The Theft & the Miracle Read online

  Hannah had no idea how long it took her to complete the sketch. It could have been twenty seconds or twenty minutes, but at last her pencil stopped moving and she sat back, exhausted. Sweat broke out on her forehead and she felt sick and faint. She unwound her scarf and threw it down. Then she closed her eyes.

  “Feeling all right?”

  She looked up to see the chaplain standing anxiously over her.

  “Yes—yes, I think so. I suddenly felt faint.”

  “Put your head down then—that’s right. Better now? Good! Strange place to faint—it certainly can’t be the heat. Seems even colder in here than usual! May I see your drawing?”

  Hannah took her hands off the page and looked down at the finished sketch. She stared in disbelief. It was quite perfect. Every detail of form and expression was represented, down to the last fingernail.

  “That’s remarkable!” The chaplain’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. “I was watching you. You came in here only ten minutes ago and as soon as you sat down, you were scribbling away like someone possessed! You did that in less time than it takes to write a shopping list. You’re quite an artist, young lady!”

  Hannah said nothing. She was still staring at her drawing.

  “Well, well, artist or not, you’d better be getting home and out of those damp clothes before you catch pneumonia. I think you’ll find the rain has stopped now.”

  Hannah put the sketch carefully in her bag and got unsteadily to her feet. She still felt weak with shock. With shock and with something else. She had an odd sense of being somehow dislocated. As though she were standing looking at herself from a great distance. A distance that seemed to have another dimension than just space. Briefly she felt that time, usually so well behaved and predictable, which marched obediently to the demands of clocks and calendars and history books, suddenly had become shifting and shapeless, like a thick mist appearing from nowhere, treacherously concealing a friendly and familiar landscape.

  She picked up her bag and carefully made her way to the main door of the cathedral, where the man with the umbrella was standing and looking speculatively up at the sky.

  When she got outside she felt slightly better. The fresh air cleared her head and she found that the chaplain had been right—it was no longer raining, but the clouds still hung low and heavy over the darkening city and the wind, which half an hour earlier had been so violent, had dropped entirely. Even the rush-hour traffic seemed muted and distant.

  She didn’t have to wait long for a bus, and the journey passed in a confusion of vague, disturbing thoughts. When she got off, she walked the short way home, glancing every now and again over her shoulder to reassure herself she was alone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DRAWING

  “HANNAH, WHERE ON EARTH have you been? Dinner was ready half an hour ago! We were worried about you! And where’s your coat?”

  “Sorry. When I got out of school, it was about to rain and Katie had lost her coat so I lent her mine and then I went and sat in the cathedral till it stopped.”

  As usual, her mother went straight for the weak spot in her reasoning.

  “If it was raining, why did Katie need your coat any more than you?”

  “Her bus pass was in her pocket, so she had to walk and she lives in Linton Green.”

  “But why the cathedral? It’s the last place I’d have chosen! Why didn’t you go into a café or somewhere warm? That’s such a damp old place. You’ll be lucky if you haven’t caught a cold! Anyhow, come and eat now.”

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Stir-fried vegetables with brown rice.”

  “Sounds healthy. Anything for dessert?” she asked hopefully.

  “Fresh fruit salad. And you can have low-fat yogurt on it if you like,” her mother added generously.

  Hannah sighed. “Thanks.”

  When she had finished eating, she went into the sitting room to talk to her father.

  “Hello, sweetheart, what have you been up to?” He was tapping away at the computer and didn’t turn around.

  “Oh, the usual. You know. English, French, chemistry.”

  “Good, good.”

  “P.E. was awful.”

  “Mm.”

  “Art was okay.”

  “Of course. Good!”

  “And then this afternoon we helped a blind man with three hands find his gloves when the power went out.”

  “Good…good…Good God! What?” He stopped tapping and turned around in alarm.

  “He wasn’t a real man. Just someone thought up by Miss Murdoch.”

  “Who is Miss Murdoch?”

