The Secrets of the Lake

by Liz Trenow

  Why hadn’t he told her about his plan?

  The shame floods back: how she’d resented him, dismissing his ideas as silly or childish. She can hear herself shouting at him: Go away and stop bothering me and Do it your way, if you think you’re so clever. Siblings say such things to each other every day, but Jimmy couldn’t answer back because he didn’t have the words. The cruelty was all one-way. No wonder he’d decided not to tell her.

  Molly grips the arms of her chair, trying to anchor herself in the present, and the reassuring sight of Bella returning with a tea tray helps.

  ‘Oh, Mum! Look, here’s a tissue. Dry your eyes and have a cuppa. We can talk about it.’

  Suddenly Molly knows what she has to do. ‘I need to go back, Bella. To Eli’s hut.’

  ‘You said it’d all gone, Mum. Burned to the ground seventy years ago. There won’t be anything left. Perhaps we ought to tell the police? Let them investigate.’

  ‘No!’ Molly almost shouts. ‘I don’t want them involved. But I need to go back to the glade. To ask him.’

  ‘Ask who?’

  ‘Jimmy.’

  She’s being illogical, of course; it’s ridiculous. But Bella calmly pours the tea and says, ‘If that’s what you want, Mum, we’ll try to make it happen.’

  Molly knows it is impossible. How is she to get down a woodland path when she can only shuffle twenty steps with a walking frame? As Bella leaves, she promises to make what she calls a ‘recce’.

  A few days later she telephones to say that the route is reasonably wheelchair-friendly, but only up to a certain point. After that, the track is narrow and full of tree roots. Besides which, she says, she could find no trace of any hut anywhere.

  But Molly has set her heart on going.

  Bella promises to try and get her there. ‘By hook or by crook, Mum.’

  ‘You never say that. It’s one of my phrases.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind me stealing it?’

  ‘Just so long as you get us there somehow, my darling.’

  26

  The following Sunday, Bella arrives with Lewis, a strapping lad of sixteen who suffers from terrible acne but is an ace sportsman.

  ‘No football this weekend?’ Molly says.

  ‘Nah,’ he grunts. ‘Training pitch is being dug up. Going to make it all-weather.’

  ‘Lewis has got an idea,’ Bella says, nudging him. ‘Go on, tell your gran.’

  ‘You know those firemen’s-chair thingies,’ he says, fingering a spot on his chin, ‘they use for evacuation?’

  Molly nods, although she hasn’t really got a clue.

  ‘Dad says we can borrow one from the fire station.’

  A chair? How’s that going to work, she wonders? But he’s still talking.

  ‘He’s going to come too. Reckons we can manage it, easy, between us. Over the bits where the wheelchair won’t go.’

  She glances at Bella. Her daughter’s divorce was acrimonious – he’s married to the ruddy fire service, she used to complain – but as the years have gone by, they have stayed civil for Lewis’s sake. ‘Andy’s going to help us? That’s kind.’

  ‘He’s always been fond of you,’ her daughter says quietly.

  ‘Well, thank you, Lewis. If you really think it’s going to work, we’ll give it a go, shall we?’

  Two weeks later, Molly finds herself being bumped along that familiar path and down the slope. The bluebells are nearly over now, but they seem to have been even more widespread than she remembers.

  Halfway down, Bella shouts, ‘There it is,’ and the little procession draws to a halt. She leans down to her mother’s level and points. ‘Look – between the trees, Mum.’

  Molly peers. At first she can’t see beyond the greenery but then, between their trunks, she can just catch a glimpse of something white in the far distance. She tilts her head and waits for her eyes to adjust. Slowly a shape comes into focus.

  ‘Good Lord. I see it now. Look at that. It’s the outline of a giant dragon. Carved into the hillside. Whoever put that there, do you think?’

  ‘Apparently it was a millennium project, organised by the landowner.’

  ‘Now that’s what I call a real dragon,’ Molly says.

  It has a fine set of wings and a long, curly tail and is apparently breathing fire. Perhaps this is how the crocodile ended up, proudly taking her place as a proper grown-up dragon. One day she might write the final chapter for Jimmy’s book. But she will never offer it to her publisher – it’s too personal. It is her brother’s special story.

