Blow the House Down

by John Blackburn

  The news that the full quantity of the missing Terradyte had been recovered affected people in various ways. Mallory and his colleagues on the Housing Committee were at first undecided what to do. Dealer was still adamant that his fears were justified and demanded time to pursue the inquiries. If Dealer was right, the Heights remained in jeopardy, but Strand’s attitude had made any excuse based upon a fault in structure or design impossible. They therefore attempted to fob the public off with a statement that the search had necessitated some minor damage and the building could not be reoccupied till it was made good.

  That did not satisfy many people. But Strand chuckled when he read it, John Forest hummed happily and slipped a sheet of foolscap into his typewriter, Mr N’genza smiled one of his ape-­like smiles. One who felt really pleased was Jack Baxter.

  ‘Won’t be long now, lass. Just a few panels and so on will have been removed; that’s all.’ He gave Hilda’s ample backside an affectionate pat as they strolled through the little park surrounding the municipal buildings. ‘They’ll have the place shipshape before next week’s out, and then we’ll be back in a proper home again, eh, luv?’

  ‘Home.’ Hilda winced at the word. She had had a bad dream last night and all her early anxieties were returning. Had a series of warnings been given, she wondered? Was there a curse on the towers? What that lass at the town hall had seen in the wind tunnel might have been explained, but then there had been the lunatic with his bomb, and her own dream had appeared so real. Had God sent it to tell her that Mallory Heights was unsafe?

  In the dream she had been a child again. She was lying in bed, and there was a coal fire facing her. Crouched in a chair before the fire sat her grandmother, old and bent and witchlike, telling the fairy story that Hilda had tried to put out of her mind. The tale of the Skulda, the great sea dragon that lay sleeping beyond Billon Tor. But when sin came to the land, the Skulda awoke. The old voice droned on and on and grew fainter, the embers dwindled and then there was no light, no sound, and she was quite alone in pitch darkness, till the other sounds came. Rain on the windows, the curtains rustling, the moan of the wind over Billon Tor, rising and howling as it grew closer till Hilda, the child, had buried her head under the blankets.

  But there was no escape from the dragon. The house had trembled beneath his fury, her bed bucked like a horse, and somewhere far away in the distance, even louder than Skulda’s voice, she heard the crash of a high building falling.

  13

  ‘What is your considered opinion, Miss Fane?’ It was three o’clock on Saturday afternoon and in two hours’ time the march on Fentor Park was due to commence. Mr Samuel Fawkes stood before the window of his antiquarian bookshop, ‘The Learned Lion’, cynically watching a party of British Maoists file down Red Lion Street to their assembly point. ‘Are they high-­minded young citizens bent on carving a future for this “best of all possible worlds”, as Voltaire has it, or depraved hooligans?’

  ‘A mixture of both, I imagine. The majority are probably perfectly decent young people, but it’s always the louts and fanatics who get the publicity on these demonstrations.’

  ‘How true, dear lady. A good murder is always news, a saintly action rarely makes the headlines.’ He nodded and pointed up at the towers of Mallory Heights. ‘And what are they? Symbols of goodwill or temples of evil, as that poor lunatic believed; Babylon the great city of the Beast?

  ‘Ah, don’t worry.’ Fawkes tapped his lips with a grimy fingernail. ‘Though mum’s the word, I have friends at court.’ Fawkes’s daughter had married a C.I.D. sergeant, and he was an industrious correspondent to the local papers, which endeared him to their editors who were often short of material. Also, people feel free to talk in bookshops and not much happened in Randel­wyck without his hearing about it.

  ‘Yes, I know about the Baylis business. He was a customer of mine, as it happens, though not a valued one; collected sermons and Victorian tracts and there’s no money in that. Because of our acquaintanceship I was summoned to the police station yesterday and again this morning and grilled – I think that is the word – by a most unpleasant intelligence officer, who kept asking if Baylis had ever expressed strong religious or racialist views to me and whether I considered him to have been mentally ill. I said no to the first question and yes to the second, with the rider that most book browsers are two-­thirds round the bend, anyway. Present company excepted, of course.

  ‘But come in and have a chat, my dear.’ Janet collected ‘modern firsts’ and was a valued customer. Fawkes had hurried out when he saw her passing. ‘The sight of dedicated humanity en masse is horribly depressing.’

