The Game

Chapter One

When Hayley arrived at the big house in Ireland, bewildered and in disgrace, rain was falling and it was nearly dark. Her cousin Mercer had called the place just “the Castle”. As far as Hayley could see, peering up at the place while Cousin Mercer was paying the taxi, the building was a confusing mixture of house and castle and barn. She could see turrets and sharply sloping roofs, tall chimneys, a wooden wall and a stone part at one side that seemed to have been patched up with new bricks. Then the taxi drove off in a spurt of mud.

Cousin Mercer – who had confused Hayley all along by turning out to be a grown up youngish man and not a cousin her own age – picked up Hayley’s small old-fashioned suitcase and hurried her into the house, where it was more than ever confusing.

They came into a large stone-floored dining room full of people milling about around the enormous dining table, or in and out of the big kitchen beyond. Most of them were children, but all older-seeming and larger than Hayley, while distracted-looking ladies, who were probably aunts, pushed this way and that among them with piles of plates and baskets of bread.

Nobody took any notice of Hayley at all. True, somebody said, “Good. She’s here. Now we can eat at last”, but nobody really looked at her. Cousin Mercer left Hayley standing beside her suitcase and threaded his way to the kitchen, shouting, “Mother! Sorry about this. The plane was late and the taxi driver lost the way!”

Hayley stood. Her arms hung slightly outwards from the rest of her and her hands dangled, useless and floppy with strangeness. She had never been in the same room with so many people in her life. She was used to the hushed and sequestered way Grandma and Grandad lived, where nobody ran about or laughed much, and nobody ever shouted. These people were so lively and so loud. She didn’t know who any of them were, apart from Cousin Mercer who had brought her here from England, and she missed her friend Flute acutely, even though it was probably Flute’s fault that she was here and in disgrace. She still didn’t understand how she had made Grandma so angry.

Hayley sighed. The other main thing about these tall, rushing, shouting children was that they all wore jeans or long baggy trousers with lots of pockets down the sides, and bright stripy tops. Hayley sadly realised that her neat floral dress and her shiny patent-leather shoes were quite wrong for this place. She wished she had jeans and trainers too, but Grandma disapproved of trousers for girls.

To add to the strangeness, there were more boys here than girls. Most of the boys were fair and skinny, like the girls – and the girls were so pretty and so confident that Hayley sighed again – but two of the boys stood out by being dark. One was a tall, calm boy who didn’t seem to shout as much as the others. He was obviously popular, because the others were always trying to get his attention. “Troy!” they shouted. “Come and look at my new trick!” or “Troy! What do you think of this?” Troy always grinned and went obligingly over to look.

The other dark boy was smaller and he struck Hayley as a perfect little beast. He spent his time slyly pulling the beautiful streaming hair of the girls, or stamping on people’s feet, or trying to steal things out of the pockets in the baggy trousers. Hayley learnt his name too, because every minute or so someone screamed, “Tollie, do that again and you’ll die!”

These people are all my cousins! Hayley thought wonderingly. And I didn’t know about any of them until this moment!

Here she found that Tollie had come to stand in front of her, jeeringly, with his hands hanging in exactly the same useless position that Hayley’s were and his feet planted the same uncertain six inches apart. “Yuk!” he said. “You dirty outcast!”

“You’re my cousin,” Hayley said. Her voice came out small and prim with nerves.

“Nim-pim!” Tollie mimicked her. “I am not so your cousin! Mercer’s my dad and he’s your cousin. But you’re only a dirty outcast in a frilly dress.”

Hayley felt things boiling in her that she would rather not know. She wanted to leap on Tollie and pull pieces off him – ears, nose, fingers, hair, she scarcely cared which, so long as they came away with lots of blood – but luckily at that moment a large lady bustled up and enfolded Hayley against her big soft bosom hung with many hard strings of beads.

“My dear!” the lady said. “Forgive me. I was making the sauce and you know how it goes all lumpy if you leave it. I’m your Aunt May. Tollie, go away and stop being a pain. You have to forgive Tollie, my dear. Most of the year he’s the only child here, but this is the week we have all the family to stay and he feels outnumbered. Now come and be introduced to everyone.”

