by Babs Horton
He was a hero all right.
It was so quiet as they stood there in the long grass waiting for him to whistle.
Whisshh! A bird flew up out of the grass nearby and Billy leapt into the air. Bessie squealed. Billy grinned at Iffy and pointed upwards. The bird climbed high into the evening sky, singing madly, dipping and soaring into the blue. Iffy watched it go until she felt giddy from the movement.
No one spoke.
They waited and waited. He must have been gone half an hour at least they thought. Bessie wanted to go home. So did Iffy.
A cool breeze came up the river rustling the long grass that made Iffy’s bare legs itch. Goose pimples pricked her arms and she shivered.
No whistle came from Fatty. He must have been in there by now. He’d been gone for ages.
The town clock bonged eight o’clock.
“Wee ooh wit!” Fatty’s whistle! He was inside the grounds of the Big House.
The whistle came again louder, “Wee ooh wi i i it!”
It was him! They knew his whistle anywhere. He was right there on his own in the grounds of the Big House.
“What if they catch him?” Bessie said.
“They might set the dogs on him.”
“Or the geese.”
“Or shoot him dead.”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
“Would they?”
The sun dropped behind Carmel Chapel and the great arched windows burned with orange fire as if the whole building was alight inside. It looked eerie and frightening as if God had got in there and was playing with matches.
The water glugged and gurgled over the grey boulders of the river and swept on by. Invisible frogs croaked around them in the long grass and Bessie stamped her feet to scare them off. She did the same for snakes when they walked up the mountain. Thump thump, thump she went, in case an adder had his eye on her for a quick bite.
The birds heard the noise before they did. They rose from the grass and the graveyard trees in a black explosion of squawking.
“BANG!”
Gunshot.
Bessie screamed and Billy had to put the flat of his hand over her mouth to shut her trap for her. Rooks and crows flapped and screeched above the burning chapel.
“They’ve kilt him,” Iffy said.
Billy’s eyes were leaking pools of terror.
Bessie’s face was as pale as the dummies in Gladys’s Gowns’ her mouth slack and hanging open behind Billy’s tiny fingers.
Iffy thought of Fatty lying in a pool of crimson blood on the satin-smooth lawn, his guts scattered all over the grass, his lungs spread out to the size of tennis courts like they’d learned in science lessons at school.
“What’U we do?” Bessie said through Billy’s fingers.
“They might come after us if they know we know it was them who shot him.”
Silence all around except for the glug of the river.
A silver fish plopped. Circles in the water grew ever wider. A crow cawed gruffly from a high tree in the graveyard.
They were too afraid to move. Running away meant turning their backs on a gunman.
Billy sobbed silently, his fingers searching out Iffy’s hand.
Iffy’s stomach rumbled noisily. Bessie farted, and coughed at the same time to cover up.
A second gunshot rang out.
They ran hell for leather for the cover of the bridge.
Still no sign of Fatty. He was a gonner. Bang bang you’re dead fifty bullets in your head. Dead meat. They knew it.
Bessie’s teeth chattered. Iffy’s skin was a crawling map of goose pimples. Billy wiped tears from his eyes, fat, plopping tears that came without any noise. Iffy put her arm around his heaving shoulders and felt his bones shaking under his skin. Bessie rolled her eyes at the two of them.
“Haisht, Billy, it’ll be all right.”
Muffled noises came from the pipe. It was someone come to get them.
“Bugger off, will you!…Ow!…Get off,”
Fatty’s voice! He was alive! But someone was after him. He was being chased!
Bessie squealed and ran deeper into the cover of the bridge. Billy and Iffy followed her, peeping out from the archway. They could see the pipe, but if anyone came out behind Fatty they wouldn’t be able to see the three of them. They’d have time to run.
Someone from the Big House was chasing after Fatty with a gun. Mrs Medlicott perhaps, who wasn’t safe where kids were concerned, was following him across the lawns waving a shotgun. She must have missed him when she fired. What if she killed him in front of them? What if she killed them all?
