Ruthie's
Children
Ingrid Barnes
I will never
forget the first time I saw my aunt Molly’s farm. The
driver jerked the reins and the horses turned off the main
road and onto a smaller track. The green wall of trees
suddenly parted and there before me lay the golden fields.
My mother had sometimes told me of them, when I was quite
young and she was too. She would sit in her straight-backed
armchair with the gold gilt arms and I would sprawl on the
rug on the floor of the darkened parlour, looking up at her
face, which glowed ethereally in the gloom. She would wave
her long stemmed glass, the amber liquid within sparkling
mesmerisingly. I can still hear her voice, melodious and
soft, as she told me of her home.
“Our piece of land is a long strip, steep and narrow,
running from the jungle, right down to the ocean, hedged
between two rocky headlands. In winter it is nothing much
to see, but in summer . . .” At this point my mother
often tossed back her head to gaze at the ceiling. She
would shake her head ever so slightly so that her hair hung
down the back of the chair, a long, straight fall of gold.
“Between those two rocky sentinels, the fields are
carpeted with grass of the brightest gold, cascading down
like a river of sunlight until it curls itself around a
tiny crescent of pebbles cupping a tiny bay, a tiny pool of
the deepest azure, stolen from the ocean which lies beyond,
shimmering and rippling in the hot, hot, summer sun . .
.” My mother spoke these last words in the softest
and most seductive of whispers and as her voice trickled
away into the silent heaviness of the room, my nurse would
come and lift me from the rug and carry me up to my room.
Nor will I ever forget my first sight of my cousins, the
twins. I saw them before I knew their names or even of
their existence. It was as the cart slipped out of the
jungle’s cool caress onto the dusty track that cuts a
line, straight down, through the gold. There was actually a
small strip of dirt just below the jungle, before the
fields began and before we slid down into the towering wall
of grass, I saw two girls standing in the dirt on the hill
watching the cart. They were about the same height as me,
with brown arms and pink cheeks. At the distance I could
not see any differences between them, even their clothing
was similar. They wore blouses and skirts of rough cloth.
The hems of their skirts had been caught up and shoved into
the waistbands showing their long brown legs and leather
slippers covered in dust. They did not smile welcomingly
but stared hard at me, their eyes piercing and their mouths
straight lines across their faces. Then the fields of gold
opened up and swallowed us and all that I could see was the
softly swaying grasses, shimmering in the heat, just as my
mother had said.
The grass was as high as three of me, and as we trundled
along the rough track, all that I could see that
wasn’t gold was the undulating stripe of white hot
blue above me.
~ ~ ~
Eventually
we came out of the grasses to the homestead. My mother had
never mentioned this, the large low house that lounged
here, right in among the grasses, about two thirds way down
the slope. It looked as if it had just grown up with the
grass, some strange sprawling, rambling wooden plant. My
aunt Molly was standing by the door. I knew her well as she
often came to the city for business and stayed in my
mother’s house. When she saw me she cried out,
“Ruthie!” and stepped forward, lifting me off
the seat and hugging me tight in her muscular arms. She
introduced me to the cousins, of which there were many.
“And then there’s Jill and Caroline, the twins.
They’re probably up in the fields, you might have
seen them.”
I was led into the kitchen, a large, warm, welcoming room,
and was sat on a rough wooden chair and handed a huge mug
of tea and a huge scone that spilled jam and cream onto my
fingers. Everything in this house was huge, twice as big as
things in my mother’s house, just in the way that
Molly was twice as big as my mother. There I was introduced
to my uncle, a great bear of a man with red hair and a
shaggy red beard. I was instructed to call him Sam.
“That’s what all the children call me, I
won’t hold with any ‘father’ or
‘uncle’.” As I ate, he chatted to me
about all sorts of farm things. I was too tired and
overwhelmed to say anything. Molly watched me carefully and
as soon as I swallowed the last mouthful of tea she
proclaimed that I had better take a nap before dinner.
She picked me up and carried me out of the kitchen and down
a long corridor and at the end there was a small staircase.
Up the stairs was an attic room with huge wooden beams
across the roof. There were three beds in a row along the
wall. “This is Jill and Caroline’s room. And
yours too now.” She pulled back the covers of the bed
closest to the door and tucked me inside. “I’ll
wake you before dinner,” she said, kissing my
forehead. “But if you need anything, you just run
down those stairs and find me, okay?” I nodded and
closed my eyes.
