by Babs Horton
Ninety-nine, one hundred.
He let his breath out quickly, hot breath that steamed in the freezing air of the bedroom. He drew in great aching lungfuls of frosty air.
The sounds in his head began to melt away: his brother’s breathing slowed, stopped; the loud sobs became faraway laughter.
His eyelids began to droop, covering the reflected star fire. His head was full with the sound of music now. He waved to the moon, and climbed unsteadily down from the window seat. His brother’s bed was empty now, the folded clothes gone. Only the sandals remained. New sandals with the price still on the bottom.
In her pink bedroom in Inkerman Terrace, Bessie Tranter slept deeply, snoring gently into the frilly gingham pillowcase. The smell of eucalyptus and disinfectant hung in the air and a candle burned softly on the mantelpiece. In a glass cabinet near the window the faces of her foreign dolls had been turned towards the wall because she disliked the feel of their cold glass eyes on her face as she slept.
The bedroom door was ajar and beyond it her mother sat in a high-backed chair keeping guard in case Bessie had a bad dream and called out in her sleep.
Bessie slept on, dreaming her favourite dream. She had walked down the aisle of Carmel Chapel in a fairy-tale dress. The whitest lace you ever saw. White as snow, frothy as a fountain. She carried a bouquet of red roses and gypsophilia and she lost count of the bridesmaids who tripped along behind her. The congregation sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. When she stepped out of the chapel, confetti fell from the blue skies onto her shiny gold ringlets, like soft rain.
She waved gaily to the urchins of the town who had lined up on the hump-backed bridge to catch sight of her. Ragged urchins with grimy faces and running noses. The strange thing was, that among these dirty children stood Iffy, Billy and Fatty and that couldn’t possibly be right because they would have been grown up like her.
Later, in the kitchen of her dreams Bessie was busy making meals for her handsome new husband. She took down plates from the plate rack, dainty plates made of rice paper. From shiny saucepans that reflected her smiling face she served mint imperials for potatoes, spearmint pips for peas, chocolate slabs for meat. She sat up at the pink and white Formica-topped table, opposite her sat her husband, his face hidden by a large newspaper. And a beautiful voice on the wireless sang ‘Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be’.
Fatty Bevan listened, ears cocked for any sound. He heard the sound of his father’s bed groaning under his weight, a loud curse as his feet came into contact with the icy floor, the scrape of the cracked old chamber pot as it was dragged out from under the bed. His father coughed a thick, phlegmy cough. Silence. Then came the hiss as he pissed into the pot. He pissed a river, pissed as long as the Brewery horse did. Once, Fatty had looked in the pot and it had been full to the top – a brown and frothy stench. When Fatty peed it was green like cabbage water and barely covered the bottom. The stink of his father drifted across the landing. Fatty held his breath and tried not to breathe in. He waited and listened for the sound of the front door opening. Not likely. His mother wouldn’t be back until she was sure the old man was flat out. She’d still be in one of the back rooms of some pub, crying into her pint pot of cider. He waited for the sounds of heavy breathing. When he knew it was safe because his father had begun to snore, he pushed back the bleached flour sacks that acted as his sheets and blankets and felt under the bed for his sandals. His feet slipped into them like old friends. He’d gone to bed in his clothes, as he always did, ready each night to make his escape. He knelt on the bed and gently pushed up the window making barely a sound. He dared not use the stairs for fear of waking his father. He didn’t want another beating. He still had wheals on his back from the last one.
He eased his small body out onto the window sill, swivelled round with the dexterity of a monkey and lay, belly down, across the sill. He manoeuvred himself until he hung from the sill by his elbows, his bare knees grazed by the rough stone walls.
He gathered his strength. This was the tricky bit. He had to heave himself up on an elbow, and pull down the window so the draught from it would not wake the old man.
One, two, three. Yes! The window slid shut without too much noise.
