Authors: Emma Smith
“Whatever are you doing with that clothes-line, Amy?”
Mr Nabb was watching too.
“Well, I’ve got to have something for tying Mick up with. I used my stockings last night,” she added truthfully, “and I couldn’t hardly get the knots undone this morning.”
“But you don’t need a whole clothes-line for tying Mick, and I certainly don’t intend for you to cut a piece off—not off that good line. Why don’t you take a few bits of the binder-twine that was round the bales? There’s plenty lying about in the shed.”
So Amy had to be content with binder-twine, although it was not as strong as a clothes-line or nearly as comfortable for the hands. Sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor and yawning, she began to unravel the bundle and to knot the pieces together so as to make a single length. When she had finished she tied one end of it to the bar at the foot of her bed.
It was much too short.
Amy regarded with dismay the line that was meant to dangle down over the roof of the shed. It reached as far as the window and not an inch further. If only her bed had been close to the wall instead of clear out in the middle of the room then the line would have been long enough, but it was too late to think of trundling her bed about now—the whole household would be aroused.
Holding her candle high Amy looked round the small bare room in search of inspiration. Her eye fell on the pair of stockings that tied Mick to the bed-post. She could lengthen the twine with her stockings, and she could tie Mick up with her patent-leather belt instead. But when this change-over had been made, and Mick attached by Amy’s belt to the leg of the bed, and Amy’s stockings added to the twine, still her home-made line was not as long as it needed to be, and what more could she use? She did have a third pair of stockings, but they were airing on the string above the range in the front-kitchen. There was nothing else that she could think of. And then, miraculously, her exploring fingers came upon last year’s outgrown skipping-rope, lying dusty and forgotten underneath the chest-of-drawers. It was so exactly what she wanted that her confidence returned with a rush, and she felt as she had felt in the shed earlier that evening when she saw Inspector Catcher’s explanatory skis leaning up against the cottage wall: luck must be on her side!
With the skipping-rope knotted to the toe of the second stocking the line was fully long enough and Amy, satisfied, coiled the strange conglomeration that composed it on her bed and sat down again by Mick to wait.
How much time had passed since she came upstairs? It seemed like hours. She stretched herself on the rag-rug with her ear to the boards, and listened. It must be late: the sound of talking had ceased. Then she heard the grandfather-clock strike a single blurred note. One! Could it really be one o’clock? If it were, she had only to stay awake for two more hours. On the other hand it might have been striking half past anything. She must make quite sure not to miss how many times it struck after another half-hour.
But suppose when it struck again it was only once? That would mean that the last time had been half past twelve, or one o’clock—either. Which? Three ones in a row. Three ones were three—three o’clock? She struggled to sit up but realised then that she had been making a muddle in her head. One strike—it had struck once. How cold it was! She reached up a hand vaguely and pulled the unfinished patchwork quilt down on top of the ironing-blanket, forgetting her home-made line, which came with it. What was the thing that hit her head? A skipping-rope handle? How funny! And how hard her bed had become! No, of course, it was not her bed—she was on the floor. She was there so as to listen. It was very important for her to listen and count. She must listen and count. Listen. And count. But when the grandfather-clock struck eleven times Amy heard nothing at all.
She awoke feeling cramped and uncomfortable and with an overpowering sensation of having done something wrong. Wrong? What had she done? And then she knew: she had fallen asleep, and now she had no idea of the time. Her candle had gone out. It must have been burning for hours. Amy crawled across the floor on hands and knees to the chest-of-drawers, raised herself, groped for the candlestick, found the box of matches, struck a match and examined what was left of her candle. The wick had burnt down almost to its root and then drowned in hot melted wax which had set again, hard and white, over it. With her finger-nail she prised the little blackened fragment of wick upright out of the wax and lit it, using another match. If it stayed alight for only a few minutes more it would be enough.
She had to hurry and yet, hurrying, she had to make no noise at all. Amy lifted the wooden chair beside her bed, taking great care not to scrape it, carried it across the room on tiptoe and set it down beneath the west window.
