To Nowhere and Back

By Margaret J. Anderson

On Elizabeth’s first discovery of the tumbledown cottages at the far edge of the woods, all she saw was the rotting thatched roof and crumbling walls. Inside the air was dank and the wallpaper was stained with damp and mold. But on the next visit, escaping from the misunderstandings and misery of being the new girl at the village school, everything has changed. The decayed thatch has been replaced by new straw, the crumbling walls are intact and smoke curls from the chimneys. Most confusing of all is the girl in the faded ragged dress who is feeding the chickens.Could the girl be a ghost child who has come back to haunt the woods where she once played? Somehow Elizabeth can’t believe in a ghost who feeds chickens. Or in ghost chickens, for that matter. There must be another answer, but it is just on the edge of her understanding. Elizabeth has to see her again. On their next meeting, when the ghost child, Ann, reaches out and touches Elizabeth something happens that Elizabeth can never understand, though it was to happen again and again. They simply become one person and only Ann walks through the door of the cottage, yet Elizabeth is still there, thinking and looking and feeling as Ann did.As Elizabeth moves back and forth between the two worlds, the past becomes a vivid reality. She enjoys being part of a lively family of six children compared to her on only child status, but she soon realizes that her trouble fitting in at school is nothing compared to not having the chance to go to school at all. And there’s also the fear that she may not find her way back to the present.“This story has such a beautiful weave of today and yesterday – you will be compelled to read it again and again. I read it many times as a child and found that I enjoy it just as much now! . . .I would actually give this book more than 5 stars if I could . . . Amber Rieder So that’s why I’m issuing this title as an e-book! Margaret Anderson

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 1975
• ISBN: 9781483521190

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Random Cottage

Wedged between two suitcases and a picnic basket in the back seat of the small Morris, Elizabeth listened to her parents discussing whether they should have turned right or left at the crossroads. Her mother had said to turn left, but now her father thought they should have turned right.

See if you can find this village on the map, Mr. Fenner suggested to his wife.

It’s called Lower Waterberry, Elizabeth said, over her father’s shoulder. Couldn’t we stop here for a coke? It looks historic. She added the historic part because her parents were much more interested in history than coke.

Rather to Elizabeth’s surprise, her dad brought the car to a sudden stop outside the village post office and said, All right. I’ll take a look at the map while you two stretch your legs.

Elizabeth went into the post office, which also served as a general store, and bought her coke. Her mother followed her into the little shop and stood reading a number of notices taped to the glass door.

Listen to this, Elizabeth! For Rent: Random Cottage. Small furnished cottage with view. Close to school and shops. Reasonable rates.

Are you people looking for a furnished house? the postmistress asked, coming out from behind the counter.

Yes, we are, Elizabeth’s mother answered, and was soon explaining that Mr. Fenner was on a year’s leave from a college in Timberhill, Oregon, where he taught history and literature. He was interested in Thomas Hardy—the writer who had lived around here a hundred years ago—and that had brought them to Dorset. Now they were looking for a place to stay near Dorchester, where he could do research and reading. Then Mrs. Fenner went on to say that she, herself, wrote books but she could do that anywhere. And they must find somewhere close to a good school for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth shuffled uncomfortably, feeling that it was hardly necessary for her mom to tell their whole life story to a perfect stranger. But the postmistress was more than interested and was soon telling them all about the village and arranging for them to see the cottage.

When Mr. Fenner heard about the cottage, he agreed it would be a good location. I’ve found Lower Waterberry on the map, and it’s quite close to Dorchester.

There is where Elizabeth would go to school, her mother said, pointing to a red brick building further along the road. The postmistress assures me that it’s a very good school.

Elizabeth looked at the building with a scowl. The windows were small and high, and there was a forbidding look about the worn steps leading up to the narrow entrances with Boys chiseled in stone above one and Girls above the other. She could imagine a tall, stern teacher, with a cane in his hand, standing behind a high desk.

Perhaps it was the thought of school, but Elizabeth couldn’t share her parents’ enthusiasm about the idea of settling down in England. While the postmistress was busy making arrangements for her sister, Mrs. Higgins, to show them the house, Elizabeth found herself hoping it wouldn’t be suitable.

When Mrs. Higgins arrived, it was easy to see she was afraid that the Fenners, being from America, would find the cottage too inconvenient and old fashioned. Her ideas of American family life were based on TV and the movies. Elizabeth could have told her not to worry. As far has her parents were concerned everything improved with age—an opinion Elizabeth did not share.

But when they turned up the steep, winding lane, just beyond the school, and found the little white cottage with its thick, thatched roof, sitting snug against the hillside, even Elizabeth was excited.

Mrs. Higgins unlocked the door and ushered them in. At first the rooms seemed dim in contrast to the brightness outside. The windows were small, but in the dining room, a patch of sun brightened the blue plates and brass kettles on the large oak sideboard. There was a round, polished table, and the ladderback chairs had worn red velvet seats. The furniture, like the house, was sturdy and old and comfortable. A big grandfather clock stood in the corner by the stairs and two easy chairs were arranged by the fireplace in the sitting room.

Mrs. Higgins told them the cottage was over two hundred years old. The kitchen and bathroom had been added at a much later date, though when Elizabeth looked at the appliances and bathroom fixtures, she decided it hadn’t been that much later.

