Free Devil By The Sea by Nina Bawden

woman looked up from her letter. “Don’t bother me now, I’m busy.”
    Hilary wandered round the room, picking up books and back numbers of periodicals. The room was small and stuffy, darkened
     by an elm tree outside the window. A heavy clock under a glass dome ticked the time away, its round, brass weight circling
     slowly. Hilary could remember the room before Auntie came, when it had been her father’s study. His desk had stood under the
     window and his school pictures had hung on the walls. Alice had cleared it out angrily, saying, “It’s good enough for
her,
isn’t it? Or do you think my lady should have the best bedroom?”
    Hilary found the morning newspaper crumpled on the sagging seat of Auntie’s wing-chair. She lay on her stomach on the floor,
     dug her toes in the rag rug and spread the sheet out before her.
    Poppet’s picture was in the middle of the front page and Hilary looked at it with interest. She knew it was Poppet although
     her hair looked darker because of the bad printing of the photograph and the name underneath was different. She read the first
     few lines beneath the picture and a dark veil came down over her eyes. Her heart beat wildly in her throat. Something cold
     and evil menaced her from the shadowed corners and for a little while she crouched quite still, as if afraid to wake a sleeping
     beast.
    Then she whispered, “Auntie.” The erect, broad back did not move, the pen scratched unhesitatingly across the paper, but Hilary
     knew that she listened. She did not believe in Auntie’s deafness. Auntie said that she heard and Hilary believed her. Comforted
     by the mountainous, calm presence, she went on in a louder voice, “I saw a man take Poppet away. She was on the beach with
     her mother and he came and took her. He told her he was going to take her to the Fun Fair. I expect he said something like
     that, don’t you think? But he didn’t take her to the Fun Fair. Peregrine saidhe was the Devil. Do you think he was the Devil, Auntie? She must have been a very naughty little girl.”
    Suddenly a new and closer fear assailed her. “Auntie, he knows where I live. Will he fetch me away too?”
    In the silence, her head sang with light, tripping voices. Who will they send to fetch her away, fetch her away, fetch her
     away? Choking, she scrambled up from the rug and ran to the desk, looking up urgently into the leathery face. “Will he come
     for me, too?”
    Auntie felt the plucking fingers and looked at the moving, anxious mouth. “Come for you? Who, dear?”
    “The man in the newspaper.”
    “You naughty child….” Auntie brushed her away and, rising from her desk, lumbered across the room. Bending stiffly, she screwed
     the page of the newspaper between her hands, stuffed them in the wastepaper basket and kicked it out of sight. She lowered
     herself into the wing-chair, breathing heavily.
    “You’re not supposed to read the newspaper. It’s not suitable. Your mother will be very angry.” Her massive shoulders hunched,
     her face became, suddenly, sad and crumpled and very old. “I should never have let you see it,” she said.
    Hilary saw, with astonishment, that Auntie did not care about her. She was only concerned that her own carelessness in leaving
     the paper lying about should not be discovered. Uncertainly she promised, “I won’t tell Mummy.”
    “No.” Half to herself, Auntie mumbled, “She wants to get me out of the house. All she needs is an excuse like this. Charles
     wouldn’t be able to stand up for me. He’s a good man, but just. He’d know I was in the wrong. And what would happen to me?
     I’m old, my friends are dead. I ask you, what would happen to me?”
    The question escaped her lips in a little, whimperingbreath. Her trembling hands played with the brooch at her throat. Between the thick, blue veins, the flesh was livid white.
    “Stop it,” cried Hilary, terrified, “Oh, stop it.”
    Auntie’s eyes flickered over her without