Bawden The Witch's Daughter

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-28708-6
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

On the Scottish island of Skua, friendship develops between the lonely and mysterious Perdita and a blind girl, Janey. Both possess a kind of second sight - Janey's is the ability to hear, feel and remember more than others, and Perdita's is the ominous legacy of her being a witch's daughter. When Janey's brother, Tom, starts investigating a cluster of mysterious events and suspicious characters, all three become entwined in an adventure of hidden jewels, desperate criminals and dangerous detection. Written in 1963, TheWitch's Daughter showcases Nina Bawden's innate regard for the integrity of her young characters. As she has said: 'I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.' Hugely admired on publication by both reviewers and readers, it was described as 'thrilling' by the Times Literary Supplement.

Nina Bawden is one of the most admired and engaging writers of fiction for children and has written more than fifty books. Born in 1925, she was educated at Oxford and completed her first novel the year after gaining her degree. She is the author of such classics as Carrie's War and The Peppermint Pig, and has won the Guardian Fiction Award and the Phoenix Award as well as being commended for the Carnegie Medal. Described by the Daily Telegraph as 'without question one of the very best writers for children', she divides her time between London and Nauplion in Greece.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bawden, Nina

Leseproben

BEWITCHED

THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER sat on a rock in the bay. It was a huge rock, with steep sides of black basalt, turreted like a castle and crowned with purple heather. On one side the sea thundered, throwing up spray like white lace. Inland, the wet sand of low tide stretched back to the dunes and the brown slopes of Ben Luin beyond. The bay was empty except for a few bullocks at the water’s edge and the gulls that swooped and cried like kittens over the shore and the hills of this Scottish island of Skua. The witch’s daughter closed her eyes and flew with the gulls in the air: she turned and dived and felt the wind cold on her face. She flew in her mind: her body sat still on the rock. Her name was Perdita, which means lost.

Her eyelids fluttered open. She looked out to sea and saw the red steamer from the mainland moving across the bay. Perdita stood up and turned inland. Once off the heathery cap of the rock, the way down was dangerous, but she was neat and unhesitating as a deer. Her feet were bare, her boots tied round her neck with string. She wore a woman’s dress, cut down but still too long for her, and a green scarf round her hair. The bullocks watched her with their black-lashed, mild eyes as she ran across the sand. She vanished among the spiky grass of the dunes and then re-appeared, climbing upwards across a patch of cropped turf to a dry-stone wall. Over the wall, she stopped to put on her boots. The peat bog squelched beneath her, tugging at her boots, but she trudged sturdily on, working her way round the side of Ben Luin towards one of its lower ridges. When she reached the top of this ridge, she paused for breath and looked down at the town of Skuaphort, a small cluster of white houses round a harbour and a stone jetty. Small boats rocked at anchor on the land side of the jetty and, out in deeper water, the steamer was slowly rounding the point and coming into harbour.

Perdita ran down the stony side of the crag, scattering sheep and starting up a hare that loped a little way before it froze still, pretending to be invisible. She reached the stone road by the ruined cottage and jumped the stream, because the little bridge that had once crossed it, when the cottage was lived in, was ruined too. Once on the road, she went slower because the stones were loose and would roll under her feet if she were careless. The town was further than it looked. By the time she reached the harbour, the steamer was already tied up, and beginning to unload.

There were other children tumbling out of the white houses and racing towards the jetty. The witch’s daughter avoided them, hiding behind an angle of the school house wall until they had gone safely past her. Hugging the walls of the buildings, she kept her eyes on the ground as if she did not want to see, or be seen. She hopped off the road onto the shore and made her way over the rocks that were slippery with gingery seaweed, to a beached boat. She crouched behind the boat, to watch.

Besides the half dozen children, there were men on the jetty: John McAllister the postman, waiting with the mail van; Will Campbell with his box of lobsters for Oban; Mr Duncan from the shop, to fetch his supplies. These were being carried off now, down the swaying gangplank: crates of groceries, grey containers of Calor Gas. Perdita waited. She was not interested in Mr Duncan’s supplies. She was interested in people. New people. Was anyone going to land? It was not very likely, she knew—more people left Skua than ever came to it now—but all the same, she craned hopefully from the shelter of the boat, her eyes fixed on the steamer. Then she gave a little sigh of satisfaction. Four people had appeared on deck, a man, a woman and two children: a fair-haired boy and a younger girl. The boy ran down off the boat but the girl, who had come with him to the head of the gangplank, hung back, waiting. As Perdita watched, the woman joined her and placed one of the girl’s hands on the rail. She said something and the child lifted her foot to place it on the gangplank, lifting it rather higher than was necessary. Then, with the woman guiding her, she came hesitantly down, seeming to feel the way with her feet, until she stood on the jetty. The woman left her there and returned to the deck to help the man carry suitcases off the steamer.

