The Ocean at the End of the Lane(33)

‘I just want Ursula Monkton to go away,’ I said. ‘I hate her.’

Ginnie Hempstock put out a finger, ran it across my jacket. ‘It’s not what anyone else hereabouts is wearing these days,’ she said, ‘but my mam put a little glamour on it, so it’s not as if anyone will notice. You can walk around in it all you want, and not a soul will think there’s anything odd about it. No shoes?’

‘They didn’t fit.’

‘I’ll leave something that will fit you by the back door, then.’

‘Thank you.’

She said, ‘I don’t hate her. She does what she does, according to her nature. She was asleep, she woke up, she’s trying to give everyone what they want.’

‘She hasn’t given me anything I want. She says she wants to put me in the attic.’

‘That’s as maybe. You were her way here, and it’s a dangerous thing to be a door.’ She tapped my chest, above my heart, with her forefinger. ‘And she was better off where she was. We would have sent her home safely – done it before for her kind a dozen times. But she’s headstrong, that one. No teaching them. Right. Your breakfast is on the table. I’ll be up in the nine-acre field if anyone needs me.’

There was a bowl of porridge on the kitchen table and beside it, a saucer with a lump of golden honeycomb on it, and a jug of rich yellow cream.

I spooned up a piece of the honeycomb and mixed it into the thick porridge, then I poured in the cream.

There was toast, too, cooked beneath the grill, as my father cooked it, with home-made blackberry jam. There was the best cup of tea I have ever drunk. By the fireplace, the kitten lapped at a saucer of creamy milk, and purred so loudly I could hear it across the room.

I wished I could purr too. I would have purred then.

Lettie came in, carrying a shopping bag, the old-fashioned kind: elderly women used to carry them to the shops, big woven bags that were almost baskets, raffia-work outside and lined with cloth, with rope handles. This basket was almost full. Her cheek had been scratched, and had bled, although the blood had dried. She looked miserable.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you, if you think that was fun, that wasn’t any fun, not one bit. Mandrakes are so loud when you pull them up, and I didn’t have earplugs, and I swapped it for a shadow bottle, an old-fashioned one with lots of shadows dissolved in vinegar …’ She buttered some toast, then crushed a lump of golden honeycomb on to it and started munching. ‘And that was just to get me to the bazaar, and they aren’t even meant to be open yet. But I got most of what I needed there.’

‘Can I look?’

‘If you want to.’

I looked into the basket. It was filled with broken toys: doll’s eyes and heads and hands, cars with no wheels, chipped cat’s-eye glass marbles. Lettie reached up and took down the jam jar from the window ledge. Inside it, the silvery translucent wormhole shifted and twisted and spiralled and turned. Lettie dropped it into the shopping bag, with the broken toys. The kitten slept, and ignored us entirely.

Lettie said, ‘You don’t have to come with me, for this bit. You can stay here while I go and talk to her.’

I thought about it. ‘I’d feel safer with you,’ I told her.

She did not look happy at this. She said, ‘Let’s go down to the ocean.’ The kitten opened its too-blue eyes and stared at us disinterestedly as we left.

There were black leather boots, like riding boots, waiting for me by the back door. They looked old, but well cared for, and were just my size. I put them on, although I felt more comfortable in sandals. Together, Lettie and I walked down to her ocean, by which I mean the pond.

We sat on the old bench, and looked at the placid brown surface of the pond, and the lily pads, and the scum of duckweed by the water’s edge.

‘You aren’t people,’ I said.

‘Are too.’

I shook my head. ‘I bet you don’t actually look like that,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

Lettie shrugged. ‘Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.’

I said, ‘Are you a monster? Like Ursula Monkton?’

Lettie threw a pebble into the pond. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren’t.’

I said, ‘People should be scared of Ursula Monkton.’

‘P’rhaps. What do you think Ursula Monkton is scared of?’

‘Dunno. Why do you think she’s scared of anything? She’s a grown-up, isn’t she? Grown-ups and monsters aren’t scared of things.’

‘Oh, monsters are scared,’ said Lettie. ‘And as for grown-ups …’ She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, ‘I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truthis, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.’ She thought for a moment. Then she smiled. ‘Except for Granny, of course.’