Maybe not a chart-topper.
I was exhausted when I got back to the cottage and frozen. Dibdobs gave me tea in front of the blazing fire. She’s made me some fir-cone earrings and sprayed them gold. I had to try them on for her while the twins stared at me as if I were a very early Father Christmas. In earrings. Dibdobs thought they looked a treat and started her spontaneous hugging.
“Oh, oh, Lullah, you look so beautiful, like a princess. With your black hair and those green eyes, oh, oh.”
And she actually started crying. And hugging.
This was new. And sweet. Until the twins joined in with Micky and Dicky.
Later, when I was tucked up in my bed, the twins came in with “the shoe.” “For seepin,’” as Max told me.
Dibdobs came in to collect it because it has to go in its box. She said, “I’m so sorry, Lullah, the boys are treating it like a pet. I must find a real shrew to show them.”
Thinking about shrews made me think of the owlets. It’s so windy and wild outside. I hope they’ve got better at hunting. I wonder if Cain still looks out for them like he used to when they were tiny.
It was one of the only good things about him.
Ooooh, I’m so tired, what a day. But now I’ve done this thing for Vaisey I can put my horsey legs behind me for good.
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought, Charlie likes me.
Even though he knows all about the Cain thing.
The Dark Black Crow of Heckmondwhite
WHEN I WENT INTO Dother Hall on Monday morning, there was an enormous owl waiting on the doorstep. Wearing glasses.
Is it my imagination or are Dr. Lightowler’s glasses getting bigger?
She said, “I’ve been thinking about you all weekend.”
I smiled and said, “Oh, that’s nice, I—”
“Tallulah Casey, yet again you choose to drag the reputation of Dother Hall through the mud.”
What? She couldn’t have heard about the Cain thing surely. Could she?
She went on. “At a PUBLIC event with the eyes of the world upon us, when we need our neighbors to support us, you deliberately do your silly, childish antics in front of invited guests. Everything is SOOOOOO funny to you, isn’t it? Anything for a cheap laugh.”
Oh, she meant the lunchtime performance thing.
I tried to tell her, “But it was all Vaisey’s idea, she . . .”
Dr. Lightowler shook her feathers, I mean, cloak.
“Don’t try to blame others. I’ve always known what you are. You’re a selfish girl.” I blinked in amazement. What was she talking about? “And worst of all, untalented. Don’t think I didn’t understand your so-called rap about ‘owls.’ Well, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew this time, my girl.”
She swished off, turning her head round every now and then to look at me. Before she swept into her eyrie.
Throughout the day, every time I came out of a door it seemed that Dr. Lightowler was there looking at me. Not blinking and then twitching. I said to the others, “I’d better not wear anything brown, she might think I’m a shrew.”
I’m trying to make a joke about it, but it’s not nice.
At break, I got a message to go and see Sidone.
When I went into her office, she was lying on her chaise longue in harem trousers, smoking a hubbly-bubbly. She said, “I know it’s a filthy habit, but I picked it up in Marrakesh when we were on tour with Carry On Matron and well . . . that’s another story. Pull up some cushions.”
I piled up some cushions and sat on the floor at her feet.
“So, Miss Casey, you had a checkered beginning with us here at Dother Hall, and to be quite truthful it was only because Ms. Fox says you are an extraordinary presence and bound to be quite tall that we kept you on. Not everyone thought it a good idea. This is a hard business and in order to survive you have to be skillful. Dr. Lightowler specially came to talk to me about your lunchtime performance.”
Oh no. She’d actually done it.
Sidone adjusted her turban.
“Dr. Lightowler says that she thinks that you have a great talent for broad comedy.”
What? Great talent?
Had I misjudged Owly?
Sidone continued, “Yes, we had an interesting chat. She reminded me of when you were the horse in the Mummers play at The Blind Pig, and then your hilarious horse in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And, of course, your duet on Friday. Merrylegs, wasn’t it? I don’t know why it hadn’t struck me before. Until Dr. Lightowler pointed it out, I’d forgotten how fond you are of the ‘horse genre.’”
