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94 pages

English

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Esther, (13), is crippled and kept hidden in a cottage by her ignorant and superstitious family. Her joy is her baby sister who plays 'mermaids' with her on the floor, untroubled by her disability. One day her mother takes the baby to a lady who has come to live in the big house on top of the hill, and who makes photographs. Esther has overheard the fishermen's children whispering about the lady's black hands (stained by the photographic chemicals). They run away when she wants them to model for her because they think photography is witchcraft. Esther is terrified at what may happen to her treasured little sister. She attempts the impossible: to drag herself up the hill after her mother in order to rescue the baby. Halfway up she is discovered by Tom, (15), the local clergyman's son who should be studying but has slipped out with his sketchbook onto the downs to make a drawing of a kestrel in flight. Tom thinks the girl is hurt and picks her up and carries her to the lighted glass house at the top of the hill where Mrs Cameron is photographing the baby. Esther sees her little sister and thinks she is in danger. She struggles out of Tom's arms, falls against the glass and it breaks. Mayhem results and the picture is ruined. The photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, famous for her pioneering photographs, including pictures of children, is furious. Then she sees the beauty of the girl beneath her rags and asks Esther to model for her. That Esther cannot walk is not a disadvantage as posing requires sitting still for long periods. Mrs Cameron also asks Tom if his father will tutor her son, Henry and the Tennyson boys, and the children become friends. Thus the two children enter the fertile and creative world of the artists and writers who formed the Pre-Raphaelite circle at Freshwater around the Poet Laureate, Alfred Tennyson. The unconventional circle teaches them to value individuality and to overcome prejudice. Through a series of ups and downs each grows into their true self. Esther is taken up to London by Mrs Cameron to see a doctor and becomes a patient in the new Great Ormond St Hospital for children. She learns to read and returns to the Island, able to walk with crutches, and sets up a stall where she sells souvenirs to the new tourists. Tom gets to meet the artists George Watts and Edward Lear. He makes a drawing of a stricken vessel and sends it off to the Illustrated London News and is offered a job as a roving artist-reporter. There is a suggestion that one day he will defy convention and come back to marry her.

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 avril 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781788031691
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	4 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Finding

Meg Campbell
Copyright © 2017 Meg Campbell
Front cover: Study, Head of a Girl by G F Watts, courtesy of Manchester City Art Gallery

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1788031 691

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To G F C
with love
Contents
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1
Esther slithered over and pulled herself up till she could see out of the window. Mam was striding up the hill taking Becky away. Hot panic boiled in her chest. If I’m not there, if I’m not in time, a terrible thing will happen.
She’d held onto Mam’s skirts, she’d put her arms around Mam’s legs, she’d tried to tell her, but Mam wouldn’t listen. She’d cried and sobbed and cried again but Mam wouldn’t hear. Mam bundled little Becky up. ‘Don’t be silly Essie, I don’t know what you’re on about.’ Then she’d picked up Becky in her arms, stepped around Esther and gone, slamming the door behind her.
Esther knew that Mam was taking Becky to the Black Witch.
When Becky was born, twelve years after Esther, she might have been jealous, but she wasn’t. Mam laid the baby in the wooden crib by the fire and Esther crept up to it and looked at the little fists lying either side of the baby’s head. Cautiously she picked one up and the tiny fingers opened like a starfish and closed over hers. Becky belonged to her; Becky needed her.

