The Penderwicks at Last Read online

  Now he stopped whistling and yelled.

  “Alice!” He drew out the first syllable—Aaa-lice—and Lydia realized that all along he’d been whistling Alice’s name. She was even more impressed than before. Not that it worked. No Alice showed herself.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Lydia. “Please, if she doesn’t want to.”

  “She’s just a little upset right now. A few hours ago, her brother left to visit his cousin in Canada, and she’s going to miss him. Let’s put away the chickens, and I’ll go find her.”

  Lydia followed him behind the cottage to where the chickens lived in a pen that had lots of space for them to move around, plus a little house of their own with two separate rooms, one for being social and one for laying eggs. Cagney told them to be good girls, then went into the cottage to hunt down the elusive Alice, who, contrarily, was already on the porch when Lydia returned to the front of the cottage. Like her dad, Alice was wearing a cap, but this one was black and yellow with a big D on the insignia. If the cap was meant to hide Alice’s red, puffy eyes, it wasn’t working. Lydia could tell she’d been crying.

  “I’m Alice,” she said. “I guess you’re Lydia.”

  “I don’t want to bother you if, you know…” Lydia trailed off, not wanting to mention Alice’s tears.

  “If I’m crying? I’ve stopped.” Alice lifted her cap to prove it, and it was true that no new tears were forthcoming. “Anyway, my parents think we might be friends while you’re here.”

  Lydia didn’t mention that she’d hoped the same thing, not wanting to foist herself on anyone. But at least she hadn’t loathed Alice on sight. This was a positive first step. “We don’t have to be friends. I’m okay on my own.”

  “Thank you.” Alice pulled down her cap again. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Your sister Jane told my mother that you like everybody.”

  “That’s not true! Jane should know better.”

  Alice perked up a little. “Maybe you won’t like me.”

  “I’d already know if I wasn’t going to.”

  Cagney came through the door behind them. “There you are, Alice. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Dad, Jane was wrong. Lydia doesn’t like everyone.”

  “I really don’t. I wish my sisters would believe me,” said Lydia. “There’s this girl, Deborah, I just couldn’t stand.”

  “We’ll be sure not to invite Deborah to Arundel,” said Cagney.

  Alice had something else she wanted to clear up. “My parents said that our family owes the Penderwicks a debt of gratitude, because Mrs. Tifton hated having you here so much that she never rented out our cottage again. Which is how Dad and Mom could move into it when they got married, and why we still live here.”

  “That wasn’t me, though,” said Lydia. “I wasn’t even born when my family was here last time. You don’t owe me anything.”

  Alice perked up even more. “Dad, did you hear that?”

  “You’re missing the point, Alice,” he said.

  “But she truly doesn’t owe me anything,” said Lydia. If they were to become friends, she didn’t want it to be by coercion.

  “All right, I’ll let you two work it out while I take the key to Batty.” He held up a boringly normal old key, not what Lydia had expected—something large, ornate, and made at least of silver, maybe even gold.

  As he strode off, Alice sank back into gloomy silence, and Lydia was left staring out at the trees, wondering what to say to this sad person. Eventually, she came up with a question.

  “Do you know Mrs. Tifton well?”

  It turned out to be a good question. Alice launched enthusiastically into her longest speech so far.

  “Sure, I do. When she lived here, she came over almost every day to boss around my dad and tell my mom her problems, like about when her last husband stole everything stored in the attic, sold it, and kept the money, and some of it was really valuable, so he got thousands of dollars. That’s when Mrs. Tifton said she was done with husbands, and moved to New York City. No one believes that she’s done with husbands—not even her lawyer, which is why he told her to give Arundel to Jeffrey. And Jack, my brother, says she probably moved to New York because husbands are easier to find there. I said she managed to find plenty while living here, and he said that proves that she’s run out by now.”

  This was all interesting, but Lydia’s attention had caught on the attic. The attic and the treasures it held—old clothes, furniture, toys, bows and arrows, anything that could be dreamt of—had come up often in her sisters’ stories.

