The Girl From World’s End

Just thinking about it gave her courage to ferret in the darkness. The sky was clear and the moon was up high enough to be a lantern if she opened the window shutters. Her eyes were getting used to the half-light. It was better to keep moving than to freeze, so she packed the straw into the sack to make a little mattress, and pretended it was a feather quilt and she was the princess in the pea story. Then she gathered up any bits of wood she could find, scliffs from the stairs.

There were holes built into the inglenook, crannies where things were kept dry like the one in the old bit of Cragside for salt, and a bread oven. Feeling her way into the holes with fear in case a rat jumped out of its nest, like one had in the chicken coop the other day, scaring her half to death with its beady eye, Mirren tried to be brave. Inside was dry and she touched something hard and jumped back. It didn’t move. Her fingers found a cold metal box about the size of a baccy tin.

Please let there be lucifers inside, she prayed. The tin was rusted and hard to prise open, all ridges and bumps in fancy patterns made of brass, and her fingertips were numb. In frustration she banged the edge on the hearth and it fell open.

Inside was a kit of some sort. Dad had one of these on the mantelpiece to keep his pipe bits in. It was an old comforts tin for soldiers, he had told her, once full of chocolates and cigarettes. This one had the face of the old Queen on, but nothing inside but a bit of rag, some chalk ends, a peppermint lozenge and two dry lucifers. Two chances to make a flame: another prayer was answered.

How did they do it in the scout book? She had to have some dry cloth. Her clothes were damp-even her knickers were wet where she had leaked–but she did have a thick vest and liberty bodice though she couldn’t cut them. Then she found the hanky rolled in her knicker pocket, full of snot but dry enough now.

She must make a little triangle tent of straw and bits to catch alight but she needed stuff to put in the fire too, wood and bits to keep it going. Dad once told her that poor people used cow dung to heat their fires. Dried dung didn’t smell, he said when she turned up her nose. There was plenty of that scraped along the walls, if she searched hard enough.

She piled everything she could and tried to light the lucifer, but it flared and went out before anything smouldered and she threw it away in disgust and frustration.

She set out her little fire again and hovered over it as she struck the last match. This one flared and dropped onto the tinder. As it smouldered she recalled she had to blow it gently, adding little pieces with trembling fingers, just like Granny Simms did when her fire wouldn’t catch.

Slowly the little fire grew from a few twigs to a flaring ember of warmth and needed feeding with fresh stuff to burn. Just the sight of it made Mirren feel warm. If only there was a candle somewhere. Back to the storage holes and a fingertip search in case there was something there, and there was: just a stub, but a candle for company.

Up the stairs she went gingerly, in search of kindling and bits of plaster laths.

‘Thank you, house,’ she whispered into the walls. ‘Thanks for shelter and firelight but I need more wood. Where can I find wood?’

Then a strange thing happened. It was as if she could hear her dad’s voice in her head for the first time since the accident.

‘Mirren Gilchrist, use yer gumption, lassie. It’s all to hand.’

With her candle end she crawled up the ladder and saw the broken laths lying around the walls, a pile of dry kindling. She must chuck them down onto the flags and make a pile. This was dusty work but it kept her mind off the roar of the blizzard and the piles of snow gathering from the hole in the roof.

Downstairs was warmth, a feather bed, a lozenge to suck if she dared. Water could be heated in the brass tin over the fire and she popped in the lozenge to give it taste. This was using her gumption too. Whatever happened, the fire must be fed in the hearth. No one would come in the storm, but perhaps in the morning…

Waking at first light shivering, Mirren smelled smoke and smouldering embers. Her hoard was well and truly exhausted but there was a good supply upstairs. Time to melt more snow in the tin. Through the gap she could see blue sky and a few drifting flakes. She opened the shutter to a mysterious white mound, strange shapes, no walls or barns or rocks, just great waves of snow, in peaks like whipped cream. The devil wind was whipping up new shapes. Her tummy was rumbling with hunger and her legs were wobbly but there was nothing to eat here.

It was warmest sitting right by the fire, hidden under the archway, and when the blackened tin was hot she wrapped it in a sack to warm her feet like a hot-water bottle. The stones were now hot and if she stayed tight she was thawed enough to tingle, but the fire was the only thing being fed. She was feeling dizzy.

What was happening at Cragside? Had they discovered she was wagging off school? In some ways she was glad to be found out. Wasting schooling was doing her no good.

‘Whatever you do in life, lassie, get an eddy-cashun,’ her dad once said when he was sobered up. ‘You dinna want to end up like me. Even a girl needs a schooling.’

It had been easy in Scarperton, but this school was teaching her nothing and the teacher didn’t care. He was useless and smelled of whisky. How she hated that smell.

Up here it was peaceful, safe between thick walls. Someone must have lived here once, but who? If only she could live here with Mam and Dad. They could keep stock and make butter and cheese, and she could show Dad all she’d learned from Granddad.

Had Mam played here as a little girl? Was her spirit watching over her now? Mirren hoped so.

