Page 4 of The Midnight Carousel

At first, Maisie pretends she can’t hear the whimpering.

She is crouched, her fingers loosening the sand, digging in a circle.

With a squelch, she releases a cockle from its home and moves on to its neighbour.

Last night’s gusts stripped a layer from the beach, and a month’s supply lies like a field of crops inches beneath the surface.

Easy pickings. Though not so easy that seawater doesn’t sting Maisie’s skin, made raw by the Essex climate.

Perhaps one day she will become as polished as the smooth stones scattered along the shoreline, rubbed new by the tides.

The distant whimpering of what sounds like an animal rises to a scream as Tommy returns from his toilet break further up the beach.

It would be easier if he could wade into the waves to relieve himself, but Maisie won’t let him dirty the sea.

He scratches a sore on his leg, his shins like twigs about to snap.

‘There’s something hurt– I saw it,’ he lisps.

She tosses a handful of cockles into a bucket of seawater and straightens up, patting her knees clean.

‘Show me where,’ she replies, sounding braver than she feels.

Maisie follows Tommy up the escarpment, using spiky marram grass as steps to the top, and along the ledge to the dunes.

They weave along their usual path, dodging driftwood as large as a man’s torso, and arrive at a thicket of sycamores.

It’s as she feared: a writhing squirrel is caught fast in the fangs of a poacher’s trap, with no chance of survival.

‘What do we do?’ Tommy asks.

‘Dunno,’ says Maisie, shrugging.

They both know exactly what next steps to take, but neither likes to say.

Tommy shuffles while Maisie stares at her bare feet, the dirt beneath her toenails like the speckled patterns of a snail’s shell.

Their awkwardness is interrupted by a piercing shriek, and she can bear it no longer.

Gritting her teeth, Maisie picks up a small rock and ends the creature’s misery.

Both children turn to the sea, their arms upstretched.

‘Dear Lord of the Water, please care for this soul,’ Maisie murmurs.

‘Amen,’ Tommy agrees.

There’s one thing left to do before the squirrel is at rest. With the rock as a headstone, they arrange a collection of leaves over the body.

Life on this spit of an island is precarious, and the two children often come across dead crabs washed up after a storm, rabbits lured by the poachers’ traps and, once, the half-skeleton of a young deer with its neck snapped in two.

They have had so many near-misses of their own that Maisie has always feared it could be her or Tommy next.

Tumbling from branches, being caught out by rising tides and slipping on wet rocks are all commonplace.

Then one day she strayed into a graveyard.

They have never been to church, not officially, but she and Tommy were blackberry picking on the other side of the island four autumns ago.

Hungry for the plumpest fruit, they were balancing on the wings of a stone angel set upon a tomb when a priest surprised them.

‘Dear Lord, our Saviour,’ he’d exclaimed, taking several paces back.

‘Have mercy on these heathen souls.’ He made a sign across his chest with the fingers of one hand while clutching a line of beads that looked like pebbles from the beach.

Here was a man of God showing Maisie a path to safety.

She had been fascinated. And so now Maisie and Tommy had their own customs to protect them.

Blessing the dead animals they find. Taking fifteen steps sideways after getting injured.

Drawing circles in the air before climbing trees.

Arranging stones in small piles to ward off bad luck.

Their duty done, they continue foraging for cockles, moving up the beach until the lengthening shadows of the sand dunes tell Maisie it’s time to leave. Worried about crossing paths with the unfriendly locals, she takes a circular route home. Sometimes they throw sticks at Maisie, or give chase.

Heaving the half full bucket, the children cross a stretch of mud that is sometimes land, sometimes sea; then they pass a rise of land where a misty view of the mainland appears, and plunge into the darkening forest.

There’s just time to check their treasure is safe.

Stored in the hollow of a dying copper beech, wrapped in a washed-up rag that looks like it’s torn from a sail, Maisie knows the contents by heart, each piece buffed and admired and held to the sun to catch its sparkle.

The tooth from a large shark. Five stripy seashells.

A giant crab’s claw. A collection of pebbles.

A copper coin that isn’t English. And their favourite: a bright coloured picture, which is possibly a page from a book, that they had rescued as it bobbed along the current last summer.

Attracted by the flash of colour, they had waded up to their chests to pluck it from the water before the wind got there first, their feet mashed by stones.

