Advent Page 13

  ‘No one ever sees you when you’re sneaking around, Horace,’ Marina said admiringly.

  ‘Followed him all the way down to the house. Bet you never saw a thing.’ Gav was pretty sure he had, for an instant, but it wasn’t worth mentioning. ‘Come to visit then?’ It sounded like an accusation.

  Marina answered instead. ‘I just told you that. Anyway, what are you doing here this morning? Shouldn’t you be in your school instead of following us around?’

  ‘I weren’t following!’

  ‘You just said you followed me,’ Gav put in.

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s different.’ Horace glared at him before appealing to Marina. ‘Never seen him before in my life, have I? I see some bloke I never heard of coming out of Miss Clifton’s, walking down the drive, what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Gavin is Gwenny’s nephew. That means his mother’s her sister. He’s allowed.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Gav said, and this time he had the small satisfaction of seeing his sarcastic tone hitting its intended target, though Marina remained happily oblivious to the tension between the two boys.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t jump out of the rhododendrons like that. You gave us a fright. What are you doing here today? Are you going to come exploring?’

  ‘Just on my way out,’ Horace muttered.

  ‘You weren’t going to stay? What’s wrong? You don’t look pleased to see me.’

  The boy took off his cap and ran his fingers through his short hair. ‘Course I am. Got to go, though.’

  She pouted. ‘Why? We were going down towards the lookout. Can’t you come for a bit?’

  ‘No. Not today, OK?’

  ‘Oh all right then. How about at the weekend? Gavin will still be here then. We can explore together.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Horace looked about as pleased with the suggestion as Gav was. He jammed his cap back on.

  ‘Good. So is today one of those holidays? Or are you being bad again?’

  Horace blushed. ‘Course not.’ Now he was doing his best to pretend Gavin wasn’t even there. ‘Anyway, I got to go, innit.’

  ‘You’re acting very funny, Horace. What is it?’

  The boy opened his mouth to dismiss the question, but stopped himself. He was, indeed, very fidgety; even Marina had noticed. He eyed Gavin, who thought it was pretty obvious what was wrong with the kid but certainly wasn’t going to try and explain concepts like competitiveness and jealousy to Marina.

  Nothing in Horace’s look prepared him for the boy’s question.

  ‘You here with your mum then?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Your mum. Miss Clifton’s sister, yeah? She staying here too?’

  ‘Er—’ Gav began, just as Marina chimed in, ‘No. Actually, Gavin’s mother doesn’t like him. It’s because he’s different. They sent him away on his own – was that it?’ Gav had no idea how to shut her up. ‘He told me earlier. That’s why—’

  Fortunately Horace rescued him. ‘So there’s no one else staying?’

  ‘No. Horace? What’s wrong?’

  It wasn’t just the grey light. The boy did look slightly pale.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. Seen Miss Clifton this morning?’

  Gav and Marina looked at each other. Her breeziness deserted her, all at once.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Just wondering.’

  Marina gave no sign of answering, so, ‘She’s gone off somewhere,’ he said. ‘No one’s sure where.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I know, don’t I? Saw her down on the rocks just now.’

  Gav’s heart lurched. Marina was stung too. ‘What? You can’t have. Where?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. Don’t tell me what I saw. On them rocks by the cove. Where that ledge is, going out in the water.’

  ‘When? Yesterday?’

  ‘No, I told you! Don’t you listen? Just this morning. Earlier on. I just come across, I tied the boat up, I was coming up the path by the shore and I saw her out there.’

  ‘You can’t have.’

  Horace obviously didn’t take contradiction well. ‘Oh yeah? Why not?’

  ‘Caleb said she’s not here.’

  This was the wrong thing to say. Horace threw his hands in the air, fists smacking against branches. ‘Caleb! Bloody hell, what does he know about it?’

  ‘Caleb knows whenever someone’s here.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid! Doesn’t know when I’m here, does he?’

