Wishing Water
Freda Lightfoot
Originally published 1995 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
Copyright © 1995 and 2010 by Freda Lightfoot.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0956607324
Published by Freda Lightfoot at Smashwords 2010
‘paints a vivid picture of life on the fells during the war. Enhanced by fine historical detail and strong characterisation it is an endearing story...’
Westmorland Gazette on Luckpenny Land
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‘You can’t put a price on Freda Lightfoot’s stories from Manchester’s 1950s Champion Street Market. They bubble with enough life and colour to brighten up the dreariest day and they have characters you can easily take to your heart.’
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‘Kitty Little is a charming novel encompassing the provincial theatre of the early 20th century, the horrors of warfare and timeless affairs of the heart.’
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‘a compelling and fascinating tale’ Middlesborough Evening Gazette on The Favourite Child (In the top 20 of the Sunday Times hardback bestsellers)
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‘An inspiring novel about accepting change and bravely facing the future.’
The Daily Telegraph on Ruby McBride
Lissa Turner seems to have everything a girl could ever hope for: she’s pretty and intelligent, has warm and devoted parents and a beautiful home in the Lake District. But despite her good fortune, Lissa is not happy. For her real mother abandoned Lissa while she was still a baby, and her feelings of confusion and vulnerability have persisted. As soon as she is old enough she takes up a job in Carreckwater, a lively village in the heart of Lakeland. She makes many friends but is wary of close relationships. Secretly Lissa wants nothing more than to be loved and cherished, but her lack of faith in herself launches her into a disastrous marriage with sinister consequences...
Read a Sneak Preview of Larkrigg Fell
Also by Freda Lightfoot as ebooks
Chapter One
1951
Lissa Turner kilted her thin cotton skirts and slid from the sheep-cropped turf into the icy waters of Allenbeck, squealing with delight as it foamed against her bare legs. She swivelled her head round to look up at the boy, still standing on dry land, very nearly over-toppling herself in the process.
‘Come in, it’s wonderful.’
She wriggled her toes, the stones grinding and slipping beneath her feet, and tried another step. Above her head a lapwing climbed on lazily beating wings, finishing in a dizzying display of joy in the May sky. Not always so blue in these Lakeland hills, it came as no surprise to Lissa to find it sun-filled and blue. For today was a special day.
Today she was to see her mother.
All around them grew alder and silver birch, pale slender stems crowding the edge of the small gushing stream, eager perhaps to cool their own feet in the exhilarating flow from the rocky depths of the high mountains. Over the low hump of Gimmer bridge, built a century or more ago with painstaking care and not a scrap of mortar, as was the way in this part of Westmorland, she could see right along the rough track to the stile where the road divided. If she took one twisting path she would come to Broombank, her home, and where Meg and Tam lived. The other climbed up over Larkrigg Fell to the place she should live, Larkrigg Hall. The place where her mother would be preparing a special tea this very afternoon for their first meeting in years. Four years to be exact, not since just after the war when Lissa had been only seven and too young to understand anything.
But she understood now. In Lissa’s pansy eyes was more knowledge than she admitted to, certainly more than was considered good for her. Her stomach tightened into a knot of excitement. Lissa meant to enjoy this day, to wring from it every drop of pleasure she could.
‘What if you fall in?’ grumbled the boy, pausing in the act of unlacing one boot as he wondered if he would get the blame, if she did.
Lissa gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Then I’d get wet.’ The idea at once took root and she wanted nothing more than to feel the icy water flowing and stinging over every part of her young flesh. Something tickled her toes and she wriggled them, seeing darting slivers of dark shadows race away.
‘Oh, look, there are millions of minnows here,’ she cried.
‘Don’t talk soft. Millions, my foot,’ he scoffed.
‘There are.’
‘Catch some then, clever clogs. Bet you can’t’
‘I can.’ Lissa lifted the jam jar that had been hanging on a string about her neck and, still holding her dress with one hand, dipped it with the other into the gushing waters. The tiny fish fled. Not one was to be seen. The water that gushed into the jar was quite empty of life. ‘Oh.’ She sighed her disappointment.
‘You’re ignorant, Lissa Turner. All girls are ignorant. Can’t catch fish to save your life.’
She stopped caring about the sharp stones and swivelled about to splash him with a spray of the foaming water. ‘Yes I can!’
‘Here, give over,’ he protested and taking up a flat stone, tossed it carelessly into the beck, missing her bare feet by inches. The water splashed in great wet globs over her clean print frock and up into her face, making her gasp at its coldness.
‘Oh, you rat!’ But the imp of mischief in her could not resist retaliation, so she dipped her hands in the cold water and scooped up great washes of it. Though she aimed at the boy, laughing on the shore, she soaked herself more than him.
‘Nick, we could go for a swim. A real one. Why don’t we?’ She was breathless suddenly with the unexpectedness of her idea, eyes shining with excitement. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? The perfect way to celebrate a special day.
‘We can’t go for a swim.’ The boy sounded contemptuous, as if she was wrong in the head. ‘You know we’re not allowed to go alone up to the tarn.’
‘Oh, phooey.’
‘And our Daniel can’t swim yet.’
‘I can too,’ came a piping voice from some yards away but neither of them took any notice of the smaller boy, knee-deep in water and mud, engrossed in his hunt for wild creatures.
‘Anyroad, Miss Clever-Clogs is going out to tea.’ The older boy spoke with lilting mockery in his tone. ‘With the witch up at the big house.’
‘She’s not a witch,’ Lissa hotly protested, uncertainty in her voice.’ She’s my grandmother so how can she be a witch?’
Nick put on his superior expression.’ If she is, how come you’ve never been to see her before then?’
Lissa desperately searched her mind for a reason. Not for the world would she admit the truth, that her grandmother would have nothing to do with her. Any story was better than that. ‘She’s not been well.’