  “That husband sold everything that was in the attic? There’s nothing left?”

  “Nothing. And he stole other stuff, too. He was a real winner. The one before that did illegal things on Wall Street and went to prison for a while.”

  Lydia was disappointed that the attic was now empty. It was going to be one of her first adventures. She also found herself feeling sympathy for Mrs. Tifton. No one deserved such bad husbands.

  “My sisters don’t like her much,” she said.

  “Do you want to see how she looks when she’s mad?” Alice made a face like she’d bit into a sour pickle. “I kind of miss her. It’s more exciting with her around. Or when Jeffrey’s home from Germany, though that’s a nicer excitement. In March, he brought me this Dynamo Dresden hat because of the D, for my middle name, Delaney. He couldn’t find any hats in Germany with A for Alice.”

  She took off her cap and showed it to Lydia, who was impressed. Jeffrey had always brought her ballet skirts, fancy ones with embroidery and layers upon layers of tulle. She was outgrowing a few of the earlier ones, and secretly hoped he’d bring her another when he came home for the wedding. But a real sports hat from Germany was also nice. Unlike ballet skirts, hats can’t be grown out of.

  Alice’s long speech must have used up her available words, because conversation now ground to a halt. It was a relief when Batty and Cagney returned in Jane’s car.

  “We have two dogs, if you want to see them,” Lydia told Alice.

  Clearly more enthusiastic about dogs than people, Alice ran to the car and peered into the backseat. Feldspar excitedly presented his feather duster. Sonata yawned.

  “Batty, this is my daughter, Alice,” said Cagney. “Alice, say hello to Batty.”

  “Hello, Batty. Dad said you wore butterfly wings and were odd.”

  Cagney groaned. “I apologize for my daughter, Batty. I did not tell her that you were odd. I believe I said ‘quiet and very shy.’ ”

  “I was a little odd,” said Batty. “And they tell me I wore wings, but I don’t remember.”

  “Odd isn’t always bad,” said Alice graciously. “My brother sometimes calls me that. Can I get into the car with the dogs?”

  While Alice rolled around in the backseat with Feldspar and Sonata, Batty conferred quietly with Lydia. Cagney had offered to show them around the mansion, discussing necessities like kitchens and bathrooms, sheets and towels. Did Lydia want to come along or stay with Alice? Lydia had little interest in sheets and towels, but she also didn’t want to be with Alice unless Alice wanted her there.

  “Should I ask her, or do you want to?” Batty whispered.

  “You, please.”

  Batty reached into the backseat to pull Feldspar’s feather duster out of Alice’s face.

  “Would you like Lydia to stay with you, or should she go with me and your dad to the mansion?”

  Alice stared out the car window, apparently considering her options.

  “Alice,” said Cagney. “Please.”

  “I’m thinking!” She glanced at Lydia. “Do you like sheep?”

  * * *

  —

  Who doesn’t like sheep? There turned out to be an entire flock of them living in a field next to Arundel. When Lydia’s sisters had first visited
, this field was home to a bull who didn’t appreciate Batty crawling under the locked gate and taking over his favorite grazing spot, and who appreciated even less Jeffrey and Skye showing up to rescue her. Lydia had wondered if the bull would still be around, and was a little disappointed to find that she wouldn’t get to meet him in real life.

  But unlike bulls, sheep don’t attempt to murder people who visit their field. This meant that the gate that had once been thick wood was now only wire mesh and wasn’t even locked. Alice shoved it open, and in they went. The sheep—Lydia counted seventeen—were gathered in a far corner near their barn, busily chomping on grass. They raised their heads to make sure the new arrivals weren’t wolves or coyotes, then went back to their meal.

  Except for the one sheep slowly but deliberately making her way toward the girls.

  “That’s Big Papi.” Alice pulled a handful of oats out of her pocket. When Big Papi arrived, she ate the oats right off Alice’s hand. “You can pet her if you want.”

