Voyage of the Sparrowhawk Page 3

  Max’s mother never answered anyway.

  Clara had passed the Sparrowhawk many times before and never paid it much attention, but today was different. Today for the first time, she heard voices on board.

  She stepped closer, feeling curious, then stopped.

  A girl and a boy sat cross-legged side by side with their backs to her on the roof of the boat, two dogs between them in a tangled heap. Clara narrowed her eyes. The larger dog was a black and white spaniel cross. The smaller one … Clara’s mouth formed a silent ‘Oh!’

  The smaller one was Malachy Campbell’s stolen chihuahua.

  Probably, Clara should have said something.

  A stolen dog!

  But Clara disliked Malachy Campbell, and she didn’t approve of keeping dogs in cages. And also, there was the light on the water, the mist, the peacefulness … To Clara’s eyes, in that moment, the children and dogs on the boat seemed to belong to a different world, an enchanted place like a fairy tale, or poetry.

  Tomorrow, maybe, if they were still here, she would return and introduce herself. But right now Clara tiptoed away, carefully, so as not to disturb the feeling she’d not had for a very long time, that anything was possible.

  CHAPTER THREE

  If you could hug yourself while you run, Lotti would be doing it as she ran home through the woods up Barton Lane.

  After the awful loneliness of school, two new friends!

  In one day!

  Granted, neither had had any choice in the matter. She had stolen one and broken into the home of the other. Nonetheless, she felt giddy with the joy of it.

  The lane began to climb. Lotti stopped running to catch her breath and felt a stab of panic as Federico raced ahead.

  What if he carried on running and didn’t come back?

  What if he wasn’t her friend at all? What if …

  Yip! Yip! Yip!

  Federico hurtled back down the lane, straight into her arms.

  ‘I’ll never leave you!’ he seemed to tell her with his ecstatic, wriggling body.

  ‘Never, never, never!’ Lotti replied, hugging him close.

  The woods gave way to open hillside. This had been a favourite walk when Lotti’s parents were alive. Together, Lotti, Théophile and Isobel had crunched through winter snow, lingered in spring’s flowering gorse, lain in the summer grass to listen to the skylarks sing. On the way home, if Lotti was tired, Papa had carried her on his back, snorting and pawing the ground like a pony. Lotti loved every tree, every stone, every curve of the hills surrounding Barton Lacey, but there was no time to stop and look at them. If she was to be back in time for supper, neat and tidy as her aunt liked, she would have to hurry.

  And yet her footsteps dragged.

  ‘They can’t stop me keeping him,’ she had said to Ben, and for as long as she was planning to rescue Federico, Lotti had pretended to herself that this was true because she wanted very much to save him. But the closer she got to home, the less realistic this seemed. Papa would have celebrated Federico’s rescue. He loved animals. And Mama would have been pleased too, because she hated any form of cruelty. But Uncle Hubert and Aunt Vera?

  It wouldn’t do, Lotti thought, to barge in with Federico. She must choose her moment, and also think of a story that didn’t involve actual stealing. Lotti viewed her kidnap of Federico more as liberation than theft, but Uncle Hubert and Aunt Vera probably wouldn’t see it that way …

  ‘I’m going to have to hide you for a bit,’ she told Federico. ‘But where?’

  Federico licked her hand.

  They cleared the brow of the hill and Barton Lacey came into view, a square honey-coloured house nestled in gardens and trees. As Lotti and Federico began their descent towards it, a light flickered at the eastern perimeter gate. Lotti’s heart leaped.

  She knew what that light was – Zachy, out smoking his evening pipe!

  Zachy, whose crowbar she had stolen … Zachy, who used to scold her for picking fruit before it was ripe but always saved her the best strawberries, who let her trot after him with her own little trowel to dig in bedding plants, who had adored Mama and known Lotti since she was a baby …

  Zachy who lived in a cottage right on the edge of the Barton grounds, where her uncle and aunt never went … who actively disliked the Netherburys – Zachy would help!

  Lotti, with Federico at her heels, raced down the hill towards the light.