  He grimaced at the Maoists. They looked orderly and well-­behaved, but the police were obviously expecting trouble and a squad was bringing up their rear: black uniforms contrasting with the garish clothes of the marchers.

  ‘Only for a few minutes, then.’ Janet was rather fond of Fawkes, but as usual she felt a slight twinge of guilt while entering his gloomy shop which smelled strongly of pipe smoke and musty leather. Samuel Fawkes was an eager champion of ancient monuments and rural amenities, and his press correspondence in their defence made him a thorn in the flesh of her superiors. After the old Moot Hall was demolished he had described the council as ‘Wanton Vandals’. When a motorway across the moors was proposed, Joe Pinter had been furious to read that he was ‘a dull, soulless and uneducated man, a despoiler of England’s green and pleasant land’. Mallory Heights had also aroused Fawkes’s ire, and readers of the Randel­wyck Herald had been regaled with much acrimonious correspondence regarding its aesthetic failings.

  ‘Ah, I see that I have a client.’ Fawkes could tell the value of a customer at a glance and he nodded coldly at a youngish man waiting inside the shop. ‘What can I do for you, sir?

  ‘A copy of Marie Corelli’s Sorrows of Satan. I should not imagine I have such a thing, but you can look in that case on the right labelled “Best Sellers of Bygone Days”.

  ‘Now come and sit down, Miss Fane.’ He led Janet along a narrow corridor formed by bookshelves against the wall and piled volumes stacked like bricks on the floor, and motioned her to the chair behind his desk.

  ‘How is your young man Paul Gordon, my dear? You have both been in the news of late, haven’t you? First that television interview and then his heroic search for the second bomb. I only wish it had existed and blown that eyesore to Kingdom Come.’

  ‘You saw the television programme?’ Janet watched Fawkes lower himself on to a pile of the Chambers’s Encyclopaedia. He had dark ginger hair, his hands had ginger flecks on them and his gingery-­brown suit was crumpled. He made her think of a character in some children’s picture book in which animals have human personalities and occupations: Mr Fox, the bookseller, with a great bushy tail sticking out from his baggy breeches.

  ‘Not personally, but my wife is a compulsive addict, and she told me about your appearance.

  ‘Good heavens! You’ve found one. How extraordinary.’ The young man had returned in triumph and Fawkes looked at the battered volume with astonishment. ‘That will be six shillings and sixpence, please. Thank you, sir. Do call in again when you are passing.’ He nodded as his client hurried away and then eased himself more comfortably on to the stack of books.

  ‘Now, tell me more, Miss Fane. The inside story, as it were. It must have been quite a shock when you saw that model move.’

  ‘There is nothing more to tell.’ Janet knew that Fawkes was a gossip, and she looked away from his probing eyes. Above the shelves on her right the wall was gay with pictures; coloured prints, illustrations cut from books, and bullfight and travel posters. The one nearest to her showed an aerial view of La Libertad, the capital of the South American republic of Nuevo Leon.

  ‘Oh, dear, dear.’ Fawkes’s teeth clicked in irritation, as he saw a woman come through the door and look nervously around her. ‘I can always tell would-­be vendors of junk, so what treasures will she have to offer? An incomplete Children’s E
ncyclopaedia, perhaps; a set of Scott with broken bindings, some book club selections or remaindered novels? “Bin havin’ a clear out, sir.”’ He leaned towards Janet and whispered in a thick Randel­wyck accent. ‘“Gotter lotter books ter sellyer. Luvly books they is, mister.”

  ‘Afternoon, Madam.’ She was walking towards them and Fawkes’s normal voice returned. ‘Can I have the pleasure of assisting you?’

  ‘I do hope you can, sir.’ The woman did not notice the sneer in his greeting. She was short and stout and obviously working-­class and her honest red face showed that she was very ill at ease. When she paused before the desk Janet recognized her as a Mrs Baxter, one of the evacuated tenants of the Heights, who had also appeared on ‘Sentry Box’. ‘Have you any books about wind?’

  ‘Dear, dear, so you suffer from that distressing complaint.’ Fawkes rolled his malevolent pink eyes. ‘You will find our medical section on the shelves to the left of the door. There should be a copy of Adamson’s Flatulence and Kindred Disorders.’

