Midnight is a Place (23 page)

"Mr. Towzer—" he began.

But at this moment Mrs. Tetley returned, and stood watching with a lynx eye while Lucas carried out his few belongings and piled them on the cart. Old Gabriel wandered off, muttering, probably to the nearest alehouse, and Lucas drove back to Midnight Park.

Lady Murgatroyd and Anna-Marie, meanwhile, had been collecting brushwood and getting to know one another.

"Do you know what I enjoyed most about losing all my money?" said Lady Murgatroyd, expertly lopping away with a billhook. "It was learning how easy it is to do a great many things like this. When I was a real lady and rode around in a carriage, I
thought that chimneysweeping and bricklaying and carpentry and weaving cloth and making bowls and plates could only be done by chimneysweeps and bricklayers and carpenters and weavers and potters. Now I know that anybody can do these things, for I am not at all clever, and if I can do them, it is certain that anyone else can."

Nevertheless, Anna-Marie thought, her grandmother did look clever: her face was so lively, and had so much shape to it. Like a carving in a church, Anna-Marie thought. And her eyes, set in the deep triangular hollows, turned out, when seen by daylight, to be a strange and beautiful gray-green, the color of weathered stone.

"
Grand'mère,
" said Anna-Marie, dumping an armful of brushwood in Lady Murgatroyds wooden wheelbarrow, "why is everybody in Blastburn so horrible? Truly I think we have met only one kind person,
ce monsieur
'Obday, and even of him I am not sure, for I think he may not be paying Luc as much as he should."

Lady Murgatroyd passed a dirt-stained hand over her high forehead.

"I am afraid it is partly your grandfathers fault," she said thoughtfully. "For it was he who started the town, with Midnight Mill. When he first built the mill, it was to be a good place for people to work in, with fair wages and everything made as well as it could be. And so it was, for a long time. But then your grandfather was so disappointed when your father would not learn to look after the Mill but wanted to write music instead—"

"Oh, and he did! He wrote beautiful music! I can remember many, many of the tunes—"

"Yes; but as well he was rather wild, and did some things that upset your grandfather."

"Did they upset you,
Grand'mè?
"

"Not so much," said Lady Murgatroyd, with a private smile. "He was a wild boy, Denny, but we understood one another very well, he and I.... But so, instead of making sure that the Mill was carefully run and in a good order to hand on to his son, your grandfather began to take less and less interest in it. He had it looked after by a manager instead of going there every day himself. Well, then Sir Randolph won it—you have heard about that?"

"Yes, Luc told me,
Grand'mère—
"

"And Sir Randolph looked after it still worse. All
be
wanted, I am afraid, was to get as much money as possible for his gambling, so things were done in a poor way, and the people were paid less, and the machinery has been allowed to get old and dangerous. And the other factories in the town are run in the same way, because the other owners have discovered that is the way to make a lot of money quickly, if you don't care what happens to the people who come after you."

"But why is everybody in the town so mean and
mechant
—the boys who throw stones at me for picking up cigar ends, and the ones who take money not to hurt people in hospital, and mock at strangers in the street, and seem to hate everybody?"

"It is because they are so poor. When you have only just enough to keep ¿dive, you are frightened of anybody who might take it from you, so you hate them. And you get your money in any way you can."

"But you are poor,
Grand'mère,
and yet you don't seem to hate people?"

"Well," said Lady Murgatroyd cheerfully, "I've
had
everything taken away from me, and I found it wasn't so bad after all. It was a big relief not to have to look after Midnight Court, I can tell you! There was always a broken window or a smoking chimney that needed attention; I never had a minute. Whereas now I can do just what I like—read or weave or paint pictures, or just sit and remember old times."

"So perhaps," said Anna-Marie, "it might be better for the people in the town to have everything taken from them?"

"But they have never had much at all, poor things! It would be better, much better, if they could have
enough,
so they could stop worrying and be kinder to each other."

"But
Grand'mère,
" said Anna-Marie thoughtfully, "how do people
know
when they have enough? For I think Sir Randolph was quite rich and yet he was
avare.
"

"Stingy."

