Breaking and Entering

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘I’m afraid not, darling. We’re just trying to get directions.’

  ‘What, again?’ she groaned, returning to the refuge of her Walkman.

  Daniel got out and approached the gnarled old man, but couldn’t make him understand at all. He might as well have been speaking to a foreigner. The man gazed blankly back at him, his bloodshot eyes watering in the wind; his bald head shaking in bemusement as he repeated no, he didn’t know, he couldn’t help. The dog was making a low growling noise, its hackles raised in warning.

  Daniel strode back to the car, his frustration overlaid by fear. This was the foreign country of his childhood. At the age of seven he’d been plucked from the warm safe womb of Africa and deposited here in the barren wastes of Wales. Nobody had understood him then. He couldn’t express his longing to go home – so intense it was a pain – nor explain his utter bewilderment at things like snow, or syrup of figs, or dormitory inspections (when Matron examined your hair and nails and tongue, as well as the contents of your cupboard and how you’d made your bed). He had spoken a different language himself when he’d first arrived from Zambia – a brightly-coloured cheerful language, with words for hope and play – but the new compulsory ‘school-speak’ encompassed only rules and punishments.

  ‘Well?’ asked Penny. ‘Any luck?’

  His response was deliberately jokey: alas, he hadn’t been successful in getting through to the ‘native’, either in English, French or Swahili, and perhaps he should have asked the dog instead. He owed it to Penny and Pippa to keep his spirits up. They both looked pale and tired, and it was his damned fault they’d got lost in the first place. It was crazy to have set out without a definite address, though he had spent ages on the phone, trying every conceivable source – first Alison, then her Welsh friends, and finally the actual pub where she had heard about the healer. But everyone he’d rung had been maddeningly imprecise, unable to supply a detailed map reference, so in the end he’d bought a large-scale Ordnance Survey, ringed the few vague landmarks mentioned by the landlord, and assumed that they would find it with a little kindly assistance from the locals.

  Now he cursed himself for his naïvety, and also for giving in to his wife and daughter’s pleadings and agreeing they could stay for lunch at Mrs Gwynfryn Evans’s. If they had set off after breakfast, as he’d wished, they wouldn’t be faced with the grim prospect of darkness falling before they found the camp.

  He put the car in gear once more, steeled himself for another stint of motoring. The road meandered on interminably, up hills and then down, zigzagging its benighted way across the countryside. They skirted a lake, its dark forbidding water ringed by sentinel firs, and then traversed a stretch of heather, the sky above them black with rooks wheeling home to roost. The road swooped down again, snaking past a secret stream, closed in by reeds and bulrushes, and suddenly they found themselves at a crossroads with a signpost.

  ‘Hooray!’ cried Penny, winding down her window and reading out the place-names.

  Daniel consulted his map. Not one of the names was on it, nor had been mentioned by the landlord in his long spiel on the phone. ‘Well, your guess is as good as mine,’ he shrugged. ‘Which way now, d’you think?’

  ‘Left,’ said Penny. ‘It looks a marginally better road.’

  You wouldn’t say that if you were driving, Daniel thought morosely, as he manoeuvred the car round ruts and potholes, and negotiated blind corners. Penny had never learned to drive, but he’d give anything to change places with her and rest his aching back. He checked on Pippa in the mirror. Her eyes were closed again, but she was still hooked up to her Walkman, doubtless trying to drug herself on the latest unmelodious offering from some pop group. It was getting near her bedtime, and she would be completely flaked out by the time they reached their destination – if they ever reached it.

  ‘Hey – a village!’ Penny exclaimed, pointing to a cluster of grey roofs ahead.

  ‘Thank God!’ said Daniel, relieved to see signs of civilization after mile upon mile of wilderness. There must be someone around with a tongue in his head, and with any luck there might be a pub or a guest-house where they could put up for the night. ‘Look, it might make sense to stay here, Penny, rather than push on any further and still be driving round in circles at midnight.’

  ‘Oh, let’s not give up now, when we’ve driven all this way. We must be more or less on top of the place. It’s only ten past nine, for heaven’s sake, and not even dark.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t like the look of those clouds. What if the weather breaks?’

