The Ghost of Howlers Beach

by Jackie French

  ‘Butter’s already had polio,’ said Dr O’Bryan shortly. ‘He was three years old, that time you were all visiting the Blue Mountains. A few days in bed and he was fine. Only one per cent of polio cases are serious. I didn’t tell you what it really was in case you all worried needlessly. Father said we all had polio too when we were small. Once polio is in the house any child there is likely to get it. It’s extremely infectious.’ He turned back to Olive. ‘Is your brother’s breathing affected?’

  ‘It seems all right.’ Olive seemed to be trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘It might change at any time. I’m sorry to worry you,’ he added gently, ‘but you need to know how serious polio is once it passes into the spine causing paralysis as your brother seems to have, or into the brain, and how quickly it can get worse. Jenkins, call an ambulance.’ He turned back to Olive. ‘You’re at the susso camp?’

  ‘No! We . . . we live on a little beach nearer here. But you can’t get in there now because the tide is coming up — it’ll be fifteen hours before anyone can carry Gil out, or we’d have brought him here. The only other way in is through a tiny tunnel . . .’ Olive looked even more desperate. ‘I don’t think you’d fit in the tunnel. Maybe a boat?’

  Dr O’Bryan stared. ‘You don’t live in the Ghostly Cove, do you?’

  ‘That . . . that’s what Dad used to call it,’ whispered Olive. ‘But then he’d laugh and tell us there weren’t really any ghosts, the noise is just the wind blowing through the caves.’

  ‘Used to call it? Where are your parents now?’

  ‘They’re . . . away.’

  ‘When will they be back?’

  Olive just shrugged

  ‘That is appalling! Who’s looking after your brother?’

  ‘Tish. She’s only five but I thought it would be quicker for me to come and find you. But how do you know about our beach?’

  ‘I’ve lived here all my life,’ said Dr O’Bryan shortly. ‘We used to play there when I was a boy. Of course I know it.’ He thought, then shook his head. ‘You’re right. I don’t think we can get your brother through the cave on this side. Even if I could get through the tunnel these days, the boy needs to be in a hospital, with an iron lung to help him breathe if necessary.’

  Olive gave a despairing gasp as Dr O’Bryan added, ‘We’ll have to call the lifeboat. I’ll give the police station a ring to fetch the crew. We’ll have an ambulance waiting on the beach too. Elephant, Cake, would you mind preparing a room for this young lady for the night?’

  ‘No!’ cried Olive. ‘I have to come with you! Tish will be terrified if she sees men coming up the beach from a boat.’

  ‘There’s not much room in a lifeboat, not with a boy laid out in it. It’s hard rowing in the swell around the cliff. You’d take up room and not add any muscles to the oars,’ boomed Aunt Elephant. ‘I’ll come in the lifeboat. I can row harder than any of those chaps. As soon as we reach the cove I’ll call out that we’ve come to rescue your brother and sister, not hurt them. And then I can bring the little girl back up here.’ She glanced at her sisters. ‘We gels used to call that beach the Mermaid Cove,’ she boomed softly, as Dad went quickly into the study to call the lifeboat and the ambulance.

  ‘You knew about it too?’ asked Butter.

  ‘Of course we did,’ said Aunt Peculiar. ‘But we never told your father. He’s so much younger than us, and it seemed too dangerous — he might have been caught there by the tide.’

  Aunt Peculiar reached out and took Olive’s hand. ‘Come on in, my dear. You need some sweet cocoa for shock and a warm bath and a hot water bottle in your bed.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t go to bed till I know that Tish and Gil are safe.’

  ‘My dear, it will be days before we know how Gil is. But my brother will make sure he gets the best possible treatment.’

  Like Mum did, thought Butter despairingly. But Mum died.

  ‘You don’t need to go to bed yet,’ Aunt Peculiar added. ‘Your sister will need you when she gets here. But let’s get you warm.’

  ‘Thank you,’ whispered Olive. Her tears glinted in the porch light.

  CHAPTER 20

  Dad and Aunt Elephant vanished with Jenkins in the car. Auntie Cake whisked Olive upstairs and when they came back to the sitting room Olive was dressed in ladies pyjamas, with the too-long arms and legs rolled up. They had tiny flying pig’s trotters painted on them, so they must have belonged to Aunt Peculiar.

