Kitabı oku: «The Girl From World’s End», sayfa 3
‘Help me,’ she called again, but no one came.
Those last few yards were like agony, carrying a load of ice on her shoulders, but she fell into the stone porch with relief. It was already half filled with a snowdrift. She shouted but no one answered. Desperation fuelled her arms to batter the oak-studded door and it yielded even to her puny weight. How she yearned for firelight and the glow of a storm lantern, the smell of bacon or an open fire, but there was nothing, just an empty shell.
Part of the rafters were stove in and she could see snow falling through the gap in the roof, little drifts piling up, and it was just light enough to see the old stone fireplace behind a great arch of stone spanning the width of the room. Inside there it was dry and sheltered. There was even old straw bedding on the flagged floor, musty and dusty where it was dry, old cattle bedding. There was a broken ladder to a small loft but she daren’t risk going up there.
Through another arch she spotted the cold dairy with slate shelves. The storage holes were empty of jars. No one had lived here for years. There were a few bits of broken chairs, nothing else but four bare walls.
The disappointment rose up like bile in her throat. No fire, no welcome. There was not even a lucifer to light a fire, not even a beast to warm herself by, but it was shelter from the blizzard outside and it was getting dark.
‘Be thankful for small mercies, child,’ came her Sunday school teacher’s voice in her head. Looking around in the gloom, she had to admit that there was everything here for her to ride out the storm.
If you were silly enough to do what she had done then this was about the mercy she deserved, she decided. She was safe and this would have to do. Outside the wind was roaring up a gale. Bits of roof rattled and clanked but stayed put.
Mirren gathered up the driest bits of straw she could find to make a nest under the stone arch. She sat in the grate, trying to be brave. There was snow to suck on and she still had her store apple to feast on in her coat pocket. Every bite would have to be savoured slowly and eked out as if it was a proper meal, skin, pips, core, the lot.
Where she was, she hadn’t a clue, but it was high up above Cragside. The chimney breast smelled of old soot and woodsmoke, and the straw itched. She thought of mangers and cheered her flagging spirits singing ‘Away in a Manger’. She was away in a manger but no one knew where she was and there’d be hell to pay when they found out.
She heard little rustlings and scratchings beside and above her: night creatures scurrying into the walls. At least the house had other things here, mice and wrens seeking shelter…maybe wild cats, foxes, wolves…No use scaring herself with fairy tales. For one night she’d be glad of company, whatever it was. She was one of them, trapped, penned in, safe enough. The house will look after us, she sighed, and curled up in a ball to save heat.
Down in the valley Windebank school would be dismissed early. They had a snow drill and roll call, and children would have been collected. Others would be forced to stay by the stoves and stay the night in Burrows’ den, poor buggers! She could swear out loud and there was no one here to tell her off. This was better than being stuck with that hateful man. This was all his fault…
Mirren woke from a deep sleep feeling numb, legs aching with cramp. She scoured around hoping there might be a provender sack, something to stuff with straw to keep her teeth from chattering. There was a small store under the ladder stairs with a pan and a brush, and to her joy some rotten sacks. Once more the little house had come to her rescue. If only there was enough kindling to get a flame going.
It was then she remembered the scouting book. There was a section on lighting fires with sticks of wood and bits of cloth, making sparks to smoulder into kindling. She wished she’d read it more carefully.
Just thinking about it gave her courage to ferret in the darkness. The sky was clear and the moon was up high enough to be a lantern if she opened the window shutters. Her eyes were getting used to the half-light. It was better to keep moving than to freeze, so she packed the straw into the sack to make a little mattress, and pretended it was a feather quilt and she was the princess in the pea story. Then she gathered up any bits of wood she could find, scliffs from the stairs.
There were holes built into the inglenook, crannies where things were kept dry like the one in the old bit of Cragside for salt, and a bread oven. Feeling her way into the holes with fear in case a rat jumped out of its nest, like one had in the chicken coop the other day, scaring her half to death with its beady eye, Mirren tried to be brave. Inside was dry and she touched something hard and jumped back. It didn’t move. Her fingers found a cold metal box about the size of a baccy tin.
Please let there be lucifers inside, she prayed. The tin was rusted and hard to prise open, all ridges and bumps in fancy patterns made of brass, and her fingertips were numb. In frustration she banged the edge on the hearth and it fell open.