The boy grunted his disbelief and Lissa wished she could stamp her foot at him but the water hampered her.
‘If you want to know, she’s been waiting for my mother to come home. She couldn’t get here for my birthday but she’ll be here today.’
‘Huh! Rather you than me. The old bat’s a witch I tell you,’ Nick insisted. ‘And you’d best come out of that beck, before our Meg catches you.’
Lissa had been thinking exactly the same thing but she hated to be told so. ‘I’ll please myself what I do, Nick Turner.’
‘You’re just a girl, and as a boy and your cousin I’m responsible for you, like I am for our Daniel here. Anyway, your hopeless at fishing.’
Lissa was incensed. Though she‘d gladly slipped down to the beck at Nick’s suggestion, bringing her jam jar to catch a few minnows, that was only because she hated to be confined, even for a minute, while the adults chattered on about the Festival of Britain Tea Party in the village hall, how good Betty Hutton had been in ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ at the pictures last week, and other matters which were of no importance at all.
‘I’m three months older than you so how can you be responsible for me? Nor are you really my cousin, so there.’
The boy’s lip curled with superior mockery. ‘Huh, no one believes that old tale Aunty Meg tells about her finding you in a Liverpool orphanage.’
‘Believe what you like, it’s true.’ Lissa slapped more water at him. ‘I do know who my mother is though, so there. She’s flying all the way from Canada to see me. Today!’ The joy of it sang in her heart.
‘Meet your mother? Looking like that? Oh, aye, you will be popular.’
Lissa’s heart gave a little jump of fear. Oh, no, she couldn’t meet her looking a sight. Katherine was beautiful, everyone said so. For weeks Lissa had watched as the dress had been painstakingly stitched, anxiously waiting for the day when she could wear it. But, unable to resist Nick’s challenge, she’d ruined everything.
‘It’s all your fault,’ she cried, tears pricking the back of her eyes. ‘I can catch fish just as well as any boy.’
But Nick only laughed, quite without sympathy for her plight. She turned, meaning to get out of the stream, her movements as liquid and graceful as the swirling waters that washed about her white slender limbs, hair ribbons slipping loose in the wild tumble of glossy black curls. For all she was still a child, it was abundantly clear to anyone that Lissa Turner would grow into a beauty, one very much with a mind of her own.
‘Drat you.’ Lissa slapped at him again with the flat of her hand, then laughed out loud as he lost his footing, arms flailing round and round like a windmill in the wind, and almost in slow motion fell backwards into the water. Fortunately it was more wide than deep at this point and he was as much winded as wet. But for Nick, surprisingly angry.
‘Now you’ve done it,’ he shouted.
He looked so funny sitting there on the pebbles with his bony knees poking up out of the frothing water that Lissa laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks. Then Nick joined in too while Daniel rolled on the grass and waved his feet in the air with delight.
Too late now to argue. Too late to complain she was in her best dress and she really mustn’t risk spoiling it. And Lissa desperately wanted to prove she was as good as him.
‘Keep still,’ she ordered. ‘Don’t frighten the fish away with your cackling. I’ll show you.’
She carefully kilted her skirts between her legs, tucking the hem into her waist band at the front, stuffing the trailing bits up the lace-trimmed elastic of her best knickers.
Then she waded slowly out into the fast-flowing stream, close to the bridge where there were fewer stones and the water spread out wide and deep and dark beneath a tunnel of greenery. As it came above her knees she stopped. For what seemed an age Lissa waited until the tiny minnows had grown used to the pale trunks of her legs and brushed against them with casual ease. Very slowly she bent down, holding the jar in the flow of the river. At first there was nothing and her heart fluttered with despair.
Then she saw it, a great fat black cloud of darting fish. In seconds her jar was crowded and she swooped it out of the water with a cry of triumph.
‘I’ve done it. See.’
Her delight was short lived, for the swift movement rocked a stone beneath her foot and the heavy water took instant advantage, pushing resolutely against her. Even as she struggled to find her balance Lissa knew herself lost. Holding the jar high in her hand to save her precious fish, she sat with infuriated dignity, almost up to her chin in the deep water.
Meg stared at Lissa with horror in her grey eyes. ‘How could you?’ She widened her gaze to encompass the two muddy boys, unusually subdued. ‘How could any of you behave so badly, today of all days?’
They all stared miserably at the pools they were making on the slate floor, deeming it prudent not to reply.
‘Upstairs with you, madam.’ Meg ordered, then jerked a thumb at her two nephews. ‘You two had best go to the outhouse, clean that mud off and get out of those wet things. I’ll find you something dry to wear, though I can’t promise it’ll fit, nor save you from trouble when you get home.’
She felt a jolt of pity for their sad faces as they trailed off to do her bidding. At any other time Meg would have laughed at their predicament. It was no more than childish fun after all. She could remember she and her brother Charlie being in exactly the same predicament on any number of occasions. But she was short on humour today. Kath’s letters always seemed to put her in a temper, even now, after all these years. There was still the gnawing fear that she would come for Lissa and take her back with her, and Meg would never see her lovely girl again. Canada was the other side of the world, after all.
She could remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the time Kath had come for her daughter. Lissa had been seven years old by then. Seven years in Meg’s care, and Kath had imagined she could simply collect her, like a parcel, and ship her away. But Meg had refused to allow it.
‘Lissa stays here with me, at Broombank, where she belongs,’ she’d said, and that had been that.
Surprisingly Kath had made no protest. She had merely smiled her beautiful smile, shrugged slender shoulders and walked out of Meg’s life with that elegant swinging sway to her hips, to start life in Canada with her new husband.
She’d written once or twice a year since then, often claiming that she would visit soon, but nothing had ever come of these promises.
Until today.
A soft touch at her elbow brought her back to the present. ‘Here,’ said Tam, handing her a steaming bowl. ‘Sponge her down quickly with some warm water and she’ll be right enough. Did you never get mud in your own eye, Meg O’Cleary?’