Hayley, who had gone limp with relief against Aunt May’s many necklaces, found herself tensing up again at this. Now they were all going to despise her.

Although nobody did seem to despise her, the introductions left Hayley almost as confused as before.

The loud, fair cousins were the children of two different aunts. But, beyond gathering that some were Laxtons and belonged to Aunt Geta, and that the rest were Tighs, which made them sons and daughters of Aunt Celia, Hayley had no idea which were which – let alone what all their names were.

Aunt Geta stood out a bit by being tall and fair, with an impeccable neatness about her, like a picture painted very strictly inside the lines. Grandma would approve of Aunt Geta, Hayley thought. But Aunt Celia was a blurred sort of person. Aunt Alice, who didn’t seem to have any children, was like a film star, almost unreal she was so perfect. And the tall, calm Troy turned out to be the son of another aunt who had stayed at home in Scotland. Most confusingly of all, the slender brown lady, whose little pearl earrings echoed the curves of her long cheeks and the shine of her big dark eyes, turned out not to be an aunt at all, but Troy’s elder sister, Harmony. Since Harmony had been bustling about just like the aunts, setting the table and telling Tollie and the Tighs and Laxtons to behave themselves, Hayley supposed it was a natural mistake. But it made her feel stupid all the same.

“Supper’s ready,” Aunt May announced, tucking her flying grey hair back into its uncoiling loose bun. “You sit here, Hayley, my dear.”

Everyone dived for the great table. Chairs squawked on the stone floor and the noise was louder than ever. Harmony and Aunt Alice raced to the kitchen and came back with bowls and casseroles and dishes, while Aunt May bustled behind them with an enormous brown turkey on a huge plate. Aunt May’s hair came uncoiled completely as she put the bird down and she had to stand back from the table and pin it up again. Meanwhile Cousin Mercer came back from wherever he had disappeared to and set to work to carve the turkey.

Aunt May was the untidiest person she had ever seen, Hayley thought, sliding nervously into the chair Aunt May had said was hers. Aunt May’s clothes were flapping, fraying, overlapping layers of homespun wool, decorated in front by at least three necklaces and a lot of gravy stains. Her feet were in worn out fur slippers, and as for her hair…! Remembering that Cousin Mercer had told her Aunt May was Grandma’s eldest daughter, Hayley wondered how on earth Grandma had managed with Aunt May as a child. Grandma always said Hayley was untidy and spent hours trying to make the curly tendrils of Hayley’s hair lie flat and neat. “I despair of you, Hayley,” Grandma always said. “I really do!” With Aunt May, Grandma must have despaired even more. Still, Hayley thought, looking from neat Aunt Geta to beautiful Aunt Alice, the younger daughters must have pleased Grandma quite a lot.

But Aunt May was kind. She sat next to Hayley and, while Hayley struggled with a plate full of more food than she could possibly eat, Aunt May explained that the Castle had once belonged to Uncle Jolyon, but now it was a guesthouse, except for this one week of the year. “I give the staff a holiday,” she said, “and have all the family to stay. Even your Aunt Ellie comes over some years. And of course we have heaps of rooms. I’ve given you the little room on the half-landing, my dear. I thought you’d feel a little strange if I put you in with the other girls, not being used to it. Just tell me if you’re not happy, won’t you?”

As Aunt May chatted on in this way, Hayley looked round the table and noticed that Cousin Mercer, sitting behind the remains of the turkey, was the only grown-up man there. All the family? she thought. Shouldn’t there be some uncles? But she was afraid it might be rude to ask.

The turkey was followed by treacle pudding that Hayley was far too full to eat. While everyone else was devouring it down to the last few sticky golden crumbs, the rain got worse. Hayley could hear it battering on the windows and racing through pipes outside the walls. The Laxton cousins were very put out by it. It seemed that there was some game that they always played when they were at the Castle and they had wanted to start playing it that very evening.

“We couldn’t have played tonight anyway,” Troy said in his calm way. “It’s too dark to see, even if it wasn’t raining.”

