‘You said to keep the train crash in mind,’ Rose reminded him, ‘but nothing heard at Hazel’s house had anything remotely to do with that, thank goodness. If I ever have, that dream again, I’ll die.’
‘Don’t be afraid, Rose.’ Mr Vingo turned to look at her very seriously. ‘I have a feeling things are going to be hard for you on this mission, and very strange indeed. But never forget.’ He stopped and held up a gloved finger. ‘I warn you now. Never forget that through the noble grey horse, you have the strength and endurance to overcome the greatest of evils.’
‘The Lord of the Moor?’ Rose shivered, and felt too small and helpless, her ankles and feet numb in the chilling sea.
‘Or his henchmen.’
‘The soldiers?’
‘And other forces. Go Rose, into battle.’
‘Where?’
He turned down the brim of his hat to let water out, then shrugged and walked on.
‘When I’m old,’ Rose said, ‘I mean, older than I am now, and I meet another messenger, I’ll jolly well help them.’
‘Aren’t I a help to you?’ He looked so shocked that Rose had to say, ‘Of course. I couldn’t do any of it without you.’
‘Well said.’ He put his stick on her shoulder for a moment, as if he were knighting her. ‘Then my life has not been in vain.’
Rose had to leave him cruising down the beach with his coat blowing out like a sail, and run back to the hotel to change and serve lunches. It stopped raining in the afternoon, and as soon as she could get away, she rode her bike over to the farmhouse where Abigail and her parents lived when they were in England.
Abigail had gone to a friend’s house, which made Rose feel illogically jealous, although of course Abigail had other friends, and of course Rose had been busy at the hotel, and of course they had seen each other that morning; but she still felt jealous. And she had wanted to share with Abigail the great news that Ben Kelly’s mother had rung to ask if they could come for a weekend soon. Abigail was Rose’s best friend, but Ben was … very special.
‘Want to come in and have a Coke?’ Mr Drew had a nice comfortable way about him and was always very friendly to Rose. Sometimes she felt more at ease with him than with her own father.
‘Oh, thanks. No thanks.’ Fool. Here was her opportunity to go in for a chat and find out if he’d been sacked. Now or never. ‘Abigail told me you’ll be going back to America.’
‘For a while. She’ll miss you, I’m afraid. And the ponies.’
‘So will I miss her.’ Rose looked up at him and took a breath. ‘Is – er, I mean, everything’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Sure. Routine rotation of personnel. Looks like a bit of a promotion for me, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh, I am glad.’
‘So am I. The plant here is making money like it’s going out of style. We’re opening a new section and taking on more people.’
‘That’s wonderful, specially as – well, there’s so much unemployment these days, isn’t there.’
Here was Rose Wood on the well-weeded front path of the Drew’s beautiful old brick house, having a conversation with a businessman about economic prosperity. So much for you, George Mollis, with your ‘Laying off workers’ and ‘Don’t look too good’.
On Monday, she saw a boy whose mother was a nurse at Newcome Hospital. She got into conversation with him, so as to be able to ask casually, ‘Your mother works in the operating theatre, doesn’t she? I suppose she’s seen lots of amputations.’
‘Oh, hundreds,’ the boy boasted. ‘She used to hate it, but now she says it’s just routine. An arm or a leg – if it’s got to go, it’s got to go.’
‘Do they – do they ever – you know – cut off a person’s wrong leg?’
‘Couldn’t. They tie a label on the toe, “Handle with care”, so they’ll know.’
‘Oh, that’s good. Thanks.’
‘Any time.’ The boy went off, pleased to have been an authority on hospital procedure.
So it must be Hazel.
At lunch, Rose saw Hazel sitting next to an empty chair in the cafeteria, so she went over and ate her sandwiches there while Hazel ate baked beans and sausages.
When Hazel was poking at the beans with her fork, Rose took her right hand and turned it over, to trace the life line and head line, in the way Mrs Ardis pretended to read your future in your hand.
‘Ow!’ Hazel said. There was a raised red line inside one finger.
‘You chopped your hand?’
‘Cutting cake.’
