The Song of Mat and Ben

by Joan Aiken

  I tramped down through the snow to the museum, which occupied what used to be a warehouse on the harbourside.

  The museum was a pleasant surprise, as there were no dusty pots or rusty billhooks. All the contents were elegantly displayed in glass cases with bright lighting and photographs of tin mines and half-size models of fishing boats. I asked at the desk if they had a portrait of Carl Pernel, and was sent upstairs to the music department and given a pair of headphones which would provide me with a commentary about the exhibits.

  Just as I reached the top of the stairs I heard a crash of glass breaking, and a woman’s voice cry out in alarm. I walked through a doorway into the music department to find the floor sparkling with glass splinters and fragments of varnished wood.

  ‘Did you do that?’ bawled a red-faced woman to me.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Throw that pot!’

  ‘I haven’t thrown any pot,’ I said, utterly mystified.

  Then I saw that one of the big glass cases had been completely smashed, along with its contents. A label on the floor by my foot said, FAVOURITE GUARNERI VIOLIN OF CARL PERNEL.

  A large broken clay pot lay among the debris – just the kind I don’t like.

  ‘You must have thrown it,’ declared the woman furiously. ‘You were just outside the door and the pot came through it.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said a girl, one of the museum staff, who had come up behind me to lead me to the portrait of Carl Pernel. ‘I was close behind him all the way up, and he hadn’t any pot.’

  ‘Where did it come from then? He must have thrown it! Send for the police!’

  The police were sent for, and turned out to be the familiar Inspector Mutton.

  ‘Trouble seems to follow you around, my lad,’ he said to me. But the curator girl, Rose Killigrew, held by her story that I couldn’t possibly have thrown any pot, for she had been within touching distance of me all the way from the ground floor.

  ‘Well, it’s a downright disgrace, whoever did it!’ said the furious woman. ‘Pernel’s violin smashed and his portrait damaged too – it was knocked right off the wall.’

  While they were discussing the damage and the insurance, and whether the wrecked violin could ever be mended, and while Inspector Mutton was taking notes, I studied the portrait and was astonished.

  Pernel was so young!

  I had always thought of him as being an elderly character, in his forties or fifties perhaps – but this man looked no more than twenty-five. He had a thatch of brownish fair hair and freckles, like the twins, and was smiling a shy half-smile as he looked down at a fiddle-bow that he held in his hands. It wasn’t a very good painting – done by a local amateur – but it made him seem like a person, a real person. And pitifully young to have had all those tragic things happen to him. As soon as I saw the picture of him I thought, he would never run out of a blazing house and leave two children to burn to death. No way!

  Thinking these things I absently fitted the headphones over my ears – and loudly into them lilted and sang the music of Pernel’s tune for his sons, ‘This is the song of Mat and Ben…’

  Turning round I was just in time to see two small boys in rusty black suits scamper away from me and slither down the stairs.

  ‘Oh, stop them!’ I gasped. ‘Stop those boys! Wait, won’t you?’

  But nobody else had seen them, it seemed, and they were gone long before I got down to the ground floor.

  I ran back upstairs, frantically clutching the tune in my head, like a live, wriggling fish, and asked Rose Killigrew if there were any manuscripts of Pernel’s music in the museum. Yes, several, she told me, and I whistled her the tune and asked if she knew that one. But she shook her head. She was a music expert, and she had catalogued all the Pernel documents they had. She was quite sure that particular melody was not among them.

  ‘It’s such a lively, distinctive tune, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘Whistle it again!’

  And of course – when I tried – it was clean gone.

  ‘But it was on tape, on the headphones,’ I said. ‘That’s how I caught it again!’

  Rose shook her head. ‘I’ve never heard that tune before,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it isn’t recorded on the headphone tape.’

  She was right. When we played the headphone tape right through, it was not there.

  I went out, heavy with sadness and frustration.

  I would have liked to sit on a bench and watch the gulls swooping and look at the harbour, which was full of slopping, chopping green water for the tide had come up high, and try my hardest to remember the tune.

