by Granger, Ann
‘How about you, Katie?’ Morton asked the child suddenly, stooping to her level. He was aware of a rustle among the crowd of Colleys, perhaps surprised at his questioning a small child.
‘Did you see anyone you don’t know yesterday, Katie? Someone in the lane? A man or a lady, or lots of people?’
‘No,’ said Katie.
Morton fancied a collective relaxation of tension among the assembled Colleys.
‘You can see for yourself,’ said Dave. ‘The track bends round from our gate. You can’t see the lane directly from here. You’d have to be down there.’
It was a fair point. ‘Where are the pigs?’ asked Morton. Dave blinked and surveyed him for a moment. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said. He turned away and gestured Morton to follow. They set off towards the corner of the house. The other Colleys, with the exception of Gary, melted back indoors. Gary followed his father and Morton.
The smell of the pigs increased as they rounded the cottage. There, before him, was a large field full of the animals. They rooted about happily, pigs as far as the eye could see. Little corrugated iron huts were dotted about the field as shelters. They all looked in very good health. The house and other property might be ramshackle, but the pigs were well cared for. Morton supposed they had to be, or they wouldn’t fetch a good price. In a further, smaller, enclosure, two horses grazed side by side, tailend on to the pigs, as if blocking out the indignity of being kept alongside them.
Morton turned his attention back to the pigs. ‘What sort are they?’ he asked.
Gary, who had been silent until now, answered. ‘Large white.’
‘It’s the kind of meat shoppers want,’ his father explained, ‘on the lean side, not too much fat. My old granddad, Jed Colley, he wouldn’t have touched bacon that wasn’t mostly fat, but tastes have changed.’
‘I’m not keen on fat bacon, myself,’ said Morton.
‘Ah . . .’ chimed both Colleys, shaking their heads.
‘So, easy to rear, then?’ asked Morton. If the Colleys were willing to talk about pig-rearing, it might make them chattier on other topics.
‘Straightforward enough. You have to watch them in a hot summer. They can get sunburn.’ Morton must have looked as though he thought his leg was being pulled, because Dave continued, ‘It’s those pink skins of theirs.’
Morton eyed the nearest pig. Its skin, beneath its white hair, was certainly very pink and vulnerable-looking. ‘So,’ he said, ‘good business?’
Both Colleys immediately made noises of dissent. ‘You’ve got your work cut out to make a decent living,’ said Dave. ‘But we keep afloat.’
It was time to bring the conversation back to the body found in Balaclava House. ‘You see,’ said Morton, ‘our problem is this. There must have been someone – or some persons – around yesterday. The dead man was carried into the house, so we think. He may not have been dead at the time, but he was almost certainly dying and was very unlikely to have walked in there unaided.’
‘Is that a fact?’ asked Dave Colley. ‘Well, none of us saw anything.’
‘Nothing,’ corroborated Gary. ‘First we knew of it was when I walked past Balaclava on my way into town. I saw you lot outside the house and poor old Mr Monty being pushed into a police car.’
‘But you walked on into town? You didn’t turn back and come here to tell your family about the disturbance?’ Morton didn’t give up easily.
‘I rang ’em,’ said Gary. ‘On my mobile.’ He fished in his pocket and held up a phone. It looked like one of the latest models. ‘This one, here.’ Gary gave Morton what could only be described as a triumphant grin.
Morton made one last effort. He turned to Dave Colley. ‘None of you was curious enough to walk up the lane to Balaclava House and find out what all the fuss was about, after Gary phoned you?’
‘We were busy,’ said Dave. ‘And things had got behindhand. The pigs broke out earlier on the far side of the field there and got on to Sneddon’s land. My boy and I had to round them up and fix the broken fencing. Then young Gary, he went off into town, and I got going on the paperwork. I should have been doing that when I was chasing the bloody pigs. Any kind of farming now is snowed under with paperwork. When Gary phoned in the news, I told my wife, but we didn’t have time to go running round to Balaclava. We reckoned we’d hear all about it sooner or later.’