The Horse Genre?
Sidone puffed on her hubbly-bubbly. “As Mr. de Courcy often says about a career in the thea-tah, ‘she is a harsh mistress.’”
I said, “Yes, well, I was thinking about, you know, specializing in comedy. . . . Ms. Fox thought—”
Sidone’s head was lost in a cloud of smoke, but I could still hear her. “So Dr. Lightowler suggested you should consider specializing in . . . horse work. She thinks you have the legs for it. And, of course, it’s regular work, especially at Christmas with the pantos, and then there’s always children’s theater groups. Little children love a horse.”
When I came out of her study, I felt like I had been hit on the head with a mallet. I was so dazed. It had come to this. A life as a pantomime horse.
I didn’t tell the girls what had gone on in Sidone’s study. I just said that it was a general chat about careers. But the Tree Sisters kept on asking me why Sidone wanted to see just me and not them. All day they went on.
In the end, I went and hid in the “vole lavatory” and sat on the seat that was all taped down. Flossie climbed on the seat of the next-door loo and popped her head over the partition. I heard her and looked up, and she said, “Goddammit, Miss Lullabelle, tell us why you so ornery you got a face like a baby’s smacked bum. What in tarnation did Ms. Beaver say?”
Eventually, I told the Tree Sisters about the panto horse thing. There was silence from them at first and then they laughed for about a year. I felt even more stupid and lonely. The bell rang for last period and we had to go to Monty’s reading class.
I cannot believe he’s reading War Horse to us. He says it’s for the “interesting narrative perspective,” but they have puppet horses in it, don’t they? Has he been talking to Dr. Lightowler?
Vaisey whispered to me, “Come to the dorm at the end of the day for a special emergency Tree Sisters’ meeting. To be held in Flossie’s bed for warmsies.”
After the final bell, as we went up the stairs, Vaisey gave me a hug and said, “Don’t worry, your sisters won’t let you down. I’ll help you like you helped me.”
It was freezing in the dorm and the tarpaulin roof was flapping. We all got into Flossie’s bed and Jo said, “Funnily enough, when I was Bob’s assistant, we fixed this bed. There were some dodgy wooden slats and he used a prototype slat made out of glue, newspaper, and—”
At which point the whole bed collapsed, and we had to go into Vaisey’s bed.
Vaisey said, “You didn’t fix this one as well, did you?”
When we’d bounced up and down and found that the bed didn’t collapse, we settled down again. The Tree Sisters gave me a pep talk. I had to write the main points down to put in my Darkly Demanding Damson Diary later so I wouldn’t forget.
The main points are:
1. Dr. Lightowler is mad.
2. As a snake.
3. But even madder.
4. So get over it.
We went into morning assembly on Friday and Sidone swept onto the stage in a man’s formal evening suit.
“Be careful what you dream of, my girls! Such excitements. Such joyful news!! Sound out the bells!”
Then she waited and said again, “Sound out the bells!”
Gudrun was on the side of the stage with her gong. Gradually she seemed to notice the silence. Especially as Sidone was holding her arms out towards her. She struck her gong.
Sidone
came to the front of the stage and began. “Mr. Legge . . .”
Gudrun sounded her gong again.
Sidone said, “Thank you, thank you, Gudrun, enough. Mr. Legge has just telephoned with a marvelous, a simply inspired idea.”
We looked at each other. Jo said quietly, “Who is this Mr. Legge when he’s at home?”
We shrugged.
Sidone continued.
“Yes, girls, When Mr. Legge brought his young men to our humble artistic temple to see our lunchtime performance, he was so impressed.”
Oh, now we got it. She meant Hoppy!!!
I whispered to the others, “You see what this means . . . we’ve struck comedy gold. Hoppy, who has only got one leg, is actually called Mr. Legge. Please, please tell me that his first name is Arthur. Then he could be Mr. A. Legge. Or if he’s a Cockney . . . Arf-a-legge!!!”
Sidone was still going on.
