by Pauline Fisk
Phaze II would have sneered at them for being scuds. But Abren smiled along with them. It was a nice moment for her, too. But then a second woman appeared, spoiling everything. She came pounding up the mound from the iron-gated houses at the far side of the square, heading for the child and shouting something.
Abren watched her coming, paralysed by sudden fear. She couldn’t make out what the woman was shouting, but suddenly she couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t think straight or speak. Her sense of dread was overwhelming. She wanted to shout, ‘Go quickly, while you can! Get out of here! Flee …’
But all she could do was flee herself!
Leaving the child crying, the mother powerless to stop the shouting woman, and the Chadman staring blankly as if none of this were happening, Abren tore out of the square. She didn’t want to see what took place next. She didn’t dare. It was as if some awful thing had happened here. And she ran in terror of remembering.
Football fever
Abren ran and hid and ran again for half the day, tearing round the town as if looking for a way out. She didn’t know what had got into her, but she felt as if she were being stalked. Once she saw Phaze II, but she darted down an alley and hid behind a rubbish bin until he’d gone. Then she started running again.
If only she could leave the town – cross the river and leave the horseshoe loop behind – perhaps then she would be safe. She headed for the Welsh Bridge, but everybody seemed to be staring at her strangely, and she turned back. Something had been triggered in her memory, but she didn’t know what it was. She saw Phaze II again – a face in a busy crowd – and turned away in a panic.
It was ridiculous, of course. Phaze II was her friend, who had come along the girders to ask if she was all right. But suddenly Abren felt as if she couldn’t trust even him. She hurried across town, heading for the English Bridge and getting caught up in a football crowd. With relief, she found herself surrounded by good-humoured supporters, nothing more threatening on their minds than beating the away team. Men and women, boys and girls, they all merged together into a sea of blue-and-white. And with her head down, Abren tagged along with them, hoping that she’d blend in.
The bridge approached and she moved towards it, her heart thundering. Town supporters jostled her on either side, and she started on to the bridge, expecting a hand to tap her on the shoulder and drag her back. But she reached the end of the bridge, and three roads stretched ahead of her, signposted to ‘Birmingham’, ‘Historic Ironbridge – Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’ and ‘London’. Abren didn’t know where any of these places were, but the river lay behind her, and so did Pengwern.
Suddenly she felt free. She headed for the nearest road, full of expectation. But before she could get more than a couple of steps, a crowd of away supporters came surging off a coach right in front of her. They were impossible to withstand – a tight wedge of men and boys who swept her along with them. No amount of crying to be let go made any difference. They were so preoccupied with getting to the match on time that they didn’t notice Abren. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her road disappear, and then the other two as well. Then she was carried into the ground, through the turnstiles, crushed up tight, and on to the stands.
Here a new sight greeted her. Not the football pitch, ready for the game with crowds around it waiting for the whistle, but the town viewed from the far side of the river. Abren stared at it – a patchwork of old stone mansions, towers and spires and modern office buildings. She saw the castle on the skyline, saw the roof of the new shopping mall, saw the old infirmary and the houses and flats nestled into the old town walls. Saw treetops swaying in a light spring breeze, and crows circling over them.
Then a whistle blew and the game began. On every side of Abren, men and boys started yelling words of wisdom. The ball ran down the pitch and their advice ran after it. And not just theirs; whole families of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grannies and grandpas were yelling at the two teams not to let them down.
Abren chose the moment to slip away. She trod round toes as best she could, tried not to knock into anybody’s ribs or dislodge anybody’s drink. She tried not to spoil anybody’s view. But for all her efforts she ended up only a few feet down the stand. She started again, heading off in another direction. But this proved no more successful. Finally, fed up with being careful, she charged like a bull – straight into Phaze II.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Why are you following me?’
‘Who says I’m following you?’
‘Don’t play with me – I know you are.’
‘Well, what if I am? You’ve been running round the town like a mad thing. Something’s obviously wrong.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, yes, you do.’
Abren tried to get away, but before she could something happened on the pitch. The town fans cheered, and the away fans started shaking their fists. They shouted vile things, and Abren found herself surrounded by men and boys with angry-looking, twisted faces.
She started pushing her way between them, startled by their voices and the violence in their faces. Phaze II chased after her, refusing to be left behind. Every time she turned around, there he was. She reached the end of the stand, and the away team scored a goal, setting their away fans crowing this time, and the town supporters crying foul.
Obviously, this was no ordinary match, but a battle between mortal enemies! Abren tried all the harder to get away. The voices were turning nasty.
‘Bloody Welsh!’ they cried. ‘Kill the scrubbers! Break their legs! Die, die, die! Out, out, out!’
It sounded like an action replay of the BC boys’ graffiti. And indeed it was! Abren looked around her and realised that for all her trying to get out of trouble, she had surrounded herself with Border Commandos! She tried to hide her face from them, but wasn’t quick enough. The boys saw her – the selfsame boys who’d chased her and sprayed paint at her and driven her into the river. Now they stared at her again and recognised who she was.