~ ~ ~
When I woke the sun was shining through the windows in the
sloping ceiling. I closed my eyes and lay there with the
warm rays of light falling on me face. I slowly became ware
of two voices in the room. They were quarreling. “We
ought to go fishing up at the birch pond. It’s just
the right time for the sweet little yellow fish, the ones
that Molly likes. We can surprise her, and she’ll
probably let us off washing up tonight,” one voice
said. “We can do that tomorrow,” replied the
other voice,“but today the tide’s perfect for
rockpooling on left headland.”
Rubbing my eyes, I sat up. The arguing voice were my
cousins Caroline and Jill who were sitting on the beds
beside mine. The first thing that came to my mind was the
promise that I would be woken for dinner and I asked aloud
why I hadn’t been. One girl turned around and told
me, “You were fast asleep when we came up and Molly
said that if you were tired enough to sleep through us two
coming up the stairs, then perhaps we should just leave you
to sleep.” As an afterthought she added,
“I’m Caroline, and this is Jill.” She
turned back to the conversation.
“The tide won’t last, you know.”
“Yeah, I s’pose. We can go for the day and get
Molly to make us a picnic. We’ll take Minnow along
too, to collect shellfish.”
“I’ll get our sacks, where are they?”
“I left them in the second cupboard in the top drawer
to the right.”
Caroline slipped off her bed and went over to the row of
cupboards that lined the wall opposite the beds. She opened
various doors and drawers and came out with two little
bags, two pairs of overalls and two cotton shirts, tossing
one of each over her shoulder and the other to her sister
on her bed. I could not hold my words in any more.
“Can I come? Can I come with you?” I blurted
out.
Both girls turned to stare at me. For a few minutes there
was absolute silence as flickers of thought crossed their
faces. Then, they both spoke at the same time. As Caroline
said yes, Jill said no. Then they turned to face each other
and proceeded to have the most violent argument I had ever
seen at that stage in my young life. I later learned that
this was quite normal in Molly’s house. Molly would
yell at Sam and Sam would yell at Molly, and they would
both yell at the children, who, shockingly, yelled right
back. But after they were finished, they would forget all
about it and go on as if it never happened. No grudges were
held.
In my mother’s house no-one dared to so much as raise
a voice. If there was a disagreement, one person was always
clearly right. And whoever was right would get their way
and the other person couldn’t do a thing, except
sulk. If my mother and I had had an argument, she was
always right and I would sulk in my room until I was
hungry, at which point I would come out and snatch food
from some place and scurry back into my room, and whenever
I saw my mother I would turn my face away, and whenever she
spoke to me I would pretend I couldn’t hear. This
would go on for an hour or a week, depending on the
seriousness of the argument. My mother had arguments with
everyone, the maids, the cook, my nurse, the neighbours,
and any relatives within striking distance. The only time
she wasn’t right was when my father was home from the
sea. When they argued, he
was
right and my mother would sulk, much worse than I did. He
would try to kiss her or apologise but then she would lock
herself in her room and refuse to eat right until he went
away again. There was never any explanation for why the
right person was right, it just was that way. It was one of
the many disconcerting differences between my
mother’s house and Molly’s. I also thought it
was strange that my cousins called their mother by her
first name. I had always been instructed to call my mother
‘mummy’ in public and ma’am at home.
Caroline screamed at Jill that, “She is just a poor
orphan and we should be nice to her and she is our cousin
anyway,” and Jill screamed at Caroline that,
“We don’t even know her and look how skinny she
is she looks as if she’d break if you pushed her and
she’ll probably hurt herself and ruin our whole
day,” and I sat and watched until they were finished
and then said, for no reason other than I didn’t know
what else to say, “I’m not an orphan,
I’ve still got a father and he’s a sea captain
on a ship and he’s out at sea right now or else I
wouldn’t be here.” And they looked at me with
huge round eyes and slightly opened mouths and Jill said,
“Really, a real captain on a real ship?” And I
nodded and Caroline asked what clothes I had and, glancing
disdainfully at my lacy blouses and velvet skirts, pulled
out another pair of overalls and tossed them at me. Then
she went down to the kitchen while Jill asked me about the
ship. Had I been on, and what was it like inside, and what
were sailors like? Fortunately my father had taken me on
board for an hour last time he had come ashore so I could
answer almost all her questions and when I couldn’t I
made up answers that got more and more exciting and
outrageous until Caroline came back with a picnic for three
that would have fed ten. As I was “skinny as a kitten
with worms” I wasn’t allowed to carry anything.
