Cora Ravenwing (5 page)

“Ooh, that Mrs. Briggs!” I said. “She says an awful lot sometimes. I don’t really like her very much—she helps Mummy in the house, you know.”

“She comes here too sometimes. We’ve got Horti,
actually; 
she lives up on the attic floor—she’s our
au
pair.
She does quite a lot of cleaning, but sometimes Mummy gets Mrs. Briggs in to lend a hand. She frightens me, you know; she gets so carried away about certain things, including Cora, that I just go away rather than listen. Mummy says it’s mainly hysterical nonsense anyway. She doesn’t like me to hear. Horti can’t stand her either; she won’t work in the same room. All the same, I sometimes wonder if Mummy does half believe some of the stories against Cora, because she certainly doesn’t want me to have anything to do with her.”

“Well, I think Mrs. Briggs is absolutely foul,” I said. “saying horrible things about a tiny baby and trying to make everyone hate her.”

“She took Cora in, you know,” said Hermione. “She had a new baby herself just about the same time as Cora was born. But it died—never really had a chance, apparently—there was something wrong with its heart. The doctor thought it might help her a bit if she could mother another baby, so he arranged for her to have Cora. It solved Mr. Ravenwing’s problem about what to do with Cora, too.”

“You’d think she’d be specially close to Cora then …”

“I know. But something went dreadfully wrong. It was to do with her husband, I think. When Cora was about eight months old he suddenly up and left Mrs. Briggs, and she took to blaming it all on Cora.”

“How on earth …? How could it have been Cora’s fault?”

“I don’t suppose it was. But Mrs. Briggs just seemed to turn on her—said she’d been a screaming brat from start to finish and that she’d driven her husband away …”

“But Mrs. Briggs has still got a husband—I’ve seen him—a little, thin, pale old man …”

“I know. He came creeping back again after a bit. But not before Mrs. Briggs had dumped Cora back on her father’s doorstep at dead of night. She left her there, wrapped up in an old black-out. The milkman found her screaming her head off at crack of dawn. There was the most almighty fuss, apparently, with police and everything. But Mrs. Briggs wasn’t arrested because they said she was temporarily
deranged
because of losing her own baby. And her husband came back then—I suppose he felt to blame.”

“He looks such a weak, ill sort of man.”

“Mrs. Briggs has always hounded him to death—that’s one theory. Bullied the life out of him. But Mummy says he’s never had good health. It’s hard to know what Mrs. Briggs is like really. Anyway Mr. Ravenwing took Cora back and has looked after her ever since. She has more or less been brought up in the graveyard, Mummy says. First she used to lie there in her pram, watching her father digging graves and gardening, and later she used to potter round behind him, playing in half-dug graves and so on. Don’t you think that’s unnatural, somehow? People said she was always appearing at funerals, creeping up during the graveside service and peering out from behind
gravestones
. And when the mourners went away she used to dance round the new grave and fiddle about with the wreaths and sprays, pinning the flowers in her hair and just seeming to delight in it all.”

“I must say I think that side of her can be a bit
frightening
,” I said and I told Hermione about the times I’d been in the graveyard with Cora. “But I think it’s
understandable
after the kind of life she’s had.”

Hermione looked surprised. “Oh, well,” she said, “there’s more to it than that. There’s some sort of badness in her, you know, even if she isn’t absolutely evil, as Mrs. Briggs
says. She’s not like the rest of us. It’s definitely true.” She seemed to want to persuade me, to have the matter closed and my decision safely made in favour of repudiating Cora completely. “Mrs. Briggs is quite sure she’s a changeling. She thinks Mrs. Ravenwing couldn’t possibly have given birth to a creature like that and that Cora was somehow substituted.”

“Oh, that’s completely mad!” I said. “I’m surprised people have put up with that sort of wicked nonsense. It sounds as if she just blames Cora for simply being alive when her child isn’t—but that’s no excuse for persecuting her.”