  “She teaches math. You’ve met her before on parents’ night.”

  “Have I? Can’t remember, I’m afraid.” He smiled and shook his head, then seemed about to go back to the computer.

  Hannah began to feel slightly desperate. She needed his attention.

  “Dad,” she said, “what do you know about the Virgin and Child? I mean the ones in the cathedral.”

  William Price wasn’t an insensitive man—he just found it hard to concentrate on the things which didn’t particularly interest him. There were two things about this question that interested him. The first was that it was about history, which was the subject he taught at the university; the second was that he noticed an edge to his daughter’s voice which struck him as unusual.

  He pressed Save and turned all the way around in his chair to look at Hannah thoughtfully.

  “Only what everybody knows. World famous, mid-fourteenth century, carved from local oak, once supposed to have had miraculous powers, mysteriously survived the wholesale destruction of religious images during the dissolution of the monasteries. Generally considered to be one of the finest examples of medieval wood carving in Europe. But you knew all that already, surely?”

  “Yes…I suppose so. I never thought about it much, though. Do you know any more?”

  Her father nibbled his thumb for a moment before replying.

  “As a matter of fact there is something that always struck me as curious. Historically speaking, that is. The cathedral records seem to show that the statues made their first appearance sometime around the end of thirteen forty-eight. Now if that’s true, the Black Death was just beginning to take a hold on this part of the country by that date. The odd thing is that from thirteen forty-nine onward, there were very few cases of the disease recorded in the city itself and those that did get it apparently brought the contagion from elsewhere, yet often survived when they came here.”

  Hannah frowned in an effort to take in all this information.

  “So…what are you saying, Dad? That the statues somehow protected the people of the city from the plague?”

  “I’m not saying anything. Historians are supposed to weigh evidence, not jump to exciting conclusions. But it’s always struck me as an interesting coincidence, and there’s no doubt that people flocked to the cathedral for several centuries afterward because they believed the Virgin and Child had power to cure their ills.”

  He stopped being a history teacher suddenly and became a dad again.

  “You still haven’t told me why you want to hear all this.”

  “Oh well, I’m probably imagining things, but it’s just that today it was raining at the end of school and I went into the cathedral to wait until it stopped and, well, something weird happened, Dad. Something really weird.”

  “Tell me.”

  Hannah explained as best she could about the sketch. When she had finished, her father said nothing for a moment or two. Then:

  “May I see your drawing?”

  She fetched her book bag from the hall, took out the sketch, and handed it to him in silence.

  He looked at it carefully, then got up and took down a large, illustrated volume from the bookcase. After a few seconds he found the page he was looking for and laid Hannah’s drawing next to it while his glance moved from one to the other. At last he closed the book and handed back the
sketch.

  “It’s very good,” he said in an odd voice. “Very good indeed. In fact, it’s—” He stopped himself, but Hannah finished the sentence for him.

  “Too good? It’s okay, Dad, you can say it. You’re right, it is. But I know I did it, because one of those chaplain people watched me and he was curious because he said it hardly seemed to take me any time at all.” She tried to say the words calmly but couldn’t quite stop them from shaking.

  Her father heard the fear in her voice. “What do you think happened?” he asked gently.

  “I’ve really no idea. I just wanted to keep out of the rain!”

  He smiled. “Well, there’s probably no point in trying to explain it now. We may just have to accept that we have a genius in the family! In any case, you’ve always been very good at drawing—it’s not as if this were a complete fluke.”

  “Hm.” Hannah glanced at her watch. “I should do some homework.” She stood up, took the sketch, and walked slowly out of the room.

  Her father watched her go, but he didn’t return to the computer. Instead he reopened the book with the photograph of the statues and sat gazing at the page in thoughtful silence until his wife came in twenty minutes later and switched on the TV for the news.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MRS. ABBOTT

  SATURDAY MORNING’S SKY had the clear, blue-eyed innocence of a child who has quite forgotten yesterday’s tantrums. The red and yellow leaves of the beech tree outside Hannah’s bedroom window sparkled in the autumn sunlight, and her mood matched the weather. Something good was happening today. What was it? Of course! She was going to see a movie with Sam.

