Night Birds On Nantucket

  To Dido’s great surprise and relief, Pen proved a handy little creature with the indoor tasks; she had been taught by her mother to wash and bake and cook and polish; ‘which it’s as well,’ Dido admitted, ‘for I never could abide housework and I don’t know a waffle-iron from a skillet; if I’d a had to make the bread it’d turn out tougher’n old boots. It beats all how you get it to rise so, Pen. You’ll have to teach me; one thing, housework ain’t so bad when it’s just us on our own. In fact it’s quite a lark. Pity the old gal couldn’t go back to wherever she came from.’

  ‘Oh Dido,’ confessed Pen – they were out of earshot of Aunt Tribulation now, sociably hoeing the enormous potato field together, ‘she frightens me dreadfully! Her eyes glare so – at least I’m sure they do behind her glasses! And her voice is so angry and scolding. I’m sure I shall never get used to her.’

  ‘Now, now, Pen,’ Dido admonished. ‘Remember as how you’re learning to be brave? Every morning when you get up you must say twenty times, “I am not scared of Auntie Trib.” You’d best start now.’

  ‘I am not scared of Auntie Trib,’ Pen said obediently. But then she broke out, ‘It’s no use, Dido, I am scared of her!’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to get you out o’ the habit,’ Dido said stoutly. ‘You watch me, see how I stand up to the old sulphur-bottom.’

  Pen gulped, nodding, but she looked apprehensive.

  ‘Do you remember her now you see her again, Penny?’ Dido asked. ‘Is she like she was when you was small?’

  ‘Just as frightening,’ Pen said. ‘But I don’t really remember her much. It was Mamma, saying she was a dragon that I remembered. She looks older than I expected. And even crosser!’

  Dido pondered over Pen’s words. Really, she thought, there’s nothing to prove that this lady is Aunt Tribulation at all. This is a mouldy lookout for me getting back to England; I don’t see leaving Pen with old Gruff-and-Grumble.

  She thought this again when the noon hour came and they entered the house to the accompaniment of a regular hurricane of thumps from upstairs. Pen ran up to inquire her aunt’s wishes and returned trembling and in tears, so fierce had been the request for ‘gingerbread and apple sauce and look sharp about it, miss! What have you been doing all morning, I’d like to know? Idling and playing and picking flowers, I suppose!’

  ‘Oh, pray don’t scold, Aunt Tribulation, pray don’t. Indeed, indeed, we haven’t been idling; we have hoed more that half the potato field.’

  ‘Old harridan. I wonder how she knew you’d made some gingerbread?’ Dido said. ‘She must have a nose on her like a bloodhound. There’s some apples down cellar, Penny, I saw them when I was getting the kindling for the stove. And there’s hams and onions and molasses and bushels of beans, so we shan’t starve and nor will old Mortification upstairs.’

  As Pen hurried to get the apples Dido, stoking the stove, muttered, ‘Ill, my eye! If she’s so ill, what’s her nightcap ribbon doing on the kitchen floor? You’ve been poking and snooping and spying, you old madam, you, to see whether we did the housework, you horried old hypocrite!’

  When the apple sauce was made she took a saucerful up to Aunt Tribulation with the cap ribbon ostentatiously stuck like an ornament at the side of the dish. ‘I guess this is yours, Auntie Trib,’ she remarked innocently. ‘I can’t think how it come to be lying on the floor downstairs. Acos you haven’t been down, have you?’

  Aunt Tribulation took this very much amiss. ‘Impertinent girl! Don’t speak to me in that way. Apologize immediately!’

  ‘Why should I?’ Dido said reasonably. ‘You ain’t been extra polite to us.’

  ‘You shall be shut up in the attic till you learn better manners.’

  ‘Tally-ho! I’m agreeable,’ said Dido. ‘I can jistabout do with a nap arter all that hoeing.’

  ‘Not now,’ said Aunt Tribulation, who appeared suddenly to recollect that she had other plans for the girls. ‘I want you and Penitence to shift the sheep up to the high pasture. And mind you count them! Do that as soon as you’ve washed the dishes. And don’t forget to make up the stove. And feed the hens and pigs.’

  ‘Sure that’s all?’ inquired Dido. ‘Nothing else as how you can lay your mind to? Sartin? Tooralooral, then.’

  ‘Now, how the mischief are we to count these here blame sheep?’ Dido said, as the girls walked down the sandy lane to the pasture where the sheep were grazing.

