Sabrina Fludde Page 11

  ‘What are we doing? I don’t understand.’

  Abren couldn’t but ask, even if it gave the game away. Her mother turned and looked at her, and for a moment Abren thought that she was going to have to own up about not knowing where she was. But then a vehicle came lurching down a track which joined the road, and her mother said, ‘What are we doing, indeed! Gwyn should have been here waiting for us, but he’s late as usual. Look at him!’

  The vehicle pulled round in the road – an old Land Rover whose cough and splutter made the taxi sound healthy. Behind the wheel sat a boy in dungarees and a checkered shirt. He was older than Abren, had the same untidy hair, and their mother’s eyes. Abren’s brother Gwyn, obviously.

  He drew to a halt. Abren looked at him, her heart thundering. He nodded tersely, and she smiled back. Then he smiled at their mother, and something fleeting seemed to pass between them, without words. She went and hugged him. Neither of them said anything. Quickly and efficiently they loaded the luggage into the Land Rover, then they climbed in, setting Abren between them on the front seat.

  They started up the track, travelling in silence. Abren looked at her brother’s face. She didn’t recognise it. Didn’t recognise anything about him at all! Her own brother – but she might never have set eyes on him before!

  It was a sickening moment for a girl who’d banked so much on getting home and finding her memory. Abren watched the landscape in trepidation as the Land Rover spluttered up the track. This was the landscape of her home, but its dark trees and plunging drops, grassy meadows and little streams meant nothing to her. She might never have seen those grazing sheep, or those browny-red birds wheeling in the sky, or those old boundary walls.

  The Land Rover carried on, like an instrument of torture. Abren tried not to panic, but failed miserably. What if she reached journey’s end and still didn’t recognise anything? Not her home, nor her mother, nor her school friends, nor anything at all about her old life? The game would be up, and she’d have to confess. But, worse than that, she’d have to face a life without a memory. Without a childhood and a past.

  With nothing but what she had now.

  Slowly, the Land Rover pulled round a great sweep in the track. Ahead of her Abren suddenly saw an ivy-covered ruin with tumble-down barns behind it. The Land Rover drew close to them, and to Abren’s surprise she saw curtains at windows and pots of geraniums on sills. Smoke was rising from a chimney. It wasn’t a ruin after all!

  It was her home!

  Gwyn drove into a yard between the house and the barns. ‘Here we are,’ he said, relief in his voice. ‘Back at last. Back at Blaen Hafren.’

  Abren stared at the house, and couldn’t move or speak. She waited for the moment when it would all come flooding back. But Blaen Hafren stared back in silence. It was just some old ramshackle farmstead, stuck up a track. It was nowhere special.

  Nowhere that Abren remembered.

  The mountain man

  Abren sat in her bedroom, surrounded by luggage. Her mother brought up the last bag and dumped it down, then left the room, pulling the door behind her as if she knew that something was wrong and that Abren wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Her footsteps faded on the tiny winding staircase, and the house fell silent.

  Abren sniffed the air as if she’d never smelt this musty bedroom before. Her own bedroom – but it felt as strange to her as the bedroom in Compass House. As strange as the railway bridge had felt when Abren had first gone there. As strange as that first night on the Bytheways’ sofa-bed.

  It was as if Abren had never smelt this musty air before, or seen the old oak beams and dipping floorboards of her bedroom. Never sat at this dressing table with its speckled mirror, or washed at this marble dresser with its jug and bowl. They could have been museum exhibits. They didn’t feel like a part of her life.

  She turned away, her expression grim, and started unpacking. Each item, as she brought it out, told more of a story than anything in this room. Underneath the new clothes which her mother had brought her were gifts which the Morgans had pressed on her. Soap and towels from the blue-and-white bathroom, books from their shelves, banners full of sweet dreams, which had once hung over her head. And last of all – completely unexpectedly –

  ‘Sir Henry Morgan’s cutlass!’

  Abren lifted it out. The cutlass had been wrapped carefully in layers of paper and a note had been attached to it, which read, ‘Never be afraid again – All our love, Pen and Henry.’