Meg looked lovingly into her husband’s face and her lips lifted into a smile. How could she resist when she loved him so much? Tam leaned over the bowl and dropped a kiss upon her nose.
‘Tis a lovely woman you are, Meg, when you’re thinking with your heart. I’ll go and deal with them two tearaways and take them back meself. See if I can stop your father tanning their hides. He is staying at Ashlea again, is he not?’
‘Yes,’ Meg sighed. ‘Poor Sally Ann.’
‘She gets on with him better than you do. I’ll see these lads don’t suffer his wrath.’ Taciturn and dour to a fault, the boys’ grandfather Joe was supposed to be retired in Grange-Over-Sands but spent every moment he could at his old home, Ashlea, using the excuse that he was helping his daughter-in-law, Sally Ann, widowed by a stray bomb, and never remarried. Joe had remarried, at the end of the war, but the marriage hadn’t prospered.
‘Thanks.’ Meg gave Tam a warm smile of gratitude, drew in a deep breath and started up the stairs. Lissa could be as troublesome to deal with in her own way as Joe. There were no arguments from her now as Meg stripped off the sodden dress. No tantrums or tears as the dripping, best white underwear with the lace trim was replaced by everyday interlock vest and knickers.
‘You’ll have to wear your yellow cotton frock,’ Meg said, hiding a smile as she saw the pretty nose wrinkle in disgust. ‘Don’t like it.’
Meg sighed, biting back the retort that perhaps Lissa should have thought of that before she decided to go fishing for minnows, but managed, with difficulty, to hold her tongue. ‘Which then?’ thinking over Lissa’s wardrobe which shrank daily as the child grew. Soon, all too soon in Meg’s opinion, she would be a child no longer. Budding womanhood would take over. It was certainly long past time they had a talk about it.
‘I shall wear my jersey skirt and blue embroidered blouse,’ Lissa said, deciding on what she considered to be her most sophisticated items.
‘Isn’t it rather warm for jersey?’
‘You’re wearing a skirt and blouse.’
So the blue jersey it was. The tangled dark locks were brushed and fresh ribbons found to put them back into their tidy bunches, one at each side of the rosy, scrubbed cheeks. The sparkle was back in the arresting eyes, the tongue loosened once more into chatter. ‘Oh do let’s hurry, Meg. We mustn’t be late. What will she be like? I don’t remember her. Will she like me?’
The questions came thick and fast as they set off to walk the two miles up to Larkrigg Hall. Meg’s heart went out to the child, for didn’t her own anxiety match Lissa’s?
‘Of course you will recognise her, once you see her. She will be surprised how much you have grown.’ Meg didn’t like to talk about the love aspect. She couldn’t. She found it impossible to credit Kath with the ability to love a daughter she’d abandoned so soon after her birth. Not even a war would have persuaded Meg to do such a thing. But then there had been other, more pressing reasons, best not remembered.
The slopes of Larkrigg Fell rose gently ahead of them, with the steep crag of Dundale Knott at their backs, its comical lop-sided appearance belying the very real dangers to be found on the crags and crevices that scarred its surface. As her beloved dog, Rust, had once discovered to his cost. He was at her heels now, as always. Battle-scarred and not so spry as he’d once been, yet fit enough to walk the fells with her every day tending the sheep, despite his thirteen years.
‘Come on, old boy,’ she urged, a softness to her voice whenever she addressed him. ‘He’s panting a bit more than he should, Lissa. Maybe I’d best retire him.’
Lissa rubbed the dog’s ears, one brown, one black. ‘You know he couldn’t take to that. Where you are, so must he be.’
Funny thing, loyalty, Meg mused. It could cement a friendship or, misplaced, just as easily ruin one. Hadn’t she learned so herself once?
To their left was Allenbeck. It began high on Larkrigg Fell where it gathered its strength to burst out as a waterfall, known locally as a force, and tumbled onwards through Whinstone Gill, a deep cleft cut into the rocks forming a wooded ravine, till it ran out of power and passed under Gimmer bridge at a more sedate pace.
Now they climbed the sheep trods through Brockbarrow wood which in its turn flanked the southern shores of the tarn. Brockbarrow wood. The place for a lover’s tryst. And betrayal.
‘What shall I say to her?’ Lissa worried. ‘What can we talk about? She doesn’t know me or any of my friends.’
Anxious dark blue eyes gazed up at Meg. Jack’s eyes. She swallowed. ‘Tell her all about yourself. About how you like to help on the farm, how you’re learning to play the harmonium. How you are changing schools this year and mean to go to the High School.’
‘If I pass my certificate.’
‘Of course you’ll pass.’
‘I’m so nervous. Isn’t it silly?’ A small hand crept into Meg’s and she squeezed it encouragingly.
‘I’m pretty nervous myself as a matter of fact.’
‘Are you?’ An odd relief in the voice.
Somewhere high above a curlew mewed its plaintive, lonely cry, but Meg was aware only of Lissa’s deep thoughts. The worst part of Kath’s letters were her promises to visit, the way they unsettled the child, made her think and ask endless questions.
‘Tell me again how you came to Liverpool to find me,’ Lissa asked, wriggling close, and Meg stifled a sigh.
‘I’ve told you a dozen times. Kath couldn’t keep you. She was going into the WAAFS’ because of the war. She gave you to me to keep safe, at Broombank.’
‘Did she come to see me a lot? Did she miss me?’ Lissa frowned. ‘I can’t seem to remember.’
‘It was difficult, with the war and everything,’ Meg hedged.
‘I suppose so.’ More deep thoughts, Lissa wishing she could understand it all properly. She wished and wished so hard sometimes that it hurt, deep in her tummy. If only her mother would come, just once. Her child’s faith in the goodness of life made her certain that Kath would be kind and beautiful and tell her that she loved her, and Lissa would learn all about that secret part of herself she couldn’t quite discover.