  ‘There’s a gate in those railings over there,’ Pen said. ‘If you could get behind them and drive them, I could count them as they came through.’

  ‘Clever girl, Pen. You’ve got a right smart head on your shoulders when you doesn’t get all of a-pucker and a-fluster.’

  Dido ran off across the rough pasture which was not grass but low-growing scraggy shrubs and bushes. Pen waited by the gate, and, conquering a slight tendency to shrink in alarm as the sheep streamed towards her, manfully counted them.

  ‘Two hundred and twenty-three,’ she said when they were all through and being driven up towards the high pasture. ‘I wonder if that is the right number?’

  ‘Well if it ain’t you may lay Auntie Trib will tell us fast enough. Croopus, don’t the wind blow up here, and can’t we see a long way!’

  ‘All over the island,’ Pen said wanly, looking across the rolling, shrubby moorlands to the line of the ocean. On the south shore white, mushrooming clouds of spray from breakers could be seen dimly through a belt of haze.

  ‘What’s that white tower to the east?’

  ‘Sankaty Head lighthouse. There’s a forest between us and it,’ Pen said with a faint glimmer of pride, ‘but you can’t see it. It’s called the Hidden Forest. That’s uncommon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Rummy,’ agreed Dido, ‘So’s your pa’s house. Why’s it got a balcony on the roof? And why’s it standing on legs?’

  ‘I don’t know about the legs. The balcony was for Mamma so she could look out to sea and see if Papa’s ship was in sight. Look, isn’t that a man coming to call at the house? We’d better go home.’

  ‘Race you down the hill,’ Dido said, and was astonished when Pen nodded, picked up her skirts, and darted away down the sandy track.

  But when they reached the house, panting and laughing, nobody seemed to be about. The man had vanished. They ran into the kitchen, and Dido went up to Aunt Tribulation’s room.

  ‘Is somebody called here?’ she asked, knocking and entering. There was a sort of flurry from the bed, as Aunt Tribulation huddled down in her pillows. Two spots of crimson showed on her thin cheeks.

  ‘Do not come in until I give you leave, miss!’ she croaked.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sure! We were feared you mighta had to get up and answer the door.’

  ‘I have done no such thing! Be off to your work!’

  ‘Good land, don’t be in such a pelter. I’m just a-going,’ Dido said, injured. But in the passage outside she paused, remembering that the door next to Aunt Tribulation’s opened on an upward flight of stairs. Must lead to that fancy balcony, she thought. I’ve a good mind to step up, won’t take but a moment. She tried the door. Strangely enough it was locked now, though she was sure it had been open before.

  ‘Why are you loitering out there, girl?’ Aunt Tribulation called angrily from her room.

  Dido shrugged and ran downstairs.

  ‘Does that door by Aunt Trib’s room lead up to the roof, Penny?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, and to the attic.’

  ‘Where’s the key kept?’

  ‘In the door, mostly,’ Pen said in surprise. ‘But there’s a spare, because once when I was little I locked myself in there. Oh, I was scared, and so was Mamma!’

  ‘Where’s the spare live, then?’

  ‘On a hook at the back of the china closet. Why?’

  ‘Just I’ve a fancy to go up there sometime,’ Dido replied calmly. She did not add that she was also curious to know what Aunt Tribulation was up to: it seemed clear that while the girls were out she had locked the attic
door and taken the key. Why had she done so?

  ‘What’ll us do now, Penny?’ she inquired.

  ‘I suppose we’re free,’ Pen said doubtfully. ‘I’d like to do some lessons. And write my journal and sew my sampler.’

  ‘Not on your Oliphant. There’s the old gal a-thumping again.’

  Aunt Tribulation called imperiously for Pen to bring her more gingerbread and apple sauce.

  ‘How many sheep did you count?’ she demanded.

  ‘Two hundred and twenty-three, Aunt Tribulation,’ Pen quavered.

  ‘One missing! That one must be found, miss.’

  ‘Y-y-yes, Aunt!’

  ‘Make haste and set about it, then.’

  Pen bore up till she was downstairs, but then she burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, I’m so tired! And look, it’s nearly dark outside. Do you think we really need go tonight, Dido? I’m sure we’d never find it. And I don’t believe I can walk another step.’