“Yes, Mr. Legge was so impressed, he wants us to have a ‘coming together’ in the woods that divide us.”
Everyone cheered. Jo shouted out, “Like a sort of love-in, Ms. Beaver?”
Sidone trilled, “Perhaps, perhaps, Jo, more like a Big Night Out tableau: music, dance, a winter feast. Songs, verse, performances from The Taming of the Shrew, fire, and food. The crackling of the bonfire among the dark trees; a beacon of art and joy in the bleak midwinter. A feast for the eyes and nourishment for the soul.”
Good heavens.
I said to the Tree Sisters as we left the hall, “You know what this is, don’t you? It’s a big bonfire with snacks and us prancing around like fools and Mr. Barraclough laughing at me again.”
Flossie gathered us into an enormous Tree Sister hug. “Yes, that’s true, but you’re missing the most interesting thing . . . there will be many, MANY boys there.”
Everyone at college seemed very merry about the planned Big Night Out. Ms. Fox said, “Well, sensation seekers, this may save our bacon. Few quid from Woolfe Academy and we’ll be laughing!”
Monty was skipping about when we went for our afternoon session. Clutching his heart and saying, “We must have ‘enthusiasm,’ girls. Do you know what that means?”
Jo put her hand up. “Like when someone says, ‘Would you like a Jazzle?’ And you say, ‘Not half, matey!!!’”
Flossie said, “Or someone offers to carry you around instead of having to walk everywhere and you say, ‘Yes sirree Bob!’”
Everyone started yelling out stuff and Monty had to shout over the top. “Good ideas, girls, but enthusiasm—from the Greek enthousiasmos—means literally to have the god within! To fill yourself to the brim with life. As Sprogsy shouted that night in Rome as we were running from the police, ‘Breathe, eat, drink life!!!’ Try it in your own lives. Whatever you do, do it with ENTHOUSIASMOS!!!”
Monty’s lecture on enthusiasm might be the worst thing he has ever done in his long career of doing the worst thing. Since his class we’ve been doing everything with enthusiasm. And I do mean everything. In the café, Flossie shouted at the dinner lady who asked her what kind of crisps she wanted, “I want the FINEST Corkers known to humanity!!!”
The Tree Sisters carried the “enthusiasm” theme into my nightly pep talk.
Flossie started, “Here are some major plus points of your life, Lullah. We’ve written them down and you must absorb them.”
Jo said, “When we say ‘absorb,’ we mean ‘eat.’”
I said, “Is this because Monty said we must ‘breathe, eat, and drink life’?”
Jo said, “Yes.”
I said, “He didn’t mean eat everything surely?”
Flossie said, “Shall we get on? Not seeing boys makes me a bit bad-tempered and violent.”
I read my major plus points list.
1. The Tree Sisters love you!
2. Blaise loves you!
3. Gudrun, Bob, Sidone, and Monty love you in their own way! (Which is of course not what everyone would want, but nevertheless you have got it. Big time.)
4. Ruby loves you! And Matilda is mental about you!
5. The Dobbinses are mad about you. And also just mad.
6. The twins adore you.
7. The owlets love you—they just can’t be bothered coming to see you.
8. Phil, Ben, Jack, and Charlie like you! (Which, actually, in Charlie’s case, seeing what happened to him, is pretty good.)
Flossie said, “So, as you see, that is a lot of liking-ness for one person. We haven’t even put down the maybe-like-you people, you know, your parents, brother, etc.”
Jo said, “Yes, so quickly, quickly eat your list with enthousiasmos.”
As they watched me chewing my list, I was thinking, Yes, but does Charlie like me? He said he did, but that was ages ago.
Still it was nice to be with the Tree Sisters. And I’m very happy that they care about me.
Vaisey said, “And Lullah, the Big Night Out can be when you really show Dr. Lightowler what you can do.”
I spat my list out when I walked home. I had stored it in my cheek like a hamster.
Saturday, miraculously, was nice and sunny. I woke up feeling chirpy for the first time in days. Whatever Dr. Lightowler said, other people thought I was clever and talented. My Tree Sisters loved me and that’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have made my own little family.
