by Ned Reardon
Ned Reardon
Blackberry Bill
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2018
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-912643-65-3
Copyright © Ned Reardon, 2018
The moral right of Ned Reardon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.
In loving memory of ‘Micky’
Chapter 1
Three days ago Tom Langley walked out of his life.
He packed a bag and hurried away from everything and everyone. Then he came here to this place; this shabby little room in the attic with its tiny roof window facing the sea, where he has sat and thought and dreamt of nothing but his earlier days back then… Back then, on those desolate marshes, when he was a boy.
Chapter 2
The boy who sat quietly and alone in the churchyard was ten years old. He gazed down at the fresh flowers, little orange ones this time, which somebody had placed upon his parents’ grave. Yet another floral tribute. They had kept appearing mysteriously at the foot of their headstone for as long as he could remember. As always, he wondered who was responsible for them. A friend, possibly of his mother or father, or an unknown relative. It was a mystery he was determined to solve.
Interrupting his thoughts, a sudden gust of wind sailed briskly through the old elms, violently rustling the leaves. For a few moments the boy felt released from his quandary. He knew the sea was close by for it evoked a sound similar to the surf breaking upon a pebble shore. He adored the ocean and listened attentively until the breeze had run its course. Except for the cawing of a few rooks nearby, the deathly silence came once more, restoring a sense of foreboding amongst the forsaken graves. Alas, for the deceased, a sad and lonely permanence was ubiquitous, for here upon this hallowed earth past mourners had whittled to few and far between.
The boy now spent most of his free time here, sitting amongst the tombstones. And he just waited… and waited…
The vicar once told him that it is sometimes easier on the heartstrings never to have known one’s parents rather than to painfully endure their loss during one’s childhood. But the boy’s heart ached to the contrary having grieved for them ever since he was able to comprehend his own unfortunate circumstances. He’d already found out that his parents had died during his infancy so he had never really known them. But he wished he’d been able to have seen them as they once were. As real people. Alive people.
For him, this would of course had just been a wonderful, miraculous whim but by the grace of God, if only granted for just one day of his lonely life, when he could have held their hands and felt the warmth of their parental love. An inconceivable day in the history of time when he’d be permitted to glance upon their mortal flesh, smell their scent, converse with them and oh how so lovely to have actually embraced them! But most of all to have been able to tell them how much he loved them both.
His eyes welled with emotion for the solemn truth was that he owned no memories of his deceased parents. Only visual fantasies are what comforted and sustained him. All he really possessed of them were their names graven on their tombstone.
Stark, cruel, heart-breaking letters etched out of the stonemason’s cold slab which marked the remains of his entire family now lying dead and buried forever beneath the heavy white stone.
In Sacred Memory Of
Thomas Edwin Langley
Died 20thFebruary, 1958
Also
Isabella, Constance
Loving wife of the above
Died 20 th February 1958
R.I.P
Nor had he ever seen any true likenesses of them for he’d been most profoundly informed by the local authorities, who were also now directly responsible for his welfare and upbringing, that there weren’t any.
His parents, along with all of their worldly belongings, namely The Marianne, a wooden-hulled sailing barge moored at Milton creek awaiting cargo bound for the port of London, had ceased to exist following a disastrous fire that had broken out one dark winter’s night this nine years past. The boy had no other relatives.
The vicar had also told him that as a baby he’d been rescued from that terrible blaze by some person or persons unknown. The boy had always rather liked to believe that it was probably his mother or father whom had performed the heroic deed when placing their precious baby boy safely ashore out of harm’s way. However, nobody has ever been able to give him a true and honest account of what did actually occur on that tragic night.
Chapter 3
While the tears were still wet in his eyes, he heard a grumbly, rustic voice from beyond the church porch. ‘Hey you there!’
The boy swung round slightly surprised but instantly resumed his former carefree manner after noticing that it was only Joseph, old Joseph Crow, come to work on digging some poor soul’s grave.
‘I say… you there!’ repeated Joseph, ‘Can’t you hear me? What are you up to there, boy?’
Having no desire whatsoever to talk to this man, the boy ignored Joseph’s hollering and remained reticent.
The boy knew Joseph well. Joseph always wore the same dirty clothes, a ragged cloth cap, a hole-ridden V neck jumper, a grimy brown blazer, formerly belonging to the vicar but now torn at the elbows, some corduroy breeches and a pair of hobnail boots thick with graveyard mud. More often than not, he would greet folk with an unkind growl and it was common knowledge that he much preferred his own company and so he was given a wide berth by all and sundry.
Before now the boy had often contemplated that come the day when the grumpy old gravedigger finally died, who’d then dig a hole for Joseph, himself?
The boy also knew that Joseph had been this way for the past two decades following the loss of his own wife and child. Ever since that fatal, stormy night when they had drowned out in the estuary and he’d died in spirit, he had endeavoured to join them in that other world in spirit without actually taking his own life. Throughout his widower years, night after night he’d wallowed in self-pity, pickled his organs in liquor and refused the friendly counsel of anyone who tried to help him. Nowadays there wasn’t a parishioner left upon the entire marsh that he could call a friend. His only solaces were his pipe and tobacco, the spirits of the night and his own bitterness.
