The Ghost of Grania O'Malley

by Michael Morpurgo

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Jessie’s mother. ‘The treasure’s gone.’

  Jack ran across the yard towards the chicken shed, and Jessie followed as fast as she could. She found him staring down into an empty hole. ‘I just can’t understand it,’ her mother was saying. ‘I thought maybe one of us might possibly have mentioned to Mister Barney where we were hiding it, but we didn’t. He didn’t know anything about it. But we had to ask, just to be sure.’

  ‘I told you, Cath,’ said Jessie’s father. ‘Someone must have seen you burying it last night.’

  ‘But it was dark, you know it was.’ Jessie’s mother was near to tears. ‘Why do you keep trying to blame it on me?’ The two children said nothing. They knew very well who had taken it.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Jessie’s father said. ‘But it has gone, hasn’t it? That means someone’s stolen it, someone on this island. It wasn’t us, was it? And it certainly wasn’t old Mister Barney. I told you there was no point in going up there. How could he possibly have moved a thing like that all by himself? There’s only one answer. Someone must have seen us fetching it back in the boat from Piper’s Hole. They must have spied on us, and then later on, watched us bury it. But who? Who?’

  Jessie tried not to look across at Jack, but she could not stop herself. It was the barest flicker of a smile, but her father noticed it. ‘You don’t seem very upset, Jess,’ her father said.

  Jessie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of course I am, but what can we do? If it’s gone, it’s gone. And besides it’s no use to us any more, is it? Jack and me, we only wanted it so’s we could share it out and save the Big Hill.’ She turned to her mother. ‘The diggers have come, Mum. Marion Murphy said.’

  ‘I know,’ said her mother quietly. ‘I know.’

  ‘There’s four of them,’ said Jessie’s father. ‘Down by the quay. They start work Monday.’

  Jessie’s mother walked away towards the house, talking as she went. ‘You know, I’m beginning to wonder about all this. I’m really beginning to wonder. When we were kids, and Mister Barney told us he’d seen Grania O’Malley’s ghost, we never believed him. When he said she’d hidden her treasure on the island, we never believed him. He spent his life looking for it, and we laughed at him. Then Grania O’Malley’s treasure turns up, out of the blue.’

  ‘So?’ Jessie’s father said, following her into the kitchen.

  ‘You still don’t see it, do you? If he was telling the truth about the treasure, and it seems he was, then it follows he was telling the truth about the ghost. And today, when we find the treasure’s been dug up and taken away, what did he tell us? Grania O’Malley’s come back for it, he says, because she knows it’s no use to us any more. Well, if that’s true, and let’s just pretend it might be true, then it fits, don’t you see. The whole thing fits. The children were meant somehow to find the treasure, and the treasure was meant to save the Big Hill. It was all her idea. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Jimmy? And now she knows it can’t be done, because she’s heard all about how it’s not ours to share, how you can’t just give treasure away when you find it. So she came to take it back.’

  They were in the kitchen now, and she turned to face Jessie’s father. ‘I know it sounds mad, I know it does. But that’s the gist of what Mister Barney said, isn’t it? Well, I don’t laugh at old Mister Barney, not any more. And there’s something else you haven’t thought of. No one has thieved anything on this island in my lifetime – maybe the odd sheep does go missing from time to time, but that’s all. We leave the doors unlocked, don’t we? The keys in the car, don’t we? Does anything ever get taken? Think about it. I didn’t dig that treasure up. You didn’t, the children didn’t, Panda didn’t. If Mister Barney says it was the ghost of Grania O’Malley that dug it up, then you know what? I believe him. And if that makes me cracked in the head, then maybe I am.’ And with that, she opened the drawer and took out the bread knife. ‘I’ll make you your sandwiches, Jack. And, Jess, why don’t you help your father fill in that hole before a chicken breaks a leg?’