  ‘Now, you cuddle up there,’ said Auntie Cake, leading Olive to the sofa. She tucked a crocheted rug, with tiny spiked beetles’ legs on a red background around her — another of Aunt Peculiar’s efforts.

  ‘Thank you, Auntie Cake,’ said Olive, politely huddled on the sofa.

  ‘No need to thank me,’ said Auntie Cake. ‘I’m glad to be able to do something. One feels so helpless. All through the War there was nothing to do but knit socks, and then the flu epidemic and all we could do was make soup and get it to whoever needed it, and now all this unemployment . . . I’ll go and get the cocoa and have some ready for your little sister when she arrives too. She’ll be just starting school if she’s five . . .’ Auntie Cake stopped at the look on Olive’s face.

  ‘There isn’t a school at the susso camp,’ said Olive. ‘And there’s no bus to get the kids to school anywhere else.’

  ‘We’ll have to see about that,’ said Auntie Cake softly. ‘But cocoa and some toast and plum jam first.’ She gave a quavery smile. ‘Our dear mother always used to say there’s nothing so bad that it isn’t better on a full stomach. And Father declared that plum jam was the best jam of all for a crisis.’

  ‘She’s nice,’ said Olive, as Butter sat down in the big soft armchair again. ‘You’re lucky to have your aunts.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Butter, trying to think of something comforting to say about Gil. But any of the phrases like ‘He’ll be all right’, ‘Don’t worry, Dad will make sure he gets better’ might be a lie.

  ‘Why do they have such funny names?’

  ‘They’re what Dad called them when he was small. They thought it was funny and started to call each other Peculiar, Elephant and Cake. Their real names are Petunia, Ellen and Kate.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Olive. ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘Butter,’ said Butter firmly. He wasn’t going to tell anyone, especially Olive, that he’d been called after Grandpa. ‘Butter’ might sound odd, but it was better than the name he’d been given at birth.

  Neither said anything for a few minutes. ‘What was your mum like?’ Olive asked after a while. Butter had a feeling she was just saying something to crack the weight of frightened silence.

  ‘Pretty. Fun. We made giant sandcastles together on the beach, with even bigger turrets than this one. She read books to me and . . .’ Butter’s voice broke off. ‘You said your mum told you stories too?’ he managed at last.

  ‘Yes. Mostly funny ones.’ Despite the words tears lurked in Olive’s voice. ‘She was always laughing. She loved the sunlight, the moonlight on the water. She always knew when the fish were running — that’s how we always had fish to eat or sell. She knew which seaweeds to eat . . .’

  ‘You can eat seaweed?’ asked Butter, startled. ‘Dad used to bake potatoes in seaweed but we never ate it.’

  Olive nodded. ‘Some kinds of seaweed are good if you know which ones. And the little seeds from the pigface, but you can eat their leaves too. Mum . . . Mum seemed to lose her light as she died, all those last weeks.’ She shoved her fists against her eyes to wipe away the tears that had finally fallen, then discovered a handkerchief in the top pocket of the pyjamas and blew her nose.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Butter helplessly.

  ‘I’m not just crying for her. I’m crying for all of us. We’ll be discovered now! Not just by your dad and your aunts — maybe I could have convinced your family not to tell anyone. But the men in the lifeboat — they’ll see our home and know we’ve been living there and the people in the hospita
l will want to know where Gil has been . . .’ She broke off as the front door opened again.

  ‘Olive?’ called a small trembling voice.

  ‘Tish!’ Olive ran out and picked her up.

  Tish clutched Olive like a small monkey, still holding Giraffe, a bit sandy now but obviously loved. ‘The men came in a boat and took us to shore and there was a big car and it took Gil away and this enormous lady promised me faithfully that you’d be here.’

  ‘And I am,’ said Olive.

  ‘Boats feel funny,’ said Tish tremulously. She glanced back at Aunt Elephant, who had followed her into the room. ‘They go up and down and cars go fast. Why do cars go so fast? But this lady hugged me and I wasn’t scared and Giraffe wasn’t scared either. Much.’

  She snuggled down in Olive’s arms then. ‘The lady is really an elephant,’ Tish whispered to Butter. ‘But it’s a secret. I asked where her trunk was and she told me it was invisible.’

  Thank you, Aunt Elephant, thought Butter.

  ‘How . . . how is Gil?’ asked Olive.

  ‘I don’t know, my dear,’ said Aunt Elephant. ‘He’s conscious, which is good, and breathing well. But he’s lost feeling in his legs and that isn’t good.’

