A cornish orphan, p.19
A Cornish Orphan, page 19
A home abandoned.
A family – gone.
Nan straightened up gingerly and went to Mufty who was looking at her with empathy, his furry ears pricked, his velvet nose reaching out to her. In the harsh desolation of that moment, Nan felt Mufty was the only living creature on earth who cared about her. He was giving her his love in the way that horses and donkeys do, by pressing the whole length of his warm face against her body. She held on to him, soaking up his silent kindness, allowing the simple, wordless comfort of a donkey to fill the jagged hole in her mind.
It was getting dark. Time to go home.
But tomorrow – tomorrow she would come back. She would ask everyone what had happened. She’d knock on doors. Nan would leave no stone unturned until she knew the truth.
‘Lottie Lanroska!’ Miss Poltair had a whip in her hand. Malice glittered in her eyes as she rapped the chair Lottie was standing on. ‘Daydreaming again? You don’t stop working for one minute. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes – Miss Poltair.’
‘And look at me when I’m speaking to you.’
Lottie turned her head carefully, afraid she would fall off the chair if she tried to look round.
‘Say you’re sorry!’
‘Sorry – Miss Poltair.’
Every day the twelve girls of Lottie’s age group were given a task – scrubbing, sweeping, polishing or washing up. The older girls in the home did the ironing or the mending or chopped vegetables in the kitchen. Today Lottie’s age group were cleaning the tall windows along the corridors, a difficult job done with a rag dipped in vinegar, then scrubbed with damp newspaper. Lottie’s arms ached from reaching up, standing on tiptoe on the chair to clean the highest of the small panes. Distracted by the views outside, she had paused to gaze and dared to dream.
Most of the windows in the building were too high for her to see much except sky. But standing on the chair, Lottie could see the green fields of inland Cornwall. Cornish hedges ablaze with gorse, sheep with baby lambs, a few horses and donkeys. She gazed with bitter longing. She wanted to be out there, free, playing and exploring with Morwenna.
She continued polishing the glass, but still her eyes were drawn to something in the distance. A hill with enormous stacks of granite and a stone cross on top. The Carn Brea. Lottie remembered what P.C. Roach had said about it. At night, up there, you could see the lights of St Ives twinkling far away. The Carn Brea was like a signpost. It was stage one of Lottie’s incubating escape plan. To go up there, with Matt and Tom, study the landscape, and figure out how to find their way home to St Ives.
None of them had any knowledge of map-reading or navigating skills, and getting hold of a map seemed out of the question. Lottie thought Matt knew how to navigate by the stars. Vic had been teaching him that before he’d gone off to live in Newlyn. But it wouldn’t be much use in the daytime. She thought sadly of the education she was missing. They’d just started doing Geography and Lottie found it fascinating. Seeing the vastness of America was both thrilling and alarming. Finding her real mother in thousands of miles of land wasn’t going to be easy. The only person who might help her was Nan, Lottie thought. Nan had a magnificent set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and one wet afternoon, she’d shown Lottie how to use them, and together they’d found the shipping routes to America. Lottie hadn’t explained why this information was so important to her, but Nan had looked at her shrewdly as if she secretly knew the dream in Lottie’s heart.
Hearing Miss Poltair’s dreaded footsteps and cane-rapping at the far end of the corridor, Lottie pretended to be polishing vigorously. She was glad when they were allowed to get down from standing on the chairs and moved on around the corner to the dining room where the windows faced east. Lottie’s arms ached, her fingers burned with sore skin, and she wanted a drink. All the girls looked tired but they were driven on relentlessly. There would be no break until lunchtime, and after lunch they went to school. Boring school for Lottie. Basic English and Maths well below her ability. Never any stories or poetry, no geography, no music.
‘If those windows aren’t spotlessly clean when I come back in half an hour, there’ll be no lunch.’ Miss Poltair rapped the cane on the palm of her leathery hand. ‘Erica will supervise you while she’s laying the table.’ She handed the cane to Erica who was one of the older girls. ‘Don’t hesitate to use it, girl.’
