Mrs Flannagan's Trumpet

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘But it’s all right now.’

  She shook her head at this, then pressed her fingers over her lips before saying, ‘No, no; it won’t be all right for me until they get him, that Mr Van. He’s clever. Aye, an’ wily. That Hal Kemp was bad in one way but…but that Mr Van, I know now he’s like the devil ’cos he could smile an’ be pleasant when he was doing awful things. No’—she shook her head—‘I’ll be frightened to put me foot across the door until they get him.’

  He didn’t now say, ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ because he knew that in her place he would be feeling the same.

  He went out and filled the scuttle, and as he was returning across the yard two men entered it. He put the scuttle down on the ground and stood waiting, and when they neared him one of the men just shook his head, and Eddie, stooping, lifted the scuttle and went into the kitchen. They followed him.

  ‘Will you sit down a minute?’ He turned from them to Daisy, saying now, ‘Go and tell me granny the pollis are here.’

  ‘You didn’t find the boat then?’ He was looking from one to the other of the men.

  ‘Yes, lad, we found the boat all right and we rescued four bairns. And there’s a number of men behind bars in the Sunderland Jail at this minute, but I’m afraid your sister wasn’t one of the children.’

  He turned from them and put his hand to his throat as if to loosen the tension, then as the kitchen door opened to admit his granny he went out into the yard again because he couldn’t bear to witness her reaction to the news.

  It was when he had been standing in the dark quietness of the stable for about ten minutes that Eddie asked himself a question, and he wondered why he hadn’t asked it before. The question was: What had become of Barney and the cart? He remembered his grandfather saying that the horse must have been used for night work because it appeared so worn out. He also knew that although both the cart and horse were supposed to belong to Hal Kemp, it was his grandmother who had set him up with it to start a little business of fish transporting from the quay to the shops. But where were the cart and horse now?

  Perhaps somewhere in Sunderland.

  It was evident that they had used it as a means of transport for what they termed their cargo. But if it had been left on the Shields quay the police would have spoken about it before now.

  Where else, he now asked himself, could they have hidden a horse and cart along this stretch? It wasn’t likely they had taken it down to the beach and hidden it in one of the shallow caves, because Barney liked company and he would have set up a neighing. Nor was it likely that Hal Kemp would have paid a hostler to see to the animal. So where could the horse and cart be?

  … He was on his feet when the probable answer came to him. Biddy McMann’s…Biddy had a shed outside her cottage. It was a good size, not quite as big as the barn here, but it would take a cart and horse all right. And hadn’t the gentleman, Mr Van, lodged with Biddy until he disappeared? And who would think of looking for him in his old lodgings, for no man would be mad enough or…clever enough to hide out under the police force’s nose, so to speak.

  He had passed the end of the yard and was speeding over the grass when he heard one of the men hailing him from the house, but he took no notice. His legs seeming to have acquired a separate strength of their own, he leapt over mounds and rough ground, down the shallow valley, up the other side and for some way along the cliff top before he turned inland. And he was still running when, like a speck in a field, he saw Biddy’s cottage.

  He was within a hundred feet of it when he drew to a halt and stared at it. The cottage was a small place, consisting of only two rooms up and two rooms down with a lean-to at the back that Biddy used as a scullery.

  The door of the cottage was closed but that was no indication that she was out.

  He kept his steps slow and trod lightly as he neared the door and turned the handle. It was locked. He now moved cautiously along the wall to where the single window was draped with lace curtains. Dropping onto his hunkers he looked through the clear space left by the curtains where they were parted and gathered into a loop at each side of the window. The room was empty and the fire was out. Definitely Biddy hadn’t returned from…across the water. It was as his granny said, she was never there when she was wanted. He could imagine her coming jauntily into the house tomorrow and saying, ‘Well now, Maggie, if I’d only known you were in need of me I would have been here like a shot. Now you know I would.’

  He moved past the window but didn’t go round to the back of the cottage; instead, he made his way to the outbuildings that stood facing him.

  Gently he lifted the latch of the door and as gently pushed it wide but didn’t enter. He didn’t want a blow on the head from the side. The place was lighted only by the daylight coming through the cracks made by the warped wood, but it was like a note of welcome being given to him when he heard the horse neigh.

  His eyes darting here and there, he went slowly forward until he reached the horse; then stroking its muzzle, he said softly, ‘Hello, Barney old boy. Hello there,’ and the horse tossed its head and neighed again.

  ‘All right. All right. Quiet. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He patted the animal’s flank, then went quickly out and across the narrow yard and to the door leading into the lean-to.

  The door, as he expected, was locked but the makeshift window to the right of it had an ordinary sneck latch which could be moved by inserting a thin blade between the upper and lower sections. He had got in through the back window of their own house more than once in this way; once when his mother had lost her key and another time when he came home from work in the middle of the day with a burnt finger and his mother was out.

  But where would he find a thin blade now? He didn’t carry a knife, having always resisted the temptation after seeing what could happen when tempers got out of hand and pocket knives were brought in to enforce an argument.