For a terrible moment, Abren expected them to take up where they’d left off. But then – as if they’d seen a ghost, back to haunt them from the grave – the boys turned white, every single one of them.
‘No! It can’t be …! Bloody hell!’
Suddenly, there was a stampede in the stands – BC boys disappearing in all directions, crushing everything that got in their way. Abren managed to jump aside, but Phaze II wasn’t quick enough. They knocked him to the ground and the last thing Abren saw was his black coat as they pounded over him.
‘It’s her!’
‘That girl!’
‘It can’t be!’
‘It is!’
No longer could Abren see Phaze II. She called for help, but no one came. She tried to reach the place where he had fallen, but couldn’t find him. She dived beneath the crowd, and the world down there was made of boots. They all looked the same, and all felt as cold and hard as steel. But Abren struggled between them. She had to find Phaze II. She alone was to blame for whatever he was going through.
In the end it was Phaze II’s cough that led Abren to him. His unmistakable cough! She heard it on the ground somewhere, and pushed her way towards it until there he was, slumped in a corner against a corrugated fence. A trickle of blood was coming out of his ear, his nose was swollen and one eye was half-closed. But he still managed to grin at Abren when she reached him.
‘Glad you found me,’ he said – and suddenly he was Abren’s friend again, not someone to run away from. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Abren followed as he hauled himself to his feet and led her along the back of the corrugated fence, weaving behind BC boys, Day-Glo stewards who had come at last to see what was going on, away fans who’d got caught up in something beyond their understanding, and police. Finally they reached a gap at the bottom of the fence. Phaze II dragged Abren through on hands and knees.
On the other side she found herself on a tree-lined earth path between the river and the railway bridge. A tunnel ran through the bridge, exactly matching the tunnel on the town shore, except that it wasn’t cobbled and had no light. Abren looked into it, and suddenly felt as if she’d come home. She didn’t want to run away to London. Didn’t know why she’d ever left.
She headed for the bridge, and Phaze II followed her, although his eye was weeping and he would have done better to find himself a doctor. It was as if their fortunes were bound together. They reached the tunnel and started climbing up its inside wall, inching from brick to brick and niche to niche until they reached the girders. Here the darkness of the bridge wrapped itself around them, hiding them from BC boys and Day-Glo stewards and anything else that might come after them.
Phaze II grinned at Abren and his face said home again. He jumped the jump and she did too. Then the two of them felt their way through the dark chasm, stumbled up the flight of steps and forced their way through the metal door. And even when they switched on the light to reveal the narrow tea-bar room, just as dismal as when Abren had left it, they still felt as if they’d come home.
Abren walked down the room. She didn’t mind the mess of smelly leftovers, or the mould, or the dust settled over everything. Didn’t mind the manky smell which came from bodies living without proper ventilation. Didn’t even mind Old Sabrina next door.
The bell was silent, as if Old Sabrina had worn herself out with ringing. Abren went to check that everything was all right, and found the room exactly as she’d left it. The mirror, the piano, the cut-glass chandelier, the marble fireplace. Even Old Sabrina’s chair was just as she had left it.
The only difference was the old woman herself. She wasn’t there.
‘Old Sabrina’s gone!’ Abren called.
‘She can’t be,’ Phaze II called back. ‘She’s always there. Of course she hasn’t gone!’
He came running, but Abren was right. He checked between the bin bags in his room, in case Old Sabrina had had a fall. Checked the toilet. Squeezed between the boards and checked the bit of rusty railway track outside. Checked the old abandoned platform, and then returned to check his room again, turning everything over and looking increasingly worried.
Finally, he returned to Old Sabrina’s room as if expecting her to have returned and the whole thing to have been some crazy joke. Not that Old Sabrina ever made jokes.
‘She must be here!’ he said.
Abren didn’t answer. She was too busy blaming herself, yet again. She was the one, after all, who’d left the poor old woman ringing her bell. Phaze II said he’d go and double-check the toilet, and she said she’d go back down the chasm, taking a torch with her to get in all the corners. Her mind was full of rivers running underneath them, and girders without handrails, and places where the only way forward was to jump. She could imagine Old Sabrina stumbling forward on her swollen feet, and missing her step. Imagine her being swept away – and Abren knew how that felt, didn’t she?
She was halfway to the door, when it juddered open. But it wasn’t Old Sabrina who came through, to set her mind at rest. It was a uniformed policeman. He took one look at Abren.
‘Seems like we’ve found what we’re looking for,’ he said.
Part Four
River Secrets
Compass House
It was the postcard that had done it – Abren’s scribbled note to Bentley which praised his playing under the railway bridge. Mena read it and insisted on going to the police as she’d promised them she would when she’d reported Abren missing at Christmas. Bentley tried to make her come with him and search the bridge instead. But she wouldn’t listen, and now it seemed that a nest of homeless children had been found hiding in the spaces above the girders. Everyone was talking about it all around the town. The children had been carted off to the police station and Mena was refusing to go and identify one of them as Abren.