  She had a leisurely shower, weighed herself (the scale was equally depressing no matter which foot she stood on), put on jeans and a sweatshirt, and went downstairs.

  Her parents were sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee between them and the weekend papers.

  Hannah poured cereal into a bowl, added milk from a carton on the table, and sat down.

  “Doctors are predicting a bad flu epidemic this winter,” remarked her father from behind the newspaper. “It says those most at risk will be the very old and the very young.”

  Hannah swallowed a mouthful of cereal and suddenly clapped a hand to the side of her head. “Oh no! That reminds me! I promised I’d go and visit old Mrs. Abbott this morning.”

  “But you went to see her last Saturday,” protested her mother. “Isn’t it someone else’s turn this week?”

  Hannah nodded. “Susie was supposed to go, but she’s got her cousin staying for the weekend, so I said I’d go instead.”

  Her father raised an eyebrow. “Do your friends avoid Mrs. Abbott, or has she just taken a particular shine to you?”

  Hannah shook her head. “She likes Susie best, but she complains about all of us. Trouble is, she’s got agra, agra—”

  “Agoraphobia?”

  “That’s it. Means she’s scared to go out. So since Mr. Abbott died, someone has to do her shopping for her and go to the post office and run errands and things.”

  “And that someone’s generally you?” said Dad with a smile.

  “Oh, someone’s got to go and visit the old bat, I suppose, even if she does treat you like something that’s gone bad at the back of the refrigerator.”

  “Well if you’re going, you’d better hurry,” said Mom, “or you won’t be back in time to have any lunch before you go out again.”

  She finished her breakfast, seized a couple of shopping bags, and ran out of the house.

  Mrs. Abbott lived about three quarters of a mile away and Hannah walked fast, hoping the old lady wouldn’t have an endless list of things to do that would make her late for the movie.

  Number 43 Heliotrope Gardens shared an outside wall with its semidetached neighbor, number 45, but the two houses seemed equally eager to insist they shared nothing else.

  Mrs. Abbott’s side had been painted a dark green about thirty years earlier and never repainted since, while next door changed color so frequently that even the postman got confused and had to check the number on the gate before delivering. Where number 43 had plain net curtains with dingy, dark-red mock velvet at each side of the sagging bow window, number 45 had an elaborate canary-yellow blind, pleated and scalloped, with a lacy white lining. It looked as if someone had hung up an enormous piece of frilly underwear.

  Walking up Mrs. Abbott’s path, Hannah noticed that the two or three hopeless-looking pansies in her window box had been flattened by yesterday’s storm. As she rang the bell she glanced next door and saw a red-and-green garden gnome leering at her from behind a plastic birdbath. She leered back at it.

  “I thought the other girl was coming today.” Mrs. Abbott opened the door so suddenly that Hannah almost fell into the house.

  “I’m sorry, but she couldn’t after all.” She wondered why Mrs. Abbott always managed to make her feel guilty before she’d even set foot inside.

  “Now, since you’re so late, you won’t be able to bring back the potatoes in time for me to boil them for my lunch.”

  “It’s only eleven o’clock, Mrs. Abbott.”

  “I daresay some folk eat their lunch anytime, but I like mine on the table by twelve sharp!”

  That was the thing about old people, reflected Hannah. They seemed to need routine to feel safe. Mrs. Abbott never went out, never entertained, never needed to please anyone except herself, but she lived her life according to a strict timetable that would have made air traffic control look slack.

  “Now you’re here you can change that light-bulb for me.” She pointed to the small but hideous chandelier that hung from the middle of the hall ceiling.

