School for Skylarks Read online

  ‘Soon Mop will come –’

  Lyla broke off because her words were dissolving, and, unaccountably, tears from deep inside were rising to the surface when she’d had no intention of their doing so. She rose and pushed past Solomon and fled upstairs.

  6

  DEVILLED KIDNEY

  On account of the scratching and peculiar pitter-pattering that went on at all hours of the night at Furlongs, Lyla had not slept well. Well, she wouldn’t be staying long. A plan was in motion. Wheels were turning. The Ministry of Works would send soldiers here, and she would be sent home.

  She rose from her bed, went over to the wardrobe and rifled through her clothes. Someone had done a very thorough sort of packing, and Solomon had done an equally thorough job of unpacking. At the far end of the rail was a mothy green cape that wasn’t hers. Lyla rolled her eyes. It had probably hung there for at least a century or two.

  She went down to breakfast, huffing as she passed a bucket on the stairs, then grinning to think how it probably rained inside Furlongs, and how Great Aunt Ada probably sloshed about the place in gumboots. She smiled until she remembered how unfair life was, which made her cross again, that is until the smell of breakfast reached her. A house that held so stalwart a woman as Great Aunt Ada might provide an Empire-Building breakfast of things like eggs Benedict or devilled kidneys.

  She paused. There was no Solomon anywhere. She glanced at the Mail Out tray and saw that her letter had gone. Old Alfred was staring at her as if to say, I know what you are doing. I know about your letter to the Ministry of Works. So she stuck her tongue out at him, crept to the dining room and peered in.

  She glimpsed a splendid table upon which sat enough silverware to host a royal banquet for several heads of state. There’d definitely be toast; perhaps even butter. The door swung open and suddenly Lyla was caught in Ada’s cool, bright gaze. Her great aunt was seated at the far end of the table, the canary known as Little Gibson was perched on a toast rack and behind them both stood Solomon, a linen napkin draped over his arm. Ada had newspapers and tea and, indeed, a devilled kidney.

  ‘How marvellous she’s still here! We didn’t think she would be, did we, Solomon?’

  ‘No, my lady.’

  ‘After all,’ continued Ada, ‘she’s been kidnapped and wishes to return to where she came from.’

  Solomon’s face remained impassive. His mistress might talk to him, but only under the rarest of circumstances would he venture any opinion of his own.

  ‘Actually I might be here for just a day or two more. But then I must return to London, because my disappearance will be making Mop anxious and worried and upset,’ said Lyla.

  ‘I see. Well, I hope you slept well?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I didn’t because that room is haunted.’

  ‘Ah, but don’t you see, it’s the person that inhabits it that is haunted, not the room itself,’ remarked Aunt Ada, handing a cuttlebone to Little Gibson. ‘You bring along the things that haunt you, wherever you go.’

  Lyla had no idea what was meant by that. ‘Ghosts don’t scratch or make noises,’ she retorted.

  ‘Oh, but they do. The Green Countess, for example, cries.’

  ‘The Green Countess?’

  ‘She was very, very wicked, and she wore bottle green from head to toe.’ Aunt Ada’s eyes lit up. ‘In fact, the very cape that hangs in your wardrobe belonged to her. And on moonless nights, the door opens and a candle floats across the room—’

  Lyla was gawping, until that is, she detected the faintest trace of a smile on Solomon’s lips and, knowing then she was being teased, interrupted her aunt. ‘Countesses do not scratch at floors.’

  ‘Ah, but the scratching is only the mice. You heard mice.’

  ‘Ah, that makes it so much better,’ remarked Lyla sarcastically. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter because soon I’ll be going home.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘I will.’

  Aunt Ada paused, then tried again. ‘Your mother—’

  ‘Needs me,’ interrupted Lyla firmly.

  As Aunt Ada regarded Lyla with those piercing eyes, colour began to rise to Lyla’s cheeks, and her blood started to toss and pitch inside her.

  ‘Just wait! You’ll be forced to let me go!’ she hissed.

  Lyla marched out and stomped up the stairs, keeping to the edges where she’d make most noise, but no one called after her or came running, so at the top she sank down and raged. A short while passed but still no one had come, so she rearranged herself in a noisy, huffy kind of way. Still no one came, so she grew bored and stood and marched past all the knights in armour into the Yellow Silk Room.

