Advent (21 page)

 
‘Like what?’ Marina said, when Horace’s incoherent narrative showed no sign of resuming. Gav hadn’t made much of an effort to keep up with whatever the boy was talking about, but he did find himself wondering about Auntie Gwen waiting to receive a letter. Which day was it Mum had got her letter, the letter he’d stolen and read on the train? Last Thursday? Would Mum have written back to tell her he was coming? Was he the thing she’d been so excited about?

 
‘I dunno. It was just weird, OK? Like first she was asking about my mum. Like, was she going to that church meeting thing on Monday. All about it. She must have asked, like, five times. “What time is it? Is the priest always there? How long does it usually last?” How was I supposed to know all that stuff? But she’s going on and on about it. On and on. “It’s at lunchtime, isn’t it?” Lunchtime, lunchtime, like that. Then she kept asking where we’d been, like she was my mum. “What were you doing all day? Where did you go?” Asking if we’d been to the chapel. Did your dad go with us? Or Caleb? “Are you sure? Are you sure?” It was like she was too off her head to listen.’

 
Marina evidently couldn’t find anything in what Horace said to get worried about, though for his sake she tried her best to. ‘Oh,’ she ventured, after a pause. ‘Yes, that does sound a bit odd.’

 
In all his life Gavin had never met a worse liar. Even that polite half-truth came out of her mouth blaring its insincerity.

 
‘You don’t get it.’

 
‘No, Horace, I—’

 
‘All right, then, forget it. Forget I spoke.’

 
‘Horace—’

 
‘Just forget it. I got to go anyway. Oh, and something else.’ His face had darkened with sulky resentment. ‘You won’t believe this either. Someone was singing. Yeah, I know, I’m making it up. Well I’m not. I heard it.’

 
‘Singing?’

 
Determined to have the last word, Horace was already ducking away. He moved amazingly deftly, barely stirring the glossy leaves. ‘Yeah. Heard it in the woods near the chapel. Just now. Knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

 
‘Wait, Horace, I—’

 
‘See you, then.’

 
‘Horace!’

 
But the small figure was already hard to make out among the twisted shadows. They stared after him, Marina stricken, Gavin just happy to see the back of him.

 
‘Don’t forget the weekend!’ Marina shouted after him. The boy bobbed away and vanished altogether in the undergrowth, heading for the edge of the woods.

 
‘I think he decided to make an exit,’ Gav said.

 
‘A what?’

 
Gav suspected that Marina had no experience with displays of temper. In fact she didn’t seem to have much experience of anything. She was the only person he’d ever met beside whom he felt positively worldly.

 
‘He’s upset. Wants to make it clear to us. So what was all that about?’

 
‘I don’t know.’ She was still watching the direction he’d gone, as if she expected him to pop back out of the bushes any second. Gavin waited a while in silence in case she was right.

 
‘But where’s he from?’ he asked, when he was sure the kid had gone. He couldn’t get his head round the idea of an ordinary schoolboy popping up in these woods like that. ‘I mean, where does he live?’

 
‘Across the river somewhere.’ She sounded distracted. ‘Gwen says his mother’s a kind of housekeeper for people there. She’s from China, which is all the way on the other side of the world, past the sunrise.’

 
OK
, Gav thought.

 
‘So he just comes to . . .’ He was going to say ‘play’, but the word didn’t fit Pendurra. ‘Um, visit sometimes?’

 
‘Yes. He has his own boat. I’ve seen it. It doesn’t have a name. I think that’s wrong, but he won’t listen to my suggestions.’

 
‘So what was he on about? All that stuff about Aunt Gwen?’

 
‘I’m not sure. He’s not usually like that.’

 
‘Like what?’

 
She was pinching her lip unhappily. ‘He just ran off. Normally he likes talking to me. Gwenny didn’t tell me anything about seeing him this weekend either.’

 
‘Well, at least we know she’s here now, right?’

 
‘What? Where?’

 
‘Well . . . wherever he said he saw her. By the river.’

 
‘Oh. No, he can’t have.’

 
‘Because Caleb said she’s not here.’

 
‘Yes.’

 
Gav stared at her, but she gave no sign that there might be anything strange or surprising about what she’d just said.

 
‘So even if someone else says they’ve actually seen her, he just knows.’

 
‘Yes,’ she said absently, looking around the woods.

 
‘That’s a bit hard to—’
Believe
, he was going to finish, but stopped himself. He’d had this conversation before, over and over again, when he was a bit younger than Marina. Except that he’d always been on the other side of it. The wrong side. So why was he trying to sound like his parents again?

 
‘I think we should go back to the house,’ she said.

 
‘Huh? Why? What’s wrong?’

 
‘I don’t know. Things aren’t like they usually are this morning. I don’t like it.’

 
‘Shouldn’t we go see if we can find Aunt Gwen?’

 
‘We don’t know where she is.’

 
‘No, I mean check out whatever Horace saw. Wherever that is.’

 
‘Oh.’ She shook her head. ‘Down by the cove past the chapel? No. I don’t want to go that far. I promised Caleb.’ She fingered her neck, exactly as if an invisible lead were attached to an invisible collar and she was checking whether it was tight.