Hermione became a little distant when she saw I wasn’t impressed with her horror story. “Oh, well—you’ll see,” she said. “It probably sounds crazy to you because you’re a newcomer here. But when you’ve lived here longer you’ll see what I mean. I’m not saying Cora
is
a changeling; I’m not saying anything about her, one way or the other; I’m just explaining the background because you asked.”

“Oh, I know, Hermione,” I said quickly. “I did want to know. I’m sorry to seem rude …”

“You’ll find the others at school won’t like it if you’re friendly with Cora.”

“Well, I’m not particularly. In fact she scared me out of my wits the last time I saw her.”

“There you are, you see. And she’s been terribly naughty, you know. She used to steal—people’s flowers mainly. She used to sneak into gardens at night and pick whole bunches, even dig plants up by the roots. People never got the police because they were sorry for her. And, in any case, Mrs. Briggs’s stories about her being evil used to scare some of the old villagers and they thought if they crossed her she
might bring heaven knows what sort of curse down on their heads.”

“Don’t you think she might just have been terribly lonely and wanting the flowers for her mother’s grave or something?” I said. “She must have been awfully young when she did all these things.”

“Well—I know,” said Hermione. “But it got worse, actually. Not so long ago she just about poisoned Susan Spenser’s little brother in his pram in their very own garden. He’d been awfully poorly with measles and was taking a long time to recover, but he was picking up at last and then in sneaked Cora and fed him some spoonfuls of a concoction she’d brewed up from roots.”

“Heavens! That was really frightful!” I said. “She’s funny about sneaking around people’s gardens, isn’t she? We found her in ours—but she said she was only looking.”

“Well, just think. It could have been
your
baby brother if you’d been here a year or two ago.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Oh, he’s all right. He recovered. But he might not have done. He had to go to hospital. Luckily Mrs. Spenser caught Cora red-handed or they might not have known what was wrong with him.”

“Gosh …”

“Yes, you see. As it is, the Spensers have never spoken to Cora or her father again. And, as we’re very friendly with the Spensers, we haven’t either. I don’t think anybody has very much really.”

“I can understand how people feel about that,” I said. “At the same time, Cora was only trying to cure the baby, don’t you think?”

“She nearly killed him,” said Hermione crossly. “That’s what counts.”

I could see that our new friendship was going to fizzle out even before it started if I persisted in arguing and taking Cora’s side, and it seemed foolish to jeopardize the
relationship
with Hermione when my last encounter with Cora had been so terrifying in any case. I also remembered my mother’s advice that, even if I wanted to be friendly with Cora and help her, I didn’t need to cut myself off from everyone else. “You’re probably right,” I said quickly. “The whole story is just so unusual it’s hard to understand it all.”

Hermione was appeased. “I expect it is. We’re not really supposed to talk about it, anyway. Mummy’d be cross with me for telling you. She says that even if we can’t forget and forgive we can at least keep quiet.”

“Let’s not talk about Cora any more, then,” I said. “I don’t want to do anything to offend your mother.”

We stretched out in the sunny little glade and ate our sticky meringues and recited poems to each other, not our own, but ones we’d learned at school. I enjoyed myself tremendously and thought Hermione’s recitations superbly executed, her tones of voice and facial expressions so aptly assumed. I thought she was very beautiful. At last we heard a faint “Coo-eee” in the distance. “That’s Mummy,” said Hermione. “She must want us to go in.” We jumped up and brushed the crumbs from our frocks. Then down we went on our hands and knees again and crawled our way out of Paradise.

Back at the house I encountered almost the whole family, but it was less of an ordeal than I’d expected because I knew that Hermione and I were friends. Her father was a big cheerful man. He was wearing a green tweed suit with plus fours. Hermione saw me looking at his legs and whispered, “He just wears those at weekends—he’s a city gent really!” He shook my hand and asked lots of questions
about me and Mother and Father. He even asked how old they were and what job Father had, which seemed a bit nosy, but I was flattered at his interest and told him all he wanted to know. Hermione’s oldest brother, Hector, was there but he didn’t say much—just nodded and smiled and stroked a big yellow retriever which was resting its head on his knee. The next brother, Angus, was off somewhere playing cricket, but two more boys, James and Tom, were sitting at the table and they started teasing Hermione as soon as we came in. “Been reading her your poems then, Herm?” asked Tom, and James whispered to me: “Don’t forget to tell her how marvellous they are. She thinks she’s very good, you know.”