She worried sometimes that perhaps it was her fault that Kath had left. Perhaps she’d been a disappointment and her mother had been glad to give her up.
Today, at last, all those fears could be swept away.
All Lissa had ever seen of the world was this dale, these familiar mountains. She ached to see the rest of it, live the life she felt was her due. She adored Meg and Tam, loved them as if they were her real parents, but what kind of life might she have had if she’d been Lissa Ellis instead of Lissa Turner? How would she have been different? It was hard to work it out.
A tall Scots pine stood like a sentinel on a small rise before her. Beyond that, Lissa knew, was the last sheep trod they needed to climb. This would join the long sweeping drive that led up to Larkrigg Hall through a pair of stone gate posts. It was a fine, nineteenth-century house, set high on a ridge as its name implied, surrounded on all sides by strangely shaped rocks and crags that poked out of the thin soil like old bones. A house that might have been her home, if things had been different.
Or she might, even now, have been in Canada, seeing other mountains, riding the ponies on her mother’s ranch. These dreams had filled her head for years, keeping her awake at night. Now, she was sure they were about to be realised.
‘Will she tell me who my father is, do you think?’ Her voice was soft, robbed of breath by the wind and the intensity of her excitement.
Meg and Kath had both avoided this part of the story. How they had both loved the same man, Kath had borne his child and Meg had loved her and brought her up. It hurt and embarrassed them both still, to think of it.
Meg drew the child into the circle of her arms. ‘One day we’ll talk about it,’ she said with a smile. ‘When you are old enough to understand.’
‘I’m old enough now. I’m eleven. Not a baby any more, Meg.’
No, more’s the pity, she thought, and tightened the ribbons that were, as usual, slipping down the glossy curls. ‘It isn’t important, not really. You have me and Tam. Remember that we love you. You are our own darling child so far as we are concerned.’
‘I know.’ Lissa wished that it was enough. But somehow it wasn’t.
Larkrigg Hall, a rectangular, solid house, bigger than it looked at first glance, with a plain, protestant look to it, stood at last before them. Only its tall trefoiled windows and great arched storm porch relieved the austerity of the grey stone walls. Meg pushed Lissa forward and politely rattled the knocker, for the inhabitants of Larkrigg Hall did not follow the more usual country custom of using the back door for callers. Meg could feel her heart start to thump uncomfortably at the thought of Kath waiting within.
The door creaked open and Amy Stanton, Rosemary Ellis’s housekeeper, stood four-square on the slate step. Solid and forbidding, taking her pleasures where she could find them in ill health and local disasters, she almost smiled upon them now.
‘She hasn’t come,’ she bluntly informed them. ‘Mrs Wadeson sent a telegram this morning. She says she’s sorry but she won’t be here after all.’
The door had almost closed before Meg came out of her shock. Slamming her hand against the polished panels she stopped it most effectively, but then she hadn’t spent years lifting and managing sheep to be put off by an old door, solid oak or no. ‘What did you say?’
Meg lifted her chin in that stubborn way she had and the high-cheekboned face took on a dignified beauty that had melted stouter hearts than Amy Stanton’s. There was no sign of a thaw in this one.
Even to Lissa’s miserable observation it was clear that Meg was wasting her time.
‘Amy?’ A stentorian voice from within settled the matter and the door shut fast with a solid clunk. Meg muttered something unpleasant under her breath that Lissa didn’t quite catch then, taking her hand in a firm grasp, grey eyes sparkling with a rare anger, she set off at a cracking pace back down the long drive, dragging the child with her.
‘Come along, sweetheart. Let’s go home.’
It was Grandfather Joe, surprisingly, who offered a solution. Following that bitter disappointment, Lissa had written again to her mother, asking if Kath had another date in mind. The letter had not been answered. Not that she cared, she told herself. What did it matter if Katherine Ellis, now Mrs Wadeson, did not love her?
Yet somehow it did. It mattered very much. Lissa felt full of curiosity, ached to meet her. Not because she felt herself unloved by Meg, far from it. Meg had been the best mother anyone could wish for. It was simply a need to fill in the whole picture, to know who, exactly, she was. She couldn’t explain it any better than that, not even to herself. It made her feel all uncomfortable inside to know she’d been dumped.
‘What’s up with thee, moping about with a face like a wet fortnight? Stop fretting,’ he said, shaking out his newspaper as if to remind her that the worries of the world, such as the progress of the Korean War which he followed with great interest, were far more important than any a young girl might have. ‘It’ll all be t’same in hundred years.’
‘I suppose it will,’ said Lissa sadly, though this was not a philosophy she could warm to. ‘Do you believe in wishes, Grandfather?’
Joe pondered the question then chuckled. ‘I remember doing some wishing as a child, by the water every spring. Eeh, what daft-heads we were.’ Laughing softly at his own youthful foolishness, he returned to the paper. ‘Will thee look at the price of wool? Might as well work for nowt.’
‘Grandfather.’ Lissa’s voice was coaxing, her smile bewitching. Aware he had a soft spot for her she knew she never got anything out of him by being miserable, for all he put on such a dour face himself. She leaned against the arm of Joe’s chair and gazed up into his face. ‘Tell me about the wishing.’
Joe regarded the child he’d come to think of as his granddaughter with a serious eye. ‘It’s not to be taken lightly,’ he warned.
‘Oh, no,’ Lissa assured him. ‘I wouldn’t.’
He glanced around, as if he was about to impart a great secret, or preferred Meg not to know what he said. ‘Water has special powers, tha knows. Whether it be beck or tarn, each has its own sprite or fairy and it don’t do to cross them.’
Lissa solemnly shook her head, not daring to speak. Would this be the answer she so badly needed?