We set off up a dusty track, through the fields with
Minnow, who was a sleek, fat, black puppy, running in
circles around us yapping excitedly. We climbed up the
slope into the jungle. When we came out of the trees, we
were standing on a rocky point that jutted into the sea.
Before us lay a patchwork of rocks and pools full of
seaweed and shells and tiny fish. Minnow went berserk,
jumping in the air and whining. He chased the gulls as if
he thought he really could catch them. The twins laughed
and I laughed with them and as easily as that I was
accepted into their world. Their world of golden fields
flanked by rocky headlands and edged with pebbly beach at
one end and the jungle at the other. They knew it all like
the backs of their hands, and as I ran with them I learned
to know it too.
~ ~ ~
It
was quickly discovered that, though I was small and weak, I
was the fastest runner out of us. One of their favourite
pastimes was running in the grass fields. Once inside, you
could see nothing but the grass around you, and unless you
had a good sense of direction and knew where you were, you
could come out of the grass in a completely different place
than where you intended. The twins would scream as they ran
so that they could keep together, but they knew the area so
well that they could run into the grass and come out
exactly where they wanted to be. The first time I ran in
the grass, I got hopelessly lost and came out at a huge
deserted barn. Behind it, swaying in the breeze, was a
huge, half-dead tree. I have never seen such an unwelcoming
building. I screamed for a while and Caroline and Jill came
out into the clearing. “That’s the old barn,
no-one uses it any more. We don’t go there.
It’s forbidden, and there’s nothing good to do
in there anyway,” Caroline explained. Jill looked up
at the barn with a mischievous look on her face then
announced, “I want to go on the roof.” Caroline
and I looked at her in horror but she was already running
towards the barn. When she tried to open the door, it fell
right over. Undeterred, she peered inside. Turning, she
beckoned to us. “Come on,” she called,
“There are stairs. They might lead to the
roof.” With that, she vanished inside. Caroline
dashed after her. Partly out of my own deep curiosity, and
partly out of fear at being left alone, I followed them in.
Inside it was as cold as winter and gloomy, the windows
having been grimed over by many years worth of dirt and sea
salt. By the time I found the stairs and clambered up, I
was wreathed with cobwebs, like a Christmas tree. With a
sigh of relief, I came up into a sort of loft. It was full
of hay bales stacked in piles. Jill and Caroline were
poking around in the hay. I saw straight away that I could
climb the bales and get right up to the roof to the window.
When I reached the top, I forced the window open. Jill and
Caroline scrambled up besinde me and we peered out. Jill
winked at me with a new respect. Turning her head, she
squinted up into the sun. “I’m sure we can get
onto the roof,” she said. I desperately wanted to get
out of the horrid dark building, so I wriggled halfway out
the window, and from there I found that I could get onto
the highest point of the roof and then into a branch of the
old tree. Jill and Caroline climbed out after me and joined
me on the branch. There was another window at the other end
of the roof and I pointed it out to them. Jill got that
mischievous expression again. “I thought of a
challenge. The challenge is to climb out that far window
then walk across the point of the roof and climb into this
tree.”
~ ~ ~
Jill and Caroline’s other favourite pastime was
‘challenges’. A challenge was a dare. There was
no punishment if you failed, just the shame. We
didn’t walk the roof that day though, for, as
Caroline pointed out, the barn roof could be seen from the
house and if we were seen doing something dangerous in a
place we were forbidden to be severe punishments would
apply. We decided instead to walk the roof early in the
morning, one day, whenever it felt right. And we scrambled
down the tree and ran back into the fields, screaming.
We came out eventually at the water’s edge on the
side of the right headland. The pebbled beach was in full
view of the house and therefore was good only for swimming
but not for dares. If we did anything
‘dangerous’, some cousin or other would tell
Molly, who would put a stop to it. The twins had found
other places to swim, an this was one of them. We quickly
pulled off our clothes and plunged off the rocks into the
sea in our underpants. We challenged each other to dive as
deep as we could and swim as far out as we could and then
we lay on the rocks to dry. If we came home wet, Molly
would know we’d been swimming and would keep us in to
help in the kitchen the next day. The twins had many tricks
to fool Molly, but in reflection, I’m sure that she
was never fooled. Molly was not the sort of woman who is
easily fooled.