  A lump formed in Abren’s throat. It had been their only pirate treasure, but they had given it to her. Gently she removed the paper. The cutlass gleamed in the afternoon light – cold steel, and scary, too, even though Abren knew that if she put her finger on the blade, the edge would be blunt.

  Abren wrapped it up again, and put it in a drawer with clothes on top, as if it were a special secret, belonging to another life. Then she sat on the bed and wondered at herself. What sort of girl was she, whose memories began and ended in Pengwern? What sort of girl, who could forget her family and her old life? She felt ashamed. Blamed herself, yet again. Felt hot and panicky and sick.

  Suddenly, as if she couldn’t stand her musty bedroom any more, Abren jumped up. She had to go outside, breathe fresh air, get away on her own. Perhaps then, without her mother watching her, and her brother staring awkwardly, as if not knowing what to say – perhaps only then would everything come back.

  Abren hurried through the house, trying to work out how to tell her mother that after months away, all she wanted was to be alone. But she never had to. Her mother was out in the back pantry having words with Gwyn. She didn’t notice Abren slipping outside, crossing the yard, finding the stream which ran down the back of the house, and walking up beside it, lost in thought.

  Abren walked until she found a waterfall, which she didn’t remember, just like everything else. She clambered up beside its pools, shoots and gulleys, and found herself on the edge of the forest. Shadows fell across her, and she felt small beside the great trees. Felt like a nobody. A nobody without a memory.

  Abren started up between the trees, climbing over roots and fallen logs, scrambling up a carpet of pine needles and following a path cut by the stream. Time passed, but she didn’t notice until she emerged on to a vast open grassland, with the sun lowering in the sky. She looked at hills rolling off in all directions, and valleys fading into the night. The view stretched for miles, and she suddenly realised that it was no ordinary hill that she had just climbed.

  It was a mountain. And what a mountain, too! Abren heard a symphony of breezes rippling through the long grass, birds singing their goodnight songs and dogs barking up ahead of her somewhere. She looked at tall reeds and bright mosses, stretching away like a sea that carried on for ever. And she saw the world beyond her, hill after hill and valley after valley, spreading out like a vast blue shadow which had no end.

  Abren gazed at it all, completely mesmerised. It was only when the sky darkened and the rim of the forest faded with the light that she realised how late it was. She turned back, looking for the stream which was her only path home. Suddenly, a man appeared in front of her, looming out of the fading light.

  Abren had thought she was alone up on the mountain, but the man straightened up from a smoky fire which wrapped itself around him like a grey cloak. A pack of dogs played at his feet – steel-grey dogs with strange red spots. Perhaps they were the dogs that Abren had heard earlier. He waved a hand, and Abren waved back, taking in long leather boots, grass-green canvas trousers full of useful-looking camper’s pockets, fiery gold-red hair and strikingly black eyes. A sky-blue shirt was open at the man’s neck, and a chain hung round it, thick with silver charms.

  Abren stared at the charms, and couldn’t take her eyes off them. The man smiled.

  ‘Are you lost?’ he said. ‘Out on your own?’

  ‘I’m – I’m with my mother,’ Abren said. ‘She’s just behind me.’

  The man looked behind her, and the mountain w
as empty. Not a sign of anybody’s mother. He smiled again. Looks like your mother has got lost,’ he said. ‘Where are you from?’

  Abren didn’t want to tell him, but she somehow couldn’t help herself.

  ‘I’m from Blaen Hafren,’ she replied.

  The man looked at her as if she weren’t just mildly entertaining any more, but suddenly of real interest.

  ‘Blaen Hafren?’ he said, and his eyes seemed to tighten in his head. Like sharp black lenses they focused on Abren as if they hadn’t really noticed her before.

  ‘What of it?’ Abren said.

  The man shook his head. ‘So the old girl’s back. And so are you. The lights are on again, are they? You must be Abren.’

  He took a step towards her and the dogs leapt out of his way. His charms glinted at his neck, and Abren stared at them again. The man moved closer, holding out his hand.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said.