  ‘I think that’s just marvellous,’ she says, as they resume their slow procession down the path. They reach the place where the stile used to be, but there is now a gate, which is easier to negotiate, although after that the path narrows and the wheelchair can go no further.

  ‘You’re light as a feather, Molly,’ Andy exclaims, hardly breaking breath as they lift her in the fireman’s chair. It is surprisingly comfortable. She is reclined backwards at about forty-five degrees and feels positively regal, like a queen in her sedan, or an Indian maharajah in his howdah – but perhaps that was only for elephants? Andy’s carrying the front of the chair with his back to her, and she can see the muscles rippling reassuringly beneath his T-shirt. Keeping fit is a religion for her former son-in-law, and essential for his job as a fireman. Lewis, who is behind her, seems to be doing fine, too.

  After a few minutes they reach the junction – at least that’s what Bella seems to think, although what used to be the path to Eli’s hut is now almost completely overgrown. Andy takes from his backpack a fireman’s axe and a lethal-looking machete and they start hacking at the brambles and saplings, following the trail of small rocks that Eli laid there all those years ago to mark his way at night-time. All the whitewash has gone now, of course, but the rocks lead up the slope to a grove of shrubby trees that are slightly smaller than those around them. This must have been Eli’s glade.

  They set Molly down and she stays in the fireman’s chair while Andy and Lewis begin to clear away the bracken and brambles. Bella takes out a flask of tea and some biscuits from her backpack, and Molly remembers the flapjacks Eli used to cook on his little pot-bellied stove, and the sweet tea he served in enamel mugs that burned your lips.

  Resuming work after tea, Lewis stubs his toe and lets out a curse that no sixteen-year-old boy should know, in Molly’s opinion. He continues hacking until he’s cleared the undergrowth to reveal the curve of something solid stuck in the ground, heavy and immovable. Something metal . . .

  ‘It’s the wheel,’ she exclaims. ‘Of the shepherd’s hut.’

  ‘Then we’re in the right place, Gran?’

  ‘Definitely,’ she says. ‘Keep going.’

  After a few moments half of the wheel has been revealed, lying at forty-five degrees into the ground. As Lewis digs some more, she hears something rattling.

  ‘Whatever’s that?’

  ‘Some kind of chain . . .’ Kit’s chain. In the rucksack. What if Jimmy took it?

  The world goes pale and the sound of birdsong seems to fade, and then blackness.

  When she opens her eyes Molly finds herself in the back of an ambulance.

  ‘You gave us such a fright,’ Bella says. ‘They say it probably isn’t anything too serious, but when you passed out, it took you such a long time to come round and you were so confused. We thought it better to be safe than sorry.’

  The paramedic looms over her, fiddling with wires and other bits of apparatus they have attached to her.

  ‘Hello, Miss Goddard,’ he says. ‘You had us a little worried there for a while. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Perfectly fine,’ she says, struggling to pronounce the words clearly because her tongue seems to be stuck to the roof of her mouth and her lips don’t move very well. ‘Can I have some water?’

  They take her to hospital anyway and, after a very long wait and loads of tests, she’s declared fit to go home.

  Next morning Bella is t
here in her bungalow, sleepy and tousled, bringing her a cup of tea in bed.

  ‘You stayed the night?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave you alone, could I? Not after that. The sofa is surprisingly comfortable.’ Bella sits down on the bed. ‘That was quite a day yesterday, wasn’t it? I’m sorry it all got a bit too much for you.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. It was what I wanted, remember. You got me there, my darling, and I’m very grateful. But what happened?’

  ‘Lewis found the chain.’

  Ah, yes, of course. That terrible clinking sound.

  ‘Do you suppose Jimmy really . . .?’ Bella asks.

  Molly shakes her head. ‘I don’t think it’s likely, my darling. It was probably the chain Eli used for Sarge.’ She sighs. ‘It’s all so long ago.’

