by Babs Horton
She hung them on the washing line for all the valley to see.
“No shame at all,” said Bridgie Thomas.
“Dis bloody gustin’,” said Iffy’s nan.
“Dirty stinking old cow,” said Mrs Bunting.
They watched Dai out of the sides of their eyes. He stopped quite close to them, poked a fat slug of a finger against one hairy nostril and blew out a stringy ribbon of green snot from the other.
“Ugh!” said Bessie.
Dai changed nostrils and blew more snot.
Bessie held onto her dinner but only just.
Fatty leant close to Iffy and whispered, “Once he had a cat and it stole his dinner so he cooked it alive in the oven and then ate it. It was called Lucky.”
“Shut up, Fatty.”
“He did. Honest! He peeled off the fur and ate it with brown sauce and pickled eggs.”
“Stop it, Fatty.”
“He’s nothing but a big fat gobby git,” Fatty muttered under his breath.
“Hush up!” Bessie said. “He might hear you.”
Dai staggered on towards them until he was close enough for them to smell the beer on his breath. There was a wet patch of wee on the front of his trousers.
He glared at Bessie first. She squeaked with fright and Fatty swore he heard her tonsils hit her ribs and bounce back up.
“What you bloody gawking at, Bessie Big Drawers?”
Bessie gasped, and pulled her bunny-wool bolero up over her head.
“What you staring at?” he asked the headless Bessie.
Silence.
“What you staring at, eh?”
No answer from Bessie, just wheezing rasping noises that came from the depths of the bolero.
Dai turned on Billy. “Cat got your tongue, eh?”
Billy looked up at Dai, his eyes wide with fear, softly damp round the lashes. A lump moved up and down in his neck.
Fatty stiffened next to Iffy. She felt for his hand and took hold of it tightly.
“Just ignore him,” she said through clenched teeth.
It was her turn next.
“Got something to say have you, Sambo?”
Iffy looked down at her daps.
Sambo wasn’t a nice thing to say. He said it because she was dark. The sun never burned her no matter how hot it was.
“Damn, you’re an ugly-looking little bugger, Iffy Meredith. Can’t blame your mam for taking one look at you and running.”
Hot tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and her heart rattled in the space behind her heaving ribs. A wobble started in her lips, her throat grew tight.
It wasn’t true. Her mammy died when she was born. Nan said. Everybody knew that.
Fatty squeezed her hand tightly.
She bit her tongue, kept her trap shut.
Dai turned to Fatty. “Who are you looking at, fat guts?”
Iffy held her breath and squeezed Fatty’s sticky fingers. She prayed. Hard. Please God, don’t let him say anything.
“Don’t know. A pile of shit, I think,” Fatty muttered.
Iffy jabbed him hard with her elbow. Dai wasn’t safe to give cheek to.
“What you say?” Dai growled.
There was brown spit in both corners of his mouth and yellow crystallised bogies in his left nostril.
“I said it’s a nice day, Mr Gittins,” Fatty said, dead cool.
“Ay, well, I don’t take no bloody lip off the likes of you, Fatty Bevan. I could paste the living daylights out of you.”
“Go on then.”
Iffy held on to him like grim death.
Dai stumbled, belched loudly and the stink of rotten teeth, slimy gums, beer and tobacco wafted over them. He glared at them with his gobstopper eyes, lost interest, spat a big glob of frothy spit over the bridge and then reeled off up the hill.
“Fat-faced fart!” Fatty shouted out loud to his back.
“Haisht!” said Bessie coming up for air. She was scared he’d come back and belt them. So were they all.
Dai swayed and staggered away up the hill. If their eyes had been bullets he would have been a dead man.
The sun disappeared behind a cloud for the first time in weeks. The sky grew dark. They heard the first bashing together of thunderclouds away in the next valley, where all the men had one extra long finger so that they could pick pockets dead easy.
The mountains went from green to plum to damson. Growling clouds rolled above the valley. Lightning forked over Old Man Morgan’s hill farm.
Barny the bulldog howled. Thunder clapped and shook the valley, rattling the stones in the river bed.