It was hard to be a motherless lamb with no memories of her mam, just a snapshot in a print dress. The mother of her imagination would be tall and pretty, with golden hair, and clever and sparkling, but no one at Cragside ever talked about her much when she asked questions. They clammed up and looked the other way when she pestered for more.

Did they own this house or did it belong to the bigwig in London who came for the shooting at Benton Hall? Why was it left to rot, unloved, abandoned?

Mirren made for the door, thinking if she kept in a straight line she might just make her way down like the sheep. Her courage failed when she opened the door on to a mountain of snow. She was trapped, fast in, as they said round here. Time to bank up the fire and pray. She was no match for the devil wind and the snow giants.

She sipped her hot water, pretending it was cocoa laced with the top of the milk. Mam and Dad would have loved this house but they weren’t here now. They were gone and she was on her own again. If someone didn’t come soon she would starve. How quickly night-time fears flee when the sun shines, but she sat like Cinderella at the hearth, too weak now to move.

When would they come?

4 (#uf56aa83c-0324-5126-8355-cc99741ea590)

Adey took one look at the sky and knew school would be out early. They must send a cart to see the child got back safely. Country kiddies took shelter in bad weather. They knew to lie low until it was safe, but Mirren was different and secretive these days and she might not do the right thing. Adey sent Joe to collect her just in case.

Now they were used to having her around the place, grown accustomed to her noisy chatter and questions. Questions. She was a bright one and her piano playing was coming on. All she lacked was practice and concentration, but she was little Miss Head-in-a-Book. It would be nice if she got to the girls’ secondary school like her mam. Her coming had brought life back to the place and no one could say she didn’t help out…

Then Joe blew in from the doorway, covered in snow.

‘You’re back, praise the Lord. Thanks for getting her, Joe. Where’s her ladyship?’ Adey searched for the child behind him.

‘She wasn’t there, Mother. Burrows said summat about her going home early and that’s not all. I had a word with Lizzie Halstead at the door. Mirren’s hardly been in school at all…’ he muttered.

‘The little minx, wait till I get my hands on her. What’s going on?’ Adey was all worked up with worry and fury.

Carrie was lurking at the stove and she turned pink. ‘Perhaps I should’ve said something earlier, Mrs Yewell, but our Emmot says that Mirren hates school and got the cane for fighting. They’ve been calling her names and Burrows makes her go in the baby class so she’s been off sick.’

‘Now you tell us!’ snapped Adey. ‘How long has this been going on? Oh, my giddy aunt, she’s out in that snow. Send for Tom. We’ll have to get up a search party.’ She felt the fear and panic rising and went for her coat.

‘Hang on, Mother. What good’ll that do in this wild darkness?’ came Joe’s predictable reply. ‘She could be anywhere by now. She’s a sensible lass even if she’s stubborn with it. She’ll have found cover. Tom and the village boys will look for her in the morning.’

‘We can’t wait that long. She’ll catch her death,’ Adey was shouting back. ‘Wait till I see her, scaring us half to death. You’ll have to take the strap to her and teach her a lesson.’

‘Wait on, Adey. Lass’s in enough trouble as it is, gadding off into the hills. She doesn’t know the lay of the land and not the size of tuppence ha’penny. We should have kept a closer eye on her ourselves. We used to be able to sniff out trouble with our lads but we’ve got out of the habit, and she’s a deep one, at that.’

‘You could take the dogs out with a storm lantern,’ Adey pleaded.

‘Don’t be daft. And have two of us lost in the snow? We’ll do the job proper with a gang stretched over the moor. Mind you, she’s a right devil running off from the schoolmaster. I thought only lads did that,’ said Joe, scratching his head.

‘We’ve got to do something,’ screamed Adey, pacing up and down the kitchen, clattering her pans.

Carrie started to cry. ‘I’m not a tale teller, as you know, but I reckon Burrows had made her life a right misery. Emmot says she’s top of the class but she has to sit at the back and shut up or teach the dunces to do their letters. That’s not right, is it?’

‘Poor lass has had a right miserable time but never thought to tell us,’ said Joe, slurping his tea in a way that always got on Adey’s nerves.

‘We didn’t bring her all this way to lose her in the snow,’ Adey sighed. ‘Happen we should never have brought her here in the first place. It’s not like living in a town. She never said a word…’

What if Mirren was already lost? What sort of Christmas would they have in mourning? How would she ever forgive herself? The girl’d been taking her bullying in silence and that showed courage, and to put up with Burrows in the state he was in nowadays. He ought to be reported. Were they such ogres that she couldn’t tell them her troubles?

If she came out of this alive, they’d have to think things afresh, perhaps put her in a private school, but where would they find the cash for that?

‘Dear Lord, keep the child safe for one more day, temper the wind to the shorn lamb,’ Joe prayed, and they bowed their heads in the kitchen. ‘Show us the way…’

Outside the wind roared and the blizzard raged but no one got a wink of sleep that night. They were helpless in the face of the storm. It was out of their hands now.

The fire was still crackling with more broken-off laths but Mirren was now weak with hunger and fear. Why didn’t they come? Would they ever find her? Perhaps they had given her up for lost?