by Juno Dawson
A glass hatch slid open, from which the hollow-cheeked young constable who’d come to the farm emerged, and I wondered how he’d avoided being called up. Essential services, I suppose. ‘Bore da, Bess … girls. What can I do for you?’
‘Hello, Huw,’ Bess said, blushing fuchsia.
‘Good day, sir,’ I said. ‘We need to speak to someone about the wrongful arrest of Reg …’ I had no idea what his surname was.
‘Bawden,’ finished Bess. ‘Reg Bawden.’
At least Huw didn’t laugh us out of the police station. Instead, he frowned deeply. ‘What do you girls know about Reg Bawden?’
‘Enough to know he didn’t murder that boy in the forest.’
Apparently I said it loud enough to alert a more senior officer. A ruddy-faced man appeared behind Huw at the glass hatch. ‘What’s going on, Huw?’
‘Dad … I mean Sergeant Thomas … this girl says she knows something about the murder.’
‘And who might you be?’
‘I’m Margot Stanford, sir, and I’d like to know on what grounds you’re holding Reg Bawden.’
His face suggested he was far from impressed at having his detective work called into question. ‘Oh, is that right, is it?’
‘Yes, sir. Unless you have a witness, it’s rather Reg’s word against that of Mr Tebbit, isn’t it?’
‘Look here, missy, it’s no business of yours. Go you on home.’
Sergeant Thomas went to close the hatch, but I reached out and blocked it with a gloved hand.
‘Absolutely not. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what evidence you have against Reg beyond the colour of his skin. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t another young man abscond from Mr Tebbit’s care? Doesn’t that pique your interest even slightly? Why two boys would invite such danger rather than remain in the house of a strange old man for a second longer?’
Red blotches began to spread from Thomas’s collar towards his jowls. ‘Oh, you want to be mighty careful with what you’re saying, girly …’
I fixed him dead in the eye. ‘He a friend of yours?’
The crimson mist reached his forehead. ‘I’ll say it again in case you’re deaf. Go home.’
‘No.’ My tone left little room for debate. Sometimes progress is saying no and meaning it.
‘How dare you, the flamin’ cheek of it—’
‘Now what’s going on here?’
We all turned to see Ivor’s bulk filling the doorway.
‘What are you doing, Margot? Gethin said he saw you stormin’ in here.’
I felt as if I’d been caught red-handed. ‘Ivor. It’s not right. They can’t keep Reg without any evidence. They just can’t.’
‘Oh, is she yours, Ivor?’ Thomas cut in. ‘Take her home, will you?’
Ivor lumbered to the desk. ‘See here, Dave, why are you holding this boy Reg?’
‘Oh, don’t you start, Ivor.’
‘I mean it though. People in town are talking, Dave. Talking about Geraint Tebbit.’
‘Aw, you’re as bad as she is! Just keep your nose out!’
With Ivor at my side, I felt stronger. ‘Have you actually spoken to the other boy who ran away?’ I asked. ‘I believe his name was Roger.’
Thomas said nothing, instead sighing like a steam train.
‘It’s a valid question, Dave,’ Ivor agreed.
‘No. No, we haven’t.’
‘I saw that body, Sergeant Thomas,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t murdered; he died from cold, I’d venture. He ran away and froze to death. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘Ivor,’ Thomas said gravely, ‘you need to take her home right now.’
‘Come on, Margot. You’ve made your point. Dave … you can’t try this boy without evidence. You better be sure before you do, you better be sure as eggs.’
Thomas glowered up at him. ‘I’ll thank you for your assistance when you come to me for advice on farming, how about that?’
Ivor’s nostrils flared and the bull in the next field over from the farm was called to mind. ‘Girls. Go wait in the van. Now.’
Too scared to disagree, Bess and I hurried out of the police station, Ivor taking over the battle. ‘What now?’ Bess asked.
I thought I was fresh out of ideas until it occurred to me, in such a small station, the cells were probably on the ground floor. ‘Follow me,’ I told her. Checking the coast was clear, we crept around the perimeter of the police station. A narrow snicket led to a damp paved backyard. We had to clamber over some dustbins to get to them, but it was pretty simple to deduce the high, narrow windows covered by iron bars were probably the cells.