  It was a weekend when time itself seemed to stand still. There was a calm and a quiet over the island, only a breath of wind off the sea. Even the owl in the abbey stopped calling at night. They dipped the sheep on Saturday morning, and through it all, Jessie’s mother never said a word. She scarcely looked up. After it was over, Jack said he was off down to the quay. He wanted to see the diggers for himself, he said, and besides, the quay was on the way to the field and he was expected for a game of baseball with Liam and Marion and the others. It would be too far for Jessie to walk, if they had to hurry. ‘Then you can push me in the wheelbarrow,’ said Jessie. She did not like the idea of being left behind one little bit. Jack didn’t argue. He laid some straw in the bottom of the squeaky wheelbarrow, and off they went, Mole and Panda tagging along behind.

  When they reached the quay, there was a great crowd standing round the diggers. Everyone seemed to be there: Father Gerald, Mrs Burke, Miss Jefferson, Michael Murphy, and dozens of others that Jessie had never seen before. The pub was overflowing into the street with people. Jack and Jessie left the wheelbarrow, made their way through the crowd and gazed up in awe at the gigantic bulk of the machines. Just the tyres were as high as Jack could reach. Painted on each of their yellow sides was one word, in huge black letters: ‘Earthbuster’. Jessie saw them suddenly as living creatures, as monsters sleeping in the sun, but only for the moment. Once woken, they would rampage across her island and swallow up the Big Hill.

  Marion Murphy was being lifted up on to a digger by a man in orange overalls. There were a dozen others dressed the same. Jessie soon worked out these must be the digger drivers, or maybe they were mechanics. They were swigging pints and rolling cigarettes as they folled up against their diggers. Swaggerers, Jessie thought, swaggerers every one of them. But the islanders were swarming around them and around their machines in open admiration. Marion had clambered on to the top of the digger by now, and stood there posing triumphantly, arms upraised, while her father took photo after photo of her. Jessie stared stonily up at her until she caught her eye. I’d give a lot, an awful lot, Jessie thought, for Grania O’Malley to push her off that digger. ‘I hate you, Marion Murphy.’ Jessie tried to say it with her eyes, and must have succeeded because Marion looked away at once and posed again, more nervously now, an uneasy smile on her face.

  ‘Let’s go, Jack,’ said Jessie. ‘I’ve had enough.’ But Jack wasn’t there. She went looking for him, and found him at last round the front of a digger with one of the orange-overalled drivers who appeared to be showing Jack over the engine. She tugged at his coat, but he didn’t seem to grasp how impatient she was to leave, nor how annoyed she was becoming.

  ‘You see this, Jess? This guy says it’s got to be about the biggest earthmover in the world. This is some powerful machine. Makes my Volkswagen at home look like a tricycle. How many horsepower, d’you say, sir?’

  ‘Over five hundred,’ said the driver, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He had ginger hair, Jessie noticed, a ginger that almost matched the colour of his overalls. ‘Four-wheel drive, fuel injection. Thirty tons of power. Do anything you want, this will. Move mountains if you want it to.’ He heaved with laughter at that, and then Jack was laughing with him and asking more questions about the engine. Jessie had had enough. She glared at them both and walked off.

  Later, with Jack pushing her in the wheelbarrow along the road towards the field, Jessie was still bridling at what she saw as Jack’s betrayal. He had been fraternising with the enemy, and she was furious with him. It was a long and silent walk. ‘Something on your mind?’ Jack said at last.

  Jessie let fly. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything but engines?’

  ‘Hey, I was just talking to the guy. What are you so mad at me for?’

  ‘If you don’t know, then I’m not saying.’ And they relapsed into a simmering silence that lasted until they reached the field.

  Liam and the
others were already practising. As usual, Liam and Jack were the captains and they picked the teams; and as usual Marion managed to get herself picked for Jack’s team. Jessie went off on her own and sat down under the tree. It was the first real argument she’d had with Jack, but it was entirely his fault and she wasn’t going to make it up, not ever. She could see too, that he was really angry. He was winding himself up and pitching with real venom. No one stood a chance. They ducked and dodged and protested, but Jack just kept pitching. They hardly managed to hit a ball at all. And when it came to his turn with the bat, he belted the ball right over the fence and into the potato field beyond. He ran six home runs before they found the ball; and when they told him that wasn’t fair, he said that he knew the rules better than they did.

  Even after the game was over, she could see he was still furious. ‘You coming or what?’ he snapped at her. All the way home in the wheelbarrow she sat with her back to him, arms folded, lips pursed.