  ‘Lewis also found this.’ Bella reaches into her pocket and brings out a small piece of white porcelain tube. Molly weighs it in her hand, remembering the long, curved stem it was once part of, the small round bowl that was constantly refilled and relit, and the clouds of smoke that really did deter gnats.

  ‘It’s a piece of clay pipe. Thank you, my darling. And please thank Lewis. I shall treasure it. It’ll help me remember Eli and the good times we had, bless his poor, kind soul.’

  A month passes and Molly receives a letter from Kit, in spidery old-man’s writing, saying how much he enjoyed meeting her again after all these years and enclosing a photograph of Chris’s two children, whom he considers his ‘grandkids’. They are lanky teenage boys, both in sports kit, with dark floppy hair and high colour to their cheekbones: miniature versions of their great-uncle at the same age.

  She writes back, sending a photograph of Lewis, who is nothing like her, of course, but of whom she is immensely proud, she says. And she tells Kit something of their visit to Eli’s glade, and finding the wheel and the piece of clay pipe.

  It is while she is writing about Eli that the idea comes to her. He killed himself out of desperation and shame, and she has no idea where he was buried. But Eli was a true countryman and loved that woodland; he taught her and Jimmy to love it too. And he fought a lonely battle, over several years, to save the land from being sold and developed. The woodland is still there, a testament to his success. Thanks to him, local people can still walk in those woods, enjoying the snowdrops and bluebells, the birdsong and the peace. She would love to see Eli’s contribution recognised, his name remembered.

  So she starts another letter: Dear Vicar. She asks him who looks after the woodland these days, and how the work is funded. Would she be able to make a contribution, she asks? After all, international publishing success has brought greater riches than she could ever have imagined and, even after generous gifts to Bella and her grandson, and a large annual donation to the Down’s Syndrome Association, Molly has more money in the bank than she will ever be able to spend in her lifetime.

  Within a week she is visited by the new vicar – a charming middle-aged woman with curly grey hair, who strongly reminds her of Aunt Mary – accompanied by the parish clerk of Wormley, an older man who walks with two sticks.

  Over tea and biscuits, they probe her gently about what she has in mind. She tells them about Eli – although she skips over the details of her own tragedy, and how Eli died. ‘He was an eccentric old boy who lived in a shepherd’s hut in the woods for at least a decade,’ she says. ‘And he taught me and my brother how to love nature.’

  By the time they leave, it has been agreed that they will take the proposal to the parish council: a proper path through the woodland, which might – if they agree – be waymarked as ‘Eli Chadwick Way’, with benches placed at appropriate points, signboards with information about flora and fauna and, most important of all, a fund to maintain the woodland, which will be known as the Jimmy Goddard Bequest.

  After they have gone, Molly finds herself smiling. She takes her walking frame and goes to the chest of drawers in the bedroom, leaning down with difficulty to retrieve, behind a pile of unworn and probably now moth-eaten woollen jumpers, the small box in which her old papers are stored. The sticky tape has long since lost its stick, the box is falling apart, but she manages to carry it back to the kitchen table where she sits and, with heart pumping, opens the lid.

  Here are long-forgotten letters; the first commission of a story; a particularly poignant letter from a young fan with Down’s syndrome; a photograph of herself with Jimmy and Pa, taken by Miss Calver when they first arrived in the village, and one of Pa and Mum on their wedding day. Also a handkerchief with the initials CMW from that stormy night, which she must have failed to return. Molly still doesn’t know what the M stands for – she will ask Kit next time she writes. She expects to cry, but strangely enough she finds these small items comforting.

  And there, at the bottom, is The Ugly Dragon: pages torn from a lined notebook and stitched together with string between cardboard covers. She remembers how tough it was, pushing the thick needle through so many pages, how she pricked her finger and, yes, here it still is, the stain of her blood.

  Outside the daylight is fading; she has to switch on the light to read, although it doesn’t take long. She sits back and folds her arms. They aren’t that bad, these stories, for the first attempts of a fifteen-year-old. She can read clearly between the words the love she had for her brother, as well as the frustration she felt at having to look after him. She can sense the longing of a young woman in love, believing herself to be on the brink of adulthood. And she can feel, almost palpably, how the writer was trying to make sense of the anxiety and confusion around her, of a village riven with mistrust and hidden, malign forces.