Inside was a kit of some sort. Dad had one of these on the mantelpiece to keep his pipe bits in. It was an old comforts tin for soldiers, he had told her, once full of chocolates and cigarettes. This one had the face of the old Queen on, but nothing inside but a bit of rag, some chalk ends, a peppermint lozenge and two dry lucifers. Two chances to make a flame: another prayer was answered.
How did they do it in the scout book? She had to have some dry cloth. Her clothes were damp-even her knickers were wet where she had leaked–but she did have a thick vest and liberty bodice though she couldn’t cut them. Then she found the hanky rolled in her knicker pocket, full of snot but dry enough now.
She must make a little triangle tent of straw and bits to catch alight but she needed stuff to put in the fire too, wood and bits to keep it going. Dad once told her that poor people used cow dung to heat their fires. Dried dung didn’t smell, he said when she turned up her nose. There was plenty of that scraped along the walls, if she searched hard enough.
She piled everything she could and tried to light the lucifer, but it flared and went out before anything smouldered and she threw it away in disgust and frustration.
She set out her little fire again and hovered over it as she struck the last match. This one flared and dropped onto the tinder. As it smouldered she recalled she had to blow it gently, adding little pieces with trembling fingers, just like Granny Simms did when her fire wouldn’t catch.
Slowly the little fire grew from a few twigs to a flaring ember of warmth and needed feeding with fresh stuff to burn. Just the sight of it made Mirren feel warm. If only there was a candle somewhere. Back to the storage holes and a fingertip search in case there was something there, and there was: just a stub, but a candle for company.
Up the stairs she went gingerly, in search of kindling and bits of plaster laths.
‘Thank you, house,’ she whispered into the walls. ‘Thanks for shelter and firelight but I need more wood. Where can I find wood?’
Then a strange thing happened. It was as if she could hear her dad’s voice in her head for the first time since the accident.
‘Mirren Gilchrist, use yer gumption, lassie. It’s all to hand.’
With her candle end she crawled up the ladder and saw the broken laths lying around the walls, a pile of dry kindling. She must chuck them down onto the flags and make a pile. This was dusty work but it kept her mind off the roar of the blizzard and the piles of snow gathering from the hole in the roof.
Downstairs was warmth, a feather bed, a lozenge to suck if she dared. Water could be heated in the brass tin over the fire and she popped in the lozenge to give it taste. This was using her gumption too. Whatever happened, the fire must be fed in the hearth. No one would come in the storm, but perhaps in the morning…
Waking at first light shivering, Mirren smelled smoke and smouldering embers. Her hoard was well and truly exhausted but there was a good supply upstairs. Time to melt more snow in the tin. Through the gap she could see blue sky and a few drifting flakes. She opened the shutter to a mysterious white mound, strange shapes, no walls or barns or rocks, just great waves of snow, in peaks like whipped cream. The devil wind was whipping up new shapes. Her tummy was rumbling with hunger and her legs were wobbly but there was nothing to eat here.
It was warmest sitting right by the fire, hidden under the archway, and when the blackened tin was hot she wrapped it in a sack to warm her feet like a hot-water bottle. The stones were now hot and if she stayed tight she was thawed enough to tingle, but the fire was the only thing being fed. She was feeling dizzy.
What was happening at Cragside? Had they discovered she was wagging off school? In some ways she was glad to be found out. Wasting schooling was doing her no good.
‘Whatever you do in life, lassie, get an eddy-cashun,’ her dad once said when he was sobered up. ‘You dinna want to end up like me. Even a girl needs a schooling.’
It had been easy in Scarperton, but this school was teaching her nothing and the teacher didn’t care. He was useless and smelled of whisky. How she hated that smell.
Up here it was peaceful, safe between thick walls. Someone must have lived here once, but who? If only she could live here with Mam and Dad. They could keep stock and make butter and cheese, and she could show Dad all she’d learned from Granddad.
Had Mam played here as a little girl? Was her spirit watching over her now? Mirren hoped so.
It was hard to be a motherless lamb with no memories of her mam, just a snapshot in a print dress. The mother of her imagination would be tall and pretty, with golden hair, and clever and sparkling, but no one at Cragside ever talked about her much when she asked questions. They clammed up and looked the other way when she pestered for more.
Did they own this house or did it belong to the bigwig in London who came for the shooting at Benton Hall? Why was it left to rot, unloved, abandoned?