  But all the benches were covered a hand’s depth in snow, so I went home to Aunt Lal instead.

  She listened to my story with close attention.

  ‘It’s bound to be the Hardistys – it must be their malice and ill-will that is trying to prevent you from helping those twins,’ she said. ‘But you seem to be getting closer to them. At least you saw them.’

  ‘I think it helps me to see them when I hear the tune,’ I said. ‘It seems to fetch them.’

  Mrs Fearon dropped in just then for a cup of tea. She was a fat, comfortable body whose natural expression should have been cheerful. But she looked worried and upset.

  ‘It is so distressing,’ she said. ‘I never could abide the sound of kids crying – when it was my own I always had to pick them up straightaway. Tom used to say I spoiled ours rotten. And now to hear that grizzling and boohooing going on all the time, nighttime and daytime too – it’s more than a body can bear!’

  She glared at Aunt Lal as if it were her fault.

  ‘I know,’ said Aunt Lal. ‘They want their father, poor dears. The puzzle of it is, why doesn’t he hear them? Everybody else seems to.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘Except in dreams.’

  ‘It’s getting everybody down,’ Mrs Fearon went on. ‘The adults are all tired and snappish and the kids quarrel…trade’s bad, tourists aren’t coming…’

  ‘That’s partly because all the streets are dug up,’ Aunt Lal pointed out.

  ‘It’s because the shopkeepers are ratty and unhelpful, too. And those mobs of Tollmen and Hellwethers scrapping and skirmishing all over the streets! Why can’t they go and fight each other up on the moor?’

  ‘There’s more ammunition for them in the town,’ Aunt Lal suggested. ‘Stones and cobbles all ready dug up by the Water Board lying handy for use. Which reminds me, how is your black eye coming, Ned?’

  ‘It’s nothing much,’ I said.

  ‘Talking about things dug up by the Water Board,’ Mrs Fearon said, ‘my hubby found a thing this morning he thought Mr Carne would like to look at…’

  Aunt Lal’s mention of my bruise had reminded me of how I was knocked flat on the quay, and mechanically I stuck my hands in my pockets to check that the key and the lucky two-penny piece were safe.

  They were not there.

  I must go back, I thought at once. At once! To the spot outside The Hornpipe Cat where I was knocked down. That’s where they will be. Might be. In the snow.

  ‘My hubby has a job with the Water Board, you know,’ Mrs Fearon was clacking on, ‘the pay’s not wonderful, what is, these days? His men dug up this box in one of the side-cuts they took off the main trench in Fore Street – kind of a tin box, lawyers’ box he thought it might be, all caked over with rust and muck, maybe got papers inside it – thought Mr Carne would be interested…’

  ‘A box full of papers…?’ Aunt Lal was beginning eagerly, when there was a knock at the door.

  It was Inspector Mutton. ‘You lost a key?’ he said to me.

  ‘Yes. Yes!’

  ‘Ah! Thought it might be yours. Found in the snow, it was, outside The Hornpipe Cat. It’s down at the station, you want to go and claim it.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said. ‘I’ll go directly.’

  But now Uncle Adam came home, clasping carefully in his arms an amazing, crust
ed earthy, rusty object about the size of a small backpack with no particular shape.

  ‘Spread out some newspaper would you, lovey,’ he said to Aunt Lal, who did so in front of the hearth.

  ‘That’s the thing my hubby found in the trench,’ Mrs Fearon said proudly. ‘Did you ever see anything so filthy? I wouldn’t want it on my hearthrug, I can tell you – covered in germs, I daresay – eh, well, best be getting back to make the old man’s tea, he’s grumpy enough as it is…’

  I was torn. I wanted to race down to the police station and pick up my key without loss of time; on the other hand I was ragingly curious about the thing Mr Fearon had found.

  Uncle Adam had scraped all the loose earth off it using a brush and dustpan. Now, with a chisel and a plasterer’s trowel, he was scraping away at the rust.

