Long Lankin

by Lindsey Barraclough

  Mrs. Eastfield headed for Pete and me. I thought she was going to belt us, too.

  “And you!” she yelled. “I’ll make sure your mother knows about this! Be sure I will!”

  Storming between us, she pushed us aside so hard that Pete’s head flew back and banged on the door frame with a clunk. He moaned, staggered slightly, then looked up at me with watery eyes, spilling over into tears.

  “I — want — my — mum,” Cora sobbed in a small voice.

  I just didn’t know what to do. The only thing I could think of was to get us all home as fast as possible, but I’d have to confess to Mum about going down to the church. It would be much, much worse if she heard it first from Mrs. Eastfield.

  So I had to find Mrs. Eastfield to ask her, but it was the last thing I wanted to do in all the world. She’d gone off down the hall past the big stairs, so I went after her, but every room I tried was locked. The big thick door at the end of the hall was the only one that gave when I pushed. When I peeped in, somebody said, “Hello.” It was a real live parrot in a cage.

  Mrs. Eastfield was sitting hunched up in the corner of an old red settee, kneading a handkerchief in her hands. She looked up, and her eyes were red and wet. I stared down at the floor.

  “Mrs. Eastfield —” I swallowed. “Would it possibly be all right if Cora and Mimi came up to my house for a bit? I absolutely promise we won’t go down the church again. I’m really, really sorry. It”— and I took a deep breath —“it was my fault, and Pete’s. We’ll take them in the woods and over the Patches next time. Honest. We won’t do it again.”

  “Do what you like,” she said quietly, wiping her nose on the hankie. “I don’t care.”

  “I’ll post that letter. I absolutely promise I’ll post it at Mrs. Wickerby’s. You can ask her if we bought the stamp. I promise. Honestly. Hope to die. Cross my heart.”

  She turned and held out the creased letter without even looking at me. “Do what you like,” she said again. “It’s too late anyway… .”

  It was a bit of a miserable walk down the Chase, I have to say, with all of them snivelling.

  “Dad walloped us the other day, didn’t he, Pete, for fighting,” I said, doing my best to make Cora feel better.

  “That was your fault.” Pete sniffed. “You know that green engine’s always been mine. Auntie Barbara gave it to me.”

  “Rubbish!”

  “She did!” He stopped dead in the road, his hands curling into fists.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you can keep the blimmin’ thing.” I tossed my hand in the air at him, then turned back to Cora. “Sister Laserian at school’s the worst for hitting,” I said. “She’s got this special stick. It’s this thick.” I held my thumb and first finger at least two inches apart.

  “No, Sister Camillus is the worst,” said Pete. “She whacks you with her hands. They’re hard like leather, like the soles of your shoes, most probably because she does loads of it — whacking.”

  “Must have hurt her at first, though, when she first started.”

  “She probably did it for a penance at the beginning,” Pete went on. “Then God made her hands hard in a miracle, so she could stop us being so wicked, like if we talk at dinners.”

  “They’re the Sisters of Divine Mercy,” I told Cora.

  At last she lifted her head.

  “There’s this teacher at my school — Mr. Diamond,” she said. “The boys say if you’re naughty and he catches you, he’ll hit you with a slipper with nails sticking out of it.”

  “Blimey! Do you know anybody he’s done it to?”

  “No — nobody I know.”

  It was sweltering. Pete pulled out his handkerchief, knotted the corners, and stuck it on his head like Grandpa used to do, except Grandpa’s hadn’t usually been blown in over and over again then left in his pocket for weeks till the lumps of snot had gone green and hard.

  Cora put her head down again. She was walking oddly — I suppose because of her banging her leg against the table and falling on the floor. There was a big red patch on the side of her face and some small half-moon nail marks on her arm. Mimi kept tugging on her skirt and trying to get her to talk to her.

  As we got nearly to the top of the hill, we pointed out the old pillbox, a concrete bunker from the war, behind the trees on the right, but Cora didn’t seem that bothered. Then, as we passed Glebe Woods on the other side of the road, round the back of the Treasures’, I tried to cheer her up by showing her the bit of broken fence where you can get through. As long as you’re careful to pull it back behind you, from the road nobody need ever know you were in there.

