Father Mansell and Mrs. Mansell are really quiet. They have grown-up children who have left home and have families of their own. I wonder what it’s like living joined onto the Treasures. I wonder if they can hear them being smart and posh on the other side of the parlour wall.
Roger took me up to the tall iron gates to Glebe House. We went through a separate, single gate to one side.
The garden was almost as big as Poplar Park near Limehouse Town Hall. The drive curved round towards the house, which was surrounded by dark trees with thick twisted trunks. I didn’t know it was possible to live in a house so big, with so many rooms, and not be the Queen. An enormous arched window ran the length of the house from top to bottom. Behind its glass panes, a staircase zigzagged up and down.
“Do they have servants?” I whispered.
“They’ve got a man who does the garden — Mr. Crawford, remember? Then there’s Mrs. Campbell I told you about, who lives near us, who goes in every day to do the housework. Mum says a lady like Mrs. Treasure shouldn’t be doing her own ironing and that people who are that clever can’t keep their houses clean themselves because they’ve never learned. She says they do so much reading of books that they never have any time left over to do the washing-up. We’ll just creep past their windows and go round the back.”
But then we heard an irritating yap-yapping. Around the corner of the house, a girl appeared with a little brown-and-white dog snapping around her fancy black patent-leather shoes. The girl was older than me. She wore a white dress with puffed sleeves and a sash. Her shiny dark hair was caught up on one side with a slide and a wide checked bow.
“Crikey,” said Roger through his teeth as she drew nearer. “It’s blinkin’ Maisie Treasure and that nasty little dog of hers — Pippin or Drippin’ or something.”
Maisie Treasure was smiling, but it was a pretence. The corners of her mouth turned upwards well enough, but her eyes glittered coldly like two black beetles.
“Hello, Roger!” she said in a voice straight off the Home Service.
She didn’t say hello to me even though I was standing right next to Roger, but I could see she was taking me in, all the same.
Roger muttered that we couldn’t stop as we were going round the back to see Father Mansell.
“Out of luck — he’s in with us, I’m afraid. He and my father get together most Saturdays to discuss the text for Sunday. Father’s a lay reader, you know, at North Fairing.”
Whatever that is, I thought.
“Annoying about the electricity, isn’t it?” she went on.
“What about it?”
“Oh, are you all right in the village? Some power lines blew down in the storm, and we won’t be able to put the lights on until Monday, when the men come out to do the repairs. Mrs. Eastfield will be the same.”
Unluckily for us, Maisie didn’t go in right away but stood there swinging her hands behind her back. I noticed her eyes on my trousers, then she looked up at my scruffy hair and my face. I shrank and looked down at the gravel drive with my one good eye.
“What happened to her?” she asked Roger at last, nodding in my direction.
“This is my friend Cora,” said Roger. “She fell down the stairs.”
“She’s wearing my old clothes,” said Maisie.
I felt myself blush scarlet.
A little bell tinkled in the house.
“Must go. Bye!” she said, turning on her smart heels. I listened to their scrinch scrunch on the gravel, and just knew they were the sort of shoes that would go click click click on the pavement. The dog jumped up and down on its short little legs, looking back at us, growling and barking. I wanted to kick its backside.
Roger stared after her.
“Well, if we can’t ask Father Mansell,” he said, “it looks as if I’m going to have to go and see one of our priests at Saint Cedd’s in Daneflete instead. Mum’ll think I’ve gone mad when I tell her I’m going to church of my own free will tomorrow. She’ll think I’ve had a vision like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.”
Mum said it looked as if it was going to be sunny, so she made me wear my thin blue shirt with the stripes. I shoved the tie in my pocket as soon as I got to the lane.
By the time I reached the main road, the wind had changed and chilly drizzle was blowing up the hill from the marshes. I hung around the bus stop for a while, getting cold, then decided to walk it. Between stops, a bus came along, but the driver wouldn’t pull up even though I stuck my hand out.