I thought it was a good day to go owlet-seeking with Rubes. I went to call for Ruby and Mr. Barraclough answered the door. His face brightened when he saw it was me. He said, “Hello, young man, at a bit of a loose end? Or are you miming? Is that it? Are you doing miming now?”
I said, “Mr. Barraclough, is Ruby in?”
He said, “Ruby’s taken Matilda to dog-dancing class in Little Waddle.”
Was he joking? I could never tell.
I said, “I didn’t know Matilda could do dog dancing.”
Mr. Barraclough said, “She can’t, son. She’s hopeless, but needs must when the devil drives. As a theatrical type yourself and a sensible young man of the world, you’ll realize that you have to appeal to your market.
“Most of The Iron Pies’ audience are of course hell-raisers and decadents like me sen, but there are a few family types with littluns. Littluns who might like to see a doggie dancing. So we thought Matilda can earn her keep instead of generally lying around snoozing behind the drum kit.”
Ruby’s not going to be back until four so I went off for a little wander by myself.
I might as well have a look in the barn. You never know, the owlets might still remember it and go back there. I haven’t seen them since Lullah fell off my windowsill.
It was nice out but windy. I took my hat off. I liked the feel of the wind tossing my hair around. Then it blew completely over my eyes so that I couldn’t see where I was going. I pushed it back and then the wind blew it over my face again.
As I walked along the familiar path, I made a rule that I wasn’t allowed to touch my hair; I had to let the wind do what it liked.
The wind stayed in the same direction for about a minute. I bumped into a stile and fell over a stone, but on the whole was doing quite well. Then the wind changed again.
My hair blew back and I saw, on the path, Cain with his dog.
The Divil Himself.
The wind had blown his fringe down over his eyes, and he had a black leather coat on with the collar turned up and leather gloves.
I felt my heart lurch.
The air around him seemed charged with energy. It’s annoying, but you can’t help sort of “feeling” him. He wasn’t moving, just standing there looking at me.
I couldn’t turn round and go back home. Anyway, why should I? I’ll walk straight past him with Northern grit.
He was still looking at me from under his eyelashes. Then, without looking away, he made a chucking noise with his teeth. Was he chucking at me?
How rude.
But then from the branch above him a feathery bombshell flew down onto his outstretched glove and then another one. Owlets!!
! It was Little Lullah and Little Ruby! I forgot about him and ran up to see them. They were tugging at something he was holding in his glove . . .
I said, “Oh, oh, it’s them. What are you feeding them?”
He looked up at me with his dark eyes and held mine for a moment, then cast his gaze down to the owlets. “Baby shrews.”
He was an animal!
The owlets gulped the baby shrews down. They looked like they were smiling all the time they were doing it. They probably were.
It reminded me of my dream about being a shrew and Dr. Lightowler looking at me, ready to eat me.
But they weren’t like Dr. Lightowler—they were my children. My wild children.
I couldn’t help myself. I went nearer to them and said softly, “It’s me, big Lullah, hellloooooooo.”
Fortunately, I remembered not to fluff myself up or do the blinky-eye thing. They looked at me and cheeped. It made me want to burst into tears with love. And now they were doing head-swiveling!! For me, they were swiveling their heads for me. No one has ever swiveled their head for me. I put my finger out and touched each of their tiny feathery chests. They cheeped again as the shrew tails disappeared into their beaks.
Then Cain shook his glove and said, “Get gone now, you two lazy arses, get hunting.”
Both of them plummeted to the ground, took a few staggering steps, and then careened off into the air.
I shouted after them, “See you soon! Come back to the barn—I’ll bring snacks!”
For the first time Cain smiled his crooked, mean smile. “Bloody hell, tha’s barmier than I remember, soft lass.”
I was determined to hold my ground. Then he licked his lips and leaned back against the fence, crossing his arms and putting one leg over the other.
Holy moly.
I couldn’t stand the silence so I babbled, “Why are you, with, are they . . . I mean, do you see them often?”