  The evening was worse still. After supper, her mother sat staring into space. Jessie went and sat on her lap to console her and to be consoled. Jack phoned home, and then just took himself off to bed without even saying goodnight to anyone.

  ‘Is something the matter with Jack?’ her father asked.

  ‘He’s just sulking,’ Jessie said.

  ‘He’s sulking!’ Her father smiled wryly.

  ‘Only one more day before they start.’ Her mother spoke as if she were speaking to herself. ‘One more day for the Big Hill.’ And she looked up at Jessie’s father. ‘You know, somehow I always thought something would happen to stop it. First, I thought I could do it by talking to people, explaining, persuading. I couldn’t. Then I thought that the people in Dublin must have more sense. They didn’t. But even then, I still had faith. I don’t know why, but I still believed it could be stopped. Then when the children brought us the treasure, I thought for sure that we’d win, that the Big Hill was reprieved. Just another false hope. And now I cling to anything, even Mister Barney’s ghost. I know it’s silly, Jimmy, I know it’s nonsense. But there’s nothing else left, except prayer maybe. Am I going to pray in Mass tomorrow! I’m going to pray like I’ve never prayed before.’

  ‘I’ll pray with you,’ said Jessie’s father.

  ‘You don’t come to Mass,’ she replied tartly.

  ‘I can still pray, can’t I?’ he said. ‘And I’ve a lot more faith in prayers than I have in ghosts, that’s for sure.’ He went on, ‘Everywhere I went today, I kept looking at people, and thinking: was it you? Was it you that stole the treasure? Even Father Gerald, honestly. I’m telling you, one of them must have stolen it.’

  Jessie lay in her bed that night and listened to Jack snoring in the next room. Every snore she heard made her angrier still. She made up her mind that she wouldn’t speak to him the whole of the rest of his time on the island. Hadn’t he laughed with that digger driver, and about the digger being able to move mountains too? He’d laughed! She felt so angry, and so lonely at the same time.

  She longed to climb into her parents’ bed and snuggle up to them and tell them the whole story of Grania O’Malley. She would tell her mother there and then not to worry, that Grania O’Malley would never stand by and watch the diggers move in on the Big Hill. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Even if her mother believed her – and maybe she would now – her father most certainly would not. And what if she did tell her story, and then Grania O’Malley didn’t come back and save the Big Hill. What then? Where would that leave her? No, better to wait and see how things turned out.

  The snoring stopped next door. She heard Jack’s bed creaking, his door opening, and then footsteps coming along the passage outside her door. ‘Jess?’ He was whispering through the door. Pride would not let her answer. She pretended she hadn’t heard. ‘Jess?’ The tiptoeing steps moved along the passage and then there was silence.

  She wished at once that she had answered, but it was too late. Through her window she saw the full moon sitting on top of the Big Hill, too bright to look at, and anyway, she thought, you mustn’t look at the full moon through glass. It makes you mad. She closed her eyes.

  ‘Oh talk to me, Grania O’Malley, please,’ she whispered. ‘Please, please. Just let me know you’re there.’ Barry surfaced and splashed in his bowl. She said her proper prayers, closing her eyes tight shut. ‘You’ve got to stop them, God. You’ve got to save the Big Hill. Please.’ And she went on praying, until sleep overcame her.

  * * *

  Jack wasn’t there when Jessie came down late for breakfast the next morning. Her father said he had gone off to play baseball with Liam. Jessie sat through Mass but could not concentrate. Either she was still fuming inside about Jack’s treachery or she was watching the swallow high up in the roof, swooping down over the heads of the congregation and up to the rafters by the door, searching for a way out but never finding it. Her mother’s knuckles were white under her forehead as she prayed. Jessie prayed to Jesus and to Grania O’Malley at the same time. She felt a little guilty about doing that in church, but she thought that Jesus wouldn’t mind, that he’d forgive her just this once. As Father Gerald had so often said: ‘Jesus understands, Jesus forgives. All you have to do is ask.’ So she asked for forgiveness, and went on praying to both of them.