Satisfied he was not about to be mocked, Joe said, ‘When we was no more’n bairns we’d go every Maytime to the well or some other special watering place and fill our hands with water. Sometimes we’d use a bottle and add a drop of sugar or a twist of liquorice to drink, then give the rest back to the water sprite. Or we’d drink from us hands and give a gift instead, like a flower or a penny. You ask Meg about Luckpennies. Carry the luck for you they do.’
‘Why do they?’
‘Why?’ Joe looked confused. ‘Nay, lass, how should I know?’
‘But did you make a wish? And did it ever come true?’
Joe was anxious to return to the latest figures from the auction mart. ‘Course we did. But I’m too old to remember what we wished for, let alone if it ever come true. It’s all a lot of nonsense anyroad. You have to drink it up quick, afore it leaks out of your hand, and say your wish with your eyes closed.’ Then thinking of Meg’s possible reaction to these superstitions, he added for good measure, ‘But you must believe in the Good Lord and say your prayers every night.’ Nodding wisely and recklessly mixing Christian and pagan traditions. ‘Then you’ll get what’s good for you and no more.’
Lissa felt excited. She said her prayers every night already, but she thought she’d try the wishing as well, just in case. It could do no harm to try.
Nick had one or two wishes of his own which he could do with having answered, concerning learning to play football and getting a new bicycle, so he was ready enough to share the experiment with Lissa. It seemed harmless enough.
The beck was considered too mundane and the water too gushing for any sprite to survive in it. There was nothing for it but to try the tarn. Strictly forbidden, tucked darkly behind Brockbarrow wood, they chose an afternoon when Daniel had been taken, protesting, to the dentist, since they didn’t trust him to keep a secret. It was June, not May, but Lissa hoped the fairies wouldn’t mind, this being their first visit.
‘We mustn’t get wet or fall in this time,’ she warned and Nick gravely agreed. The tarn might be small and round, a sheet of water innocently sparkling in the sun on a beautiful day like this, but it was bitterly cold, had been trapped in this cup of land since the Ice Age and nobody knew quite how deep it was. It was not a place to mess with. Both children gazed on the ruffled waters and shuddered. They could well believe that sprites lurked beneath its glittering surface, perhaps even devils.
The small ceremony took no more than moments to complete. There was no time to waste as they were fully aware they risked the wrath of their respective parents should their trip be discovered.
‘I’ll go first,’ Lissa said, dipping the small Tizer bottle in the clear water.
As she drank the sweet liquorice water she closed her eyes and wished with all her might that one day soon her mother would come. She sent her thoughts winging far across water, mountains and sea to a distant, unknown mass of land painted red on her geography atlas and known as Canada.
Send my mother home, her inner voice begged.
Then it was Nick’s turn. They glanced sideways at each other and giggled.
‘It’s a bit daft is this,’ he said. ‘Go on. Get on with it.’
When he had done they emptied the rest of the brown liquid into the tarn and watched the wind sweep the sunlight like a shower of diamonds across the small lake. It seemed, to Lissa’s lively imagination, like an answer, and a great sense of peace and certainty came upon her. It would work out all right in the end, she felt sure somehow, deep in her heart.
Chapter Two
Time passed. Lissa tried not to think of her mother and was happy enough in the dale. Each spring she and Nick continued to make their wishes, though never revealed them or owned up to whether they ever came true. That was far too risky and might spoil their chances, though Nick did boast one day that he’d got picked for the school football team.
Lissa wrote regularly to Canada, and twice a year, on her birthday and at Christmas, received a reply. These were always a disappointment, telling her little, closing with the promise that one day Kath would come but never offering any definite date. Then on her thirteenth birthday a different sort of letter arrived.
Meg handed it to her, frowning. ‘It’s from Mrs Ellis. She’s declared herself ready to receive us.’
‘Oh.’ Lissa was stunned. Was this good news or bad? She couldn’t quite make out from Meg’s attitude. ‘Why now?’
‘Perhaps a bout of conscience? Though I very much doubt it. Have you been writing to Canada?’
Lissa nodded, saying no more when she saw how Meg’s face tightened in that odd way she had whenever Kath or Canada were mentioned.
‘We are to call next Wednesday, at three o’clock precisely. You must put on your best frock. Only I would prefer you not to fall in the beck this time. Let us try to present a civilised image, shall we?’ Meg gave a wry smile and Lissa giggled with relief.
‘I’ll do my best.’
Lissa knew, the moment she stepped into the house, that she hated it, which was deeply disappointing. They passed through a dark hall where a glassy-eyed stag’s head glared down at them, causing her to shiver. Then they were shown into a small, oak-panelled room of faded gentility, dark and depressing. Where was the pretty turquoise and gold drawing room Meg had spoken of? Lissa had imagined delicate, tasteful furniture. Instead, most of the house seemed dusty and shut up, judging by the number of forbiddingly closed doors.
At first sight everything in the room appeared to be draped in some sort of covering; filled with mats, runners, tablecloths, even the piano shrouded in an Indian rug. A single, rose-shaded lamp bloomed in the window embrasure. It should have given a cosy feel but it only cast gloomy shadows across the walls.
Lissa’s small nose wrinkled with distaste at the stale smell that met her nostrils. The room was as unaccustomed to fresh air as it was to visitors.
A figure rose from the shadows by the empty fireplace and Lissa started, stepping back in sudden fright as she recalled Nick’s constant teasing about a witch, and felt glad suddenly of Meg’s warm reassuring hand as it slipped over hers. But then she was almost grown up now, and didn’t believe in witches.
‘Miss Turner.’ The voice sounded cold and disembodied. Glancing anxiously up at Meg, Lissa caught the ghost of a knowing smile and knew instinctively that these two were old adversaries.
‘Mrs O’Cleary, if you recall. But you always used to call me Meg.’
