As my eyes became accustomed to the candlelight, I saw that she wore a white cotton blouse with short puffed sleeves and a low peasant-girl neckline. With her raven black hair and her brightly colored dirndl skirt, she might easily be taken for a gypsy fortune-teller.
'Robin's gone,' she said.
Those two words nearly broke my heart. Like everyone else in Bishop's Lacey, I had always thought that Grace Ingleby lived in her own private, insulated world: a world where Robin still played in the dusty dooryard, chasing flustered hens from fence to fence, dashing into the kitchen now and then to beg a sweet.
But it was not true: She had stood as I had done, beside the small gravestone in the churchyard of St. Tancred's, and read its simple inscription:
'Robin's gone,' she said again, and now it was almost a moan.
'Yes,' I said, 'I know.'
Motes of dust floated like little worlds in the pencil beams of sunlight that penetrated the chamber's gloom. I sat down in the straw.
As I did so, a pigeon clattered up from its nest, and out through the little arched window. My heart almost stopped. I had thought the pigeons long gone, and I almost sat on the stupid thing.
'I took him to the seaside,' Grace went on, caressing the sailboat, oblivious to the bird. 'Robin loved the seaside, you know.'
I pulled my knees up under my chin and wrapped my arms around them.
'He played in the sand. Built a sand castle.'
There was a long silence, and I saw that she had drifted off somewhere.
'Did you have ice cream?' I asked, as if it were the most important question in the world. I couldn't think of anything else.
'Ice cream?' She nodded her head. 'They gave it to us in paper cups ... little pointed paper cups. We wanted vanilla--we both loved vanilla, Robin and I. Funny thing, though ...' She sighed. 'When we ate it, there was a taste of chocolate ... as if they hadn't rinsed the scoop properly.'
I nodded wisely.
'That sometimes happens,' I said.
She reached out and touched the sailboat again, running her fingertips over its smooth painted hull. And then she blew out the candle.
We sat for a while in silence among the spatterings of sunshine that seeped into the red brick cave.
Hot. Waiting for something to happen.
'Why are you here?' she said at last. I noticed that she was not slurring her words as much as before.
'The vicar sent some people to camp in Jubilee Field. He asked me to show them the way.' She seized my arm.
'Does Gordon know?' she demanded.
'I think he does,' I said. 'He told the vicar it would be all right if they camped at the bottom of the lane.'
'The bottom of the lane ...' She let out a long, slow breath. 'Yes, that would be all right, wouldn't it?'
'It's a traveling puppet show,' I said. 'Porson's Puppets. They're putting on a performance Saturday. The vicar's asked them. Their van's broken down, you see, and ...'
I was gripped by a sudden inspiration.
'Why don't you come?' I asked. 'Everyone in the village will be there. You could sit with me, and--'
Mrs. Ingleby was staring at me with horror.
'No!' she said. 'No! I couldn't do that.'
'Perhaps you and Mr. Ingleby could both come, and--'
'No!'
She scrambled to her feet, raising a thick cloud of chaff, and for a few moments, as the stuff swirled round us, we stood perfectly still, like figures in a snow-globe paperweight.
'You'd better go,' she said suddenly, in a throaty voice. 'Please go now.'
Without a word I groped my way to the opening, my eyes streaming from the dust. With surprisingly little effort, I found myself able to drop down onto the wooden vane, and begin the long climb down.
I have to admit that Jack and the Beanstalk crossed my mind.
The farmyard was deserted. Dieter had gone down the lane with Rupert and Nialla to the river, and by now they had probably already made camp. If I was lucky, I might be just in time for a cup of tea. I felt as if I'd been up all night.
What was the time, anyway?
God blind me with a fish fork! Aunt Felicity's train was due to arrive at five past ten and I'd completely forgotten about her! Father would have my guts for garters.
Even if Aunt Felicity wasn't already fuming on the platform and frothing at the mouth, how on earth was I ever going to get to Doddingsley? It was a good six miles from Culverhouse Farm, even as the crow flies, and as far as I knew, I wasn't about to sprout wings.