He took a deep breath, let go of the window sill and dropped towards the ground, pushing himself out from the wall with his feet. He turned in mid air and landed on all fours in the frost-stiffened, clumpy grass of the yard.
A sharp stone grazed the palm of his hand. He licked the wound and it left a smear of blood on his chin. Then he was up and away hot-footing it off down the lane.
He kept close to the high walls that surrounded the Big House and when he heard the rumble of wheels coming over the hump-backed bridge he stepped into the overgrown gateway to the gardens of the house and pressed his body deep into the shadows.
The sound of the wheels came closer and he could hear Carty Annie cursing loudly to herself.
Carty Annie fascinated Fatty. She was mad, but only with grief; she wasn’t a dangerous lunatic. She was ancient, over a hundred years old people said. She was Irish and years ago she lost all her babies in one go. They got drowned in a storm in a lake in Ireland.
She had arrived in their town one day, pulling the same old cart she had now, trundling up the road that led from the faraway sea. She had moved into a tumbledown house in a place called Dancing Duck Lane and had stopped there ever since. They called her Carty Annie because she never went out without her cart. It was a wooden cart with buckled wheels and a piece of old rope for pulling. It was always full of queer old stuff that was no use to anyone: empty tin cans; clods of earth cut from the mountain; dead rabbits; jam jars; an old stone covered in green moss and slime; a cracked piss pot; a rusty tin bucket with no handle and a picture of the Pope with faded pink tinsel round the frame.
Sometimes, when the wind was in the right direction, she set up shop on the Dentist’s Stone. In the olden days the dentist came on a horse and people sat on the stone to get their teeth pulled out with pliers. No gas or nothing. There were still bloodstains on the stone and marks on the ground where they’d dug their heels in deep. She told fortunes.
Free if she liked you, a tanner a go if she didn’t. The queue often went right down over the hump-backed bridge almost as far as Carmel graveyard. Someone always kept an eye out for Father Flaherty and everyone scattered if he came on the scene.
Fatty never called her Carty Annie to her face, none of them did, just Old Missus. He didn’t know anyone who knew her real name.
He peeped through the bushes that wrapped him round and caught a quick glimpse of her as she passed. She walked with her head bent low and as she came level with the Big House she walked in a wide arc into the road, just the way all the kids did who believed it was haunted.
He’d watched her before as she wound her way towards her cottage. He knew her habits now. If he gave it ten minutes she would be back home, she’d park the cart in the lane and would head straight to her pile of sacking in the bare back bedroom. Another five minutes and she’d be fast asleep and when she was, he was going to peer through the windows and take a good look at whatever it was she kept in there.
The moon was high over Blagdon’s Tump and a candle still burned in the Old Bake House where the Tudges lived. There wasn’t a Mr Tudge because he’d run away with a fancy woman from over the mountain. Lally Tudge was fat. Her sister Dylis was fatter. Mrs Tudge was the fattest. That was the rule they learned in school.
Fat. Fatter. Fattest.
Daft. Dafter. Daftest.
They didn’t use the word daft much. Twp was the word they used. Twp meant not right in the head, but not dangerous. Lally Tudge was twp. Two splashes short of a birdbath. Ninepence to the shilling. No lights on upstairs. That made him smile. It was probably Lally who had the candle still burning now, too afraid to blow out the flame for fear of goblins and the sandman. He wasn’t afraid of anything like that. It was the living he was afraid of: he had reason to be.
The wind was icy now and blowing much stronger. He shivered in his thin clothes and hugged himself. He waited. The Old Bugger hooted down in the chapel graveyard and the dogs in the Three Rows began to yelp and howl.
He slipped out of the shadows and walked on past the Big House. Over to his right on the lonely piece of ground they called the rec the roundabout turned slowly in the wind. He climbed the stile. No sign of Carty Annie anywhere up ahead.
The twisted branches of the withered tree were black against the sky and their shadows dripped onto the path. Once an old man had hanged himself there by his bootlaces. They had found him on Christmas morning, his arms and legs splayed out as though he were doing a star jump the way they did in games lessons at school. They had to cut him down and defrost him with a blowtorch so they could fit him in a coffin.