In those early days, just after I had arrived, I was still
much weaker than the twins. As I spent more time running
with them and doing their challenges I grew stronger until
I could almost match them in most things, and even better
them in some. We would sometimes go up into the jungle and
climb trees and the challenge would be treetop tips.
Treetop tips is just like normal tips, but you aren’t
allowed to touch the ground. The twins admitted that this
game was much better with three players, especially with
such good third player, and I glowed all over with their
praise. They didn’t know that my garden back at home
I would stay in the treetops for entire days, sometimes
just for fun, and sometimes to avoid my mother.
We played tips everywhere, even on the beams across the
roof of our room. The ‘tipper’ would chase the
other two along the beams. Sometimes the two who were being
chased would stage a mutiny and attack the chaser. This
game always ended with someone being pushed off the beams
onto one of the beds below then tickled until they screamed
for mercy. We often had violent pillow fights in the middle
of the night, waking the whole house with our screams and
laughter.
~ ~ ~
Molly accepted me into her family as if I were just another
child, as if she had actually had triplets instead of
twins. It was accepted that I belonged to the twins and we
did not really pay much attention to the other cousins.
Molly tried tirelessly to keep us in line but her efforts
were all in vain and we ran wild all summer long. She would
sometimes sit me on her lap and stroke my hair. She would
sigh and say, “They’re too wild for you,
pet,” so softly that I could hardly hear her.
Though Sam was the man and a huge one at that, he spent
most of his time out in the fields with the hired workers.
It was clearly Molly who ran the household. I always
thought of it as Molly’s house on Sam’s farm.
That was one similarity between my mother and her sister,
they both ran their own households, but where my father
simply wasn’t around to make decisions, Sam accepted
that Molly made the decisions and trusted her judgement.
Molly was the head of the household and it was Molly who
explained to me what had actually happened, that my mother
had died of the coughing sickness and that my father was
still out at sea and wouldn’t be back until Autumn
and as there was no-one else to look after me, she had
taken me in for the summer, until my father got back and
worked out what to do with me.
So I had the whole long, hot, dusty summer to spend with my
wild cousins in the golden fields. I liked to pretend that
I really was Molly’s daughter and that Jill and
Caroline and I really were triplets. This was easy to
pretend when the three of us squashed together into
Sam’s huge armchair and Molly fed us little treats
and chatted to us as she did her mending by the fire.
Later, Sam would come in from the fields and, finding us in
his chair, would toss one of us over each shoulder and grab
one in his arms, then carry us up to the attic.
~ ~ ~
It was near the end of the summer, but the day was
certainly the hottest so far. We had all crawled into one
bed and were snuggled together like puppies when the sun
poured in the roof window, forcing itself determinedly
under our lids. Jill stretched her arms and yawned, then
stood up on the head-board of the bed. Caroline and I lay
cuddling each other, looking up at her, knowing that
something exciting was going to happen today. I could feel
the excitement in the air and see it sparkling in
Jill’s eyes as she waved her arms dramatically.
“Today it is the right day!” she announced.
“Today we’re going to walk the barn
roof.” Caroline and I giggled, hugging each other
tightly.
No-one else was awake as we crept through the cool dark
house. As I swung the back door open, a wave of light and
heat rolled into us. The fields were brighter and more
golden than I had ever seen them, they seemed almost to
emit their own light, as if the grass itself was glowing.
We screamed with joy and excitement and raced into the
grass with our hair streaming and our arms waving, leaving
the back door hanging wide open.
The golden wall was solid before me but as I ran into it,
the grass parted to accept me. Immediately Caroline and
Jill and the house vanished and all I could see was grass
and a little circle of blue, so bright that it was almost
white, high above me. I could hear screams around me, but I
did not need them, I knew my way and as I flew out of the
grass the barn was there before me, huge monstrous and
creaking. Its gaping doorway trailed cobwebs, like a mouth.
A huge, dripping mouth. Caroline came out a few breaths
after me and we stood side by side and stared up at the
foreboding building. All was silent but for the soft music
of the grass in the wind, and in the shadow of the barn the
heat of the day fled leaving us shivering.