  “There’s a ruined castle in the woods,” said Pete.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Cora, as if it was a fib. It wasn’t a fib, actually. There were heaps of old stones and half-buried bricks all covered in trees and bushes and moss. It was really fun, climbing over them and exploring. Once, Mr. Crawford, the Treasures’ gardener, spotted us from the garden and chased us out, shouting and swearing. We don’t go in there that often, because we’d get into big trouble with Mum if we were caught, but if we hear the mower on the front lawn, we know he’s round the other side of the house, so we creep through the fence and jump around on the castle until the engine stops, then run away quick.

  Just after Glebe Woods, there’s a stream that runs under the road and behind the pillbox on the other side. If it’s clear, you can drop bits of twig on one side of the road and see if they come out on the other, but more often than not it’s choked with grass.

  We carried on up the lane and crossed over the main Daneflete road opposite the Thin Man.

  To get to Bryers Guerdon, you walk down the Daneflete road a bit, then cross over to go down Ottery Lane, which leads into the village. It’s like going through a green tunnel, the top end of the lane, because the trees lean over towards each other and their highest branches meet up in the middle.

  There’s a deep ditch running along the right-hand side of the road. I pushed Pete in it once when he was little, and felt awful afterwards because Mum had to throw his coat away. He swallowed some of the water, and for days afterwards, I thought he was going to die of the fever.

  When you get to the place where the houses start, there are bridges over this ditch. Each house has its own bridge.

  The first house on the left is Mr. Granville’s shop. He’s the butcher, and he’s got a big moustache that goes up at the sides in two points. When I asked Mum how it stays up, she said he puts wax on it. A bit farther down on the other side, there’s Mrs. Wickerby at the post office, then, over the road from her, there are two grocers together. Mrs. Aylott’s is the one we go to — the other one never seems to have much in it. It’s called the Dairy. The old lady, Mrs. Rust, sits in there all day with a hairnet on, knitting. Some people must go in, but we never do. Everything on the shelves in the Dairy has a great big space around it. There’ll be a loaf of bread and then three feet of empty shelf, then a jar of Golden Shred, then four feet, then a packet of Daz and some Marmite.

  Mum sends me down to Mrs. Aylott’s with a list, and if I can’t carry it all, Mr. Aylott comes round with the stuff in a box when the shop shuts.

  I really like Mr. Aylott a lot.

  When it was the Garden Fête over on the field in June, Mr. Aylott was Madame Zaza the Fortune-Teller. He wore one of Mrs. Aylott’s scarves done up in a turban and some earrings made of brass curtain rings on loops of string. When he came out of his tent for a cup of tea, Dennis and his friend Bernard kept creeping up on him and lifting his skirt. Mr. Aylott would turn suddenly and pretend to take a swipe at them, and they’d go shrieking off. I don’t know why they did it over and over again; he still had his trousers on underneath.

  I told Cora what Mum had said about Mr. Aylott — that a shell had exploded right next to him in the First World War and he was the only one of his unit left. It left him rather deaf, so you have to shout at him.

  “He’s got a piece of apple in his head,” Pete said.<
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  “What are you going on about?” I said. “What piece of apple?”

  “Mum said,” said Pete. “From the war, and forty years later it’s still in there.”

  “You idiot!” I said. “A piece of shrapnel — not apple. What a dope!”

  “What’s shrapnel, then?”

  “It’s a bit of metal stuff out of a bomb, like a bullet,” I said.

  “Could he go off, then?”

  “Go off? Of course he couldn’t go off. The blinking bomb’s already exploded once. That’s why he’s got a bit of it in his head. Sometimes you say the most stupid things, Pete. I don’t know how you’re ever going to get your scholarship. And take that blinking hankie off your head. It’s disgusting.”

  We went into Mrs. Wickerby’s to buy a stamp for Cora’s letter. Mrs. Wickerby is like one of those little black spiders that eat their husbands, especially when she’s sitting in her post-office box, waiting for him to bring her a cup of tea. Mr. Wickerby is very quiet.

  She kept us waiting and waiting as she did something important with postal orders, even though she knew we were standing there. Then she caught sight of Cora out of the corner of her eye and leaned right over in her box to look her up and down.

  “Yes, can I help you?” she said.

  “I need a stamp,” said Cora.

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to say please? Please may I have a stamp?”

  “I need a stamp, please,” Cora said.

  We posted the letter in the pillar box outside the shop, then crossed over Ottery Lane.