  ‘Nor you shall,’ said Dido sturdily. ‘Be blowed to the old faggot. How does she expect us to find one sheep in the dark in umpty miles o’ wild country? That’s a crazy notion. It’ll look after itself till morning, I reckon; we’ll find it then. Run along to bed, Pen, while I stoke the stove and lock the back door.’

  Pen was already half asleep by the time Dido tiptoed up and snuggled in beside her under the quilted comforters.

  ‘I brought the back and front door keys,’ she whispered, tucking them under the pillow. ‘Just so’s to be on the safe side. ‘Night, Dutiful. You’ll have to write a letter to your pa about all this.’

  ‘Good night, Dido. Yes, I will write a letter.’

  Halfway through the night Dido woke up and lay listening sharply. This ain’t half a creaky old house, she thought. Every pine board seemed to have its own separate voice, and when the wind blew it was almost like being on the ship. But no wind was blowing now, and yet a board had creaked. Burglars? Dido slid a hand under the pillow and satisfied herself that both keys were still there. Pen slept peacefully. The creak was not repeated and, after a while, Dido too drifted back into sleep and dreamed that she was asking Aunt Tribulation to lend her the fare to England, while Pen weepingly begged her not to go, and Aunt Tribulation made no reply except to shake her red wattles, wink a black, beady eye, and croak, ‘Certainly not! Certainly not! Get up, you lazy girl! Cock-a-doodle-doo!’

  ‘Wake up, Pen, it’s morning.’

  ‘Oh, no, it can’t be!’ moaned Pen. ‘I could sleep for hours longer.’

  ‘Never mind. At least we shan’t have to light the stove this morning. I can jistabout do with some bacon and coffee.’

  They dressed in the warm kitchen. While Dido was brushing Pen’s long hair, Pen said, ‘That’s odd. I thought we left the window fastened. Look, it’s only pushed to.’

  Dido considered the window in frowning silence for a moment before going out to the pigs. But she only said: ‘Oh well, lucky nobody noticed it and got in.’

  After breakfast Dido found the spare attic key and ran softly upstairs. She slipped the key into the keyhole – it fitted, the door opened; and she tiptoed on up the next flight. She found herself in a huge room with a sloping roof and low dormer windows. It stretched the length of the house and was filled with all sorts of odds and ends – old trunks, old boots, boxes, bales of sacking, flour-bags, two stuffed birds under a glass cover, some wooden stub-toe skates, an old fowling-gun, and so forth. Dido looked around sharply. She did not quite know what she was searching for, but almost at once she found it: faint, sandy footprints on the floor.

  Those weren’t made long ago, Dido said to herself. If they had been, they’d a soon dried up and blowed away.

  A ship’s ladder and a trapdoor led out on to the roof; looking down from the widow’s-walk balcony Dido saw Penitence hanging clothes on the line. I’d best be getting back to work, she thought, before the old gal finds I’m up here, and she closed the trapdoor and tiptoed down the ladder. At its foot she stopped short, riveted by the sight of something that she had missed on her first hasty survey of the attic. Behind one of the chests, as if it had been hurriedly thrust out of sight, was a bundle of ladies’ clothes: bonnet, gloves, a black silk dress and a cloak of grey twill. On top of the bundle was a pair of bottle-green boots.

  Dido tiptoed over and inspected these. They had white stains on them.

  Salt water, she said to herself. Those haven’t been here long.

  I’d best get outa here.

  After giving another quick, darting look round the attic she slipped down the stairs and softly closed and locked the door behind her. None too soon, it seemed; she could hear terrified wails coming from Aunt Tribulation’s room.

  ‘Dido said I might go to bed!’ Penitence was saying through her tears. ‘Dido said we’d never find it in the dark. And indeed, Aunt Tribulation, we were dreadfully tired. Dido said th-that looking at night-time was a crazy notion.’

  ‘She did, did she? She shall be punished for that. And you, miss, had better go out now, and I don’t wish to see you again until the sheep is found! I am going to make myself obeyed from now on, do you understand?’ Aunt Tribulation rapped on the floor with her stick.

  Frowning, Dido walked into the room.

  ‘So, girl!’ Aunt Tribulation addressed her fiercely. ‘You countermand my instructions, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dido agreed. ‘They was downright addlepated. And you didn’t oughta shout at Pen that way, you’ll scare her into historics. Pen,’ she added, more in sorrow than anger, ‘haven’t I told you about not putting the blame on someone else? Stick up for yourself, girl!’