Jill shot out of the grass and, putting her hands on our
shoulders, jumped high in the air between us. She laughed,
then turned and grabbed our hands, pulling us to the gaping
hole of the doorway. Once inside, the creepiness of the
barn washed over us, like a wave, and as one we sprinted
over to the tiny wobbling staircase that led to the loft.
Usually when we ran anywhere we screamed or laughed, but in
this place we were absolutely silent. I felt as if
something about this place was squeezing my chest,
preventing me from making a sound and filling me with a
great need to get out into the sun.
Shivering we crawled into the loft, scrambling over and up
the piles of hay bales. I was first, and when I reached the
far window I pushed it open violently, and slithered out. I
straddled the spine of the roof, the tiles sloping down
steeply on either side of me, and below them the ground of
hard packed dust. Jill and Caroline burst out behind me and
as we all sat there in the sun I felt myself calm down.
Jill set us all off into hysterical giggles. But I
remembered that as soon as someone woke and saw us on the
roof, we would have lost our chance forever, as they would
certainly ban us from the barn if they knew what we were
doing. So I nudged Jill, and she stood quickly, wobbled
once, then started to walk along the top point of the roof.
She wobbled only once more before she reached the edge of
the roof and slipped onto the branch. Caroline and I
clapped and whistled then I gave Caroline’s hand a
squeeze and she stood and began to walk. She wobbled
considerably more than Jill had and I knew that if I could
see her face, the tip of her tongue would be poking out.
She had reached the end and was just about to climb onto
the branch when she slipped and almost fell, but she
grabbed the branch and Jill hauled her up, and I heard them
laughing as she swung her leg over behind Jill and put her
arms around Jill’s waist. Then they both turned to me
and grinned as I stood up.
The roof slid down from me on either side and the fields
spread out around me. The sun beamed down on me, kissing my
face. I owned the whole world. I walked forwards, one foot
in front of the other, my bare skin gripping the tiles. I
was completely confident, I didn’t wobble and I
walked fasted than either of my cousins had. I was about
halfway across when Caroline let out a small shriek,
“Hurry, I can see Molly in the yard.” I walked
faster keeping my eyes straight ahead on the branch and my
cousins. The sun was not kissing me any more, but beating
down on my back, the heat making me dizzy. I was almost at
the end, my cousins were reaching out to me, ready to grasp
my hands and lift me into the tree. A thick voice yelled
out in surprise “Hey you, what do you think
you’re doing?!?”
I looked down towards the voice. One of the farm workers
was running towards the barn along the track. What he
thought he was going to do, I don’t know but
suddenly, I wasn’t standing quite straight any more.
I swayed then sort of sat down on the roof. But the sides
were too steep and I slid down, the hot tiles biting my
skin and grabbing at my clothes. I don’t know if I
screamed or not but I could hear all the screams around me.
Caroline was screaming, “Help, help,” over and
over, her voice cracking with desperation. Jill screamed an
endless, wordless scream of horror. The roof disappeared
from under me and I was falling freely. I heard
Molly’s voice cry, “Ruthie,” in a broken
sort of way.
I found my head in Jill’s lap. She was wailing and
her hot tears fell onto my cheek. Caroline’s face was
in the background and it was cold and hard and still. I
noticed this during the few seconds before a surge of pain
swamped me and pushed me right out of my body into
blackness.
~ ~ ~
When I woke again I was in a white bed in a white room on
the wall opposite me were three chairs. Jill was asleep in
one, her face contorted and her eyes red. In the next,
Molly dozed, her face different, crumpled. In the last
chair sat Caroline, and she was not asleep but was staring
at me. Her face was hard, and her mouth was straight. I
didn’t say anything, partly because my mouth was too
dry to speak, and partly because I simply had nothing to
say. Out the window, I saw the docks and the ships and the
bustle of sailors. I realised that we were back in the city
and I knew that my life would never be the same.
~ ~ ~
Molly explained it all to me when she woke up, but first
she sent Jill and Caroline outside. Jill looked back at me
with the face of a lost puppy. I had broken my back in that
fall and I would never be able to move my legs again. I
would have to use a wheelchair for the rest of my life. My
father was still at sea but would return in a few days and
then it would be decided what was to be done with me.