Fatty came out of the pipe like the man they fired from a cannon at the circus, but without the bang. He shot out of the hole at a hundred miles an hour at least. He flew through the air and turned over and over, landing halfway down the bank with a hell of a crack that would have killed a normal boy.
He roly-polied over and over and over down the bank flattening daisies and dandelions as he went. Faster and faster. A blur of faded khaki and washed-out blue. He would have landed in the river if a thick clump of stingies hadn’t broken his fall.
“Ow! Shit! Ow! Shit! Ow! F-fuckinada!”
Bessie spluttered and went puce.
They heard a noise from the pipe. Someone was behind Fatty!
It was the maniac Mrs Medlicott for sure. A mad woman with a gun!
They looked up at the pipe in terror. Something peeped out of the blackness.
It wasn’t a maniac. Or an English woman. It had an orange beak, and two beady eyes, a long neck and a fat belly. It was a huge white goose. It glared down at them, looking from side to side. Then it opened its beak and let out one hell of a racket.
“Help me out, will you? I’m getting stung to death, mun,” yelled Fatty from the depths of the stingies.
Billy and Iffy rushed towards him, all the while keeping a careful eye on the goose.
Fatty swore and yelped.
The goose got fed up and waddled back into the pipe.
“Who fired the gun? Did they try to kill you? You was lucky.”
Fatty didn’t answer. He was desperately trying to wriggle out of his T-shirt.
“Get me some dock leaves, quick. I’m fuckin’ pickled.”
Iffy and Billy snatched up armfuls of dock leaves, spat on them, and Fatty stuck them all over his belly. Iffy and Billy did his back for him. Bessie kept her hands firmly in her pockets and looked the other way.
He was covered in lumps and bumps. All over his arms and neck, up his back and round his ankles. Iffy thought it must have hurt like mad, but he didn’t even cry. He was lucky though. It was a wonder he hadn’t broken his neck the way he’d come out of that pipe and catapulted down the bank. He was like a cat with nine lives.
Thank God.
The sound of the ice-cream man’s bell clanged out, getting louder as he came up past Morrissey’s shop. Mr Zeraldo always made his last stop near the bridge, even when it was nearly dark.
Mr Zeraldo was an Italian. He owned a café in town and he was the ice-cream man, too. He had a battered old van painted pink on the bottom half and cream on the top. Strawberry and vanilla. It had a bell, but nobody could tell what the tune was meant to be, it was just an awful racket.
Zeraldo’s was the best ice cream in the world: strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, tutti frutti. Wafers. Oysters. Tubs with wooden spoons that set your teeth on edge. Zeraldo’s ice cream had little slivers of ice in it that prickled the tongue.
Mr Zeraldo had been a prisoner in the war even though he hadn’t done anything except sell ice cream. He had been sent away to pick hops on a farm up near Worcester. Mr Zeraldo’s first name was Mario. He had gold teeth and wore a bracelet. The Italians had the best graves up in the cemetery – all photographs and flying angels.
Mr Zeraldo put raspberry sauce all over the top of a cornet, or choroiafe sauce and nuts. A chocolate flake if you were rich. If you didn’t have enough money Mr Zeraldo would give you a broken-off cornet
and a little dollop of ice cream on it.
The sound of the bell came closer. Billy grabbed Iffy’s arm, pulling at her excitedly. He beckoned to Fatty and Bessie to follow.
They hurried back under the bridge and scrabbled up the bank.
Zeraldo was parked up above them on the bridge. The bell faded into an echo, only the soft hum of the engine could be heard.
Mr Zeraldo leant forward through the window of the van. He stared open-mouthed at Fatty. His gold teeth glinted merrily.
“You bin inna de wars,” Mr Zeraldo said raising his black eyebrows.
Fatty looked a sight, as if he had walked out of a jungle after years of being lost. He was covered in spit-licked dock leaves. His filthy, scratched face was a mass of swelling bumps, black mud was smeared across every bare bit of his body.