Mirren made for the door, thinking if she kept in a straight line she might just make her way down like the sheep. Her courage failed when she opened the door on to a mountain of snow. She was trapped, fast in, as they said round here. Time to bank up the fire and pray. She was no match for the devil wind and the snow giants.
She sipped her hot water, pretending it was cocoa laced with the top of the milk. Mam and Dad would have loved this house but they weren’t here now. They were gone and she was on her own again. If someone didn’t come soon she would starve. How quickly night-time fears flee when the sun shines, but she sat like Cinderella at the hearth, too weak now to move.
When would they come?
4
Adey took one look at the sky and knew school would be out early. They must send a cart to see the child got back safely. Country kiddies took shelter in bad weather. They knew to lie low until it was safe, but Mirren was different and secretive these days and she might not do the right thing. Adey sent Joe to collect her just in case.
Now they were used to having her around the place, grown accustomed to her noisy chatter and questions. Questions. She was a bright one and her piano playing was coming on. All she lacked was practice and concentration, but she was little Miss Head-in-a-Book. It would be nice if she got to the girls’ secondary school like her mam. Her coming had brought life back to the place and no one could say she didn’t help out…
Then Joe blew in from the doorway, covered in snow.
‘You’re back, praise the Lord. Thanks for getting her, Joe. Where’s her ladyship?’ Adey searched for the child behind him.
‘She wasn’t there, Mother. Burrows said summat about her going home early and that’s not all. I had a word with Lizzie Halstead at the door. Mirren’s hardly been in school at all…’ he muttered.
‘The little minx, wait till I get my hands on her. What’s going on?’ Adey was all worked up with worry and fury.
Carrie was lurking at the stove and she turned pink. ‘Perhaps I should’ve said something earlier, Mrs Yewell, but our Emmot says that Mirren hates school and got the cane for fighting. They’ve been calling her names and Burrows makes her go in the baby class so she’s been off sick.’
‘Now you tell us!’ snapped Adey. ‘How long has this been going on? Oh, my giddy aunt, she’s out in that snow. Send for Tom. We’ll have to get up a search party.’ She felt the fear and panic rising and went for her coat.
‘Hang on, Mother. What good’ll that do in this wild darkness?’ came Joe’s predictable reply. ‘She could be anywhere by now. She’s a sensible lass even if she’s stubborn with it. She’ll have found cover. Tom and the village boys will look for her in the morning.’
‘We can’t wait that long. She’ll catch her death,’ Adey was shouting back. ‘Wait till I see her, scaring us half to death. You’ll have to take the strap to her and teach her a lesson.’
‘Wait on, Adey. Lass’s in enough trouble as it is, gadding off into the hills. She doesn’t know the lay of the land and not the size of tuppence ha’penny. We should have kept a closer eye on her ourselves. We used to be able to sniff out trouble with our lads but we’ve got out of the habit, and she’s a deep one, at that.’
‘You could take the dogs out with a storm lantern,’ Adey pleaded.
‘Don’t be daft. And have two of us lost in the snow? We’ll do the job proper with a gang stretched over the moor. Mind you, she’s a right devil running off from the schoolmaster. I thought only lads did that,’ said Joe, scratching his head.
‘We’ve got to do something,’ screamed Adey, pacing up and down the kitchen, clattering her pans.
Carrie started to cry. ‘I’m not a tale teller, as you know, but I reckon Burrows had made her life a right misery. Emmot says she’s top of the class but she has to sit at the back and shut up or teach the dunces to do their letters. That’s not right, is it?’
‘Poor lass has had a right miserable time but never thought to tell us,’ said Joe, slurping his tea in a way that always got on Adey’s nerves.
‘We didn’t bring her all this way to lose her in the snow,’ Adey sighed. ‘Happen we should never have brought her here in the first place. It’s not like living in a town. She never said a word…’
What if Mirren was already lost? What sort of Christmas would they have in mourning? How would she ever forgive herself? The girl’d been taking her bullying in silence and that showed courage, and to put up with Burrows in the state he was in nowadays. He ought to be reported. Were they such ogres that she couldn’t tell them her troubles?
If she came out of this alive, they’d have to think things afresh, perhaps put her in a private school, but where would they find the cash for that?
‘Dear Lord, keep the child safe for one more day, temper the wind to the shorn lamb,’ Joe prayed, and they bowed their heads in the kitchen. ‘Show us the way…’
Outside the wind roared and the blizzard raged but no one got a wink of sleep that night. They were helpless in the face of the storm. It was out of their hands now.
