‘Yes, it was. You always ask that when we reach this bit of the story.’
‘You have to tell stories exactly the same every time. It’s like – um – like a jigsaw or painting. If you change anything, next time you tell the story there’ll be a wrong piece somewhere.’
‘You look like a worried pixie when you say that. A ragamuffin pixie. Have you brushed your hair this morning?’
‘I’ll brush it in a minute. Why don’t we ever go to see my grandmother?’ People at school often talked about going to visit grandmother; it always sounded a good thing to do.
‘Well, families are odd things, you know. If you marry someone your family don’t like—’
‘Oh. Oh, yes I see.’
‘I wonder if you do.’ Almost to herself Mother said, ‘But he could be very charming when he was younger.’
He could be very charming…But that was years ago, and now you’re terrified of him. This could not be said, of course, and it was a relief when Mother said, in her ordinary voice, the voice that always dispelled the fear, ‘But one day we will go. Just the two of us.’ This was said with a wary glance at the door. ‘One day we’ll do it.’
One day, when I can no longer stand the brutality…One day we’ll run away, just you and me…
‘Where does she live? Do you know exactly? Is it miles and miles?’
There was a pause, as if Mother was trying to decide whether to answer this. Then she smiled, and said, ‘Yes, I do know. It’s a place called Mowbray Fen. That’s in Lincolnshire. You have to go through Rockingham Forest, and along by Thorney and Witchford, until you come within sight of Wicken Fen.’
The names were repeated softly, as if they might be a spell; a charm that would take you on to a golden road. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or like the children who went through a wardrobe into a magic land.
‘There are marshes there, with queer darting lights that the locals call will o’ the wisps – they say if you can capture one it must give you your heart’s desire.’
‘What’s a heart’s desire?’
‘It’s different for everyone. But once you’d gone through all those places,’ said Mother, still in the same far-away voice, ‘you’d come to the tiny, tiny village called Mowbray Fen. There’s a house there standing all by itself and it’s called the Priest’s House because it was built at a time when people could be put to death for believing in the wrong religion, and there are legends that priests hid there before being smuggled out of England and across to Holland. We’ll find the places on your school atlas in the morning.’
The names had been like a litany. Thorney and Witchford and Rockingham Forest. Rutland Water with the place called Edith Weston that sounded like an old lady, who knitted things and smelled of lavender water. And there was Whissendine and Thistleton.
‘They’re like the places in that book I read at school. The Hobbit.’
Books could only be read at school, because there were no books in Pedlar’s Yard. But the school had a small library where you could sit at dinner-time or in between half past three when classes finished, and four o’clock when the teachers went home and the school was locked up. It was quiet and there was a nice smell from the books and on Mondays there was a polish smell from the weekend cleaning. When I’m grown up and when I have a house of my own it will always, always smell of polish.
‘You’re a hobbit,’ said Mother, smiling.