  ‘When can we go and see him?’ asked Olive.

  Aunt Elephant crouched down next to the sofa. ‘My dear, you and your sister have been exposed to polio. You’ve been secluded so long, despite your visits to the camp, that you almost certainly have never had it. You need to stay in quarantine till we can be sure you didn’t catch it from your brother, or you might pass it on to other people.’

  ‘For . . . for how long?’

  ‘Thirty-five days,’ said Aunt Elephant in her softest boom. ‘As long as neither of you come down with it. If you do it might be longer. We will need to see about quarantine for your parents when they get back — from wherever they’ve gone,’ she added disapprovingly. ‘I’m sorry. I know it seems an impossibly long time. But we’ll try to make them good days.’

  Olive shook her head, cradling Tish protectively. ‘We can’t stay here.’ She shut her eyes in anguish, then opened them again. ‘But we can’t go back home either. Not now the men in the lifeboat know we live there. They’ll tell other people! You . . . you don’t understand! It can never be good again!’

  ‘Try not to worry,’ boomed Aunt Elephant, obviously not understanding at all. ‘Polio can be bad, but mostly it isn’t.’ She reached over and scooped Tish up in her arms. ‘Come on, little seagull. Let’s give you a bath and get you into bed.’

  ‘I want Olive!’ cried Tish.

  ‘Then come and have a bath and I’ll bring you back to your sister,’ said Aunt Elephant calmly. ‘And my sister Cake is making you some nice chicken soup.’

  ‘It’s a warm bath,’ said Olive reassuringly. ‘These people have taps that hot water comes out of.’

  ‘It’ll burn me!’

  ‘Not that hot.’

  ‘And there are all those stairs. What if I fall down the stairs?’ Tish was in tears. ‘No place should have lots of stairs like this.’

  ‘The stairs are safe,’ Butter assured her.

  ‘And then we’ll have soup,’ promised Olive. ‘Soup with chicken, like at Christmas.’

  ‘I want sandwiches,’ said Tish stubbornly. ‘I want Woofer too. I won’t have a bath without Woofer!’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Butter in sudden alarm. He imagined the dog stranded in the cove, his family gone, alone in the darkness

  ‘He headed straight for the kitchen,’ said Aunt Elephant. ‘That dog’s no fool. I bet he’s tucking into leftover roast lamb right now.’

  She smiled at Olive and then at Tish, tucked up in her arms. ‘I think that dog knows a thing or two. He knows he’s safe here, safe enough to go hunting for his dinner. I’m pretty sure he’d object if you try to have a bath with him. And of course you can have sandwiches if you’d rather. Everything will be all right.’

  ‘No,’ said Olive, her face bleak. ‘Even if Gil recovers it can never be all right again.’

  CHAPTER 21

  ‘Sleep in another room away from Olive?’ The newly bathed Tish, clad in a nightdress made from one of Auntie Cake’s soft cotton blouses, looked at Aunt Peculiar as if she had suggested she get her head cut off.

  ‘You and your sister can share a bedroom,’ said Auntie Cake soothingly. ‘The Mostly Purple Room has twin beds in it.’

  ‘I want Gil too!’ Tish was near tears again. ‘I want Gil!’

  ‘Gil can’t be here, darling,’ said Auntie Cake.

  ‘I want to sleep in this room. With him too!’ Tish pointed mutinously at Butter.

  The Aunts exchanged glances. ‘We can make you a bed on the sofa. Would that be all right?’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar.

  Tish shut her lips tight.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Miss O’Bryan,’ said Olive politely.

  ‘And Butter can sleep in the armchair tonight,’ declared Aunt Peculiar.

  Butter nodded. It would be uncomfortable, but he’d do anything to lessen the terror in Tish’s eyes.

  Tish looked around for something else to object to. ‘What if that lamp thing burns the house down?’

  ‘It won’t. It’s not very hot. You can feel it if you like,’ boomed Aunt Elephant.

  ‘What if a ghost appears at midnight?’

  ‘What ghost?’ asked Butter.

  ‘All castles have ghosts,’ said Tish scornfully.

  ‘This one doesn’t,’ said Olive.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s a Very Small Castle. Too small for a ghost,’ said Butter, inspired. ‘Ghosts need big castles.’

  Tish seemed to accept this. Olive looked at him gratefully.