“I had a fight with a gorilla, Mr Zeraldo!” Fatty said, grinning. “I look bad but you should see the state of him!”
“It wasn’t a gorilla, it was a goose,” said Bessie.
They ignored her.
Billy scrabbled in his pockets, stretched up on tippy toes and put some money on the counter of the van. He pointed at the board with the faded pictures of lollies, cornets and tubs.
He held up four small fingers.
“Foura ninety nines, eh?”
Billy smiled and nodded.
“You wunna da pools?” Mr Zeraldo asked Billy.
Billy smiled, his face full of dimples, and shook his head from side to side. He held his tiny hands up. Five fingers on one hand and five on the other.
“Data how mucha you won?”
Billy shook his head again.
Then Iffy twigged. “It’s his birthday, Mr Zeraldo. He’s ten today.”
They stood together on the bridge in the growing shadows looking at Billy. A breeze rustled through the graveyard trees, sheep bleated up on the darkening mountain. Far away Barny the bulldog howled and rattled his rusty chains.
“Happy a birthday to you…” sang Mr Zeraldo.
They joined in,
“Squashed a tomatoes and a stew
Bread and a butter in ze gutter
Happy a birthday too oo oo oo yooooo!”
Mr Zeraldo drowned them all out. He had a huge, beautiful voice even though he was only little. His voice hit the windows of Carmel Chapel and’put the last of the orange fire out. His voice bounced back at them. It shook the trees and echoed under the bridge and chased after the river down the valley.
Billy bit his lip shyly. His huge brown eyes were wet and shiny.
Billy’s birthday.
The same day as that awful thing had happened to his brother. The wheel turned…drop off…someone ran for his mam. They carried him away in brown paper bags.
Iffy didn’t want to think about it.
Everyone clapped when they’d finished singing and Mr Zeraldo gave Billy his money back and gave them all free ice creams. He was dead kind.
“You buy yourself some-a-thing nice!”
“Thanks, Mr Zeraldo,” Fatty and Iffy said for Billy.
Mr Zeraldo drove slowly away over the bridge and the clapped-out old van creaked and rattled its way back towards town.
Fatty made them wait until he’d finished his ice cream and licked his lips.
“Bloody hell, I thought I’d had it!”
“We heard the gunshot.”
“Who was it who fired at you?”
“What? Nobody fired at me.”
“But we heard the bang.”
“Oh that! Probably somebody out shooting rabbits or foxes.”
“What happened then?”
“What’s it like in there?”
“Did anybody see you?”
“Hang on, give us a chance.”
“Are there statues, Fatty?”
“Yep.”
“Were they…you know?”
“Naked? Yep.”
“Completely naked?”
“Yep. Starkers. You can see everything.”
“Everything?”
“Bums and titties!”
Bessie looked away, blushed from the knees up.
“And fannies.”
Bessie gasped. So did Iffy.
“And one of them’s got no head.”
“No head?”
“No. Someone must have chopped it off.”
“Did anybody see you?”
“No. I seen her though.”
“You never!”
“She was having dinner. I could see her through the big window. Very posh. Lah di bleeding dah. There was candles in silver sticks.”
“What was she eating?” asked Bessie.
Fatty rolled his eyes.
“Fried liver and kidneys. Human ones.”
“Honest?”
“Don’t be so dull. I couldn’t see what she was eating.”
Fatty was as brave as a lion. Iffy couldn’t imagine not being scared of the rats and the dark and the geese and dogs and the guns.
“Did you see the fishpond?”
“Yep.”
“Could you see to the bottom of it?”
“No, cause all of a sudden that fucking great goose come flying at me – ”
“Fatty Bevan!”
“Sorry, Bessie. I’m going to go in again, though, when the moon is full and I’m gonna see if what they say is true about old Medlicott coming out of the pond!” Stark staring bonkers he was.