  He looked about him. There was a poss-tub and a wooden roller mangle to the side of the lean-to, and on the draining board of the mangle was a handleless broken-bladed knife, used, he saw, for cutting up soap, blue mottled soap, for the prong which had once been inserted into a bone handle gave evidence of this with the pieces of dry soap adhering to it.

  He wondered as he picked up the knife why Biddy didn’t keep her mangle and her poss-tub in the shed. Likely because it was too far away from her source of hot water.

  The knife did its work, and quietly he pushed up the bottom half of the small window. But even as he crawled through and fell onto his hands on the stone floor he asked himself what he expected to find, and grimly the answer came from deep within him, ‘We’ll see, won’t we? We’ll see. If I’m wrong, well, I’m wrong, but if I’m right…!’

  The door from the lean-to led straight into the kitchen-cum-living room and right opposite was the front door, but to the left of him was a door leading into the other room, the room Biddy always referred to as ‘me parlour’.

  Even as he tiptoed towards it he knew that if there was anyone in the house they would already be aware of his presence, the neighing of the horse alone would alert them, so deciding to use surprise tactics he took his foot and thrust it against the parlour door. It opened easily and when it reached its full extent it hit some object behind it which thrust it closed again. But he had seen enough of the room to know that it was empty, unless…unless there was someone behind the door.

  He now opened the door slightly and peered through the aperture between the door and its stanchion. It gave him a clear view of that part of the room, and there was no-one in it.

  He turned now and looked towards where the stairs led upwards to the right of the door which gave onto the scullery. When he reached the foot of them he stared into the dark abyss they presented. If anybody was up there they were waiting for him and they had all the advantages.

  He stood for a full minute considering. Having made up his mind he made no bones about being quiet, but walked across the room towards t
he front door, then walked back to the kitchen door and out into the lean-to. There he withdrew the bolt from the outer door, then banged it closed again, and now, stooping down, he quickly undid the laces of his boots and pulled them off.

  He was again standing at the bottom of the stairs when he heard a door open above him. Pressing himself against the side of the wall now, he waited for someone to descend.

  When he heard no further movement at all on the stairs or from up above, he reckoned that whoever was up there must have surmised that he had left, that is if they had been in the front upper room of the cottage; if they had been in the back room all they needed to have done was to look out of the window and they would have known immediately that he hadn’t left.

  The minutes passed and still there was no sound from up above; so now he pressed himself from the wall and began to ascend the stairs, cautiously placing each foot on the side of the treads in the hope that they wouldn’t creak.

  The stairs were dark right to the top but there was sufficient light on the tiny landing given off by a fanlight in the roof for him to make out that both bedroom doors were closed.

  He surmised that his quarry would be in the front room and so it was this door that he pounced on and burst open. Immediately he saw his mistake for the room was empty. He swung round and faced the other door and although his body was taut he was trembling now in every limb; it was as if all his bones were attached to wires.

  He waited, staring unblinking towards the closed door. Had he imagined he’d heard a door open and close? Had he come on a wild goose chase? No, no; some instinct told him he hadn’t and it was this same instinct that made him bend forward, lift the latch of the door with one hand while with his foot he kicked it open …

  Now he stood staring wide-eyed into the small room for straight before him was a bed and lying on it was Penny, apparently sound asleep, and standing at the head of the bed was the man, the Belgian, the stone gatherer, the child gatherer.

  It was the man who spoke first. ‘It has taken you some time to make the stairs,’ he said. There was no smile on his face now, yet the voice was still smooth, the words broken slightly with the foreign accent.

  Eddie made no reply but slowly lifted one foot forward, then the other. The third step brought him to the foot of the bed, and here he gripped hold of the brass rail. His mind was giving him words to speak such as ‘You filthy swine! You dirty rotten swine! I’m going to kill you. Do you know I’m going to kill you?’ But he couldn’t get them past his lips because his jaws wouldn’t work, they were so tightly clenched.

  When he sprang it was to meet the man’s forearm across his chest, and the blow sent him reeling back to the wall. But the impact with the wall seemed to help him to spring forward again, and now he was grappling with the hated individual. They were on the floor rolling in the confined space between the wall and the bed. At one point he was uppermost with the man’s neck between his hands, then the man’s knee came up sharply to his groin. He gasped and rolled aside. This was the same trick that had disabled him in the cave. But now his fury was so great that it did nothing more than make him gasp before his hands went out again to combat the blows that the man was now raining on him.

  Again they were rolling on the floor, and again he was uppermost and somewhere inside his raging brain he knew he was getting the upper hand and that the man was weakening, and when he heard him gasp, ‘Enough! Enough! Let…let me go. You…you have won,’ he still went on pounding him until he told himself that should he succeed in killing him the man would escape justice, the justice that years of imprisonment would mete out.

  Sanity returning to him, his arms dropped to his sides and he stumbled to his feet and, backing away towards the foot of the bed, he gasped, ‘Get up!’

  For a time the man seemed unable to move, and when he did it was to turn on his hands and knees and crawl a few paces to where a small open valise lay on the floor.

  Eddie watched him clutching at the scattered clothes as if for support; he watched him pull himself to his feet by the help of a wooden chair; and so when the seemingly defeated man sprang on him he was completely off his guard.