Rose was awed at this proof that she had really travelled to Hazel’s house, going back a few days in time to when Here Today was at the school.
She wanted to ask Hazel, ‘How’s the radiator working?’ but she couldn’t, so she asked, ‘How’s your mother’s perm?’
‘She hates it. She carries on about it all the time. I can’t stand it.’
‘Nor could I. Mothers can be a pain, can’t they?’ Forgive me, Mollie, you’re not a pain, though you do drive me up the wall sometimes, but I’ve got to get Hazel talking.
‘Mine isn’t.’ Hazel finally stopped messing the beans about and put a forkful in her mouth, chewing them as if they were tough meat.
‘You get along all right?’
‘Super.’
‘Because look, Hay—’ Lord, this was difficult. ‘Look, Hay, we’re friends, aren’t we?’
Hazel nodded suspiciously, as if she thought Rose was going to try to borrow a pound.
‘But you never really talk to me.’
‘I do.’
‘I mean, about problems.’
‘Haven’t got any.’
‘Well,’ Rose plugged on, feeling a perfect fool, ‘if there’s ever anything … I mean, I know you’re shy and all that, which must be hard, so if you want to – I mean, do you want to come over to Wood Briar next Saturday?’
Help! Suppose Ben comes that weekend? But Hazel said ungraciously, ‘You mean, to work? Sorry, I can’t. I’m going shopping with Mummy.’ When Rose had been Hazel, she had hated her mother. Now she was being smug about shopping with dear Mummy. Some people were hard to help.
Rose was so annoyed with her that she didn’t ask her to go to the Paradise Café, and got away after school before Hazel had got out to the bicycle stands.
‘Hullo dear.’ The fat woman in the flowered apron greeted Rose cheerfully. The Paradise was full of steam and the smells of constant frying, but the counter was clean and the salt shakers polished and the bottles of ketchup and sauce were not nearly as disgusting as they might have been.
‘Where’s your friend?’ The fat lady brought Rose a bag of chips without being asked.
‘She’s off fried food.’ Rose watched to see if the woman would turn pale, thinking, Another one? They’re dropping like flies, and then made up for the lie by adding, ‘Not because of anything she had here.’
‘I should hope not.’ The woman laughed. She was always laughing, and swabbing the counter with her huge beefy arm. ‘We’re getting the kitchen redone, you know. You’ll be able to see your face in the cooker and eat off the floor. If you want to, of course,’ she added rationally.
At home, Here Today was getting into its minibus in the car park.
‘Where are you going?’ Rose asked.
‘To the hospital, to do a show in the children’s ward.’
‘Can I come?’ Perhaps she could find Room 4 on Bellamy Ward, with the spiders in the radiator.
‘Of course. You can help.’
Rose threw down her bike and dashed into the hotel to change her uniform.
‘Where’s Mum?’ She found her father upstairs in the rooms at the back of the hotel that were their apartment.
‘Out.’ He was looking at a drop of gravy on a slide under the microscope.
‘Damn, I needed to ask her—’
‘Don’t say damn. Ask me.’
He might have said no, but he was chuckling over a pleasing discovery under the microscope
. ‘The fat globules aren’t separating!’ When Rose asked, he said, ‘Why not? Sounds like fun.’
In her bedroom, Rose stepped out of her skirt and into trousers in one movement, hurtled down the stairs and into the bus just as it was starting, and Chris pulled the sliding door across quickly, before she could fall out.
Chapter Four
On Bellamy Ward, Rose kept a lookout for Room 4, but Here Today were late, as they almost always were, and they were hustled down a corridor and through swing doors into a long ward.
The beds had been pushed together so that the actors could perform at one end, and as many people as possible – children, nurses, and patients in dressing-gowns from other wards – were crowded in to sit on the beds and on chairs and in wheelchairs and on the floor.
They couldn’t possibly put on the same show that Rose had seen at the school, but they were very adaptable. There was no piano, but there were the guitar and banjo and Frank on the drums, and Ilona tap-danced on a tiny piece of floor with a skirt over her leotard and tights, which was made of dozens of multicoloured strips and flew out in kaleidoscopic patters of energy. When Ilona tap-danced, she didn’t just keep her body still and let her feet be the voice of the music. She jumped and spun, and twisted her body like an acrobat, and used her arms as vigorously as her legs.
