Old Baggage

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t listening very hard. There was a kingfisher on a post behind RC’s head when he was speaking and I couldn’t help watching it. Have you ever seen a kingfisher close to?’

  ‘Only flying. Up by the ponds, last month.’

  ‘They’re wonderful, aren’t they?’

  ‘It was so fast I could hardly see it. Like someone drawing a blue line in the air.’

  He nodded, slowly. ‘I’d say that’s a perfect description. And poetic, too. So go on, be charitable, tell me the rules again. There are clues hidden, aren’t there?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Simpkin and your leaders made them up. Both teams get given a compass and a clue – the same clue – and they have to work out from it where the next clue’s hidden and send out runners to fetch it. And there are five clues altogether. And as well as solving them you have to—’ Abruptly, she closed her mouth.

  ‘What?’

  She grinned. ‘I can’t tell you. It’s strategy.’

  ‘Aha!’ He stood up, and indolently straightened his uniform. ‘Well, as I say, bonne chance. If you triumph, may I buy you an ice?’

  ‘All right, then,’ she said, emboldened by the sudden ease of the conversation. ‘Vanilla wafer, please.’

  ‘And what do I get if my team’s the victor?’

  ‘It won’t be.’

  ‘You’re sounding fearfully confident.’

  ‘Confidence is the staff that supports all our endeavours,’ she said, and walked off with her head in the air, knowing that he was watching her. And now, for the first time, she really wanted to win.

  ‘First clue cracked!’ said Mattie.

  Doris and Avril had broken away from the huddle of Amazons and were sprinting off to the north-east, while the League was still in a cluster, one or two heads turning anxiously to watch the other team. After a few moments, and some worried discussion, a boy and a girl headed off in the same direction as the Amazons.

  ‘I don’t think I understand what’s happening,’ said the journalist.

  Richard Cellini cleared his throat, as if about to deliver a lecture. ‘The clue will lead to a hiding place containing two further identical clues, one for each team. The new clue must be brought back to be opened and solved, and then the next runners will be sent out.’

  ‘Or not solved,’ added Mattie. ‘I have the feeling – don’t you? – that the League has failed with the first puzzle and have simply despatched a pair of hounds to follow my girls in order to find the hiding place. Which, of course, is perfectly acceptable as a tactic. One should always use whatever means are most suited to the occasion – isn’t that so, Jacko? Remember how you ambushed Asquith by disguising yourself as a flower-seller?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Jacko.

  ‘We used to say, “It’s hell for leather and it’s neck or nothing!”’

  ‘So’ – the journalist glanced back at his notepad – ‘does that mean that any tactic is acceptable?’

  Jacko raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I think we’re both wedded to fair play, aren’t we, Mattie? Youth should remain unsullied by – oh, could you excuse me a moment, a friend has arrived.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but walked across to greet a young woman who was bumping a baby-carriage across the grass, and Mattie found herself standing in awful silence beside Cellini. What did one say to such a stick?

  ‘When you were in Australia, did you ever see a duck-billed platypus?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Or an echidna?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re the only examples of monotremes in the entire world, I believe.’

  The silence stretched.

  Doris and Avril were back in ten minutes, Avril with a thread-wrapped piece of paper clutched in a damp fist.

  ‘The League followed us the whole way,’ said Doris between gasps, ‘but we split up when we got to the pond and that confused them for a couple of minutes. The clue was wedged behind the lifebuoy, like Freda guessed. They’ll have found it by now, I think.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ida, unwrapping the thread and spreading out the strip of paper. ‘Well done. This one says, “HEAD DUE WEST TO ICENI QUEEN’S LAST RESTING PLACE. AT IL DUCE’S COLOURS LOOK FOR BROCK’S FRONT DOOR.”’

  ‘Ill what?’

  ‘“Duce”, it says. D, U, C, E.’

  ‘Doochay,’ said Freda. ‘That’s what they call Mussolini.’

  ‘Old Baldy Musso?’

  ‘So what’s his colours?’

  ‘The Italian flag’s white, green and red, isn’t it?’

  ‘But I think it’s changed now. Yellow, maybe. There might be a ribbon to look out for – or chalks.’