"Stingy; thank you."

"Yes; well," said Lady Murgatroyd, taking up the handles of the loaded barrow and wheeling it over the snow as quickly and easily as if she were twenty, not seventy, "I suppose he was worried all the time about losing his money."

"So how can you teach people not to worry?"

"You ask some large-sized questions,
petite-fille!
I suppose you can do it in two ways, and neither is easy."

"
Et quoi?
"

"Either you make their lives so much better that they don't have to worry—"

"Or?"

"You somehow teach them that worrying doesn't help, but is only a waste of time."

"I think both ways together would be best," said Anna-Marie. "For some people will always be worrying—if only about whether the soup is going to be thick enough or if the milk will go sour. So you make them comfortable
and
you tell them not to unquiet themselves."

"
Eh bien, ma petite!
If anyone is going to do that to the people of Blastburn, it will have to be you, not me!"

"Why,
Grand'mère!
"

"I am too old."

"
Oh, quelle blague, Grand'mère!
" Anna-Marie said, laughing. "You are droll! If you can chimneysweep and lay bricks and make
poterie,
I think you can also tell the people of Blastburn to cheer up.... Aha, there comes Luc!" Her sharp eye had spotted him slipping through the gap in the wall with their basket. She bolted over the snow to help him.

Luckily it was a dim, foggy day. Although no snow fell, the yellow-gray clouds hung low, full of smoke; a dull red sun climbed a little way above the horizon, crept into a cloud, and sank again quite soon. Even the keenest eyes could not have seen more than thirty yards through the gloom, and nobody was about to see Lucas, Anna-Marie, and Lady Murgatroyd building a lean-to stable of stakes and brushwood against the park wall, in the little copse.

"In the summer," said Lady Murgatroyd, "we may as well enlarge the gap in the wall, so as to let the pony come through and graze in the park."

"But
Grand'mère,
suppose the park is sold to someone who does not want us here?"

"Now you are worrying needlessly," said Lady Murgatroyd. "If that happens, then we will make other plans."

Lucas told them what old Gabriel had said about the park being sold for coal-mining land. Lady Murgatroyd sighed at the thought, but she said, "Well, it would certainly give employment to a lot of people. And if they put a mine here, we'd have plenty of warning beforehand, so that we could find somewhere else to live. There! I call that a really luxurious stable."

"
Un palais de cheval,
"agreed Anna-Marie. The stable was walled and thatched with tightly bound bundles of brushwood; they had even constructed a brushwood door which hung on hinges made from leather straps; and the floor was snugly lined with dry bracken, which they had scratched out from under the snow.

"I would not mind sleeping in here myself," said Anna-Marie.

"Oh, in that case, you can have it, and we'll keep Noddy in the icehouse," Lucas said gravely.

"
Tais-toi, imbécile!
But still," said Anna-Marie, "when it is springtime and Monsieur Ookapool is here, maybe we build another
petite cabane, n'est-ce pad?
It would be nice to sleep here under the trees, I think."

"There are still bluebells in spring here," said Lady Murgatroyd. "Even though the town has grown so big and smoky."

For a moment they were all thinking of spring; it seemed almost as if the bluebells were there already.

Then Lady Murgatroyd said, "It's nearly dark; come along in."

Anna-Marie had already made herself familiar with the interior of the icehouse. Now she had a very enjoyable time showing it to Lucas. There was the big room with the fireplace where Lady Murgatroyd lived and slept, comfortably furnished with rugs and books and tree trunks. Then there were three smaller rooms, one of which Lady Murgatroyd had used as a larder, because it had slate shelves all up one wall. One was her washroom, because it contained a very large stone basin, which in Sir Quincy's day had been used for making ice cream. And the third was empty. Bet the baby at present occupied this room in her wicker cradle. It had been decided that Anna-Marie should share it with her, and that Lucas should have the larder. His room had a small door leading out, and all three rooms, as well as the big one, had little grating-windows cunningly sunk in the turf so that they were almost invisible from outside, unless you stood very close, and yet they let in some light.

"Isn't it a nice house, Luc," Anna-Marie kept saying.

"No, it's an icehouse!"