‘Do you think he’s in there?’ said Bess hopefully.
‘I suppose he must be. Say, help me with the bin.’ Together we tipped a metal dustbin upside down, and I hitched my skirts and climbed atop it with Bess’s help. I tapped ever so quietly on the glass through the bars. ‘Reg? Reg, are you in there?’
I heard activity on the other side of the window – furniture shifting. The glass was frosted, but a distorted face soon appeared at the window. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Reg, it’s me, Margot Stanford.’
‘Margot! What on earth you think you’re doing?’ His voice was muffled but I heard him well enough.
‘I’m here with Bess. We came to see if you were all right?’
He paused. ‘I’ve been better.’
‘Are they looking after you? Are you warm and fed?’ He assured us he was. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘tell me honestly – did you do what they’re saying you did?’
‘No! I done nothing. I only met Stanley once or twice for a kick-about. I wasn’t nowhere near him when he went missing.’
I breathed a sigh of relief. I believed him with all my heart. ‘Good. Tell them that. If they have no evidence, they can’t do a thing.’
He looked over his shoulder. ‘I better go. I’m standing on my bed and someone’s gonna see.’
‘Let me talk to him!’ Bess tugged on my skirt.
‘Bess wants a word,’ I said, and clung to a drainpipe to help myself down.
I gave Bess a hand up and steadied the dustbin. ‘Oh, Reg! I miss you!’
I heard Reg chuckle. ‘Miss you too, Bess. I’ll be out soon.’
I wished I was as confident. ‘I’ll wait for you!’ Bess said tearfully, pressing a hand to the window. I stifled a smile at how melodramatic she sounded, positively cinematic in fact.
‘Oi!’ We both froze, Bess almost tumbling off her perch. I didn’t dare look up. We’d been caught red-handed. ‘Thought I told you to wait in the truck. What you doin’?’ Ivor loomed at the end of the alleyway.
Bess hopped into my waiting arms. ‘Nothing,’ I said guiltily, quite clearly up to something.
‘Think you should come with me right now before they put you on the other side of that wall.’
We shuffled past, shamefaced. ‘Thank you for helping,’ I muttered as I passed him.
‘Hmmm.’ And that was all he said on the matter.
By the afternoon, news had already spread. Word of a spirited English evacuee descending on the police station like a virago and giving Sergeant Thomas a piece of her mind was all anyone in town could speak of. I know because already Bess’s mother and Hilda Llewellyn had stopped by the farm to truffle out further facts like hungry pigs.
By supper, word reached us that Geraint Tibbet had been taken in for questioning. That was the last I’ve heard, but I feel a swell of optimism. I don’t claim full responsibility for the victory. I wonder if town gossip was tightening around the sergeant like finger screws until he had to act. I can only hope that they are in the process of tracking down the other little boy and he’ll confirm the dark and horrible truth I fear.
I must push that ugliness aside. Proving Reg’s innocence is a fight worth fighting. I think Mother would be proud.
Chapter 11
I sleep in until after eleven, blaming teenage hormones while I still have the chance. Margot and Mum chat down
stairs as I drift in and out of indulgent Sunday-morning sleep, dreaming strange, BBC2-afternoon-movie black-and-white dreams of Reg and Bess and young Margot. Then Gregory Peck turned up and it all got very confusing.
As I stir properly, everything I read last night feels like fiction. It’s just so … outlandish! Murder, well, not murder, but … paedophilia, I guess … and Margot somehow saving a man from death row. Except we never called it death row in this country, but still. How is it I’ve gone nearly sixteen years without ever hearing about this remarkable Atticus Finch moment? Neither Mum or Margot have mentioned it once.
I mean, how many times have I heard this story – valiant white saviour gallops in and rescues the downtrodden black guy, and everyone cheers for Kevin Costner or whatever. But then I think, this isn’t a story, it’s Margot’s life … Margot’s words, and I guess I’ll never get to hear Reg’s side of it, which is a shame, but what choice do I have? I can’t exactly hop in the TARDIS to speak to him, and I can’t ask Margot either without letting on I’ve nicked her diary.