‘Yes, that makes me wonder just where you did hear about the body, Mr Colley,’ Morton said blandly, ‘since Gary, your son, only saw Mr Bickerstaffe getting into a police car.’
The two Colleys exchanged glances.
‘Well,’ Dave said slowly. ‘Later that evening, my mother walked up the lane and took a look. She wanted to check on the house and Mr Monty, you see, in case he needed anything. She saw the undertaker’s vehicle just drawing away. There were still cops there. Ma came back and told us about it. So that meant someone had died, hadn’t they? And it wasn’t Mr Monty because Gary saw him with you lot.’ Dave looked pleased with his own logic.
Gary’s smile had broadened. Whatever Morton asked them, they’d have an answer.
Morton fixed Gary with a look to let him know the smile hadn’t gone unnoticed. ‘I’ll probably be round here again. In the meantime, if you think of anything at all, let us know, will you?’
The Colleys mumbled indistinctly.
‘By the way, whose are the horses?’ Morton asked, nodding at the further enclosure.
‘My lad’s,’ said Dave Colley. ‘He’s always kept a horse or two, since he was a nipper. Sometimes he grazes them in the paddock there and sometimes down in the field by the road.’
Gary Colley struck Morton as being more a motorcycle person than a horse one. He wondered if there was gypsy blood in the Colleys.
They walked back, all three, to the main area in the front of the house.
‘That building.’ Morton indicated the large brick-built block. ‘When was that built?’
‘Oh, the old barn there,’ said Dave dismissively. ‘That’s been here longer than any of us here now. That was built when Balaclava House itself was built. It used to be the coach house and stables for the big house. This . . .’ He waved a broad callused hand at his surroundings. ‘This was originally the stable yard. Our cottage there was for the use of the head groom. The Bickerstaffes gave up the carriage and the horses after the First World War. They bought a motor car. They had money in those days, Bickerstaffes. They had a new garage built nearer the house and a flat for a chauffeur over it.’
‘I didn’t notice a garage with a flat over it near the big house,’ objected Morton.
‘No more you would. It fell down years ago. I went up and took the bricks away to build our pigsties, doing Mr Monty a favour, like.’
Doing yourself a favour, you mean, thought Morton.
‘Well,’ Dave began again, showing signs of impatience at the interruption, ‘my great-grandfather had been their coachman and head groom since before Queen Victoria died, but now he was out of a job. He reckoned he wouldn’t find work again, times having changed. He wasn’t so young, either. Motor cars were coming in everywhere and he didn’t see himself learning to drive one. The story goes that he did try, but he could never remember not to turn his head and talk to his passengers. After he’d driven a whole car full of Bickerstaffes into a ditch, they told him they’d get a younger man.
‘So he went to the then Mr Bickerstaffe and asked if he could rent the stables, the yard, his tied cottage and the two paddocks between Balaclava and Sneddon’s land. Then he could start a smallholding, since he was about to lose his job. After all, the family had no use for them any longer. Old Bickerstaffe agreed. Felt he owed it to him, I suppose. Later, my grandfather, Jed Colley, got the money together to buy it all. Bickerstaffes let him have land and buildings for a knock-down price. Land was cheaper in those days. No one had started putting brick boxes all over the countryside. Bickerstaffes weren’t doing so well with their biscuit business by then, and even a bit of money, cash in han
d, from my granddad was welcome.’
Morton walked past the dog pen on his way out, still avoiding the baleful yellow gaze of the penned animals. But he was aware of it, as he was aware of the gaze of Dave and Gary Colley watching him leave. From inside the cottage, he was sure, the women watched him, too. He was equally sure they knew something but they weren’t prepared to tell him whatever it was. He just had to hope he had better luck with Peter Sneddon, the farmer.
