‘Changeling,’ he muttered. ‘Changeling.’
It was a word Tom did not know. Then the door was closed.
Chapter Fourteen
It was only twenty past two when the bus took him into Dunroth. After making sure that the steamer was due at five past three he went for a walk up through the gardens, passing the Union Jack shaped with rockery plants, and the Crown with fairy-lights round it. People dressed for sunshine were putting on the green, or picnicking in grassy corners; a long row of them sat on the benches along the castle terrace, where there were many flowers as bright as the women’s dresses, bees, a flag-pole without a flag, and a monkey-puzzle tree without monkeys. He walked slowly, needing the people’s company in a way he had not done before. Hitherto he had moved among them like a spy among unacknowledged enemies; now he was more than ever on the lookout, but this time it was for companionship and especially for assurance that he was like them all, able and permitted to look at what was lovely and laugh at what was funny.
As he stared down from the high terrace to the blue Firth, two or three times, hearing a man’s laughter, he turned with a stound at his heart, expecting to find Mr Forbes beside him; for it was Mr Forbes who had compared the flowers to the women’s dresses, and who had looked in the tree for the puzzled monkeys.
From there steamers could be seen leaving the pier four or five miles across the water. Seeing what he took to be the one due in at five-past three with Alec, Chick, and Peerie on board, he was about to wander down towards the sea-front when he noticed a woman coming out of the big castle-like building with books under her arm. Going over, he saw a notice saying it was a library and reading-room. Although he knew that children not accompanied by adults were seldom allowed into libraries, he entered. Often in Glasgow he had been privileged, despite his clothes; he had sat for hours, as in a sanctuary, studying encyclopaedias, atlases, and history books; often he had done his school exercises there.
Inside was an empty hall with stairs. On the top was a door with the name ‘Reading-Room’ on it. There was another, inscribed ‘Toilet’, with the ‘i’ almost erased. He saw the joke, in this town of landladies.
The reading-room was really a sunken corner of the library which was reached by a short flight of steps. There was no door, so that Tom could see the librarian behind the counter. She in her turn could see him. Once or twice she seemed about to come and find out what he was doing there, but changed her mind, no doubt because of his quiet purposefulness. He it was who went to her.
‘Could I have a look at a dictionary, please?’ he asked.
‘And what do you want a dictionary for?’ But she was amused rather than displeased.
‘To look up a word.’
‘What word?’
‘Changeling. Is there such a word?’
‘Yes, there is.’ She was now surprised.
‘I’m not sure what it means.’
‘No, it’s not a very common word. Is it for a competition?’
‘No.’
‘Are you on holiday here?’
‘Yes.’
She went into a room behind the counter and returned with a large dictionary, which she set down in front of him.
‘Do you know how to use it?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
Quickly he turned over the pages. He ran his finger down the columns till at last it stopped at the word he wanted. ‘Changeling: a creature, in animal or human form, supposed to be left by the fairies or “other folk” in place of one they had stolen; often applied to a dwarfish, ill-favoured person or animal, spreading an evil influence.’
He read it several times, until he could have repeated it by heart, seeing more and more clearly why Mr Forbes had applied it to him, and why Mrs Forbes had looked at him with such loathing. When the librarian smiled at him, he hardly knew how to smile back. A sense of strangeness possessed and frightened him; his finger on the dictionary did not look like a finger at all.
‘Well, did you find it?’ asked the librarian.
‘Yes, thanks,’ he whispered.
‘It’s a funny word to be looking up.’
‘Yes. I think it was a kind of joke.’
All the way down to the pier he felt that strangeness. The people whose company he had enjoyed were now remoter than ever; the assurance of kinship had been taken away. He could not bear to think about the Forbes family; whenever his thoughts strayed near them they recoiled, as if from an area of pain, terror, and shame.
As the steamer edged in to the pier he could not at first make out his friends, so many hands were waving. Then he heard a screech shriller than any seagull’s; it was made by Chick whom he now saw, wearing a skipped cap of four colours. Beside him stood Peerie with a similiar cap. There was no sign of Alec.
