The Tulip Girl (3 page)

Across the table the young man winked broadly at her. Maddie smiled back but managed to keep her mouth firmly closed.

There was a fifth person sitting at the table. A boy not much older than she was, Maddie guessed. He was very thin, so thin that his wrist bone protruded and his long fingers
looked as bony as a skeleton’s. Although his face and hands were lightly tanned from working out of doors, under the open-necked shirt Maddie could see a ‘V’ of pale skin. His
mousey-coloured straight hair fell forward almost covering one eye. Every so often he flicked it back with a toss of his head. His grey eyes were large behind round, steel-framed spectacles. Maddie
noticed that he kept looking at her from beneath the flop of hair, glancing up swiftly and then away again. She smiled at him but her attention was drawn back again and again to the taller,
good-looking young man who came to sit beside him and directly opposite her and whose broad shoulders seemed twice as wide as the younger boy’s.

The master came and sat down at the head of the table and they all bowed their heads while he murmured a short prayer in a soft, deep voice. Then he took up the carving knife and fork and began
to carve the meat.

‘Don’t give the girl too much. I don’t want her leaving any,’ Harriet said.

The man glanced at Maddie, smiling. ‘You can always come back for more if you can manage it.’

‘Thank you, Mr Trowbridge,’ Maddie said politely and was surprised when the young man opposite her threw back his head with a gust of laughter whilst the younger boy sniggered behind
his hand. The master was amused, but beside her Maddie heard the woman’s sniff of annoyance.

‘I think we’d better introduce ourselves properly,’ the man said. ‘My name’s Frank Brackenbury and the young rascal sitting opposite you is my son, Michael. Mrs
Trowbridge you know already and this . . .’ he indicated the young man sitting on his immediate left, ‘is her son, Nicholas, but more usually called Nick.’ He chuckled as he leant
forward to say in a loud whisper, ‘Much to his mother’s disgust.’

So where, Maddie wondered at once, was Mrs Brackenbury? What had happened to her? And what about Nick’s father?

‘We don’t know your name, young’un,’ Michael said, interrupting her thoughts.

‘Madeleine March.’

‘She’s called Maddie,’ Harriet said at once. ‘We don’t want her getting fancy ideas about herself. If I had my way, she’d be plain Jane.’

Maddie felt the eyes of all three men upon her and a flush of embarrassment crept up her cheeks. No one spoke and the girl knew that, despite their kindness to her already, Mrs
Trowbridge’s veiled reference to her plainness could not be refuted.

Maddie lay on the soft feather bed watching the clouds scudding across the bright face of the moon. She was tired, yet sleep would not claim her. So much had happened in just a
few hours. This morning she had woken up at the Home to the familiar sounds in the long dormitory: girls chattering, jostling each other to get to the washroom and then Jenny appearing like a
wraith at the side of the bed.

‘Walk to school with me, Maddie?’ It was the same every morning.

‘’Course I will,’ Maddie responded, patient as always, swinging her feet out of bed to touch the cold linoleum. Then the younger girl was smiling, skipping away happily to get
washed and dressed, safe in the knowledge that her protector would be with her.

But tomorrow morning, Maddie thought now as her heavy eyelids began to close and the moon became a blurred, distorted shape, poor Jenny Wren would be on her own at school.

Maddie slept fitfully, waking every so often bathed in sweat to fling off the covers, only to wake again feeling cold. It’s this bed, she thought. It’s lovely and soft, but
it’s too hot. When she could stand it no longer, she got out and pulled the soft feather bed away leaving only the lumpy, hard flock mattress beneath it. She was about to climb back in when
the door to her room flew open and the light was switched on, flooding the room and causing Maddie to screw up her eyes against it. Harriet, in a long white nightdress, her grey hair straggling
down to her shoulders, stood in the doorway.

‘What on earth is all the noise, girl? And what is this doing on the floor?’ The woman pointed at the feather mattress heaped beside the bed.

‘It was too hot,’ Maddie declared. ‘So I took it off.’

‘Well!’ Harriet was flabbergasted. ‘Well, I never did. You ungrateful little chit.’ The woman bent and, picking it up, said, ‘We take the feather beds off in May
and put them back in November, but if that’s how you feel, you can do without it. Just one thing, me girl, don’t come running to me in the middle of winter when you’re cold in bed
of a night.’