It was a different time. I suppose, in 1941, Reg didn’t have too many people – let alone white people – speaking up on his behalf, and I’m proud Margot did. I like to think I’d have done the same.
I hear Margot’s Land Rover crunch away down the dirt track and take that as my cue to get up. Mum has fed Peanut, saving me the job. ‘All done,’ she says. ‘Do you want brekkie? It’s almost lunchtime, Fliss.’
‘I’ll just have this.’ I take a banana out of the fruit bowl. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘Ooh, yes, please!’ She eases herself onto the sofa.
‘Where did Margot go?’
‘She’s taking the generator over to one of the houses in the hills – they didn’t get their electric back or something. She’ll be back in a while.’
I pour the tea and stir sugar into mine. ‘Good. Let’s make the most of it while she’s gone.’
‘Fliss,’ Mum says wearily, putting her bookmark back into the latest Martina Cole, ‘you promised me you’d give it a fair go.’
I carry the tea over and plonk it onto the coffee table. ‘I am trying. It’s her that’s being a megabit—’
‘Felicity …’
‘She’s a bully, Mum. She does it on purpose. She did it to you before you were sick.’ I remember, on more than one occasion, Mum telling Margot to butt out of her work and stuff.
Mum sighs. ‘Margot is old. She’s set in stone. You’re young and flexible. We might have to bend to fit around her a little.’
‘There is no Pilates in the world that’d make us that flexible.’ Mum smiles and it lights up her face. She is starting to look better. I wonder if the last of the chemicals they pumped into her system are gone. Before long she’ll be able to go back to work … and that means going back to London, unless she intends to make documentaries about sheep and hills.
I think about the triumphant Reg saga. ‘What was Margot like when you were little?’
Mum shrugs. ‘Not very mumsy. Dad did most of the parent stuff. You have to bear in mind Margot was already this famous award-winning journalist when I was born and those were the days before childminders and any concept of work–life balance. She was busy, I suppose. I didn’t mind though; I was always very proud of her. She was right at the heart of the women’s lib movement – not that she needed liberating from Dad, but even when I was little I thought that was a wonderful thing.’
I try to remember Grandad, but I was so young and he died so suddenly. I do recall him being kind, fuzzy and warm, always ready to swing me around their Hampstead garden. I had a choice of ‘arms’ (being swung by the arms), ‘legs’ or ‘aeroplane’ (which was one arm and one leg). That garden was something else: foxgloves and willows and the pond with the koi carp. He lived to defend those bloody fish from a dastardly heron. ‘Was Margot alive during the war?’ I ask innocently, not wanting to reveal I’m ransacking her private diary.
‘Of course! She’d have been … a teenager. In fact …’ Mum stands and walks to the sideboard. She slides it open and runs her finger along the spines of some dusty old volumes. She pulls one out and I see that they’re photo albums. ‘Let’s see. This one is from … 1939, so just before the war.’
She sits alongside me on the settee and we leaf through gorgeous sepia images of Margot’s life in London. In most of them she’s pictured with her father, the admiral, and her mother. It’s easy to see where Margot gets her looks from: she’s got her father’s statuesque height and, luckily for her, her mother’s beautiful cheekbones and lips. My great-grandparents: perfect strangers to me, both long dead before I was born. We get to the end of the album and there’s nothing from during the evacuation. ‘Does she ever talk about the war?’
‘Not really, actually,’ Mum admits. ‘Why don’t you ask her yourself? Maybe that’s what you need: to get to know each other better.’
I say nothing and Mum returns to Sexy Mob Wives or whatever it is she’s reading. That’s the problem … I am getting to know Margot, and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
There’s only one thing for it. After I’ve showered and gone way dizzy from hanging my head upside-down to blow-dry my hair, I dress in sensible shoes – some old violet Kickers – and finally venture into the forest. Eerie voices, mari-morgans, whatever, I have to know. If the cave behind the waterfall exists, I suppose that would go some way towards corroborating the diary. In history, the teachers are always telling us to question secondary sources, especially diaries, because of bias. Maybe Margot was so bored during her time at the farm she concocted a story about herself.