A pause, during which Lissa received the decided impression that she was being scrutinised from head to foot, though since the room was so dim and the woman was in shadow, she couldn’t be sure.
‘I see you have brought the child.’
Meg smiled again. ‘Of course. This is Lissa. My daughter.’
Lissa felt as if she should curtsey, the moment so crackled with tension. Instead, she screwed up her courage, took a step forward and held out her hand, remembering her manners. ‘Good afternoon…’ she began, smiling politely, and stopped. How to address this woman whom she knew to be her grandmother but had never been acknowledged as such? She bit on her lower lip and waited. The rose-coloured light flickered across the thin, unsmiling face, showing up the whiskers on her chin.
Ignoring the small outstretched hand, Rosemary Ellis turned away, leaving Lissa feeling foolish, forced to retreat to Meg’s side.
‘Pray be seated.’ A regal gesture indicated a roomy sofa. It too was so swathed in paisley shawls, arm shields, antimacassars and cushions, so that Lissa dared hardly sit upon it for fear of disturbing the arrangement. ‘Amy, tea, if you please. For our guests.’
‘Very good, madam.’ Amy quietly withdrew, closing the double mahogany doors as she went.
Meg whispered in her ear. ‘Don’t put your dirty shoes on the rug, it’s Persian, and very valuable.’
Lissa sat gingerly next to Meg, trying to tuck them out of the way, which wasn’t easy. She fixed her eyes upon a display of dried leaves in a copper bowl that sat incongruously upon an upturned seed box in the wide, marble hearth. A spider hung from a thread on one leaf and Lissa watched it, fascinated.
They sat in silence in the cold room for what seemed an eternity. Somewhere a clock chimed and she counted out three strokes. Lissa’s back started to ache and her legs to fidget. Meg cast her a warning glance, then clearing her throat, turned to Mrs Ellis with a smile.
‘I trust you are keeping well? I haven’t seen Jeffrey... Mr Ellis for some time. How is he?’
‘Much the same. Never goes out these days.’
‘Might we see him?’
‘I do not think that would be wise.’
It was a relief when the double doors opened again and Amy wheeled in the tea on a clattering tea trolley that had seen better days. Meg touched Lissa’s hand. ‘Go and help Mrs Stanton serve the tea, sweetheart.’ But as Lissa rose to do so, a stern voice bade her remain where she was.
‘I hope we have better manners here at Larkrigg than to permit guests to serve themselves.’ Lissa sat down again, accepting the china cup and saucer with the first flutter of nervousness. Misery was sharp within her. This was not at all how she’d imagined her first meeting with her grandmother would be. She had so longed to see her, and the inside of the old house where her mother had lived as a girl.
It confused and intrigued her to think that a member of her own family, whom she didn’t even know, lived behind these grey stone walls. Now here she was at last, and nothing was as she had hoped. Perhaps Lissa hadn’t quite expected words of love. But a smile, a word of welcome would have warmed her. There was none.
The only consolation was that through the tall, trefoiled windows she could see the friendly mountains that she loved so much, their dark faces streaked with snow filled gullies for spring had been late this year. The house stood so grandly on its ridge that its face looked beyond Larkrigg Fell to the majesty of Kentmere Pike with the dark sentinel of Dundale Knot closer to hand.
Perversely Lissa wished herself out amongst them, where she might find the peace and sanctuary they offered; instead of here, where she felt an outcast. Unwanted.
She realised with a startled jerk that Rosemary Ellis was addressing her with some question and she had missed it. In horror, Lissa glanced at Meg for help who, sensing her predicament, attempted to breach the gap.
‘Lissa attends the High School. She goes into Kendal each day by bus.’
‘The High School?’ The words were spoken with contempt, as if the idea were unthinkable. ‘How very utilitarian.’
‘It’s a very good school as a matter of fact.’
‘Katherine was educated privately. Only the very best of everything, naturally. Still, a local establishment is probably more appropriate in the circumstances.’ Rosemary Ellis fixed her cold gaze upon Lissa, who began to feel quite sick.
Lissa hated the increasing tension in the room and watched in dismay as Meg attempted to laugh away the implied criticism, though it seemed to be through gritted teeth.
‘How is Katherine? She is well, I hope?’
‘Perfectly. My daughter leads an exceedingly busy social life. Her husband, Ewan Maximillian Wadeson III, has quite a position to keep up. A property owner of some renown.’
‘Then she shouldn’t make promises that she intends to visit when she clearly hasn’t time,’ Meg daringly stated, making Lissa jump. Rosemary stiffened and gazed down her long nose at Meg.’ She can’t simply drop everything. On a whim.’
‘It was always her idea to visit. We did not request it.’
‘Well, I certainly did not, Mrs O’Cleary. For my part, I believe the past is best left buried.’
Lissa gazed perplexed at her grandmother. What did that mean? Best left buried. She couldn’t be buried, could she? She was here, alive and well, a physical reality. Lissa felt a bit guilty suddenly, for though Meg might not have made any requests to see Kath, she certainly had. Constantly. She thought it best not to mention those, though perhaps this was an opportunity to get a few questions answered. She edged forward in her seat.
‘What is she like, my mother? Does she look like me? Or like you?’ Here, Lissa’s young mind quailed at this dreadful possibility, and she hurried on without stopping. ‘You still haven’t told us, Grandmother, why she keeps letting me down. Is it my fault? Will she be coming soon? She did promise, really she did. "I’ll come as soon as I can", she said. When do you think that will be?’
Rosemary stared as if shocked that the girl owned a tongue, let alone a mind churning with questions. ‘I really couldn’t say, and I am not your grandmother.’ She turned away to sip her tea with patrician disdain, the subject closed so far as she was concerned. Not for Lissa.
‘Why can’t you say? Perhaps she would prefer it if I were to visit her in Canada?’ Lissa strove to keep the eagerness from her voice. The thought of crossing half the world in a huge ship in search of this elusive, beautiful mother excited her, but she hated to show how much in front of Meg.
