Scarecrows

by Robert Westall

  Tris burrowed down into his rucksack, strewing clothes all over the place like Vesuvius erupting. Found a pair of leather sandals and put them on. Burrowed again, erupting the rest of the contents, including several transparently-greasy paper packets that had been food.

  ‘Got some good cheese,’ he said. ‘Camembert. My grandmother gave it me . . . oh.’ He held up a sock regretfully. ‘Like a sock-and-Camembert sandwich? It’s a clean sock.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Simon. ‘I’m off socks at the moment – I’m on a diet.’

  Tris produced a massive air-pistol. ‘Where’s the action, squire?’ He looked out of Simon’s bedroom window, and saw the scarecrows. ‘Aha – the opposition. The Clancies – the old gunfight at the OK Corral.’ And he had grabbed a tin of pellets, loaded the pistol and disappeared downstairs before Simon could say a word. Through the field gate, and advancing on the scarecrows with the air-pistol waggling dangerously loose from the right hip-pocket of his jeans, and his arms dangling by his sides, swinging his hips in a bow-legged walk.

  ‘Ah’m coming fo’ you, Billy Clancy. Give yo’self up an’ there won’t be no trouble, boy.’

  Simon stopped dead in his tracks.

  The anger had returned; the sky was suddenly dark and pressing down on his head.

  But Tris walked on.

  ‘C’mon, boys. You know it ain’t no use getting orkard. There’s a nice dry quiet cell, down in the old jail-house . . .’

  The young miller faced up to Tris; fat, stubborn, falsely-cocky as ever. The rain had made his face run and dribble even more. But it only made his expression harder to read; more like Starkey’s.

  ‘All right, Billy . . . don’t blame me . . . just think of your old mother . . .’

  Then Tris crouched, drew and shot all in the same instant. Even as Simon’s head began to split open, he had to admit that Tris’s act was bloody brilliant.

  The pellet took the miller clean between the eyes. The figure swayed slightly, but did not fall.

  ‘So yo’ think yo’ tough, boy,’ said Tris. Reloaded and shot; again and again.

  Every wound made the miller’s face worse.

  Then Tris stepped up to the scarecrow, and said, ‘The trouble with yo’, boy, is that yo’re dead and yo’ don’t know it.’ He placed a foot firmly in the miller’s chest, and kicked him flat.

  Again, the woman fell with the man, as if tied to him; again they fell in an obscene huddle.

  ‘Ah don’t hit wimmen-folk,’ drawled Tris. ‘Sorry, Ma’am. But yo’ shouldn’t do that kind of thing. Not in public.’

  Tris turned to face Starkey. In the act of reloading, he paused. Something about Starkey seemed to get through to him. He mimicked Starkey’s pose. Exactly. Then stayed stockstill, as if taking the temperature of the water with his toe.

  ‘I – don’t – like – you,’ said Tris, not in his normal voice. And shot. Again, he was dead accurate. The shot knocked Starkey’s cap spinning. Underneath, the packed straw was brown and rotting.

  ‘Eeugh, what a pong!’ said Tris. Simon sniffed. The smell of the mill pond. Tris picked up the cap, tried it on his own head, paused again, and looked at Simon.

  ‘For God’s sake, Simon, what are you staring at?’ Then he threw the cap away among the turnips, and kicked Starkey over in turn. ‘What else is there round here worth doing?’

  ‘Oho,’ said Tris. ‘A path through the turnips. Leading to . . . The Wizard’s Castle. The Wizard of Oz. Follow the yellow-brick road!’

  And he broke out into the song from the old movie.

  ‘We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.’ And danced ridiculously, gaily, up the path through the turnips. Just like Judy Garland and the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion.

  Simon followed, though his feet dragged through the turnips like lead. There seemed to be a pressure from the mill, radiating outwards like a silent unmoving wind. A wind like a silent, still hurricane, that he had to battle into, like explorers into an arctic blizzard. It was nearly impossible. But Tris was his friend. Tris was good. He couldn’t let him go to the mill alone.

  It did strike him as funny. Up to this very moment, the mill had tried to suck him in. Like a vacuum cleaner. Now, suddenly, it was trying just as hard to keep him out. That was odd. But the pressure was so terrible on his mind that he just had to concentrate on keeping going.