  ‘No, not that sort of wind, sir. It’s gales and storms and such like, I mean.’

  ‘Ah, now I’m with you, Madam. In the meteorological sense of the word.’ Fawkes stood up reluctantly. ‘I don’t think I have anything at the moment, but I’ll take a look.’

  ‘It’s Miss Fane, isn’t it?’ The woman had noticed Janet and she smiled in recognition. ‘Do you remember me, Miss? We was on the telly together. They explained what you saw happen in the wind tunnel, but I still feel so worried about going to live in the Heights. That’s why I came here today. Jack, he’s my husband, says it’s an old wives’ tale, but I want to know all I can about the Skulda.’

  ‘The Skulda.’ Fawkes straightened from a stack of books he had been examining. ‘You have read something on the subject?’

  ‘Not read, sir. But when I was a lass, the old people used to tell us about the Skulda. My gran, she believed in him all right. So real she made the story sound.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ All Fawkes’s cynicism had vanished. ‘How fascinating that a legend should keep alive so long. You may have come to the right place, Madam.’ He squeezed past Janet to a shelf behind the desk.

  ‘Yes, I rather pride myself on my local history section. Here’s Professor Askew’s Curiosities of Northmoorland. The first edition limited to three hundred copies. Quite a rare book, but only priced at five pounds because the title page and frontispiece are missing.’ He drew out a heavy quarto volume bound in blue vellum. ‘Let’s see what the good Professor has to tell us about the sinister Skulda.’

  ‘Got any Lawrence?’ A tall and emaciated clergyman had entered almost soundlessly and Fawkes swung round with a frown. ‘T.E. or D.H., Father Marsh?

  ‘Ah, a red Secker edition of Sons and Lovers. No, I’m afraid not. Quite certain because I’m looking for one to make up a set. Good day to you, Father.

  ‘Now, back to the Skulda, ladies.’ The door closed behind the cleric and he laid the big book on the desk and opened it at the list of chapters.

  ‘ “Follies and Grottos” – they’re not much use to us. “Buckfield Abbey and the Wailing Ghost” – nor they – “The Pig Women of Grover’s Green” – still plenty of them about – “The Legend of the Sea Beast.” That should be it. Page 201.’ He put on his glasses and turned to the chapter.

  The pages were badly foxed and Fawkes held the book tilted towards the light while he read aloud.

  ‘The story of the Skulda first appears in a chronicle written by Geoffrey de Lyon, Abbot of Buckfield, which states as follows.

  ‘Because of the impiety of the third earl of Randel­wyck, it was ordained that a great beast should lie in the sea, and the name of the beast is Skulda. For ever Skulda shall lie sleeping there, and when sin doth flourish amongst our people, he awakens and his mighty lungs do cleanse the foulness from the land.

  ‘In the year of our Saviour, 1345, did the beast first show his powers. He awoke in the night during the Feast of the Blessed Saint Agnes, and there was ruin and grief throughout our regions.

  ‘Saint Agnes. Her feast is January 21st, of course.’ Fawkes nodded over the page. ‘Interesting how often myths are based on actual phenomena. It was obviously a severe January gale that brought the legend of the Skulda into being. But I must not digress.

  ‘In the sixteenth century a large bronze bell was mounted on the cliffs to give warning should the Skulda awake. But so great was the cunning of the beast and the power of his breath that the bell was thrown down and he came unheralded, destroying all that stood before him.

  ‘During the early years of the eighteenth century the Skulda is said to have been extremely active . . .’

  Janet had been looking at the prints on the wall while he read. For some reason the picture of La Libertad kept attracting her. The poster was just a gaudy daub issued by an airline company, she had never visited South America, she had never seen another aerial illustration of the city, but there was something so familiar about the view that it fascinated her.

  ‘My dad told me about that.’ Fawkes had read how, in 1813, a colliery chimney had collapsed near Billon Tor and the mine been abandoned. Hilda Baxter nodded vigorously. ‘It’s true then. The old people were right all the time, and there is a great wind that strikes ever so often.’

