With your appetite doubtless stoked by our first story, we can now proceed to something possessing a touch more bite. It is, after all, hard to deny that while tragic, the death of an old man with a long prior history of ill health is hardly the most inexplicable event, regardless of the case’s weirder elements. Let us wind back our focus then from one on the cusp of his twilight years to those whose lives are just beginning, namely Ada (six), Winnie (four), and Baby William Marsters (seven months), as well as their babysitter Lily Silver, a gifted schoolmistress-in-training who in her nineteenth summer had the dubious luck of being briefly entangled with my cousin Marvin, himself still a wayward bachelor then.
Marvin was sharing a flat in Wimbledon with his older brother Felix, while I rented in nearby Earlsfield with my soon-to-be-wife Edna, and as such we all saw a lot of each other, particularly that summer when the weather was very fine. Though I never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Silver, we heard plenty from Marvin of her many virtues, chief among which was an uncommon skill with children. Throughout the borough she was well reputed as a babysitter and had been employed by the Marsters family in this vein for some time prior to beginning her studies. Now back for the summer, she had been more than happy to take up the mantle once more.
My memory of this story starts like most of them from those days, with Edna, Felix, and I sitting in The White Horse of a Saturday afternoon with our stomachs rumbling, wondering when Marvin was going to arrive and enable us to order. That day, when he finally did, no number of apologies could mask the twinkle in his eye nor the excitement in his manner. He had just been with Lily, we soon found out, who was terribly shaken up about some incredible occurrences in her custody of the Marsters children which had rendered her quite stricken. Naturally Marvin had not been sitting down for more than a minute before he began to give us the whole story, and he did not stop talking until the bill was paid and we were down to our last cigarette.
That summer, Lily was staying with her parents in their family home on Pope’s Lane, north of Gunnersbury Park, the preferred playing grounds of the Marsters children. With its western gate situated just over the road from the Marsters’ house on Lionel Street, a picnic in Gunnersbury always made a reliable choice for the day’s activities. The children’s favourite area was under the silver birch tree next to the hopscotch court. Winnie was a dab hand at the game, while Ada (much too old for such things) loved nothing more than playing Tarzan in the lower branches of the tree, which had stood for over a hundred years and was perfect for climbing.
Baby William, for his part, was fascinated by the undergrowth beneath the tree and could be occupied for hours being tutored by Lily in the miniature world of bugs, plants, and leaves. It being an especially warm summer, there were many leaves around and Lily got into the habit of ritually giving him one to keep, the boy clutching it by the stem in his fat hand like a trophy the whole ride home.
The hopscotch court meanwhile was a limestone embed set in the path, each stone engraved with a line from the nursery rhyme to which Winnie would always sing along.
“One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told!”
On any given day Lily must have heard those words repeated countless times over, even singing them herself whenever Winnie demanded she join in with the game, but she had never dwelt on their actual meaning until one particular afternoon. While Baby William fanned himself at her feet with a superlatively large leaf, somewhere above Lily’s head Ada was crying that she had now climbed high enough to see the English Channel, and that her babysitter simply had to look up this instant. As Lily cast an obliging glance between the branches, a quick flash of iridescent turquoise stole her attention, and she noticed for the first time that a magpie had made its nest in the topmost section of the tree.
At once the old superstition returned to Lily’s mind, and recognising the coincident meaning of the nursery rhyme’s lyric caused her to laugh quite involuntarily. Of course the children were eager to know the reason for her laughter, but upon hearing the explanation, Winnie’s face fell. She stared down at the hopscotch court to double check the numbers and looked up again furious.
“What’s the matter, dear?” said Lily.
“Did you see two magpies or one magpies?” Winnie asked forebodingly.
Understanding now, Lily looked again into the tree, making sure to feign recognition. “Silly Lily! Definitely two. A mummy magpie and a daddy magpie.” She smiled at the girl. “Two for joy. That means good luck.”
At this Winnie beamed and resumed hopping and singing with newfound purpose, while Baby William seized a good handful of leaves and threw them all over his head.
Soon after, on one of Lily’s rare days off, driving down Lionel Street she was surprised to observe two police cars and an ambulance partly blocking the park’s western gateway. A small crowd had gathered in the street where a wealthy-looking couple were on their knees as if wrestling one another to the ground, the woman wailing most frightfully, and the man’s face wracked with pale horror. As one does, Lily took one curious look before driving on, and had no cause to think anything further of the strange incident until the following day.
It was a beautiful August morning, and while Ada and Baby William were in fine spirits, Winnie seemed uncharacteristically glum. Lily was able to persuade her to leave the house at all only by letting her choose whatever she wanted from the dressing-up box; Winnie selected a shiny toy jewellery set and agreed to the day’s plans on the sole condition that she be referred to throughout as Princess Goodluck.
The park seemed somewhat less busy than usual, and when they got to the birch tree, Lily noticed at once that a fresh spray of flowers had been left beside the base of the trunk. Of course this in itself was nothing too surprising, for it was a very large park where one could often find misplaced items. They proceeded with the picnic as usual, Lily setting Baby William down on the blanket to paw at the undergrowth while the girls went about their usual business. Ada took at once to the tree, and though Princess Goodluck found that she had to remove most of her jewellery to stop it falling off during hopscotch, she was quick to assert that this did not negate the terms of her agreeing to be there.
Within five minutes Lily became suddenly aware of a white-haired woman staggering towards them from the bordering playground. She was waving her arms over her head, with her face contorted in dismay. It seemed like she wanted to cry out but was repeatedly stopping herself, clenching and unclenching her jaw in a grotesque loop. With another moment, Lily might have shot to her feet to confront the charging stranger, yet as the woman neared it became clear that her countenance was not one of rage but deathly fear.