"Ah, bah!
Tu es vraiment stupide!
"

"Children! Suppertime!" Lady Murgatroyd called.

At supper—which consisted of a very delicious cheese-and-apple pie—Lady Murgatroyd explained that if they liked to bring back meat from Blastburn, she would not have the slightest objection to cooking it, but she herself ate only eggs, cheese, fruit, and vegetables.

"I have always found that best for my voice," she explained.

"Do you sing songs,
Grand'mère?
"

"I used to,
petite-fille;
now I only teach."

"I wish you will sing to me; Papa used to."

"Yes, he had a beautiful tenor voice. And you, my child, can you sing?"

"Oh yes. And I make up tunes."

"Then, after supper, I will show you my tuning fork."

"Papa had one of those."

"I'm sure he did. But mine is a special one."

After the meal, true to her word, Lady Murgatroyd produced the tuning fork from a wooden case. It looked ordinary enough: a bluish metal prong which, when banged on the stone wall, gave out a sweet tingling note.

"Why is it special?" Anna-Marie wanted to know.

"You have heard of a composer called Georges Frédéric Handel?"

"Oh,
di!
He has written some music about water." She hummed a bit of it.

"Quite right. He was born over a hundred years ago, and died in seventeen fifty-nine, as you may know. This tuning fork belonged to him."

"Truly?" said Anna-Marie, very amazed.

"True as I stand here. When Handel died, he left his tuning fork to a friend of his, an English musician and singer called Henry Metcalfe, who made up some beautiful songs. And Henry Metcalfe gave it, when he grew old, to a German composer called Diefenmacher, who wrote organ music. He died in eighteen hundred, and left the tuning fork to a French singer called Hector Boismachère. And
he
was my father and left it to me."

"Oh,
Grand'mère!
So you are French?"

"Half French, half English; like you. So, you see, the tuning fork has always been passed on from one musician to another. And I hope it always will be."

"So you, grandmother, when you grow older, will have to find a musician to give it to."

"Yes, I shall, " said Lady Murgatroyd.

Anna-Marie begged her grandmother to sing a song. And before long they were singing together, half in French, half in English, nursery songs, ballads, whatever came into their heads.

Lucas, who could not tell one note from another, listened politely. But his eyes, ever since he came into the icehouse, had been straying more and more eagerly toward the books. Lady Murgatroyd said, laughing, "Do read whichever of them you would like. I am afraid they are mostly poetry and plays, but there is some travel and biography. And a bit of philosophy."

Lucas was across the room before she had finished speaking. He opened one book and then another. He was lost.

A couple of hours later, Lady Murgatroyd said gently, "I don't want to be a killjoy but you did say, didn't you, that you had to get up at half past five so as to get to your sewer at six o'clock?"

Lucas dragged himself out of a play called
The White Devil.
It was like pulling himself out of the Muckle Sump. "Yes, of course," he said dazedly. "What time is it, my lady?"

"Oh, why not call me grandmother? You and Anna-Marie might just as well count yourselves as cousins. Its ten o'clock." She pointed to an old silver-gilt clock which sat in a hole in the wall where one stone had been removed. "And you needn't worry about waking in the morning. Listen."

She pressed a button at the back of the clock and it immediately played a sweet silvery tune: "London Bridge Is Falling Down."

"You see," said Lady Murgatroyd, "it is an
alarm clock;
set this little hand to the time at which you want to get up, and the clock will wake you by playing its tune. Put it on the shelf by your bed."

Lucas and Anna-Marie had piled themselves beds out of more bracken, which had been drying in front of the fire all evening, giving off a leafy, earthy smell. Lady Murgatroyd luckily had two spare blankets, and Lucas said that he would buy some more in the market; cotton blankets cost only five shillings there. Meanwhile they also piled sacks, and what clothes they had, on top of the blankets, for the stone rooms were cold.

"But this bed is much, much more comfortable than the one at Mrs. Tetley's," Anna-Marie said.

After they had gone to bed Lucas came out of his room again—his own room—to ask, "Ma'am—Grandmother—do you have any spare paper that you aren't using?"