  They were all standing and chatting outside the church door after Mass when Liam came racing down the hill on his bike, scooted to a stop, threw it down and came running up the church path waving his arms and shouting, ‘It’s sabotage! Sabotage! Someone’s fixed the diggers.’

  Father Gerald took him by the shoulders and calmed him down. ‘What are you saying Liam? What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone’s fixed them. They won’t work, Father. They won’t start. None of them will.’ Jessie and her mother looked at each other, a sudden bright hope in their eyes. Jessie felt a cheer of joy bursting to get out, but she held it inside her until she was alone with her mother in Clatterbang, and rattling along the road towards the quay, in convoy with everyone else.

  ‘It’s the ghost!’ cried her mother. ‘It’s the ghost of Grania O’Malley, like Mister Barney told us. It’s Grania O’Malley.’ And the tears were running down her cheeks. ‘Well, don’t look at me like that, Jess. It has to be her, it has to be.’

  ‘I know, Mum!’ Jessie laughed above the clatter. ‘I know!’ And Clatterbang coughed loudly and backfired.

  Jack was there with everyone else on the quayside. The digger drivers in orange overalls were gathered in a huddle and talking to the Garda. There was a Garda boat moored out in the harbour. People were still coming from all over the island, in Land-Rovers, on motorbikes, on foot. Mrs O’Leary was standing in the road outside her pub, still in her fluffy slippers. Father Gerald hadn’t even taken his surplice off and it was flapping about him in the breeze. The whole place was a buzz of excitement. It was Mrs O’Leary who came over towards them as they got out of Clatterbang. ‘Someone’s fixed them, Cath,’ she said. ‘They don’t know what’s the matter with them. They just won’t work, not any of them.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ said Jessie’s mother, laughing. ‘I wish it was, but it wasn’t. But I think there’ll be a few here who’ll think it was.’ And it was true. Several people were glaring at them, Michael Murphy amongst them. They walked away from Mrs O’Leary over towards Jack. ‘If I told them who it really was,’ Jessie’s mother whispered to her, ‘they’d not believe me, not in a million years.’

  Jack had seen them now. He was sauntering over to join them, hands deep in his jeans pockets, baseball bat tucked under his arm. ‘Hi,’ he said, and he was grinning happily at Jessie. ‘Never seen anyone half as mad as those digger guys,’ he said. ‘I’m going home. You coming, Jess?’

  Jessie walked alongside him for some way, until they had left the houses well behind them, until she was quite sure no one could overhear them. Then she tugged at his arm and stopped him. ‘It was her, wasn’t it? She came!’
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  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Jack cryptically, and he wandered on. She tottered after him, dragging him to a stop again.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He was laughing now. ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ he said. ‘It was your dad’s. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, not like us. He came to me and he said, did I know how to gum up the digger engines? I told him I could, anyone could, but first you got to find out a few things. So I went and asked that digger guy to show me his engine. You were there, right? Found out all I needed to know. Then, last night, your dad and me went and did it. I tried to wake you, but you were asleep. All you have to do is take off the distributor heads, and then pour a whole lot of sugar in the gas tank, and presto, nothing works. Told you, when it comes to engines and stuff, I can fix – or gum up – just about anything.’

  ‘You did it?’

  ‘I told you, me and your pa.’

  ‘So it wasn’t the ghost. It wasn’t Grania O’Malley.’

  ‘I guess not,’ said Jack, and then, ‘are we friends again?’

  ‘I could hug you,’ Jessie said. ‘I could really hug you.’

  ‘OK by me,’ he said. And so she did. She felt like

  skipping all the way home, but she couldn’t. She laughed instead, prattling on and on about how it served them right, about how she couldn’t wait to tell her mother what had really happened. Jack said very little until they were nearly home. Mole came trotting down the road to meet them. Jack ran his hand along his back as he walked along beside him.

  ‘It won’t stop them, Jess, you know that,’ he said, trying to break it to her as gently as he could.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’ll maybe stop them for a day or two, but they’ll soon fix it again. They’ve got to take them all apart and clean out the sugar – blocks the fuel injection. But once they clean them out, they can start them up again. We haven’t won the battle or anything, Jess. We just put it off for a while, that’s all.’