  Abren panicked and cried out. Immediately a sound came from the forest – answering as if on cue!

  ‘Abren! Abren – is that you?’

  Abren could have wept with sheer relief. ‘It’s my mother!’ she said.

  The man withdrew his hand. ‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘Tell her an old friend was asking after her. That he’s glad to know the lights are on again at Blaen Hafren, and he’s glad she’s found her Abren. Tell her that we’ll all meet soon, and that her old friend hasn’t forgotten her.’

  He kicked the fire. Through a cloud of ashes Abren saw her mother emerging from the forest. She waved frantically.

  ‘You can tell her yourself! Here she comes …’

  She turned back – only to find that the man had gone. His dogs had gone too, and only the ashes remained, settling back on the cold ground.

  Abren cried out. Her mother came up the open grassland, panting from her climb. Gwyn rushed ahead of her, and Abren flung herself at him.

  ‘There! Just there! That man! Did you see?’

  ‘See who?’ Gwyn said. It was the first time he had spoken to Abren, and his voice was cold, as if he’d just about had enough of her.

  ‘That man!’ Abren said. ‘You must have seen him. That mountain man with his dogs! I don’t know how he did it – one minute he was here, and the next he was gone!’

  Her mother came and joined them. ‘What are you talking about? What man?’ she said, resting her hands on her knees and struggling to catch her breath.

  ‘He said that you were old friends,’ Abren replied. ‘He was glad to hear that the lights were on at Blaen Hafren. Glad that you’d found me, and said to tell you that we’ll all meet up. Very soon, he said. Oh, and he hasn’t forgotten. Whatever that means.’

  Abren’s mother turned to stone. At first Abren didn’t notice. But when she turned to go, her mother remained staring at the ashes. She didn’t know whom Abren could be talking about, she said in a cold stiff voice. Was she sure that she’d really seen someone? Sure that she wasn’t making it all up?

  Abren swore blind that she wasn’t, and her mother shivered. Gwyn came and put a hand on her shoulder. Perhaps now they were here, he said, they should carry on to the top. He looked straight into his mother’s eyes, as if he were trying to tell her something, but she turned her face away.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said with sudden urgency in her voice. ‘We’ve got to get back home. There’s a storm on the way. Can’t you feel it? If we don’t leave now we’ll regret it. Come on, both of you. Don’t just stand there. Hurry up!’

  Calling the corph candle

  There was a storm. It lasted all night. The first few drops started falling as they made their way along the smooth top of the waterfall, and by the time they reached Blaen Hafren, rain was running down its roof in sheets. Gwyn slammed the door behind them and even bolted it, ‘in case the storm blows in’.

  Their mother made them supper – oven chips and greasy tinned beef. For a welcome-home meal it wasn’t a patch on stew and dumplings, or even on eel pie! All the while they ate, the storm ranted overhead – an angry monster shaking Blaen Hafren within an inch of its life. Abren’s mother listened to it with a long face. Rain came dripping through the ceiling and she sent Gwyn dashing about, catching it in buckets and bowls. She shuttered the windows and stuffed towels under the doors. But still it found its way in.

  Abren suggested that they watch the television to take their mind off things. But her mother said it wouldn’t work in a storm like this. Abren suggested phoning the Morgans, just to let them know that she had arrived. But her mother said that the phone line was down.

  In the end, bored and restless, Abren went to bed. It was a funny sort of homecoming – not what she had hoped for. Downstairs she could hear her mother raking out the living-room fire and turning out the lights.

  Abren closed her eyes and tried to sleep, telling herself that despite everything it was still good to be home. But the storm kept her awake and she tossed and turned, missing her comfort blanket more than ever. Slates slid down on to the front path, and rain found its way in, dripping round the bed. Abren told herself that the storm would soon be over. But her bedroom was freezing and damp, the ceiling was springing more leaks by the minute, and her windows were shaking fit to shatter.

  Finally, unable to stand it any more, Abren got up, put on her newly bought dressing gown and headed downstairs, hoping there’d be a bit of fire left in the grate. She expected to find everywhere in darkness, but when she passed the kitchen door she found the light on and her mother sitting at the table.