  ‘Don’t be such a pessimist. Why should it break when the forecast was so good?’

  ‘Hell!’ he muttered, jolting to a stop. ‘We can’t stay here in any case. It’s completely derelict.’ He got out and slammed the door, trudged up to the nearest house; its splintered windows gaping, its door hanging on one hinge. The other houses were similarly deserted; glass shattered, paintwork peeling, gardens overgrown. Further up the street, there was a pub – the Pen-y-Gwryd – but the sight of its empty shell dashed all hopes of bed and breakfast. The shuttered general stores next door looked equally unwelcoming, unlikely to stock anything but rats and rusted cans.

  Penny and Pippa joined him by the ruined shop. Neither said a word. Penny shivered, rubbed the gooseflesh on her arms. Daniel kicked at a heap of broken roof-tiles. In the leaden silence he seemed to hear the murmurings of dead shopkeepers and publicans; the complaints of ghostly villagers who had long ago crumbled into dust. If man had seemed insignificant before, here he was redundant. The land had no more use for him; had wrecked his buildings, disfigured his brave monuments.

  ‘Well,’ said Penny with unconvincing brightness. ‘This must be one of those abandoned villages Alison was telling us about. Which is actually a hopeful sign because it means at least we’re in the right area.’

  Daniel didn’t answer, just traipsed gloomily past more ramshackle homes. He came to a small church, set back from the road; its roof open to the sky, its gravestones cracked or fallen. He wandered up the path, pausing a moment to touch a headless angel; manacles of ivy shackling its stained arms. The ancient yew in the graveyard was nothing but a mockery – a symbol of immortality presiding over death and decay.

  Penny and Pippa caught up with him and started examining the tombstones. ‘The inscriptions are all in Welsh,’ said Penny. ‘What an alien language it looks – all ys and double Is. I can’t make head or tail of it.’

  ‘Well, half of them seem to be Jones,’ Pippa said, pointing to a name in crumbling stone. ‘And that’s easy enough.’

  ‘Or Evans,’ added Penny. ‘Though I can’t see any Gwynfryn Evans. Perhaps she’s a one-off!’

  ‘Blast!’ said Daniel, looking up in alarm as a heavy drop of rain stung against his forehead. ‘The rain’s begun already. Quick – back to the car!’

  Although they ran full tilt, they were drenched by the time they scrambled back inside. The rain was sheeting down, lashing the roof of the car, beating against the windscreen, obscuring their surroundings. Dusk had fallen instantaneously; the glinting gold of evening swallowed up in storm clouds; summer doused in wintry cold.

  ‘I think we’d better wait till it eases off. The windscreen wipers won’t be able to cope with this lot.’ Daniel tried to ignore his intense craving for a cigarette, and also his idiotic feeling that Wales was pouring down on him a storm of disapproval; positively wanted to be rid of him. After all, they hadn’t forecast rain (as Penny had just pointed out), so this unexpected cloudburst did seem slightly ominous. Penny and Pippa’s silence seemed an additional source of reproof, and he guessed they were both thinking of Mrs Gwynfryn Evans’s haven, where they might now be lying in their warm and cosy beds if he hadn’t dragged them heartlessly away. He was especially worried about Pippa, who had become tense and sullen again – little wonder in such weather: the rain hammering down relentlessly and the wind keening like a demented mother mourning her dead child. If only it wasn’t so di
fficult to know what course to follow. It might be wiser to turn back, as Penny had suggested earlier on, but he had no idea which way was ‘back’, and any road he took might actually lead him further and further astray. Yet they could hardly pitch a tent in the middle of a downpour which looked as if it had set in for the night. Another option was to sleep in the car – cramped, cold and uncomfortable, and quite impossible for him. He could no more sleep in a car than run naked through a crowded store. No, the only sensible plan was to wait until the rain had eased and then press grimly on, in the hope of finding either the camp or somewhere else to stay.