  ‘It seems to be a metal chest with a handle on top,’ he said. ‘Like those Japanned deed boxes lawyers used to keep wills and documents in. Pass me the oil, will you, Ned; and a steel wool pad, and a skewer. Yes: under the handle I think I can see what might be a keyhole!’

  A keyhole!

  ‘Where’s the police station, Aunt Lal?’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go and pick up my key. I’ve a feeling –’

  ‘That your key might fit the lock? You never know!’ she said. ‘The police station is just off the harbour front, in that narrow lane – Tucking Street – behind the harbourmaster’s office. Only five minues from here. But run – the snow has started again. Here, wear this cap.’ She crammed a blue knitted cap on my head.

  ‘They’ll think he’s one of the Tollmen,’ grunted Uncle Adam, on his knees, scrubbing away.

  ‘Rubbish! But hurry, Ned.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  I RAN ALL the way to the police station. And ahead of me, in the snowy dusk, I thought I could almost see two little figures scooting along. And as I ran, my feet thudding and scrunching on the new snow, I could almost remember the tune:

  ‘This – is – the – song – of – Mat – and – Ben –’

  My bath is as wide as the Bristol Channel…

  At the police station they had a phoned message from Inspector Mutton and were quite ready to hand over the key and the two-penny piece to me if I confirmed that they were mine, which I did.

  Outside it was by now almost dark, and the snow was coming down so hard that it was like walking through a forest.

  I started back the way I had come, but before I had taken half a dozen steps, someone grabbed me from behind – hands clenched on my elbows, two people, I thought – the woolly cap was pulled down hard over my face so that I couldn’t see, and I was forced forward at a headlong pace. My arms were clamped ferociously behind my back. Whoever was thrusting me onward had twice my strength, and I could only just breathe because of the thick fabric muffling my nose and mouth. I stumbled along half-fainting, half-choking, unable to shout for help.

  It was like a nightmare. But it was real. And it went on for too long, for what seemed endless time, but was, I suppose, ten to fifteen minutes – tripping, half-falling, struggling over a rough, snowy, rocky surface.

  Then I was flung down, violently, on the ground, and I suppose did pass out, as I had before on the harbourside. This time for longer.

  When I came round I found myself in complete pitch dark, and I was stupid and dazed with cold. For a while I thought that my hands were tied behind my back and then slowly realised that they were not tied, but just numb and dead, half frozen from being lain on. I pulled myself up shakily, shoved my hands under my chin, inside my jacket, blew on them, tucked them under my arms, and, after a while, gradually a bit of feeling began to come back into them.

  I thought, I must get up, get away from here, or I shall die of cold. But where is here? The ache in my hands and feet was unbearable, I knew that if I didn’t move, walk, jump, get into motion somehow, I might very easily die, as people do on mountains, in avalanches…

  If only my mind would function and help me – but that seemed as frozen and paralysed as every other part of me… Now I remembered being shoved along, at a stumbling run, from the police station, but who had done it? Was it Hellwethers or Tollmen or – a more frightening thought – was it Mark Hardisty and his sister, revisiting St Boan from whatever unrestful unhappy region they now occupied – come back to prevent Carl Pernel from ever finding his children?

  As my mind began sluggishly to move, I could feel the circulation creeping back to my hands and feet.

  Agony, it was. I stretched out my arms and felt around me to find out whether, by touch, I could learn anything about my surroundings. Was I in a cave, a tomb, a cell, a cellar?

  One hand touched rough, splintery planking. So I was in a wooden building, it seemed. But where? I thought we had come some way from the town. And I could hear wind, overhead and all around, besides the distant, regular boom of waves breaking not far off. I must be above ground, then. At first I had been afraid that I was down a mine, somewhere underground. But the sounds of wind and waves were comforting, in a way.

  Then an even more frightening thought came to me. Mark and Alida Hardisty had fallen down a mine hole. I remembered Aunt Lal saying that it was on Cold Point. It used to be uncovered, but they’ve put a shed over it now.