Lottie quickly chose the window at the far end which overlooked the garden. She climbed onto a chair, and gave a gasp of delight. The window overlooked the kitchen garden, and a group of boys were out there working. She hadn’t seen Matt and Tom since the foggy night when they’d arrived, so she stared out eagerly. Tom wasn’t there but she could see Matt, his back hunched over a spade. When he straightened up for an instant she thought he’d grown taller. Her heart beat faster when she realised he looked so like Arnie, even from the back. Something about the way he stood, the shape of his legs and the way he moved. If only he would turn around and see her there in the window. She wanted to wave and shout. It was so good to know he was all right. Like her, he’d be hating it, but surviving. Lottie wanted to throw down her polishing rag, leap from the chair and hurtle out of the building and across the garden. She touched her hair which was tightly plaited and wound around her head. Would Matt even recognise her? She’d tear the plaits out and run with her blonde hair flying, the way she had done in St Ives.
As if sensing her thoughts, Matt did turn round, very suddenly, and looked directly at the window. Lottie waved wildly, and he waved back.
‘WHAT are you doing?’ Erica looked up at her, power-drunk, the cane swishing in her plump pink hand.
‘Waving to my brother.’
‘GET DOWN. How dare you wave – to a . . . to a BOY.’ Erica’s cheeks were a dark, unhealthy pink.
‘But he’s my brother.’
‘I don’t care if he’s the king. Say you’re sorry.’
‘NO.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not sorry.’ Lottie stamped her foot, furious with Erica for stealing her moment of joy. ‘I haven’t seen my brother since February. Why shouldn’t I wave?’
Erica’s hot hand crunched the top of Lottie’s arm and shook her. She moved her face so close that Lottie could see the florid network of tiny veins on her cheek. Wielding Miss Poltair’s whip-like cane, she whacked Lottie’s bare legs and, having started, Erica couldn’t seem to stop.
Lottie’s fury at this violation of her simple human right to wave to her brother was stronger than fear. She knew how to fight now, from the times she’d watched Tom and Matt fighting. At first she’d been horrified, but gradually it became clear that despite the bullying and the crying, Tom was learning how to fight and how to survive emotionally, by himself, with no one to comfort him.
Lottie wasn’t going to stand there meekly and let Erica beat her. She kicked and twisted and glared. She didn’t cry. Crying would have been music to Erica’s ears. Instead, she shouted and the words shot out like bullets, indiscriminate and deadly. Things her mother had said, like, ‘Nice girls don’t fight,’ bobbed dimly in her mind, and were shot down. ‘I AM going to survive,’ she yelled at Erica’s surprised face. ‘You’ve got no right to beat me. I’m not having it. You stop it, right now, or you’ll be sorry.’ Lottie got hold of the cane in both hands and wrestled it. She gave Erica an almighty shove, one that Morwenna would have been proud of, and Erica fell backwards like a pillow, her eyes frightened, her mouth square.
Lottie stood over her with the cane in her hands, aware of the group of girls standing close clapping their hands, grinning and laughing with joy to see Erica on the floor. ‘Beat her. Beat her. Go on, Lottie. Beat her fat bottom.’
Suddenly Lottie felt part of a tribe.
She felt like the leader of a tribe.
Erica didn’t get up and fight back. She lay there, crying and trembling. She’s afraid of me, Lottie thought, awed. She looked at the cane in her hands. Stupid thing. ‘We don’t need this,’ she announced. With her head held high, she took the cane over to an open window and flung it, spinning, into the garden. It felt good.
Her moment of glory ended when the dreaded footsteps thundered through the vast building. The girls fled and scrambled back to their window-polishing, except for Lottie who stood over Erica, her chin defiantly tilted, her dark blue eyes glowing, the backs of her legs stinging from the beating.
‘WHAT is going on here?’ Miss Poltair squeaked to a halt.
Erica sat up. ‘It’s her. She pushed me over. And kicked me. And she threw your cane out of the window.’
‘Why?’ The reptilian eyes glimmered a horrible green.