Then the rain came. Fat warm splodges of rain at first. Then thinner, faster and cooler. Until down it came. Bucketing. Tamping.
Shrieking, they raced for the cover of the tree that overhung the Dentist’s Stone. Standing beneath it and watching the rain bounce off the road, they listened as it made tunes on the tin roofs of sheds and on all the upturned buckets.
Water gushed down the hill until the gutters were torrents of liquorice-black water. Lollipop sticks, sheep shit and dog ends rode the rapids until the drains were spouts and the wonky steps that led to the terraced houses were waterfalls.
And then it happened. Just like Bridgie Thomas had said it would.
It was magic. It was a curse, or a miracle. It was great. It was terrifying. They came dropping out of the dark August sky. Raindrops with legs on. Raindrops with eyes. Mad eyes, bright in the sudden afternoon gloom. Millions of them.
Bessie screamed and grabbed hold of Iffy’s arm. Iffy pushed her away.
Billy pointed. His eyes were as shiny as alley bompers.
They stared and gawped, goggle-eyed.
A cloudburst of frogs. Tiny frogs raining from the sky. Falling and falling until there were puddles of green, puddles of eyes, hopping puddles. Their eyes were puddles.
“Fuckin’ Ada!” said Fatty hopping from one foot to the other, water squeaking through his holey sandals.
Bessie screamed fit to bust.
Water dripped from the tree and soaked them.
They were mesmerised. Except for Bessie, who leapt up and down like a chicken with an egg up its arse. She held down her gingham skirts in case the frogs took it into their heads to leap into her knickers.
There was no one else about, only the four of them to see it. But Iffy and Fatty knew it was God and he must have been dead mad to send plagues of frogs to their little town.
The thunder rolled away over the Sirhowy Mountain.
Up on the mountain the dried-up ponds would be full again and watery-eyed rats would be flushed from the overflow pipes.
Bessie wailed on and on.
“Shut your trap, Bessie, you’re like a bloody banshee. They’re only frogs,” said Fatty but his voice for once, sounded a little bit scared.
“Waaargh!” wailed Bessie.
They ignored her, standing there sopping wet and staring. Bessie’s ringlets unringled, like fat sausages split into limp skins.
Fatty hopped up and down, yelped, swore some more, “Bugger bugger bugger shit shit damn! It’s bloody great!”
Billy held on to Iffy’s arm tightly and the two of them shivered together in alarm and excitement.
The road was a moving carpet of tiny frogs. The frogs blinked, winked, grinned stupidly up at their stupefied audience.
Bessie screamed till her tonsils went red.
Then the frogs fled, hopping and leaping away down the hill and over the ragged bank to the river. Like bloody magic they were.
Bessie took off. She went flying up the hill, clutching at her skirts, screeching for her mam, splashing through the water on her skinny white legs. Lucky legs; lucky they didn’t snap. Belloching all the way home.
The three of them stood transfixed. Raindrops splashing on them from the tree. The watery sun peeped out from the dark sky, and they steamed in the wobbling rainbow light.
In the distance Bessie was still wailing for her mam. They listened to the
slip-slapping of her pigskin sandals as she shot up the hill. They grinned with glee because they knew that as she ran across the bailey of Inkerman the black mud would slop up over her white sandals and all over her ever-so white socks.
They stayed put for ages afterwards just watching the empty puddles. Puddles still rippling in the wake of a million frogs.
The black frog clouds had emptied over their town and rolled away over the mountain to the valley of pickpockets.
They were afraid.
All around them the air was a fading croak.
Then the town clock bonged out. Five bongs. Billy’s and Iffy’s tea time.
Fatty walked away down towards the bridge holding Billy’s hand.
Iffy wished there was someone left to hold hers. It felt strange standing there all alone after the frogs had gone.
The world around her had changed. The colours were brighter. A golden glow outlined the trees, the wonky bridge and the wings of a bird flying high above. The air smelled of weed and nettles, electricity and wet coal dust.
Iffy looked round fearfully for stray frogs.