There was no curtain or wings, just a screen at the side, behind which it was Rose’s job to help with quick changes, and see that the hats and canes and Marge’s feathered fan were in the right piles, and put the glasses and moustaches back in the shoe box when the actors tore them off.
The children adored everything, and at the end, everyone wanted more. Toby made his sad face, with his lip pulled down and his eyes like a bloodhound. Marge hid her face in the ostrich feather fan. Ilona pretended to cry. Chris, in a Superman T-shirt, struck a gallant pose and announced that he would recite from the telephone book. Everyone groaned, including Rose from behind the screen. Frank clapped a hand to the side of his bald head and said, ‘I know, let’s do “Kitchen”!’ – which they had planned all along for an encore.
As the song revved up, faster and faster, a small girl with a bandage round her head got up in spotted pyjamas and danced with Ilona and Tina. Everyone clapped in time, faster and faster. Rose slipped out between the screen and the wall and managed to climb over people on the floor and push between chairs and the crowd in the doorway, out to the corridor. There were side rooms for patients, most of them empty now. Rose followed the numbers, and on the half open door of a room on the right, she saw the number 4, hesitated, looked up and down the corridor, and knocked.
In the second before a voice answered, she wished she hadn’t knocked. Now that she had found it, she did not want to go into Room 4. But the voice said, ‘Come in,’ unenthusiastically, so she ventured in.
It was a single room, with two casement windows and a wide window sill with books and stuffed animals on it, and a low, old-fashioned radiator underneath.
‘That old cast iron coil radiator.’
On the bed sat a girl of about fourteen with her hair in two thin pigtails tied with strips of bandage. She was sitting hunched up against the head of the bed, with her legs crossed and her arms clutching her knees. She looked sallow and moody. She didn’t ask Rose who she was. She obviously didn’t care, nor whether anyone came in or not.
‘You missed the show,’ Rose said, ‘What a shame.’
‘Didn’t want to go.’ The girl stared listlessly at the wall in front of her, not looking at Rose.
‘Why not?’
‘Felt too rotten.’ Her thin shoulders shivered, although she was wearing a cardigan and it was quite warm in the room, thanks to George Mollis.
‘Would you like to meet the actors, if you’re not well enough to get out of bed?’ Rose felt sorry for her, left here alone.
‘I don’t care.’ The girl sounded very depressed. ‘It won’t make any difference. Everything’s creepy. I hate being ill. I hate this place. Hospitals are supposed to make you better, but I feel worse. I hate this room.’
‘Seems nice, though.’ Rose looked round the room, which was freshly painted in white and pale yellow, with pictures of children and animals on the walls, bright flowered curtains and a small flowered armchair near the bed.
‘I’m supposed to be lucky to be in here,’ the girl said gloomily. ‘They said it was a storage room for a long time, and I’m the first one in it since they opened it and did it up because they need more beds for the teenagers. But I hate it. Look at that creepy picture.’ She nodded towards a picture on the wall opposite the bed. It was of a boy in a red jersey and grey shorts running through a field of long grass and wild flowers, with a brown and white spaniel leaping up at him. ‘My room at home’s got posters all over it. I hate it here. It’s cold and ugly depressing, and sort of – I don’t know. They can have it.’
Voices and feet in the corridor meant the show was over. Rose said feebly, ‘I’m sorry,’ and slipped quickly out of the room.
As she made her way back to the actors through the patients and nurses, she felt excited, poised on the edge of adventure, believing that at last she had found the clue embedded in her journey to Hazel’s. Room 4. A bright, pretty room – and the patient hated it.
George Mollis had been right about one thing. The room had been closed for some time. But the mystery? He’d been wrong about so many things, he might have made that up too.
At home, after supper in town with the actors at Papa’s Pizzeria, Rose went up to Mr Vingo’s turret room to tell him about the clue. He was usually up there after dinner, but the room was empty. The lid of the marmalade piano was closed like an upper lip down over the ivory keys. The cupboard door was open on a muddle inside, and two shoes of different pairs were on the chair. His floppy zipper bag wasn’t underneath the bed. He had done another of his disappearing acts.
