by Guy Sheppard
‘Don’t go so close,’ warned Devaney. ‘Someone only has to lose their grip on a button they’re buffing and it can fly like a bullet absolutely anywhere. You’ll never see it coming.’
That made sense. Or he was still trying to work out what she really wanted.
‘This dust not trouble you, at all?’ asked Jo, her tongue feeling as if it were about to blister.
‘Not that I know of.’
‘But you must worry?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s a tough environment. Not every worker would want to get their hands quite so dirty. Not even for the war effort.’
His lips twisted with an ugly grin. It was more dry, mocking humour as he puffed heavily on his pipe to block all other smells.
‘I couldn’t care less about any of them as long as they do what I want.’
‘Good to know.’
All other conversation was lost in the din of another machine starting up. Next moment the air blew thick with additional dust and sparks.
As Jo coughed and went to cover her mouth with her hand, so Devaney was feeling quite chatty.
‘In my previous place of employment in Birmingham, we had a polisher who broke his arm while buffing a toast rack for our boss. The first person on the scene saw all the blood and fainted. That’s because the toast rack had collapsed like a pack of cards and wrapped the worker’s arm twice round the spindle. After that I had him sweeping floors one-handed for a while, but he had to retire shortly afterwards. Lung cancer got him.’
‘The dust?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Shouldn’t these women at least wear masks?’
‘There’s always a first time for everything.’
Jo retreated further from the storm of fire and dirt. Walls were strung with black growth-like debris thrown up by the row of machines. The floor was the same. To brush against any surface was to touch something like a living, greasy moss or lichen; it was millions of very fine fibres that had come loose from staple and finishing mops and flown through the air to attach themselves to every surface. There was also much greyish-black soot everywhere.
‘It’s emery grit,’ explained Devaney. ‘We glue it to the polishing mops where it dries very hard. Then we use it to abrade away the pits in the metal. Your badge is a case in point. Only when it is mirror bright can we put on new layers of copper, nickel and chrome.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘Give me a few days.’
‘Thanks. I’ll see myself out.’
‘Not that way, Mrs Wheeler. I’ll escort you off the premises, just to be safe.’
One of the workers glanced up from his bench and caught Jo’s eye as she passed by. He was very calm but utterly lost. His gaze met hers with a stare that did not spare her. She couldn’t say it was the look of the faceless damned since everything else appeared so humdrum.
Or she didn’t choose to see it.
That’s not to say it didn’t bother her.
Even as she walked out the workshop, she saw Devaney rush to dial somebody’s number on the phone on the desk in reception.
*
At least she had thought to bring her bag of stripy humbugs with her. Jo sat astride her motorcycle in the factory car park and waited for Bella’s return. Peppermint tasted warm in the cold. Sweets were her one weakness.
Her mistake had been to expect that good-for-nothing dog of hers to stay put on the quayside. Now she was missing.
She was really berating herself for not being bolder – she should at least have cross-examined Kevin Devaney about where he was on the night Sarah died. But she was no police officer. He could simply refuse to answer her, or run a mile. Better to keep quietly digging for information than show one’s hand too soon. For all his brainless brawn he didn’t look the sort to kill lightly – he’d have to have orders from on high?
No, there had to be more to this than met the eye.
‘Bella! Come!’
Where most dogs had an uncanny ability to sense their owners’ slightest change of mood, whether sad or happy, she had noticed something was missing in Bella as soon as she got to know her better. In a word, she could be semi-detached. And that detachment could happen at the bat of an eyelid. There would forever be deep inside her the desperate urge to break free. They had that in common, at least. That’s why she usually let her go off whenever she wanted.
That didn’t mean that right now she wasn’t being a bloody nuisance.
‘Oi! Where are you?’
Suddenly there came an excited woof.
‘Uh oh.’
She knew that sound.
Bella had found something.
The nearer Jo drew to a large metal skip on the quayside, the more her eyes fixed on a mop of black hair that fell across someone’s face.
Bella indeed looked ecstatic. She might have been a miniature bullterrier bred for ratting not fighting, but she could still be roused to attack. That’s why her captive was not going anywhere until she said so. She wasn’t being aggressive, as such, she was just showing him her less gentle, affectionate side next to the bin of dented, empty oil cans.
‘What’s up with your dog?’ came a feeble voice. ‘What do I do next?’
Jo knew that devious, hangdog look.
It wasn’t so much buck-toothed as toothless.
Yes. Could be.
‘Noah?’
The cornered man’s hands were clasped at the back of his head, his knees were drawn up to his chin as he hid behind his elbows.
‘It is you, isn’t it, Noah.’
‘That depends.’
‘Whatever are you doing all the way out here in the Forest?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
It was her missing friend all right, but he was horribly flustered. Worry and guilt were all over his features; shame was no less obvious. His old raincoat had gone in favour of a smart zip-up, one-piece siren suit. Just about everyone including Winston Churchill wore such suits nowadays, for those long hours spent in dirty holes underground during enemy air raids. He wore equally new box leather shoes. Whoever had fitted him out with his striking wardrobe had given him a grey scarf, grey balaclava and matching knitted mittens.