For a moment she felt as though she was standing in a different town. A town of magic, of spells and miracles and secrets. A town touched by God.
It made her afraid. And glad. And even more afraid.
Fear got the better of her and she raced up the hill in the echo of Bessie’s roaring wash. She leapt down the steps to Inkerman, splashing through the deep black puddles on the bailey. As she passed Bessie’s closed door she heard her blubbing in the kitchen. Bloody big babby. She ran past all the back doors. Black mud splashed up from loose stones and splattered her legs, her back and her neck, it felt great.
Someone was piddling in an outside lav. She laughed rudely out loud.
She flew in through the back door. The kitchen was a cloud. A white cloud with her nan somewhere in the middle of it singing.
“Oh, Danny Boy…the pipes the pipes are calling…” She clanked the battered lids on bubbling saucepans. “From glen to glen, and down the mountainside…” The cloud lifted. “The summer’s gone…”
Nan grew from a spectre in the fog to a red-cheeked granny, pushing back silvery wisps of damp hair that had escaped from her bun.
The salty smell of boiling ham and cooking lentils filled the room.
Iffy told her about the frogs.
“The trouble with you, Iffy, is you’re a bloody Tom Pepper.”
Iffy stood by the sink dripping with indignation.
Nan lifted a saucepan lid and poked boiled potatoes with a wonky fork without looking at her once.
“Honest to God, Nan, it rained frogs!”
“Don’t tell lies, Iffy.”
“I’m not! I’m not! Cross my heart and swear to die, stick a needle in my eye. Honest to God, Nan, it rained frogs.”
“Frogs my arse!”
“There was lightning and a bloody big crack of thunder and – ”
“Watch your tongue, my girl, or I’ll give you a bloody crack round the ear if you carry on.”
“On my life, Nan, hundreds of them.”
“Ay, and I’m a monkey’s uncle. Pass me that salt.”
Iffy passed the salt.
A blue tub of salt, sweaty with steam.
“Green ones, thousands, millions, hopping all over the place. Laughing they were…It’s a plague from God. Just like Bridgie Thomas said, to punish us for all the bad things we’ve done.”
“Bad things! Bridgie Thomas! Bridgie Thomas is soft in the head. Rained frogs be buggered! Get them wet clothes off and put them to air on the fender.”
Iffy stood by the fire steaming in her vest and pants.
It was boiling in the kitchen. There was always a fire even on scorching hot days. The fire was the only way to cook and boil water for tea.
“Fatty’ll tell you.”
“Fatty? Fatty’ll say anything bar his prayers.”
“It’s true! And Bessie and Billy seen them. They was swimming in the puddles and then they all hopped away down to the river. Nan, Nan honest…”
“Raining frogs! Laughing frogs!”
“But Nan…Bridgie Thomas said it would happen. That the graves would crack open and dead people would be walking about all over the place!”
“Dead people walking! How the hell can dead people walk! I have enough trouble and I’m alive!”
“That’s what she said! What if it happens, Nan? What if my mam and dad come alive and come after me!”
“Don’t be so dopey, Iffy. Your dad is up in heaven.”
“And my mam?”
Mrs Meredith poked the bubbling potatoes and didn’t say anything.
“And my mam, Nan?”
She coughed, lifted a lid, and poked the ham with a vengeance.
“Ay, and your mam, God forgive – ”
“But what if dead people do come after me when I’m in bed?”
“Iffy! Dead people can’t hurt you! It’s the living you want to be afraid of.”
“Why do I have to be afraid of the living?”
“You don’t.”
“You just said I did.”
“Well, you don’t! There’s nobody you have to be afraid of.”
“What about Georgie Fingers and Dai Full Pelt and old Mrs Medlicott?”
“You keep well away from that lot.”
“Why, if they’re not going to hurt me?”
“Just keep well away and don’t even speak to them if you can help it.”
“But you said they wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Go anywhere near them and I’ll bloody hurt you!”
“Dai Full Pelt called me Sambo.”
“What were you doing talking to him?”
“I didn’t.”
“Ay, well, Dai Full Pelt doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Tell him to go and scratch.”