Then the Tigh cousins wanted to know if they could play the game indoors instead. The Laxtons thought this was a splendid notion and said so at the tops of their voices. “We could use the big drawing room for it, couldn’t we?” they demanded of Harmony, who seemed to be in charge of the game.

“No way,” Harmony said. “It has to be done out of doors. We’ll do it tomorrow, when the grass in the paddock has dried.”

This raised such a shout of disappointment that Harmony said, “We can do hide-and-seek indoors, if you like.”

There were cheers. Aunt Geta murmured, “Bless you, Harmony. Keep them organised till bedtime if you can and we’ll let you off clearing the dishes.”

So while the aunts cleared away the stacks of plates, everyone except Hayley rushed away into other parts of the house. Aunt May picked up Hayley’s suitcase and showed her up a flight of stairs into a small white bedroom with a fluffy bedspread which Hayley much admired. There Aunt May drew the curtains – which flapped and billowed in the gusts of rainy wind outside – and then helped Hayley unpack the suitcase.

“Are these all the clothes you’ve got, my dear?” Aunt May asked, shaking out the other two floral dresses. “These are not very practical – or very warm.”

Hayley felt hugely ashamed. “Grandma said Aunt Ellie was going to buy me clothes in Scotland,” she said. “To go to school in.”

“Hm,” said Aunt May. “I’ll have a look and see if I can dig you out something to wear while you’re here.” She carefully spread Hayley’s pink and white pyjamas out over the white bed. “Hm,” she said again. “Hayley, if you don’t mind my asking, just what did you do to make your grandmother so angry?”

Hayley knew she would never be able to explain, when she hardly knew what had happened herself. Aunt May would surely not understand about Flute and Fiddle. Besides, Grandma had never seen either of them. She had only seen the boy with the dogs, but why that had made her so very angry Hayley had no idea. All she could manage to say was, “Grandma said I was romancing at first. Then she said I was bringing the strands here and destroying all Grandpa’s work. She said Uncle Jolyon wouldn’t forgive me for it.”

“So she dumps the problem on us,” Aunt May said in a harsh, dry voice. “How typical of my mother! As if we could stand up to Jolyon any more than she can! Didn’t your grandfather object at all?”

“Yes, but he was upset too,” Hayley said. “He said I might grow out of it, but Grandma said I wasn’t going to get the chance. She phoned for Cousin Mercer to come and fetch me. She said you’d know what to do.”

“Blowed if I do!” Aunt May replied. “I’d better ask Geta how she manages, I suppose – or Ellie would be more help. Harmony must have been the same kind of handful when she was younger. Anyway, you run off downstairs and play with the others, and don’t bother about it any more.”

Hayley would have liked to stay in the small room. It felt safe, even with its creepily billowing curtains. But she had been brought up by Grandma to do as she was told. So she went obediently downstairs and found the big drawing room in the centre of the house. There were at least five doors to this room. Hayley arrived to find cousins rushing in and out, shrieking, while Troy stood in the middle of it with his hands over his eyes, counting to a hundred, and Harmony shouting, “Don’t forget! Kitchen’s out of bounds and so is the office!”

After that everyone thundered away. Shortly Troy bellowed, “One hundred! Coming, ready or not!” and raced away too.

Hayley stood where she was, bewildered again. She had never played this kind of game with lots of people in it and she had no idea what the rules were. She stayed standing there, until Tollie rolled out from under a sofa and looked at her jeeringly.

“You’re a wimp,” he said, “even for an outcast. And a wuss. And you’re not to tell anyone you saw me.” And, before Hayley could think of anything to say in reply, Tollie climbed to his feet and hurried out of the nearest door.

Hayley went to sit on a different sofa, beside a very realistic stuffed cat, where she stayed, sadly trying to decide if the stuffed cat was a cushion or a toy, or just an ornament. Being brought up by Grandma and Grandpa simply did not prepare a person for life, she thought.

From time to time, cousins tiptoed through the room, giggling, but none of them took the slightest notice of Hayley. They all know I’m a wimp and an outcast, she thought.