*

Now Esther felt the blood coursing through her. The light was brighter, her eyes were sharper and her muscles were stronger. She was no longer poor Essie. Essie, the good-for-nothing, the one who had to be carried up to bed, the one who couldn’t even go to school. I can pull with my hands, she thought. I can wriggle like a worm. I can stop her taking Becky. And I will . A new Esther was inside her and pushed the feeble old Essie out of the way.
Grannie was out and the new Esther urged, Push the three-legged stool across the floor to the door. Haul yourself up onto the seat. Use your elbows, use your hands.
Now she was on the top of the stool and could reach to the latch and unclasp it. The door swung open and a cool smell of seaweed from the salt marshes rushed past her into the cottage, making the flames jump and crackle in the grate. She half slid, half fell down again onto the doorstep. There in the distance was Mam with Becky. She had almost reached the top of the hill. She was holding Becky on her hip and looking up towards the big house with the turret.
‘Come back,’ Esther screamed but the wind carried her voice away. ‘Come back!’ Mam didn’t even hear.
I will get to her , thought Esther, I must .
Esther dragged herself across the road onto the verge next to the hedge and began to pull herself up the hill. Briars spread across her path and reached out with their jagged sprays. She pushed them away but one sprang back to whip her across her face. Thorns grabbed her gown and dug into the cloth on her back.
I am low down like an ant , she thought, but an ant is tough, you can squash an ant and not kill it.
Her skirt caught but she tugged and tugged until it ripped free. Her bare knees hurt on the stones and her long hair kept falling into her eyes. Dry leaves whispered as she moved over them, like the fishermen’s children giggling in the lane. ‘Don’t let the Witch catch you,’ they said, ‘or she’ll turn you into a pichure.’
Under the old leaves the grass was emerald green and there were bright red toadstools with yellow spots. One squashed under her hand and it sent up a rich smell. The smell was musty, the smell of a Witch, and wherever she looked, her eyes made the shape of a Witch. The Witch with the black hands that the children ran away from.
In her head the Witch was standing at the top of the hill like a tall pine tree, like a turret, waiting for Becky. Her hair was flaming red and her eyes were yellow. She looked down at Esther, daring her to come closer.
Becky will stretch out her baby hands to the bright red hair and yellow eyes, the way she reaches towards the glow of the hearth, Esther thought. When she does that I get between her and the danger and now I must get between her and the Witch. No one is going to take Becky away from me. Nobody.
Now there was a cat standing across her path. A witch’s cat with its back arched and its tail waving smoothly from side to side, back and forth, back and forth. The cat looked at her with burning eyes, opened its mouth, hissed and was gone. Then in its place was a glossy crow. It took a step towards Esther and with a jerk of its head, opened its beak and let out a hoarse warning cry, ‘Go back, Go b-a-c-k’. It spread its wings; they were two black hands, fingers outstretched. Then it leapt up and away into the sky.
In the mornings when Becky slept, Esther was left by herself on the stone-flagged floor of the cottage. Grannie liked things to be clean and tidy. ‘Move up,’ she’d say, pushing at Esther with her brush. Grannie liked things perfect. ‘She’ll never work. Another mouth to feed.’ Grannie’s words sang in Esther’s head.
I’m not perfect, my legs don’t work , thought Esther, but Becky loves me. They all think I’m no good, ‘cept Becky. Nothing is going to stop me getting to Becky. Nothing.
Her heart pounded. It was such a long way up the hill and her hands were sore, but she wouldn’t let anything stop her getting to Becky, not even herself.
2
As Tom began to run up the wide green verge beside the hedge, he saw ahead of him a girl. She was crawling very slowly. Probably one of the fishermen’s children playing a game, maybe hide and seek, he thought. He looked around for others, but couldn’t see any. He quickly caught up with the small figure, recognising her. It’s that girl, he thought, the crippled one the children call crazy. She seemed to be struggling, pulling herself along by her arms, making slow progress. Dark curly hair hung in a tangle down her back and shoulders.
He came up behind her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Where are the others?’
The girl shrank down, drawing herself into a little ball, freezing like a wild creature that hopes if it keeps perfectly still it won’t be seen. He bent down to look more closely; a pair of fierce brown eyes turned up towards him and he saw that there was blood beneath the strands of hair that fell across her face. Something must have happened. The girl was hurt.
He stood up and looked around. What should he do? He couldn’t just leave her; he’d have to take her to someone. He bent again, put his arms under her and cautiously lifted her up against his shoulder. She was bigger than he expected but thin and light.
‘No!’ The words came out in a high-pitched gasp and she wriggled like a mad thing under all the muddy garments, as if trying to escape.
‘Hush, I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said. ‘Where do you live? You’re bleeding and I must take you to someone.’
‘Becky,’ she shrieked, and her sharp elbows dug into him.
‘Becky?’ he asked and the girl gestured wildly towards a house at the top of the hill. The someone called Becky lived there.
‘All right, I’ll carry you,’ he said.
The girl wound her arms tightly around him. He felt her quick nervous pants against his neck, warm and soft, urging him forwards up the hill. He staggered on towards a light that glimmered in what looked like a greenhouse or potting shed attached to the side of the house.
The glass panes of the shed held a glow and there were figures inside. Someone stood bent over with her head under a black cloth, which covered a box on a tripod. A long, red skirt showed beneath, reaching down to the ground. A light was angled to shine down on a table in front of a black curtain where a baby was propped up with cushions. A pair of real feathery-white swan’s wings was bound to its back with a sash that crossed in the front. It was a chubby baby and the wings made it look like a cherub angel. Another woman, presumably its mother, was standing anxiously beside it just beyond the light, trying to keep the little child amused.
As he got nearer, the girl in his arms stiffened and strained forward, reaching out with her arms. ‘Becky,’ she cried. ‘Oh Becky, are you dead? Are you are become an angel with white wings? Oh Becky! You mustn’t be dead!’ She jerked herself towards the glass pane of the window, her head hitting it with such force that there was a sudden splintering crash as it shattered.
The mother whipped around, the baby began to scream and the photographer in the red skirt snatched her head out from under the black cloth.
‘She moved! It’s ruined! Another plate wasted!’ Her voice