Upstairs were two large bedrooms with oak beams running crookedly across the ceiling. Plaster was flaking here and there from the whitewashed walls. In one bedroom the far wall curved outward, and then sloped back toward the roof. Elizabeth thought that perhaps the builder hadn’t had a tool for measuring angles, but she later found this was the chimney from the downstairs fireplace.

Imagine! Two hundred years of history in this house, Mr. Fenner exclaimed. Just think of all of the families that have lived here before us. It’s the people that lived on the land, in cottages like this, who wrote the history of England. History isn’t kings and parliaments and great cathedrals. It’s the little people, the villagers, the townspeople . . .

That’s very true, sir! said Mrs. Higgins agreeably. Now, about the rent in advance . . .

Elizabeth ran downstairs and outside. She could see that living in a house like this was going to give her father a lot of opportunities to turn life into one long history lesson. Her parents claimed she had no imagination because she didn’t get excited about ruins and abbeys and antiques. But why spend all your time thinking about what happened two hundred years ago when there is so much happening right now?

True to her philosophy, Elizabeth switched her thoughts to the present. The garden would be good for hide-and-seek, and there were trees to climb. In front of the house was a small lawn surrounded by borders of lupins and delphiniums and roses. To the side, separated from the lawn by a trimmed hedge, was a wild garden.

Elizabeth pushed through the hedge into this densely overgrown garden. Flowering currant, with its catty smell, tangled with the brittle fingers of a forsythia bush. Lank grass and nettles grew everywhere. A cherry tree reached above the bushes and Elizabeth swung herself onto a stout lower limb. She was soon high enough to see over the bushes and over the ragged boundary hedge, too. The ground fell away steeply, so that she looked down on the roofs and chimney pots of a row of houses on the Merston Road below. Beyond were fields, trees, and hedges—the patchwork quilt of English countryside.

Elizabeth! Elizabeth!

Mr. Fenner’s voice penetrated the sanctuary of the treetop.

Coming, Dad!

A few minutes later Elizabeth appeared at the front door with a leaf in her light brown hair and mud stains on her socks.

Her parents were unloading the car.

We’re going to move in! Take these books into the front room, Elizabeth, her mom said. And then you can unpack your suitcase.

Elizabeth walked into the sitting room and laid the books down on the windowsill. As she did so she had a strange feeling she was being watched. She turned quickly, but there was no one there. Yet the feeling she was not alone persisted. Mrs. Higgins had gone down to the village, and she could hear her parents talking to each other outside. Elizabeth took a long, slow look around the empty room, shrugged, and hurried back outside.

Which one is my bedroom? she asked, grabbing her suitcase.

Upstairs, turn left, answered her father.

Elizabeth clattered upstairs. She noticed the doors were oddly shaped, cut to fit the sloping roof. Little metal latches held the doors closed. Elizabeth lifted the latch of the door on her left and went in. Crossing the room, she threw open the small window. The walls were so thick that the windowsill formed a seat, and from there she could lean out and touch the bristly, cut ends of the thatch. It gives the house a bushy-eyebrow look, she thought.

Below her was a trimly clipped box hedge. It looked as solid and bouncy as a mattress. Elizabeth considered jumping from the window onto it but decided not to. Her parents were in sight and would surely forbid her ever to do that again, and she might want to. If, for instance, the house caught fire.

Dad, she called. Don’t you think this kind of roof is dangerous? It could easily catch on fire.

You’re right,answered her father. But this house has stood for two hundred years without anyone being careless with fire, and we’ll have to be careful, too!

Elizabeth drew her head back in the window.

"Two hundred

Reviews for To Nowhere and Back

[johngrant1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

American 10-year-old Elizabeth and her parents come to live in a small cottage in the west of England so her dad can do research in Hardy Country. Elizabeth is unsettled by it all. One day on a walk through the nearby wild woods she and her mother come across a pair of ancient derelict cottages. When Elizabeth returns there on her own later she discovers that, far from derelict, the cottages are athrob with life; further, the forest around them is far thicker than she remembers it being before . . .

She eventually discovers that she has timeslipped back to 1871. There is a 10-year-old living in one of the cottages, Ann, and Ann alone of all her family knows that Elizabeth is there watching. When Elizabeth impulsively touches Ann, her identity flows into the other girl, and she is able to spend some time as a not-entirely-passive observer of Ann's life before running back through the wild woods and into the present. Needless to say, when she gets home she finds she hasn't been gone long.

Several times more Elizabeth journeys into the past to spend extended periods living within Ann's life. Finally, though, Ann's baby brother dies and Ann herself falls ill -- and, it seems certain, will soon join him. She chooses as a better option than this to come into the present and let her selfness flow into Elizabeth, the way Elizabeth's has so often flowed into her. For the rest of Elizabeth's life Ann will be, as it were, at the back of her mind.

This is an extraordinarily charming tale, and in both telling and subtlety of concept an advance on Anderson's earlier In the Keep of Time. I do hope some wise publisher somewhere has the sense soon to bring it back into print; at the moment used copies are commanding moderately high prices on Amazon. (I was able to obtain my reading copy solely through New Jersey's inter-library loan system, shortly to be axed at the behest of NJ Governor Chris Christie, who's cutting the state's library budget by a completely insane 74%.)