Changelings

by Jo Bannister

  Sarah looked at him, momentarily distracted. ‘What? Oh – yes. Nobody in East Beckham lives more than two hundred yards away. The whole village would fit into a good-sized football stadium.’

  ‘It’s as well to get on with your neighbours then,’ he observed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah sombrely. ‘We depend on one another for everything out here. If you want a private life you have to live in a city: in a small village there’s no such thing.’

  Donovan wasn’t quite sure how to put this. ‘You do know Castlemere’s only about ten miles away?’

  That made her laugh. ‘Only as the crow flies. The village mentality takes the scenic route.’

  She returned to the scullery to finish the washing-up. Donovan followed and started drying. ‘How long has The Flower Mill been here?’

  ‘The business, about three hundred years; this house, a hundred and forty; my husband’s family, four generations.’

  ‘It’s a good thing Simon wanted to take over,’ said Donovan. He looked up from the plates, wryly. ‘Or is that not how it works with a family business? – do you have no choice?’

  Sarah looked round at him, her head a little on one side, slow to answer. ‘No, there’s always a choice. There has to be – even in a family business, not everyone is born with the same talents. Running The Flower Mill takes a knowledge of horticulture, but it also takes business acumen, an ability to manage people and salesmanship. Robert, my husband, had all of that, but there was no guarantee his son would.’

  ‘You could always have got in a manager.’

  ‘In fact,’ she said, a thread of emotion breaking the surface of her voice, ‘my son Jonathan was going to manage the place when Robert retired. He loved the business. He was tramping round in Robert’s cast-off wellies within days of us coming here. While Simon was off seeing the world Jonathan was studying commercial horticulture in France. We thought the future was secure.’

  Donovan wasn’t sure if she wanted to be prompted, but the habit was hard to kick. ‘What happened?’

  She took an unsteady breath. ‘Robert had a stroke and died. We’d only been married six years – he was fifty-four years old. I was so – angry, But at least I had Jonathan; and so did the Mill. We were going to manage.

  ‘Then Jonathan turned his tractor over and drowned in a ditch’

  Donovan had always supposed his family was God’s punchbag, for thumping when things were going badly in the celestial mansion. It came as a shock to learn that on alternate days He was thumping the Turners.

  All he could say was, ‘God in heaven!’ and it was more an accusation than a prayer.

  ‘Robert had been dead just six weeks,’ continued Sarah Turner. ‘We hadn’t got the will sorted out or anything. I thought we were going to lose everything, I didn’t see how we could continue.

  ‘But Simon, bless him, after misspending his youth for five solid years, set about picking up the pieces. What he didn’t know he found out; what he couldn’t do he got someone to show him. Of course it was his inheritance, it was in his interests to look after the business; but it was a lot of work. He could have sold up, used the money to go travelling again. Everyone in East Beckham owes him a debt of gratitude. None of us would be here if The Flower Mill had been sold.’

  ‘I nearly said something very stupid,’ Donovan said apologetically. ‘I nearly said You were lucky!’

  Sarah gave a rueful little smile. ‘It’s all right, I know what you mean. It could have been worse.’

  ‘How old was your son?’

  ‘He was’ – a fractional pause while she did the sum – ‘twenty-one, just a couple of years younger than Simon.’

  Looking on the bright side wasn’t something Donovan was good at but he felt it incumbent upon him to try. ‘And now there’s a new generation. Is Elphie horticulturally inclined?’

  ‘Elphie would make a good Flower Fairy but I can’t see her running the business. I keep telling Simon to find himself a big bruiser of a wife and start raising tractor drivers!’

  ‘There’s no chance,’ hazarded Donovan, ‘Elphie’s mother and him might get back together?’

  ‘None,’ replied Sarah Turner crisply. It was an effective end to the conversation. They finished the pots in silence.

  It was only half-past seven but Donovan was tired. He made his excuses and hauled himself upstairs. Lacking the energy to undress he sprawled on top of his bed and fell asleep.