The rain hit me side on, so I had to hold my hand against my right cheek to stop it going numb; then the feeling in my hand went as well.
As I walked along, I wondered which priest would be saying Mass. I’d be all right if it was old Silverwood, with his round glasses and his fluffy white hair always sticking up like he’d had a fright. But if Geraghty was doing it, he was bound to ask me why I wasn’t altar serving anymore; then I’d have to confess it was me who was responsible for the trailing cassock, the hot candle wax, and Brian Buntree having to go to the clinic.
With every step, my heart sank further into my chest.
Nan used to call this sort of rain Scotch mist. I’d rather be Roger going to Daneflete, even in this weather, than sitting here staring out of the window, remembering the last two nights.
It’s dark in the house, but we can’t switch on the lights or the wireless. The electricity isn’t working. Auntie Ida put a big oil lamp on the kitchen table, with two wicks, telling us to be careful not to jog it or we could burn the place down. I wouldn’t mind. At least we could go home. Auntie made Mimi some dolls out of clothes pegs and bits of cloth and wool. I played with them with her for a while, but I’m so tired that I’ve come upstairs.
I look over at the bed. I should lie down for a nap, get rid of this thick headache, but I hear things when I’m half-asleep and they give me goose pimples. You’re supposed to be able to die of fright from a nightmare, but I don’t think these things are nightmares. I think they’re real.
Last night I heard whispering, very close to me. I peered at Mimi’s face, half in shadow on the pillow. She was moving her lips in her sleep, as if she were speaking. I leaned in towards her, and with her breath on my cheek I heard her say, “Help us … help us … save us …” but it wasn’t her voice, or even one voice alone — it was many voices.
I lay there, my heart thudding, and thought that from somewhere downstairs I could hear a sound like sharp nails scratching slowly on a door. I pulled the eiderdown up around my hunched shoulders.
Then, from another room, far off, somewhere in the house, someone was screaming, crying out, “It’s all my fault! It’s all my fault!”
I had the same nightmare in London. Horrible noises, sobbing and wailing, came up the fireplace into our bedroom from downstairs. Grown-ups were talking quickly. I wanted to go and crawl into Mum and Dad’s big bed and snuggle down in between them, but I knew it would be empty and cold. In the morning, Mum wasn’t there. Dad looked washed out. He hadn’t shaved. His chin was raspy.
I know it wasn’t a nightmare really, but I’ve always tried to pretend it was.
Last night I heard the same words: “It’s all my fault! It’s all my fault!”
I lay there through all the hours of the rest of the night, too frightened to shut my eyes again, waiting for the light.
I can’t tell Roger. He’d think I was going mad.
I imagined knocking on the presbytery door after church and Mrs. O’Hara, the priests’ housekeeper, answering.
“What do you want?” she was going to say. “Go away! They’re having dinner!”
Mrs. O’Hara was like the nuns. She made you feel like a sinner.
I couldn’t face it and turned back to Bryers Guerdon.
I carried on past the end of Ottery Lane and on in the direction of Hilsea, with my wet shirtsleeves clinging to my skin. I glanced at my watch, thinking I’d have to kill time by walking around in the freezing rain for an hour and a half so Mum woul
dn’t know I’d chickened out of going to church.
Then I caught a whiff of Saint Bruno tobacco. I knew it was Saint Bruno because that’s what Grandpa Bardock had smoked.
I looked up and saw a tall figure hunched up against the wall of the Thin Man, coat collar turned up, hat pulled well down, trying to relight his pipe.
As I drew near, the man looked up and I saw myself reflected in Father Mansell’s rain-spattered glasses.
“Hello, Father Mansell,” I said.
“Oh, hello, er …” he said, sucking on the pipe stem. “Frightful weather.”
“Roger,” I helped him out. “Roger Jotman.”
“Ah, yes.”
“You going up to Saint Mary’s?”
“Yes. Car wouldn’t start. Damp plugs, most likely. Couldn’t get a lift from Treasure. They’d already left. Anyway, must get on. Cheerio.”