Suddenly remembering the nights of shivering in the cold dormitory, when ice formed even on the inside of the windows, Maddie realized that such a bed would be a luxury. She lunged forward and
grasped the feather mattress, trying to tug it from the woman’s hands.

‘Leave it here in my room, if it’s mine.’

Their faces only inches apart, the girl and the older woman glared at each other. ‘It isn’t yours,’ Harriet insisted. ‘At least, it won’t be if you carry on like
this. You’ll be back in that orphanage where you belong.’

‘Is something wrong? Is she all right?’ The deep voice spoke from the doorway, making them both jump.

‘Oh, Mr Frank. I’m sorry you was disturbed.’

‘Is she all right?’ the man repeated, his glance going beyond Harriet to the girl.

‘She complaining she’s too hot,’ the woman’s tone expressed anger at the girl’s daring, but the man was smiling.

‘I’m not surprised. It’s a warm night. I was too.’ He nodded towards the offending bag of feathers. ‘But I shouldn’t take it right away, Harriet. This time of
year the nights can turn just as cold again. Let her keep it in her room and she can do what she likes.’

The woman thrust the mattress away from her, pushing it towards Maddie and almost knocking her backwards onto the bed. ‘Whatever you say, Mr Frank. Now . . .’ She turned back to the
girl. ‘If you’d be so kind as to get into bed, then maybe the rest of us could get some sleep.’

The light was switched off and the door closed firmly, leaving Maddie in darkness.

The mester had been kind, Maddie thought as she climbed back into bed, but in sticking up for her he had shown Mrs Trowbridge up. The woman would not forgive her for that.

Tonight, Maddie knew, she had made an enemy of Harriet Trowbridge.

The banging on her bedroom door woke Maddie with a start before it was even light.

‘Jenny . . .?’ she said aloud and then remembered where she was.

‘Come along, girl. Get up,’ the woman’s voice came from the other side of the door. ‘There’s work to do.’

Maddie groaned. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’ But she pushed back the covers and scrambled out of bed.

Washing in cold water in the ewer was no hardship for the girl raised in an orphanage where the use of hot, or even warm, water was thought to be pampering the children.

‘A little hardship is character building,’ had been Sir Peter’s edict, though Maddie doubted he, in his mansion, had ever washed in cold water in his life.

Maddie had only ever seen Sir Peter’s house once. In the spring of 1943 there had been a garden party in the grounds to raise funds for the War effort. The girls from the Mayfield Home,
which Sir Peter’s own father had founded during the 1890s, had been marched, two by two, through the village to the home of their benefactor. Arriving at the entrance where once massive
wrought-iron gates had hung, the children had found they still had a long walk through parkland before they came in sight of the house. Maddie remembered how weary Jenny had been. Then they had
been required to stand in the sun on their best behaviour and smile politely whilst the smartly dressed ladies told them how lucky they were to have someone like Sir Peter with their best interests
at heart.

That had been the day, she thought with a shudder, that they had seen the Hanging Tree.

There were several of the village children at Mayfield Park that day with their parents. Steven Smith, whom Maddie was obliged to sit near in school, had soon sought her out.

‘It’s the Mad March Hare.’ He tweaked her hair and then stepped back sharply before she had time to lash out at him. ‘What you doing here? Didn’t think they’d
let you out of the madhouse to come.’

Jenny shrank behind Maddie, clinging to the back of her skirt and peeping round the older girl to watch him. But Maddie grinned at him. ‘Hello, Stinky. Didn’t think they’d let
a smelly little beggar like you come here, either.’

He drew himself up to his full height – an inch taller than Maddie. ‘My dad shoes all Sir Peter’s horses, so there.’ Steven’s father was the village blacksmith and
the boy’s clothes always reeked of the forge and the smell of singeing hoof. It was not an unpleasant smell, but Maddie used it to go one better on the nickname he had given her.

‘Bet you’ve never seen the Hanging Tree,’ he said.

From behind her came a little squeak of terror from Jenny. But Maddie said, ‘The what?’

The boy moved closer dropping his voice to a scary whisper. ‘There’s a tree in the woods here where a feller hanged himself a few years back. Want to see it?’

Maddie felt Jenny’s fingers on her skirt clutching tighter.

‘’Course we do,’ Maddie said boldly, ignoring the whimper behind her. ‘Oh no, Maddie, no.’

‘Come on then.’ The boy turned and began to walk, hands thrust into the pockets of his short trousers and with a swagger in his step, towards the woods.