  He was woken an hour later by the sound of a car in the yard. It was none of his business but old habits die hard: he got up and trudged over to the window. But he was too slow: it had already gone.

  Elphie must have heard him moving: it was mere seconds before there came a light but still somehow peremptory knock at his door quickly followed by the child herself, all bustling intensity, carrying a photograph in a frame. She plonked down on his bed and waited impatiently for him to join her.

  ‘This is us; she said firmly. One narrow finger tapped the glass as she spoke. ‘That’s Nana. That’s Grandpa Robert – I never knew him. That’s Daddy. That’s Dr Chapel – he was Grandpa Robert’s bestest man. That’s Uncle Jonathan: I never knew him either. That’s my mommy. I did know her,’ she said reflectively, ‘but I don’t remember. And that’s the vicar.’

  ‘Did you know him?’ asked Donovan solemnly.

  The child gave a wide beam. ‘Don’t be silly, I wasn’t borned then!’

  Donovan studied the photograph with the required gravity. It was the Turners’ wedding day: the usual faintly bemused expressions of two families with little in common brought together in front of a church none of them would normally have ventured into, posing with a man in a long white dress they would usually have crossed roads to avoid.

  Even without Elphie’s assistance he’d have been able to identify both Sarah and Simon. Twenty years had passed, turning the bride in her pretty floral dress and hat into a woman in her late fifties and the round-faced youth beside her into a father and a businessman. Robert Turner was easy to identify too, if only by his enormous smile and the proprietorial arm with which he encompassed his new wife. He must have been ten years older than Sarah, Donovan surmised. Of course, it was a second marriage for both of them.

  A process of elimination allowed him to name one more member of the party – Jonathan, Sarah’s son, on the bridegroom’s other side. Six years after this photograph was taken he lay dead in a ditch. He stared out of the picture frame with a certain wariness, less enthusiasm for the proceedings than the other parties to them – almost as if (and this was Donovan’s Celtic feyness at work) he suspected this wasn’t the best day’s work from his point of view. If his mother had married a postman he’d still be alive.

  And that was Elphie’s mother, was it? Donovan peered closer. She was older than Simon – four or five years, which is a lot at that age. Of course, it wasn’t at that age that they got together. If Elphie was eight it may have been ten years after this family group was gathered, and five years between late twenties was a very different thing.

  So who was she? A bridesmaid, apparently, so presumably a friend of Sarah’s. Or perhaps a relative; which made the falling-out between them more difficult than if Elphie’s mother had been a stranger when Simon brought her home. What was it all about? Elphie’s condition? A damaged child puts a big strain on a relationship. Or just two people who found they didn’t like one another as much as they had loved?

  Donovan caught himself trying to interrogate a bunch of people in a photograph and decided that even for him this was obsessive behaviour. Their relationships were not only their own affair, they were ancient history, no possible concern of his.

  More to be polite than because he wanted to know, he said, ‘What’s your mammy’s name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Elphie.

  Donovan blinked. ‘OK.’ So she wanted him to see her mother’s photograph but not to know her name. That was all right. The child was a law unto herself: he knew that already.

 
; ‘Nana says I mustn’t ask about her,’ Elphie confided solemnly. ‘She says she let us all down and isn’t part of this family any more. But she is pretty, isn’t she?’ There was a wistful note in her high light voice that tweaked at Donovan’s heart strings.

  ‘She certainly is; he agreed firmly. ‘And you know, just ‘cos people can’t be there any more, doesn’t mean they’re entirely gone. There’s lots of your mammy in you. That means, anywhere you go, you’ll always have a bit of her with you.’

  He was rewarded with a beam like sunrise breaking through Elphie’s sharp little face. ‘’S right,’ she said with conviction; and hugging the photograph to her narrow chest she marched away.

  It was after eleven when Liz and DC Morgan called it a night. With the car’s interior light on and the Ordnance Survey map spread across their knees they ticked off the black square that was the last house they’d visited and exchanged a discouraged glance.

  ‘Well, it’s perfectly obvious then, isn’t it?’ said Liz wearily. ‘If none of the people living in any of these houses saw either Tara or Donovan, either on the canal or in the mere, there’s only one logical explanation. Alien abduction.’