People laughed as Chick and Peerie came staggering down the gangway, laden with tent, pans, blankets, and rucksacks. Both wore tight blue jeans. Peerie’s were genuinely American, with galloping cowboys sewn on; his shirt too was gaudier than Chick’s tartan. Each had his hair rumped close.
They greeted him with typical grimaces, winks, yelps, and pokes in the belly. It was Peerie, the soft-hearted, who noticed Tom did not respond.
‘Are you feeling sick, Tom?’ he asked. ‘You look sick.’
Chick was already leering round at the girls in their brief shorts and sleeveless blouses. ‘Peerie was nearly sick on the boat,’ he said, ‘and it was as calm as a pail o’ piss.’ He winked at his joke, spat, and flicked at a fag-end behind his ear.
Peerie grinned. ‘Chick was talking aboot things that would make onybody sick,’ he said. ‘Alec couldnae come, Tom.’
‘Boils,’ said Chick, ‘all over his mug.’
‘You said, Tom, we’d to come even if Alec couldnae manage.’ Peerie smiled as he spoke, but could not coax a smile out of his leader.
Chick thrust his face near theirs. ‘See that one?’ he whispered, and winked towards a girl of about sixteen, proud of her breasts in their white silken jumper, and of her long tanned legs naked to the thighs. ‘I could go for that.’
Peerie stared at Tom and grinned in shame. ‘He’s always talking about tarts noo.’
‘I’m growing up,’ said Chick, grabbing himself lewdly. ‘Whit aboot this tart you’re staying wi, Tom? Whit’s she like? Skinny? Nae tits yet?’
‘That’s whit I mean, Tom,’ whispered Peerie.
Suddenly Tom seized Chick by the front of his shirt. He could not speak.
Chick glanced at Peerie in amiable surprise. Peerie also couldn’t understand this violence on the part of his gentle leader.
‘There’s folk watching,’ he warned.
‘You’ll tear aff the buttons,’ said Chick, smiling.
‘Don’t speak aboot them,’ whispered Tom.
‘Who’s them?’ asked Chick. He had already forgotten his remarks about Gillian; his eyes were again roving.
Tom let go. ‘The people I’m staying with,’ he said.
Chick smoothed his shirt. ‘O.K.’
‘You’re an awfu’ toff, Tom,’ said Peerie, eagerly. ‘When we saw you on the pier Chick said it wasnae you, you were such a toff.’
Tom remembered his singing. He must try to win, for the money was needed. When he walked away, they staggered after him with their loads.
‘I’m bigger than you, Tom,’ remarked Chick.
Peerie was always the peacemaker. ‘There’ll be room in the tent for you, Tom, seeing Alec’s no here.’
Tom didn’t answer.
Peerie was anxious. ‘My grannie said she wouldnae let me come if you werenae to be staying in the tent wi us.’
‘His grannie doesnae trust me,’ chuckled Chick.
They crossed the street towards the gardens. A girl was singing; amplified, her voice yearned for her lover to come back to her.
Chick was enchanted. ‘Whit smashin’ singing. She’ll hae a face like a donkey’s bum, but she can sing.’
‘Where are we going, Tom?’ asked Peerie.
They were delighted.
‘Whit’s the prize?’ asked Chick.
‘Three pounds.’
‘Whit are you going to sing, Tom? Make it the “Unchained Melody”. Like this.’ He sang a piece: ‘“Oh, my love, my darling, I have hungered for your touch”.’
Leaving them, Tom hurried round behind the stage. His fellow-finalists were already on it. The master of ceremonies waved him up.
‘I thought you’d gone away home,’ he said. ‘Are you singing the same as on Tuesday?’
Tom nodded.
‘That’s right. Are your folks here again?’
That last question was accompanied by a glance over the audience for the proud parents. He was flabbergasted therefore when Tom suddenly turned, jumped off the stage, and disappeared.
Tom rejoined his friends. Paying no heed to their astonished questions, he hurried down to the beach.
‘Did you see a detective?’ gasped Peerie.
‘There were some guys saying you would win,’ said Chick.
‘If you had won that three pounds,’ said Peerie, sadly, ‘we might no hae needed to steal.’