He moved towards the path and began heading for Ottery Lane.
For a moment I hesitated, then ran after him.
“Father Mansell!” I shouted. “What does Cave bestiam mean?”
I could see his irritation as he turned.
“What? Look, Roger, I can’t be late for Holy Communion.”
“Cave bestiam. I think it’s Latin.”
“What? How do you spell it?”
“C-a-v-e b-e —”
“Yes, yes, it’s not cave, it’s pronounced ‘cahvay.’ It means ‘beware.’ Is that it? I have to go.”
“And the other bit — bestiam.”
“With cave it would be ‘of the beast.’ Must go, Roger.”
I walked all the way to Hilsea, spent ages looking at the twitchy guinea pigs in the murky little pet-shop window, then went back home, thinking of nothing else but what Father Mansell had said.
Cave bestiam — beware of the beast!
It was pouring again.
The power was still off. The big glass lamp, with the wicks barely showing, shed its feeble light onto the tabletop, while the corners of the kitchen remained colourless, save for the hot glow of the fire under the copper.
Mimi had Sid and the peg dolls lined up under the lamp and was pouring water into cups and saucers for them from an old enamel jug.
Auntie pulled the mangle in from the outhouse and wiped the dust off with the dishcloth.
“When the kettle boils, can you make us some tea, Cora? Oh, and there are some digestives in the pantry.”
When the kettle started to get noisy on the big black stove, I emptied the slops out of the teapot, then went to get the biscuits.
I’d never been in the pantry before. It was a dark little room with shelves all the way up to the ceiling, stacked with tins (some of them rusty), bags (mostly torn), and packets of this and that (half of them on their sides and leaking). Searching for the McVitie’s, I noticed that a doorway on the end wall had been bricked up. Even though the newer bricks were painted the same dirty white colour as the rest of the room, there was no mistaking the outline. The mortar was rough and poorly finished, as though it had been done in a hurry, and the bricks were a different size.
I reached for the red roll of biscuits and disturbed a few cream-coloured flour moths. As they fluttered up towards the huge rusty meat hooks hanging from the ceiling, I gazed at the wall and wondered what secret place lay behind it.
Auntie Ida and I drank our tea without speaking. Mimi chattered away in dolls’ voices, the hot water bubbled in the copper, and the rain beat against the windows. Finn lay under the table and occasionally shifted his feet. I sucked on a digestive with my sore mouth and longed for the wireless.
Suddenly there was a loud banging on the front door. Auntie went white. Finn shot out, barking.
“’S all right. I’ll go,” I said.
“No, you won’t! Ignore it! I’m not expecting anyone!”
“It might be Mr. Aylott with the shopping.”
“He comes round the back — and never on a Monday… .”
“It might be Roger and Pete, or the postman or something. You might have got a parcel. It might — Auntie Ida, it might be Dad… .”
When I said that, she got up and went out of the room towards the front door. The banging started up again.
“Is anybody in there?” a man’s voice boomed. “Are you there, Mrs. Eastfield? It’s the Electricity Board!”
It was a blessed relief to have the wireless going again.
It’s awful when Mum does the washing and it’s raining. The whole house is damp and steamy and stinks of washing powder. She boils up Dad’s handkerchiefs in the big nappy pan, and the smell of the grey soapy water is revolting. I never look in, as I dread to think what I might see floating among the bubbles.
It isn’t so bad when the sun’s shining. Then the laundry can go on the line outside or on the veranda, but when it’s raining, it feels as if the whole world’s wet.
Pamela’s nappies hang in neat rows from the kitchen airer most days, but on Mondays, if it’s wet out, there are clothes everywhere, draped over the small wooden clotheshorse in front of the paraffin stove in the hall, trailing from the big one standing by the fire in the sitting room, and drooping over any chair with a spare back. Everybody walks around slowly with their arms held in so they don’t knock the horses over and set fire to Terry’s horrible yellow underpants, although that might be a blessing.