The girl had long, brown hair that blew in the wind. She put up a hand to hold back her hair and looked out from the jetty. Perdita thought she was looking straight at her.

Perdita looked round. No one else had noticed her. Cautiously, she came out from behind the boat and scrambled over the rocks towards the jetty until she was standing beneath it, out of sight of the other people, but in full view of the girl. She was about her own age, Perdita thought, which was ten years, seven months old. Perdita looked at her and then smiled shyly. The girl did not smile back, but bent her head sideways, as if listening. Puzzled, because she did not seem unfriendly or nervous of her, like the island children, Perdita stopped smiling. The girl took one tentative step towards the edge of the jetty, and then another …

‘Janey. Janey….’ The woman’s voice was sharp, as if she were alarmed. She came up beside the girl. ‘You’re rather near the edge, my darling,’ she said, and took her hand.

The girl, Janey, stiffened impatiently, humping one shoulder higher than the other in a fretful gesture. ‘Don’t shout, Mummy,’ she said. ‘How can I see if you shout?’

Perdita thought this a strange thing to say. With the aid of a chain, she hoisted herself up over the edge of the jetty. Her head and shoulders were in full view now, but she was suddenly too curious about this odd girl to be afraid someone might see her, and, indeed, for a little while she was safe enough: the weekly steamer was an event on Skua and absorbed everyone’s attention.

Clinging to the chain, she watched the newcomers being greeted by Mr Tarbutt, who kept the small hotel, the only hotel on Skua. He had put on his best suit for the occasion and was beaming all over his round face, which shone rosily, like a varnished apple. Since his hotel was often empty, even in the short, summer season, this was a red letter day for him: besides the family of four, there was another visitor, a fat man with short legs who carried a long, canvas bag with knobs sticking out one end. Since Perdita had never seen golf clubs, she did not recognise them. Mr Tarbutt had a trolley for the luggage and was loading suitcases on to it. The fair-haired boy was helping him. He was very eager and excited and talked all the time, but in such a quick, English voice, that Perdita could not understand what he said. His sister, Janey, said and did nothing. She stood quite still while her mother talked to Mr Tarbutt. When her father came off the boat, carrying the last of the suitcases, he set them down by the trolley and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Here we are, then. Think you’re going to like it, darling?’

Janey shook back her long, brown hair. ‘It smells like a lovely place,’ she said, and, suddenly, Perdita understood why she had not smiled back at her before. Understanding, she pursed her lips to make a soft, warbling cry, like a sleepy bird. Janey turned. Perdita warbled again, so low that only someone listening really hard could have heard her, and this time Janey did smile back, a quick, delighted, friendly smile, before her father led her away to follow the trolley which was loaded now and being pulled by Mr Tarbutt, off the jetty and up the one stony street of Skuaphort, towards the hotel.

Perdita watched her go, too interested to remember that now the bustle of the steamer landing was over, one of the island children would be bound to notice her.

As, of course, one of them did. Alistair Campbell, who had been helping his father bring down the lobsters, nudged the boy next to him. In the space of perhaps thirty seconds, all the children on the jetty fell silent. Perdita became conscious of the fixed gaze of six pairs of eyes. Her enemies were standing in a semi-circle, watching her.

At once, she ducked down, slipping her hand over the chain and grazing the palm. She made her way over the rocks towards the road. The children ran off the jetty and round the harbour after her. They could have caught her up quite easily, since she had to go slowly over the slippery rocks, but they seemed to prefer to keep their distance. Once she was on the road and trudging uphill, out of the town, they followed her in a giggling group, stopping when she glanced back over her shoulder but moving on as soon as she turned round again, as if playing a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps. Perdita lifted her chin and faced stubbornly into the wind. She intended to ignore them. She would have ignored them, if Alistair Campbell had not thrown a stone. It was a small stone, no more than a pebble, and he threw it half-heartedly, so that it did no harm, only clattered on the ground behind Perdita’s heels, but it made her angry. She wheeled round to face them, her face set and fierce, her eyes glinting like chips of green glass. The island children stood still. For a long minute, none of them moved or spoke: they stood as if spell bound. Then one of the younger ones sniggered nervously, the sound cut off short as his big sister clapped her hand over his mouth, and Alistair Campbell, the oldest of them all, plucked up his courage and turned to run. They all gasped and followed him, stones scudding under their feet. The little boy who had sniggered slipped...