The Mystery of the Cupboard

His vision of ‘the country’ as a barren wilderness devoid of all entertainment blurred a little, and out of the mist rode a familiar figure: an American Indian, seated astride a strong, alert brown pony, with his hand raised in stern greeting. He cocked one buckskin-clad leg over the pony’s neck and slid to the ground, where he stood knee-deep in lush English grass. What was odd was, in Omri’s vision, he was the same size as Omri - well, bigger, obviously, because he was a man. The odd thing about this was that Omri had only ever seen him small. But often in Omri’s night- and day- dreams, he appeared full size.

Now, in the daydream, the Indian made a stirrup of both hands and gestured with his head. Without hesitating, Omri ran up to him, put his left foot in the hands and felt himself lifted. A moment later he was on the pony’s warm back.

It felt terrific. He looked down at the Indian - his friend - and the Indian narrowed his black eyes at him approvingly and gestured with both fists. Omri understood him instantly and echoed that squeezing movement with his legs. The pony started forward…

“What are you grinning at?” asked Adiel, who was watching him. “You’ve got your loopy look.”

Omri hastily banished Little Bull from his mind and rearranged his face into solemn lines. “Nothing, I was just thinking. And where would me and Gillon go to school?”

“Gillon and I,” corrected his father between his teeth for the three thousandth time. “Locally. We’re looking into it now.”

“It’ll be some tinny little country school with eight pupils,” said Gillon.

“Oh, come on, boys, cheer up. It won’t happen till the summer at the very earliest. And meanwhile there’s all the fun of going to see our new place. We’re going this weekend.”

“Is it by the sea?”

“Not far — about six miles.”

Gillon scrambled up. His eyes were on Omri. In them, Omri discerned a brotherly signal: might not be so bad, what d’you think? Omri gave an almost imperceptible nod. His heart felt suddenly, unaccountably light.

*

Visiting the new house was quite a lot of fun, apart from the long car journey, which was obviously hard to take, especially as their parents had recently gone on a health kick and flatly refused to take them to motorway service stops where they insisted you could only buy junk food. They had to wait till they were off the motorway, by which time the pubs had stopped serving lunch and the next meal would be tea. However, by the time they found a tea place they were all so hungry that health was forgotten and they stuffed themselves with tea cakes and scones and thick cream and strawberry jam and flapjacks till they nearly burst. They might as well have had the hamburger-and-chips meal in the first place.

On the way again, Omri asked, “Who did you inherit this house from?”

“Some cousin I never knew existed. An old, old man who died recently without leaving a will. It seems I’m his nearest relative. The lawyers contacted me and said I was to have the house. Bit of luck, eh?”

“Let’s wait till we’ve seen it,” said Gillon, never one to see the bright side until he was forced to.

The house was outside a village in deepest Dorset. It took four hours to get there, and find it. After passing through a mysterious dark tunnel they drew up at last beside a big gate in a lane. There was no sign of the house, which was screened from the road by a high hedge of mixed wild trees and shrubs, not like London hedges, which tended all to be made of the same thing.

They entered through another gate, a small one, and went up a path. The first thing that struck them was how incredibly different it all was from London. The boys could hardly grasp the fact that they were actually going to live in a place like this, surrounded by open countryside, with no other houses in sight. They felt weird about it, as if they were on another planet.

The details in the lawyers’ letter had talked about ‘an acre of land, outbuildings, a paddock, and a small wood running down to a river that borders the property’. They stood on the overgrown lawn and stared round them in wonderment. In the distance were rounded hills, some with trees crowning them, and nearer were sloping fields. It was indeed ‘a big green place with lots of trees’.

“We’re in the Hidden Valley,” murmured their mother. “Isn’t it absolutely magical?”

“How much of all this is ours?” asked Gillon.

“Just this bit, stupid,” said Adiel. “Up to the fence.”

“No,” said their mother, consulting a sort of map the lawyers had sent. “More than that. That big field is ours — that’s the paddock. Down to those trees down there. That’s the river. And there’s more across the lane.”

“More?” The garden at home, which they had considered vast, dwindled by comparison to tablecloth-size.

Their mother led them across the lane to the big gate. Beyond it was a yard with buildings on three sides. One was a big workshop, and their father headed for that like an arrow. Another was three open bays under a corrugated iron roof. A third looked like an old barn and had several doors.

“That’s the pigsty and stable,” their mother said. “Long disused. And a couple of rooms for feed and stuff. And somewhere there are henhouses.”

“Long disused, too, I suppose,” said Adiel.

“No, as a matter of fact, there are hens. Some old party from the village has been coming in to look after them occasionally and collect the eggs. It should be round the back there somewhere.”

The boys belted round behind the pigsty and found about a dozen hens, one of them with five tiny chicks running around squeaking. There was a handsome cockerel, too, who obliged with a regal crow as soon as they appeared.

“Hey, check this out, Dad!” called Adiel, bending over a long box. “Fresh eggs!” He emerged holding two in each hand.

“And fresh chicken!” said Gillon.

“If you can kill them,” said their mother.

“Anyone would kill a chicken to get a roast one,” said Gillon, who’d never killed anything in his life.

“Well, never mind the livestock now. Let’s go and look over the house!” said their mother excitedly. “My very own house! I can’t wait!”

The two-storey house was made of stone, with a thatched roof. It was a funny shape, long and thin, with a sort of bend or wave in the middle.

“It’s a real Dorset longhouse!” enthused their father.

“A longhouse!” Omri almost shouted.

They all looked at him curiously.

“Yes… That’s what these long one-room-deep stone houses are called around here.”

The rooms were fairly small, but there were eight main ones altogether — four bedrooms in a row above four little linked living rooms. No corridors. Two flights of stairs, one at each end, so the two middle bedrooms led off the two outer ones. The bathroom had been added in modern times, built out at the back over the kitchen. From every window there were beautiful views.

The garden was neglected and the thatched roof gave Omri’s father pause.

“It’s all very well,” he said, while they all rushed about getting enthusiastic. “I love the place, it’s perfect, that workshop! My dream of a studio! But have you any idea what it costs to rethatch a thatched roof? And we’d have to, almost right away. Look, it’s rotten.” He reached out through one of the tiny windows upstairs and pulled a handful of thatch out of the deep eaves. It was black with age and damp and it had a musty smell.

From below, Omri called in an odd tone, “Come and see this!”

The others went outside and round to the gable end of the house, nearest the road. Up under the sloping thatch was a plaque, inset into the stone. It was engraved in very worn old-fashioned writing. Omri couldn’t read it, but their mother, with difficulty, made it out:

Blessed the man who fearing God buildeth for posterity. LB. 1704

When she’d finished reading, they all stood for a moment. Then Gillon said, “What’s posterity?”

“It means your bottom,” said Adiel.

The older two burst out laughing. Only Omri didn’t — he wasn’t listening.

“Don’t be fatuous, boys,” said their father. “Not ‘posterior’! ‘For posterity’ means ‘for those who’ll come after you’.”

Gillon and Adiel were still choking down their mirth when Omri said quietly, “We’re definitely going to like living here.” They all looked at him.