“Come down, darling,” Lily told Ada. “Don’t argue. You too, Princess. Come over to the blanket for a moment, there’s a good girl.”
When the old woman had reached them she made a haggard attempt to smile, and began whispering through laboured breath her thanks to the Lord for saving the little ones. With Lily’s attention she drew closer and asked in hushed tones whether she had not heard the terrible news from yesterday. When Lily said she hadn’t, the woman beckoned her to come yet further from the earshot of the children, and after hesitating, Lily agreed.
Here the old woman laid a withered hand on Lily’s shoulder as she leaned in to whisper in her ear. “A little one died here yesterday. Fell out of that same tree and snapped her neck. Barely seven she was. I watched it happen. Whyever she should have been climbing so high… Seeing your little one just now, I – Lord – I didn’t know what to do!”
Under the birch tree, Winnie started shrieking. A magpie had stolen her bracelet.
It took all of Lily’s pedagogical skills (not to mention courage) to suppress her own reaction long enough to devise an appropriate excuse to give the children, not only for why the birch tree was now off limits, but why the old woman had come. In the end, neither Ada nor Winnie seemed fully satisfied, and with the awful news stewing at the back of Lily’s mind, the day ended on a sour note. When Mrs Marsters inquired as to the atmosphere, Lily could not find the words to tell the truth.
On her way out, Lily was fetching her personal effects from the base of Baby William’s pram when something sparkled in the corner of her vision. Sometimes the boy would inadvertently manage to stash his woodland findings partly within the lining of his seat, for his babysitter to clean up at the end of the day. But this time Lily saw no leaves or twigs. Instead there was a small chain-link necklace of what looked to be authentic sterling silver. A hidden prize among the undergrowth, scooped up presumably by accident, and sure to be sorely missed, it was another of the day’s unwelcome surprises. Exhausted, Lily stowed it under the pram with the rest of the toys and resolved to deal with it tomorrow.
The next day, Lily arrived at the Marsters house to unfamiliar chaos. Ada and Winnie were inconsolable, Baby William would not stop screaming, and Mr and Mrs Marsters had barely slept. She received the story only in broken bits and pieces, but it seemed to go like this: the two girls shared the upstairs front bedroom, where the large main window faced out onto Lionel Street and the western side of the park across the road. It was a terrible night’s sleep for Baby William, whose behaviour had reverted almost to that of a newborn. Typically when thus worked up he could be soothed by a night-time walk in his pram, yet when his father had tried, it only upset the boy more. The mere sight of the pram now seemed to drive him apoplectic.
By now Ada and Winnie had grown more or less accustomed to a baby in the house, but this was more than anyone could sleep through. What’s more, Winnie seemed to have fallen ill. Ada claimed that all through the night she had risen from bed in some kind of somnambulary fit, walked to the bedroom window, drawn the curtains, and stood staring at the moon for minutes on end, only seeming to snap out of it when Ada had physically pulled her away.
As usual on a summer’s night, the parents had left the window ajar, and neither child was tall enough to reach the latch herself. Yet the final time Ada woke up, Winnie was standing on a chair right before the wide open window, laughing and giggling just as she did while playing hopscotch. Ada had screamed, the mother had run in, and Winnie had been pulled back from the brink with one bare foot hovering over the road below.
The Marsters told Lily that they wouldn’t be needing her services today, and she showed herself out with a sickening feeling in her stomach. Yet just before she reached the front door something stopped her. For reasons she could not articulate she felt compelled to check underneath the pram for the silver necklace, finding it right where she had left it. She mulled it over for a moment, put it in her pocket, and continued out in a hurry.
At a loss, Lily returned home to quiet her mind and do her best to shed the queasiness which had overrun her day. Ever since the incident at the park she had hardly felt herself, and this confounding development with the poor Marsters children had only quickened her malaise. Bidding her parents an early goodnight, she headed upstairs to her old childhood bedroom where she lay down on the bed, rested her eyes, and allowed herself to drift into a dreamless sleep.
Hours passed. Outside, the summer sun was straddling the horizon, turning the sky a fiery pink. From the bedroom window one could just about make out the northern border of Gunnersbury Park, its treetops silhouetted in the glow of sunset. When Lily came to, she was sluggish to leave her bed, wary of the strange light from outside. Though she was hardly aware, her right fist was closed tight around the silver necklace in her pocket. As she rose to walk towards the window, she yawned, and rubbed her eyes, and looked out into the evening sky.
What she saw froze her to the spot.
Fifteen feet over the street below, a girl was playing hopscotch in mid-air. She was giggling and beckoning, and though her movements were wordless, silent, Lily felt sure she knew what she wanted. The girl jumped, and hopped, and paused, and hopped again. She was laughing at Lily, pointing at her, and edging ever closer, closer, closer.
The rest can only be surmised, for as I understand it this was as far as poor Lily ever made it in retelling the course of events before abruptly fleeing as if struck with horrific revelation. Marvin being Marvin (and if anything, more incorrigible in those days) he no doubt tried his level best to get it out of her later, a fact I’m sure played a rather decisive role in concluding whatever was between them. But he must have found out something, for some time after our initial discussion, he mentioned having visited the silver birch tree armed with a shovel, acting on suspicions that Lily had returned to bury the necklace there. He dug and dug until darkness set in, for if she had, she had buried it deep, far from threat of further theft by magpie or juvenile alike.