‘You been avoiding me these last few days, or what?’ asked Jo.
Bella gave a bark, then licked Noah’s chin.
‘Trust me, Jo, I can’t say a thing to you.’
‘Okay, so now I’m concerned.’
‘Please go away.’
‘Better question, why?’
‘If I’m seen talking to you they’ll beat me.’
‘Who the devil is ‘they’?’
Noah rose to his feet and clasped his hands together as he started to bow and scrape. He behaved as though he were face to face with a regular bobby, but he made a very bad liar.
‘Please, I haven’t done any harm. Honest.’
‘So why are you so scared of me?’
‘You’ve been asking all sorts of questions in Victoria House pub, haven’t you?’
‘No more than I should.’
‘Please don’t interfere in things that don’t concern you. Let me go. It’s not safe here for either of us. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.’
‘Suppose I do leave,’ said Jo with less conviction in her heart than her voice. ‘It’s clear to me that you’re in some serious shit and someone has to talk you out of it?’
He nodded vigorously, but she wasn’t finished with him yet.
‘I don’t like the look of you. What’s going on, Noah?’
‘Not now. Not here. I’ll meet you somewhere safe – soon – in the cathedral. I promise.’
With that, Noah ran into the plating factory. Bella wanted to chase after him, nip his heels. But first she conferred. She looked up and rolled her head. Pricked her ears. It was one thing for a dog to be able to act decisively in the absence of its owner, bu
t quite another to have her standing right next to her and daring her to move a muscle. Should she really lose the initiative due to someone else’s imprudence? They both knew Noah was up to no good.
That said, she eyed Jo critically.
‘What! Okay, so I was a bit harsh, but there’s no way round it. If Noah’s so smart, he’ll show up when and where he says he will, or else.’
Bella curled her bald tail between her legs, as if to say: ‘You think?’
Jo frowned. Clearly news travelled fast in Gloucester. This was the second person in forty-eight hours to urge her to call off her investigations and keep quiet.
TWENTY
Sam simply couldn’t sleep for brooding about it. The best he could do right now was to go to his window, lift the blackout curtain and scan the horizon one last time. Why shouldn’t he, from the safety of his own bedroom?
In the morning he and his parents would leave Drake’s House forever, bound for a new home deep, deep in the Forest. He was going to miss living by the river and railway so much.
He had never moved home before, but not even that could quite explain the wild thumping of his heart right now. An odd ringing noise reached his ears, as of metal on metal.
Was he sure it was only a shout and not a call? What’s more, there was that ghastly ripple of the blood-filled moon on the River Severn’s restless water.
His window was glinting and flashing. He could just about see to the water’s edge if he stood on the tips of his toes. Was he even truly awake, or was that a clash of weapons that he heard?
Soon there came the sound of someone’s piteous wails. Giddiness turned to vertigo. The sight of it all was both eerie and spectral. But who’d believe him? The room rocked from side to side and his head started to reel. His arms ached; his lungs heaved fit to burst; he felt pain, exhaustion, fear and excitement. This was no dream. Embattled men were combing the Forest in murderous pursuit of something? How long had this been going on? He had to have the answer. Their rallying cry died on the wind as he pressed his nose flat against the cold glass. The moonlight shone red in his face, the blowing of horses’ nostrils blasted hot in his ears. They were all knights of the Round Table.
Suddenly King Arthur held his long sword aloft and sounded his war trumpet.
‘The white boar has killed too many of our men already. I will not chase him any more, but will challenge him here, face to face.’
Slithers of ground mist coiled from dark forest to muddy beach, Sam noticed. Trees rattled and boomed like thunder. Then he saw step from the fog the large, misshapen silhouette of some animal or other. It both shocked and shook him to his core. The razor-back crest of hair along its spine suggested some sort of pig. With its broad snout and muscular shoulders, the angry hog hunched its short, powerful neck in a confusion of malice, outrage and pain.
But formidable tusks told him that this was no ordinary swine. Fiery red eyes glittered like garnets. It swivelled its ears forwards and raised its great head in the air to smell and take stock of its ambushers. Or rather its entire stance changed to a charge as it lowered its brow, all white bristles, like a battering ram.
And yet, with its obvious brutality there came intelligence, courage and stamina.
He could have been mistaken for thinking that this was one creature created from a mishmash of others.
The outcry from the knights was unanimous.
‘Mabon,’ cried Arthur, ‘ride forward. Goreu, you do the same. Menw, you follow me. Together we’ll drive it into the river.’
So saying, Arthur whistled to his two boarhounds Aned and Aethlem. He ordered the slobbering, black Great Danes to circle behind the beast at the river’s edge and bite at its heels.
Sam saw it stamp its cloven foot, paw the ground. Then it snorted. During this time, the knights shouted louder and louder to bolster their spirits, for they had been fighting their enemy all the way from Ireland and were weary to their souls.
‘Go to the devil, you filthy pig!’ shouted Menw, son of Teirgwaedd.
‘We’ve got you this time, you coward,’ added Mabon, son of Modron, even as he struggled to rein in his mount Dun Mane, the horse of Gweddw.
They were not alone.
