by Babs Horton
Christ! Within five years of this photograph being taken she was dead and buried. And soon, soon he would be joining her…
The second photograph was one of his wife, taken standing alone on a beach. In the background he could see children playing down at the water’s edge, the funnel of a ship in the distance. At her feet lay an overturned bucket, a spade and a crushed sandcastle. He turned the photograph over. She had written, ‘Alone again. Barry Island 19 – ’ The date had been erased by time. No doubt he’d been too busy on a case to go with her, he’d been busy on too many cases as far as his marriage was concerned. He’d been on a case the night she’d been taken ill.
He threw the photograph down with a violence that surprised him. That was the official line. He’d said it so many times he’d almost come to believe it. He’d been on a case the night she’d been taken ill. It was a lie! A lie he’d grown to believe. He hadn’t been on a case, he’d been with another woman, a woman he hardly knew, and he still hadn’t forgiven himself. And soon, soon he would be laid to rest, if that were the right word, in the black soil on a windy Welsh hillside.
Next he picked up a moth-eaten, faded velvet pouch that his mother had given to him on his tenth birthday. It had once been a glorious scarlet colour. He pulled apart the shrivelled strings that drew it together and tipped it up. Five alley bompers clattered into the palm of his hand.
Alley bompers! These had once been his pride and joy. Five large silver metal marbles, the king of marbles in his youth.
He lifted a sheet of yellowed tissue paper that disintegrated at his touch. Underneath it lay a battered book, the faint gold writing on the spine almost obliterated. He opened it up and the musty smell of bygone years pervaded the room. It was a copy of Hamlet. He was quite sure it wasn’t one of his own books. He had boxed those up and they were ready to go to the charity shop. He couldn’t work out how this book had got into the box or where it had come from. He turned a yellowing page. It was a library book and the date stamp declared it to be nearly fifty years overdue. He made a rough mental calculation of the fines due. Well, he made his mind up that as he was going back to Wales, he’d return the book!
He turned it over in his hands. Something was niggling him about it. He closed his eyes for a moment and let his mind wander. He had a vague recollection of standing in a bedroom opening a box. He’d been with Sergeant Rodwell. That was it! They’d been searching the missing child’s bedroom. He’d stood looking down at this book for a long time and wondering, then he’d slipped it into his jacket pocket thinking that it must have some significance, some bearing on the case, only he hadn’t been able to work out what it was.
He laid the book down and lifted out a card. It was a funeral card, the type mourners attached to wreaths and flowers. His hands began to shake as he turned it over and read the smudged words written on it in a childish hand.
Then he picked up another photograph. Four faces looked out at him from across the chasm of many years. Four young faces captured for posterity in a black and white photograph.
He picked up the rolled-up poster from the box. He slid his finger inside the rubber band that held it together and it perished beneath his touch. He unrolled the poster carefully; it had been made by enlarging the original photograph. Thousands of posters like this one had been pinned on lamp posts and in shop windows from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Three of the faces in the photograph had been deliberately blurred, but the fourth face was ringed in black. Beneath the photograph, the faded writing read, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?
And in almost forty years no one ever had…
Over the past days he had become fixated with this case. He supposed it was because he was a rational man and his mind was trying to tidy up unfinished business before he died.
It was pointless though even thinking about it. It had all happened such a long time ago. It was ancient history. An unsolved crime like hundreds of other unsolved crimes. Dead and buried. Yet he knew he had never really let it go. He supposed he had kept all these things, these sad mementoes of a lost life because it was the one mystery that still intrigued him. He knew – he’d always known – that there was something that he had overlooked. Something that had probably been staring him in the face.
He was going back to Wales, going back to die but, before he did so, he had to go over everything about this case. He was determined that at long last he would try to lay this mystery to rest. He replaced everything carefully in the box, stood up wearily from the bed and picked up his old notebooks from the table.
As the sun went down and coloured the room with an eerie orange light, he sat back on the bed and slowly turned the pages of one of the notebooks, pages that were as thin and crisp as onion skins. Sitting in the growing darkness he became immersed again in the past, a past he couldn’t let go of.
The moon was high and full above Blagdon’s Tump, the air was spiked with danger. Far away Iffy heard the clop of horse’s hooves somewhere on a lonely road. She looked around fearfully but the road was empty, glistening with powdered ice. Behind the high forbidding walls the Big House was a moving shadow, with smoke drifting up from the chimneys.
The smoke was different to their smoke. Wood smoke. Apple and pine. The chimneys of the town breathed coal. Fossil and dinosaur.
She thought of the pond in the garden. She hoped the ice was thick. A thick stopper of ice keeping the lid on him. The twisted old body of dead Dr Medlicott beginning to stir as the moonlight filtered through the black oily waters of the fishpond.
She climbed carefully down over the river bank. The ground was rutted and frozen beneath her Wellingtons and the stiffened clumps of grass crunched noisily. She stepped warily into the blackness under the hump-backed bridge.
Silence.
Her heart was loud in her ears and she felt it battering through her skin against her vest.
“Pssst!”
“Shit!”
She jumped in fright. Torchlight hit her in the eyes. She put up her hands against yellow glare.