Chapter Five
When Mr Vingo went off, you never knew where he’d gone, nor when he would come back. He would turn up again after several days without warning, as casually as if he had only been for a stroll round the garden.
‘I’ve locked Mr V’s door,’ Mrs Ardis told Rose this time, ‘and given the key to your mother, so he can’t complain of theft.’
He never did, but sometimes he asked her, ‘Where did I put this or that?’, which she translated as, ‘You took it.’
Rose was in the garden with her mother, planting daffodil bulbs under the trees at the side of the lawn, when she heard someone playing Mr Vingo’s piano, up in the turret room behind them. Then she heard a guitar and Tina’s voice, high and wistful, and Marge’s deeper contralto joining it. They were singing their sad little duet, about the girl who couldn’t ever leave home, and the girl who could never go back.
‘Did you give them the key of Mr Vingo’s room?’ she asked Mollie.
‘No, of course not. They’re singing in the back lounge. Nice to hear them, isn’t it?’
Kneeling in the grass, with one hand in a trowel hole, settling the bulb down for winter, Mollie cocked her left ear to listen, but Rose, kneeling beside her, cocked her right ear, because she heard music coming from a different place. Ventriloquism? A shifting sea breeze? A trick of the damp atmosphere? It was definitely Mr Vingo’s piano. You couldn’t confuse it with the jangling old upright in the lounge.
She didn’t say anything to her mother, because now Marge and Tina’s song was drowned by the haunting sweet notes of Favour’s tune, that nobody but Rose could ever hear. She threw down her trowel and jumped up.
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘I thought we were going to finish.’
‘Gosh, I’m sorry. I forgot, I promised to meet Abigail. We’re going to—’ The tune was louder. It was filling her ears.
‘Oh well.’ Rose’s father would have made a fuss and given her a small lecture on starting things you didn’t carry through, but Mollie just shrugged and said, ‘Story of my life. Mollie will do it.’
‘No, look – I�
�ll help you later.’ Rose was poised for flight.
‘It’s all right.’ Mollie started to dig another hole. ‘You go, love.’
Although she couldn’t possibly guess at the secret life that ran alongside Rose’s normal everyday life, Mollie understood about the ups and downs of being thirteen, and knew that however close they were, there were things in Rose’s life and in her mind that she could never share.
Rose bent to kiss the top of her untidy gold hair, which had earth in it from being brushed back with the hand that held the trowel, and ran to get her bike, so that it would look as if she were going to Abigail’s.
What if Abigail turned up looking for her? She jounced her silver bicycle, over the roots and puddles of the woodland path. It would be so much easier if she could share the secret with her best friend, but a messenger of Favour must never tell. Never disobey. Never be afraid. Never fail.
She left Old Grey Mare at the end of the trees and climbed up the slope, to run across the moor in her torn gardening dungarees with mud on the knees, the tune in her head leading her on like a siren song.
Coming through the copse to where the valley waited, she stepped down into the mist without fear. Last time, there had been nothing to stop her. The Lord of the Moor and his forces of evil had left her alone, and perhaps they had given up before the power of the horse, and slunk back to their castle in hell. Usually she groped her way down through the mist with her hands before her, fearful of what they might touch, but today she plunged recklessly down.
When she crashed into the invisible being who was waiting for her, it was like hitting a wall of ice. Her breath was knocked out of her. She gasped and staggered. She thought she was going to die. Putting out a hand, she touched the damp velvet and fur of his tunic, and snatched her hand away as if it was burned, from the cruel cold steel of an unsheathed sword at his waist.
The Lord of the Moor.
‘No ethcape,’ he lisped. She felt his poisonous breath on her cheek and. saw the glitter of his ruthless eyes devouring hers, probing her mind. He suddenly turned his head, and the weasel on his shoulder struck forward at her like a snake, its lips drawn back in a sneer over the needle teeth.
The Haunting of Bellamy 4 Page 4