Goreu, son of Custennin, screamed:
‘You eat little children.’
Sam heard the boar let out a growl. Immune to insults, it tracked the two boarhounds with its flared nostrils. The brutish stubbornness and brave, blazing eyes lent this Hogzilla the nobility of a worthy foe.
It ground its lower tusks against its upper ones, whetting each razor-sharp tip while its mouth filled with foam. The longer it stood its ground, the more it gained courage.
Then it charged again.
The knights did the same.
The crash was awful and gory. The air was rent with screams of men and hounds. Drake’s House shook to its very foundations. Osla Kyllellvawr attacked with Manawyddan, son of Llyr. With them went Kacmwri, Arthur’s servant.
‘Grab it by the ears,’ cried Gwyngelli, the instant they closed in from all sides.
Mabon spurred his horse to the boar’s head and there he leaned down and plucked the magic razor from its bristles. Kyledyr Wyllt charged on his own mount until they all fell into the river – still he managed to hook the shears. In the confusion Gwyngelli upended the hog by its feet and plunged with it beneath the currents.
Sam held his breath, saw the great boar disappear. But its feet somehow found the riverbed and Kacmwri trod too close. The beast speared him with its tusks – it tossed him several yards into the river in the blink of an eye. All efforts turned to Arthur’s servant to stop him drowning. Too late, Kacmwri was dragged away by the surging tide before he could be reached.
Horrified, Sam watched the knight slip under, weighed down by his armour.
‘Help!’ cried Osla Big-knife. He also had been gripped by the wall of water. It raced at him with tremendous speed. No horse could have galloped faster than this tidal bore. In running after the hog, he had lost his weapon. Now the steep-fronted wave filled his sword’s sheath, unbalanced him and dragged him down for a third time.
‘Where is it?’ cried Arthur. ‘Where is the devil?’
But this great creature, like all wild boars, was an excellent swimmer. Neither knight nor hound could go after it across the wide river. Once safely ashore, it ran at a steady thirty miles per hour in the direction of Cornwall, Sam observed with wonder.
But he’d already seen too much.
‘Sam? Whatever’s wrong?’ cried Freya, as she burst into his bedroom in her blue, crepe-de-chine nightdress. She switched on a bedside lamp and crouched beside him, smelling of lemon cleansing cream. ‘Why did you just scream?’
Still craning his neck at the window, Sam stared with stupefaction through its glass grown dim again.
‘It’s the wicked king, turned pig, called ‘the boar Trwyth’. King Arthur’s boarhounds Aned and Aethlem have gone after it in the river but won’t catch it.’
‘You’ve seen King Arthur hunting a boar?’
‘Yes, a big white one. He and his knights have to retrieve the magic comb from its bristles. Without it, Prince Culhwch can’t comb the giant’s hair and marry his beautiful daughter Olwen…’
‘Wow. Slow down. What is all this about knights and giants?’
‘Don’t you see? King Arthur never killed Twrch Trwyth when they drove it into the sea off Cornwall. They never knew where it went after that. No one did.’
Freya stood stock still for a moment, baffled by the conviction of Sam’s revelation. Only gradually did her eyes fix on a book that lay open on his bedside table.
‘Did granddad give you this?’
‘Yes.’
She picked up ‘The Mabinogion’ and turned a few pages of her favourite Welsh stories.
‘I might have known it. My father has been telling you more crazy tales, hasn’t he? You do know that he is obsessed with wild boars? He collects rep
orts about them from all over the world. A boar has only to chase a diplomat up a tree or invade the French Riviera and he cuts the article out of the newspaper for his scrapbook. Last time we spoke he insisted on telling me all about how they’re laying siege to Rome and raiding the dustbins for food. He really can’t be trusted to talk sense at all.’
‘Twrch Trwyth is alive, mum. It’s stalking the Forest. I’ve seen it.’
‘I blame granddad. His silly stories are giving you nightmares. Please go back to sleep immediately.’
‘Why won’t you believe me?’
‘Because there are no wild boars living in England. They were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago. Go to sleep now.’
Next minute James arrived in the room clutching a cricket bat with both hands. ‘What the hell is going on? Why are you both still up at this time of night? I thought you were burglars.’
Freya hurried Sam into bed as he made urgent, pleading signs to say nothing.
‘It’s just a childish dream, no more,’ said Freya, sternly.
James retied the strings on his silk brocade dressing gown.
‘Be that as it may, the removal van will be here first thing tomorrow. Sam needs to be up and about by seven for his breakfast. You do, too.’
Freya pulled blankets up to Sam’s chin and planted a kiss on his forehead.
‘Daddy’s right. We all have a busy day ahead of us.’
Sam half closed his eyes in the darkness, but before Freya could move away he grabbed her arm and hissed a few words in her ear.
‘I see the white boar most nights now. What do you suppose it wants from us?’
Freya’s eyes blazed with rightful outrage.
‘We all have our monsters.’
Sam tried shutting his eyes harder and buried his head in his pillow. Downstairs he heard James shout furiously at Freya about something, until she successfully urged him to lower his voice.
After that, anything his father said descended into grunts and snorts.