by Pauline Fisk
Mad Dog hung his head. ‘If I got lost, it was my own fault, not the school’s or anybody else’s,’ he said.
‘So that’s what you call it?’ Uncle said. ‘Getting lost.’
‘I don’t know what else to call it,’ Mad Dog said.
‘Try mucking about. Try not listening to your teacher. Try wandering off and doing the opposite of what you’re told,’ Uncle said.
He collected Mad Dog’s belongings from the house, thanked the sisters for all they’d done and frog-marched him out to the car. But at the last minute, instead of getting into it, Mad Dog hung back. He wanted to go home – of course he did, no matter how much trouble he was in. But he didn’t want to leave this peaceful garden where he had felt safe.
But he had no choice. Uncle packed him into the car and the sisters came and stood round it, wishing him all the best. One of them gave Uncle directions for a short cut back over the mountain, avoiding the main pass road, and the other seized the opportunity of Uncle’s being distracted to lean through the open window and tell Mad Dog that Plynlimon might be full of tricks, but it was a wonderful mountain too.
‘Some people go up there and never feel a thing,’ she said in a low voice, as if for his ears alone. ‘But some go up there and Plynlimon comes alive for them. And that’s what happened to you, isn’t it? Well, there’s a treasure on that mountain, if you’re brave enough to look for it. You mark my words. It’s up there, waiting to be found.’
20
Answers for Elvis
When Mad Dog got home, Uncle wasn’t the only one who was furious. Everyone was furious, right down to Aunty’s kitchen ladies, Ruth and Kathleen, who’d been up with her all night long, making drinks and manning the phones.
Even Elvis was furious, leaping out and punching Mad Dog in the stomach the moment he climbed out of Uncle’s car, as if to punish him for all he’d put him through. Then, no sooner had they got into the house, than Mrs Heligan phoned up, seeming to think Mad Dog had done the whole thing deliberately to get at her.
Even the police had to be faced, who wanted to get Mad Dog’s story straight and tell him how much the search for him had cost.
Then finally Aunty – who was rarely a woman lost for words – told Mad Dog what she thought of him. ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’ she said for the whole world to hear, including her guests. ‘How much pain and grief you’ve caused? How much trouble you’ve put people to? Really Ryan, what were you thinking of? HOW DARE YOU PULL A STUNT LIKE THAT?’
Mad Dog baulked at that word stunt. He knew he’d behaved thoughtlessly, but that was all it had been, and it would have been nice if Aunty could have been pleased to have him back. Getting lost wasn’t something he’d done on purpose to cause a fuss. He tried explaining this, but Aunty said that, if it hadn’t been on purpose, how else would he describe it?
‘I suppose your legs just took off on their own!’ she said. ‘And Grendel’s legs along with you. Because this isn’t only about you, is it? She got lost as well, and not only have we had our own fears to contend with but we’ve had Grendel’s father breathing fire all over us, threatening what he’d do if you as much as harmed a hair of his princess’s head!’
For days after that, Mad Dog kept trying to find ways to say sorry, but nobody seemed interested. Elvis’s fear of losing him had turned into a total refusal to have anything to do with him. Aunty said she’d got no time for apologies because she had a business to run. Uncle said that words were cheap.
Mad Dog even tried apologising to Ruth and Kathleen, in the hope that they at least could find it in their hearts to show a bit of sympathy. But they were no more impressed than anybody else. ‘You think you’re in trouble now,’ they said. ‘But you wait until your school gets hold of you. There’ll be hell to pay when you get back!’
They were right. Mad Dog only had to walk across the playground to find himself a major spectacle. Grendel and her gang glared at him as if he were evil incarnate. Mad Dog shuddered at the memory of their night together and wondered what she’d told her friends. Certainly, Luke, Hippie and Rhys teased him mercilessly about his ‘sweetheart’ and blew kisses at him every time Grendel was around.