  The stories could do with some serious editing, of course. An introduction, and maybe a final chapter. She’s always sworn she would never offer it to her publisher, but perhaps now is the right moment, after all this time? It will, of course, be dedicated, as are all her books, simply ‘To Jimmy’.

  A month later something entirely unexpected happens. The police return. It seems Bella has ignored Molly’s instruction and written to them anyway, saying she has new evidence to suggest that a line of enquiry into Jimmy’s disappearance was never properly pursued. Knowing Bella, Molly suspects that it was probably a rather forceful letter, leaving them no option but to act, for fear of a future complaint. And act they did, with surprising speed. A couple of coppers were despatched to do a search of the area around the hut, and they’ve found something they want to show Molly.

  ‘Something that might . . .?’ she asks, scarcely able to catch her breath.

  As the policewoman holds out the transparent plastic bag, Molly gasps. Inside it is a small rectangle of flat metal, barely an inch long, so rusted that it is impossible to tell whether anything had ever been inscribed on it. But from the size and shape, and the position of the hole in one end, Molly knows at once what it is.

  She holds it to her heart, and tries to suck in a breath. The colours in the room around her have blanched, all sounds are muffled, the air is heavy as though a fog has somehow descended, and everyone else seems far away, a series of insubstantial shapes.

  ‘Mum, are you all right?’ She feels Bella’s arm around her, pulling her back to the present. ‘What is it? Do you recognise it?’

  Her throat is tight, she cannot speak. Someone offers a glass of water, which helps.

  ‘It’s Jimmy’s,’ she croaks. ‘The identity tag with his name and address on it. In case he got lost.’

  ‘Oh my Lord,’ Bella says. ‘Does this mean he died in the fire?’

  They both look at the police, who look at each other. After some hesitation, the man starts, ‘It might indicate that scenario, Miss Browning. But it could have been lost there at some other time, previous to his disappearance.’

  He turns to Molly and says, quite gently, ‘It’s a long time ago, Ms Goddard, but do you recall your brother losing this, erm, identity tag at any point beforehand?’

  She shakes her head, unsure whether to be horrified or somehow, in the st
rangest way, relieved.

  ‘But we understand that you and your brother were frequent visitors to this hut, before it burned down?’

  She nods.

  ‘Then I suppose we may never have absolute proof,’ he says, measuring his words carefully.

  ‘Did you find anything else, like . . .’ Bella hesitates.

  ‘No, madam. If you are referring to human remains, no. Nothing else. And we did take a very good look, let me assure you.’

  Molly suddenly knows. ‘I don’t want you to go digging around any more, thank you very much,’ she says, loudly and firmly. ‘What good would it do? We’ll never find out who was responsible, and whoever it was will be long dead by now. Let my brother rest in peace.’

  She takes out the piece of metal from its plastic envelope and cups it in her folded hands. A little sob escapes from her throat. They will never be certain, of course, and somehow she doesn’t really feel the need for certainty any more. It is enough to know that she is holding something of Jimmy; something that will always stay with her.

  ‘Will you bury this with me when I go, sweetheart? And Eli’s clay pipe?’

  ‘We will, Mum. We most certainly will.’

  Something is different, now. A weight has been lifted, but it takes Molly a few moments to identify it. The knot in her stomach has finally disappeared.

  THE UGLY DRAGON

  by Molly Goddard

  Chapter 7: Jimmy takes a ride

  The next time Jimmy went to the lake the crocodile was nowhere to be seen. As usual, he called, and rustled the paper bag – he’d brought fruitcake, this time. Then he waited, watching a family of ducks trailing across the water in an unruly line and listening to the pigeons cooing in the woods behind him. It was a perfect day, with little clouds scudding across a deep-blue sky, reflected on the still surface of the water below.

  At last she appeared, or at least he thought it was her. To be honest he wasn’t sure at first, because she looked so different. In the few days since he’d last seen her, her legs seemed to have grown, her tail was long and curly and on her back, either side of the lumpy ridge, were two new humps.