by Babs Horton
Far in the distance could be heard the ringing of an ambulance bell.
Will sat in his room at the Firkin looking through his old notebooks and thinking about the moment when Elizabeth Tranter had closed the front door and left him standing in a daze looking up at the house.
The last time he had been there he had been on police business. He’d visited the middle cottage in Coronation Row with Sergeant Rodwell. Coronation Row where Lawrence Bevan had lived out his short life.
He and Rodwell had called round at the house looking for Mr Bevan. There had been no sign of anyone at home and yet the front door was unlocked.
Will had pushed open the door and he and Rodwell had stepped inside the darkened house. There had been an unpleasant, fausty odour about the place, an uncared-for, dirty smell.
Each room on the ground floor was strewn with discarded clothing, piles of old racing papers, empty milk bottles and fish and chip papers screwed into balls. A mountain of beer flagons filled the floor in the pantry.
They had climbed apprehensively up the uncarpeted stairs. There were two bedrooms. The largest was a mirror of the downstairs rooms. The smell was rank, of sweat and greasy bedclothes. A brimming piss pot festered beneath the bed. On the bedside table cigarette butts overflowed from a saucer and a cup of long-cold tea was surfaced with mould.
When they’d entered the smaller bedroom across the landing it was as if they were in a different house. There was an iron bed against the wall nearest to the window. The sheets on the bed had been made from old flour sacks, slit down the sides and tacked loosely together with pink thread. The makeshift pillow was made from a roll of newspapers wrapped round with an old ripped towel and tied with string. The bare wooden floor was scrubbed clean and was dust free. There was a bookshelf cobbled together from old wooden cider crates.
Will had picked up one of the books. The Waverley Medical Encyclopedia. It was a battered old copy, and where the spine had broken it had been carefully mended with adhesive tape. Lollipop sticks had been inserted between some of the pages.
“A queer sort of book for a kid to read,” he’d said to Sergeant Rodwell.
“Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, he was a queer sort of kid.”
“In what way?”
“Well, scruffy as hell for a start. Always up to something.”
“Takes a bit of gumption, though, to keep your room clean and tidy like this when the rest of the house is a bloody tip,” Will’d said.
Will had turned to one of the pages of the encyclopedia which had been marked with a lollipop stick. Page 614, SPEECH. He’d read the text that had been underlined faintly in pencil.
When the voice is lost suddenly and there is no obvious abnormality to be seen in the cords, the cause is hysteria.
The second lollipop stick marked page 369, and carefully underlined were the words:
Thus…successive generations of human beings may have an excessive number…or a deficiency of fingers and toes.
Will sat very still, thinking.
He looked back at the notes he’d made all those years before. He’d recorded that in the margin of the book someone had written ‘MEASURE BOTH CATS FEET’.
Will remembered raising his eyebrows at the time, he had closed the book and placed it carefully back on the bookcase. Then he’d looked quickly through the rest of the books. There was a school atlas, a boys’ annual, a well-thumbed copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Not the usual reading matter for a ten-year-old, he’d thought at the time.
On the top of the boy’s bookcase had lain a small red collar with a silver barrel attached to it.
“Did he own a dog?” Will had asked Rodwell.
“Not as far as I know, sir. No, I don’t think so. He was mad about animals though. One of those kids who’d pick up birds with broken wings, kept snakes and toads in his pockets, that sort of thing.”
“He wasn’t known to you for any criminal activity?”
“No. He wasn’t into thieving or anything like that. Couple of things we suspected him of but never caught him for.”
“What were they?”
Sergeant Rodwell had coughed. “I think it was him who…er…tipped a bag of manure over a woman in town.”
Will had laughed, an echoing laugh in the sparsely furnished room.
“What?”
“Somebody got into one of the empty flats above one of the shops. Along came this particular woman and Bob’s your uncle, someone emptied a sack of the stuff all over her. Still steaming it was too. Miss Riley, she’s a local schoolteacher. Gave her a right turn I can tell you!”