Everybody had it in for him. Teachers stared coldly at him. The head teacher had him in his office and tore him off a strip with Aunty and Uncle present. Even a representative of the search-and-rescue services came into school to tell a special assembly what they thought of little boys who went wandering off by themselves on lonely mountains. Afterwards the representative had words in private with Mad Dog, and then words with Mrs Heligan too, who came out looking furious. The talk around the school was that her job was on the line.
Nobody, however, was as furious as Mrs Anwen Jones. Lovely Mrs Anwen Jones – Mad Dog’s favourite teacher ever, who might have had food poisoning on the day in question, but had put hours of careful thought into that trip, and was distraught about the way things had turned out. Around school, people said there’d been a massive bust-up between her and Mrs Heligan, and that they weren’t talking any more.
But she certainly had plenty to say to Mad Dog. ‘That trip was meant to be a treat,’ she said in a controlled but very scary voice, when she got him on his own. ‘But you had to go and mess it up, didn’t you? One small boy doing his own thing, and the whole thing’s ruined for everybody else! Well, Ryan Lewis, I want you to know that if you as much as blink without permission from now until the end of term, you’re for it.’
As if to give Mad Dog a foretaste of what being for it meant, Mrs Anwen Jones slapped him in detention for the next week and said he was lucky not to be suspended. Here he was forced to write an account of what had happened on the mountain, where he’d gone wrong and why he’d never do it again. Then he had to copy it out, and then copy it again. Drafting was what Mrs Anwen Jones called it – an important exercise in the National Curriculum, and he should thank her for giving him the chance to improve his skills. But Mad Dog had a string of other words for it, none of which were in the National Curriculum, and none of which were repeatable.
On the last day of what was not only his last term but his whole life in that school, Mad Dog handed in his efforts. By lunchtime, Mrs Anwen Jones had it back to him with ‘sloppy work – untidy handwriting – bad spelling – you’ll have to pull your socks up when you start at the comprehensive’ written all over it.
It was a far cry from the ticks on Mad Dog’s Rheidol project, and hardly the way he’d imagined saying goodbye to his favourite teacher. For the rest of the day, he skulked around pretending he couldn’t see the way that people were looking at him. Ever since coming back off the mountain, he’d been a marked man, and this last day was no different.
The day ended with a leavers’ service which everybody attended. Afterwards it was a relief to get away. The rest of the class was crying, hugging each other, giving presents and taking photographs. But Mad Dog got into Aunty’s car without looking at anybody, and didn’t even relent when Mrs Anwen Jones came over and said, ‘All the best then, Ryan.’
‘Thanks,’ he muttered, staring straight ahead of him. Aunty drove away and he didn’t look back, not even once.
For days after that, Mad Dog skulked around the vardo, which wasn’t the most exciting place to spend a summer holiday but was better than school. Most of his time was spent on an old PlayStation that Uncle had brought home from work in the harbour office. Mad Dog had never shown the slightest interest in computer games before, but now he took to the PlayStation like a holed boat to a dry dock. With a screen in front of him and a controller in his hand, he didn’t have to think about anything, least of all what had really happened up there on Plynlimon.
At night-time however, in the dark, with nothing to distract Mad Dog, the whole thing would come creeping back. Had something really chased him up there on the mountain? And, if not, why the panic? And why had that ruined cottage scared him so much? And that crossroads between valleys – why, when he’d turned back, had it looked so sho
ckingly familiar?
Even the good bits about Plynlimon left Mad Dog with questions. Turquoise gadflies, bright pink fox-gloves and strings of ponds were all very well but why had he found himself so captivated by them? Why so easily had they cast their spell? And his ffon – the way he’d lost it and it had turned up again? What had that all been about? And that thing Grendel said about the light – what had that been about?
Mad Dog had no answers, and he wished the questions would go away. One thing was for certain, though – the world beyond his computer screen was a dangerous place, and it was best to stay indoors where it was safe.
Hardly surprisingly, it turned out to be a long summer holiday. Jobs around the hotel shaped a fair part of it, and the PlayStation and television shaped the rest. Mad Dog’s friends phoned, apologising for making fun of him and trying to persuade him to come down and play. Aunty’s sisters phoned as well. Even though they hardly talked to Aunty any more, they still wanted Mad Dog to come and play, and said their sons were missing him. But Aunty said he wouldn’t come, and she wasn’t being awkward. It was true.