  Dick Morgan thought for a moment, then shook his head lugubriously. ‘Doesn’t make sense.’

  Liz was too tired to chuckle. ‘None of it makes sense. Why pick on that bit?’

  ‘They’re aliens,’ said Morgan, ‘not masochists. If they’d abducted the skipper thirty-six hours ago, they’d have sent him back by now.’

  6

  Somehow his body was aware that it had already slept too long. Donovan woke before six, while the sky was still dark and the house silent. He washed and dressed and quietly went down to the kitchen. Still there were no signs of life. He supposed flowers were less demanding of their farmers than dairy cattle, which even on a Saturday would be bawling to be milked by now.

  As he sat at the farmhouse table, hands cradled round a mug of tea, gradually he became aware he was being watched. He didn’t think Sarah or Simon were spying on him through the crack of the scullery door, and there was nothing sinister about Elphie however odd her behaviour. So he didn’t understand the unease he was beginning to feel. He owed his life to these people: how could he feel threatened by them?

  It had to be a hangover from his illness, like the ache in his chest and the lack of stamina. Normally he could go all day on caffeine and acrimony: having no energy was a strange, rather frightening sensation. The ability to keep going when others had stopped had got him out of a lot of trouble: he liked knowing that, as a last resort, he could always run like hell. Today he’d have had trouble staying ahead of Dr Chapel.

  He sipped his tea and avoided looking at the scullery door, and observed aloud, in a tone of some regret: ‘Well, if no one’s awake, I suppose I’ll have to find the boat on my own.’

  He got up and headed for the back door, and when he got there Elphie was waiting, thrusting slender limbs into a bright red duffle coat and green Wellington boots.

  He pretended surprise. ‘I didn’t know you were up. Can you tell me where my boat is? I need to feed my dog.’

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  Donovan was glad of her company. The fen was a wet wilderness, a man could lose his bearings out there.

  But they weren’t ready to leave yet. Elphie regarded him critically and shook her head. ‘You’ll catch your death.’ She went back to the scullery, returned with her father’s coat. It was too broad for Donovan but he hadn’t one of his own. They’d brought him here wrapped in a blanket, hadn’t thought to bring him something to go back in.

  Elphie set out across the yard, skipping in her giant boots and trilling a high, light, wordless ditty like birdsong. Donovan was too slow for her: she grabbed his hand and tried to hurry him along. Failure made her giggle. Her pleasure in the stupid game made him grin.

  But they weren’t going the right way. About the only thing he knew about East Beckham was that it lay north of the canal. Elphie was tugging him further north, towards the peaty heart of the fen. Donovan stopped and looked around, noting the rising sun, checking his references. Then he pointed. ‘The canal’s that way.’

  Elphie nodded energetically, the floss of pale hair flying. ‘The pond’s this way.’

  ‘Pond?’

  ‘They moved your boat. Why’s it called Tara?’

  Her lightning changes of subject left him floundering. ‘It’s where the old kings of Ireland ruled.’

  ‘Are you from Ireland?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you a king?’

  He barked a laugh. ‘I’m a policeman.’

  ‘I saw the queen on the telly. Her horse did a poo.’

  ‘They do,’ agreed Donovan lugubriously. His grandfather worked with horses. The first paid job the young Caolan ever had was shovelling up after the damn things.

  Elphie headed north-east, following a path that only her eyes could see. After two fields the plough gave way to a wasteland of reeds and sere autumn grasses, waving together with a constant faint susurrus like a convention of sotto voce gossips. The ground grew wetter underfoot: drainage was too expensive to squander on land that wasn’t growing anything. There was no evidence that anyone had been here for months – except possibly Elphie, who could walk without leaving footprints.

  Even looking for it, Donovan saw the pond barely soon enough to avoid walking into it. The high featureless reeds parted before his hands and there it was, an expanse of still water mirroring the silver sky.