  He caught up Tris by the mill-dam. Tris was firing airgun-pellets into the water at a shallow angle; trying to get them to bounce off the water and skim all the way across, like the bouncing-bomb in the Dam Busters. He managed it; one pellet skimmed all the way through a gap in the lily-pads to the far shore.

  The two ducks appeared round the corner of the island. They were bigger now; but the largest one still swam in front.

  ‘It’s de law, boys, beat it!’ yelled Tris; and scarpered along the dam wall towards the mill.

  Pressure, pressure, pressure. But Simon followed.

  Tris sailed through the front door. ‘What is this place, Simon?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been here before? What you been doing with yourself all these weeks?’ They both looked round the room.

  The hats and coats were gone off the pegs . . .

  And Simon had a terrible conviction that, back in the turnip field, the scarecrows had got back on their feet, and were facing, now, towards the mill. He and Tris were trapped.

  ‘Not much here . . .’ said Tris thoughtfully. ‘What’s all this shredded paper on the table?’ He picked up one of the largest pieces. ‘Butter ration to be reduced? Hey, this must be a wartime paper.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Simon. He had to dredge the answer up from fathoms deep; his voice was a croak.

  ‘Christ!’ said Tris. ‘What’s the matter, Simon? You sound like a bloody zombie. I don’t think the country air’s doing you much good.’ He peered at Simon in the gloom of the living room. Concerned. ‘You all right?’

  For a moment, Simon nearly told him everything. It would have been so easy.

  And sounded so potty.

  ‘Got a sore throat,’ he said. ‘Had a bit of flu, I think.’

  Tris went on looking at him; not satisfied. Till Simon said abruptly.

  ‘There’s a water-mill through there. In full working order.’

  ‘Great,’ said Tris. ‘Let’s go.’ He left his air-pistol lying on the wooden table, alongside Starkey’s pipe, and made for the door to the interior.

  ‘I’d . . . take that with you, if I were you,’ said Simon.

  ‘Why? Who’d pinch it? There’s been nobody here for years; except you, you crafty old sod.’ Again he gave Simon an old-fashioned look.

  They climbed up through the works of the mill. It was all gallows now; gallows and trapdoors opening under your feet, and ropes in loops and the sack of grain that swung in the draught from the open door behind them; the sack with the frayed strands of rope like flaxen hair.

  Simon knew now that Starkey must have had fair hair.

  And the footsteps in the flour-dust; Mum’s, Jane’s, his own with the ribbed soles; and the scuffle marks where he had obliterated Joe Moreton’s footprints, deliberately, one after the other.

  But Tris walked straight across the lot, not giving two buggers.

  ‘You say it’s in working order?’ he asked incredulously.

  ‘I’ve had it working,’ said Simon.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ said Tris admiringly. ‘This whole place is shot to hell. Look at this woodworm – look at this death-watch beetle. And this dry-rot in the main beam . . .’ He began pulling the main beam away in handfuls. ‘This I know all about. Our greenhouses at home are an endless battle –’cause of the damp from the plants. Drives my father nuts . . . some tomato growers have the new aluminium greenhouses – they’re great. But my old man’s a stinge – he keeps on patching and propping up our old wooden ones. One day they’ll fall down around his head burying him in tomato chutne
y up to his neck.’

  Simon gave a sudden explosive giggle. At the idea of the solemn, bald, ponderous Mr la Chard buried in chutney up to his neck.

  But the giggle choked off halfway. Tris gave him another funny look.

  ‘My throat,’ mumbled Simon.

  Then the two doors downstairs banged shut, one after the other.

  They looked at each other. Simon got the impression that there was more going on in Tris’s head than Tris was letting on.

  ‘I’ll just go and get my pistol,’ said Tris.

  Simon waited.

  Tris came back whistling; leaving both the doors open again.

  ‘Wind blew them shut,’ he explained. He was carrying the pistol in his right hand. Had he loaded it downstairs?

  The doors banged shut again.

  Then the mill was full of noises. Whispers. Clicks. Bangs. Everywhere. But you couldn’t place them in the shadows. The main-beam, the one with dry-rot in it, groaned overhead.

  Then a noise like a boy rattling an iron bar along iron railings. And a rumble deeper and lower down than your own heart.

  Creak, creak to their right; crack, crack, crack to their left.