Hermione looked so pink and hurt that I spoke out quite firmly. “No, she hasn’t read me her poems yet, but I hope she will one day. I’m sure they’re good.”

Mr. Phillips looked pleased with me and said: “Bravely spoken, Rebecca. These jokers need putting in their place from time to time.” He’d taken Hermione on his knee and she was resting her blonde curls against his cheek. I thought how long it was since I’d sat on Father’s knee and felt a pang of envy. Only Dory sat on Father’s knee nowadays; even Jo wasn’t encouraged in baby ways. “Are you going to take Rebecca down the drive, pet?” he murmured in her ear. “It’s time she went home, you know. Her mummy’ll be waiting.”

I thanked Mrs. Phillips for our picnic as politely as I knew how, but she seemed busy now the others were home and hardly noticed my departure. Hermione did, though, and at the end of the drive she said: “Look, that was a really nice afternoon. I’m pleased you’ve come to live here. Let’s meet again soon.”

I said: “I’ve enjoyed it all too. I can’t tell you how nice
it’s been to meet somebody else from the school. I’ll get Mummy to ring your mother and ask you to tea at our house.”

Hermione went back up the private drive and I started off along the pavement to our house.

Suddenly a thin dark figure sprang out of a gateway as I passed and barred the way. It was Cora. “You’ve been at the Phillipses’, haven’t you?” she hissed. Her eyes were staring out through her fringe and her face looked pinched and hurt. “What did she tell you about me? Bad things, didn’t she? Did she tell you I kill and steal? Did she tell you I’m a Devil Child? Tell me what she said.”

She seized hold of my arm with her bony fingers but I wasn’t frightened. I looked down at her, so skinny and agitated and lonely. “Don’t be daft, Cora,” I said. “She didn’t say anything. Don’t make a fuss.”

She let go of me and jerkily scraped her hands across her face. She could have been brushing her fringe out of her eyes or dashing away tears before I saw them; I wasn’t sure which. “Don’t forget you’re my friend, Becky.” She just stood there with her head drooping down.

“Of course I won’t forget.”

“Why did you scream at me the other day?”

“I was scared in the graveyard. Loads of people are.”

“I’m not; I love it there.”

“I know—but that’s because you’re so used to it. You’ve practically been brought up there.”

“Did Hermione Phillips say that?”

“Well, I suppose she did.”

“You
did
talk about me then!”

“Not much.”

“Did she tell you the bad things I’ve done? Did she tell you what Mrs. Briggs says?”

“Oh—she told me all sorts. But she wasn’t terribly mean about you. She didn’t say she believed it all.”

“Do you believe it all, Becky?”

“No—I think it’s all nonsense. I believe you’ve done some silly things—very naughty. But I don’t believe you’re evil and all that.”

Cora seemed relieved. She wanted to go for a walk, but it was getting late and I had to go home. I didn’t want to walk with her then, anyway. She was too sad and troubled and dark, and my mind was full of Hermione with her blonde curls, poetic visions and secret Paradise.

M
OTHER WAS PLEASED THAT I’D MANAGED TO GET ON WITH
Hermione. “There you are, dear,” she said, “another friend for you. And there’ll be lots of other nice girls in your class. I expect Hermione will introduce you to one or two before term begins. We’ll have her round here soon and then they’ll probably ask you back.”