The fire was still crackling with more broken-off laths but Mirren was now weak with hunger and fear. Why didn’t they come? Would they ever find her? Perhaps they had given her up for lost?
Outside the door a cruel silvery world shimmered with icicles cascading down from the roof ends but she was too tired to wonder at the beauty of it all. She wanted to be home with Gran in Cragside kitchen, back with Carrie making faces, back sneaking titbits to Jet under the table.
It was melting, though. There were drips plopping from the hole in the roof, but no other sound. Then she heard the faint bark of dogs in the distance. Her heart thumped with relief. Someone was out there searching for her.
‘I’m here, over here!’ she squeaked, but her voice was too quiet. She couldn’t open the door for the weight of snow and she was desperate. What would the Scouts do now?
Uncle George’s book had served her well so far. There was a chapter on camping and sending signals, but she’d skipped that bit. If she was high up perhaps they would see her smoke.
Mirren piled on more laths. The only thing to hand was her new winter coat and she was in enough trouble as it was, so she grabbed a smelly sack and tried wafting it over the flames but it caught alight and she had to throw it onto the fire. Perhaps the blue smoke might be visible.
She sat down, exhausted and tearful. Come on old house, she prayed, help me one more time and I promise, on my blue temperance badge, I’ll pay you back.
There was always the hope that the kindred spirits who had once lived here would come to her rescue. She opened the one working shutter and yelled until she was puce and dizzy.
Then a tall boy in a peaked tweed cap, carrying a proddy stick, climbed over a drift and waved.
‘She’s here! Over here! Now then, young Miriam, let’s be having you,’ smiled a pair of dark brown eyes. She’d never seen him before in the village. He was about fourteen.
‘Who are you?’
‘Jack Sowerby, from The Fleece. You must be wrong in the head to go gallivanting up World’s End…’
‘It wasn’t snowing when I left,’ she answered back. No wonder she’d never seen him. Yewells didn’t go in pubs. They were Satan’s houses. ‘Anyway, the house found me and kept me safe.’
Her rescuer didn’t seem interested in her explanation but kept on whistling and shouting.
‘She’s alive, up here!’ he called, and suddenly there were dogs sniffing at her, faces peering under sack hoods with burning cheeks, and she was pulled through the window to safety.
‘So you spent the night at World’s End,’ laughed Uncle Tom, shoving in her hand a flask of hot soup, which burned her throat. ‘Sip it slowly. You’re a lucky blighter to find this ruin and hole up like a lost sheep. Happen you’re a Yewell through and through. Now, young lady, don’t you ever do such a daft thing again. You have to treat these hills with respect or they’ll take your fingers off in a few hours and your life by nightfall. Mam and Dad are going mad with worry at Cragside. Don’t you go putting lives at risk again…silly mutt!’ Uncle Tom stared at her with cold eyes and she cried.
‘Now what’ve I said?’ he muttered. ‘Don’t take on. Drink yer soup.’
It was creamy broth with bits of meat and veg in it, the most wonderful soup in the world at that moment, but she still felt dizzy and floppy.
Uncle Tom had never shouted at her before. The lad, Jack, peered in through the window. ‘She’s got a fire going…She’s canny enough, Tom, to think of that.’ He turned to her with smiling eyes. ‘I reckon we’ve got another Miriam o’ the Dale here. How did you think all this up?’
‘I read Uncle George’s book.’ At least Jack Sowerby didn’t think she was stupid. ‘I tried to do smoke signals but it didn’t work.’
‘That’s grand. They’ll be right proud of you when they find out,’ he said, but Uncle Tom was scowling.
‘No they won’t. She’s for it when she gets back, if the look on my mam’s face is anything to go by. She’s lost us a day’s work.’
‘The snow did that for you. We can’t blame her for a blizzard. The poor kid’s half starved. Do you want a piggyback?’ Jack offered.
But Mirren shook her head. ‘No thank you, I’ll walk. I’ve caused enough bother. I don’t suppose you’ve done anything as daft as me?’ she asked them both.
Uncle Tom suddenly roared. ‘His mam says Jack ran away on the first day at school ’cos he couldn’t count up the cardboard pennies so he hid in the cellar of the pub and she and Wilf were run ragged trying to find him.’ He lifted her up as she was struggling and her legs had turned to jelly. He carried her down to the waiting sled, to the warmth of a horse steaming, then homewards over the snow.