  Could I be in that shed? A shed built around a large, deep hole?

  Shakily, groggily, propping myself against the wall that I could feel with my right hand, I pulled myself up till I was standing. Then I began to move forward very slowly, testing the ground with each foot in turn before I put my weight on it.

  After about four steps I came to a corner, an angle in the wall.

  Then – terrifyingly – when I felt ahead with my left foot, I found nothing. The ground was not there. It was like arriving at a step down, a deep step. How deep I had no means of telling. With extreme caution, I turned myself around and began inching along in the other direction. This way, the wall went on farther – about a dozen steps. Then another corner. Then I felt a post, or joist, an interruption in the wall and a crack in the planking. A door! With painstaking care I fingered the door, up first, as far as I could reach, then down to ground level.

  I found two hinges. So the handle, or latch, must be on the other side. Plank by plank I felt my way across that door as if I were an archaeologist working on an inscription.

  Finally I came to a latch and a keyhole.

  A keyhole!

  I lifted the latch, pushed the door – pulled it as hard as I could – but it didn’t budge, either way. Locked.

  No one but a crazy fool would expect the key I had picked up from the police to fit this keyhole – nevertheless I tried it. And it did fit. The door opened outwards. I edged through, removed the key, and stuffed it back in my pocket. Shut the door again behind me. And stepped out on to rough, tussocky, snowy ground, with wind scouring my face and snow flinging itself against my eyes and mouth.

  Which way to go?

  East, it must be. Cold Point, where the wooden shed covered a pit-shaft, where the two Hardistys had been found with broken necks, lay to the west of St Boan. Therefore, all I had to do was face into the icy wind and keep going.

  Easier said than done.

  Outside the shed, though, it was just fractionally lighter than inside. I could see the rocky outline of the headland and the sea, a pale gleam, down below, and the white breakers curving in on the town beach, ahead, and the West Pier sticking out, like a black finger above them, into the sea. But the cliff path was narrow and rough, and if I should chance to slip there was nothing much to break my fall on to rocks below. And the wind beat and battered against me, making it hard to go forward steadily, pushing me off balance.

  Oddly enough, what I felt most was lonely.

  If only I had someone to talk to.

  The thought that at least twenty minutes of this slow, staggering progress lay ahead of me before I reached the town was so daunting that half a dozen times I was on the point of just slumping down in a tussock of snowy heather and giving up.<
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  But then, through the whine of the wind, I felt I was listening to a voice that said:

  I was lonely too. Keep going.

  You were lonely.

  Very lonely. Everybody hated me. When I walked out of doors people’s faces were cold and ugly with hate and scorn. Because they said I had let my children die.

  But couldn’t you tell them that was not true?

  They refused to believe me. Because, where were the children? They said I cared for nothing but my music. They made me into an outcast.

  How terrible.

  Yes, it was terrible. But you can help me now.

  How?

  Find the boys. Tell them that I am waiting for them. That, once we are together, nothing will matter.

  How can I find them?

  Sing. Sing my song. Then they will hear, then they will know who sent you, where you come from.

  But how can I remember the song?

  Listen to the wind, the wind in the key of D. The key, the key…

  His light, cold hand caught hold of mine, and all the way along the cliff path he led me – steadily, safely, against knifing wind, against cutting snow – while his music threaded the howl of the gale and made the walk ahead seem within my power.

  When the lights of the town began to prickle out dimly through the snow and vapour, Pernel’s faint cold grasp melted away. He was gone, and the music was gone too. With all my strength I tried to keep the tune in my head, but it melted like snowflakes…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  INSPECTOR MUTTON WAS at Uncle Adam’s house when I got back.

  ‘Where have you been? What happened to you?’ they all shouted at me. They sounded angry, not welcoming. But then Aunt Lal, seeing the state I was in, relented and took me off to the kitchen for a drink of hot milk and ginger and a rub-down.