  *

  Zachy was a darling, just as she had told Ben. His ancient face, white-whiskered and wrinkled like a walnut, had broken into a grin at the sight of Lotti and Federico, and he and the little dog had taken to each other at once. Lotti left Federico nestled in a crate in front of the fire in Zachy’s cottage, with the old gardener preparing him bread and milk.

  ‘I just have to explain about him to Uncle and Aunt,’ she had told Zachy, who had grunted like he was saying good luck with that. But now it was very nearly seven o’clock and Sally, the only indoor servant left at Barton since the war, would be dishing up Lotti’s supper.

  The rain predicted by Elsie began to fall as she came out of Zachy’s cottage. By the time she had run through the grounds – the kitchen garden and the orchard, the beech alley where Papa had taught her to ride, the glade where Mama had loved to read, the stream, the bridge, the elegant main lawn – she was drenched. Quiet as a mouse, she slipped into the scullery. Perhaps, if she could just tiptoe along the servants’ corridor then up to her room to change her clothes and brush her hair before stealing back down to the kitchen … Like Zachy, Sally was fond of Lotti and disliked her employers. She only stayed at Barton because she was saving up to buy a pub with her fiancé near her home in Kent, now that he was home from the war. Sally would cover for her …

  ‘Charlotte?’

  Hubert Netherbury’s voice called out from the drawing room as Lotti reached the stairs. Lotti froze.

  ‘In here, Charlotte, please.’

  And perhaps, if Lotti was suitably apologetic, Uncle Hubert would not be so very angry that she was late … perhaps Aunt Vera would not notice Lotti’s sodden clothes, the tear in her sailor suit, her hair wild from the wind and rain …

  Lotti walked slowly towards the drawing room.

  Hubert Netherbury sat in Papa’s chair by the fire, a glass of sherry in his hand. One glance at his thin, pressed mouth told Lotti that he was furious, but he said nothing, didn’t even look at her, just waited for her to stammer an excuse.

  ‘I was out walking.’ Lotti stared at the carpet as she spoke, and how surprised Ben would have been to see her now – Lotti the dog-rescuer, the housebreaker, barely able to speak!

  This was what she hated most about her uncle, how small he made her feel.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late, I lost track of time.’

  ‘Charlotte, your clothes …’ Vera Netherbury spoke in a hushed, reproachful voice, as if the sight of Lotti gave her physical pain. ‘Your hair …’

  Lotti glanced up at her aunt and flushed with rage. She was wearing one of Mama’s favourite shawls, an extravagant blue cashmere embroidered with butterflies with a deep silk fringe. On lovely Isobel St Rémy, it had looked beautiful. On mean Vera Netherbury, it was hateful and absurd.

  ‘I got caught in the rain,’ muttered Lotti, failing to sound apologetic.

  Hubert Netherbury toyed with his sherry glass, then very delicately put it down and flexed his hand. Lotti, remembering the slap at Great Barton station, flinched and looked at the carpet again.

  ‘Be very careful, Charlotte,’ said her uncle softly. ‘Or I may change my mind about not sending you away to school.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle,’ whispered Lotti. ‘I won’t be late again.’

  ‘No, you won’t. Now get out of my sight.’

  Lotti fled.

  *

  Up in her room, Lotti threw herself on the bed and punched the mattress. How did her uncle make her feel like this, so wretched, with so few words? She had been wrong, so wrong, to come home! She should ha
ve stayed at school! Except … the lovely hills around Barton Lacey, the memories of Mama and Papa … and now the Sparrowhawk, and Ben, and most of all Federico. Federico, who was now her responsibility, who she had already let down by appearing as such a dishevelled mess before her uncle and aunt … what would happen to him if she was sent away to school? Who would look after him?

  Moune. The thought came from nowhere, but that was hopeless of course, because as well as Moune being far away in France, there was the awful and terrible fact of her silence …

  Oh, what should she do?

  The door opened and Sally came in, carrying a basin.