At some point during the holidays, Mad Dog wrote to the Ingram sisters thanking them for what they’d done for him and sending back their clothes. He never thought he’d hear from them again, and didn’t particularly want to either, but a letter came straight back. It didn’t say much, but it smelt of flowers and brought back memories of being rescued and feeling safe. He remembered sitting in the sisters’ garden, lapping up the sunshine and drinking amber tea, and he remembered what they’d said about treasure on Plynlimon and people finding it if they were brave enough.
There was nothing brave about hiding in a caravan, but Mad Dog threw away the sisters’ letter, telling himself that he didn’t want to think about things like treasure, and being brave and mountains coming alive. If he never saw Plynlimon again it would be too soon for him, and the same went for the River Rheidol. He mightn’t know for sure what river had flowed through that crossroad between the valleys, but he only had to think about it to not want to see the Rheidol ever again. It didn’t feel like a friend any more. It didn’t feel safe. Once there’d been comfort in the idea of one river running through Mad Dog’s life. But Mad Dog had lost his faith in rivers. If he never saw one again, it would have been too soon.
So Mad Dog kept out of the way of the Rheidol. An entire summer holiday went by without him going down to it even once. But the questions persisted, no matter what he did. His time on Plynlimon Mountain had unlocked something in him from which he couldn’t escape.
Sometimes Mad Dog felt as if he was standing on the edge of a precipice with every unanswered question and forgotten memory in his entire life on the other side. ‘Why can’t I just live an ordinary life?’ he asked himself one day. ‘You know, wake up, get up, go out to play, come in again, have a good time, never think too much, never question things, simply just – oh, I don’t know, just be? Why’s my life got to be such a mystery?’
Mad Dog stared down at his ffon. Its intricately engraved topknot stared back at him with its moons, stars and bundle of letters spelling out a message that he’d never understood. WAOOC. Yet another mystery that he’d failed to unlock! Mad Dog’s eyes ran over the letters, trying to work them out. Maybe they were unreadable because they had no meaning. Maybe they were just a bunch of shapes, and didn’t spell out anything and there was nothing to unlock.
Mad Dog fetched a piece of paper and tried again, mixing up the letters to see if something new emerged. He expected nothing, but it was worth a try. If he could only crack this one small code, he told himself, then maybe he could crack some of the bigger mysteries in his life. Maybe one would lead him to the next, in a chain effect.
But WOOAC meant no more to him than AWOOC, WAOCO, CAOOW, CWOOA, OWAOC or any other combination that Mad Dog came up with. And giving the letters numbers made no difference either. Even treating the word as a picture and standing it every way round, including on its head, made no difference.
‘What are you doing?’ Elvis said.
He’d come in from playing at a friend’s house down in the village. Mad Dog hardly ever saw him any more, and it wasn’t just because Elvis was still upset with him for getting lost. Devil’s Bridge was his home now. He had his own friends and they had their dens. He never played with Mad Dog, or hung around with him or talked about their life at No. 3. And he definitely never talked about their old life before No. 3.
‘I’m trying to work out what this means,’ Mad Dog said, thrusting his ffon at Elvis.
Elvis pushed it back. ‘Why would I be interested in that old thing?’ he said.
Mad Dog felt his hackles rising. ‘It’s not an old thing,’ he said. ‘It’s a message from our parents.’
Elvis shrugged. ‘So what?’ he said.
Mad Dog was shocked. ‘You shouldn’t talk like that. Not about our parents. Our parents loved us, and you ought to give them some respect.’
Elvis looked unimpressed. ‘Where are they now?’ he said. ‘I can’t respect someone I’ve never met.’
‘They had to go away,’ Mad Dog said.
‘Why did they do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
Elvis shrugged again, as if to say there you are, and stomped off, leaving Mad Dog frustrated at his lack of interest. But one day things would change, he knew. His brother would grow up, and then he’d want to know everything. Who their parents were. What had happened to them. Where they’d come from. Why they had abandoned them.
