Long Lankin

by Lindsey Barraclough

  Odd things hung from the branches — dirty rags, shredded by the wind, all faded to the same shade of greyish white, fastened on with rusty wire so long ago that the bark of the tree had grown around it; the remains of children’s shoes; an old leather sole; a small buckle. Nailed to the trunk was a little, rough square of wood, covered with faint scratches that might once have been writing; other rusty nails stuck out with nothing on them at all, as if the things had long blown away and rotted in the soil or had fallen off to be lost in the green stagnant water.

  I looked up. A face with one eye stared down at me. It was the broken head of an old doll tied onto a branch by its long dirty hair.

  A pile of brown, rotting flowers was stacked up against the wall on the dark side of the church.

  “They’re from people’s funerals,” I told Cora as she picked up some soggy little cards in cellophane covers. “Old Mr. Hibbert comes down and tidies up the newer graves and chucks the old wreaths on this heap. He’s done it for years. Once, Pete and I had to hide for two hours while he was pottering about. If he’d seen us, he would have sneaked on us to Mum.”

  “You know, some of these flowers are still all right,” Cora said. “They’ve got little wires coming out of them.” She held up the rusting frame of a square wreath. “Look, we could make new wreaths with flowers that ain’t mouldy yet and put them on them poor old graves from hundreds of years ago where nobody visits.”

  My first thought was that Gary Webb in my class would probably beat me up or something if he found out I’d been playing with flowers. I’d had a lot of trouble one way and another with Gary Webb. I saw his mum at the Confirmations and she’d got the same sort of sticking-out teeth.

  The worst thing happened when we had a new teacher in our school, Miss Doyle, who was a real person and not a nun. She asked us if we had anything interesting to tell the class about where we lived, and I put my hand up and said we had some beavers living in the pond by our woods, and they’d made a big house out of sticks.

  “A lodge,” she’d said.

  “Yes, that’s right, a lodge,” I said, and by the end of my story, I almost believed it myself, I could see the beavers so clearly in my mind.

  Then, later, when we were in the lines waiting for the school buses, Gary Webb waited until Sister Laserian, who was on duty, turned her back. Suddenly his two best friends, Leonard Ricketts and Vincent Grossit, took hold of my arms. Then Gary Webb punched me really hard in the stomach with his fist and said I was a liar about the beavers. He said I was really stupid and that everybody knew you only got beavers in Africa.

  I thought I’d die from pain and no breath. Then Sister Laserian came back. I didn’t want to cry, but these big tears just spurted out on their own. I could never have told her what had happened. She shook me really hard and told me not to be such a big baby, in front of all the bus lines. The worst thing was, Pete was in the line a bit back from us, and I saw him turn away and go red and embarrassed because I was his brother.

  Then I remembered that Gary Webb lived over on the other side of Daneflete, nearly to Lokswood, so how was he ever going to know about it? I could do whatever I wanted down here.

  We found enough good flowers to make three really nice wreaths and wound them onto the frames with the little bits of rusted wire. Mimi brought some buttercups she’d pulled up, and we stuck those on as well, then filled out the gaps with bunches of hawthorn berries from the bushes.

  Cora chose one of the old gravestones. Only about six inches of it stuck up out of the ground. We pulled the grass away and tried scraping off some of the moss with the sides of our shoes, but it was much too old to clean. We let Mimi pop the wreath over the stone, then stood back to admire our work.

  “I bet the man in heaven who’s buried there is saying thank you,” said Pete. “We should say a prayer.”

  The only prayer Cora knew was the grace from her school dinners, so we joined our hands and said, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”

  “Let Mimi choose the next grave,” I said.

  “Pick a grave, Mimi,” said Cora, prodding her in the back. “Then we can put some more flowers on it.”

  “How about this one, Mimi?” called Pete.

  He was standing a few feet away from the side of the church, just along from the porch, next to a long stone box shaped like a coffin, its sides rising a couple of feet out of the grass. The narrow end of the grave had sunken much deeper into the ground than the wide end, and the stone lid, knotted with ivy, had slipped slightly sideways and backwards, leaving a dark opening.