My father came home from sea the next week and came
straight from the ship to the hospital and came in to my
little white room smelling of the sea. I was alone, staring
out my window at the docks. By moonlight, it seemed to be a
different world from in the daytime. All was quiet, almost
all the sailors having gone into town, and the ships seemed
to talk to each other, moving up and down at their moorings
with the shifting of the sea. My father looked at me and I
knew he wanted to grab me up and hug me to his chest and
swing me around in the air like he always did. Except he
couldn’t because I was broken. I could see the
disappointment in his eyes. “Oh my little
bird,” he said to me, “What am I to do with
you?” He sat gazing at me for a long time. Then tears
came to his eyes and he said, “If only your mother
was still alive. Oh your poor mother.” And he dropped
his curly black head into his hands and wept and I realised
how much he had loved my mother, with her prim manners and
tantrums and the golden hair that cascaded down her back,
gold as the golden fields where she was born.
And I remembered my mother and how she took me with her on
shopping trips to little shops to buy dresses and how
sometimes she would buy me a little trinket or something.
And how sometimes I would embarrass her by being rude to
the shop ladies or whining or getting lost and she would
take me straight home and strike me across the face with
her little white hand so that I fell on the floor and then
she would go out and slam the door, leaving me locked in
the house. And I remembered all the secret ways I would
find to get out into the garden, which was my kingdom, and
how when she found each escape route and blocked it up, I
would find another.
~ ~ ~
Molly came to say goodbye, the twins cringing behind her in
such a way that I knew that she blamed my fall on them and
had told them so. She stroked my cheek and said that I
didn’t deserve this and then she went to talk to my
father and they were so cold that I saw that they
didn’t like each other, not at all. Jill came over to
my bedside and kissed me too much and told me in whispers
that Molly was sending them to a boarding school in the
city and that they would come and visit me if they could
and she kissed me even more as Molly called her away.
Caroline did not say anything but looked at me silently and
as Jill pulled her away she grabbed my hand and squeezed
it, as I had squeezed her hand on the roof of the barn and
then they were gone and the room was quiet and white again.
My father told me that he was taking me home and the nurse
wheeled in a wheelchair that he had bought for me and he
lifted me into it, very carefully as if I was one of
mother’s glass vases that would break if you even
breathed on it and that were kept in the high cupboard with
glass doors. And I realised that he was going to continue
to treat me like a vase, and I mourned for all the times
that he would have hugged me and tossed me up to the roof
if only I were not broken, for I knew that they could never
be. Not any more. Not now. I was worried because after my
wild life in the golden fields I was sure I would go mad if
I was put in a cupboard with glass doors.
As my father wheeled my chair across the square, he told me
that his ship was leaving again the next day and that he
had found a governess for me who would teach me and look
after me and that he had found maids and a cook as well to
look after us. I believe he expected me to respond, to
thank him, or maybe to scream and howl, but I did neither,
I did not say anything.
~ ~ ~
I was very lucky. There are many cruel women in the world
and if one of them had been my governess, I would have been
trapped in her control until my father came back. Miss
Gray, though, was kind and not at all strict, only
excruciatingly boring. My lessons with her were a challenge
as I had to force myself to concentrate and not daydream. I
decided that the only way I could make my father proud of
me was by doing well in my lessons, so I struggled with my
teacher to master every piece of work that she gave me, and
I pleased her greatly. But in my free time I took refuge in
my garden. It had always been a bit wild and the lack of
care did no damage to it. The trees that I had used to
climb easily were now unattainable. It was hateful not to
be able to do anything that I had used to, but I preferred
to be out there than in the house, where my mother’s
presence still lingered in every corner.
~ ~ ~
Winter came, and somehow it shocked me, though it had come
every year before and there was no reason that it
shouldn’t this year. But while it was autumn I could
still pretend that it was summer and that I was really in
the fields with Jill and Caroline. Now that snow dusted the
window sills and the cold breezes crept under the doors, I
could not hold on to that fantasy. Nor could I take refuge
in my garden, as Miss Gray would not allow me to go outside
in case I should take a chill. Eventually, though, she grew
tired of me wheeling myself up and down the sloping
corridors and bothering her with endless questions. She
instructed me to write a story. I sat by the fire in my
room and tried, but I couldn’t think of anything to
write. She told me, vexedly, to just write whatever was in
my head. I started tentatively and found that there was a
whole, swollen river inside me that had been waiting for me
to open the floodgates. A river of words. I wrote until my
left hand ached, then swapped to my right. Though writing
with my right hand started out messy, I wrote so much that
by spring I could write equally well with either hand. And
when the snows melted and I ventured outside, the garden
greeted me with green shoots and tiny buds that burst into
full-blown blossom as sat under the branches and wrote.