  And then all the main drive-shafts were turning; the great mill-stone rumbling and sparking in its heavy bed.

  The whole mill was a great drum with twenty insane drummers. Simon and Tris shouted at each other and heard nothing.

  If someone came now, they would hear nothing . . .

  Tris turned and ran upstairs. Simon followed him, blundering, stumbling, blind.

  Tris reached the top platform, and looked down at the sluice. Sluice pumping black water.

  ‘Sluice-gate’s worked itself loose,’ yelled Tris. ‘Things do that . . . My father’s greenhouse ventilators . . .’ He pulled the lever.

  Slowly the mill stopped.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Simon, blundering towards the stair. He had a certain conviction now that when they got outside, the scarecrows would be waiting.

  ‘No,’ said Tris. ‘Hang on. This is great.’

  He pulled the lever the other way. The mill started up again.

  ‘Whoom, whoom,’ said Tris, with great enthusiasm. And opened up the lever a little bit more.

  The mill went faster and faster. Rising in tone, up, up, up to a many-voiced chorus.

  ‘Blast-off!’ shrieked Tris, and threw the lever wide.

  The mill roared; and began to moan inside its roaring. Agony inside the power. A horse being ridden to death. A pleading, pleading, pleading, inside the wood and the metal and the stone. Please stop. Please, please don’t wreck me.

  ‘That’ll do,’ said Tris, and turned it off. The mill sighed and slowly settled. The last few turns were almost a gasp of relief.

  As the noise ceased, Simon realised his head was clear as a bell. He knew the scarecrows were still lying in the field, where Tris had left them. Afraid to move. For some reason, afraid of Tris. Why?

  ‘I’m hungry,’ complained Tris. ‘What time do your lot have lunch?’

  Simon looked at his watch, dazed. It was nearly one o’clock.

  ‘We’d better hurry,’ he said. ‘Or we’ll be late.’

  On the way down, Tris paused to examine a crack in one of the whitewashed walls. He whistled. ‘That’s new.’ He pulled flaking bits of whitewash from the edges of the crack. ‘You can see bloody daylight through it. This mill, old lad, has not got long for this world. Poor thing.’

  But there wasn’t any regret in his voice.

  They crossed the turnip field. The scarecrows were lying just as they’d left them.

  ‘Nasty things,’ said Tris. And gave Starkey a flying kick where his ribs should have been.

  ‘Hey, steady!’ said Simon.

  ‘Why?’ asked Tris heartlessly.

  ‘There’s an old vicar watches this field . . .’

  ‘Good morning, vicar,’ yelled Tris at the top of his voice. ‘My uncle’s a vicar, the old fraud. We shall now sing Hymn 256.’

  They travelled home to the sound of Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.

  ‘More potatoes, Tris?’ Mum smirked. Like she thought he was God or something. ‘What have you two been doing this morning?’

  ‘Been to that mill.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Mum. ‘We got the cats there.’

  ‘And I suppose you buy your flour at the pet shop?’ asked Tris.

  Joe Moreton laughed so much he splattered runner-beans all over the table-cloth. Tris picked up the bits.

  ‘You’re supposed to eat those,’ he said to Joe, reprovingly.

  Joe blew out a second mouthful, choked, had to be banged on the back and said to Tris, ‘You’ll be the death of me. Do you never stop?’

  ‘Only in Lent,’ said Tris. ‘And then only for five minutes.’

  Joe was smirking at him fatuously too. And Jane slipped her arm through Tris’s slyly; from where she sat next to him at table.

  ‘I love you, Tris,’ she said. With maddening predictability.

  Oh, they were all so busy loving each other so much. It made Simon feel like a dull black shadow, who shouldn’t be there. His mum, his sister, his mum’s husband . . . what was so marvellous about Tris anyway?

  ‘What did you make of the mill, Tris?’ asked Joe Moreton.

  ‘It’s knackered,’ said Tris. ‘Cracks in the wall you could put your hand through. It’ll go down bang, one of these days.’

  Helped along by Tris la Chard, thought Simon bitterly. Don’t bother telling them you nearly ran the thing to pieces.

  ‘A real death-trap,’ said Joe, sagely. ‘It should be pulled down. If kids got to play in there . . . I think I’ll ring up the council. It’s their responsibility. They have a thing called a Compulsory Demolition Order.’