  Pen gave her a miserable glance.

  ‘Still, we mustn’t be too hard on the old gal,’ Dido added, with a sudden seraphic smile at Aunt Tribulation. ‘When she shouts at you, Pen, remember her rheumaticks is hurting her cruel bad.’

  Plainly Aunt Tribulation did not quite know how to deal with this.

  ‘Penitence!’ she snapped. ‘Be off!’

  Pen hesitated, then ran from the room.

  ‘As for you,’ Aunt Tribulation went on, ‘you can miss your dinner. Go out, finish hoeing the potato field, then do the cornfield, and don’t come back till it’s finished.’

  ‘Blister your potato field,’ Dido replied calmly. ‘I’m a-going to help Pen find that sheep. And if I miss my dinner, so will you, acos there won’t be no one to bring it up to you.’

  With which parting shot she ran downstairs to the kitchen. Pen had already started down the track. For several hours they searched unsuccessfully. There were plenty of sheep to be seen grazing the rough pasture as they went farther afield, but not one with the red C which was Captain Casket’s mark. At last, when they were about halfway to Polpis and the sun was high in the sky, Dido suddenly cried: ‘Oh, look, Pen! I do believe that there’s a sheep with a red mark. Look, by the bushes. Quick, let’s go arter him. Brrr! though; ain’t it turned cold all of a sudden!’

  While they were searching, the children had not noticed that a fine white sea-mist had come creeping over the island. Just as they started after the wandering sheep the mist caught up with and engulfed them.

  ‘Hey, where are you, Pen?’ Dido called anxiously.

  ‘Here! I’m here!’

  ‘Blame it, it’s like walking through porridge! Where in thunderation is your voice coming from? Stand still, till I find you,’ Dido said, feeling her way forward. But Pen suddenly shouted excitedly:

  ‘Oh, I see it, I see the sheep! I believe I can catch it, too!’

  There came the sound of running footsteps, which faded into the distance, then a disappointed cry, ‘Oh, drat!’

  Missed it, diagnosed Dido. Seconds later a damp, dew-spangled sheep bolted past her, nearly knocking her down, and disappeared into the dimness before she could grab it.

  Blazes, Dido thought. Now I’ve lost ’em both, Pen and the sheep. Which’d I better go after? Pen, I reckon. The sheep can look after itself.

  ‘Penitence!?
?? she called lustily. ‘Du-oo-tiful! Penitence! Where are you?’

  No answer – only a plaintive, faraway bleat. Not you, woollyknob, Dido thought crossly. She floundered on into the smoky whiteness, tripping over wet, tangling shrubs, getting caught in thornbushes and low-growing holly, stumbling into holes and out of them again.

  At last she struck a track which led uphill. Night was falling by now. Dispirited, weary, and very worried about Pen, she turned along it. Maybe I’ll come to a house or a farm, she thought, where I can ask somebody to give me a hand hunting. At this rate the poor little brat stands a chance of being out all night and that’d just about do for Pen; she’d be seeing ghosts and boggarts for the rest of her life.

  She hurried along the track, which sloped more and more steeply uphill and suddenly brought her out into a familiar barnyard. Why, curse it, Dido thought angrily, I’m home, what’s the good o’ that? No hopes Auntie Trib will give a hand. I’d best turn right round and go back the other way.

  She was just turning wearily down the dusky track when a lantern light showed in the barn door.

  ‘Dido!’ called Pen’s eager voice. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Penny!’ Dido exclaimed joyfully. ‘You’re back, then!’

  ‘Yes, and, what do you think? I found the sheep again! Wasn’t that a bit of luck? And, Dido, I have had such a curious adventure, listen –’

  ‘You found the sheep? You brought it back all on your own?’ Dido was amazed. ‘I’d never a thought you had it in you, Pen! How ever did you manage to fetch it along? Where is it now?’

  ‘In the barn. I led it,’ Pen said.

  ‘How, for gracious’ sakes?’

  ‘Well,’ Pen said rather shyly, ‘I thought, how would Dido set about it? So as I hadn’t got a rope I took off my stockings and tied them together. It was the sheep that found the way home, not me. But I was dreadfully worried about where you’d got to, Dido. I’m ever so glad to see you.’

  ‘Well, us’d better turn to and do the evening jobs while there’s still a glim of daylight,’ Dido said. ‘You can tell me about your adventure when we’re indoors making supper, Pen.’