Once Upon a Wardrobe(55)

“I can’t.”

“But you can.” His face is the picture of confidence. It scares me a bit.

“And why do you even care?” I ask. I’m angry; I’m frustrated. I want to throw my arms around him and let him hold me until I stop shaking, and at the same time I want to push him away. All the feelings are banging up against each other, fighting for first position. “What does it matter to you at all?”

“Megs, are you dotty?”

“Most likely.”

“I care because I care about you.”

Time freezes. The winter evening’s steady course toward night pauses. Something is about to happen, and I’m fairly sure what it is.

Padraig leans forward and his lips are on my lips, kissing me. I’ve imagined kissing in an abstract way, something that would one day happen. But not in a snowbank outside a pub.

My first kiss.

I’ve been waiting for it and expecting it, even as it totally surprises me. I close my eyes.

Padraig pulls me closer, and there’s nothing in the world but the feel of his lips on mine. I have a giddy sense of rightness and goodness that has nothing to do with logic or lists or facts.

“Whoop, whoop!” a voice calls out, and a chorus of others laugh in return as a group of students stumble past.

The kiss and the moment are over.

“That was Megs Devonshire,” says a girl.

“And Padraig Cavender,” says another.

“Miss Prissy Lane won’t be too pleased,” says the first girl. The laughing resumes until it turns into a group singing a rough ballad about a farmer and a milkmaid. The gaggle of students round the corner to High Street.

Embarrassment floods me. Me, Margaret Louise Devonshire, canoodling in the middle of a snowbank. I jump up, slip, banging my elbow against the curb so rightly that electric shocks run up my arm and I cry out.

Padraig stands slowly and carefully, reaching his hand down to pull me up. I face him and shake out my arm. “I must go, Padraig. Please don’t follow me.”

And off I go. He doesn’t follow, just as I’d asked.





Twenty-Two

A Grand Adventure




The morning arrives with a slow lazy snow, its flakes falling fat and quiet, gathering on windowsills and fences. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Out the cottage’s kitchen window, the sky peeks blue behind low clouds, and hints of the snow peter out to a weak sun. Around me are the remains of breakfast that I am to be cleaning up. Mum and Dad have gone market shopping in town while George sits quietly at the kitchen table, drawing in his thick sketchbook, which to me has become a symbol of all that is good: George’s vital passion to create something marvelous in the middle of uncertainty.

I watch out the window, my mind wandering from exams (Did I do all right with such a scattered mind?) to the presents I want to get for Mum and Dad (a new cast-iron pan) to Padraig and the kiss. Always back to the kiss. Thoughts of Padraig are persistent and never fail to bring a thrill, even as I try to tamp it down.

A blue car stops in front of the house.

The door of the sedan opens, and my thoughts snap to the present. Did Mum order something delivered—a Christmas present perhaps? A young man bundled in a black wool coat and hat climbs out of the car, wraps his red scarf tighter about his neck, and looks up to the house as if checking the address before walking toward the low gate that opens into the garden path to the front door.

Padraig.

Had my thoughts become so muddled that I made him up? Had I become so preoccupied that I could think of someone and then imagine he is ambling up my familiar stone walkway to the front door?

I rush from the kitchen, my breath puddling in my throat. I don’t have a name for my feeling; it’s a peculiar mix of excitement and worry.

He can’t be here. Not at my house. Not with George sick and me looking all mussy from sleep and not yet fully dressed and my parents gone shopping and . . .

He knocks.

George looks up. “Who is it?”

“I’ll get it,” I say. I walk past the hall mirror and glance at myself: a disaster, just as I thought. Messy dark curls are mushed up on one side from sleeping. I run my fingers through my hair, then hurry to open the door.

Padraig grins at me from beneath the flock of his cap. “Well, hello, Megs!”

“What in the world?”

“I have a surprise for you.”

I glance back to the kitchen. George still sits at the table and his back is to us. He’s drawing as if that’s all there is to do in the world. I grab my coat from the hook by the door and slip on my green wellies before walking onto the front stoop.

“A surprise for me?”

“Well, it’s for you . . . and George.” From his pocket he slips out a map folded in neat creases. He opens only the first flap. “See this?” He points.

I lean to look where his finger rests. In tiny words I read Dunluce Castle. I lift my gaze back to Padraig’s. “What’s this about?”

“We’re taking George there. Today.”

I cough a laugh, a kind of relief that this is a joke. “He already has a map. He’s drawn all over it.”

Now it’s Padraig’s turn to laugh, and it’s a full one. “No, silly. I’m taking you both there. In the car. On a ferry.”