~ ~ ~
Jill visited me every month on the first Sunday, which was
visiting day at the boarding school. She kissed me and
brought presents and showered me with gossip about girls I
didn’t even know. I asked once where Caroline was,
and if she was sick but Jill quickly, and expertly, I
noticed, changed the subject. She was much the same as
before, still loud, emotional and excitable, but there was
something about her, a new sort of twitchiness. She jumped
at small noises and looked around her as if she expected
someone to be following her. She didn’t seem to enjoy
her visits, the house being “so big and cold”,
she said, “with all these servants jumping out at you
everywhere and then curtseying and not saying a
word”.
There were many awkward silences between us. It seemed that
we lived in two completely separate worlds. We had no
common ground to talk about except our shared past, which
we silently agreed not to speak of, and Caroline, of whom,
Jill never said a word. I was almost worried that she had
died and no-one dared tell me. Gradually, Jill stopped
coming every month, there being other places she wanted to
go with her school friends. Then she stopped coming at all
and I wondered if she had forgotten me, and I was sad but
kind of relieved, for we had nothing to say to each other
any more.
Molly came to stay once, on a business trip, but it was so
strange with just the two of us and only pain and guilt
between us that she never came back. Either she did no more
business in town or, which I think more likely, she stayed
in a hotel. I asked her about Caroline too but she fell so
quiet that I did not ask again.
~ ~ ~
I waited in
vain for a visit from Caroline and the year passed and
another followed it and my routine of lessons and writing
was only disturbed by the changing of the seasons which
determined whether I wrote inside by the fire or in the
garden. The only other events were the homecomings of my
father. His journeys differed in length from a few weeks to
a few months and he never thought to tell us when he would
be home again. We were only warned of his coming when Miss
Gray saw his ship at the docks through her tiny silver spy
glass. Then the whole house was a bustle, the maids rushing
to ready his room, dusting and making up the huge bed with
clean new sheets, the cook preparing all his favourite
dishes and Miss Gray and I struggling into our good
clothes. I admit we spent most of our days wearing clothes
my mother would have considered ‘rags’.
Sometimes I even wore my nightgown all day.
I
relished these days, as I felt as if I was poking my tongue
out at my mother, but she could not slap me or knock me
down, for she was in heaven, my father said. One afternoon
I wheeled my chair down into her room. It was exactly as
she had left it, as per my father’s instructions. At
first I just stood and looked at all her fine things. Then
one day I went inside. I wheeled my chair slowly and
quietly, as if she might still be walking about, and would
stop and cock her head at the sound of my breathing, then,
ever so slowly, turn on one heel and stalk towards me.
Eventually I reassured myself that she was really gone and
I would often go in and take out her silky dresses and
stroke them with my “nasty, dirty clutching
fingers”. One day, I pulled all her jewellery out
from the tiny boxes on her dresser. I tried each piece on,
gazing at myself in the fancy mirror with its golden frame.
I would dust my face with powder and dip my fingers into
the tiny bottles of scent. I didn’t even like the
smells, but I was getting back at my mother. It was
revenge.
This had been my pastime even when my mother had been
alive. When ever she was out, as soon as I had watched the
coach out of the gates, I would rush into her room. I was
getting revenge on my mother, the only way I knew how. I
wonder now why the nurse and maids never stopped me. One
day my mother caught me in there sitting on her bed wearing
her favourite necklace and reading her letters. She
screeched like a cat at and grabbed the letters from my
hands. She hit me across the face with all her strength,
not once, but seven times. I counted. The diamond of her
wedding ring bit into my cheek and left a tiny scar. Anyone
else would think it was a freckle, but I know what it is.
She threw me out of the room, still wearing the necklace,
though neither of us realised that at the time. I was dazed
and dizzy but my mind was still clear enough to tell me
that I had to get out of the house. She would come back for
me and if she found me, she would hit me again. This I
knew, so, though I couldn’t stand, I crawled out of
the house and into the garden on my hands and knees. I
crawled deep into the belly of the garden to my secret
hiding place and curled up under a tree. I stayed out there
all night. I heard my mother raging up in the house and the
maids calling for me in the garden, but I was well hidden
and they went back empty handed. I woke up in the morning
with twigs in my hair and found the necklace still around
my neck. I took it off and buried it.