 
‘What’s this chapel place?’

 
‘It’s a house all made out of stone. Just one room. It’s off by itself in the woods, out towards the head. No one ever lived there, people used to use it to think about God. That’s an imaginary person who some people think made the world. It’s very old, nearly as old as the old parts of the house. Maybe we can go tomorrow.’

 
Gav just watched her worried expression until he’d confirmed to himself that she was again perfectly serious. ‘You don’t do much RS, do you?’

 
‘What?’

 
‘Never mind.’

 
Her head drooped. ‘You know all about chapels already.’

 
‘No, really, I just . . . Sorry. So, this place is on your land somewhere? Like private?’

 
‘That’s right. Along that way.’ She pointed, though one direction looked exactly the same as another to Gav.

 
Something was nagging at Gav’s memory, but he couldn’t pin it down. ‘So why was Horace talking about it like that? All that stuff about Aunt Gwen being excited?’

 
‘I already told you, I don’t understand. Come on, let’s get going back.’

 
‘No. Wait.’ He was beginning to find Marina’s nervousness a bit irritating. Or maybe it was that he really didn’t want to end up back with the adults, stammering and looking at his feet. ‘We ought to try and help figure out what Aunt Gwen’s doing, right?’

 
‘Let’s just go and tell Caleb.’

 
Gav found himself wanting to postpone another conversation with Caleb for as long as possible. Perhaps this time he’d be blamed for making Marina break her promise to go back to the house. ‘Look, how far is it to that chapel? That could have been her Horace heard, right? That singing. Maybe, I don’t know, something’s happened to her.’ Maybe she’s finally gone completely mad.
But how would you tell?
his father’s voice sneered in his head. ‘Couldn’t we just go and check quickly?’

 
‘You can’t get down to that path from here. This way ends at the lookout.’

 
There was something about Auntie Gwen and a chapel, Gav thought. That was what was bugging him, at the back of his thoughts, somewhere. But how could he possibly have known anything about it? He tried to remember whether there’d been a mention in the scrapbook. ‘So what’s inside it? Is it just like a mini church?’

 
She frowned as if even talking about it made her unhappy. ‘I don’t know. It’s always kept locked. It’s too important to be left open.’

 
‘What’s important about it?’

 
‘It just is. No one’s supposed to go there. Someone tried once, a long time ago. Gwen told me the story. They were in terrible pain or something. There was someone else too, more recently. After that Daddy hid the key in the old office.’

 
Gav was reminded of the rumours Hester had mentioned. ‘Is there treasure in there or something?’

 
‘I don’t know.’

 
‘You’ve never been?’

 
‘Not inside. Well, not since I was a baby, but that doesn’t count. There’s a kind of pool where they took me.’

 
‘A pool? Water?’

 
‘Yes, there’s a hollow with a spring. They built the chapel where the spring comes out. That’s the water that makes you well.’ Makes
a
well? Gav thought. But Marina’s voice was clear as birdsong; he knew what she’d said. ‘We’ll go and look this afternoon. If Daddy says it’s all right. Come on.’ She made to squeeze past him, back the way they’d come.

 
He sighed. ‘Can’t we at least go to the whatsit? Lookout. Hey, you were going to show me something.’

 
She pulled herself up short as if someone had yanked her invisible lead. ‘Oh! I forgot.’

 
‘Please? It’s right here, isn’t it?’

 
She ran her hands through her hair, raising damp tufts. ‘All right, then. Just quickly.’ But her mood had clouded over. Whatever confidence she’d been about to share with him seemed to have disappeared. Gav couldn’t help catching some of her disquiet. The weird appearance of the boy with his mysterious apprehensions and nonsensical story had unsettled him, reminding him that Auntie Gwen was still missing. It had been a long time now, almost a whole day. Even she didn’t forget things for that long, did she?

 
They went on in silence together, treading carefully as they traversed the slope. The land was slanting more sharply, right to left, and the track itself was little more than scars of mud. Looking up for an unwise moment to make sure he didn’t lose sight of her ahead, Gav slipped and fell with a squeak of surprise into the wet leaf mould and earth.

 
‘Gavin!’ He stumbled as he tried to push himself up. By the time he was upright again he was almost coated in fragments of twigs and strips of sodden leaves.

 
She laughed, a smothered giggle that made her fold in on herself as if she were trying to disappear inside her oversized jumper. ‘You look like a woodwose. I should draw a picture. Are you all right?’

 
He didn’t think she’d really said he looked like a woodlouse, but he wasn’t going to ask. He was so relieved to have lightened her mood again that he didn’t much care either way. ‘Fine. Just slipped.’

 
‘Hold my hand,’ she said. ‘Just for this last bit.’

 
So he did. He blushed at being helped along by a girl two years younger than him and probably half his weight, or maybe for another reason, but she kept her eyes ahead as they negotiated a small upwards slope, and didn’t see. There was an odd stab of disappointment when she let go of his hand as the track levelled out again. He wondered whether maybe she’d felt it too, because she stopped, and they stood a few moments, just the sound of their breath together under the winter branches. Only when he looked around did he realise that they’d reached the spot.