Chapter 6
Monty sat in Bridget’s back garden where he’d found a secluded spot, shielded from the wind by the junction of high dry stone walls. There was a white-painted metal seat here. It wasn’t any more comfortable than the average church pew, but he was glad to be out of the house. He could relax, as he couldn’t indoors: nobody could be at ease with Bridget hovering over him. He felt uncomfortable even out here, probably because of his new clothes. They had been bought during a humiliating visit to the nearest Marks and Spencer’s in Cheltenham. Bridget had marched him around like a harassed parent of a six-year-old, ticking off items on a list. His only original possessions left were his shoes. He had pointed out to Bridget that it took time to break in shoes to the shape of his feet. She’d given way on that, but on nothing else. Everything else had an obstinate newness about it, fighting his shape. So the waistband of his trousers was too tight. His shirt collar was too stiff. The sleeves of his woollen sweater were too long. It was reliving his first day at his new prep school, wearing a uniform intended to ‘let him grow’. He didn’t feel he was himself but someone else. Perhaps that was why, when he dozed off, he began to see himself as a boy. Events unrolled in his dream world as if he watched a film and actors played out the story. Monty was a young boy in shorts and an Aertex sports shirt. He toiled up the steep rise of Shooter’s Hill and Penny followed behind, complaining that he went too fast. He was carrying a brown paper bag containing a hardboiled egg, with a pinch of salt in a screw of paper to season it. The bag also held fish paste sandwiches made with a lot of bread and very little paste filling. To supplement this unappetising fare, he had a box of broken biscuits from the Bickerstaffe factory.
Penny, whose mother was more experimental in culinary matters than his, had brought banana and jam sandwiches cut into triangles with crusts trimmed off, and wrapped in greaseproof paper. Bananas were still a novelty in the shops after the war years and Penny’s sandwiches were something special. Mrs Henderson was clever at creating little treats for the children. It would never have occurred to Monty’s mother to take the trouble. Penny also had two sausage rolls and a bottle of dandelion and burdock.
They reached the summit and flopped down with relief after spreading out the threadbare green plaid travelling rug that Monty had also been obliged to carry uphill, rolled up over his shoulder. His shirt, where it had rested, was soaked in sweat and its rough woollen texture had rubbed an angry red mark on his neck. He hadn’t wanted to bring it but Penny had insisted. Sneddon’s sheep grazed up here from time to time and left their calling cards on the short dry grass. Penny, like all women, was fussy about that sort of thing despite being only ten years old.
In silence they proceeded to lay out their joint stock of provisions on the rug. This was the usual drill. It was followed by a ceremonial exchange of items. Monty swapped his boiled egg for one of her sausage rolls and they agreed to share the broken biscuits and dandelion and burdock. Monty had started out with a bottle of weak orange squash but had drunk it on the way up. Secretly, he would have liked one of Penny’s jam and banana triangles, but he hesitated to offer one of his fishpaste monstrosities in exchange; so in the end he didn’t.
This whole area of high land was known as Shooter’s Hill. From up here you had a spectacular view, miles and miles of undulating countryside, patched with fields, divided by the meandering river and roads, dotted with cottages. It meant Monty could see his whole world, laid out at his feet like a tapestry carpet. Balaclava House looked like a toy building. Further along lay the Colleys’ untidy yard and their ramshackle cottage, even tinier.
Way over there, behind the woods, lay Sneddon’s Farm and the doll’s house of a cottage where Penny and her widowed mother lived. Mrs Henderson eked out a precarious existence for herself and her daughter by writing children’s stories. Their home was a former farm worker’s hovel, no longer required. Mr Sneddon let Mrs Henderson have it for a peppercorn rent because it had an outside privy, and also because he felt sorry for her, being a war widow. You couldn’t see cottage or farmhouse but you could see Mr Sneddon’s sheep two fields away, mere white dots.