  ‘The rest is easy,’ said Ida. ‘Boadicea’s supposed to be buried in that little wood at the top.’

  ‘The tumulus, you mean?’

  ‘And Brock’s a badger!’ piped Winnie, from where she was still lying in the shade.

  ‘Shhhhhhh,’ said everyone, heads swivelling to see if the other group had overheard. The League’s two runners were hurtling back across the field towards the group, waving the clue.

  ‘They’ll know what the Doochay colours are,’ said Freda, darkly. ‘Why don’t we set off and see if we can work it out once we’re there. It’s me and Evadne next, isn’t it?’ And she was gone, Evadne just behind her, pigtail flapping beneath her panama.

  ‘It’s exciting!’ said Elsie, bouncing up and down. ‘And after Freda it’s you and me, isn’t it, Hildegard? And then Winnie and Ida?’

  ‘I don’t think Winnie’s up to it.’

  ‘I might be,’ said Winnie, struggling to sit up.

  ‘Helping to answer the questions is just as useful,’ said Ida. She glanced across at the League and saw that Simeon was looking directly at her. He raised a hand, discreetly, and then crooked a finger towards the huddle of League members and shook his head.

  ‘What you laughing at?’ asked Elsie.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ida.

  Inez quite liked the heat. She never went red in the face like some of the other girls, and she knew that her linen shift from Eaton’s suited her well, its colour very nearly matching her eyes. It made everyone else look as if they were dressed in crumpled dishcloths. Not that anybody had commented on her frock – coming to the Amazons was almost like being invisible; the other girls scarcely looked in her direction and, when they did, their gaze skidded straight off again. It was only when she spoke that anyone noticed her. ‘Do you think Freda knows that she sticks out one of her feet when she runs?’

  ‘No. But I expect you’ll make sure you tell her,’ said Ida.

  ‘It looks quite funny, actually. As if she’s doing semaphore with one foot.’

  Ida, with a visible effort, turned her back.

  ‘You shouldn’t say personal things,’ said Avril. ‘Not unless you’re related to someone. Anyway, you’re walking in a funny way yourself today – on tiptoe. You kept banging into people when we were carrying everything across.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You must know.’

  Inez smiled mysteriously, and moved away. She had, in fact, been trying out her mother’s walk, as described by Miss Lee: a sort of gliding bounce, though it was difficult to maintain a straight line while doing so. In photographs, her mother was always sitting; Inez had never imagined her in motion before, with people turning to look as she went past.

  There was a shout from the League as two runners tore away, heading for Parliament Hill, their faces set and serious. Inez could see her brother and Simeon watching them, and she tried her gliding walk again, in a direction which took her across Simeon’s eyeline.

  ‘Have you hurt your foot, Inez?’ called Miss Simpkin, from the shade beside the refreshments.

  ‘No,’ said Inez.

  Simeon was looking towards her. She attempted the type of smile which made people want to smile back, and for a moment his expression remained blank, and then he absolutely gri
nned, except that she realized, with a jolt, that he was looking not at her but past her, and when she turned her head to see who he was smiling at, it was Ida.

  Jacko was holding her friend’s infant as if it were an awkwardly shaped vase, rather than with the casual firmness that babies required, and it was emitting thin squeaks as an obvious preliminary to full-scale shrieking.

  ‘There, there,’ said Jacko, rather desperately.

  ‘Now hush, little chap,’ said Mattie, taking the child’s waving fists and blowing a raspberry on each. It stopped squeaking and gazed at her with apparent astonishment, and then spotted its mother approaching, and started wailing in earnest.

  ‘I don’t have the knack,’ said Jacko, relinquishing the child. ‘Clearly.’ For a moment she seemed to lose her composure, and Richard’s hand was quickly on her shoulder, in a gesture more tender than one might have predicted.

  ‘Nor did I,’ said her friend, ‘but when the little bundle finally arrives in one’s arms …’ She bent her face towards the child’s, lowering her lashes so that she looked like a third-rate copy of a Raphael Virgin.

  ‘Those of us who have never borne a child may yet bear the new world,’ said Mattie, rather sharply. ‘Now look!’ she added, as both pairs of runners reappeared at the same time, pounding down the northern slope of Parliament Hill, Freda and Evadne perceptibly ahead. ‘Neck and neck!’