  ‘Of course he does, Horace.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Well in that case why—’

  Gav interrupted. ‘Is that why you asked about my mum?’ A faintly uneasy feeling was stirring in him. Horace and Marina stopped arguing. The antagonism slowly drained out of the kid’s expression.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Marina said.

  ‘You saw someone who might have been Aunt Gwen or might have been someone who looked a lot like her.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Horace said, suddenly grateful. ‘See, that’s what’s weird. I was sure it was her . . .’

  ‘It can’t have been,’ Marina put in.

  Horace ignored her. ‘. . . but then she didn’t look quite right, know what I mean? And she was . . .’ The sentence trailed off. Horace looked back and forth between Marina and Gavin, unsure now which of them was his ally.

  ‘She was what?’ Gav prompted.

  ‘It wasn’t her!’

  But Horace had made his choice. Something was weighing on him and he’d decided to confide in Gavin.

  ‘I dunno. It was weird. She was like . . . bending over the river.’ Horace mimed the action, crouching low and forwards, his hands waving strangely near his feet. ‘Like she’d dropped something in the water and was looking for it, but in slow motion. And then . . . Yeah. Well.’ Gav must have failed to look sufficiently impressed by whatever the kid wanted to tell him. Horace swept his cap off again and rubbed his head. ‘Look, I got to get going.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I know,’ Marina said. ‘You must have seen someone else who looks a bit like Gwen. Anyone can go along that bit by the shore. And whoever it was dropped something by accident and was looking for it, and that’s what you saw.’

  ‘You think I’m stupid or something?’

  Marina flinched.

  ‘You think I don’t know what I’m looking at? I got perfect eyes, me. And I know everyone round here. And OK.’ His temper was up. He straightened his shoulders belligerently, as if he was now coming out with something he hadn’t meant to say but could no longer hold back. ‘I know Miss Clifton’s been acting weird recently. Yeah? Really weird. Bet you never noticed, did you? You never notice stuff like that.’

  ‘Hey,’ Gav said. Marina’s head hung so low her chin looked like it might bruise her breastbone.

  Horace now ignored him, talking fast and angrily. ‘Saturday and Sunday she asked me to go see her. Bet you never realised, did you? You don’t know everything goes on here. You nor Caleb. Something weird’s going on with her, I’m telling you. You need to keep your eyes open like I do. I know lots more than anyone thinks. Lots more.’

  ‘I know you do, Horace,’ Marina mumbled from her chest.

  Only seconds earlier Gav had been about to tell him to shut up and leave her alone, but now he was thinking of the empty house, the voice outside in the dark, the room littered with crackpot books and demented notes. The winter rose.

  ‘What do you mean, something weird?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he began, sulky but superior. ‘Hard to describe, innit.’ He waited a moment to be sure he had their attention. ‘But, OK, couple of days ago, Sunday. She said would I stop at the lodge before I went home. And when I did, she’s, like, mental. Really mental. I mean, nice and everything, friendly, like usual, but she’s so excited she can’t hardly speak. Really wound up. I thought she was pretty freaky in the morning, but by the time I went up to say bye—’

  ‘Wait,’ Marina interrupted. ‘In the morning?’<
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  ‘Yeah. I stopped in at hers before I come and see you, and then on the way back as well in the afternoon.’

  ‘You never told me you’d done that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you don’t know everything I do, do you? And anyway, she’s, like, all secretive. Kept smiling at me and going like this,’ and he touched a finger to his lips. ‘Weird. She wouldn’t say why she wanted me to do all that stuff for her, but she—’

  ‘What stuff?’

  He looked at her exasperatedly. ‘Let me finish, all right?’

  Gav would have been happy to point out that Horace hadn’t even started, at least not to any intelligible purpose, but he wanted to hear about Auntie Gwen.

  ‘So look, on Saturday, the day before, yeah? She grabs me before I go home and says will I go check the post for her in Falmouth.’