  Hannah went and fetched one of the kitchen chairs and placed it under the light. She climbed up and unhooked the little chains that held the glass pendants so she could take out the old bulb. The old lady handed her a new one.

  “But this is only forty watts,” said Hannah in surprise. “Don’t you need something a bit brighter for the hall?”

  “Brighter just means more expensive. You don’t catch me wasting money on the electric bill!”

  After replacing the bulb with difficulty because the socket was old and rusty, Hannah hooked the chains again, climbed down, put the chair back, and picked up the shopping list from the kitchen table.

  “Just a small cauliflower. I don’t want to be eating it till Christmas! And when you’re choosing the apples, don’t get Granny Smiths this time. My teeth can’t handle them.”

  She fetched an ancient wallet from the mantelpiece and rather reluctantly handed it over. “And don’t forget to count the change!”

  Hannah set off wearily. She hated shopping for Mrs. Abbott, especially at the small grocery store, because the old lady usually wanted only two or three of anything and it all had to be weighed separately. The owner got irritable and the other customers impatient.

  At last it was all done. She quickly ran through the list. Small cauliflower, two carrots, four potatoes, an onion, three apples, one can of tuna fish, small tub of margarine, small box of tea bags, small loaf of white bread, and a pint of milk.

  When she got back, she unpacked the shopping, put it away, gave Mrs. Abbott back her wallet and asked if there was anything else that she needed, hoping the answer would be no.

  “That’ll do,” said the old lady. “And thanks. It was kind of you to come.” This was said in exactly the same tone of voice that she usually said everything else in and at first Hannah thought she must have misheard. Mrs. Abbott never said thank you to anyone as far as she knew. Suddenly she was filled with pity for the lonely old woman, who could neither go out nor bring herself to welcome outside help.

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Abbott,” she said. “I’ll see you again next week.”

  Then she left before she could regret her promise.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AT HOME WITH THE FALLONS

  WHEN SHE GOT TO THE ODEON, Sam and Jessica were already waiting for her.
r />   “Thought you’d forgotten,” he said.

  “Sorry, I had to do community service work this morning and I was late getting back. Hi, Jessica. How come you never get involved with that kind of thing anyway, Sam Fallon?”

  “I’ve got my own scheme. It’s called prison visiting, and I like to keep it in the family!” He grinned, but Hannah felt a pang of guilt. She’d forgotten for a moment about Sam’s dad.

  The movie was fast-moving, noisy, and full of special effects, but for once she couldn’t concentrate. She felt restless and uneasy for some reason, and kept glancing behind her in the flickering half darkness of the cinema.

  “That bit about Vulcatron was great, wasn’t it?” said Jessica as they emerged, blinking, into the sunlight.

  “Which one was he?”

  Sam stared at her in disbelief. “Vulcatron was the planet they were attacking, you dope! What movie were you watching?”

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “Must have missed that part.”

  “I’d better get home now,” said Jessica. “Thanks for asking me along. I’ll see you on Monday.”

  She walked toward the bus stop and Sam and Hannah set off in the opposite direction.

  The Fallons lived on the first floor of a block of apartments near the station. It was the unfashionable, run-down end of the city, and the block itself was shabby and in need of renovation, but the Fallons’ apartment was a little oasis in a desert of dereliction. The windows sparkled, and the front door was proud with fresh paint. Sam’s mother was waiting for them.

  Eve Fallon was small and slim with short, shiny black hair. Today she was wearing a short black skirt and a bright yellow blouse. She looked like a cheerful little blackbird.

  “Hello, Hannah, my love!” Eve beamed at her. “Long time no see! I keep asking Sam when he’s going to bring you over, but he always says you’re too busy with your homework and your drawing. Really wonderful you are with that pencil of yours, he says! Now you take a seat, dear, and I’ll bring the food soon. And what do you two think you’re staring at? Mind your manners!” This was said to Jack and Jessie, six-year-old twins, who were watching Hannah from behind the sofa, wide-eyed, thumbs in their mouths.