  Inez watched Simeon for a while longer, and just once he glanced around and saw her, and gave a little nod, the way you might nod at a coalman, but his gaze kept swivelling back to Ida, who looked as though she had just been scrubbing a floor, her face damp, her stockings wrinkled. Inez, in her pale blue dress, was ignored, the world carrying on around her, Hildegard and Elsie haring off, a peppering of tiny clouds drifting across the sky, children shouting and jumping, a dog sniffing past, the sun pressing on her head like a thumb, and she wished there could be a giant blackboard – here, on the Heath – so she could drag her fingernails down it, very slowly, and everything would come to a halt and everyone would turn and look at her and she’d be right at the centre. They’d all see her then.

  The League runners were the first back, followed after nearly a minute of unbearable tension by Elsie, supporting a limping Hildegard.

  ‘We were ahead,’ she called breathlessly, almost in tears, ‘but I turned my ankle jumping down from a branch. So stupid of me, and Elsie wouldn’t go on without me.’

  ‘Good for Elsie, quite right, too,’ said Freda, grabbing the clue and unrolling it to reveal a sprinkling of dots and dashes. ‘It’s in Morse code! Ida, you’re wizard at this.’

  ‘And the Empire lot are still puzzling,’ called Doris, on the look-out. ‘We’re still in with a chance.’

  Ida stared at the paper. ‘Due. East. Near. Green. Shed. Del … Delve. Where. Keys. Grow. For. Prize.’

  ‘That’s probably the gardener’s shed near the bathing pond,’ said Freda. ‘That’s due east, isn’t it?’

  ‘But where do keys grow?’

  ‘The League must have cracked it!’ said Doris. ‘They’re off!’

  ‘What does it mean, keys grow?’

  ‘In locks, maybe?’

  ‘Just go, Ida,’ said Doris. ‘Otherwise, there’s no chance you’ll catch up, and you can try and work it out on the way.’

  ‘But what about Winnie? She’s not up to it, is she?’

  ‘I might be,’ said Winnie, starting to get up and then immediately sitting down again.

  ‘Go on your own, Ida.’

  ‘Keys grow on ash trees,’ said Inez. She was standing a few feet away from the others.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fruit of the ash is called a key.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Avril, dismissively, already turning away. Inez raised her voice.

  ‘I know it because Miss Simpkin secretly told me the answer.’

  There was a moment of total silence, like the pause after a firework. And now every eye was on her.

  ‘No she didn’t,’ said Ida, flatly.

  ‘Yes she did, as a matter of fact. About an hour ago.’

  ‘She’d never do that, that’s cheating.’

  Inez shrugged. ‘Then she cheated.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Ida. ‘You must think we’re all doolally.’

  And Inez smiled. ‘You’ll see,’ she said.

  Ida’s shadow slid before her as she ran; far ahead, she could see two bottle-green dots moving in the same direction, taking a line that led towards the bathing pond, and it seemed impossible that she could catch them, and, moreover, it was hard to buck herself up for the solitary chase. When she’d set off there’d been none of the baying encouragement which had launched the earlier runners, only some half-hearted ‘Good luck’s and a limp wave from Winnie; instead, the Amazons had drawn together in an uneasy, whispering cluster, shooting glances at Inez, and towards the refreshments table, where Miss Simpkin was tipping crumbs from plates. And now the only sounds were her own breath and the whack of her footsteps and the hiss of long grass around her ankles. She should, she knew, be thinking about the clue, but her thoughts kept bouncing away from the subject.

  Ahead, one of the green dots stopped and bobbed down to tie a lace, and Ida plunged onward and had halved the distance between them by the time the pair were off again. When she reached the narrow belt of woodland that separated the hillside from the pond, the shade was like a cold hand on her forehead.

  ‘No key!’ said a voice just ahead, and Ida grabbed a branch as a brake. Between the trunks she could see sunlight. She edged forward, until the yellow grass of a clearing was visible, a woodpile stacked in one corner, a roll of chestnut stakes and the remains of a bonfire quite close to her, and on the far side, forty feet away, the green tool-shed. A League boy was rattling the door, and a girl was standing just behind him, hands on hips; it was Olive, the curly-headed one from the continuation school.