  Jenkins appeared, carrying a tray. He didn’t seem at all put out by having to bring in a tray of food near midnight, nor did Esmé, who was carrying a tureen of soup behind him. Woofer limped beside her.

  Jenkins set the small table by the sofa: chicken soup, bubbling rich with vegetables; buttered toast with a dish of plum jam; lamb sandwiches, cheese and salad sandwiches, egg and lettuce sandwiches; and a big plate of lamingtons — Butter wondered if Auntie Cake had made them just in case Tish came to the house again. She just so loved feeding people.

  ‘Snerfle,’ said Woofer happily, snuggled up with Olive on the sofa and gulping down a whole lamb sandwich without bothering to chew it. He might be a small dog but he had the biggest mouth Butter had ever seen.

  ‘Excuse me mentioning it,’ said Jenkins. ‘But the little dog has already had a bowl of chopped mutton, two buns and the chopped chicken livers that Cookie was keeping for a pie.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Olive. ‘Dad said Woofer had an infinitely expanding stomach. Like the universe, but in a dog.’ Her lips trembled at the mention of her father. She looked up at the Aunts. ‘We’re . . . we’re not eating too much of your food, are we?’

  ‘Of course not, dear,’ sang Auntie Cake.

  ‘Young people need to be fed,’ boomed Aunt Elephant.

  ‘Eat up,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘People who live in Very Small Castles usually have all the food they need.’

  Tish looked at Aunt Elephant curiously. ‘Can you eat buns and apples with your invisible trunk?’

  ‘Yes. But only invisible ones,’ boomed Aunt Elephant. She winked at Olive and Butter.

  Olive drank a bowl of soap and ate a sandwich; Tish managed four sandwiches and fell asleep. Woofer grabbed two more before anyone could stop him and then curled up on Tish’s feet, his nose to his bottom in a ‘good dog taking up as little room as possible’ position.

  Butter found Aunt Peculiar tucking a rug around him. ‘Sleep,’ she squeaked lovingly. ‘You’ll hear if the phone rings or your father comes in with news.’

  Butter nodded wearily. He wondered if it was good or bad that Dad hadn’t rung yet to say how Gil was. Maybe he was just waiting to see, like they were waiting . . . his eyelids drooped.

  Butter woke at the sound
of the front door opening and closing. He was still in the big armchair. Someone had put a rug over Olive and Tish and Giraffe on the sofa. Woofer snored, the happy sound of a dog who has eaten at least five dinners and anticipates an even bigger breakfast. Aunt Peculiar slept on the settee by the window. She woke too, at the sound. She sat up, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Is that you, Pongo?’ she called to Dad.

  Dr O’Bryan stepped wearily into the living room, then sank down in an armchair. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

  ‘Of course,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. She wore pyjamas, bright yellow and painted with tiny purple toes, a bit like someone had bruised them all with a hammer. Butter realised the Aunts had probably taken it in turns to sleep down there with them. ‘How is the boy?’

  ‘Alive,’ said Dr O’Bryan shortly. ‘He’s breathing well and we’ve managed to get his temperature down.’

  Olive sat up, blinking. ‘His legs?’ she whispered.

  Dr O’Bryan hesitated before answering. ‘They’re unresponsive. The infection has entered the spine. He’s going to get worse before he gets better. But if it was going to enter his brain — affect his breathing or kill him — we’d almost certainly be seeing signs of it by now. It happens quickly. There is still every chance he will get better.’

  ‘And be able to walk? And to run?’ asked Butter.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Dr O’Bryan cautiously.

  ‘He wants to be a cricketer,’ whispered Tish, who had now woken too. ‘The best cricketer in the world. Just like our dad. He was going to be even better than Don Bradman!’

  Would Gil ever play cricket again, Butter wondered, even just at the beach? Would he ever get a job at all if he couldn’t stand properly or walk, especially as he’d never gone to school? And the people he and Olive were so scared of, the gangsters or the kidnappers or whoever they were, what if they found out he was in hospital? Gil couldn’t escape from them there.

  ‘That reminds me,’ added Dr O’Bryan tiredly, ‘what is your brother’s surname?’

  Tish said nothing. Olive was silent for a moment.

  Don’t tell him, thought Butter. If no one knows Gil’s surname the villains can’t find him in hospital. But then Olive said at last, ‘I don’t suppose it matters now. Andrews.’