  Lyla went to the window and waited there all morning, all the fear and anxiety inside her mingling and becoming a physical ache.

  If she wished hard enough and kept watching, Mop just might appear, and it was almost as if she were back at the kitchen table in London, gazing out into the street, watching for Mop. If she were in London, Winnie might be at the stove, and if she’d remembered about Lyla’s schooling, she might be reciting aphorisms for Lyla to copy out.

  Any port in a storm.

  A friend in need is a friend indeed.

  ‘Aphorism’ was the fanciest word that Winnie ever used, and she was firmly of the view that the Oxford Book of Aphorisms contained all the information required to educate a child. According to Winnie, all subjects were covered more than amply by aphorisms. Through the window, Lyla would see other children returning home from school, in happy clusters, holding hands and carrying satchels laden with the sorts of books that Winnie held to have no common sense in them at all.

  There was no chance of school or school friends for Lyla because Mop had decided that school hours were most inconvenient, and that, in fact, there was absolutely no need to go to school at all. Actually, you could grow up perfectly well, quite on your own. In fact Mop couldn’t remember anything she’d ever hated in her whole life so much as school: school tried to make you into a different shape than the shape you actually were; therefore Lyla must not go to one. And so it was that Lyla’s education had been placed entirely in the hands of Winnie and the Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

  Winnie, placing a pot in a drawer, might say:

  A place for everything, and everything in its place.

  Lyla would write that down, and Winnie would then say:

  Potatoes, three pounds.

  And Lyla having duly written that down, would sigh and cross it out, because Potatoes, three pounds was probably part of a shopping list. Shopping Lists and Spelling Tests were actually one and the same thing and they went in a different exercise book. By now Winnie, distracted by some dirt on the floor, would have taken up a broom and forgotten all about spelling and shopping and aphorisms, and Lyla would turn again to the window and wonder what other children did at school all day, and she’d watch for Mop and ache for her to return.

  As thoughts of Mop flooded Lyla’s head she felt her throat constrict. She turned away from the window. Mop would be in a worry and a flurry, for she had a tendency to fluster and to telephone everyone and issue instructions, then to telephone again with counter-instructions, and thus orchestrate a whole whirlwind entirely from the comfort of her bed.

  Lyla went to the desk and took a piece of headed paper and paused, thinking that she must be careful not to alarm Mop with news of what had happened.

  Furlongs

  Ladywood

  North Devon

  Dearest Mop,

  Father has stolen me and DUMPED me in a faraway-off-the-edge-of-the-world place with Great Aunt Ada, where there’re no taxicabs or anything. Great Aunt Ada doesn’t have a telephone and won’t enter the Modern Age because she doesn’t want voices coming down a line at her just whenever they want to. In any case the telephone company won’t put miles of cable up for someone who doesn’t hold with new-fangled things. That is why I can’t telephone you.

  I DID try to escape, but it isn’t straightforward. Tra
ins don’t stop unless Aunt Ada tells them to, and she won’t, because trains are also part of the new-fangled Modern Age, and though she admires them as a scientist, she has no intention of going about in them. So if you come and get me, you will have to come in a motor.

  Great Aunt Ada is dotty and there’s no getting through to her about what is important at all, which is sending me back to London. Her butler is either a warlock or a sorcerer or a wizard.

  I do have another Plan in motion so I can get back to you as quickly as possible because I miss you very much, but it is a rather difficult and desperate sort of Plan.

  Please don’t be worried or get ill. I am all right, but I am worried about you because I’ve already been here one whole day and you haven’t written or come to get me, so perhaps you are having a Black Day? Anyway now my Plan is underway, so hopefully soon I shall be back at home with you.

  All my love,

  Lyla

  7

  PERHAPS TOMORROW, MISS LYLA

  At Furlongs the same things happened at the same time every day and probably had ever since the beginning of time. Every morning at seven thirty, Cedric Tawny the groundsman would rake the gravel, and his Great Dane, Stephen, always beside him, would watch every stroke and sometimes pounce on the rake and make Cedric smile. Every morning at eight, the postmistress, Mabel Rawle, would cycle up the drive, and Lyla would creep down and peer into the in tray that sat beside Old Alfred in case there was a letter from Mop. Solomon, at the door to the dining room, would see her there, and when she turned, head bowed in disappointment, he’d say gently, Not today, Miss Lyla, as though he’d never said it before, and then he’d add, Perhaps tomorrow, Miss Lyla.

