Ella

Elizabeth Love has found a niche with her imaginative writing about Cumbria with first, a collection of short stories called ‘Time Lapse’ and second, ‘Kaleidoscope, a poetry profile’: a comprehensive book of poems describing creatures in the wild as well as domestic, the countryside around where she lives plus personal reflections.

This latest publication, set in the picturesque village of Wetheral a few miles out of Carlisle, will hold the reader’s interest with its simplicity, drama and romance.

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© Copyright 2012

Elizabeth Love

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ISBN-9781780690544

First Published as an e-book 2012

E-Books Publisher

17 Sedgeway Business Park

Witchford CB6 2HY

Elizabeth Love

Ella

To my faithful friend, Ida

Part I

Chapter One

It seemed to Ella that the gates with the two stone supports were the predominant things that featured in her childhood. They were there as a kind of impediment from which she couldn’t escape, and even when she walked beyond those gates in a crocodile formation with her fellow school girls, she still felt fettered and bound within them. They were unusual because they had unusual carvings on either side which had tormented Ella from a very early age – half bird, half animal, the two cockatrice were intimidating not only to her but to others. In fact they were not uncommonly large but to a young girl of four years, when she had stood beneath and looked up at one, they had appeared both menacingly huge and so frightening that she had run across the field in a crying fit of tears.

She could not forget that day for a long time, how she had seen the huge beak and front legs, and the feet with talons like those of a bird of prey. The cockatrice had combs like a cockerel, four legs with the two front ones reared up like a prancing horse, simulated feathers on the body, outstretched wings and a tail like a dragon. In her dreams she saw the two of them coming together in a clinch and fighting fiercely, clawing at each other with their enormous talons. They were there as a boundary of her world and beyond which she wanted to explore. They were there as a symbol of the restrained life inside the children’s home where she lived. She felt as though those awful, unnatural creatures tormented and mocked her very existence.

The road from those two iron gates curved in an arc across an open piece of green pasture to the red brick orphanage. It was aptly named Field House and had been built by a Carlisle businessman in the early part of the twentieth century. It was a fine house of mammoth proportions with light and airy rooms, and with an impressive outward appearance of uniform red bricks and with sandstone window frames. It was, by any standards, an elegant dwelling in a very desirable setting and just a short distance from the border town. However, just shortly after its occupation as a private dwelling, the owner got into cash-strapped difficulties and it was sold to a consortium of business people, funded partly by voluntary contribution, and provided homes for orphaned girls and for those whose families couldn’t look after them. Some of the girls were fee-paying but a few were cared for because they were destitute, had no means of support and were homeless. Ella was one of those girls and it was the only home she knew.

Her early life and formative years were happy and secure for, with the naivety of a young outlook in life, she was not prompted to question her surroundings. She was content and carefree in the company of her playmates and in the care of the Sisters who looked after them. There were dolls to dress and play with, and each one of the little girls in her age group had a special toy of one sort or another, either a doll or a stuffed toy. Ella’s was a Peter Rabbit which she took to bed with her and she was in the habit of carrying or dragging it by an arm or one of its floppy ears wherever she went. When she was a toddler she had sucked her thumb and with her left hand she would fondle the velvety ears of her pet toy, sometimes trailing the animal behind her along the corridors of the orphanage. It was her mascot and represented security and comfort, and if by some chance she became parted from her toy she fretted and cried. In her nursery years she came to know about The Tale of Peter Rabbit and his adventures and in the picture book she recognised her own rabbit wearing the same blue jacket. This was one of the first discoveries she made and the most pleasing to her in her early childhood. The rabbit got soiled and so was put in the wash tub and hung on the clothes line at the back of the house. On those days Ella had not been her usual happy elf until she was connected again with her ‘comforter’.

In this kind of environment she enjoyed everything a tiny child wanted, or almost everything, and didn’t think to ask any questions until she was five years old. Then it was that she noticed some of the girls got visitors and were taken out in a car for an afternoon, and she began to question why it was that no one ever came to take her out. Also, by the time she was seven she began to wonder why she was singled out for special kindness, particularly by the Head Sister. She was given little presents like a new dress for her doll or a pair of gloves, and for her seventh birthday she was given a hand-knitted cardigan. Then one day she was taken by the hand and told she was going to meet a nice lady. She was told she was going on an outing and in the front hall she was introduced to a kindly looking lady called Mrs Potts who was the mother of one of her playmates, Laura Potts.

You are coming with us to Silloth for a picnic, my dear, and Mrs Potts smiled and held out her hand to guide Ella into the waiting car which stood outside the main door. It was the first time Ella had sat inside a car and this one was really nice with a smart cream and green exterior. Laura sat beside Ella and Mr and Mrs Potts sat in the front.

When they got to Silloth the car stopped beside the side of the wide expanse of the green on the cobbled street in front of the church and Laura told Ella they were going to a shop to buy buckets and spades. You will like building sandcastles, Ella. They crossed over to the other side of the wide cobbled street to a shop where a display of ironmongery and paraphernalia was set outside. There were brushes, mops, aluminium buckets, kitchen tools, all manner of utensils, and there also, inside the shop, were the small buckets and spades in many vivid colours. Laura picked one up and handed it to Ella.

You fill it with sand and then turn it upside down. This was all new to Ella and she was quite amazed at the vast expanse of green lawn where there were girls dressed in white on the grass tennis courts. The whole place seemed to be so immense and there were such a lot of seagulls flying over the whole beautiful panorama. The cavernous shop had been impressive too with its collection of hardware items, most of which she had never seen before. They followed a path between flower beds and laurel bushes which led to a flat-roofed amusement centre where children were queuing up to buy ice creams. Then they reached the promenade and the sea front, and to a little girl who had never seen anything like it, the misty blue sea seemed to stretch for miles and miles. She saw the faint pattern of the hills on the other side of the Solway Firth, and as if in answer to her questioning gaze, Laura told her that the country was Scotland.

The two little girls worked together to build a sandcastle whilst Mr and Mrs Potts sat in deckchairs and watched them. They filled their buckets with the moist, sweet-smelling sand, making a circle of sandcastles and then building on top of them. Then they dug a shallow moat around the castle and filled their buckets with sea water from a rock pool to fill it. All the time they played, Ella had wondered