The boy sometimes imagined that Joseph was controlled or tormented by some exterior being. The boy knew that Joseph was rarely happy. Mostly Joseph sighed with discontentment and cursed the world for all to hear. But there was the odd occasion when he might whistle a merry tune or chant a lively sea shanty.
‘Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!’
He’d swing his pick axe and strike the virgin earth.
‘To me way-aye, blow the man down.’
Again and again he’d strike the ground.
‘Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!
Give me some time to blow the man down!’
Sometimes when Joseph hadn’t noticed him in the churchyard, this was usually after the man had turned up a bit tipsy, the boy would hide behind the nearest convenient gravestone and secretly watch him at work. It amused the boy to listen to Joseph talking to himself, which he’d realised was more productive when the man was under the influence. When this happened he often teased the old misery by gently lobbing
small stones down into the open grave on top of him. Joseph’s head would then automatically pop up above the mounds of excavated dirt. He’d squint his bloodshot eyes and grumble something wicked under his breath before returning to his labours.
The boy would then toss another piece of gravel down into the hole and low and behold Joseph would surface once again, each time becoming more flustered and angry than the last and so on and so forth, the severity of his temper much depending on the volume of alcohol he’d consumed. But never once had Joseph cottoned on to the boy’s amusing little game which he’d usually play six or seven times at tormenting him in this fashion before he’d eventually tire of it and let him be. Today however, he hadn’t the appetite for playing tricks. Today he just felt sad.
‘You there, you young tearaway…be off with you now!’ Joseph bellowed, feeling much out of sorts and a little hung over as was usual. ‘I’m warning you,’ he went on, almost at the end of his tether and in no mood for pesky kids. ‘If you don’t clear off out of here I’ve a mind to smash your face in,’ he threatened, ‘You hear me?’
The boy could hear him perfectly well but couldn’t care a hoot and therefore made no attempt to move, remaining unconcerned and obstinate.
‘I’ll smash your skull to smithereens with this’ere shovel I will,’ promised Joseph, his head thumping with pain. ‘Shift yourself I say!’
The boy wasn’t going to leave just yet and stubbornly held his ground. In truth he’d no desire at this point of his childhood to die but had ultimately decided that if Joseph was to hold true to his word then so be it.
Infuriated by his indifference, Joseph’s patience finally expired. He charged over to the boy compelled by his temporary insanity like a mad man possessed. Ranting and raving with his spade held aloft and his face glowing scarlet red, he appeared intent on carry out his threats but then quite suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
The boy had already risen to his feet and turned about to face the angry man full on. ‘Go ahead then Mr Crow,’ he said, shaking in fear but oddly at the same time remaining somewhat apathetic about the ultimatum the man had hurled at him. ‘I don’t care what you do… I don’t even care if I die!’ But the boy’s grievous statement and apparent fearlessness had clearly unsettled Joseph. Never before had anyone stood up to him with such courage, least of all a ten-year-old boy. Allowing his shovel to drop to the ground, he stood lost for words and was uncertain of what to do next.
Meanwhile, the boy resumed his position before the sad grave and quietly shed a few tears for the people lying beneath his feet and one or two for himself as well. He was astounded by his own bravery and in later years would come to regard this event as the only time he’d ever really felt his life seriously at risk.
Joseph thought hard on the present matter of his violent behaviour and, unusually for him, began to worry about the repercussions. During a recent bout of drunkenness, he’d begun to experience very unpleasant visions, nasty and macabre: terrifying apparitions which had scared him practically to death and almost driven him half out of his mind. His paranoia led him to believe that the snivelling kid before him could just as easily be one of those same ghastly spirits cleverly disguised as an innocent-looking child. But old Joe Crow ain’t to be hoodwinked this time around, he thought slyly. Mindful of this, he suddenly felt the urge to quickly make amends for his ridiculous outburst. To turn things around as it were so as to dupe this scanty young devil into thinking that he was in fact his friend.
And so, following an interlude of uncomfortable silence, he began to apologise, something he hadn’t done for many a year, albeit in an artful manner. ‘I’m sorry I’d try to scare you young’n…truly I am…It’s these headaches you see… And when I get one of ’em I usually see red and I lose my temper and then it gets me half crazy with rage, especially when I see strangers in my boneyard.’
The boy dried his eyes upon his sleeve but remained nonchalant. This man was just a bully, he thought. It’d been a long time since Joseph had felt obliged to swallow his pride and eat humble pie but now found himself willingly kneeling down beside the boy, attempting to coerce him into some friendly chinwag. ‘Arrgh… it’s a sad business though ain’t it, lad?’
The boy gave no indication whatsoever of wanting to engage in a conversation with this man who he knew to be a drunkard. He just wished he’d go away and leave him alone.