I didn’t tell Mother any of the rumours and stories I’d heard about Cora. I’d made up my own mind what I thought of those and I didn’t want Mother getting worried about that particular friendship. I hoped I’d somehow be able to be friendly with everybody; perhaps I, a newcomer and complete outsider, could bridge the gap between Cora and the others. It wasn’t that I felt particularly drawn to Cora at that stage—I was much more drawn to Hermione and felt challenged by her poetry and her big rich family—I just felt sorry for her; she’d never had a chance to be anything. I could imagine how I might have turned out in her shoes.

Mother did ask Hermione to tea a few days later. It was very different from my visit to Stansfield House, but
Hermione
loved playing with Dory and was nice to Jo too. We all had tea together in the kitchen and Dory got very silly with his food, dropping baked beans in his orange juice and spooning jelly on to the table. I could see that Mother was really quite enraged with him but Hermione was so amused and intrigued by his antics that she pretty well turned a blind eye. Jo was very shy at first; I think he was overcome by Hermione’s beauty. We were all stocky and dark, while she was so light and blonde. Eventually he took it upon himself to crayon a special picture for her to take home and she was very pleased with it, which made him feel happy and proud. I was greatly relieved that she wasn’t bored by the boys; I thought they might seem very tiresome and dull after her experience of four older brothers. But she said afterwards, when we went upstairs to my bedroom to be on our own, that it was lovely being the oldest for once.

She’d brought some of her poetry with her and asked if she could see some of mine. My heart was thumping as she read it and I could hardly concentrate on hers for hoping that she’d think mine at least passable. I did take in,
however
, that her work was very much concerned with nature—weather, flowers, birds, the seasons and their effect on one’s emotions. I remembered Cora’s tremendous scorn of her verses, but I didn’t share it. I thought them very wise and mature. I didn’t think I could ever have had the thoughts which she expressed so elegantly. I could hear her rustling through the pages of my notebook, but I didn’t dare look up at her expression. Long after I’d finished
reading
hers I sat with lowered head, pretending still to be pondering their significance. At last she said: “You deal
with much more everyday matters than I do, don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose I do really.”

“Aren’t our styles different?”

“Very.”

“I like yours, though, Becky. They’re very vivid and
forth-right.”

“Yours are marvellous, Hermione. So thoughtful.”

“It’s quite good that we’re so different, don’t you think? It wouldn’t be so nice if we were rivals.” I wondered if she thought she was streets ahead of me. She certainly didn’t say so. But I thought she must be thinking that. My poems were factual descriptions of people and places, full of rhymes and square-looking stanzas. Hers seemed to drift on and on in progressions of thoughts growing out of one another. “Actually, I find rhymes very difficult. Perhaps you found mine a bit dull …”

“Oh, not at all. I sometimes think my own are too jingly-jangly.”

We both enjoyed this sort of talk. We felt as if we were real writers discussing our craft. We speculated on what fun it would be to set ourselves the same topic to write about and see how different the end results were. We wondered if it might work to write together, with Hermione
providing
the train of thought and me rhyming it. Our time together flew by. We didn’t talk about Cora or school at all until the last minute, when I was seeing her off.

“Oh, listen. Mummy thinks it might be nice for you to meet some of my other school friends. Would you like that?”

I said I’d like it very much and she invited me to go round the next Saturday afternoon. That would be the
second Saturday in a row that I’d spent at Stansfield House. I looked forward to it eagerly.

During the intervening days, of course, I saw Cora more than once. I thought Mother was a bit irritated about that. “What do you want to see so much of Cora for?” she’d ask. “I thought you’d had enough of her. I thought she frightened you half to death.”

“I was stupid that evening and very unfair to Cora. She was jolly hurt; she couldn’t think what she’d done.”

“Oh, I see. Well, this is a change of heart, I must say! You seemed to want to get rid of her badly enough a week or so ago. In any case, I don’t want you messing around in the churchyard. That’s where people bury their dead; it’s a consecrated, holy place, not a playground.”

“We haven’t been there for ages.”

“Good. Well, that’s all I’m saying—do not go poking around amongst the graves. It’s not healthy and people don’t like it.” She stamped on the Hoover button and roared off over the carpets, deaf to my protestations.