  ‘The post?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s got that mailbox there. Gave me the key and all. She said she’s expecting a letter and it’s really important. And she wants me to bring it when I come Sunday, the next day. She said that like fifteen times, like I’m some kind of moron. So anyway, she gives me the key to the box, yeah, and that evening I go and check for her and there’s her letter. So I bring it over for her Sunday morning, like she asked.’ Marina was nodding. ‘I stop by there before I come down to see you, like I said. And when I give her the letter she . . .’ He shrugged exaggeratedly as if lost for words. ‘She looks at it like she’s almost afraid to open it. Like it’s a bomb. And then like I told you, OK, she says will I come by again in the afternoon before I go. So I did, and as soon as I open the door, she gives me this big hug and kiss and she’s, like, totally off her head. Asking crazy questions. Over and over again. Mental.’

  ‘Like what?’ Marina said, when Horace’s incoherent narrative showed no sign of resuming. Gav hadn’t made much of an effort to keep up with whatever the boy was talking about, but he did find himself wondering about Auntie Gwen waiting to receive a letter. Which day was it Mum had got her letter, the letter he’d stolen and read on the train? Last Thursday? Would Mum have written back to tell her he was coming? Was he the thing she’d been so excited about?

  ‘I dunno. It was just weird, OK? Like first she was asking about my mum. Like, was she going to that church meeting thing on Monday. All about it. She must have asked, like, five times. “What time is it? Is the priest always there? How long does it usually last?” How was I supposed to know all that stuff? But she’s going on and on about it. On and on. “It’s at lunchtime, isn’t it?” Lunchtime, lunchtime, like that. Then she kept asking where we’d been, like she was my mum. “What were you doing all day? Where did you go?” Asking if we’d been to the chapel. Did your dad go with us? Or Caleb? “Are you sure? Are you sure?” It was like she was too off her head to listen.’

  Marina evidently couldn’t find anything in what Horace said to get worried about, though for his sake she tried her best to. ‘Oh,’ she ventured, after a pause. ‘Yes, that does sound a bit odd.’

  In all his life Gavin had never met a worse liar. Even that polite half-truth came out of her mouth blaring its insincerity.

  ‘You don’t get it.’

  ‘No, Horace, I—’

  ‘All right, then, forget it. Forget I spoke.’

  ‘Horace—’

  ‘Just forget it. I got to go anyway. Oh, and something else.’ His face had darkened with sulky resentment. ‘You won’t believe this either. Someone was singing. Yeah, I know, I’m making it up. Well I’m not. I heard it.’

  ‘Singing?’

  Determined to have the last word, Horace was already ducking away. He moved amazingly deftly, barely stirring the glossy leaves. ‘Yeah. Heard it in the woods near the chapel. Just now. Knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Wait, Horace, I—’

  ‘See you, then.’

  ‘Horace!’

  But the small figure was already hard to make out among the twisted shadows. They stared after him, Marina stricken, Gavin just happy to see the back of him.

  ‘Don’t forget the weekend!’ Marina shouted after him. The boy bobbed away and vanished altogether in the undergrowth, heading for the edge of the woods.

  ‘I think he decided to make an exit,’ Gav said.

  ‘A what?’

  Gav suspected that Marina had no experience with displays of temper. In fact she didn’t seem to have much experience of anything. She was the only person he’d ever met beside whom he felt positively worldly.

  ‘He’s upset. Wants to make it clear to us. So what was all that about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was still watching the direction he’d gone, as if she expected him to pop back out of the bushes any second. Gavin waited a while in silence in case she was right.

  ‘But where’s he from?’ he asked, when he was sure the kid had gone. He couldn’t get his head round the idea of an ordinary schoolboy popping up in these woods like that. ‘I mean, where does he live?’

  ‘Across the river somewhere.’ She sounded distracted. ‘Gwen says his mother’s a kind of housekeeper for people there. She’s from China, which is all the way on the other side of the world, past the sunrise.’

  OK, Gav thought.

  ‘So he just comes to . . .’ He was going to say ‘play’, but the word didn’t fit Pendurra. ‘Um, visit sometimes?’