Chick glanced about with predatory eyes. He saw a woman lying on her back on the grass, asleep, her mouth open, her belly rising and falling. Her bag lay beside her; so did her man, but he was a wee bald stupid man who could be robbed easily.
‘Just let me get started,’ he said. ‘I’m going to like this place: plenty of tarts and money.’
‘My grannie said I wasnae to steal,’ persisted Peerie.
‘Your grannie’s a daft auld bitch,’ said Chick. ‘Do you know whit she did, Tom? She made us promise no to steal.’
‘On the Bible,’ added Peerie.
‘Aye, but it had nae batters,’ said Chick. ‘You can swear onything by a Bible that’s got nae batters.’
‘My grannie’s deeing.’
‘She’s been deeing for years.’
‘She likes you, Tom,’ said Peerie, ‘and you said you liked her.’
That was true: Grannie Whitehouse had been the only person in Donaldson’s Court whom he’d respected; though very poor and old, she had never given in. But it was different now.
‘Sure you said you liked her, Tom?’
‘I liked her, Peerie.’
‘I’m going to bring her rock,’ said Peerie, in a trembling voice. ‘Dunroth rock, wi the name right through it.’
They were by this time seated in a nook among rocks on the shore. Chick was watching three plump women in bathing costumes; they were throwing a beach ball at one another. One’s buttocks kept oozing out so that she had to keep pushing them back in.
‘Where are we going to put up the tent, Tom?’ asked Peerie.
‘There’s a big hoose on the cliff,’ said Tom. ‘It’s empty. It’s like a castle. Maybe it was burnt doon years ago. But there’s a bit of the roof still on. Maybe it would be better than the tent.’
Chick had stiffened. ‘Whit aboot ghosts?’
They weren’t surprised by this question: Chick, they knew, was often haunted; he didn’t like darkness or derelict houses; he didn’t like old women.
‘We’ve told you a thousand times, Chick,’ said Peerie, ‘that there are nae ghosts nooadays.’
‘Whit about the folk that were burnt to daith in the fire?’
‘If there was onybody burnt, Chick, then they’re deid.’
‘I could see them in the middle of the night.’ He seemed to see them then, in the bright sunshine, on the crowded beach. ‘They’d hae hair like fire.’
Peerie giggled in nervous sympathy. He knew that if in the dark broken house Chick saw those ghosts with hair like fire he might see them, too.
Chick’s white face, which no sun would ever tan, and his weird eyes, became to Tom strangely familiar. In the library, reading the dictionary, he had tried to imagine what a changeling would look like; here now, seated beside him, was such a creature.
In revulsion he leapt to his feet and ran down the beach towards the water.
Peerie gazed after him, in dismay. ‘Whit’s the matter wi Tom?’ he asked. ‘He’ll no talk to us. He’s different.’
Chick did not hear. A woman had gone behind a rock to dress. He had not forgotten the ghosts as he watched, so that his expectations, as she raised and lowered her arms, were quick with fear.
‘It must be these folks he’s staying wi,’ said Peerie. ‘They’ve made him different.’
Chick whimpered: she had managed it, she had stepped out from behind the rock with her dress on, and he had seen no wonders.
Tom was standing by the edge of the sea.
Chapter Fifteen
In the evening they stepped off the bus not far from the great derelict house. As soon as they entered the avenue Chick took from his pocket an apostle teaspoon and held it in his hand. Avenue and garden were a wilderness of willowherb, tall and red and aggressive, like gigantic cocks. Behind the house the hillside rose sheer, bristling with dark-leaved trees. The house itself was already in shadow, though sunshine still blazed on the Firth. It was so huge and so imposing on its eminence over the sea, that its glassless windows, its shattered roof, its dangling rone-pipes, and above all its open doors, made it look like an enormous sinister trap. Tables and striped deckchairs ought to have been on the lawn in front; shiny motor-cars on the carriage-way; rich people gazing out of the windows; and servants everywhere. Instead there was nobody but themselves, as they crept about reconnoitring. Chick tapped the walls with his spoon; it was like a kind of tuning-fork to which he listened as if to a warning. To Peerie he became the most uncanny thing in or out of the house. Peerie himself kept close to Tom; he would have held on to him if he had been allowed.