Beyond the farm was the quarry. You couldn’t see that, either, but occasionally you’d hear a muffled roar. Down below to the right lay the dark stain that was Shooter’s Wood. Sometimes there was shooting down there and you did hear gunshots exploding into the quiet air. Generally it was Jed Colley after pigeons. But not today. Today the woods lay dark, mysterious and silent. Now the only sound was the distant twittering song of a skylark high above. Not so long ago he’d have heard the drone of aircraft. But it had been a peacetime sky for over a year now. Monty fell flat on his back and squinted up into the bright light. He could just make out the fluttering black dot.
‘If you look straight into the sun like that,’ said Penny, ‘you’ll go blind.’
‘I’ve got my eyes shut,’ countered Monty, closing them to prove it.
‘You didn’t just now. You had them open and you were pulling a horrible face.’ She paused. ‘My grandma says, if the wind changes while you’re pulling a face, you’ll stay like it.’
‘That’s childish tripe!’ said Monty indignantly. ‘It’s what they tell little kids like you . . .’ (He was only twelve years old himself, but he knew that would annoy her.) ‘You don’t believe that now, do you? You must be potty.’
‘Of course I don’t!’ Her face turned red with fury and it clashed with her carroty hair. To let him know how much he’d offended her, she didn’t speak again.
He was glad of her silence because it meant he could just lie there, feeling the warm sun on his face, smelling the grass and earth, hearing the buzz of nearby bees on the clover and letting his thoughts drift along any route they chose to take. He was dimly aware that the pattern was already set for the adult relationship that still lay some years ahead of them. Penny would still be telling him what to do, when they were grown up, and generally she’d be right. He would find ways not to take her advice, or appear not to. Penny would be chattering and he longing for silence. She would ever be the practical one and he the dreamer.
Penny already said, ‘When we are married . . .’ and she was almost certainly right about that, too. Monty knew he was temperamentally lazy and accepted it would be easier to marry Penny, one day, than go out and find someone else. At least he knew Penny’s faults and that was preferable, he reckoned, to marrying another girl and finding out she had a score of unexpected failings.
He pushed himself up on his elbows and peered at the back of her head through narrowed eyelids. The sun sprinkled her hair with gold dust. He liked her hair. The sun made her freckles darker but he didn’t mind those. He quite liked the blue-check cotton dress she wore. He wondered how many years of relative freedom he’d got before Penny carried out her resolve to marry him. He was twelve now and he ought to be able to put it off for another twelve at least, surely? That was a lifetime. If he obliged his parents in their wish to send him to university, he wouldn’t be able to marry Penny for ages. What a relief!
‘What are you grinning at?’ asked Penny suspiciously, turning round and speaking at last, if only to accuse him. She must have eyes in the back of her head.
‘Nothing,’ said Monty promptly.
‘It has to be something. Is a beetle crawling up my back?’ Alarmed, she began to reach behind her and make awkward brushing gestures.
‘No, honestly, Penny, I wasn’t thinking of anything special.’ To distract her, he added, ‘Let’s go down to Shooter’s Wood.’
‘No,’ s
aid Penny, grumpy now because she still didn’t know why he’d been grinning and suspected a private joke at her expense. ‘My mother doesn’t allow me into Shooter’s Wood.’
‘That’s only because she’s afraid Jed Colley will blast you with his shotgun. He’s not firing down there today. We’d have heard him.’
‘I’m not going!’ snapped Penny.
‘Then I’ll go on my own!’ Irritated, he jumped to his feet.
He scrambled and slithered down the hill. Once he thought he heard her call after him. He half hoped she would follow, once she realised he really would leave her sitting there. But he couldn’t hear her puffing behind him and male pride would not allow him to look back. He knew, of course, that he would be in trouble with both their mothers if they learned he’d left Penny all alone on the hillside. But Penny wasn’t a sneak.
At the wood’s edge he did stop and look back up the hill, shielding his eyes against the sunshine. Penny was still sitting where he’d left her, a lonely figure in blue with a red topknot. He waved to her. She didn’t wave back. She, too, had her pride.