“Bloody hell, Fatty! You frightened the life out of me! I could have peed myself.”
Fatty’s laughter echoed eerily underneath the bridge.
“Have you brought it with you?”
“Yep.”
“Gis a look then.”
Carefully, she pulled the green glass bottle out of the pocket in the lining of her gabardine mac.
Fatty shone the torchlight on the bottle. The green glass glowed in the circle of yellow light.
“It doesn’t say holy water on it.”
“No, but it says Lords, only the French can’t spell. See. LOURDES.”
She knew all about Lords. It was a place you could go to play cricket or else get cured.
“Go on then, I dare you to use some, Iffy!”
“No! I only said you could look at it.”
“If you did, miracles might happen, your wish might come true.”
“You can’t wish dead people alive again, Fatty.”
“Well, wish for something else then,”
“But you’ve got to have something wrong with you for it to work,”
“No you haven’t. That woman…Auntie Mary Johanna, the one who wanted a baby…she got what she wanted,”
“I don’t want a baby,”
“You don’t have to have a baby. If it can magic up babies it can probably do puppies and monkeys and other stuff too,”
“No!”
“You just drink a bit and wish for something…like a wishing well,”
“Drink it! You don’t drink holy water,”
“But it’d probably work quicker if you drank it, like syrup of figs,”
“No, Fatty!”
It was freezing under the bridge. Icy air oozed out from the old stones and damp cold seeped up through her wellies, on up her legs right up to her ears. Goose-pimples erupted like volcanoes on her flesh. She shivered, her knees knocked with cold and fright.
“Go on, Iffy,”
She shook her head. She couldn’t drink holy water. It was a sin. A huge one.
“No, my nan will kill me,” she said through chattering teeth.
“How will she know? You can fill it up with river water and put it back,”
“Not on your nelly! Anyway, the river’s all froze up,”
“Double dare you, Iffy Meredith,”
Her heart was a battering ram against her ribs.
“We can’t, Fatty! We’ll get into trouble,”
“No one will know,”
“No! God’U know,”
“What’s he going to do? Drop a rock out of the sky and flatten us?”
“He might!”
“Double, double dare!”
“No! Just a smell that’s all you’re getting.”
The sound of the ancient cork popping out of the bottle echoed loudly under the arch of the bridge.
Iffy looked round, fear shooting up her backbone like pins. “Fatty, I can hear someone. Listen.”
But there was no sound except her breathing, fast and heavy, making smoky clouds. Fatty swung the torchlight around in the darkness. Iffy was sure she saw a hunchbacked shadow moving across the arch of the bridge.
“There’s nobody here, only us. Go on, Iffy, just have a sip.”
“No.”
“Cowardy, cowardy custard. Dip your teeth in mustard,” sang Fatty.
She glared at him and shook her head angrily.
“Just a smell, then,” he said.
“Nope.”
“Yellow belly. Yellow belly.”
“I am not!”
“You are too!”
“Not!”
“You’re like Bessie…she’s afraid of everything.”
“I am not!”
“Prove it then.”
“Why should I?”
“No reason. See you, then.”
He moved away towards the far end of the bridge taking the torchlight with him.
The Old Bugger hooted in Carmel graveyard.
“Fatty! Don’t go. Look!”
She swigged from the bottle and choked. The holy water tasted stale and salty on her tongue, not how she imagined holy water would taste.
It’d be Fatty’s fault if she started growing wings or horns. Then her nan would guess what she’d done and she’d kill her…what if a baby came out of her bum?
She wiped her mouth angrily with the back of her hand and glared at him.
“Quick. Make a wish,” said Fatty.
She closed her eyes and wished. A very secret wish. A scary wish. Once she’d made it, she wasn’t so sure she wanted it to come true.
Fatty grinned at her, his eyes shining in the torchlight.
She passed the bottle to him and he handed her the torch.
He raised the bottle to his lips, tilted back his head and swigged long and hard. The precious water glugged down his throat.
“That’s enough, Fatty!”
Then he did something worse than swallowing it: he spat. He spat out a stream of holy water! An arc of bottled holiness rose in the air and splashed down all over his holey sandals.
“Bloody hell!” he yelled. “It’s horrible! It tastes like…tastes like…”
“Tastes like what?”
“Like…like Father Flaherty’s piss.”
Iffy gasped. She was too shocked to laugh. Hearing Father Flaherty’s name said in the same breath as the filthy word piss made her head spin. She stared at him. She couldn’t believe he’d said such a thing about a priest. He was mad. Dangerous. A bloody lunatic.
He began to dance round and round in the flickering light.
“Stop it, Fatty!”
But he wouldn’t stop.
“Father Flaherty’s wee wee…Father Flaherty’s piss piss,” he sang.
“Pack it in, Fatty!”
He was making her afraid, but there was no stopping him. On and on he sang until the air underneath the bridge was a mangled echo of his filthiness.
He handed the half-empty bottle back, took the torch from her and tucked it into the side of his balaclava.
He held out his hands for Iffy’s. She shook her head and held them tight behind her back. Daft as a bloody brush he was, but it was hard to ignore his laughter. It was catching.