  At length the deluge did begin to slacken, so he nosed the car forward and ploughed through the huge puddles which already swamped the road. Leaving the derelict village, he came to another crossroads and took the right-hand fork. It gradually narrowed to a single track with passing places every hundred yards. Though there were no other cars to pass – the last one had been ten or fifteen miles back. The deserted roads were unsettling, as if he had left the normal world behind and was battling through a dream-landscape where the colours were all grey, the outlines blurred, surreal. He was forced to go at a snail’s pace, not only because of the still pelting rain, but because of the high ridge in the middle of the narrowed pitted lane, which kept catching on the exhaust. Overhanging branches closed him in, engulfed him, the dark itself a blindfold. He could see nothing of his surroundings except fragmentary glimpses caught in the headlamps’ glare, which served only to increase his claustrophobia: ivy smothering tree-trunks; densely tangled undergrowth strangulating hedgerows; the road itself shrouded in thick cloud. He was driving ever deeper into a confining labyrinth; the windscreen wipers rasping and complaining as he was swallowed up and lost. Penny and Pippa had both dropped off to sleep, intensifying his sense of isolation. It was as if they had disappeared completely; left him quite alone in a dark and choking maze.

  On his first ever trip to Wales, he remembered feeling equally alone. He had been picked up from the airport by a tall and nameless shadow-man who drove him to Greystone Court. The long, despairing journey had been conducted in strained silence, and on arrival at the fortress-school, the stranger shook him by the hand, informed him that his father was a fine and worthy man and that he must never let him down; then vanished whence he had come. (It had been out of the question for either of his parents to accompany him themselves. He was one small boy, and their work involved a thousand boys, none of whom had his advantages, his chance of a superior education. He soon came to understand that education meant banishment, and privilege was another word for pain.)

  He reached out for a cigarette, brought his hand back empty to the wheel. It was food he needed, not nicotine. He had eaten nothing since Mrs Gwynfryn Evans’s meagre lunch – macaroni cheese without the cheese. Penny and Pippa must be starving too, but they had solved the problem by closing down in sleep. He checked on them again to make sure they were still there; that this journey wasn’t a mirage, a nightmare of his own.

  He returned his attention to the road, slowing to a crawl to coax the car through a stretch of swirling flood-water. He was beginning to worry about the electrics. If the engine failed, they would be stranded all night in a freezing car – maybe stranded all week in this barren wasteland, miles from anywhere.

  He jolted up another hill, braking when he reached the top and staring in incredulity at what he saw below. Eerie lights were flickering in the darkness, and he could just make out the ghostly shapes of tents. No, he wasn’t dreaming. As he drove on down the hill, he could hear the barking of a dog, echoed by a crying child. They had actually arrived! He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Both hands pointed to twelve. It seemed extraordinary, almost magical, that not only had they found the camp precisely at the stroke of midnight, but also that the weather had changed.

  He switched off the windscreen wipers, listened to the silence. Both dog and child had quietened, and the merciless rifle-fire of rain which had assaulted the car windows for the last two hours or more had unaccountably ceased. He cleared his throat, feeling strangely disconcerted. He could do with a stiff drink, a shot of instant courage.

  ‘We’re here!’ he said, shaking Penny’s arm.

  She woke with her usual languor, too inert and sleep-dazed to take in what he was saying. Pippa didn’t even stir, but remained huddled in the back.

  ‘Look, I’m going to have a recce,’ he said, having explained once more that they had reached their destination. ‘See if I can find some way of driving up a bit closer. You stay here, okay? I won’t be long.’

  He grabbed his torch and anorak, and slipped between the trees which lined the lane. The heavy clouds suddenly gaped apart, to reveal a bold three-quarters moon, its light silvering the hills, spangling the wet undergrowth. He stood motionless and marvelling, savouring his reprieve. He had come through his ordeal and been rewarded.

  ‘Claptrap!’ he muttered, rubbing his cricked neck. For a man with years of study behind him and a reputation for rational thought, he was becoming alarmingly susceptible to woolly superstition, if not self-delusion. Still, deluded or no, he did find the whole thing singular – the abrupt lull in the downpour, that imposing midnight moon.