  ‘Just a legend, dear lady.’ Fawkes turned a page and nodded happily. ‘This is rather a nice example of wood engraving, Miss Fane: a map of the area dated 1743. Here’s the Randel valley, and this is our friend the Skulda in person, I presume.’ He pointed to a hunched reptilian creature stationed out to sea. ‘And there’s a Latin inscription written across the cliffs and Billon Tor.’ Fawkes picked up a magnifying glass and craned forward. ‘A rough translation would be “the lands ravaged by the beast”.’

  ‘And Jack expects me to live up there: to feel happy in them Mallory Heights.’ Hilda’s red face was much paler. ‘You’ve told me exactly what I want to know, sir, and I’m most grateful. They’ll have to carry me before I set foot in that death-­trap again. I’d rather stay in the blasted hostel with the blacks.’

  ‘Oh dear! So that’s your interest. You are a tenant of the Heights, but please don’t worry about this legend.’ Fawkes did his best to be reassuring, but Hilda was staring down at the map with something akin to awe. ‘Let me try and put your mind at rest. There is not the slightest cause for anxiety, if you understand how such stories are produced.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ He paused while an elderly gentleman displayed a paperback he had taken from the outside box, slammed half a crown on the desk and stumped out again.

  ‘Doubtless the third earl was a hard taskmaster and hated by his tenants, who were superstitious peasants. When a freak gale destroyed some crops and buildings, they naturally attributed it to divine retribution and the story of the Skulda came into being. Over the generations the myth grew more and more firmly established and every disaster was laid at its door.’ Fawkes had small hopes of selling the book, but he had been a schoolmaster in his youth and enjoyed lecturing.

  ‘Though I see, here, that the roof of a dissenting chapel collapsed at the turn of the century. That might well have been engineered by the God of the established church.’ He chuckled and closed the heavy volume with a snap.

  ‘But surely that proves there’s a danger?’ Hilda had kept shaking her head while he talked. ‘Oh, I don’t believe in a dragon or anything like that, but there does seem to have been a series of terrible winds from time to time.’

  ‘Winds that have lost no force in the telling, Madam. A barn is blown down and after a few generations it has grown into a castle. Exaggerated terrors to awe simple and superstitious people. No wind can damage those towers because the phenomenon is a myth and they are as sound as the Bank of England; not that that’s saying a great deal.’ His eyes twinkled at Janet, who was still staring at the poster.

  ‘The Met. Office and the Air Ministry will have given Sir George Strand a record of all the local weather conditions and he will h
ave planned against the worst eventualities. Much as I deplore Mallory Heights as an eyesore, the building is perfectly safe, so calm yourself.’

  Fawkes’s soothing tones echoed around the shop, and all at once another voice started to run through Janet’s head . . . ‘The wind will come,’ James Baylis had said with the nervous tic trembling beneath his eye, ‘that great, swirling, all-­powerful wind which will sweep aside everything that stands before it. Thousands will perish when the towers fall.’

  The Skulda – the legend of a wind that had been handed down from the Middle Ages. Janet made a mental note to telephone Major Dealer. He could stop looking for a link with the ‘True Sailormen’. Baylis had been a dreamer obsessed with the story and the Skulda was his only accomplice. He imagined that she also had experienced a vision of forthcoming disaster, and only decided to take the law into his own hands and use high explosives when she and Paul disillusioned him.

  ‘You really must discard these foolish anxieties, Madam.’ Fawkes continued his calming attempts and, almost as though she had been given an order, Janet stood up, climbed on to the chair and lifted the poster from the wall.

  ‘The designers of Mallory Heights may be artistic nincompoops, but they knew what they were doing as far as strength and stability are concerned. I promise you that there is not the slightest cause for concern.

  ‘But is something worrying you, Miss Fane?’ He boggled at Janet who had stepped down, laid the poster on the desk and opened the book at the map of the Randel­wyck area. For a full half a minute she studied the two illustrations in silence and then nodded as realization came and she knew why a garish, ill-­drawn print of a South American city had fascinated her.

  ‘Yes, I am worried, Mr Fawkes, and I owe you six pounds five shillings for the two.’ Janet paid him and rolled up the poster. ‘You’re quite wrong, you know. Mrs Baxter has a good reason to be anxious.’ She picked up the book and turned to go.

  ‘Unless the map and this poster are hopelessly inaccurate, George Strand may not have had a clue what he was doing.’