  “Don’t like it,” Mimi said.

  “You’re not supposed to like it,” said Cora crossly. “We’re only going to stick flowers on it. Choose another one if you want, but hurry up.”

  “Don’t want to,” she said, her mouth turned down.

  “Shove it on, Pete,” I called, throwing him the second wreath. “Can you see in the hole — where the lid’s tipped off?”

  “I’m not looking in there,” said Pete, tossing the wreath on the grave from at least three feet away. “There might be a skeleton in it.”

  He came back over to us, holding his nose. “That grave really stinks,” he said. “I bet it’s the dead person inside making a smell.”

  All at once, the birds shot out of the trees and whirled high in the sky, crying as they flew.

  “Who’s that?” Cora said suddenly.

  My heart dropped into my boots. I knew it had to be Gary Webb; I just knew it. I couldn’t look up for shame.

  Cora pulled at my jumper. “Over there, by the old gate. Look.”

  She turned her head back. “Oh,” she said, “he’s gone.”

  “Hell,” I said. “Was he big and ugly, with buckteeth?”

  “He was … I don’t know… . Where could he have got to?”

  We were all looking now. The tall nettles nodded, and the frayed ends of the old ropes on the gates lifted in the breeze, but there was nobody there.

  “It was your himagination,” said Pete.

  “No, honestly, I swear,” said Cora, frowning. “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. It was this man, with long black clothes on. He was looking at us. I — I’ve seen his face somewhere before, but I can’t remember where… . He looked like he’d been in an accident or something. His skin was all twisted and horrible… .”

  “Don’t be daft,” I said. “If there was a man there, we’d have seen him.”

  “I tell you, I ain’t fibbin’!”

  “It were Peter,” said Mimi, rubbing the worn patch on Sid’s head.

  “What? Rubbish!” said Pete. “I’m right here, aren’t I?”

  “No,” she said, staring back at the old gate, “the other Peter — over at Auntie Ida’s — Old Peter… .”

  We don’t play the game anymore. Roger puts the last wreath over a headless angel standing on a grave beside the path. Without saying a word, we go back through the iron gate and into the lane.

  I search for footprints or flattened grass around the gate with the roof, but everything is just the same as before. The only footprints in the wet earth are ours. Roger kicks the dirt about, and Pete won’t look at me. They obviously think we were lying. Mimi stands quietly, rubbing Sid’s patch with the side of her finger.

  I’m cross. I pick up a stone and throw it high at the gate. It bounces off and nearly hits me in the face. As I dodge, I think I glimpse something written on the crosspiece of the wooden arch that holds up the roof. I stretch up, but my fingers won’t quite reach. Moving backwards a little, I shade my eyes with my hand, but the arch is in shadow.

  “Hey, you lot, I think there’s words up here,” I call. Roger and Pete come over and screw up their eyes.

  “Can’t see it… .” Pete squints.

  “We need to climb up on something,” says Roger, “though it probably just says DM loves SS — that’s Derek Meacock, who lives next to Mrs. Aylott’s, and Sylvia Spa
rks. He writes it up all over the place. It’s on the lamppost outside Mrs. Wickerby’s, and on the bus shelter on the main road, but Sylvia never goes out with him. I asked Mum why once, but Dad butted in and said he couldn’t understand it because Sylvia’s a tart and would go with anybody for a free ticket to the pictures. Then Mum told him off and said he wasn’t to say things like tart in front of us, but I didn’t know what he meant, anyway. I thought a tart was just something you ate with custard.”

  “No,” I tell him. “A tart’s a lady what puts on bright red lipstick and dyes her hair yellow and puts it up in a bouffong with loads of lacquer to keep it stiff. We’ve got one in our street called Viv.”

  We look around for something to stand on. There’s a big stone by the side of the road, but it’s too heavy to move. Roger tries jumping but goes up so high the second time that when he comes down again, he falls over in the mud.

