’ve the responsibility of her.’

The tall old woman murmured something. Abigail caught the word ‘stranger …’

Dovey looked dubious. ‘It’s my belief she’s an immigrant lass, sent to one of the fine houses on the High Rocks to be a parlourmaid, perhaps, for she speaks so bonny. Not like folk hereabouts at all! But where’s her traps, do you think, Granny? Stolen or lost? Just what she stood up in, and the Dear knows there was little enough of that!’

Thus they talked in low voices beside the door, while Beatie Bow crept a little closer and stared with thrilled yet terrified eyes at Abigail.

‘You!’ said Abigail in a fierce whisper. ‘You did this to me!’

‘’Tisn’t so,’ objected Beatie. ‘You chased me up alley and down gully, like a fox after a hare. It wunna my fault!’

Abigail was silent. She kept saying to herself, ‘Abigail Kirk, that’s who I am. I mustn’t forget. I might sink down and get lost in this place – this time, or whatever it is – if I don’t keep my mind on it.’

Judah and Granny had gone down the stairs. Dovey limped over and put a hand on Abigail’s forehead. ‘You’ve no fever, and the ankle will be a wee bit easier tomorrow. You stay here and talk to Abby, Beatie, seeing that you’re getting on so grand, and I’ll heat up some broth for your supper.’

Beatie stared at Abigail crossly, defiantly, and yet with anxiety.

‘It’d be no skin off your nose if you codded you’d lost your memory because of that dint on the head. I dunna want my granny to know.’

‘I want to go back to my own place,’ said Abigail in a hard voice.

‘I dunna ken where your ain place is,’ protested Beatie. ‘I didna mean to go there myself. It were the bairnies calling my name. I dunna ken how I did it, honest. I never did it afore I had the fever.’

As though to herself, in a puzzled, worried voice she said, ‘One minute I was in the lane, and the next there was a wall there, and the bairnies skittering about, and all those places like towers and castles and that… that great road that goes over the water, and strange carriages on it with never a horse amongst them, and I was afeared out of my wits, thinking the fever had turned my brain. And then I heard children calling my name, and they were playing a game we play around the streets here, except that we call it Janey Jo. But they couldna see me, because I tried to speak to one or two. Only you and that wee little one with the yellow coat.’

The child’s cocky attitude had vanished. Her face was sallow and the big hollow eyes shone. Abigail remembered that Natalie had wept because she believed that this girl had been unhappy. She had mentioned fever. Perhaps that was why Beatie’s hair had been cut so short. Abigail remembered that once it had been the custom to shave the heads of fever patients. She was about to ask about this, when Beatie said in an awed voice, ‘Is it Elfland, that place where you come from?’

‘Of course it isn’t, there isn’t any Elfland. Are you crazy?’

Beatie said in a hushed voice. ‘Green as a leek, you are. Of course there’s Elfland. Isn’t that where Granny’s great-great-granny got the Gift, the time she was lost so long?’

‘You’re crazy,’ said Abigail. ‘You’re all crazy.’

She closed her eyes. The fire crackled, the room was full of strange smells, but the smell of burnt sugar was strongest of all. A hand timidly touched hers.

‘It’s bonny.’

‘What is?’

‘That place you were. Elfland.’

Abigail opened her eyes and glared into the tawny ones. ‘I told you it wasn’t Elfland.’

‘Where is it then?’

‘Guess,’ said Abigail snappily.

Beatie Bow was silent. Abigail stared at the ceiling. Then Beatie Bow said, ‘How did those children know my name?’

‘I wouldn’t know, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you.’

She wanted to scream like a seagull. With a great effort she kept the sounds of lostness and fright down in her chest. Her head was throbbing again and her ankle felt like a bursting football.

‘If it wasna Elfland,’ said Beatie slowly and thoughtfully, ‘it was some place I dunna ken about. Yet the bairns there don’t play Janey Jo any more; they play Beatie Bow.’

Abigail didn’t answer.

Suddenly the little girl shouted, ‘I will make you tell, I will! I want to know about the castles and palaces, and the lights that went so fast, and the queer old things the bairns were playing on, and how they knew my name. I’ll punch ye yeller and green, I swear it, if ye dunna tell!’

‘Maybe you’ve got the Gift,’ said Abigail cruelly. Beatie turned so white her freckles seemed twice as numerous. Abigail said, ‘You get me back there where I met you, or I’ll tell your granny where I come from and who brought me.’

Beatie whipped up a hard little fist as though to clout her.

‘I dunna want the Gift. I’m feared of it! I wunna have it!’

Abigail thought hazily, ‘When I get back home, or wake up, or whatever I’m going to do, I’ll be sorry I didn’t ask her what this stupid Gift is. But just now I don’t care.’

She turned away from Beatie’s anxious, angry face, and pretended to be asleep. Within a moment or two she was.

Twice during the night Abigail awakened to hear a child whimpering forlornly somewhere above the ceiling.

‘That can’t be,’ she thought muzzily. Then she remembered that this was an old-fashioned house. There might be attics.

Dovey had left the lamp turned low. The round glass globe had bunches of grapes etched on it. The fire had gone out and there was a smell of cold ashes.

She heard a halting step on stairs somewhere. So there really must be yet another child, and Dovey was coming down from looking after it.

Abigail didn’t know whether she liked Dovey or not. She seemed so gentle and good, but Abigail knew from books and TV that an angelic exterior often hid an interior chock-full of black evil. Besides, she didn’t want to be comforted by Dovey at two in the morning or whatever it was; so as the girl limped into the room Abigail pretended to be asleep. Dovey wore a baggy red-flannel dressing-gown, and her hair was in a plait tied with a scrap of wool. She looked worn and sleepy.

Granny was with her in an even baggier red-flannel dressing-gown. Her hair was tucked under what Abigail imagined was a nightcap, a little baby bonnet with a frill about the face, and tapes under the chin.