  But on Lyla’s seventh morning at Furlongs, Solomon was waiting for her in the hall, an envelope in his hands.

  ‘A letter for you, Lady Lyla.’

  Lyla sprang towards him, her heart thumping. At last – at last – Mop had written.

  Lyla suddenly froze. Lady Lyla. Not Mop then. She glanced at Solomon and then at the envelope and noticed now that it was an official-looking sort of letter, not like Mop’s elegant stationery at all. She grabbed it and crammed it into her pocket. Feeling a little queasy, Lyla turned and ran up the stairs. Lady Lyla. What had Solomon thought about that? She decided she didn’t care. Soon the soldiers would be here and she’d go back to London.

  Lyla crept away alone to read the letter and found it most encouraging. The Ministry of Works was most grateful, the nation was most grateful – everyone must do their part in this time of crisis. Large premises in the West Country and all areas unlikely to be targeted by the German bombers were urgently required for the safety of those in urban areas.

  Yes, thought Lyla, everything was most satisfactory. Everything was going entirely according to plan.

  And yet, somehow, she had begun to feel a little uneasy.

  After a while, Lyla shook herself and decided she must explore the house because soon she would be leaving.

  First, she decided, she would locate the kitchens and find out if there was a larder full of jellies and jams. So she made her way downstairs and eventually, by following the sound of a wireless, she found the kitchen and a person who must be the cook, for she had a round pink face and a flowered apron and an immense bosom that rested on the surface of a pastry table amidst reams of coloured wool and the only thing that was unexpected about her was the tin hat that was perched on her head.

  On the wireless, a man called Mr Middleton was giving instructions about the growing of purple potatoes. The cook was perhaps a little deaf for she was talking very loudly over the sound of Mr Middleton to someone or something – as loudly as if she were shouting into a high wind.

  ‘I got no intention, Henny, no intention of growing none of them things he’s talking about, but I do like his personality and I like the way he says “pertaters”.’

  Who was Henny?

  Lyla pushed the door a little wider open. Henny, she could now see, was actually a rather handsome copper hen, which was picking its way along the shelf above the fireplace and looking very well there amidst the copper pans.

  The cook waved her knitting about in the direction of Henny.

  ‘All day I have to talk to you – all day or you don’t lay. As if I haven’t enough on my hands, what with all the jerseys for the merchant seamen.’

  After spying for a while on Henny and the cook, Lyla peered about the kitchen. Then, disappointed because she couldn’t see any rows of jellies and jams, she decided instead to find out what Ada did with her days.

  She returned to the corridor beyond the library, passing several glass cases housing moths of an especially hairy and horned variety, then came to a door in the middle of which, to her astonishment, was a large letter box, which was an odd thing to see actually INSIDE a house.

  ‘Dotty and moonstruck,’ she whispered.

  A billiard table stood in the centre of the room, the baize surface strewn with weighing scales, manuals and batteries; tins labelled with ‘Ammonal Powder’, ‘Gelignite’, ‘Strontium Carbonate’, ‘Blasting Gelatine’, ‘Colouring Agent’, ‘Aluminium Powder’ and ‘Oxidizer’; wires and detonators; and stacks of what looked suspiciously like very large hand grenades.

  I’m stuck in an out-of-the-way place with a very dangerous great aunt, and anything might happen here, thought Lyla.

  8

  CAULIFLOWER CHEESE

  Cauliflower cheese was served every day for lunch, always at precisely one o’clock. Lyla was always hungry by then.

  Today, as she entered the dining room, Solomon was waiting at her chair to pull it out, and Great Aunt Ada smiled at her and Solomon said, ‘Another letter for you, Miss Lyla, in the second post.’ He proffered a silver dish with an envelope on it.