“Nice woman?”
It was Sergeant Rodwell’s turn to laugh.
“Ah, no, sir. She taught me. A right old dragon.”
“The case is closed then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any other crimes?”
“Well, Mrs Carmichael, the Sunday school teacher swears she saw him mooching about the church the day somebody sabotaged the nativity scene.”
“Sabotaged! That’s a strong word, Sergeant.”
“Well, there were sixteen bangers strapped to the shepherd’s leg, sir. Did quite a bit of damage, as you can imagine. Straw blown everywhere and knocked the stuffing out of the Virgin Mary.”
“Sounds quite a boy.”
“Ay, he was, sir.”
Rodwell’s use of the word ‘was’ had filled Will with acute despair, as though the boy had already been consigned to the past.
He had knelt down and looked under the bed. There were two boxes pushed up against the wall. He had slid them out, and lifted the lid on the first box. It was empty except for a layer of dirty cotton wool, indented, as though something very heavy had lain on it. He sniffed, the smell of strong soap rose from the cotton wool. He replaced the lid and opened the second box. It contained two jam jars with holes punched in the metal lids, and a copy of a Shakespeare play, Hamlet. Will’s favourite. He had opened the book. It was on loan from the local library and the ticket showed it to be ten years overdue. There had also been two new candles in the box, a third half burned, and six bangers tied around with string.
Will had slipped the copy of Hamlet into his jacket pocket, replaced the lid on the box and slid it back under the bed. There was no wardrobe or chest of drawers in the room, no clothes of any description lying around.
“No clothes anywhere. Looks as though he’s taken everything with him,” he’d said.
Rodwell had cleared his throat.
“Only ever seen the boy in one set of clothes and they were the ones he left behind on the river bank. He’s been wearing them for the last few years. Funny thing I noticed…”
“What?” Will had asked.
“There was no cricket belt. He always wore a red and white cricket belt to keep up his shorts. They were about five sizes too big.”
Will had sighed and wondered. Had the boy been strangled with his own belt? But without a body they weren’t going to find any answers. It was probably only a question of time before the body was discovered. Children didn’t just disappear off the face of the earth.
“Well, there’s not much to see, nothing to give us a clue as to what’s happened to him.”
Will had gone down the stairs of the house in Coronation Row with a heavy heart.
Fatty had done what he’d meant to do: he’d given the statue her head back. Iffy had thought that might have made him happy but it hadn’t and it wasn’t like him to be miserable. He never spoke about the puppies again, but Iffy knew he would never ever forget, and he didn’t once mention that night under the bridge when they’d heard Dai and his mam messing about.
He seemed different somehow. Paler. Like all the hot air had been let out of him.
He mooched about for days. He barely spoke. Head down, hands in the pockets of his huge shorts, kicking out viciously at stones on the road. He only cheered up a bit when one afternoon Bitty came running, pulling them by the sleeves, pointing excit
edly, dragging them down to show them the queue down by the Dentist’s Stone.
Carty Annie was holding court, telling fortunes. A tanner a go if she didn’t like you. Free if she did.
Bessie ran off home. She didn’t want her fortune told.
Iffy made Fatty go first. He spat on the palms of his hands and tried to rub some of the dirt off.
Carty Annie saw him and grinned. She took his hand in hers and drew her finger across it this way and that. Fatty giggled. He was very ticklish.
“I see women…”
Fatty looked at Iffy and winked. Iffy nudged Billy in the ribs.
“Women all around you…A half-naked woman in the water.”
Iffy giggled and put her hand over her mouth. Fatty gave her a look over his shoulder, a shut-your-bloody-trap look.
“I see a cap.”
That meant he’d work down the pit.
“And a gown.”
Operations. Poor bugger.
“And a place of learning.”
School.
Iffy didn’t think Fatty would stay in school long. The teachers picked on him because he was scruffy and they didn’t seem to like him even though he was really clever.