“How can I if I’m not allowed to talk to him, Nan? How can I, Nan?”
“Oh Iffy, Nan’s arse for a bloody raffle! Don’t Nan me…go and get some dry clothes on before you catch your death – and mind out the way or you’ll have that pan over…Rained frogs, be buggered!”
Iffy thought grown-ups believed in lots of things but they never wanted to believe in miracles.
But it was true. Bridgie Thomas was right! There were secrets in the valley that they were being paid back for. She and Fatty had drunk the holy water. Fatty had peed in the bottle! A skull had sailed away down the river. And God had made it rain frogs. She knew without a doubt that anything might happen now.
Iffy was afraid. Nan had been to tuck her in and now she lay looking up at the hook in the ceiling that had been used in ancient times to hang meat on. Grancha had told her that in the olden days the houses had been shared by two families. The poorer family had the back of the house, the kitchen and a loft above it for sleeping. The posh family had the front, the parlour, this room of hers as a kitchen, bedrooms upstairs and they came in and out through the front garden. Iffy hated that hook. It reminded her of the hooks that pirates had in the ends of their arms in story books. She was terrified of pirates even though she’d never seen one or even been to the seaside.
One night when she was little the hook had started turning round and round and she had screamed until she was sick.
She sniffed the air. Sometimes she thought she could smell the perfume from her nightmare. No smells tonight.
She prayed not to have the nightmare when the smell of the strange perfume crept out from the cracks in the walls. And she heard the cry of a ghost baby in a creaking crib. Or, worst of all, when a dark face grew out of the writhing shadows and got close to hers, whispering frantic words she couldn’t understand.
Every time she had the dream she peed the bed leaking.
On windy nights when the branches of the bushes tapped against the window she thought it was the tap tap tapping of Blind Pugh escaped from the pages of Treasure Island and come to get her. Tap tap tapping with his stick along the hillside gwlis, his blin
d eyes glowing in the moonlight.
She thought of all the lunatics who lived in the town, they could be outside the window now, prowling around in the dark. She counted them up.
Three harmless ones: Auntie Mary Meredith who was family, mad but not dangerous, three splashes short of a birdbath; Lally Tudge, no lights on upstairs; Jack Look Up, daft as arseholes but nice.
Then Dulcie Davies who lived down Iron Row and ate live fish made four. Mrs Dwyer who slept with pigs in her bed made five.
Dangerous lunatics were the worst sort. Two of them for definite: Dai Full Pelt for a start, and Georgie Fingers, then old Mrs Medlicott according to Nan.
The candle on the tallboy flickered, then hissed and the light in the bedroom grew dim then bright again. Long-legged shadows ran over the bed and scurried away into dark corners.
The tapping started on the window pane.
Iffy closed her eyes tightly, held her breath and pulled the patchwork quilt up over her head, tight against her face until she could hardly breathe. Her heart beat like a Sally Army tambourine.
The tapping got quicker, and quicker. Tap tap tap. A hard insistent tapping on the window pane.
Blind Pugh!
Bugger!
Tap tap tap!
Ghosts from the cracked open graves. Just like Bridgie Thomas had said. It could be her mam. Got up from her grave. Or her dad risen from the bottom of the sea. Both of them walking hand in hand through the gwlis looking for her. Bones rattling. Ribs white as chalk in the moonlight. Teeth grinning in gumless mouths with no lips. Smelling of fish, of coal earth, of dead flowers and rotten wood.
TAP TAP TAP
Worms wriggling out of their earholes.
TAP TAP TAP
Slugs peeping from their eye sockets.
“Iffy!”
She shot out of bed, over the cracked lino and pulled back the thin curtains.
The moon hung high and full above Blagdon’s Tump. Far away the town clock bonged and the Old Bugger hooted long and low in the graveyard.
“Hiya, Iffy.”
It wasn’t her mam or her dad! Or Blind Pugh! It was Fatty Bevan.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“Did I frighten you?”
“No!” she lied.
Her toes were banging up and down on the lino like piano keys.
“Sorry, Iffy.”