  ‘Out of those clothes now, young lady, while I build up the fire,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ve brought you hot water for a good wash, then his lordship says you’re to go straight to bed. No supper, his lordship says. Well, no fear, I say. I’ve no time to look after a sick child, not while I run this place single-handed because he’s too mean to pay for staff. And sick is exactly what you’ll be if you don’t get warm and fed. Come on, Lots, chop chop. Clean up, and I’ll go and fetch the food. Ow! Ow! What are you doing, you mad child?’

  Lotti had flung her arms round Sally’s waist. Just for a moment, the maid’s face softened as she hugged her back. Sally had witnessed the slap at the station, and comforted Lotti afterwards, and then written a strong letter to her fiancé telling him what a shame it was that Hubert Netherbury had been too old to go to the war and die there.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Lots,’ she said. ‘Life’ll work out. It always does in the end.’

  An hour later, scrubbed clean and full of boiled eggs, toast, and prunes and custard, lying in bed with a fire in the grate and a hot brick at her feet, Lotti was feeling better.

  Of course she was right to have come home! The way the little dog had run into her arms in the woods, the feel of his warm body wriggling against hers as she hugged him! With the brief exception of Queen Victoria the cat, who was now dead, Moune, who was gone, and Sally, who would soon be leaving, Lotti hadn’t hugged anyone since her parents died.

  How good it had felt to hug Federico. How completely, absolutely right.

  And Federico wasn’t the only thing that had felt right today. Lotti thought of the Sparrowhawk, of sitting with Ben and Elsie and Federico, watching the evening light. It was so simple, but it was all she wanted. To feel peaceful and wanted. With friends.

  To belong.

  Life always worked out, Sally had said. Well, Sally was often right, but sometimes life needed help. What Lotti must do now was not get sent back to school, which meant behaving absolutely and completely impeccably before her uncle and aunt. She could do that! From now on, she would be a model of Usefulness. She wouldn’t give her uncle and aunt the slightest reason to be displeased and soon – when the moment was right – she would explain about Federico in a way that meant she could keep him …

  Meanwhile, tomorrow afternoon, careful not to be seen, she and Federico would return to the Sparrowhawk …

  *

  On the Sparrowhawk Ben, like Lotti, was in bed. Unlike Lotti he was hungry.

  He had tried to heat a can of soup for his supper, but both the stove in the galley and the one in Nathan’s workshop smoked, and he hadn’t been able to light a fire. In the end, he had eaten the soup cold but abandoned it after a few mouthfuls. Now he lay in his berth under all the blankets he could find, cuddled up to Elsie for extra warmth, his mind whirring.

  The Sparrowhawk was in a worse state than he had thought. She didn’t just need a scrub and a lick of paint. All her windows needed recaulking, her metalwork was spotted with rust, and he hadn’t even dared to inspect the engine. How much was it going to cost to put all this right?

  ‘First thing in the morning,’ he told Elsie, ‘I’ll go and look for a job.’

  He’d ask at the boatyard, where he’d done odd jobs since living with Mercy, running errands and messages. John Snell, who ran it, had known Nathan; the two men had liked each other. And he could advise Ben on the Sparrowhawk too, where to start with getting her back into shape, ready for when Sam came home.

  When Sam came home …

  The truth was, Ben had no idea when his brother would return. He had lied to Mercy, and now he had lied to Lotti too, which had been more difficult because there was something about Lotti that made him want to be honest with her. But a secret was a secret, and this one was not for sharing. There had been no letter from the War Office and if the constable Albert Skinner found out, Ben would be taken into care again and separated from Elsie. The Sparrowhawk, he imagined, would either be sold or left to rot.

  How long could he keep up the pretence before anyone found out?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next morning at dawn, Lotti stole out to take Federico for a quick run on the hills, then returned the little dog to Zachy. After breakfast, which she ate in the kitchen, she sewed for four hours, irreproachably dressed in a scratchy navy pinafore, her curls pulled into neat braids. With a tremendous exercise of will, she managed to hide her impatience, but as soon as her aunt dismissed her, she sneaked away to fetch Federico and ran down to the Sparrowhawk.

  Oh, please let Ben be happy to see me, she thought as she ran. Please let it be as lovely as I remember it!