Outside, it’s what Mum would call ‘muggy’, so I select a Miss Selfridge purple denim jacket and slip it over my Lipsy blouse. The ensemble vaguely matches, but who’s going to see it? I tell Mum that I’m going for a walk and exit through the rose garden.
I stand in the shade of the trees and remember Margot’s warning to stay out of the woods and Bronwyn’s ominous stories. I refuse to be deterred. A watery, diluted sun is trying to pierce the cloud, and chirping birds are in fine voice; it’s really not scary.
But you can never be too careful. I find a flat piece of slate and every hundred metres or so I scratch an X into the bark of a tree so I can find my way back to the farm. If it’s good enough for Hansel and Gretel, it’s good enough for me.
I’m reminded of Center Parcs, the last time I was in a forest. It was BC – Before Cancer – and Mum took me and Tiggy for a long weekend. But the forest there felt very safe – the paths all clearly marked and signposted. It was like being in a forest theme park – artificial and sterile somehow, like every blue tit and squirrel had been hired to perform. This … this feels wild … wild and gnarly and angry and ancient. The branches overhead creak like old bones, as if the trees have stories to tell.
The paths wind and split with no logic, more like veins than anything man-made. After the rain last night, the air is rich with that soily, almost electric smell. Soon enough I hear the ‘whisper’ of the stream, and today she’s not saying my name, because that’s crazy.
The ground drops away without warning, splitting into a gorge. I almost career right over the edge and grab a branch to steady myself. A fast-flowing stream carves the forest, a fallen tree bridging the gap. Tempting though it is, I’m not so stupid as to try cross it in this outfit. Upstream, a rocky outcrop looms from which the water gushes, spills and tumbles. The waterfall is jagged, like a lightning scar on the hillside. There are glimmers of gold as weak sun bounces off the water.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s honestly so beautiful I forget to breathe for a second, hand to my chest. This is way existential, but for a second I feel tiny, dwarfed by the power of the natural world. Or something … I know what I mean.
Getting down to the water’s edge is more of an effort. If there is a safe and easy way, I can’t see it. The slope is sheer and covered in brambles and weeds. All I can do is cling on to overhanging branches and sort of lower mys
elf down the incline.
The rocks lining the stream are slick with moss and I continue to use branches to steady myself as I take them as stepping stones. If I fall and hit my head, no one is going to find my body for a long time.
I think about the corpse in the cave and shudder. Well, if he ever really existed.
I head upstream, and it’s hard work. It’s slow progress and my arms ache. A couple of times my foot slips into the stream and I’m soaked all the way through my socks to the skin. My Kickers squelch with every step.
I rest at the bottom of the waterfall. Water surges through a narrow gap between two mighty boulders at the top and then cascades down the cliff-face. Cool mist hits my face and I wonder just how frizzy my hair is gonna get. I scan the rocks, looking for the legendary cave. There’s nothing obvious, but I do spot a crevice where two layers of rock don’t quite sit together. That has to be it.
My feet are, I think, in very real danger of frostbite, but I’ve come this far. I set off over the rocks. This part is less treacherous than the mossy stepping stones – there are more footholds, and it’s not too slippery if I avoid the splash zones.
Even so, I’m knackered by the time I get to the opening. Wow, I’m really out of shape. I vow to do Mum’s old Rosemary Conley: Legs, Bums and Tums workout video as soon as I get home. Or tomorrow maybe.
Unless Margot neglected to mention it, the entrance to the ‘cave’ has since been covered in graffiti and there are a fair few crushed beer cans scattered around. This’d be prime real estate for winos and junkies, so I’d better be careful. Once a Girl Guide, always a Girl Guide, I pull the torch from my little Baby Spice backpack and shine it inside. I can’t see anything much, but remember Margot’s description of how the tight entrance opened out further in.
I dump the rucksack on the ledge. Carefully, and accepting I’m gonna make a total mess of the denim jacket, I lie on my front and wriggle through the gap like a snake. The torch beam is pretty weak – the batteries must be going – but I can see just ahead of myself. The dank cavern smells of wee and stale cigarette smoke. With my free hand, I feel for the drop Margot described. The tips of my fingers find a ledge and I pull myself along.