With a quick glance around her to make sure that Mrs Potter was not watching, Maddie prised Jenny’s clinging fingers from her skirt and whispered. ‘You stay here, if you don’t
want to come.’

‘No, no. Don’t leave me.’ The small child seemed uncertain as to which would be the worse fate. Being left alone amongst all these strangers or following Stinky Smith into the
dark unknown of the woods.

Taking her hand, Maddie said, ‘Come on, then.’

Entering the cool dimness, their feet squelched on the mulch of several autumns’ leaves. The breeze rustled through the trees overhead and birds rose from the topmost boughs at the arrival
of the three intruders.

‘Come on,’ shouted their guide, his voice echoing eerily. ‘It’s this way.’

They came to a small clearing and at the edge Maddie stopped and gasped aloud. ‘Oh how pretty it is. Just look, Jen, at all these flowers.’

The whole clearing was a carpet of wild bluebells, yet in the centre was a heart-shaped bed of yellow tulips edged with a border of forget-me-nots.

Steven pointed to the golden flowers. ‘Them’s been planted.’

‘Who did it?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Dunno. Someone belonging to the feller who hanged himself, I s’pect.’ He moved towards a tree at the side of the clearing and put his hand flat against the
trunk, tilting his head back to look up into the branches. ‘This is where he did it.’

Maddie moved closer, but Jenny hovered on the edge of the clearing hopping from foot to foot. ‘Maddie, I want the lav.’

Maddie stood beneath the tree as Steven pointed upwards. ‘See them marks on that branch. That’s where he tied the rope.’

‘Maddie . . .’ came Jenny’s wail. ‘I gotta go. Now!’

‘Bob down behind those bushes then,’ Maddie murmured, her gaze still on the tree.

‘I daresunt. There might be – be . . .’

Steven turned, grinning wickedly. ‘Think a bird’ll peck ya bum?’

Maddie gave the boy a shove on his shoulder. ‘Don’t tease her. She’s only little and we haven’t ever been in a wood before.’

His eyes widened. ‘Never been in a wood. Blimey. They don’t let you out of that place much, do they?’ But now there was a note of sympathy in his tone instead of mockery. For
the village lad who had been allowed to roam the fields and lanes at will, never to have been able to walk in a wood before reaching the age of eleven seemed like being locked away in prison.

‘Wait there,’ Maddie instructed as she turned and went back to Jenny to lead her behind the nearby bushes. Moments later the two girls emerged, the younger one pulling up her
knickers as, this time, she walked alongside Maddie right up to the tree.

‘Who was he, then?’ Maddie asked, once more squinting up into the branches. ‘And why did he do it?’

Now he had more of an audience the boy ran his tongue around his lips and grinned. With a sly glance at Jenny he said, ‘John Cuppleditch, they called him. He was a groom for Sir Peter and
there was a – a scandal, yes, that’s what me mam called it – a scandal . . .’ He savoured the word. ‘. . . About him and Sir Peter’s daughter, Miss
Amelia.’

‘What about them?’ Maddie demanded.

‘Me mam ses it was all round the village at the time. He was already married, see, and him and his wife had a little babby, an’ all. Everyone reckoned him and Amelia Mayfield was
going to run away together, but Sir Peter locked her up in the house and wouldn’t let her see him no more. But . . .’ The boy, young though he was and maybe not even understanding fully
the meaning behind the words, was relishing repeating the village gossip. ‘He came back at night to try to see her and Sir Peter chased him off the estate with his twelve bore.’

‘You’re making it all up.’

‘No, I’m not. He did hang himself from that tree because Sir Peter threw his whole family, even his mam and dad and his little brothers and sisters as well, out of their
cottage.’

‘How could he do that?’

‘’Cos he owned the cottage where they lived. His dad was head groom, see. So he got the sack an’ all. They was all living rough for a while in the woods, me mam
said.’

‘What happened to them?’

Steven shrugged. ‘Dunno, but him . . .’ The boy was warming to his gruesome tale. ‘He comes back here one night, throws a rope over that branch, ties a loop round his neck and
then climbed up and jumped off.’

The two girls shuddered and instinctively moved closer to each other.

‘It was two days before they found him.’ Steven leaned closer, whispering, ‘His face was all bloated and black and he was just swinging here, the branch creaking in the wind .
. .’ He made a rasping noise in his throat, trying to imitate the sound.