It was worth every ounce of pain. There have been other scraps of paper, of course, discarded from ships, swept from lands on the other side of the sea. But nothing like this.

‘What d’you think it is?’ Tommy asks for the umpteenth time as they remove it from an empty gin bottle, lay the paper on a rock and weight it down with stones, the corners flapping in the breeze like the wings of a flightless bird.

Maisie examines the image. A landscape of a thousand tiny houses forms a sprawling city sliced in half by a river.

Yet it’s the foreground that captures her heart.

A silver circle supports a group of beautiful horses with sticks poking up from their necks– not like the farmer’s plough horse, or the muddy wild ponies, or the heavy-hooved drays that pull the beer cart.

No, these horses are delicate, painted the colours of a rainbow, protected from the elements by what looks like the top of a patterned tent, out of which rises a gold-and-blue flag flapping in an imaginary breeze.

The writing running across the top could perhaps explain this wonder, but means nothing to two children who can’t read a word.

‘I don’t know but it’s pretty,’ Maisie whispers, unable to tear her eyes from the scene.

The picture is crumpled, torn along one edge and spotted by black mould, but is also a symbol of hope– imagine if something this glorious were actually to exist in the world?

They roll it up again, stuff it back in the gin bottle for safekeeping and arrive home seconds before sundown.

Indoors, the air is thick with the reek of gin.

In the semi-gloom, Tommy pulls the bucket towards the kitchen table, while Maisie focuses on the opposite corner, as though splitting up makes them a smaller target for the Sixpences, who occupy the only seating– a long platform that turns into their bed– where they lounge, humming whichever tune Mr Sixpence is fiddling.

Of course, Sixpence isn’t their real name.

Long ago, Maisie heard the new postman call out ‘Parcel for Heaton’.

But everyone else on Canvey Island knows them as the Sixpences because six pennies are what they charge each month for every orphan and forgotten bastard who is sent away by whatever family they have left to somewhere that is one step up from the workhouse.

So you should count your blessings , Mrs Sixpence says.

Arriving at the hearthside, Maisie crouches. There’s insufficient wood for a proper fire, but, if she’s able to coax a few embers in an earthenware pot, they might not freeze to death in their sleep.

The glow from the match brings three toddlers nearer, as well as Tommy, who scoops up the baby to settle him on the floor nearby.

Maisie senses danger when the smallest child reaches for the poker.

Pinning his hands to his sides, she mouths for him to keep very still.

This is a rare interlude of Sixpence contentment that could fracture for the slightest reason. A wrong look. Fidgeting.

At last, when darkness seeps through the crooked window, Mrs Sixpence heaves her bulk up and attends to the gruel, while Maisie’s stomach grumbles in anticipation.

When the children are lined up in ascending age order, she’s the last to be served, and deserves the biggest helping. But Maisie’s bowl is only a quarter full, which is less than even the toddlers received. Mrs Sixpence stares at Maisie with a sneer.

‘Your sort can get lazy if you have too much food,’ she remarks.

The sort with darker skin than everyone else, Maisie understands her to mean, having heard this sentiment a thousand times before.

Assembling her confidence, she states, ‘Thank you, Mrs Sixpence,’ in a loud, clear voice, then resumes her place on the dirt floor.

Mrs Sixpence half grunts, half laughs, as though she’s seen through to Maisie’s disappointment.

It takes seconds to wolf down the meagre ration, followed by the usual ache of watching the Sixpences consume second and then third helpings.

Finally, Mrs Sixpence lights the stub of a candle and shuffles to the hearthside.

All of the children flinch as she looms over them to pluck something from the mantelpiece.

‘A letter come while you were out,’ she announces to the room in general. ‘From your aunt. Says that, due to a change in circumstances, there’s space for you after all.’

Maisie has never heard of an aunt, and neither has Tommy, it seems, because they exchange looks as if to say Which one of us does she mean? Her heart is pounding. This is the grand prize, what they have all dreamt of since they set foot in here.

Like a miracle falling from the sky, the letter is thrust at Maisie. Breathless with excitement, she stares at the swirls of blue ink on white paper.

‘Aren’t you going to read it aloud?’ Mr Sixpence guffaws, and Mrs Sixpence cackles along.