The White Horse of Zennor. Michael Morpurgo

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СКАЧАТЬ of glistening pink cowrie shells. She had sworn to herself and to everyone else that the necklace would not be complete until it reached the toaster; and when Cherry vowed she would do something, she invariably did it.

      Cherry was the youngest in a family of older brothers, four of them, who had teased her relentlessly since the day she was born, eleven years before. She referred to them as ‘the four mistakes’, for it was a family joke that each son had been an attempt to produce a daughter. To their huge delight Cherry reacted passionately to any slight or insult whether intended or not. Their particular targets were her size, which was diminutive compared with theirs, and her dark flashing eyes that could wither with one scornful look, her ‘zapping’ look, they called it. Although the teasing was interminable it was rarely hurtful, nor was it intended to be, for her brothers adored her; and she knew it.

      Cherry was poring over her necklace, still in her dressing gown. Breakfast had just been cleared away and she was alone with her mother. She fingered the shells lightly, turning them gently until the entire necklace lay flat with the rounded pink of the shells all uppermost. Then she bent down and breathed on each of them in turn, polishing them carefully with a napkin.

      ‘There’s still the sea in them,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘You can still smell it, and I washed them and washed them, you know.’

      ‘You’ve only got today, Cherry,’ said her mother coming over to the table and putting an arm round her. ‘Just today, that’s all. We’re off back home tomorrow morning first thing. Why don’t you call it a day, dear? You’ve been at it every day – you must be tired of it by now. There’s no need to go on, you know. We all think it’s a fine necklace and quite long enough. It’s long enough surely?’

      Cherry shook her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Only that little bit left to do and then it’ll be finished.’

      ‘But they’ll take hours to collect, dear,’ her mother said weakly, recognising and at the same time respecting her daughter’s persistence.

      ‘Only a few hours,’ said Cherry, bending over, her brows furrowing critically as she inspected a flaw in one of her shells, ‘that’s all it’ll take. D’you know, there are five thousand, three hundred and twenty-five shells in my necklace already? I counted them, so I know.’

      ‘Isn’t that enough, Cherry?’ her mother said desperately.

      ‘No,’ said Cherry. ‘I said I’d reach the toaster, and I’m going to reach the toaster.’

      Her mother turned away to continue the drying-up.

      ‘Well, I can’t spend all day on the beach today, Cherry,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t finished by the time we come away, I’ll have to leave you there. We’ve got to pack up and tidy the house – there’ll be no time in the morning.’

      ‘I’ll be all right,’ said Cherry, cocking her head on one side to view the necklace from a different angle. ‘There’s never been a necklace like this before, not in all the world. I’m sure there hasn’t.’ And then, ‘You can leave me there, Mum, and I’ll walk back. It’s only a mile or so along the cliff path and half a mile back across the fields. I’ve done it before on my own. It’s not far.’

      There was a thundering on the stairs and a sudden rude invasion of the kitchen. Cherry was surrounded by her four brothers who leant over the table in mock appreciation of her necklace.

      ‘Ooh, pretty.’

      ‘Do they come in other colours? I mean, pink’s not my colour.’

      ‘Who’s it for? An elephant?’

      ‘It’s for a giant,’ said Cherry. ‘It’s a giant’s necklace, and it’s still not big enough.’

      It was the perfect answer, an answer she knew would send her brothers into fits of laughter. She loved to make them laugh at her and could do it at the drop of a hat. Of course she no more believed in giants than they did, but if it tickled them pink to believe she did, then why not pretend?

      She turned on them, fists flailing and chased them back up the stairs, her eyes burning with simulated fury. ‘Just ’cos you don’t believe in anything ’cept motorbikes and football and all that rubbish, just ’cos you’re great big, fat, ignorant pigs . . .’ She hurled insults up the stairs, and the worse the insult the more they loved it.

      Boat Cove just below Zennor Head was the beach they had found and occupied. Every year for as long as Cherry could remember they had rented the same granite cottage, set back in the fields below the Eagle’s Nest and every year they came to the same beach because no one else did. In two weeks not another soul had ventured down the winding track through the bracken from the coastal path. It was a long climb down and a very much longer one up. The beach itself was almost hidden from the path that ran along the cliff top a hundred feet above. It was private and perfect and theirs. The boys swam in amongst the rocks, diving and snorkelling for hours on end. Her mother and father would sit side by side on stripey deck chairs. She would read endlessly and he would close his eyes against the sun and dream for hours on end.

      Cherry moved away from them and clambered over the rocks to a narrow strip of sand in the cove beyond the rocks, and here it was that she mined for the cowrie shells. In the gritty sand under the cliff face she had found a particularly rich deposit. She was looking for pink cowrie shells of a uniform length, colour and shape – that was what took the time. Occasionally the boys would swim around the rocks and in to her little beach, emerging from the sea all goggled and flippered to mock her. But as she paid them little attention they soon tired and went away again. She knew time was running short. This was her very last chance to find enough shells to complete the giant’s necklace, and it had to be done.

      The sea was calmer that day than she had ever seen it. The heat beat down from a windless, cloudless sky; even the gulls and kittiwakes seemed to be silenced by the sun. Cherry searched on, stopping only for a picnic lunch of pasties and tomatoes with the family before returning at once to her shells.

      In the end the heat proved too much for her mother and father, who left the beach earlier than usual in mid-afternoon to begin to tidy up the cottage. The boys soon followed because they had tired of finding miniature crabs and seaweed instead of the sunken wrecks and treasure they had been seeking. So, by tea-time Cherry was left on her own on the beach with strict instructions to keep her hat on, not to bathe alone and to be back well before dark. She had calculated she needed one hundred and fifty more cowrie shells and so far she had only found eighty. She would be back, she insisted, when she had finished collecting enough shells and not before.

      Had she not been so immersed in her search, sifting the shells through her fingers, she would have noticed the dark grey bank of cloud rolling in from the Atlantic. She would have noticed the white horses gathering out at sea and the tide moving remorselessly in to cover the rocks between her and Boat Cove. When the clouds cut off the warmth from the sun as evening came on and the sea turned grey, she shivered with cold and put on her sweater and jeans. She did look up then and saw the angry sea, but she saw no threat in that and did not look back over her shoulder to Boat Cove. She was aware that time was running out so she went down on her knees again and dug feverishly in the sand. She had to collect thirty more shells.

      It was the baleful sound of the foghorn somewhere out at sea beyond Gunnards Head that at last forced Cherry to take some account of the incoming tide. She looked for the rocks she would have to clamber over to reach Boat Cove again and the winding track that would take her up to the cliff path and safety, but they were gone. Where they should have been, the sea was already driving in against the cliff face. СКАЧАТЬ