‘She whipped me when I didn’t deserve it,’ Lottie said clearly. ‘I did nothing wrong. I waved to my brother who is working in the garden. How can it be wrong? I explained that to Erica, but she obviously misunderstood.’
‘She attacked me,’ Erica said from the floor. ‘Look at the bruises on my legs.’
‘I was defending myself,’ Lottie said. ‘I don’t see why I should stand there and let her beat me, do you?’
The reptilian eyes narrowed. Flecks of spittle appeared in the corners of Miss Poltair’s miserable mouth. ‘Lottie Lanroska – you . . .’ She paused to bunch herself together. ‘You are a demon. A demon child. Uncivilised.’ Her arm shot out and grabbed Lottie. ‘There’s only one place for you. The cellar. Until you learn how to behave. And don’t you dare struggle or kick, or I’ll drag you.’
Lottie remembered Tom’s resistance tactics and sat down, making herself heavy on the floor.
‘Help me, Erica. Get hold of her other arm.’
Powerless between the two of them, Lottie felt herself being dragged and bumped across the floor. She saw bricks of sunshine cast from the windows racing past as the two women pulled her along. I won’t give in. I won’t, she vowed. In a flash of memory, she saw Jenny tenderly carrying her home from the shipwreck. Such love. And now, here she was, being brutally hauled through this prison of a building.
As they dragged her through the entrance hall, Lottie’s heart leapt when she saw the door to the outside world wide open, with two big girls brushing and polishing it. She’d never seen it open before. But next time, she’d be ready to seize her one chance and escape.
‘I need a drink,’ she pleaded, as Miss Poltair opened a thick wooden door and pushed her into the tomb-like darkness of the cellar.
‘You’ll get nothing until you learn to behave.’
Lottie turned around at the top of the stone steps and glared with burning eyes at Miss Poltair. ‘Why are you so cruel to children?’
The reptilian eyes wavered just for an instant and then the oak door slammed shut in Lottie’s face. She heard the scrape of bolts being shot. The door trembled. The footsteps walked away. And she was left alone in the ink-dark cellar.
John De Lumen stood in the art gallery in London, a glass of red wine in his hand. He was wearing his best suit, which smelled faintly of mothballs. It still fitted him, though he was thinner now that he lived more frugally as an artist. He’d polished his black shoes, found his favourite tie and his gold cufflinks. The wild edges of his beard had been trimmed, but not too much. He still wanted to look like an artist.
Thrilled that his painting, Discovering Charlotte, had finally been accepted for a major London exhibition, John went to the private view, not knowing what to expect. He didn’t know any of the guests who filled the gallery so it was a lonely but exciting experience. Deliberately, he positioned himself close, but not too close, to Discovering Charlotte, watching people’s reactions to it and listening to their comments.
One particular couple stood in front of the painting for a long time. They didn’t look British. The lady wore a stylish dress in a heady mix of cobalt, soft orange and cinnamon, and the man had a blatantly brash checked jacket and a Stetson hat which he’d let slip onto the back of his neck. Both appeared to be conversing in an animated way, moving their lips a lot and gesticulating with their hands.
John eyed them discreetly, edging nearer to hear their comments on his painting. Evidently, his tactics didn’t work for the lady looked at him directly, her eyes glowing with interest. Before he could escape, she swirled towards him in a drift of cobalt and orange. ‘I guess you must be the lonesome artist,’ she said in warm persuasive tones. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am an artist,’ John said, edging away from her.
She pounced on his arm. ‘Is this your painting? Discovering Charlotte?’
John nodded, putting down his glass. He didn’t feel ready for this manifestation of a dream he’d been harbouring for years. He stood awkwardly, one hand in his pocket, the other stroking what was left of his beard.
‘You’re actually HIM,’ the lady gushed. ‘You’re really, truly John De Lumen?’
He nodded, drawn to her wide smile and her flowing jet black hair. He imagined her as an Indian squaw with a feathered headband.
‘I’m Coraline, and this is my husband, Rex.’
The two men nodded at each other and Rex took out a pack of Havana cigars and offered one to John.