Carty Annie let go of his hand for a moment then quickly took it back. “I see a large expanse of water, a restless ocean. Someone coming across the ocean looking for you, looking for a long time without knowing why. Water rippling…a figure slipping away.” She looked hard at Fatty then and a troubled look stole across her face, a long dark shadow of sadness. “You will need to forgive.”
Iffy was next.
Her hand shook when Carty Annie took hold of it. She felt the heat in the old woman’s touch. Carty Annie squeezed up Iffy’s hand into a fist and held it tightly for a long while without looking at the palm. Then she raised the hand to her lips and kissed it very tenderly, a soft whisper of a kiss that made Iffy shiver. Slowly she uncurled Iffy’s tiny fingers and her bright-blue eyes looked carefully at the lines on Iffy’s palm.
After a while, she said, “Iffy, you have a long and winding path to take. I see mountains and eagles on the wing.”
A mountaineer! Carty Annie meant she’d climb Everest and be as brave as Fatty!
“You will have a good guide. A brave and handsome guide paving the way for you.”
Ugh!
Carty Annie closed her eyes but carried on speaking as though no one was there, “There will be much sadness, but then great joy. This will be the greatest journey of your life.”
A tear slipped from the old woman’s eyes and ran down a deep wrinkle on her weather-beaten cheek. It reminded Iffy of a river after a drought. An ancient woman with a face full of rivers, travelling down towards the sea.
“I see a woman. I see tears trailing.”
And more tears rolled down Carty Annie’s face, breaking the banks of the rivers.
“I see the laying down of a head on a damp breast.”
Carty Annie stopped speaking and sat very still for a while and then looked around her as if she couldn’t remember where she was or why they were there.
Iffy looked over her shoulder at Fatty and rolled her eyes at him, but he ignored her. He was staring down towards the Big House as if he had seen something that had shocked him. His face was very pale. He looked back at Iffy, but his eyes were faraway and clouded as though he was looking at her and through her, at the same time. There was a strange, troubled look about him that she had never seen before. He shook his head, blinked, saw her looking at him and smiled. Iffy grinned back.
She was disappointed that Carty Annie hadn’t said that she’d live to be a hundred or be stinking rich or famous. At least she hadn’t said she’d have babies coming out of her bum by the bucketful and a smelly husband.
Billy took his turn after Iffy.
Carty Annie put her hand on his head and ruffled up his curls.
Iffy knew why she did it, because it was what everyone wanted to do to Billy. He was so lovely you could eat him.
Billy looked up at Carty Annie, his lips were sucked up inside his mouth, which he always did when he was shy or excited. His eyes were wide, his eyelashes glistened in the sunlight.
Carty Annie took his hand and Iffy thought it looked little and pale against the old woman’s dark skin.
“You will live a long life, Billy. I see two children. I see twins.”
Iffy thought of Rosemary and Rosalind. Billy’s twins would be nice though. She imagined two little dimpled Billies in a pram, smiling.
“I see a foreign place, a wife…”
Iffy wondered who Billy would marry. She hoped it would be someone nice and kind who didn’t mind about him not talking.
“I see a crossroads in your life, Billy.”
There was a crossroads at the end of the Dram Road. There were four different ways you could go: Abergavenny, Merthyr, Trefil or back the way you’d come.
“You must take one of the roads. You must stop looking backwards, Billy. You must put your foot on the road. And walk until you find peace.”
Iffy thought he was a bit young to be thinking about going off on his own, his mam and dad would never let him. Anyway, they weren’t allowed to walk that far. It was miles to the crossroads.
“There’s something you need to get rid of. Something you must give away before you can move on, Billy. But remember, you may have to take the road on your own if no one else will follow.”
That was daft. His mam would never let him walk all that way on his own, somebody could grab hold of him and do him in.
It was growing colder. A restless wind blew through the trees and a few dying leaves began to fall. The sun was going down fast; deep-red fire burned behind the windows of Carmel Chapel and shadows crept stealthily up the valley. The town clock bonged the hour and Carty Annie shooed them away. They went running and skipping down to the river, shrieking and laughing through the long waving grass.