My mother came out of the house and sat in the garden,
calling to me and saying that she was so sorry and she
hadn’t been thinking and could I ever forgive her.
And as I always did, I came to her, hoping that this time
she really would love me as she said she did. She took me
on her lap and hugged me tightly and kissed me and cried
into my hair and the asked me softly and sweetly where her
necklace was and could she have it back. When I said
guiltily that I didn’t know where it was, she stood
up, and knocked me to the ground. My anger flamed again and
I said that I wouldn’t, that I would never give it
back and she dragged me to my room by my hair and locked me
in.
I heard her raging about the house for hours, then it
finally grew quiet and my nurse came in and brought me some
supper and asked was I okay, poppet, and hugged me close. I
cried all over her and she whispered to be quiet in case I
woke the mistress, and then she put ice on my face to calm
my bruises and did what else she could for me which was not
much.
~ ~ ~
As
I sat in my mother’s room all these memories came
back to me and I wheeled out into the garden. I pushed
through the bushes as far as I could, and when my chair
would go no further, I slipped off it onto the ground. My
arms had grown strong and I dragged myself through the
undergrowth of ferns and shrubs. Eventually, I found the
secret spot. Digging wildly, feverishly with my nails I
made a small hole. It wasn’t there. I dug all around,
my heart jumping into my mouth. Then I found it, the long
golden chain that slipped though my fingers like water, and
the heart shaped pendant of gold set with diamonds and one
bloody ruby.
I lay back, trying to find the strength to crawl back to my
chair. I looked up at the canopy of branches above me,
holding the necklace high, the pendant swinging on its
golden chain. It was so strange, all the things that had
happened since I had last lain here, before my mother had
died or even started coughing blood, before I had met my
cousins, before I had fallen. ‘Fallen’ sounds
like I had fallen over and skinned my knee or something.
But that fall had changed my life, changed everyones’
lives. If I hadn’t fallen, Jill and Caroline would
still be on the farm in their golden fields, close as
sisters could be, in their private world. And then I
wondered if maybe things wouldn’t have changed
anyway. They would have had to leave the farm eventually,
and they were so different that they must have gone
different ways and then probably would have drifted apart.
And I thought of all the possibilities, all the ways it
could have gone. If I hadn’t fallen. If.
~ ~ ~
It
was much later that Caroline came to the door and was
brought out to the garden where I was writing. I continued
writing, waiting for her to speak first. She sat on a
branch and looked around at the garden. “This is your
place,” she said softly, “It is just . . .
right for you.” I looked up at her and there were
tears in her eyes. “Ruthie, I was so scared when I
saw you lying there on the ground with your face all white,
I thought I would break. So I held myself together so hard,
and didn’t let anything out. Or anything in. And then
I didn’t no how to let go again. I stopped talking to
Jill or Molly, to anyone actually. When we went off to the
school Jill made all these friends, but I didn’t make
any because I didn’t talk to anyone. I just kept all
my feelings inside. One day a girl bumped me in the
corridor and I screamed at her and cried for an hour and
then everyone thought I was crazy, and avoided me, even
Jill. Then our English teacher told us to write a story and
I started writing about you and the barn roof and I started
crying. Everyone already thought I was crazy anyway. But I
realised that I had to keep writing, to get my feelings
out. Every time I wrote anything, no matter what I meant it
to be about, it always ended up being about falling. About
you. But the last story I wrote . . . it wasn’t about
you at all. So I knew that it was time for me to visit
you.”
She said all this in a rush of words, and when she was
finished she sat on the branch staring at me. I
didn’t know what to say so I said nothing about it,
but showed her around the garden, telling her my special
names for every place and the stories about them all, what
I had done there. When she had to go I hugged her as best I
could from the wheelchair and she was walking down the
front steps when suddenly I told her to wait. I wheeled off
to my room, then came back with a little box, which I gave
to her.
~ ~ ~
That was the last time I saw her, as she was knocked down by a cart a few weeks later, but when she died she was wearing the necklace I had stolen from my mother all those years ago. And still I sit in my garden and write, Miss Gray no longer my teacher, but my companion. My father’s income supports us. There is enough to support me until I die, an old spinster, alone but for her little demented children. Children created not of flesh and blood, but of paper and ink. Paper and ink and memories.