  “Let’s see if there’s a chair in the church to stand on,” says Pete. “It’s always open. Nyaaaah!” He goes whizzing off up the path with his arms out like an aeroplane.

  “Good idea,” Roger calls after him as he brushes down his knees.

  The musty smell in the church porch is like the smell of Guerdon Hall. There are dingy old notices nailed to the wall. Roger lifts the iron latch and pushes open the big wooden door.

  “Don’t like it,” says Mimi. “It ain’t nice — ain’t goin’ in.”

  “You blinkin’ well are,” I say, pulling her sleeve.

  I’ve never been inside a church ever before. The quiet is almost like something you can put out your hand and touch. I can hear my ears singing. Our footsteps echo off the polished tiles up into the rafters.

  The church is very small, with only eight pairs of pews, each one closed in with a little hinged door.

  The walls are plain, but up towards the timber beams, some of the white paint is peeling away and pale pictures are showing through the flakes, like the faded figures on the walls of Auntie Ida’s bathroom. Jagged scratches mark the plaster lower down, but somebody has painted over those as well. A dirty mossy stain about a foot high rises up the walls from where they meet the stone floor, continuing in a green band all around the inside of the building.

  “Is that mould down there?” I whisper.

  “Well, I think it might be, because there was this enormous huge flood when Dennis was a baby,” says Roger in a lowered voice. “The water came right up onto our veranda, and we were marooned. When it went back, there were dead fish in the garden from our pond. It was really exciting, and we were lucky because the flood didn’t actually get in the house — missed the doors by an inch — but down here I’d have thought it would have been quite bad. Maybe the walls have never dried out properly. Smells, doesn’t it?”

  Brasso and polish, damp earth, wax and old wood, and underneath, a stink like — like dead rats. I know the smell, metallic and sweet at the same time, because once we found a dead rat in the cupboard under the kitchen sink at home. It stank the place out for at least a week till we had a good search and I noticed its tail curling round a packet of Flash. Dad wrapped it up in the News of the World and chucked it in the dustbin.

  On our left, a huge arch opens out into the bottom of the tower. A thick embroidered curtain is hanging against the wall to one side, and on the other is a wooden door. In the middle of the floor is a carved stone basin covered with a wooden lid, pointed at the top like a steeple.

  “What’s that for?” I whisper. “That pointy thing?”

  “It’s a font, for baptizing babies,” says Roger. “This is a Protestant church, so they call it christening. You pour water over the baby and it gets its name. The nuns say we’re not allowed to come into a Protestant church, but Pete and me do anyway.”

  Three thick ropes are looped up to hooks in the wall.

  “They pull the bells with those,” Roger goes on. “The fluffy bits in the middle stop you getting blisters. If there’s a funeral, Mr. Hibbert rings one bell on its own. It’s that one over there, that plain old rope hanging down by itself. You can hear it even from our house, all that way. Sometimes, when I’m in bed at night and there’s a real wind blowing, I can hear it ringing, even if there’s nobody here. Honest, I really can.”

  I look up to see where the ropes disappear through holes in the ceiling. To my surprise, I suddenly feel uneasy, light-headed. I sway a little, unsteady on my feet.

  “Blimey! You all right?” says Roger. “You’ve gone all white.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, rubbing my head. “What’s up there?”

  “Dunno. Just the bells, I suppose, and the steeple.”

  “I don’t like it in here.”

  “Come and look at the big window, then.” Roger pulls me by the arm. “It’s really nice.”

  At the other end of the church is a huge stained-glass window. People dressed in scarlet, purple, brilliant yellow, and emerald green are dancing upwards towards a golden point radiating lines of light across a deep blue sky.

  “Who are all them people?” I ask.

  “It’s the holy souls,” says Roger, “going up to heaven.”

  As we stand there gazing, the sun suddenly bursts out from behind a cloud beyond the window and we see everything — the walls, the pews, the stone floor, the glass lamps, even our faces — blazing with moving bands and patches of coloured light, as if the church has been scattered with rainbows.