He wouldn’t always walk away. And if Mad Dog – who’d been there at the time, and lived through it all – didn’t have the answers, then his brother would want to know why.
Part IV
The Vasty Deep
21
Returning to Plynlimon
Halfway through August, the weather turned nasty. A series of squally storms hit Devil’s Bridge and there was thunder at night and rain every day. Hotel guests turned tetchy, and Aunty said that as far as she was concerned her honeymoon period in the hotel business was definitely over. Complaints were made about stupid things that hadn’t bothered guests before, and it wasn’t helped by the kitchen ladies making a series of silly blunders, like serving new potatoes uncooked to table and putting desserts that were meant for the cooler in the warming oven instead.
Even out in the vardo, Mad Dog caught the general mood of tetchiness. He’d sit at the window, staring at the back of the hotel and watching rain coming down in sheets, telling himself that he hated Devil’s Bridge and wishing that he was back at No. 3. When Aunty came in, he’d snap at her. When Uncle tried to talk to him, he wouldn’t answer. When Elvis looked his way, he’d say, ‘What are you staring at? Haven’t you got something better to do with your time?’
The feeling around the family was that Mad Dog was turning adolescent and couldn’t help himself. But if his age was getting to him, it certainly wasn’t the only thing. For starters there was a new school to worry about, beginning in a few weeks’ time. And then there were all those questions about his past lodged inside Mad Dog’s head.
Even when the rain clouds blew away, his mood stayed sour and grumpy. All over Devil’s Bridge, wet roads steamed in the sunshine, trees drip-dried and Aunty’s guests cheered up and started venturing outside. Suddenly the landscape they’d thought so grey and lacklustre shone like a jewel that they wanted to wear.
‘Thank God for that!’ said Aunty, who’d had enough of guests under her feet all day long. ‘They’ve gone at last!’
She suggested that Mad Dog might like to do the same, instead of moping around the vardo all day and sitting up late watching rubbish on the telly. Why didn’t he play with the children in the village? It would do him good, she said, and some of them would be going to the same comprehensive in the autumn, so it would be a chance to make friends.
But Mad Dog moped around indoors, ignoring all Aunty’s advice. The only place where he felt truly safe was inside the vardo where the outside world couldn’
t get at him. Late-night horror movies on the telly were as nothing compared to leaves drying on trees or the smell of grass warming up. Mad Dog didn’t want to see open hilltops any more, or forests, or the river glinting like gold down in the bottom of the gorge. These things were part of a world that scared him too much.
Even that evening, when the guests came out into the garden to eat beneath the rising moon, Mad Dog didn’t want to go outside. Instead he shut his window, drew his curtains, built himself a brand new barricade, as if danger was imminent, and climbed into his bed. Not that he could get to sleep. The night was muggy, and the vardo was stuffy at the best of times. Even later, after Aunty and Uncle had come to bed, the vardo was still as hot as a tin can.
In the end, Mad Dog got up to fetch a glass of water and open a couple of windows. He opened the front door as well, and the moon was shining over the hotel. It was as round and perfect as a cup of milk, and its silvery light flooded across the garden.
After weeks indoors, its impact was instant and overwhelming. Mad Dog stood watching patterns of light and shade stretching down the lawn, across the road and into the wood. And it was in those moments that he was lost.
Suddenly, scarcely knowing what he was doing, Mad Dog found himself flinging on clothes, struggling into trainers and heading out into the moonlight. He never meant to go any further than the edge of the garden – but that wasn’t how things ended up.
When Mad Dog reached the edge of the garden, the road beyond it looked like a silver river calling him away. The wood looked silver too, its paths mosaics of light and shade. Mad Dog started down them without a second thought. When he reached the bottom of the valley and saw the river in front of him, he tore off his trainers, strung them round his neck and waded straight in.
No danger was down here in the wood. There was nothing to scare him. Why he’d stayed indoors all summer long, he didn’t know. Feeling ridiculous for every minute he’d wasted in the vardo, Mad Dog started heading upstream.