Fatty reached the house, which had grass and moss growing from cracks in the walls and an old bird’s nest sitting on the crooked chimney pot. He stepped stealthily up to the darkened windows and pressed his small nose up against the dirt-streaked glass. His hot, loud breath made rivulets in the grime on the cracked panes as he strained to see inside.
It was too dark to see much, moonlight barely reached through the filthy windows, ice was beginning to form on the cobwebbed curtains. He took the cheap torch from his pocket, turned it on, and pointed it into the room. Its weak yellow light picked out an old table that looked as though it had a tablecloth made from clods of earth.
He jumped and nearly dropped the torch. A huge pair of glassy green and yellow eyes glared back at him from within. He steadied the torch and focussed it towards the startled eyes.
He smiled.
A scrawny tabby cat sat on the kitchen dresser, head tilted to one side looking at him curiously.
Curiosity killed the cat.
Miss Riley told them that in school. He didn’t believe it. Curiosity made you learn, made you wary.
He moved the beam of the torch round the room. The cat put up its paw and tried to catch the little arc of moving light. For a few moments Fatty continued with the game, then he shone the beam higher, out of the cat’s reach.
He sucked in his breath- The torch wobbled, and he had to use both hands to steady it.
A large pickling jar stood on the dresser between filthy cracked cups and leery-eyed Toby jugs. Inside the jar was the strangest sight he had ever seen.
“Fuckin’ Ada!” he yelped.
He switched off the torch and fled, racing down past the withered tree, over the stile and away past the Big House without stopping once.
Spain, 1962
Agnes Medlicott woke from a deep sleep and realised that she was smiling. She lay quite still in the blissful aftermath of a lovely dream, listening to the distant chiming of the clock on the church of Santa Maria Magdalena.
She had rarely dreamed in the past ten years but tonight she had dreamed that she was back in the Big House in Wales where she had lived for many years.
In the dream she had been standing at the window in the upstairs drawing room looking down towards the humpbacked bridge that spanned the river. It was high summer and bright sunlight came in through the open window and wrapped her in its warmth. Sunlight glinted on the white statues in the garden below and the perfume from the flowers was heady, a glorious fusion of sweet peas, stocks and roses. There were other familiar smells too, the bittersweet aroma of the dark coal-rich soil, the smell of the nettles down near the river.
She could hear the sound of water gurgling lazily in the river; the humming of contented bees and the querulous call of a magpie in the kitchen gardens. Most delightfully she heard the carefree shouts of her girls calling to each other playfully somewhere in the gardens below.
Now, sitting up in bed and fully awake, she thought how happy she had been to dream of the past, how enchanted she had been to find that nothing seemed to have changed about the old house. She thought sadly that she was disappointed to be awake, to find herself in her owrrbed in her small house in Spain where she had moved after her husband’s death.
All around her the room exhaled the familiar fusty night smells that had long been her own: ancient lavender and camphor; beeswax polish and worn linen.
The window shutters were open to the night as they always were in her bedroom. Through the window she could see, above the huddled roofs of the clustered houses that a candle was alight in a window of the Convent of Santa Engracia. A wakeful nun was praying in the darkest hours. She could hear the gentle swish of the waves on the seashore and a soft breeze rattled the window. Moonlight bathed the room in a peaceful light.
Eager to return to her dreams of the past, Agnes slipped back down between the bed covers and closed her eyes, drifting easily and hopefully into sleep.
She awoke a little later in a state of absolute panic from a nightmare. Her whole body was trembling violently and her night clothes clung to her body with perspiration. Her heart was hammering painfully, every sinew in her body was taut with anxiety.
Slowly reality dawned. She told herself that it had just been a dream, a pleasant dream that had somehow evolved into a terrifying nightmare. She reached out a trembling hand for the candle on the bedside table but only succeeded in knocking it to the floor. With increasing panic she pulled back the covers and rose from the bed.