She gave her hands to him, together they danced round and round and the torchlight bobbed up and down.
The soft patter of Fatty’s crepe-soled sandals was like rain on the smooth worn stone. Iffy’s wellies were noisier, slip-slap slopping.
And as they danced she played silently with the word piss in her head. From a wicked thought the word grew until it was vibrating on her lips. Slowly she formed it into a whisper. “Pppppppp…” Louder. “Pi pi pi…” A whispering hiss, slipping over her warm tongue, buzzing on her hot lips, a burning, fizzing rapture of filthiness. “PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISSSSSS.” Her ears hummed and scorched with the sound of her daring.
Fatty’s hands were sizzling in hers. His fingers were soft as warm toffee. Wicked as worms.
The bridge echoed and reverberated with the terrifying awfulness of their words.
Over in the Big House a dog began to bark.
From above their heads there came a loud crack, a splintering sound.
God! Paying them back. They stood quite still, their breath coming hot and fast.
Blood raced round and round Iffy’s body, her head swam with giddiness.
The echoes died away.
Fatty let go of her hands. She felt the warmth in them die. He shone the torchlight on the roof of the bridge.
GEORGE LOVES BRIDGET
CM LOVES EVO
EVO LOVES CM
LB 4 eGM
MERVYN PROSSER IS A FAT BAS…
The torchlight flickered and died.
Their hands joined again in the blackness. There was silence except the sound of their breathing.
Then there was another loud crack. They clutched at each other. An icicle broke away above their heads. It fell from the roof, missing them by inches. Splintered shards of ice exploded around their feet.
The torch stuttered back to life.
They laughed with relief, roared until the bridge was filled with the sound of their laughter. All around, the icicles began to drip, faster and faster, as if their wickedness had started a thaw.
The river of ice below them splintered and cracked. The water beneath the thick ice gurgled lazily…Then came a rushing sound, slow at first, growing louder. Large slabs of ice floated away down the river.
The torchlight played on the water. Iffy looked down and stared in disbelief. A skull was stuck fast in the ice – mouth gaping, front teeth missing. She saw it for a split second, then it was gone.
Fatty turned his back towards her taking the torchlight with him. There was a hissing sound in the darkness.
He turned around and shone his torch – steam billowed from the bottle from Lords.
Iffy gasped. “You dirty, filthy pig!”
Fatty rammed the steam into the neck of the bottle with the cork.
Iffy knew they were done for. She made the sign of the cross: ace, jack, king, queen.
Ace on the forehead Jack – just above the belly button King on the left nipple Queen on the right nipple.
“Shit! What was that!”
The town clock bonged for the first time in weeks.
Then Fatty kissed her. Hard and soft right on the lips. Just the once.
And then they were away out of the shadowy, dripping darkness. Up over the river bank, slipping and sliding as they went. They stood together on the hump-backed bridge. The moon was spinning fast. The sky an uncharted map of glimmering stars.
A red kite crossed the moon. Jack Look Up. Alone on Blagdon’s Tump trying to reach the stars for his long-dead son.
Agnes Medlicott stood alone in the upstairs drawing room of the Big House. She stood quite still looking down towards the bridge that spanned the river.
In all the years she’d been awa
y the view from this window had stayed the same. She’d stood there so many times as a young woman, newly married, watching the road for her husband’s car when he’d been out on a call. The years had passed and she’d grown tired, tired of waiting, tired of the same old excuses. A call to a difficult labour over in another valley, a child taken to hospital. All lies. It was always another woman somewhere. Another brief liaison which wouldn’t last. They never did. When she’d fallen with child she’d thought things might improve, that love for his child, if not for her, would keep him closer to home, but she’d lost the baby at eight months. A little boy. She still kept a tiny shoebox containing the clothes she had knitted. Tiny matinee jackets and hats, mittens and booties wrapped in tissue paper. Stillborn. She hadn’t even seen him or held him in her arms, the nurses had whisked him away. On the anniversary of his birth and death she updated him in her head, a new image of him every year. From the dark-eyed baby through to the chubby toddler, a bright-eyed child, then a teenager. Now, if he’d lived, he would be a man of fifty, a father, a grandfather even.
There hadn’t been any more children, much to her regret. She could have stood her husband’s infidelity if she’d had a child of her own. All those years she’d grieved for the lost child, grieved for all the children she’d never have.
The pain of it had been barely tolerable. The ache she felt when she saw a baby in a pram, a mother holding the hand of a toddler, wiping a tear away from an eye. Until in the end the pain had made her afraid, and for a long time she had barely left the house for fear of what she might do.
1963
Christmas came and went. The wishes that Fatty and Iffy had made beneath Jack Look Up’s tree and under the bridge didn’t come true. Neither were there any thunderbolts sent from God as a punishment for drinking the holy water.
Spring eventually came slowly up the valley. First came the call of early lambs born on the hill farms. The mountain ponds filled up with murky clouds of frogspawn. Then the apple trees in the Big House exploded into dusky pink clouds and sent showers of petal confetti over into the lane. Ragged daffodils pierced the black soil on the hillsides and Barny the bulldog broke his chains and rampaged through the town in search of love.