  If he’d been here thirty-six hours ago he’d have seen the bow of his boat sticking out of the reeds of the far bank. If he’d been here twenty-four hours ago he’d have found Sergeant Warren and her team still working methodically up and down the shallow mere in search of his drowned body. But yesterday, the best search they could conduct having proved fruitless and with a new slant on events that suggested Donovan may never have been here, they’d packed up and left. Tara too had gone. Only the broken reeds along the banks and at the channel hinted at recent activity.

  ‘I’m looking,’ said Donovan carefully, ‘but I’m not seeing anything.’

  ‘It was here,’ said Elphie, eyes wide in her little pointed face.

  ‘OK,’ said Donovan, non-committal. ‘Shall we try the towpath?’

  She nodded energetically, and taking his hand once more steered him round the edge of the mere, finally heading south.

  But they never got there. This had been a mistake: Donovan wasn’t strong enough to tramp round the fen. When their way crossed a stony track with a bit of a bank beside it he sank down with relief, out of breath and shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry, Elphie, I’m whacked. How much further is it?’

  She considered a moment. ‘Little long.’ Which he took to mean more than a step, less than a trek. Half a mile? If she wanted him to go another half mile she’d have to carry him.

  He was looking up the track, supposing it led back to the house, wondering how far that was, when rescue arrived: Simon Turner riding a quad bike and towing a trailer. ‘Here you are. Mum was beginning to worry.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Donovan, hauling himself to his feet. ‘I was looking for my boat. I think we got lost.’

  Elphie objected to that. ‘It was there before. It’s gone.’

  Turner nodded. ‘We took her down to Posset. She’ll be safer there.’

  Donovan couldn’t remember where he’d finally tied up, maybe it hadn’t been a great choice. Certainly Tara would be safe enough at the Posset Inn. ‘What about the dog?’

  ‘George is looking after him. We thought he’d be more comfortable in one of the old stables than shut up in the hold of your boat.’

  Donovan nodded. George Jackson, the publican, knew Brian Boru well enough to treat him with respect and not fear: he was less likely to cause pandemonium in the back yard of the Posset Inn than at The Flower Mill. ‘Can you give me a lift down there?’

  ‘Of course. But not in this. Let’s get back to th
e house. You look all in. Get in the trailer, the pair of you.’

  Donovan was too tired to care about his dignity: he did as he was bid. Elphie climbed in beside him, and they bumped back up the track to The Flower Mill.

  Sarah met them in the yard as if they’d been missing much longer than half an-hour. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, scanning their faces in turn so Donovan wasn’t sure whom she was asking.

  Some sort of an explanation seemed to be required. ‘I was looking for my boat. But apparently it’s been moved.’

  She looked at Turner, then quickly back again. ‘Yes. It was – a little in the way. The men took it to—’

  ‘Posset; said Turner. ‘I told him. I said I’d run him over later. When he’s up to it.’

  Sarah nodded quickly. ‘When you’re up to it.’ She shepherded them inside, took their coats, exclaimed over Donovan’s wet feet, sat them down at the table and began serving food as if the sheer volume of it would pin them in place.

  ‘I’m sorry if I worried you,’ said Donovan, eating and watching her face at the same time. ‘I shouldn’t have taken Elphie without asking.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried about Elphie,’ said Sarah dismissively. ‘She knows every reed and pool out there. I was worried about you. You’re not strong enough to go wandering off like that. Not yet.’

  He couldn’t argue with that. ‘I could call a friend, get someone to pick me up.’

  ‘Or you could stay put until you’re feeling better.’

  She managed to make him feel ungrateful for trying to leave. ‘I have to report for work on Monday. If I don’t they’ll send out a search party. Can I phone from here?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ she said negligently. ‘Though the line’s a bit unreliable – all those miles of wire stretching across the fen. Finish your breakfast. It’s still early, there’s no rush.’

  Reunited with his coat, Turner went out as soon as the meal was done, taking Elphie with him. Donovan went on sitting at the table.

  ‘I’m confused,’ he said. ‘That place Elphie calls the pond. If Tara was in there, how could she be in anyone’s way?’