There were two windows in her bedroom. The bigger one faced east. It came so low and the wall was so thick that the ledge formed a natural seat and here Amy used sometimes in warmer weather to station herself when day was over and her jobs all done, like someone on the look-out, gazing at the empty landscape beyond with a faint indefinable ache of longing for she never quite knew what.
The window in the west wall was only a quarter the size, not much more than a peephole, but big enough to let in a shaft of golden evening light at sunset and to let out now—so Amy hoped—a smallish girl. It was situated directly over the shed-roof, and because of the slope of the hillside, roof and ground were closer together at this end of the cottage than at the other end, which would lessen the final drop.
Amy stood on the chair and cautiously pushed the little window open. Immediately a rush of air seemed to smite her face like a blow. She was shocked. Was it really so dreadfully cold outside? Then Mick whined. She turned and looked down at him. There he sat, stiffly expectant, ears cocked, waiting for the reassurance that she was not going to leave him behind. He had been watching all of her movements intently, treading his front paws up and down whenever anxiety became too much for him. Now he whined. Amy climbed off the chair and hugged him. She said in his ear:
“You’ve got to stay, Mick—you’ve got to look after Granny. Lie down, then—wait, boy!”
Poor Mick—it was hard for him. But he lay down when Amy told him to, and rested his head on his paws: he would wait.
She took the ironing-blanket and climbing on the chair again pushed it through the window. With age, and countless scorchings and scrubbings, this blanket had become a deep creamy-yellowy colour, the colour of fleece, and the thought had occurred to Amy that if she were to wrap it round her shoulders she might from a distance be mistaken for a harmless old sheep. It would help to keep her warm as well. The ironing-blanket, Amy considered, was one of her best ideas.
Now all that remained was to fetch her home-made line, fling it out of the window after the blanket and follow both herself. But as she got off the chair her regenerated candle gave a final guttering flicker and expired. She had to move forward in what seemed by contrast to be total darkness. Reaching the bed she felt about with blind patting movements for her line. She had coiled it all ready on the bed; she could remember doing it. Then her toe kicked against one of the skipping-rope handles and it rolled, bumpety-bump, across the floorboards.
Amy stood perfectly still.
Several moments passed. When there was no indication of anyone, either below or in the bedroom next door, having been disturbed, she forced herself to take courage. Stooping down she got hold of both skipping-rope handles and grasping them tightly stepped back towards the window. At her third step she collided with the chair.
This time they must have heard! Sick with fear, she waited. But again there was silence; only silence.
Amy counted fifteen thumps of her heart and then she mounted the chair for the last time and threw her line out of the window. The room, when she turned for a farewell glimpse of Mick, was a pool of shadows and he was lost to her. What she did notice, now that the candle had gone out, was the big pale square in the wall opposite. It was the window that looked east. Was it starlight or moonrise that made it so pale, so luminous? Or was it the dawn?
The dawn? Could it be as late as that? Amy stared unbelievingly at the bland grey patch facing her. If it was the dawn she had already left it too late. Too late! But she
had
to go! It
had
to be not the dawn, not too late!
She turned and gripped the window-ledge, took a breath and sprang. The chair-legs grated as she sprang but she was in no position now to pause and listen for what might be the consequences. She was scrabbling against the wall, heaving and wriggling to scrape herself on to the window-ledge. And because the window-ledge when she got there was too narrow for her to be able to twist herself round, Amy emerged from the little west window in the only way she could: diving out, head-first; and at once the old ironing-blanket, receiving her weight, began to move off like a magic carpet. She grabbed for her fine, but the roof was too slippery. The stockings slid uselessly through her fingers, and the knob of the skipping-rope handle broke her grasp. Borne swiftly down on the ironing-blanket she reached the edge of the roof where, unable to stop herself, still head-first, over she went.