  Lydia started off tentatively patting the sheep’s broad back but was soon comfortable enough to bury her hands in the thick wool that smelt like sun, sweaters, and grass. Big Papi ignored her, wanting only oats, and bleated at Alice when she didn’t immediately produce more.

  “Why does this sheep come to you and the others don’t?” asked Lydia, who wanted a sheep to come to her.

  “When she was born, her mother couldn’t take care of her, so Dad and Mom let her live in our house, and we fed her with a bottle until she was big enough to go back to the other sheep. And she remembers, don’t you?” Alice kissed Big Papi’s nose. “I wanted to name her Blossom, but Jack named her Big Papi, and she likes that better. Watch: Blossom. Big Papi. Blossom. Big Papi.”

  Lydia looked carefully into Blossom’s eyes—one at a time, because like all sheep’s eyes, they were facing in different directions.

  “Say both names again.”

  “Blossom. Big Papi. Blossom. Big Papi.”

  “I really can’t see any diff— Oh, Alice, you’re crying again. Is it about Jack? Your dad says you miss him.”

  “I do not miss him.” Alice angrily scrubbed away her tears. “It’s just that he gets everything he wants, even naming Big Papi.”

  “Blossom!” Lydia addressed the sheep with emphasis and an extra pat on the head. “I think she responded this time.”

  “No, she didn’t.” Alice shook her head, sniffing. “I wanted to visit our cousin in Canada, too, but I wasn’t allowed because I’m not old enough yet—I’m ten, and Jack’s only twelve, and ten isn’t that much younger than twelve, and so what if he has to ride on a train by himself—my mom is dropping him off now, and I could do that, too—and so what if he’s going to hockey camp with our cousin Marcel and I don’t play hockey. Plus, my parents gave Jack a phone so that he can keep in touch from Canada, but I don’t have a phone so I can’t keep in touch with anybody, not Marcel or anybody. And Marcel has a Newfoundland puppy named Slapshot.”

  This Lydia understood. Two summers ago, Ben had gone to Connecticut to visit their cousins Enam and Marty—and Lydia had been devastated that she wasn’t allowed to go with him. And back then, Enam and Marty didn’t have their dog, Blakey. Lydia couldn’t imagine how bad it would have been if she’d had to miss a new puppy on top of everything else.

  “That’s not fair,” she told Alice.

  “I know.”

  Lydia tried to come up with something comforting. “Maybe Jack won’t like Canada.”

  “He’ll like it. It’s Canada!” Alice got more oats out of her pocket for Big Papi, or Blossom. “And, also, it isn’t just that Blossom prefers to be called Big Papi. She even likes Jack best. He’s always telling her stories about Jumping Jack Flash and Jack Kennedy the president and these two guys named Jack White and Jack Black that he says are real, but I’m not sure.”

  “President Kennedy definitely was.”

  “Yeah, a long time ago.” Alice tipped her head, listening, and then Lydia heard it—the two-note call of the black-capped chickadee. “I have to go. I’ll show you a shortcut back to the mansion.”

  After the girls said good-bye to Big Papi (or Blossom), Alice led Lydia not toward the driveway and lane, but to the hedge that separated the cottage and the estate. When they got close enough, Lydia noticed a clump of tall wildflowers growing up right next to the hedge, and then she knew where she was.

  “These flowers block Jeffrey’s tunnel,” she told Alice, “where he and Skye met. They banged into each other, and she knocked him out.”

  “The tunnel’s mine and Jack’s now. Though, actually, with Jack away, it’s just mine, isn’t it?” At that happy thought, Alice smiled, for the first time since Lydia had met her. It was a crooked smile, a little higher on the left than on the right, and transformed Alice into a funny elf of a girl, with just the right amount of wicked. “Uh-oh, there’s my dad whistling again.”

  Without saying good-bye, Alice whirled around and dashed away.

  “Thanks for introducing me to Blossom!” shouted Lydia in her wake.

  The only answer was another birdcall.

  Aaa-lice.