  ‘That would be a shame,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a fascinating old place – a real relic. There aren’t many water-mills left. They ought to give it to the National Trust. I wonder who owns it.’

  ‘Well, actually, I think it might be us. When I bought this house at the auction, I rather think there was a bit more land across the field . . . and a mention of outbuildings. I got this place so damned cheap . . . and was so busy doing it up . . . I’ll check. The National Trust can certainly have it for me . . . can’t stand the place.’

  ‘Can I help you look it up?’ asked Tris. ‘I’m rather interested. If it’s going to be saved, you better get cracking.’ His voice sounded serious, suddenly, even urgent. Simon wondered why.

  ‘We’ll do it after lunch,’ said Joe. ‘Come up to my studio. You want to come, Simon?’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Simon ungraciously. Why hadn’t Joe asked him first?

  ‘I’d like to come too,’ said Mum.

  ‘And me,’ said Jane.

  They made it sound like a bloody birthday party.

  After the washing-up, Simon slouched off into the garden in disgust. He looked over the gate into the turnip field. He knew what he would see.

  Somebody had put the scarecrows back upright. And somebody had put Starkey’s hat back on. And they had definitely been moved nearer.

  Who had moved them?

  And then he could no longer kid himself.

  I have moved them, he thought. I open the door. I give them the power. Every time I let the devils in.

  That is why they are afraid of Tris.

  Tris can undo devils. That night in the dorm with Harris . . .

  There was the creaking of an axle, from the lane. And the sound of an organ on the march.

  ‘Lee-heed kindly light, amidst the encircling gloom

  Lee-heed thou me on . . .’

  Mercyfull the merciless. Who could deal wi’ foxes, lazy horses and even the late Lord Herdsmere, Lord Knutsford’s son. Mercyfull would know how to deal wi’ a pack o’ scarecrows. Mercyfull was afraid of nowt. Mercyfull the invincible, who cured headaches by running head-down into marble fireplaces.

  The gate crashed open.

  ‘Mr Mercyfull,’ called Simon. ‘Can
you come here a minute?’ He tried to make his voice calm, matter-of-fact, boyish.

  Mercyfull seemed reluctant to come over; seemed inclined to sit on his wheelbarrow instead.

  ‘Mr Mercyfull.’

  Slowly, the old man dragged himself over. Simon stepped on one side and pointed across the field to the scarecrows, and carefully watched Mr Mercyfull’s face. He imagined him saying, ‘I lined up all three wi’ me gun, and got all three with one barrel . . .’

  But the old man merely stared a long time, then took out a red spotted handkerchief, wiped his face, and went back to his wheelbarrow. He suddenly looked rather ill.

  ‘Do you recognise them?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘The young miller, Josie Cragg, and Starkey.’

  ‘Aye.’ The word was pulled out of the very depths of him.

  ‘They’ve come back.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How do I stop them?’

  There was a long, long silence. A silence that seemed to go on forever. Then Mercyfull cocked his head on one side, as if consulting his repertoire, and began,

  ‘It was the Fust War that finished hosses. Afore t’war there was thousands. Town-councils used to pay fellers just to keep streets clear of hoss-manure. But all t’hosses went to France an’ none ever came back. France were death to a hoss – for every one killed by shot or shell, ten died o’ underfeeding or over-wok or pneumonia or just brok their hearts. Hoss traders hated sendin’ hosses to France, no matter what t’Army paid . . .’

  ‘Mr Mercyfull . . . the scarecrows . . . what do I do about them?’

  ‘Had a lovely hoss once – thowt so much on her, I walked her all the way home from Oswestry hoss-fair – all o’ seventy mile an’ it took me a day and a night. I’d just got her into stable an’ rubbed her down—’

  ‘Mr Mercyfull . . . the scarecrows . . .’

  ‘When I seen t’hoss-requisitioning officer coming. I jacked the price sky-high ’cause I didna want to part wi’ her . . .’

  Simon grabbed the old arms, the horny hands, and tried to pull Mr Mercyfull out of the wheelbarrow by main force. He must help, he must.

  ‘The officer – Captain Smith was his name – he weren’t a bad feller . . . he only had one arm an’ one eye on account o’ the war . . .’