It was a cold crisp morning with a weak winter sun, but the journey down was like bumping over ice and the poor horse slithered. How could she have wandered so far uphill–and to the end of the world, they said?
She turned to say goodbye to her house but it had already disappeared from view, hidden and secret once more. One day she must come back and thank it properly.
They were all lined up waiting in the kitchen as she was carried in and inspected for frostbite. Someone had blasted off a gun to give notice that she was safe. Two blasts and it would have meant she was a goner, so Carrie whispered.
‘You’ve given us such a fright, Miriam. Whatever were you thinking off?’ said Granny, rubbing her dry with a towel.
‘Not now, Adey,’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘She’s frozen through. Get her in that zinc tub and warmed up. Plenty of time for a sermon when she’s come to. Carrie can see to it.’
Soon Mirren was soaking in the warm tub, her hands and toes tingling, and then Carrie was towelling her dry.
‘Weren’t you scared all alone at World’s End?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t alone. There were animals sheltering in there, and when the fire was lit, I heard—’
‘They say that ruin is haunted. You wouldn’t catch me up there for love nor money,’ Carrie added.
‘It’s a kind place. I didn’t see anyone. The walls are thick and warm.’
‘You’re a braver lass than me…World’s End is unlucky for some. That’s why it’s been left. It belonged to one of yours years back. They said his wife was a witch but I never believed it…your great-granny, Sukie Yewell. She never went to church. They say…but I shouldn’t be putting ideas in your head. You’ve had a lucky escape. We thought you were a goner. The snow’s taken many a soul off these moors. They know about you skipping school, by the way. I had to tell them.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Mirren, splashing the water with her foot. Carrie was wrong. World’s End was a kind house. It had sheltered her and saved her life. Now she must get dressed and face the grilling downstairs.
Soon everyone in Windebank knew the child was safe, found in the old ruin at World’s End. George Thursby, the postman, brought an update straight from Cragside lane end, telling Miss Halstead how the town child was found. Soon it passed from cottage to shop and pub that Mirren Gilchrist was a truant from school on account of her beating by Mr Burrows. He was called by the managers to account for such rumours and reprimanded for taking whisky bottles into school. Only his war record prevented his dismissal. His wife went to her mother’s on account of her health. The village was agog at the gossip, but Mirren was to know nothing of all this.
She was trying to be extra good for her grandparents, keeping her head down, waiting for the moment when she would be summoned to make an account of her behaviour. And so near to Christmas too.
‘Why does nobody like World’s End?’ she asked at the dinner table.
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, child,’ said Gran. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Carrie said it’s haunted by a witch,’ she replied.
‘Nonsense, she’s making a cake out of a biscuit again. There’s nothing wrong with that place that a bit of repair wouldn’t sort out but it’s too far out to be much use to us, especially in winter. You did well to find it.’
‘It found me, I think. Can we mend it?’
‘Of course not, lass. There’s no money for that sort of whimsy.’
Grandpa was taking his tea into his study to do his sermon for the Christmas carol concert. Being a preacher was important and he was not to be disturbed when she passed his door.
Carrie began brushing Mirren’s hair out. It crackled on the brush.
‘Ouch!’ she cried as the lugs were combed out.
‘We should be paddling your backside with that brush, young lady, not pampering your vanity. Disobellience in one so young is a black mark. Truanting is what boys do, not nice girls,’ said Gran.
‘She’s learned her lesson, haven’t you?’ said Carrie, pulling Mirren’s hair so she nodded meekly.
‘Spare the rod, spoil the child, the Good Book says,’ sniffed Gran.
They all lined up against her two days later-Gran, Grandpa and Uncle Tom–and she stood as if a culprit before the constable.
‘We’re really disappointed in you, Miriam. If you were unhappy you should have told us instead of wagging off like that. You could have fallen in the waterfall or in a bog and no one would have known where you were. We are led to believe you’re a clever girl not a dunce…We never took you for a quitter.’ Grandpa Joe wagged his finger like he did in the pulpit when he spat out about the fiery furnace waiting for sinners. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’
‘I hate it there. I want to go back to St Mary’s school,’ Mirren sobbed.
‘That’s no answer,’ he said, ignoring her outburst. ‘It’s bound to take time for you to settle in. Tomorrow you will go down and apologise to Mr Burrows, and knuckle down to be a good scholar.’