  He stumbled on, concerned about the fact that he’d left Penny and Pippa alone, yet magnetized by the scene ahead – this unlikely fragile settlement in the middle of a wilderness. He could discern a few parked cars and vans, the embers of a dying fire, a washing-line strung between two trees. The camp was small – about six or seven tents in all and a couple of more striking tepees – though there was no sign of their occupants; no sound except the snarling of a dog. Praying it was tethered, he edged towards the tents; starting in alarm as a shadow fell across his path. Someone was coming towards him; a small man, slight in build, though his long, distorted shadow made him taller, even dangerous. It was too dark to see the detail of his face, but his hair fell past his shoulders and his eyes were piercing points of light.

  The man stepped forward, blocking Daniel’s path. He tensed, ready to defend himself, but the man’s voice was low and gentle – a mother’s reassuring tone.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said, stretching out his hand. ‘I’ve been expecting you a long time.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Daniel lay on his back, staring at the darkness. The darkness was alive. It pressed down on his eyes and nose, tried to stop him breathing. It was also very cold, so he’d lost his toes and fingers. Maybe he was going to die. Dead people were cold. They must have sent him away to die.

  At home he had a night-light – a nice, friendly lamp which shared the night with him – and his bedroom door was left ajar, so another piece of light came in and lay down on the floor beside his bed. And his tall safe parents slept next door, so he could call them if he had a frightening dream. There were eleven other beds in here, with eleven other boys, but no one he could call. The boys jeered at him because of the funny way he talked. But what was so funny? He had always talked like that.

  It was too dark to see the boys, but he could hear their snuffly breathing. They all breathed different ways. Thompson made a whistly noise and McKenzie had a cold and sounded all bunged up. McKenzie’s name was Michael, but you weren’t allowed to call him that. They took your names away here, like they took away your sweets. ‘Daniel’ had been confiscated.

  He’d learned that word on his first day, along with ‘slave’ and ‘beato’. ‘Beato’ was a funny word which hurt. They beat you quite a lot. Last week, he’d run away – run back home to Africa. He didn’t know the way, but he walked for ages and ages and cut his leg crawling through barbed wire. Mr Newman found him and drove him back in a big blue shiny car. Then they took his trousers down and hit him twelve times on his bottom. It left red marks, but you weren’t allowed to cry.

  The first night, he cried for hours. In the end, Matron came in and said he was disturbing the whole dormitory and had he got a pain? He was crying too much to answer, so she took him to the washro
om and told him to wash his face. It was horrid in the washroom. There were white tiles on the floor and the windows had ghosts’ faces in.

  Matron was a woman, but she didn’t look like one. She had a stiff white cap instead of hair, and she was flat in front where his black nanny had a big soft wobbly cushion. They didn’t have real women in Wales, or girls, or dogs and cats, or any colours except grey. Everything was grey – the sky, the hills, the school, the food, and the uniform was scratchy grey. Tonight they’d had rhubarb and that was greyish pink. He had never heard of rhubarb. It was very sour and had lumps in like the stew.

  McKenzie had poured water into his stew and made him eat it with his pudding-spoon. And after supper, he’d told him about the ghosts. Ghosts were white, not grey, and sometimes they’d had their heads chopped off, so they carried them under their arms. There were loads of ghosts in Wales, and two at Greystone Court. They came out at night and sort of floated along the corridors like smoke. He hadn’t seen them yet, but they’d probably come tonight – creep into the dormitory and rise up over his bed.

  He closed his eyes to keep them out, but the dark got even thicker then, heavy like his new school coat. He had never had a coat before, but the sun didn’t reach as far as Wales, so you had to wear more clothes. He was freezing now, and the sheets were stiff like Matron, and his heart was ticking so loudly, he was frightened it would wake her and she’d come storming from her room. He tried to burrow further down the bed. Someone was sneaking in. Not Matron, but a ghost. He could hear its scary breathing. It hadn’t got a head. He could smell it too – like frogspawn and wet socks.

  ‘Help!’ he screamed, struggling to sit up. Something was wrapped all round him, getting in the way. He lashed out with his feet and fists, yelling for his mother, begging her to come.

  And suddenly she did come. A torch was bobbing across the landing, and he could see her long brown hair, wavy and unbraided, the way she wore it at night. He grabbed the hair, twisting his fingers through the strands, to keep her there for ever. His tears were making wet marks on her nightdress, but he clung on even tighter, sobbing ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy,’ over and over, because he knew her name would scare the ghost away.