Upstairs they found a room whose ceiling was almost intact, and whose windows had some glass in them. The floor was littered with fallen plaster, withered leaves, and birds’ dung.
‘This could do,’ said Tom.
Chick was tapping his spoon against the marble fireplace.
‘Are you trying to see if there’s a secret passage, Chick?’ asked Peerie.
Chick turned and tapped his brow with the spoon.
‘I don’t like it in here,’ he muttered.
Tom’s smile now frightened Peerie as much as Chick’s tapping did.
‘I don’t like it myself, Chick,’ he whispered.
‘Why is it empty?’ cried Chick. ‘Why did they go away and leave it?’
‘If you meet them tonight ask them,’ said Tom, but in such a low voice that only Peerie heard.
‘Listen,’ said Chick.
Outside on the road a car passed. In the garden a bird chirped. Transformed by Chick’s listening, those sounds became strange and evil, from the world of ghosts. The terror was too much for Chick himself. He crouched down on the hearth, buried his head in his arms, and made noises of fear like an animal.
Peerie bravely went over to comfort him.
‘There’s nothing to be frightened aboot, Chick,’ he said. ‘It’s just an empty hoose. The folk went away. Folk go away, Chick. Mind old Mr Camm went away and naebody knew where he went to?’ Peerie groaned, having in his agitation of pity conjured up his own private nightmare: Mr Camm’s body had been dragged out of the Clyde months later. ‘Tom’s no’ frightened,’ he added.
But when he turned to look at Tom for reassurance he was again daunted by that smile, itself suggesting things which could not be seen.
‘Chick’s never been as bad as this before, Tom,’ he said. ‘It must be this hoose. Do you think it is haunted?’
‘It’s just haunted if you think it’s haunted.’
Peerie grinned; his eyes tried to keep out of the way of that unavoidable truth.
‘I think we should sleep in the tent,’ he said. ‘For Chick’s sake. He’ll be a’ right in the tent.’
They stared at Chick who was now quiet; he still hid his face.
‘My grannie says,’ whis
pered Peerie, ‘that one day he’ll go like that and never get better. I hope it’s no’ this time. He’s got his big knife wi’ him. Poor Chick. He wasnae like this when he was wee.’
‘He’s always been like this,’ said Tom.
‘No, Tom, he was fine when he was wee. My grannie says it’s in his family. He’s got an uncle who’s in an asylum.’ Peerie shuddered. ‘Will we go doon and put up the tent, Tom?’
‘If you like.’
‘I think we should.’ Peerie spoke loudly to Chick. ‘Don’t worry, Chick. We’re no’ going to sleep here. Tom and me’s going to put up the tent ootside. It’ll just be like camping.’
‘Come on then,’ said Tom.
‘But we cannae leave Chick here by himself.’
‘He’ll come after us. He’s listening all the time.’
As they were cautiously going down the broken stairs Peerie looked back and saw Chick slinking behind them.
Later, about eleven o’clock, they were lying in the tent which was pitched in a space cleared among the willowherb. Midges had tormented them while they were erecting it, and now the door-flap had had to be closed to keep them out. Peerie was playing his mouth organ, with monotonous melancholy. Chick killed midges and flies on the tent wall with his spoon. Tom stared at the roof.
Peerie shook the slavers out of his mouth organ. ‘Naebody’s very cheery,’ he remarked.
Suddenly Tom swung over and caught Chick’s wrist. ‘What time is it?’ he asked. He looked at the watch himself. ‘Five to eleven.’ Then he lay down again.
‘Sure Chick should keep that watch in his pocket?’ said Peerie.
It had been taken from a jacket laid down by a boy playing football.
‘Any cop seeing it would be suspicious,’ added Peerie.
Chick grinned and tapped the watch glass with his spoon.
‘If you’re caught,’ said Peerie, ‘we’re a’ caught.’
In a sudden excitement Tom threw off the blanket and crawled to the door.
‘Are you feeling sick again?’ asked Peerie.
Tom said nothing but tried feverishly to untie the rope fastening the door-flap.
‘Do you need to pee?’ asked Peerie, with solicitous giggle.
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