She picked up the fallen candlestick and found the matchbox. Her hands fumbled in an effort to light a match. Candle light pushed at the darkness of the room, shadows leapt, then fell, until the room was washed with an eerie light.
She felt for her spectacles on the bedside table. Hastily, she put them on.
The familiarity of the room soothed her momentarily. It was just as it always was. The rush-backed chair, the small washstand, the blue and yellow jug and bowl, the large crucifix on the flaking, whitewashed wall which loomed black as gangrene.
Her legs shook and the bones between her knees grated as she crossed the worm-chewed floorboards. When she reached the window she saw the reflection of her eyes and their intensity and brightness made her start.
Somewhere outside a dog howled, then another, until all the dogs in the village were joined in a cacophony of primeval yowling.
She heard the cock crow in the gardens of Señor Garcia’s villa and the convent bell calling the nuns to prayer. The wind banged a loose shutter in a nearby house. She tried desperately to banish the memory of the nightmare, but to no avail.
She had slipped back into the first dream and found herself again in the Big House, looking out of the window down towards the river. She had stood there for a long time, so happy to be back. It was all just as she remembered it.
Then, she had turned away from the window and with absolute dismay, saw that the walls of the drawing room were charred and blackened by fire. As she looked upwards she saw that the roof was gone, there remained only fire-ravaged beams exposed to the blue summer sky.
She had turned back again to the window. Outside the sun had disappeared behind darkening clouds. The beautiful garden had, in the space of a few seconds, been transformed into a wilderness and the statues that had stood so proudly and looked so beautiful lay fallen in the overgrown grass.
She had been startled then by the sound of someone digging in the garden. She heard the harsh noise of a spade catching against stones. A figure was over near the lilac bush.
Agnes watched, transfixed with horror. Suddenly, the figure stooped towards the ground and gave a shout of alarm.
She held her breath, her heart hammering painfully. Slowly the figure stood up, turned around and looked up towards the window where she stood. It was a man, his face partially hidden by shadow, a man staring up at her with dark, accusing eyes.
She had wanted to turn away from him but she couldn’t: she was numb with fear, hypnotised by his expression.
Slowly, the man looked back down towards the ground. Agnes followed his gaze.
At his feet in the damp black soil lay a broken skull. A tiny white skull. A long-buried,
long-forgotten secret, or so she had thought.
Oh God! Wide awake now she began to sway backwards and forwards, clutching at the window sill for support. Outside the window, the wind had grown wild and the sound of the sea was alarming in its fury.
She knew with a terrible certainty that it was time to return and face up to the truth.
November 1962
Winter came to the town. It was the coldest winter they had known. The snow came one November night, billowing up the steep-sided valley in a freezing white mist.
Iffy woke early. She opened her eyes just a crack, then closed them quickly against the myriad coloured lights that seeped through the worn patchwork quilt: rosy pink; blue; bright gingham and dowdy Paisley; polka-dot and check.
Beyond the kaleidoscope of the quilt, the room was still and strangely silent.
Iffy sniffed the world outside the quilt. The air was sharp, freezing on her nose. She burrowed back into the warmth of the bed. Then put one ear out. It buzzed with cold. She tunnelled back into the warm again. Out again, nose first sniffing like a dog.
The smell of bacon fat slipped through the parlour and under the bedroom door, making her mouth water.
One cheek and an ear out now.
Out in the parlour the clock whirred and tinked seven tinks.
A subtle shift of the early morning light pricked at her eyes and she felt at once that somehow the world was different. An intangible difference. A faint fizzing of unexplained excitement stirred in her belly.
She left the comfort of the bed, hop-footed it across the ancient green lino that splintered beneath her small feet like thin ice. She stood shivering by the washstand. In the blue and white striped washbowl a spider was spread-eagled in ice. Milky light seeped mysteriously through the curtains. Jack Frost had worked a doubler during the night.