‘I remember these two,’ said Joseph, desperate to appease the boy.
Finally the boy’s ears began to twitch with interest.
‘That day,’ continued the crafty gravedigger, ‘when I covered them over.’
The boy then looked fixedly at Joseph wanting to hear more.
‘A very sad day it was because those folks were well liked and respected… I should think half the village was in attendance that day,’ he said. ‘And the church… well that must have been packed to the rafters I reckon. ’
The boy made no comment and was reluctant to make friends but clung on to every word Joseph spoke.
‘But this ain’t no place for a young’n to be. A fine young man such as yourself shouldn’t be wasting his valuable time in this’ere creepy old boneyard,’ he continued to grovel, still grimacing with the throbbing pain in his head.
‘Those are nice marigolds,’ he remarked, reluctant to give up on the boy, ‘pick’em yourself did you lad?’
‘No sir,’ replied the boy, softly.
‘What’s that?’ returned Joseph, struggling to hear, ‘what did you say lad?’
‘I said, no sir it wasn’t me,’ repeated the boy, a little louder. The respect for his elders, irrespective of whom they may be, again presiding over his thoughts. ‘Did you see who it was sir?’ he added, out of curiosity.
Now that his persistence was finally beginning to take affect Joseph relaxed marginally, but frowned. ‘Did I see who it were what?’
The boy pointed down at the grave. ‘Did you happen to notice who it was that left these flowers here?’
‘Nar, I ain’t seen nobody today…excepting yourself of course.’
‘Well, maybe yesterday then?’
‘Nope..., oh tell a lie, I did spy that Blackberry lurking round here yesterday afternoon but it’d hardly be him, would it?’
The boy expressed a little vagueness. ‘Do you mean the man that lives out on the marshes, the one they call Blackberry Bill ?’
‘Aye lad, that’s the fella, but if you take my advice you should steer clear of him because I’ve even seen that dinlo in here at the dead of night… God knows what he gets up to!’
The boy had no intention of steering clear. He stood up and tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and began casually strolling over in the direction of the churchyard gates. Joseph then happened to notice a black, crow like bird perched on a nearby tombstone. It had been present all the time the boy was beside the grave.
‘Come on then Jack…we must go home now,’ said the boy, addressing the bird. ‘Goodbye Mr Crow.’
‘Aye lad,’ returned Joseph, relieved to be finally rid of the boy’s ghost who he had in his own misguided opinion, triumphantly tricked and therefore for once manages to avoid the spirit’s wrath. He then removed his cap, scratched his scalp and shook his head to clear away the last effects of his excess drinking.
Astounded, he watched the bird flap and squawk and then fly thrice around the boy’s head before finally settling upon its young master’s shoulder where it stayed contentedly. Joseph ran his tongue across the outside of his dry lips and swore an oath that it’ll never taste another tot of whisky. Before the noon, he was back over the threshold of The Three Hats public house and soon after found himself three sheets to the wind.
Chapter 4
A tall, strong, dark-eyed man strode determinedly across the graves. He’d been tucked out of sight at the far end of the churchyard, hidden within the s
hadows, waiting patiently for the boy with the bird and the alcoholic gravedigger to leave. Finally with the place all to himself, he stared down curiously at the Langley grave, appearing somewhat lost and uncertain of his intentions. Before turning about and heading back to the open marsh, the stranger glared suspiciously over at the upper sash windows of the orphanage adjacent and saw beyond the lace curtain the obscure form of a child’s face staring back at him.
The boy knew he himself had some serious thinking to do. He thought long and hard about what Joseph had said and in particular the part about Blackberry Bill. He could not understand how this strange man may have been acquainted with his own parents and was dubious to the notion of it actually being him whom had left the flowers. However, anything was possible and indeed if it did turn out to be so then he wanted to know why.
Finding out wasn’t going to be simple though. The boy knew that Blackberry Bill was a notorious recluse who lived like a lone wolf somewhere out on the marshes. This eccentric man was rarely seen but would sometimes suddenly turn up like a bad penny. On occasions when boys like himself, whom were happily playing football in the street using a chalked up goal on the outer side of the churchyard wall, would instinctively disperse and scramble up the nearest trees or bolt down alleyways. And when the girls, who were busy playing their hopscotch and french skipping games, would simultaneously emit high-pitched screams before scuttling off home to their mother’s aprons with their pigtails and ribbons bobbing up and down.
Not a kind, friendly thought was ever wasted in his direction. Passersby hurriedly crossed over the road to evade his presence. Some snarled nastily whilst others spat onto the ground in disgust. Washerwomen, scrubbing door steps with wet hair in curlers and scarves, slammed their front doors and bolted him out. And old timers bent on sticks, lowered their trilbys and shied away, never a greeting exchanged. Shunned by the whole community, his appearances were fairly uncommon as the majority of his time was spent aimlessly wandering the marshes. As to what purpose, nobody had got the foggiest idea and so it remained.