It was the bale of hay she had earlier put for a step that cushioned her fall and although she was scratched and shaken, she was not hurt. The sheep were startled. She could hear them shifting about on the other side of their enclosure. Amy picked herself up. It was snowing. Soft flakes blew against her face and hands and the dim light, she perceived, was indeed the light of early morning. There was no time to lose. Certainly there was no time for her to trudge all the way down to the stream and back again, laying a false trail.
She knelt and pulled her coat from underneath the hen house where she had stowed it last night when she let Mick out. Wrapped inside were her gloves and her wellingtons and Mrs Bowen’s scarf. She crammed the clothes on, buttons shoved through the wrong button-holes, gloves on the wrong hands. In the fright of her fall she had scarcely noticed the cold but her teeth were chattering and when she retrieved the letter from beneath the chopping-block, cold and haste and fright and wrong-way-round gloves all combined to make her clumsy so that she allowed the great chunk of wood to fall back on her toes. The pain was excruciating. Somehow she managed not to cry out, only gave a muffled groan. But there was no time to spare for nursing injuries. Amy pushed the letter down inside the neck of her jersey, thinking to herself that it was less likely to get wet there than in a pocket, and so, ready at last, hobbled out on to the hillside.
Dawn was coming and yet when she looked up she could see nothing. Instead of a lightening sky above her head there was a darkness, a void, and the snowflakes that she felt on her cheeks came from nowhere, touched her, vanished. But when she looked at the ground she saw it glimmering faintly all about her, and across this glimmering unmarked snow she stamped a trail of deep clearly denned footprints that curved away downhill until they merged with the tracks made by the coming and going of the Inspector and Mr Nabb. Further than this she dared not go: time was too short. She could only hope that if her footsteps indicated plainly enough at the start which way she had gone, it would simply be assumed that from there on down to the stream her trail was indistinguishably mingled with the general disorder.
Then quite suddenly she was in a fever, a frenzy of impatience to get away from the cottage, right away from doors and windows. The snow and the light were increasing together. She should have been far from here by now, out of sight, out of reach. Panicking, she floundered back uphill in the tracks that had been made last night by Inspector Catcher returning from his hunt, and round the corner of the cottage as he had come when he had so dreadfully startled her, and into the shed.
Her corrugated tin toboggan was propped ready. She seized hold of it, snatched up the old ironing-blanket, and without wasting another moment set off as fast as she could go on the much-trodden north-westerly track to the top of the hill. And when she reached the top, quite breathless, already beginning to sweat, she swerved instantly to the right, not pausing, and kept on along the ridge, bent low, straining to see, stumbling as she went. Twice she called out words of encouragement to Mick before remembering that she was alone.
The rock was her goal and when she arrived there she did allow herself to stop for a moment and then her heart lifted in triumph: she had done everything wrong—overslept, fallen headlong—but in spite of all her mistakes here she was standing on the Dintirion path, and down in the cottage below still nobody stirred, nobody knew she had gone.
Amy dropped the blanket in a heap on the corrugated tin, settled herself on top of it, dug in her heels once, and was off.
It was a gentle slope at first. She glided rather than flew and there was no need to use her heels either to accelerate or to slow herself. The snow that had thickened so ominously when she was toiling up the hill had suddenly ceased. Probably it had been the fringe of a storm passing further north. Whatever the reason, Amy was thankful—visibility was bad enough without snow to make it worse. She leaned forward, trying to distinguish landmarks ahead, prepared to change direction at any moment. But it seemed almost as though her care was unnecessary, as though the tin toboggan knew its own way. It moved down the invisible track like an engine running on lines, quite slowly, slow enough at one point to come sedately to a halt, whereupon Amy dug in her heels and they were off again.
She was surprised at how easy it was after all, much easier than she had expected, and dreamily slithering past one familiar rock after another she failed to notice her toboggan gathering speed. But the whizzing noise of metal on snow and the coldness blowing sharper in her face alerted her: she was going too fast. Fully awake, she jammed her heels down and the toboggan stopped. Amy sat and considered what came next.