‘That would be most unsuitable,’ Rosemary said, shock evident in her voice. ‘The very idea!’
‘Why? Doesn’t she want to see me?’
Cold, pale eyes raked Lissa from head to foot then turned chillingly to Meg. ‘You have taught the child no manners. Which does not surprise me, brought up as she has been with farming stock.’
Lissa saw Meg flinch as if Rosemary Ellis had struck her. Her own head was starting to ache and disappointment made her reckless. She decided she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
‘Is he my father then? This Ewan Maxi person? Or is it because I’m a bastard that you don’t like me?’
‘Lissa!’ Meg cried.
The effect was astonishingly gratifying. For one terrible moment she thought her grandmother was about to faint. Lissa saw at once there would be no denial and felt a wicked surge of gladness that someone else could suffer hurt, as she had so many times. She watched, intrigued, as the whiskered chin and palid cheeks went stark white, grew wine red, then changed to brilliant purple.
‘I must apologise for her behaviour,’ Meg was hastily saying, frowning grimly at Lissa.
‘The child is out of control. You clearly allow her to run wild. Spoil her, without doubt.’
‘I don’t think it possible to spoil a child. Where else would she find the love she needs, if not from me and from Tam?’ Brave, reckless words, chillingly received.
‘Enough. Do you take me for a fool?’ Icicles dripped from the thin voice. ‘I know why you persist in keeping up this contact with Katherine. Which is why I have called you here today, to inform you that it must stop. There will be no more contact between you. I am not too foolish to recognise a clever ruse when I see one.’
‘Clever ruse?’ Meg’s eyes widened.
‘Indeed. To get money out of me. Or my husband, as no doubt you have cleverly done in the past on many occasions, gullible fool that he is.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Come, come, Mrs O’Cleary, do not pretend with me. He helped you get a mortgage once, I seem to remember. But you will not succeed. I do not acknowledge your illegitimate child as any responsibility of mine.’ She turned away and pulled on a bell pull. ‘Now we have the matter straight, I believe this interview is over.’
Meg looked as if someone had punched her in the face. Her voice shook. ‘How dare you? How dare you suggest such things? And in front of the child.’
‘It’s all right,’ Lissa said, anxious to calm Meg. ‘I understand, and I really don’t mind about being a bastard, only I would’ve liked to know why I wasn’t wanted.’
The shock waves of this little speech almost knocked Lissa off her seat. Rosemary Ellis shot to her feet, clasping and unclasping her hands in agitation. ‘If that child uses that word once more in my presence…’ A tall, angular figure with good bone structure, but any beauty she might once have possessed had long since dissipated. A sour mouth thinned perceptibly, even as Lissa gazed wonderingly upon it.
‘Stern discipline is what this little madam needs. Though I can think of no respectable establishment which would admit her, and you seem quite unable to provide it.’
It was a long moment before Meg answered, concerned as she was about Lissa, seeing the tears brim in the violet eyes, young ears taking in every nuance of the argument. Very quietly she got to her feet. ‘We need no help to bring up our own daughter, Mrs Ellis, and you are the last person I would ask, if we did.’ Meg was trembling with anger. ‘Had I known you were going to attack us with your nasty insinuations, I would have left Lissa at home.’
Lissa was, in fact, paying less attention than Meg realised. The whole scene had made her feel distinctly odd. A pain started deep in her belly and she wanted, very suddenly, to be sick. She clamped her teeth tightly together in desperation as the room began to swim about her.
Meg was speaking from a long way off.
‘If you had not been so hard hearted as to throw your daughter out all those years ago, you might have found a bit more love in your own life. Which might have spared you this warped view of the world, Rosemary Ellis. And certainly would have benefited Kath, as well as your poor husband. Yes, Jeffrey was kind to me in the past, but I asked him for nothing and he gave me nothing but his advice and support. I never took any money from him. Ever. Although I greatly valued his friendship. I will not stay and bandy insults with you. I want nothing from you, not now, nor in the future. I agree with you about the letters. I too would prefer it if they stopped. Please ask Katherine to refrain from making promises to Lissa which she has no intention of keeping. It is thoughtless and unkind and causes nothing but hurt and upset for the child.’
Lissa groaned as the pain shot deeper, like a great weight between her legs. Neither woman heard her.
‘You have clearly read too much into her words. Katherine responds as best she can only because the child insists on writing to her.’ The older woman was almost spitting her contempt now as the two stood facing each other, determined adversaries. Meg held to her point.
‘Kath encourages this fantasy of Lissa’s that they might meet one day. It does enormous damage. Every time Kath lets her down the child feels rejected all over again.’
‘Utter rubbish!’ The whiskered chin shook. ‘Rejected indeed. You cannot believe that Katherine or I owe any responsibility to a child who readily admits herself to - to be what she is. Ours is a respectable family. She is no fault of ours.’
Meg dropped her chin and drew in a long, shuddering breath, steadying herself, fighting the urge to tear this unfeeling, cruel woman to shreds. How dare she deny Lissa’s parentage? So concerned was she with her efforts that she did not notice how the colour drained away from Lissa’s cheeks. She only heard a stifled moan and then the air seemed to be filled with a piercing scream, bringing both women whirling.
‘Look what you’ve done. Both of you,’ Lissa screamed, terror in her voice. ‘You’ve killed me. I’m dying. Meg, I’m dying.’
The blood of womanhood was running down the young girl’s legs, soaking into the bright white ankle socks and on to the valuable Persian rug.
‘Dear Lord,’ cried Meg, horrified.
‘As I said, Mrs O’Cleary. Discipline and control. Entirely lacking, you see.’
Meg sat on the edge of the big bed she shared with Tam, wringing her hands in anguish. ‘I should have told her long since. I’ve failed her, leaving it so late. She was scared out of her wits, poor lamb. I should have explained all about Jack too, then she mightn’t have felt the need to shock with that dreadful word.’