‘I won’t,’ she snapped back. ‘He hates me. He won’t teach me anything.’
‘You will do as you’re told, young lady. I give the orders in this house. You must learn that when you do something wrong you take your punishment. Write a neat letter of apology in your best handwriting and I will check it over. You’ve got to get back to study. We’ll help you with that bit and that’ll be the end on t’matter. As for punishment, I’m sure you realise that there’ll be no pantomime trips or Christmas treats for you this year. Father Christmas doesn’t bring gifts to naughty children. There’ll be no outings until I’m sure you’ll not let the family name down.’
‘I hate you all,’ Mirren screamed, and Gran cuffed her around the ear, a right sidewinder. It stung her cheek and she stared, shocked. The room fell silent.
‘Out of my sight, you rude ungrateful child. You put other lives in danger and shamed us before the village. I will not speak to you until you show due remorse. Go to your room at once.’
Even Miriam knew she’d gone too far and pushed Gran into clouting her, but she would not go back to that boring classroom to be caned and humiliated all over again.
The next day she sidled out of the side door, down the cinder path from the yard to the little summer hut where, she’d been told, on sunny days Grandpa sat outside, smoking his pipe and looking down the valley at the view, dreaming up words for his preaching.
It was just a wooden shed with an open front and railings round, and a bench inside out of the breeze. No one would find her there, she thought. She needed to calm her thudding heart and think of what to write to Burrows.
The bench was icy, and icicles hung from the roof like lollipops. How she wished she was back up on the tops at World’s End, far away in her own fireside. If she was grown up she would run away for ever and make that hidy-hole safe from prying people; somewhere to get away from meddlers.
She sat hunched up, trying to summon up courage to go back in, when she sensed at the corner of her eye someone standing to the side, hovering, not knowing whether to cough or not. It was Jack Sowerby. She glowered at him, hoping he’d slink away.
‘Hutch up,’ he said. ‘In a bit of hot water, I hear. Tom was down at The Fleece telling Mam all about it. I thought you might need a friend.’
‘No, go away!’
‘Pity I sort of wondered if we could find a way round the bother at school. It’s not a bad school.’
‘It’s a rubbishy school,’ Mirren snapped. ‘I hate old Burrows’.
‘Why?’
‘I just do, and he smells of whisky,’ she replied, sitting with her arms folded in defiance of Jack softening her up.
‘Let me tell you a story about Harold Burrows. For one, he’s not old, just over thirty. For two, he’s a brave man who won medals in the war. For three, he saved many men’s lives and he was injured in the head. For four, I’m told he gets terrible headaches that make him scream out in the night with pain. The whisky gives him heart. Shall I go on?’ Jack paused, searching her scowling face.
‘So what? He’s caned me for nothing and doesn’t teach me anything.’ Mirren stared at him.
‘What do you do to help him?’ Jack stared her back, his dark eyes piercing into hers. She looked away into the distance, not sure where all this was leading. Teachers were there to drum stuff in. Mirren had never thought of them as having headaches and homes and pain, just like everyone else. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on, you know how to be helpful, fetch and carry, look interested when he’s talking. You could be quite pretty if you smiled more.’
‘Thanks for nothing,’ she quipped, but was interested just the same.
‘There you go, thinking of yourself. You’ve got the brains, so use them. Work it out like arithmetic. Don’t sit there feeling sorry for yourself. Give him some hope by passing the blessed qualifying exams. Show him you’re a winner. If you get stuck I’ll always help if I can.’
Why was Jack being so kind? Was it something to do with the fact that Uncle Tom was visiting his mam a lot?
‘Is World’s End haunted?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘What do you think? You’re the one that slept there.’
‘I wish I could go and live up there like a shepherd, and go for walks and keep hens and not have to go to school,’ she sighed.
‘By the time you’re ready to leave, it’ll have fallen down. It’s like an eagle’s eyrie up there, but very lonely,’ Jack smiled, showing a line of white teeth.
‘We mustn’t let it fall down. It’s my friend and I want to live up there one day,’ Mirren replied.
‘Don’t be daft. Whatever could you do up there? It’s a poor living off thin topsoil. Even I know that.’
‘I don’t care. They mustn’t pull it down. Uncle Tom could mend it.’ Then she remembered that she was in the doghouse and Uncle Tom wouldn’t do anything if she didn’t go back to school.