  LYDIA EMERGED FROM THE tunnel behind a statue of a man wearing a toga and holding a thunderbolt. On the first visit, her sisters had called him the marble thunderbolt man, not realizing until they were older that he was supposed to be Zeus, king of the gods. Lydia circled around to see his face—no wonder they hadn’t recognized him as Zeus. He looked less like a king and more like a normal guy who was confused. She could imagine why. It must have been a shock to start out in ancient Greece but end up in modern-day Massachusetts. Poor Zeus. If he could stop yearning for the past, he might be grateful for such a view. Certainly Lydia delighted in what she saw—a glimpse of the carriage house and, beyond it, the greenhouse. In the other direction was a large meadow at the back of the estate, mirroring the meadows she’d seen earlier. Everywhere were garden beds overrun with bright riots of friendly flowers like zinnias and sunflowers, petunias and nasturtiums, bachelor buttons and sweet peas. Plus, one bed dedicated to a tangle of raspberry bushes. Lydia popped a berry into her mouth and almost swooned. This was her first raspberry eaten fresh, still warm from the sunshine, and she never again wanted to eat raspberries any other way.

  Yes, poor Zeus. Why should he be grateful for being stuck staring at raspberries he’d never eat? Lydia picked a few to place at his marble feet.

  “As tribute,” she told him, then swayed and stomped, being what she thought might look like a Greek maiden from ancient times. “Now, Zeus, you must know Alice pretty well. Do you think she wants to be friends with me?”

  Zeus’s look of confusion didn’t waver, though at least it didn’t get worse.

  “Maybe, maybe not? It might not be our destiny.”

  Lydia did a bit of soft-shoe for him, thinking he might like some more up-to-date dancing, then realized that she was hungry—breakfast felt like a lifetime ago. Because it was difficult to contemplate abstract subjects like destiny on an empty stomach, she turned herself around and pointed her dancing feet toward Arundel Hall and, she hoped, Batty and food.

  The closer Lydia got to Arundel Hall, the larger it seemed to grow, until she felt teensy, like Jill, Scrubb, and Puddleglum when they reach the giants’ castle in The Silver Chair. She decided that the mansion was her least favorite part of Arundel, and she wasn’t looking forward to sleeping in it.

  There was no way to guess where Batty might be in this great fortress, and Lydia wished she’d asked Alice how to get inside. There were plenty of doors, but any she tried were locked. The carved-oak front door—truly tall enough for a giant to go through—was forbidding, but Lydia bravely made an attempt anyway. Locked. She wondered if she’d be circling this unfriendly behemoth, waltzing along terraces, skipping up and down steps, for the rest of her life. How long did it take to die of hunger, and
why didn’t the Penderwicks use birdsongs to find each other?

  But then came rescue: not birdsong, but indeed a beacon that said “Here is Batty” or, as their father said, “Hic Batty est.” Somewhere a piano was pouring out the score for Merrily We Roll Along, the musical put on by Cameron High School when Batty was in tenth grade and one of the stars. She’d played and sung the score so many times at home that the whole family learned it along with her. Mr. Penderwick still sometimes sang the title song when he thought no one could hear him.

  Right now, it was just a tiny thread of music, but once Lydia figured out the direction it was coming from, it didn’t take her long to find the source, a large room on the other side of locked French doors. Most of the room had a desolate look, its furniture shrouded in white sheets that made Lydia think of ghosts, and not in a good way. But one part of the room was alive—the corner that held a grand piano, shiny and black, jutting like the prow of an ocean liner. The vast lid was propped up, blocking Batty from Lydia’s view, but she could spot Sonata asleep under the piano and Feldspar in front of it, proudly guarding Batty from the eerie furniture. Lydia knocked on the window to get Feldspar’s attention—and here he was now, wagging his tail and cleaning his side of the window with his feather duster.

  “Tell Batty I’m out here,” she said, even though she knew he wouldn’t listen. And, indeed, he concentrated on his dusting until the song ended and Lydia’s knock could get through to her sister. Batty ran to unlock the door, grabbed Lydia’s hand, and dragged her over to the piano.