The Ocean at the End of the Lane(44)

Ginnie Hempstock was there, bustling about in her apron, rounded and welcoming. I ate without talking, head down, shovelling the welcome food into my mouth. The woman and the girl spoke in low, urgent tones.

‘They’ll be here soon enough,’ said Lettie. ‘They aren’t stupid. And they won’t leave until they’ve taken the last little bit of what they came here for.’

Her mother sniffed. Her red cheeks were flushed from the heat of the kitchen fire. ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ she said. ‘They’re all mouth, they are.’

I had never heard that expression before, and I thought she was telling us that the creatures were just mouths and nothing more. It did not seem unlikely that the shadows were indeed all mouths. I had seen them devour the grey thing that had called itself Ursula Monkton.

My mother’s mother would tell me off for eating like a wild animal. ‘You must essen, eat,’ she would say, ‘like a person, not a chazzer, a pig. When animals eat, they fress. People essen. Eat like a person.’ Fressen: that was how the hunger birds had taken Ursula Monkton, and it was also, I had no doubt, how they would consume me.

‘I’ve never seen so many of them,’ said Lettie. ‘When they came here in the old days, there was only a handful of them.’

Ginnie poured me a glass of water. ‘That’s your own fault,’ she told Lettie. ‘You put up signals, and called them. Like banging the dinner bell, you were. Not surprising they all came.’

‘I just wanted to make sure that she left,’ said Lettie.

‘Her kind. They’re like chickens who get out of the hen-house, and are so proud of themselves and so puffed up for being able to eat all the worms and beetles and caterpillars they want that they never think about foxes,’ said Ginnie. ‘Anyway, now we’ve got foxes. And we’ll send them all home, same as we did the last times they were sniffing around. We did it before, didn’t we?’

‘Not really,’ said Lettie. ‘Either we sent the flea home, and the varmints had nothing to hang around for, like the flea in the cellar in Cromwell’s time, or they came and took what they came here for and then they went away. Like the fat flea who made people’s dreams come true in Red Rufus’s day. They took him and they upped and left. We’ve never had to get rid of them before.’

Her mother shrugged. ‘It’s all the same sort of thing. We’ll just send them back where they came from.’

‘And where do they come from?’ asked Lettie.

I had slowed down now, and was making the final fragments of my shepherd’s pie last as long as I could, prodding them around the plate slowly with my fork.

‘That dunt matter,’ said Ginnie. ‘They all go back eventually. Probably just get bored of waiting.’

‘I tried pushing them,’ said Lettie Hempstock, matter-of-factly. ‘Couldn’t get any traction. I held them with a dome of protection, but that wouldn’t have lasted much longer. We’re good here – nothing’s coming into this farm without our say-so.’

‘In or out,’ said Ginnie. She removed my empty plate, replaced it with a bowl containing a steaming slice of spotted dick with thick yellow custard drizzled all over it.

I ate it with joy.

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy. The custard was sweet and creamy in my mouth, the dark swollen currants in the spotted dick were tangy in the cake-thick chewy blandness of the pudding, and perhaps I was going to die that night and perhaps I would never go home again, but it was a good dinner, and I had faith in Lettie Hempstock.

The world outside the kitchen was still waiting. The Hempstocks’ fog-coloured house cat – I do not believe I ever knew her name – padded through the kitchen. That reminded me …

‘Mrs Hempstock? Is the kitten still here? The black one with the white ear?’

‘Not tonight,’ said Ginnie Hempstock. ‘She’s out and about. She was asleep on the chair in the hall all this afternoon.’

I wished I could stroke her soft fur. I wanted, I realised, to say goodbye.

‘Um. I suppose. If I do. Have to die. Tonight,’ I started, haltingly, not sure where I was going. I was going to ask for something, I imagine – for them to say goodbye to my mummy and daddy, or to tell my sister that it wasn’t fair that nothing bad ever happened to her; that her life was charmed and safe and protected, while I was forever stumbling into disaster. But nothing seemed right, and I was relieved when Ginnie interrupted me.

‘Nobody is going to die tonight,’ she said, firmly. She took my empty bowl and washed it out in the sink, then she dried her hands on her apron. She took the apron off, went out into the hallway and returned a few moments later wearing a plain brown coat and a pair of large dark green wellington boots.

Lettie seemed less confident than Ginnie. But Lettie, with all her age and wisdom, was a girl, while Ginnie was an adult, and her confidence reassured me. I had faith in them both.

‘Where’s Old Mrs Hempstock?’ I asked.

‘Having a lie-down,’ said Ginnie. ‘She’s not as young as she used to be.’

‘How old is she?’ I asked, not expecting to get an answer. Ginnie just smiled, and Lettie shrugged.