Will found his way to the bridge, a small hump-backed bridge spanning the river, a fast-flowing river now after the weeks of heavy rain. He felt strange standing there. He looked down into the water. He felt as if the past had conjured itself up again and wrapped itself about him. He thought that if he shut his eyes and wished, he could be drawn back into that long-gone summer with all its secrets.
He closed his eyes and leant back against the parapet. All around him was birdsong, the yammering of a disconsolate magpie, the querulous caw of a crow. A lone frog croaking down in the long waving grass, the sound of organ music drifted up from Carmel Chapel.
He opened his eyes. Rising up the hill, opposite where he stood were rows of identical red-brick council houses, houses with small uniform gardens and rotary washing lines. There were satellite dishes, television aerials and smokeless chimneys, vertical blinds and double glazing. In bedroom windows there were posters of football stars and rock singers.
The last time he was here there had been terraces of ironworkers’ cottages with whitewashed walls and crumbling chimneys from which smoke curled into the blue skies, even though the weather was hot. There were sash windows that rattled in the wind, faded flowered curtains blowing in a draught, crucifixes and palm crosses in the windows of some of the cottages.
He turned his back on the houses and looked down into the water, absent-mindetly picking at the moss that grew thickly on the side of the bridge. It was soft and spongy, richly green, and came away easily in his hands.
He sighed deeply and was about to move away when something caught his eye. He had uncovered the outline of a letter scratched in the concrete. He pulled away more moss, until he was looking at something he’d missed the last time he’d stood here. Not that it was of any importance but it gave him an eerie feeling just the same.
Lorence Bevan
William Jonh Edwerds
Elizabeth Gwendlin Meredith
Elibazeth Roof Tranter
After all these years the names were still there in the concrete.
The past was encroaching into the future, wrapping itself tightly around him, pulling him back to that distant summer, the hottest on record…
It had been unnaturally hot for weeks, although the weathermen on the wireless were warning of an end to the heat wave and thunderstorms were forecast. As he had sat in his office that afternoon he had hoped that the weathermen were right. The heat was overpowering, sapping the strength. He had been about to leave for home when the telephone had rung.
Sergeant Rodwell had sounded nervous, out of his depth. At first
, Will had thought it was just a routine call: a child had gone missing up in one of the valley towns. He’d thought at the time that it was probably some kid who’d had a telling off for breaking a window or been given a pasting for stealing money from their mother’s purse. It would be a frightened kid who had decided to hide away for a bit. Give their parents a scare and you could guarantee that a day’s worry would assure them a warm, tearful homecoming. A storm’ln a teacup that would be cleared up in a few hours, all over by the following morning. But it hadn’t, and thousands of mornings had passed and it still wasn’t over.
Agnes Medlicott tilted her head backwards and sipped her wine and, as she put down her glass, a movement out in the garden caught her eye. A small boy, a very scruffy small boy, was emerging from the bushes at the far end of the garden. A curly haired boy, as brown-skinned as the Spanish boys from the village where she had lived for so long.
He stood still for some seconds, looking around furtively and then tiptoed across the lawn. She was about to ring the bell for Sandicock but thought better of it. The boy stopped in front of one of the statues. Maria Elena. He looked it up and down, taking in the whole of its nakedness with his greedy eyes. She reached again for the bell but once again her hand hovered, unwilling to take her eyes off the boy.
The statue was a good six inches taller than he was, but he reached up and, with one of the gentlest movements she had ever seen, touched the face, a delicate stroke of the cheek with his fingers. Then he stretched up on tiptoes and planted the softest of kisses upon the stone lips. The sleek brown muscles of his calves were taut with effort, the thin ankle bones almost delicate in contrast to the battered sandals. The nape of his neck was swathed with tight curls. She swallowed hard. He wasn’t the child she was looking for, though she would have liked to sculpt this funny, grubby little boy with his sad, sweet gestures. He was a dirty cherubic figure and quite exquisitely beautiful.