sounds: the bleating of sheep from the field next door. And always, just too low to distinguish, a murmur of the sea. Even now it was spilling into the gulleys and on to beaches, scooping caves out of the rock not far away. On each side of this narrow island, from the north and south coasts it rose and arched over their heads, a dome of sea talk, of bee slumber, just out of sight.
There was much to do at the smallholding. Uncle John had left affairs in a disorderly state. Supplies of food and drink were low, the linen needed sorting and Hilary had declared the kitchen a war zone. And Davy Jones’s showing Geoff the ropes seemed to involve spending most of their time in a shed at the bottom of the garden. Tansy lazily contemplated the possibility of escape.
In the yard the house’s shadow lay flat and broken-backed where it rose against the angle of the barn opposite. To her right stood the spur of whitewashed brick where Uncle John had set to building guest rooms. Davy Jones had referred to this scoffingly as John’s Folly. For there had been no guests.
“Nor ever will be, I reckon, not to speak of. If there’s a guest here it’ll be some rambler who forgot the time and missed the ferry back.”
“But why? Look at this place – it’s beautiful! They should be flocking here.”
“Ah, well, you’re seeing it at its best. But the weather …” Davy Jones mumbled something about the weather, but it was lost in his beard. “Once you get a reputation …”
This trick of mumbling dumbness was already familiar and Tansy knew better than to pursue him into its thickets.
One part of the reason had emerged later that evening, though not from the mouth of Davy Jones. They’d gone to the pub in the Haven. Two locals were playing dominoes in the public bar. Each sat with a half of stout that looked, as Geoff observed, more likely to evaporate than be drunk, at their rate. Once Hilary, using the excuse of an enquiry after toilets, had tried to prise open a conversation. The domino players had fallen silent and watched her, as one might watch a spider spinning.
Tansy did not merit even that much notice. Gazing at the lights on the fruit machine nearby, she had heard them mull over her Uncle John. “Not a patch on Owen Jones. Not a patch on Davy either. There hasn’t been a decent crop raised on that land since Owen Jones fell ill.”
The fruit machine said: Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, and cascading lights dazzled Tansy in the half-darkness. And the old men were peeling away the farm’s history, through the Jones who kept it before Owen Jones, and the Jones before that who was crushed by one of his own pigs, back to ancient Hwyl Jones who built the place. And how it was a shame it had gone to mainlanders, and how things had never been right with it since.
Though it was early morning Davy Jones was already about, helping himself to bacon and eggs from the kitchen. Someone (Davy probably) had already mopped down the floor.
He saw the surprise on Tansy’s face and laughed, a big Viking laugh. “Muzzle not the ox as it treads the grain,” he said. “I’ve been helping to look after this place so long, it’s become a habit.” He sat down to eat in the big armchair in the living room.
“Haven’t you a house of your own?” asked Tansy.
“Everything’s under control,” said Davy, a piece of fried bread pouched in his cheek. “The milking’s done, and I have other people to help me. It’s like that, Sweetholm. Everyone mucks in, like. You’ll find out.”
“It sounds a very friendly place.” Tansy watched him pour himself more tea, four sugars. She decided she would try to find these friendly islanders – if their friendliness wasn’t reserved for each other.
She entered the hall. Immediately opposite, her father’s brother, Uncle John, looked down at her from a large framed photograph, in which he was being awarded a trophy of some kind. Since he was wearing a wetsuit, Tansy supposed it must be for diving, though it was hard for her to think of paunchy Uncle John as athletic. She straightened the frame, which had become lopsided, and this led her to examine all the frames on the wall.
One was a map of Sweetholm, dated 1904. A century of grubby fingers had worn the Haven away entirely, but on either side Tansy saw the paths wind down to the cliffs. Westward, the moor was scattered with smallholders’ cottages, then the Tor, on either side of which the island petered out in dubious marshland, sound pebble beach that swirled into the hungry sand. The old priory church was marked ‘Ruins’. A ten-minute walk south would take her to Palmerston’s gun battery. The Haven lay ten minutes to the north.
Sweetholm had a past, of sorts: a past that exceeded its future. After the novelty of yesterday it was the island’s grim smallness that struck her now. Three months. That was a long time, especially if there were to be arguments. Would Mum and Dad get on here? Would they? They had started so well, with such good intentions. But already there were signs, which Tansy knew too well to be able to block out. Geoff’s defensiveness, the sarcasm that sometimes seemed as involuntary in her mother as a tic.
Back in Bristol there had been ways to escape the situation. The bus to the Mall, movies, friends’ rooms where she could take refuge. Especially Kate’s. Trouble was, Kate wasn’t her friend any more – not since it came out about Geoff and Gloria.
Tansy couldn’t blame her for that. After all, Gloria was Kate’s mother. What was worse, Kate had known nothing, all that time. But she guessed how much Tansy had known.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kate had demanded at last.
Kate hadn’t spoken to her for days. Finally, Tansy had been allowed into Kate’s room. Usually there was music playing, but today she could hardly speak for the silence.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kate’s voice was toneless, like the voice of a machine.
“It’s just, I didn’t want—”
“You knew! We were meant to be best friends. No secrets, remember?”
“Kate, I never wanted to hurt you.”
“If you’d been in my house that night you’d have seen what hurting was. My Dad was sobbing, begging her to tell him it was all lies.”
“I really thought they were going to end it. Then no one would have been hurt. Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry.”
“Go on, Sellotape it with a ‘sorry’. I bet that’s just what your dad does too.”
That had really hurt. But Kate didn’t guess the whole truth even then. Tansy didn’t tell her that the whole affair had been started by the Cursing Candle. And that was odd because the candle – all the magic, in fact – had been Kate’s idea to begin with.
Kate Quilley had always been given to fads. At first her parents probably dismissed the incantations and the supernatural gewgaws that had suddenly appeared in her room. They would soon be gathering dust, they assured themselves, like the well-thumbed shelf of Screams for Teens that had preceded them. So they were not too anxious when Kate came home one day with a fat church candle, even though the cabalistic signs on its side were said to have been daubed with cockerel’s blood. “She’ll grow out of it,” they sighed.
“It’s a Cursing Candle,” Kate explained to Tansy later. “One step up from wax dolls – and much more stylish. All you need to do is take a totem from your enemy and burn it. Then watch them droop and die.”
Tansy sounded faintly shocked, as she knew Kate wished her to. “Have you tried it out?”
“Not yet. That’s the trouble,” Kate complained. “I can’t think of anyone I hate enough.”
“Except for Mr Podgery,” said Tansy wearily as Kate’s hamster began yet another workout on his wheel in the corner of the room.
Kate watched meditatively as the plump little rodent galloped and clanked.
“What a wicked mind you have,” she said at last.
For years Kate had begged her mother for a pet. She had dreamed of a pony of