  Lyla started: if it was another letter from the Ministry, she most definitely didn’t want to receive it in front of her aunt. She eyed Solomon and the silver dish warily. Miss Lyla, he’d said, perhaps a little teasingly. So probably it was from Mop, and probably it was to say she was coming to take Lyla back to London.

  ‘Oh, I knew Mop would write soon,’ said Lyla, reaching for the envelope.

  ‘Did you?’ Great Aunt Ada’s bright gaze rested on her.

  Lyla suddenly saw her father’s writing on the envelope. She drew her hand back and, blinking fiercely, said, ‘Actually, perhaps her letter has got lost.’ She looked down. Solomon waited with the envelope, but tears were brimming in Lyla’s eyes, so she snatched up her knife and fork to look as if she had other things to do than worry about letters.

  Aunt Ada enquired of her butler, ‘Solomon, it is from Lovell, is it not?’ At Solomon’s nod she continued, ‘Yes, child, from your father. You must read it.’

  ‘No. I don’t want any letters from him. Ever. I shall never read anything he writes.’ Why hadn’t Mop written? Why did it have to be from Father?

  There was silence for a minute. Solomon withdrew a step or two.

  After a while, Great Aunt Ada said quietly, ‘You are all your father has.’

  ‘He walked out on us,’ retorted Lyla. ‘That’s what the papers said. And everyone knew. Everyone.’ Lyla put on her BBC voice. ‘High-ranking civil servant Lovell Spence, cited for infidelity.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ada, watching Lyla attentively. ‘He was unfaithful, was he, Lyla? Did your mother tell you that?’

  ‘Captain Lovell Spence, cited for infidelity,’ chanted Lyla once more, with bitter sarcasm. ‘No one had to tell me anything.’ Perhaps she needed to explain things more clearly to her aunt, who had lived so long in the country that she knew nothing of the world. ‘If you’re cited for infidelity, it means you’ve been unfaithful and you’ve walked out, and so a divorce has to happen.’

  ‘Poor Lovell – he is too much a gentleman . . .’

  Why was Great Aunt Ada so dim? She got it all wrong.

  ‘A perfect gentleman, always, my lady,’ said Solomon with warmth.

  Solomon was dim too. They we
re both dim and both completely wrong.

  Lyla looked up and snapped. ‘No, not poor Father. Poor Mother. Poor me. He walked out on us. He did it—’

  ‘Lyla, when a man is a gentleman, it is often he in a court of law who—’

  Lyla clapped her hands to her ears, cutting her aunt short. ‘That’s not true.’

  Aunt Ada watched Lyla, and eventually, as if taking a gamble, said, ‘I know, Lyla. I tell you what – if you’re really, really sure he walked out on you and your mother, really sure, you certainly don’t want to read his letter, do you?’

  Lyla moved her head from side to side. No, I don’t want his letter, she told herself.

  ‘Oh dear, well, this is all rather sad, isn’t it, Solomon?’

  Solomon bowed his head and did in fact seem very sorry about the whole business of Lyla not wanting to read the letter.

  But Ada continued, her voice bright and brusque. ‘Well, what shall we have, Solomon, a Spitfire or a Vickers Wellington?’ She turned to Lyla. ‘Solomon is rather clever at fighter planes, he can even do Sopwith Camels – they were from the last war, you know.’

  Solomon, very upright and serious, answered,

  ‘The Supermarine Spitfire Mk II, madam.’

  Suddenly her Great Aunt Ada’s butler was opening the letter from her own father and unfolding it and placing it on the table and smoothing it down, then swiftly, deftly, folding it a different way, folding again and again, and Lyla was watching, most impressed.

  ‘Yes, yes, Solomon has many skills. Lions, planes, foxholes. D’you see, he’s a man of infinite parts.’ She watched Lyla, and Lyla, a little uncomfortable, watched the butler fold her father’s letter with swift, concise movements into a most accomplished aeroplane.

  ‘Open the window, Lyla,’ commanded Great Aunt Ada.

  Still more uneasy, Lyla rose and went to the window.

  ‘Solomon you were seven, were you not, in that house fire?’ asked Aunt Ada.

  Solomon gave a brief nod, then, applying the same formality and sense of ceremony to the launching of a Supermarine Spitfire as to all duties, stretched his left arm ahead and, taking aim, drew his right arm back.