  John Snell had agreed to take Ben on at the boatyard, six mornings a week from eight to one o’clock, in return for half the pay of an adult, permission to bring Elsie with him, and no questions asked about his living arrangements. Ben had spent the morning cleaning the darkest corners of a crumbling boathouse, untouched since the beginning of the war. Now he wanted to get to work on his boat, but the task was daunting. Lotti found him standing on the towpath with Elsie, examining the Sparrowhawk’s paintwork.

  It is one thing to meet under extreme circumstances, when one person is running away and another person is hiding her, and there is the excitement of a stolen dog and a homecoming. It is quite another to meet in the cold light of day. For a moment, neither Lotti nor Ben knew what to say. But the dogs had no such difficulty, and it is impossible to remain awkward when you have two dogs leaping after each other around you, barking wildly. In fact, it’s impossible not to laugh. And in the end, all Lotti needed to say was, ‘I came back.’ And all Ben needed to say was, ‘Shall I show you the Sparrowhawk, then?’

  On board, with the dogs cavorting around her, Lotti inspected the cabin, taking in all the things that in the commotion of yesterday she had not noticed. There was the damp, the cold, the draft from the windows, but also all of Nathan’s lovely, useful details – the drawers under the berths, the fold-down table and the chairs hanging on the wall beside it, the little galley where three tin mugs hung from hooks over the sink. Best of all were the pictures, painted straight on to the walls, a new one for each of the boys’ birthdays – birds peeping out among trees, dogs running on a towpath, a black and white cat sleeping behind the stove.

  ‘I love it,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘She needs a lot of work.’

  ‘I can help!’ Again, Ben heard that slight falter in Lotti’s voice, a loss of confidence, like she was afraid he would say no. But Ben didn’t want to say no. He had felt so alone, for so long …

  All afternoon, watched by the dogs curled together on Ben’s berth, Ben and Lotti polished and swept and cleaned and dusted until the living quarters of the Sparrowhawk gleamed. They threw open the doors and windows to chase out the damp, they flapped sheets and blankets in the sunshine to air them. Ben cleared the stoves’ flue pipes and at last managed to light a fire.

  He boiled the kettle and made toast, Lotti unfolded the table and together they sat down to eat.

  ‘To the Sparrowhawk!’ said Lotti, raising her mug.

  ‘To the Sparrowhawk!’ responded Ben.

  They clinked mugs. The dogs barked in response. Ben and Lotti both laughed, and began to talk about how tomorrow, if the weather was fine, they would begin to sand down the external wood in preparation for painting. When Lott
i and Federico left the Sparrowhawk, both she and Ben felt the same warm glow, which came from the knowledge that they had found a true friend and also that maybe their separate plans – to keep Federico, to stay at Barton Lacey, to remain on the Sparrowhawk – were going to work.

  For one glorious week, nobody bothered them.

  Then the policeman came.

  *

  Albert Skinner was not a heroic kind of policeman. He was small and tubby, with pigeon feet that made his bottom stick out, and for the past three years there had been about his shoulders a rather defeated slouch. Pub landlords breaking up fights seldom called for him to help, and children laughed when he tried to move them on from places where they shouldn’t be. Yet for all this, he was not undignified.

  And he was conscientious. Stubborn as a terrier, his colleagues said. He had a reputation, once he was on a case, of never giving up.

  For the past week, Albert had watched the Sparrowhawk from afar, believing that what Mercy had told him was true and that Sam would soon return to Great Barton. But with the passing days, he had grown increasingly troubled. If this went on much longer, he would write to the War Office himself for the exact date of Sam’s return. Meanwhile, Ben’s lifestyle was neither appropriate, nor strictly legal. A week exactly after Lotti and Ben’s first meeting, he set off to the Sparrowhawk to tell him so.

  *

  There is something about seeing a policeman, when you have a secret, which induces an immediate sense of guilt. Ben saw Albert Skinner first. He was on the rear deck, priming the sanded doors, and the moment he saw him Ben was filled with the absolute certainty that Albert knew he had lied about the letter from the War Office and was coming to carry him off to the orphanage.