It was this sort of attitude on Mother’s part which hardened me in my resolve to keep silent about all the revelations made to me by Hermione. I felt pretty sure that, in her present mood of wanting to get on with new
neighbours
like the Phillipses, Mother might well decide against encouraging any friendship with Cora if she knew all the gossip. She would feel uneasy about excluding her, because she was usually very fair-minded, but she would decide that it lay in our best interests as a family to go along with local prejudice. That was the manner she was already beginning to adopt, but she wasn’t spelling it out yet. She hoped I would be deflected by Hermione and her friends and abandon Cora without any unpleasantness. I thought that Father would have agreed with
me
about the
whole business, but then Father wasn’t at home very much, and, when he was, local feuds weren’t what he most wanted to hear about.

I did try to explain it all to Cora, though, difficult and potentially hurtful as that was. I thought that the only way of being fair to her was to tell her the difficulties I was having and why. One day we were wandering round the common in the sun. I was feeling a bit guilty because not only had Mother more or less put the graveyard out of bounds but she’d just about done the same with the
common
; Mrs. Phillips had heard some tales about nasty men lurking there and had advised everyone at the Mothers’ Union to keep their children in their own gardens. “That’s all right if you’ve got a garden the same as theirs but when you’ve just got a titchy little place like ours overrun with babies …” I’d said as I flounced out. Now, I was remembering her hurt face as she’d said, “I’m only
thinking
of you, darling.” But then, I’d just banged the door and come straight to the common with Cora.

I said to Cora: “I must tell you something, Cora.”

She looked at me and waited. She had the expression of someone steeling herself for a fatal blow, and it irritated me. It was time she realized how loyal I’d been in standing up for her. I was fed up with her looking as though I was going to let her down any minute when in fact I was
putting
myself through quite an amount of unpleasantness taking her part all the time. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Cora, don’t be so pathetic! It makes me
want
to abandon you. I just want you to know there are gigantic snags cropping up for me because I’m friends with you, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, bleakly.

“Well, you must realize how it is. You’ve managed to put everyone in the village off you except for me. Every
time I stick up for you it annoys people. They don’t like me so much because they know I think you’re all right.”

“Well, I
am
all right,” said Cora stubbornly. “They’re wrong. Most of them are rich and smug and stupid.”

I admired her defiance. She’d been alone for so long, faced rejection from all sides from the start, yet still she could stand up and fight back. I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to. But another aspect of my relationship with her, which I certainly hadn’t realized at first, was now beginning to dawn on me. It was that only now, for the first time, did she feel she had an ally; therefore the more she trusted me the worse would be the blow if I betrayed her. And who was to say how many more blows that abused personality could take? She was more vulnerable than ever because of me, because I had declared myself her friend. As it happened, I didn’t want to betray her, but it would have been very difficult to opt out of the friendship now if, for some reason, I had wanted to.

“As a matter of fact you’re probably right,” I said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier for me. Mummy wants me to be friends with people like Hermione Phillips. She wants us to fit in here and she wants people to like us. And the more I’m seen hanging around with you the less people are going to want me at their houses.”

“Is it as bad as that?”

“Cora, you
know
it’s as bad as that. The one good thing is that Mummy and Daddy don’t know it yet. But when they do find out I’ve a feeling they might be as bad as the others and say I mustn’t have anything to do with you.”

“I thought they were fairer than that. You always said …”

“They are usually, particularly Daddy—but then he isn’t here day after day. You can see what it’s like for Mummy—all that pressure from neighbours. Not that I’m defending her but I just know she’s hoping it’ll fizzle out with you and that I’ll get more and more friendly with Hermione and her cronies.”

“Oh,” said Cora in a flat voice. “Are you going to let it fizzle out? What do you think of Hermione, anyway?”

“I like her very much. I …”

“I don’t know how you could. She’s a snob! The whole family of Phillipses are a snooty lot. And her poetry—it’s absolutely frightful. She doesn’t understand nature at all.”