The worst thing is, Mum’s got me and Pete trapped in the house and she makes us do the worst job of all — the wringer. The wet sheets weigh a flipping ton, and if you don’t fold them properly before they go in, they won’t go through the rollers. Then you have to wind them all the way back again, and sometimes the handle gets stuck. When Mum does it, the water goes straight back in the tub, but when we do it, it goes all over the blinking floor and our slippers get soaked.
Pete and me were fed up we couldn’t go down to Mrs. Eastfield’s.
Auntie Ida got up and went to the window.
“What a cloudburst! It doesn’t seem to be easing at all,” she said. “I’m going to have to feed the chickens and get the eggs. There’s no point in waiting any longer. Cora, watch Mimi doesn’t go near the copper while I’m gone. It’s getting hot now.”
“Everything’s steaming up, Auntie. Can’t we open the window for a bit?”
“No!” she snapped. “You know you’re never to open a window in this house! Never! Do you hear?”
She got her headscarf and coat off the hook on the back of the door and went down the stone passage to the back. I knew she’d be a while putting on her boots.
“Mimi, you all right for a minute?” I whispered, turning up the wireless.
“Yeah,” she said, drinking her orange squash out of a teacup. “What you doing that for? It hurts me ears.”
“Don’t go near the copper, all right, Sis?”
“Where y’ goin’?”
“Toilet upstairs, all right? There’s rain coming in the other one. Won’t be long.”
I went quickly out into the hall and rushed up the stairs as fast as I safely could without making too much noise. At the top, instead of going to the bathroom, I turned left and went down the passage. I looked out of the small window at the end. My breath steamed up the small panes of glass. I rubbed one with my finger and saw Auntie Ida, her head bent against the rain, going down the path to the henhouse.
Quickly I went up the three wooden steps, turned right at the top, and went down the stairs I’d stumbled on the other night. A little light reached the passage from a small window almost hidden by netted cobwebs. I could see enough to avoid the chunks of plaster fallen off the walls and the dark rotting holes in the floorboards. Passing the locked rooms on either side, I reached the end of the passage and took a deep breath before raising my hand to the latch and pushing open the last door on the right.
The muffled sound of the Home Service came up through the floor. I heard the pips for the hour and then the man reading the news.
In the gloom, I made out the scuffed trail of footprints leading to t
he doorway in the corner and felt my heart beating hard as I walked over them once more. Slowly I peeped into the other room before daring to go in.
The cot had been taken to pieces and was leaning up against the wall, the bedding all removed. The baby clothes on the chest of drawers were gone, but Old Peter was still there, just as I’d left him, the blanket that had covered him in an untidy heap on the floor.
I sat down in front of the picture and gazed at the words CAVE BESTIAM, wondering if Roger had found out what they meant.
Then I noticed other words on the painting, written in tiny golden letters on the dark paint in the top corner next to Old Peter’s head — words and numbers in curly writing. I would never have seen them in the night, or when he was up on the shadowy wall over the bathroom door where he had hung for so long.
I leaned in close to read the words: PETRUS HILLIARDUS 1584. I couldn’t understand them.
I puzzled over them for a while — then I heard something, something I’d heard before. Little by little, the back of my neck began to tingle.
“‘Where’s the lord of this house?’ said Long Lankin.
‘He’s away in fair London,’ said the false nurse to him.”
It was the same voice I had heard in the sitting room: the woman — singing. I froze as soft footsteps moved across the floor in the other room.
Now the voice came from the doorway.
“‘Where’s the heir of this house?’ said Long Lankin.
‘He’s asleep in his cradle,’ said the false nurse to him.”
I felt the woman at my back, heard the gentle rustle of her skirt as it touched the floor behind me.
“‘We’ll prick him, we’ll prick him all over with a pin,
And that’ll make my lady to come down to him.’”
Suddenly the back door slammed downstairs.
“Cora? Where are you? Cora!”
I shot up at once and stood there, trembling. Slowly I turned my head — and saw nothing.
Long Lankin Page 10