They had picked up the boy’s father in a pub over in the next town and brought him down to the police station. He’d been on a five-day bender. Will had disliked him on sight.
He was of medium height, a fat, sweaty, hard-nosed man with a dying cigarette stuck to his lips.
“So, Mr Bevan, you didn’t know your son had been reported missing?”
“No.”
He stared defiantly at Will across the table.
“You haven’t picked up a paper in the last few days?”
“Now, do I look like a man who reads the newspapers?”
“And you don’t know the last time you saw your son?”
“No, I don’t. Is that a crime?”
“And you’ve no idea where he could be?”
“No.” Mr Bevan spat out a strand of tobacco, re-lit his dead cigarette with a match and blew smoke across the table into Will’s face. He showed not the slightest interest in the whereabouts of his son.
“He’ll be back. You’ll see. He’s always pissing off and turning up again.”
Will’s patience had worn thin.
“And you think it’s perfectly normal for a ten-year-old boy to go off around the countryside on his own?”
“He’s not what you’d call a normal sort of boy, is he?”
“I don’t know, Mr Bevan. You tell me.”
“He’s odd. A bit missing. Picking up half-dead animals and trying to cure them, reading bloody doctors’ books.”
“It doesn’t occur to you that reading that sort of book might be the sign of a very intelligent lad?”
“Ay, well, if he’s that intelligent he’ll find his own way home, won’t he? And then he’ll feel my belt round his arse! Now if that’s it, I’d like to go.”
Will had walked out of the room then, because he’d had an enormous desire to reach across the table and split the man’s fat nose across his arrogant face.
They’d checked out his whereabouts though and he’d been where he’d said he’d been. Numerous landlords and fellow drinkers had vouched for his drunken presence in a m
ultitude of pubs from Neath to Merthyr.
Iffy woke with a start to the sound of someone hammering at the back door. Upstairs the big bed creaked as her grandparents stirred. The noise grew louder. Someone was coming down the stairs two at a time. The hammering carried on, as though someone was battering at the door with a big stick.
Then came a great bashing on the tin bucket.
“Suffering piss pots!” said Grancha as he stepped down into the parlour.
Iffy opened the bedroom door a crack and peeped cautiously round it. Grancha was wearing only baggy underpants, one blue-veined leg stepping into his trousers, braces trailing, hopping and stumbling through the darkened room.
Still the awful racket went on.
Iffy slipped on her shorts and top, pulled on her black daps and followed him into the kitchen.
He bent down and unbolted the back door; daylight came flooding into the kitchen. Quarter past seven on the lop-sided clock that once was pawned.
Billy came falling into the kitchen along with the daylight. His small face was twisted with fear, his dark eyes were wild and wide. He pulled at Grancha’s arm and didn’t even seem to notice Iffy.
“What’s up, little fellow? Dear God, it’s not half past seven yet. Is somebody after you?”
Billy’d been to early Mass. Iffy knew because she could smell the candle smoke and polish on him.
He began to pull at Iffy’s sleeve, yanking her out over the step and into the deserted bailey, dragging and pulling her roughly up over the steps and on down the hill. Grancha followed behind, puffing and wheezing. Slipping and sliding down over the river bank, past the spot where they’d launched Lally’s baby into the river. Away on down towards the Leaky Pool. Billy pointing and sobbing.
“Jesus Christ!”
Grancha made the sign of the cross.
“Turn away both of you! Iffy, take Billy with you. Run. Run to Morrissey’s and ask him to telephone for an ambulance.”
She was floating face down in the deep water of the Leaky Pool. Her pale arms stretched out wide, like Christ on the crucifix. Her clothes spreading out around her. Close by a silver fish jumped and plopped.
Grancha went into the water, losing his footing, turning her over onto her back, pulling the weeds from her face. A soft white breast slipped from her unbuttoned dress.