“How do you know about her poetry?” I couldn’t imagine Hermione ever showing Cora her notebooks.

“It’s plastered all over the school magazine. That’s how I know. Nobody can help knowing. She’s the worst show-off I ever met.”

“Still, if it’s in the school magazine it must be good—the teachers must think it is.”

Cora was subdued for a minute but then said firmly: “Well, I don’t think it’s any use at all. One day I’ll show you my mum’s poems and then you’ll see what’s good nature poetry and what isn’t.”

“Well, I’d like to see your mother’s diaries, I must say. Why don’t you bring them along with you next time?”

“Oh, I can’t. I absolutely can’t. Dad keeps them locked up and only lets me look at them when he’s there. They’re his most important treasures.”

“Oh, I see. Perhaps he’d never let me see them.”

“I think he might if you were at home with me … Will you come one day? It couldn’t be all nice like at your house with proper cooked tea because Dad doesn’t come in till later but …”

“I don’t know, Cora. Let’s leave it for a bit.”

“Oh, I see. Tea at the Phillipses’ is all right but it’s a bit of a come-down to go to the Ravenwings’.”

I was suddenly fed up with all her sneers and gibes. I snapped at her: “Oh! For Heaven’s sake! I’ve had enough of you, Cora. You’re so rude and unfair. Why should I be friends with you anyway? There’s nothing in it for me.” Then I turned away from her abruptly and stormed off at great speed.

My outburst brought her to a complete standstill for a moment but it wasn’t long before I heard her flapping feet behind me. “Becky, Becky … wait, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

I ignored her until I was sure that my flash of temper had subsided. Then I slowed down and looked squarely in her face. She was so thin and distraught and that lank fringe was dangling in her eyes as usual. I brushed it aside so I could see her clearly and she could see me, and I held her face firmly in my hands, as I did sometimes with Jo when I really wanted him to listen to what I was going to say. “Oh, Cora! Let me be. Let me have friends if I want to. Let me see how it all works out. Don’t plague me and taunt me and sneer at other people I like; that’ll drive me away from you. If you’re nice to me and fair to me I won’t be nasty to you and leave you. Why should I?” Her sharp, dark eyes filled with tears and her head shifted and jerked uneasily between my hands. I let go of her. “I mean it, Cora. I can’t stand you nagging and if you go on I’ll have to stop being friends with you. But if you stop and if we can just have a bit of fun together instead of all this fuss all the time I’ll like being with you.”

“All right,” she said. “I’m just scared the others’ll put
you off me, but perhaps they won’t. In any case I’ll just have to risk it. I can see you aren’t going to give them all up …”

“Of course I’m not. You wouldn’t cut yourself off from everyone else by choice, would you? You’d like lots of friends yourself—I bet you would.”

“I don’t know; one’d do me. But, anyway, I can see you’re different and I’ll try to stop being jealous.”

Afterwards I wondered if so much plain-speaking had been cruel. But it had seemed the only way of befriending Cora at all. I felt that much of my motive for keeping faith with her was simply pity for her predicament. At any rate it was very difficult to know what I would have thought of her if I’d met her under different circumstances. As it was, she’d attached herself to me from the outset like a
maltreated
puppy and I had taken her on long before I realized the half of what was entailed.

The following Saturday afternoon I donned my second summer dress and set off, alone this time, for Stansfield House. I met a tall, pleasant-looking girl at the gate; she was obviously a fellow-guest and we introduced ourselves. Her name was Barbara Foster and she had reddish wavy hair and quite a lot of freckles. She was very easy to get on with but not very interesting; I didn’t feel half-scared of her as I had at first of Hermione, with her blonde beauty and intense manner. I thought that Mother would have thought Barbara a perfect companion for me, with her fresh complexion, open smile, and friendly ways. In a way I was glad that she wasn’t going to be a challenge, one was enough, but I knew from the outset that I’d never value her friendship as much as Hermione’s.