  ‘Yes. He has his own boat. I’ve seen it. It doesn’t have a name. I think that’s wrong, but he won’t listen to my suggestions.’

  ‘So what was he on about? All that stuff about Aunt Gwen?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s not usually like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She was pinching her lip unhappily. ‘He just ran off. Normally he likes talking to me. Gwenny didn’t tell me anything about seeing him this weekend either.’

  ‘Well, at least we know she’s here now, right?’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘Well . . . wherever he said he saw her. By the river.’

  ‘Oh. No, he can’t have.’

  ‘Because Caleb said she’s not here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gav stared at her, but she gave no sign that there might be anything strange or surprising about what she’d just said.

  ‘So even if someone else says they’ve actually seen her, he just knows.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said absently, looking around the woods.

  ‘That’s a bit hard to—’ Believe, he was going to finish, but stopped himself. He’d had this conversation before, over and over again, when he was a bit younger than Marina. Except that he’d always been on the other side of it. The wrong side. So why was he trying to sound like his parents again?

  ‘I think we should go back to the house,’ she said.

  ‘Huh? Why? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know. Things aren’t like they usually are this morning. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we go see if we can find Aunt Gwen?’

  ‘We don’t know where she is.’

  ‘No, I mean check out whatever Horace saw. Wherever that is.’

  ‘Oh.’ She shook her head. ‘Down by the cove past the chapel? No. I don’t want to go that far. I promised Caleb.’ She fingered her neck, exactly as if an invisible lead were attached to an invisible collar and she was checking whether it was tight.

  ‘What’s this chapel place?’

  ‘It’s a house all made out of stone. Just one room. It’s off by itself in the woods, out towards the head. No one ever lived there, people used to use it to think about God. That’s an imaginary person who some people think made the world. It’s very old, nearly as old as the old parts of the house. Maybe we can go tomorrow.’

  Gav just watched her worried expression until he’d confirmed to himself that she was again perfectly serious. ‘You don’t do much RS, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Her head drooped. ‘You know all about chapels already.’

  ‘No, really, I jus
t . . . Sorry. So, this place is on your land somewhere? Like private?’

  ‘That’s right. Along that way.’ She pointed, though one direction looked exactly the same as another to Gav.

  Something was nagging at Gav’s memory, but he couldn’t pin it down. ‘So why was Horace talking about it like that? All that stuff about Aunt Gwen being excited?’

  ‘I already told you, I don’t understand. Come on, let’s get going back.’

  ‘No. Wait.’ He was beginning to find Marina’s nervousness a bit irritating. Or maybe it was that he really didn’t want to end up back with the adults, stammering and looking at his feet. ‘We ought to try and help figure out what Aunt Gwen’s doing, right?’

  ‘Let’s just go and tell Caleb.’

  Gav found himself wanting to postpone another conversation with Caleb for as long as possible. Perhaps this time he’d be blamed for making Marina break her promise to go back to the house. ‘Look, how far is it to that chapel? That could have been her Horace heard, right? That singing. Maybe, I don’t know, something’s happened to her.’ Maybe she’s finally gone completely mad. But how would you tell? his father’s voice sneered in his head. ‘Couldn’t we just go and check quickly?’

  ‘You can’t get down to that path from here. This way ends at the lookout.’

  There was something about Auntie Gwen and a chapel, Gav thought. That was what was bugging him, at the back of his thoughts, somewhere. But how could he possibly have known anything about it? He tried to remember whether there’d been a mention in the scrapbook. ‘So what’s inside it? Is it just like a mini church?’

  She frowned as if even talking about it made her unhappy. ‘I don’t know. It’s always kept locked. It’s too important to be left open.’

  ‘What’s important about it?’

  ‘It just is. No one’s supposed to go there. Someone tried once, a long time ago. Gwen told me the story. They were in terrible pain or something. There was someone else too, more recently. After that Daddy hid the key in the old office.’

  Gav was reminded of the rumours Hester had mentioned. ‘Is there treasure in there or something?’