  At first he thought the man had stuck a hot poker in his shoulder, and when he dropped onto the foot of the bed gasping and saw the knife come up again he put out his hands to save himself. As the blood from his hands spurted into his eyes and he fell backwards across the bed he knew that the man’s knife had found another place in his body and that this was the end of him. All his effort had been in vain, and Penny, across whose feet he was lying, would be taken away and his granny would die…and his mother would go mad.

  There was a great roaring in his head, a great confusion; he was in the cave once more fighting Hal Kemp. No, no, he wasn’t, he was standing near the hole and the man with the peak cap was dancing round it. He was doing an Irish jig like Biddy McMann did when she had had a drop. The blood was in his mouth, it was choking him. Oh Ma! Ma! Oh Ma! If she only hadn’t gone away. If she’d only let him stay at home. He was going down, down, down the hole in the passage; but he wasn’t bumping himself for the man in the peak cap had his arms about him.

  Chapter Eight

  If only that fellow in the peak cap would stay in one place and he would stop bringing people into the room. One minute he was chasing him along the passage and scaring the wits out of him as he jumped over the hole, then the next minute he was running across the grass towards him holding his mother by one hand and Penny with the other; and he never seemed to do anything slowly or quietly like other people.

  Two doctors at one go he brought in, that old Doctor Collington and a younger man, and between them they put him through it. By lad, they did! Stuck needles into him. While that fellow in the peak cap stood at the foot of the bed nodding his approval.

  Then there was Mr Reade and his grandfather and Daisy…and his granny. Oh, he mustn’t forget his granny. The man in the peak cap seemed to know his granny an’ all, for he danced round her while making faces at her. It was a very strange experience, but one minute he was watching the man dancing round his granny and expressing his opinion of her with his grimaces, and the next minute it was himself who was dancing round her, and he was sticking his tongue out at her as far as it would go. Eeh! by! If she had seen him his life wouldn’t have been worth living.

  … That was funny, everybody was talking about his life and being worth living, being worth saving. But he didn’t want to live. There was a reason why he didn’t want to live, and he tried to tell himself the reason, but he couldn’t, until he thought he saw his mother sitting by the bed. And then he knew the reason. He couldn’t face her and see the look in her eyes when she told him he had fallen down on the job. All she had asked him to do was to see to Penny. And where was Penny now?

  ‘Penny! Penny!’

  ‘It’s all right, dear, Penny’s here. Look, she’s got a hold of your hand.’

  It took him a long time before he could open his eyes because somebody had put gum on his lids.

  ‘Open your eyes, dear.’

  ‘Ma.’

  ‘Yes, my dear, you’re all right…you’re all right. Lie quiet.’

  He lay quiet for a while until there penetrated through his mind lines of pain. They were radiating from his arm, his hand, his chest, in fact all his body seemed a mass of pain.

  ‘Ma.’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘I’m sore.’

  ‘Yes, I know you are, dear, but you’re getting better. Just drink this and then go to sleep.’

  He gulped at the warm liquid from the spout of the feeding cup, and over its rim he blinked up into the face of his mother…What was she doing here? What was the matter with him anyway? And where had everybody gone? The room had been full of people a minute ago, people he knew, and people he didn’t know. And where was that fellow in the peak cap?

  ‘Go to sleep, dear.’

  He didn’t want to go to sleep again because then that fellow would take over and
there they would go careering up and down that passage, jumping that terrifying hole, racing over the beach to the edge of the waves and cutting the candles open. Aye. His mind groped at the last thought. That’s what he had been doing a minute ago, helping that bloke to cut all the candles open and pull out the twine. Why? Why?

  ‘Go to sleep, lad.’

  He made an attempt to open his eyes wider. That was his granny’s voice. Oh, his granny! He couldn’t stand his granny. Well, he’d pretend to go to sleep just to stop her from nagging him. The company of the fellow in the peak cap was preferable to that of his granny.

  It seemed a lifetime later when, propped up on pillows, he looked on his mother in full recognition and said weakly, ‘How did you get here, Ma?’

  ‘Well’—she smiled at him—‘I came back the same way as I went, by train and tram.’

  ‘Did they send for you?’

  ‘They hadn’t any need. I…I read the paper and I was on my way. I got in an hour after they brought you home.’

  ‘How…how did they find me? An’…an’ what happened to him, the Belgian? Did they get him?’

  ‘Oh yes, they got him all right, dear. And thank God, they were just in time because…well, you’ll never know, boy, how near you were to death. He intended to put an end to you. It was Ted Reade who saved your life…and Penny’s.’ She reached out and gripped her daughter’s hand, and Penny who was sitting on the side of the bed hitched herself further up towards Eddie, only to be reprimanded by her mother, saying, ‘Careful. Careful.’

  ‘How…how did he know where I was?’

  ‘Well, Ted tells me that the coastguards saw you running along the cliff top, and he himself was coming up from the shore where he had been searching yet once again, and he knowing a little bit about you realised that you wouldn’t be running without a purpose and he says as much to the coastguard, and at that they turned back with him and followed the direction you had gone. And so came up to Biddy’s. That’s all there was to it.’