  Roger whispers, “It’s like that poem we do in Elocution with Mrs. Lipkiss —”

  “Oh, yeah,” says Pete, suddenly flinging himself down on the floor, kicking his legs, and grabbing his stomach. “‘When they shot him down on the highway’ — aargh — ’Down like a dog on the highway’ — aargh —”

  “Shut up! Not that one, you dope,” Roger whispers loudly. “You’ll go to hell making all that noise in a church. Get up! I mean that poem about the stately Spanish galleon coming through the isthmus.”

  “Eh?” says Pete, standing up again.

  “You know … ‘with a cargo of diamonds, emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.’”

  “What’s gold moidores?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll have to look it up.”

  “What’s cinnamon, then?”

  “Oh, leave off — I don’t know, something sparkly. Now, shut up. Look, Cora, this is the altar.”

  Under the window is a long table covered with a clean white cloth edged with lace and lined with sharp creases like Nan Drumm’s starched Sunday tablecloth. In the middle towards the back is a brass cross with three tall creamy candles in fancy silver candlesticks on either side of it. A long heavy curtain like the one in the tower, with a fringe and tassels, hangs behind the altar.

  A huge wooden eagle with its face turned sideways and a narrow ledge on its back for a book stands on the floor in front of the pews. I run my fingers over the feathers carved on its outstretched wings. The wood feels warm and smooth.

  “Get out of that pulpit, you ninny!” Roger turns and hisses to Pete, who, with furrowed brow and arms raised, is about to deliver a sermon. Muttering to himself, Pete comes down the steps and goes back down the aisle to where Mimi is waiting. She hasn’t moved an inch from her spot near the door since we came in.

  “Here, this’ll do,” Pete calls, lifting up a chair from a line of three standing along the back wall. There’s a box on the back of it with a couple of books inside.

  When we get the chair down to the old gate, Roger stands on it while I keep it steady.

  “There’s definitely writing here,” he says, “but it’s in the shadow. Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” He jumps down. “In my encyclopaedia it tells you about doing rubbings.”

  “What are you going on about now?” I say.

  “Look, you get a bit of paper and you put it over the thing you want to copy, like some old tree bark or something, then you rub it with a crayon and the thing comes out on the paper.”

  “So where are we going to get a crayon and some pape
r out here?”

  “I’ve got a pencil. It’s still got some lead in,” says Pete. He turns out his pocket and holds out his palm. Pulling away some grubby fluff with his finger, he uncovers a few bits of dead bird, a couple of Quality Streets with bite marks, a dried-up spider with half its legs missing, and the chewed stub of a pencil.

  “For heaven’s sake, put that stuff away,” says Roger. “It’s worse than one of Baby Pamela’s nappies.”

  “I ain’t touching that pencil,” I say. “You could get typhoid fever from that.”

  “I’ll do it, then. Give it here,” says Roger, grabbing it. He spits on it and rolls it dry on his trousers. “Now, where are we going to get paper?”

  “Look, here’s some,” I say, taking out one of the books from the back of the chair. “Hymns Ancient and Modern.”

  I open it in the middle and rip a page out. It’s hymn numbers 109 to 112.

  “Flippin’ heck!” yelps Roger. “That’s a huge sin, most probably mortal!”

  “Well, it’s too late now,” I say, giving him the paper. “You should’ve warned me.”

  “You might be all right,” says Pete. “It’s a Protestant book. I don’t think Protestants do mortal sins.”

  Roger climbs back onto the chair and places the paper on the beam of the arch. The chair legs wobble dangerously as he scribbles with the stub of pencil.

  “This paper isn’t big enough,” he calls down. “I can only get a bit of the writing on.”

  As I’ve already torn one page out, I don’t suppose the sin will get worse if I pull out hymn number 113 as well. Roger hands me the rubbing he’s finished and starts on the next.

  Jagged white capital letters stand out against the rough grey scribble: CAVE.

  “What’s cave, then?” I say.