The Empty Frame. Ann Pilling

it have a potence?” asked Magnus. He had chosen the bed by the fireplace and was pulling his screen into position, before putting his pyjamas on.

      “A what?” Sam shouted, over the top of it.

      “A potence. It’s a ladder,” Magnus explained, rather pityingly, emerging a few minutes later in his night clothes. “It revolves, so that you can go round inside and collect the eggs.”

      “My goodness,” said Cousin M, admiringly, “how on earth do you come to know a thing like that? I didn’t. Someone had to tell me.”

      Magnus shrugged and went back behind his screen. “Oh, I just knew,” he muttered.

      “His father was very, very clever,” Floss whispered, “and he educated Magnus himself. He knows the most amazing things.”

      Magnus came out again wearing slippers and pushed his screen back against the wall. “There is a – a potence, Magnus,” said Cousin M. “I’ll show it to you in the morning. Or perhaps you can show it to me. It doesn’t work properly. You could try mending it. I think I’ll leave these windows open a bit, it really is very stuffy. You don’t expect it, somehow, coming up from that chilly old hall.”

      “Is the hall always chilly?” asked Magnus. “It shouldn’t be, the ceiling’s quite low.” He was staring hard at Cousin M; he wanted information.

      But she treated this as a casual enquiry. “Well, I often find it a bit chilly, dear. Why?”

      “I just wondered.”

      “Anyhow, you’ll be toasty warm up here,” she went on. “Too hot, if anything. Now, I’m sorry about the bars, I know it makes it look a bit prison-like, but it’s quite a long drop to the ground. I think this was a nursery in the old days and they usually barred the windows.”

      “Actually, these bars are quite new,” Magnus said, examining them. “Look, they’ve got modern screws.”

      Cousin M now looked exasperated, even a little cross. She took refuge in drifting about the dormitory, straightening the bedcovers and puffing up the pillows. “You can dump any extra things on this spare bed,” she called over from a corner. Then, “Well, now, what is this?”

      The three of them gathered round her and looked on the fourth bed. There, neatly curled in the middle, with soft grey billows of duvet puffed up round him, was a little ginger cat. He seemed all tail and he had made a perfect circle. When he heard Cousin M, he lifted his head, blinked, yawned, mewed a little mew then buried his nose in his tail again.

      “Should I take him away?” Cousin M said, stroking his ears very gently. “He’s had a big day. Caught his first mouse, by the river. That’s how he got lost. He’s exhausted.”

      “Let him stay,” Floss begged, delighted that the bed he’d chosen was next to hers.

      “All right. But I’ll leave the door open, and if he’s a nuisance just chuck him out. He’ll find his way down to the kitchen, only he just loves people. And now he’s got three new ones to talk to.”

      “What’s his name, Cousin M?” Floss could already feel herself falling in love. The cat was mildly purring in its sleep.

      “Arthur.”

      “But that’s… your boyfriend.”

      “Exactly.”

      Cousin M grinned. “Sleep tight, and God bless you all. No rush tomorrow. Get up when you like.”

      “Isn’t she great?” Floss whispered to the others as they lay in the dark. Arthur had already crossed over from his bed to hers, squeezed under her modesty screen and was burrowing under the duvet, settling into the special warm place in the crook of her knees. “She’s put lovely flowers in the fireplace, and everything.”

      “Yes.” It sounded as if Sam was nodding off. He could smell the light, frail scent of the flowers as he lay there peacefully, and the smell of the river across the grass, and a very faint smoky smell that must be coming from the chimney flue. “You OK, Mags?” he whispered, but there was no answer. Seconds later they both heard him snoring gently.

      

      Somebody was crying, a sound with which Magnus was all too familiar. His mother had cried all the time after his father had walked out, and children had always cried in the Homes where he had been temporarily dumped when they first discovered how ill his mother was. Now, when babies cried in supermarkets and their mothers took no notice, he couldn’t stand it; he had to run away. This terror of crying seemed to be connected to an invisible main cable that went right down through the middle of him. If it were activated he felt he might die. Magnus did not understand this part of himself; all he knew was that any kind of crying was painful for him. He only ever cried in secret.

      The crying was that of a woman. She had a low voice, quite deep, and she was sobbing. There were no words. He sat up in bed and his hands met warm fur. Arthur was doing his rounds, first Floss, then Sam, now him.

      Magnus could just see the shape of his little head. His ears were pricked up and his fat little tail was erect and quivering. His fur was a stiff bush and he was making a curious sound, not a mew and certainly not a purr, but a kind of throaty growl, the sound of a beast that is suspicious and uncertain, possibly afraid. The low sobbing went on, though fainter now and already fading away. But the cat did not stay with Magnus. It shot off the duvet, plunged through the open door and vanished into the darkness.

      It was cold in the turret room now, cold and chilly like the Great Hall, and Magnus’s duvet felt clammy and damp. It had been hot when they’d switched their lamps off and they’d all flung their bedding aside, to get cool. The cold he now felt was like mist, in fact he could see a sort of mist in the room, lit up by some faint light. The source of this light was a mystery to him because all was dark outside; perhaps the mist had its own light. He watched it. It was like a fine piece of gauze, or a wisp of cloud, wreathing round upon itself, unfolding and refolding until, like a square of silk in the hands of a magician, it vanished into thin air leaving a coldness that was even more intense than before.

      He listened again for the crying noise. It was so faint now it was no more than a sad little whisper; it had almost become part of the dissolving misty cloud. But the woman had not gone away altogether. He could still hear her, though only very faintly, and she was still in distress. Magnus decided that he must try to find her. He had to stop that crying.

      But first he felt under his pillow where he always kept two things: a green army torch and a heavy black clasp knife. These things were secret treasures and absolutely nobody knew about them but him and Father Godless, who had given them to him long ago, or so it felt to Magnus.

      It was awful that “Uncle Robert”, which was what Magnus had called the kind old priest, should have had the surname “Godless” – though the old man had laughed about it. Magnus would have changed it, like people sometimes do when their name is Shufflebottom, or Smellie. He’d got to know the old man while staying with his first foster family, after they had taken him away from his mother. He was one of the priests in the church they went to. He lived in an old people’s home, now, near London, but he sometimes wrote to Magnus, and occasionally sent him presents.

      He’d given him the torch because he knew Magnus got scared in the dark and he’d given him a little Bible, too, with tiny print and a red silk marker. He’d called it “the sword of the spirit which is the word of God”. But he was a very practical old man so he’d also given him the knife. This knife, like the torch and the Bible, had accompanied him on dangerous missions in the war when he’d been a soldier.

      Magnus got up and felt for his dressing gown. It lay ready on his bed because he sometimes got up in the night, to go to the lavatory and, in this turret block, the main bathroom was four floors down. He liked his dressing gown. Floss’s mum and dad had given it to him. He liked its bold red and blue stripes and he liked its deep pockets. Into one of these he now slid his clasp knife and into the other the little red Bible, because he was scared.