  ‘We keep our key under the doormat,’ she said.

  ‘Sheds don’t have doormats.’

  ‘I was just saying. Maybe it’s hidden around here.’

  ‘The clue said, “where keys grow”.’

  ‘Is it under a plant, then?’

  ‘Which plant? It’s all plants, isn’t it? Where would we start?’

  Ida watched as, rather aimlessly, they began to cast around the shrubby edge of the clearing, and a kind of hopeful window seemed to open in her head, because all the other clues had been quite precise: once the meaning had been pinned down, the hiding place had become suddenly obvious – a lifebuoy or a badger’s sett – and the vagueness of Inez’s ‘ash trees’ surely meant that she’d just made the whole thing up and the claim that Miss Simpkin had given her the answer was her usual needling nonsense. This clue, then, like all the others, would lead to a particular spot: the shed roof, maybe, or the woodpile – or the roll of stakes – or the …

  The hopeful window slammed shut. The bonfire beside her consisted of a few ends of charred wood, and a small pyramid of ash.

  Ash.

  The League runners were rustling around at the back of the shed. Ida stepped into the clearing and crouched beside the bonfire. A thin gold line was visible in the pale ash, and she nipped it with her nails and drew out a metal disc, twice the diameter of a sovereign. ‘TREASURE HUNT WINNERS. HAMPSTEAD HEATH YOUTH GAMES 1928’ was engraved on it, with a border of leaves. She sat back on her heels. All the afternoon’s tension had gone; she felt as flat as an ironed sheet.

  ‘Hey!’ It was Olive, hurtling across the clearing. She stopped when she saw what was in Ida’s hand. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ve won. They’ve won,’ she added tragically over her shoulder, towards her team mate. ‘How did you know to look in there?’

  ‘Keys grow on ash trees,’ said Ida. ‘Ash.’

  The boy came across, tall and skinny, with a narrow, lipless face. ‘Bugger,’ he said. ‘No beano for us.’

  Olive was looking at Ida curiously. ‘What’s the matter? Why aren
’t you going back?’

  ‘Take it,’ said Ida, holding out the medal.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We cheated.’

  Olive’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘You cheated?’

  ‘Go on – take it.’

  ‘How did you cheat?’

  ‘One of the girls was given the answer to the last clue.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just take it. You can pretend you found it by yourselves and I’ll pretend you got to it before me and no one will know and you’ll get your beano.’

  The other two exchanged glances. ‘All right.’ They set off immediately, and Ida stood up stiffly, like an old woman, like her aunt when she’d been lighting the copper. The day had snapped shut. Inside it were the Amazons and Sundays on the Heath and ‘all pals together’ and shrieks and silliness and feathers in the hair, but she was done with that now. It had never been real, anyway.

  The thought of going back to the others was horrible, but if she didn’t go, they might start scouring the Heath for her, so she walked very slowly through the trees and across the open hillside, and in the distance she heard applause and cheering, boys’ voices as well as girls’, and she thought of Elsie and Winnie and Avril, who had been so excited, and she wanted to hit someone, though she wasn’t sure whether that ‘someone’ was Miss Simpkin or Inez – or herself, as a punishment for being hopeful.

  The sun was in her eyes now, the view just a golden dazzle, so she kept her gaze on the ground and didn’t see the approaching figure until he was just yards away.

  ‘Hello,’ said Simeon. ‘I volunteered to come and find you. Did you get lost?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I say, you’re not crying, are you?’

  ‘No. The sun’s in my eyes.’

  She turned her head away from him, walking faster.

  ‘I wouldn’t hurry back,’ he said. ‘There’s been rather an ugly scene.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Apparently, Inez told your team that Big Chief Amazon gave her the answer to the last question, and word has leaked out. The Cellinis were cock-a-hoop, since they thought the League had won without cheating, but Olive was looking very shifty, and has now confessed that you handed them the medal gratis, so the whole thing has slid into farce.’ He gave a little huff of laughter. ‘The journalist was scribbling away like a good ’un.’