‘No, thank you very much.’
‘Come and tell us about your wonderful painting, John – May I call you John? Don’t be shy.’
He nodded. ‘What would you like to know?’
‘The history of it,’ she beamed, ‘especially . . . who is Charlotte?’
John felt his eyes glistening. ‘That shall remain a secret.’
‘Oh – a mystery. I love mysteries – like the Mona Lisa. It makes the painting even more poignant – doesn’t it, Rex?’
A friendly frown materialised through the blue wisps of cigar smoke. A frown of intensity. Rex looked searchingly at John. ‘My wife and I own a gallery in New York. We travel the world looking for paintings – soul paintings which have a message and a mystery. Paintings you can gaze at, all your life, and still not figure out their meaning.’
John swallowed. Kindred spirits, he thought. A rarity. He felt deeply emotional.
‘What does Charlotte mean to you?’ Rex asked.
‘Everything.’
The three of them gazed at the painting, and Charlotte gazed back, enigmatically, with her dark blue eyes.
‘She is so innocent – but so knowing,’ Coraline said, ‘and there’s sadness in those eyes. Can you tell us about that?’
John’s mind went back to the day of the funeral. Little Charlotte, walking so bravely, with a black veil over her face. ‘I could – and I might – but I don’t feel ready to give that information.’
‘No – and you shouldn’t,’ Rex said passionately. ‘Let the painting speak for itself, because it does. It touches hearts.’
‘Can you tell us where you painted it?’ Coraline asked.
‘In St Ives, Cornwall – on a lovely day,’ John said. ‘I sketched her. But I took the essence of her home in my heart and spent many, many months working on the painting.’
Rex seemed satisfied with his answer. He looked at his wife and raised his bushy eyebrows.
‘Definitely.’ Coraline gave John the warmest of smiles, glanced at Rex who nodded, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. Then she said, ‘We would like to buy your painting, John. I know it says Not for sale in the catalogue but please consider our offer. Discovering Charlotte will have a good home in our gallery and it will be seen by art lovers, reviewers and collectors from all over America and beyond.’
John’s heart began to beat very fast. Could he bear to part with his best painting?
Coraline seemed to read his mind. ‘We know how artists feel. Parting with your best work is like a bereavement. It’s a big emotional journey. The painting is like a beloved bird in a cage. You have to take a deep breath, open the cage and let it fly out, into the world.’
No one had ever talked to John in such an eloquent, openly emotive way. He was startled and moved by Coraline’s words.
‘But, John . . .’ Rex leaned close, his big eyes beaming and business-like, ‘what if this truly great work of art just stayed in your private studio? Who would see it? Surely when you painted it, you did it for the world to see . . . didn’t you?’
‘I agree,’ Coraline said, with passion. ‘Discovering Charlotte is a truly great work of art.’
John’s heart beat even faster. He pressed his knees together to stop them shaking. The truth was that he’d painted Discovering Charlotte for one person only. And she would be in New York. Was his dream slowly coming true?
‘When you did the painting – did you dream of where you wanted it hung?’ Coraline asked.
John dared to meet her sweet, persuasive eyes. ‘In America,’ he said immediately.
‘Oh, but – how wonderful!’ Coraline gushed. ‘Can you tell us why? Why America, when here in London you have so much art?’
John was finding it difficult to speak. Little Charlotte, with her honey-coloured hair and dark blue eyes, was vivid in his mind. Where was she now? At this moment? It was a golden evening in early spring and even London looked exuberant with swelling buds on the tall plane trees. He hoped Charlotte was outside, running free, playing and dancing on Porthmeor Beach. To him, her spirit would always belong there.
He touched his breast pocket, feeling the bump of the seashell in his wallet. His heart was speeding recklessly towards a YES.
‘John? I’m sorry – have I asked you something painful?’ Coraline asked. She touched his sleeve. ‘You don’t have to tell us why.’
‘It – it’s part of the mystery,’ John said, ‘but – well, we’ll see what happens. My answer is YES – I will let go of the painting of Charlotte – but only to you . . .’