She was also refusing – with absolute determination – to have ‘that child’ back until her real family were found. She wouldn’t even have her back for a single meal, brought home by Fee who had gone to make the identification instead. She didn’t want any further part in ‘that child’s’ story, she said.
Fee reasoned that it made sense for them to take her back, at least for now. Bentley pleaded too, but Mena wouldn’t have it. Abren was trouble, she said. You could see it in her eyes. See something odd about her. Something wild and strange and unpredictable. It had been a mistake ever getting involved.
‘That child was born to trouble, you mark my words,’ she said.
So Abren ended up with yet another set of strangers entering her life, in yet another home that wasn’t her own. This time it was on the old town walls, in the Morgans’ place – Compass House. She stood outside it, on the narrow strip of pavement between wall and road. In front of her rose a narrow tower which looked more like a prison than anything else. Beside her stood a social worker, the policeman who had found her in the first place, and Phaze II. He hadn’t spoken since they’d left the bridge, but from his glares Abren guessed he blamed her for everything.
The policeman banged on the knocker for the second time, and Phaze II shuffled restlessly as if he knew this was his last chance to get away. Abren heard feet dragging on the other side of the heavily studded front door, and a jangling sound which could have been a gaoler with a bunch of keys. She wondered what they were in for.
‘All right, all right, I hear you,’ a voice called, and the door creaked open to reveal not the dingy horror which Abren had expected, but a bright white hall.
Abren beamed, weak with relief, and the woman standing at the door beamed back. She was tall, with jangling bracelets instead of gaoler’s keys, waist-long, yellow, curling hair and a bright pink-lipstick smile slapped across her face like a flyer on a billboard – there for all the world to read and impossible to shift.
She stepped aside to let them in. ‘We’ve been expecting you. Come in! You’re just in time for supper. I’m Mrs Morgan. Mrs Penny Morgan, but you must call me Pen.’
Phaze II scowled as if the only name that he would ever call her started with an S for scud. But Abren stepped over the threshold, wondering what fairyland she’d found behind this little tower with its studded door. Yet again, it seemed that appearances had proved deceptive. Or, as Fee had once said, you should never judge a book by its cover!
She followed Pen down the scrubbed white hall, which smelt of wood polish and was full of paintings, fish in cases, a long willow basket and an old cutlass hanging on the wall. At the end of the hall, they descended a flight of steps to a kitchen built out over the back of the house. Here all the clutter of a busy life was spread around a bright red stove. Seedlings grew in trays, under sheets of glass. A pile of vegetable peelings sat on a wooden chopping board. Glasses of red wine waited, half drunk, to be finished off. A basket of duck-blue eggs sat in bowl on the window ledge.
Phaze II stood in the doorway, staring at it all as if nothing could impress him. But Abren was enthralled. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected her day to end like this! She stared at the supper which the woman, Pen, lifted out of the stove, shutting the oven door behind her with the back of her heel. Whatever was in that cooking pot smelt wonderful. Abren fondly imagined it containing stew with dumplings, followed by a pudding drenched in chocolate sauce.
‘Sit down,’ Pen said. ‘Eat while it’s hot. Sir Henry isn’t in yet. I’ve called and called. But that’s him for you! Make a start without him.’
Abren sat down, wondering what sort of man was called Sir Henry by his own wife. She tried to catch Phaze II’s eye but he looked away, refusing to turn back even when Pen served food on to his plate. She offered helpings to the social worker and the policeman too, but they said that they had to leave.
Pen went to see them out. She was gone a while and returned alone. Abren’s plate had been scraped clean, but Phaze II’s plate hadn’t been touched.
‘Oh, dear, you don’t like chicken curry! Can I get you something else?’
‘The boy will eat when he wants. Don’t fuss. Leave him alone.’
At the sound of a new voice, Abren looked up to see a skinny black man standing at the back door. He was as tall as Pen, but stretched out like a taut wire. His cheekbones were high, and his eyes were full of something Abren couldn’t quite identify, but she soon found out was laughter. His hair was salt-and-pepper grey, and he wore an old sailor’s jersey. A clay pipe stuck out of his mouth, and a thin twist of something that smelt quite unlike tobacco came coiling out of it.
‘Meet Mr Morgan,’ Pen said. ‘You can call him Henry if you want to, but hardly anybody does. Sir Henry’s what most people know him as. After his famous ancestor, you understand, the chief of all the buccaneers, who made his fortune in the Caribbean plundering the Spanish Main. Not that we’ve seen much of his famous fortune though – apart from the old blunt cutlass hanging in the hall.’
Sir Henry laughed at her, and she beamed round, embracing all of them with her mile-wide smile. Abren thought that she could never call the man Sir Henry. It was a silly name. She looked at Phaze II to see what he thought.
‘What that boy needs isn’t food, anyway. It’s his bed,’ Sir Henry said.
He was right. Phaze II was visibly wilting. His bruises had come out like swollen prunes soaked in tea. His shoulders were sagging. His good eye was closing and Abren guessed that his other one – examined by a doctor at the police station, and covered in an enormous bandage – was now tightly shut. It had been an unexpected end to what had started as an ordinary day. And now he was exhausted.