  Her face was turned Abren’s way, but she didn’t see her at the door. Abren stood behind it. There was something very still and solitary about her mother. Something almost bleak, which made her want to rush in, throw her arms around her and own up about her memory. It was as if it lay between them like a barrier, cold and awkward, and growing all the time – particularly since they’d arrived at Blaen Hafren.

  But before Abren could do anything, Gwyn stepped out of the shadows at the far end of the room.

  ‘I still say we don’t know it’s him,’ he said. ‘It could be anyone remembering the old days, and looking for lights on at Blaen Hafren! You shouldn’t worry so much. It’ll be all right. We’ve got her back, after all. And we’re the ones who’ve done it – not him!’

  The windows shook behind their shutters. Abren’s mother tilted her head. ‘Whose dogs are those, barking in the wind?’ she said. ‘You may not think it’s him, but just you listen!’

  Abren listened too, but she couldn’t hear anything. Neither could Gwyn. He laughed at his mother. ‘This is ridiculous!’ he said. ‘You’re worrying about nothing. You’ll see tomorrow, when everything’s just fine. I’m off to bed …’

  Abren’s mother let him go without a word, melting back into the shadows. She sat for a long time staring at the table and Abren thought about going to bed herself. Suddenly, however, her mother got up, an expression of determination on her face, fetched a bucket and a brush – and started scrubbing the table!

  It was a strange thing to do in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm, but she carried on until the table was raw. When she’d finished, she got a towel and rubbed it bone dry. Then she went into the cupboard and came out with something rolled up in a piece of red cloth. She laid it on the table, removed the string, which she wrapped around her wrist, and unrolled – a thick black candle.

  ‘Let’s see if tomorrow really will be just fine!’

  Abren didn’t have a clue what was going on. She watched her mother take the candle and set it in the middle of the table, go off and make herself a cup of strong tea, drink it down as if to steady her nerve, circle the table a couple of times, her apprehension plain to see, and finally light the candle with a long match, standing well back.

  Immediately, a dusky, beautiful glow rose through the kitchen, transforming everything and shining into every corner. It lit up the dresser, the sink and the rugs on the quarry-tiled floor, and even the rainwater in the bowls and bucke
ts. Lit up the shutters, and lit up Abren’s mother, with her tight, pale face.

  For a moment Abren’s mother stared into the yellow light, then she leant across and blew out the candle. The glow disappeared as quickly as it had come, and the room looked tawdry in the ordinary light. But a single strand of smoke remained, rising like a wish. A secret smile crept over Abren’s mother’s face. There was no storm outside – only this. She watched the smoke reach the ceiling and start snaking round the room.

  Abren watched it, too. As if it were a living creature, the smoke passed beneath the old oak beams, drifed over the dresser, coiled across the sink and wafted across the floor. It sniffed its way towards the door, and for a terrible moment, Abren thought it was going to seek her out. But it carried on round the room until it reached a bowl of rainwater under the far window. For a moment it lingered over the water. Then it sank beneath the surface and disappeared from sight.

  Abren’s mother sighed.

  ‘Well, there it is.’

  It wasn’t she who spoke, but Gwyn, who hadn’t gone to bed after all, stepping out of the shadows. ‘Perhaps it was him, like you said. But tomorrow will be everything we wanted. He can’t stop it. The corph candle’s spoken. It’s in the water, plain to see. This is our chance. A death by drowning – at last!’

  No photographs

  Abren awoke feeling troubled, but not knowing why. The sun was shining, the storm had gone and the morning outside her window was crystal clear. She stood looking down the long glen. All the way to the forest she could see sunlight and bright colours. It was a perfect morning. So why so downcast?

  Her mother came into her room, singing a song. The storm had gone, she said, and it wouldn’t be back. The weather had changed for the better, and she had promised Gwyn that they’d go up the mountain to their favourite picnic spot. There’d be no jobs about the house – not today. This wasn’t an ordinary day. It was Abren’s first proper day back home – and they were going to spend it celebrating!