‘You’ve told her now?’
‘Yes, everything.’
Tam slipped an arm about her to pull her close. ‘Don’t worry over it. You wouldn’t be the Meg we all know and love if you were mooning about the house fussing over us all the time.’
‘Even so, it was a mistake. That dreadful woman. Discipline and control, my Aunt Fanny!’ Meg’s hands clenched tight, as if she would have punched Rosemary Ellis on the nose were she present. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things she said to me, what she accused me of.’
Tam stroked the golden curls away and tucked them behind her ears, kissing the lobes as he did so. ‘Haven’t you told me, sweetheart, a dozen times already? You mustn’t let the woman get to you. She is a vicious, bad-mouthed old besom and not to be listened to. I forbid you to take Lissa to see her again.’
Meg turned to gaze into his moss green eyes, startled for a moment by the unusual vehemence in his lilting voice. ‘Forbid?’
‘Why should our little girl be subjected to such an attack? Tis not her fault if she was born on the wrong side of the blanket, now is it? So keep her away in future. We don’t need any of them.’
For Lissa it was a turning point, of sorts, for the rejection cut deep. There were no more letters to Canada, no more wishing for her mother to come. She had Meg and Tam who she loved to bits. She told herself she needed no one else, certainly not a mother who didn’t love her. But she still worried about whether she was really wanted, ached to know who she really was and where she truly belonged.
The following months and years weren’t easy, and there came a particularly difficult period when Meg fell pregnant. To her shame, the thought of a baby in the house appalled her. It would take all Meg’s time and attention. It seemed to prove how unimportant she was, for why should Meg want a baby at all when she’d always claimed Lissa was everything to her?
Her fears seemed to be justified as Meg withdrew into a world of her own, rarely hearing when Lissa spoke to her so that she had to say everything twice.
Mealtimes were changed to suit Meg’s delicate stomach. She went to bed early instead of sitting chatting by the fire, leaving Lissa to make her own supper. Even iron her own clothes. It was quite incredible how life changed. To Lissa’s increasing dismay Meg became perfectly obsessed with making plans for the baby, took to having weird food fancies, morning sickness and back ache. And Tam’s loving preoccupation with her grated every bit as much.
There seemed nothing else for it but to play the martyr or how would they ever remember she lived here too? If they saw she was unhappy, Lissa decided, then they would pay her proper attention. So she refused to speak to either of them, took to spending hours alone in her room, hoping someone would notice she was missing and come and look for her. Yet if they did, she would sulk and say she wasn’t hungry. They asked if she was sickening for something because she ate so little. Except at night when they were both asleep. Then she would secretly raid the larder for cuts of meat and slices of apple pie. It made her feel wickedly decadent.
‘You don’t care about me any more,’ she said, sulking furiously. ‘Nobody does. I must be a very unlovable person. No wonder my mother deserted me.’
Meg’s look of horror brought a burst of sweet delight into Lissa’s rebellious heart. ‘What a thing to say. Of course I care. I love you dearly, Lissa. And so does Tam.’ The kettle started gently to steam.
‘You brought me up. That’s not quite the same thing, is it?’ The tone was cruelly mocking but Lissa didn’t care. She wanted to hurt Meg as she was hurting, deep inside.
‘Of course it’s the same. You are very special to us and always will be.’
Hot tears pricked her eyelids and Lissa blinked them angrily away. ‘That was only duty. You had no choice. You didn’t even choose me. I was dumped on you.’ With tremulous pleasure she watched the terrible effect of these words dawn on Meg’s face. Instantly the feeling drained away and she was drenched in guilt. She wanted to run to Meg and smooth away the stricken look, to beg her forgiveness and say she hadn’t meant it.
‘Oh, Lissa,’ was all Meg said, which made her feel worse than ever. Desperately, she tried to put it right.
‘Come for a ride. Not to Brockbarrow wood but somewhere different. I’m bored with everywhere round here.’
Meg looked distressed. Tam had got Lissa a lovely little mare, but Meg never let her go too far alone, insisting she was always accompanied. ‘I can’t. Not today, love. Why don’t you ask Tam to go with you?’
Lissa pouted. ‘Tam says he has to do all your jobs as well as his own these days. He’s too busy.’
‘It’s a difficult time.’
The kettle was rattling furiously on the stove and Meg quickly lifted it to pour the scalding water into the teapot. There was so much she wanted to explain, about life, about trust, about love, but she couldn’t seem to find the right words, the right approach to get through to Lissa any more. The huge farm kitchen filled with the comforting aroma of hot tea but when she turned back to the table, loving words of caution on her lips, Lissa was already on her feet, knocking back her chair with a fierce hand.
‘Don’t bother. I knew it was a waste of time to talk to you. You aren’t interested in me any more.’ With that she stormed out of the house.
She rode defiantly right along the quarry road, forbidden territory. The triumph she felt at breaking Meg’s strictest rule made her hum with pleasure. It promised to be a beautiful autumn day. The late afternoon sun was shining brilliantly by the time she’d ridden Goldie through Brockbarrow wood and onwards to the tarn. It glittered on the rippled surface wrinkled as an old man’s bald head.
Lissa reined in the pony and let it take a drink at the water. A picture of herself and Nick, shaking their bottles of liquorice water, came to mind. What a childish thing to do. What innocent babes they had been. As if a stretch of water could answer their wishes. As if wishing could find a mother, or make Meg still love her. There was a tight feeling in her throat but she ignored it. It wasn’t her fault if no one understood or cared for her? Or was it? A bleak thought.
‘What will I do when I’m grown up, Goldie? Where will I go? I can’t stay here where I don’t really belong.’ Lissa thought about this for a moment. What would it feel like to be a woman? What was she now? Not a child, surely.