  Our house is up a dirt track called Fieldpath Road, on the left just after the Dairy. The first house is old Gussie Jetherell’s. We tend to run past it pretty sharpish because she often comes out shouting rubbish, with her hair sticking out like a big white brush. She always wears the same grubby skirt, the same men’s checked slippers with holes in the toes, and the same dirty grey cardigan, all baggy in the front so I don’t know where she keeps her bosoms. She’s got millions of cats.

  The house joined onto old Gussie’s is Mrs. Campbell’s. She does for the Treasures and cleans the church. I think Mrs. Campbell goes into old Gussie’s sometimes to check on her. She must be mad to go in there, it looks so disgusting. Then, after Mrs. Campbell, across the end of Fieldpath Road, there’s us, and nobody else.

  Our house is wooden with a veranda, and we’ve got a smashing garden that goes all the way round. Dad grows dahlias out the front, and we’re not allowed to touch them. In the winter, he digs them up and puts them in a box in the shed. The back garden’s really good because Dad doesn’t have time to do it, so it’s just left, and there are some climbing trees and lots of wild bits with grass snakes and slow worms, and we can ride our bikes around. The grass isn’t all smooth like the Treasures’. Sometimes we get punctures and I have to fix mine quickly before Dad finds out because my bike’s new. It’s a Raleigh. I got it for passing my scholarship.

  Mum was out the back hanging nappies on the line while Pamela slept in the big black pram. Dennis and Terry were having a row by the pond.

  “For heaven’s sake, let him have the jar, Dennis!” Mum was shouting.

  “No, he just gets mud in it!” Dennis shouted back.

  “Oh, hello,” she said, catching sight of us. “While you’re there, Roger, can you look in the shed and see if there’s another jar for Terry?”

  “Can’t Pete go?”

  “I asked you. Now, go on! Or I’ll get it and you hang up the nappies.”

  I dragged myself over to the shed to get a jam jar. Of course, by the time I found one and took it over to the pond, Dennis had fished out one of those big newts with the orange belly and spots and was poking it with his finger. He wasn’t bothered about his jar anymore and had given it to Terry, so I needn’t have bothered. I knew that would happen.

  Mrs. Jotman put down her empty basket, came over to us, bent over, and looked Mimi in the eye.

  “And what’s your name?” she asked.

  “Mimi, and this is Sid.”

  “Hello, Sid,” said Mrs. Jotman, then looked over at me. “And how about you?”

  “Cora — Cora Drumm,” I said.

  “They’re staying down at Mrs. Eastfield’s,” said Pete.

  “Are they indeed? It’s been a long time since there were any children down there,” said Mrs. Jotman.

  Suddenly she wrinkled her eyebrows together. “Unless … Roger! Come here!”

  Roger obviously knew the tone of her voice, and rolled up his eyes.

  At least Mrs. Jotman had the decency not to tell Roger off in front of strangers. She caught hold of his elbow and marched him round the side of the house. We could still hear every word she said.

  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times …” she started.

  Pete and me kept our eyes down and scuffed up the earth, while Mimi went off to see what the boys were doing by the pond.

  “You’ve got the woods to play in, the garden. You can even walk into Daneflete to the park, or the pictures!” she was yelling. “Do I have to keep you in? Are you ever going to take notice of anything I say?” Then came a dull thump, but it wasn’t much. “You know I don’t want you going down to the church. You know that, Roger. I had an idea you’d been down to the marshes. You’re covered in gnat bites.”

  “We were only down at Mrs. Eastfield’s, not the church.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish! I know you’re lying. Your ears are going red. You are absolutely not ever — ever — to go down there again. Do you hear me? I’m not having this sort of trouble all through the holidays! You’re to put your pocket money in Saint Peter’s Pence next time you go to church! Understand?!”

  They came back round the house again, Roger trailing behind Mrs. Jotman, eyes downcast and rubbing his arm. As he got nearer, he looked up from under his fringe and gave us a grin.

  Baby Pamela started making a noise like a little sheep. Mrs. Jotman went over to look at her and told Roger to take me in and make some tea.

  In the kitchen, Roger filled up the kettle, put it on the stove, and struck a match to light the gas. Then he emptied the old tea leaves into a bucket under the sink. Pete took some cups and saucers off the draining board and set them out on the table, then we helped ourselves to some broken biscuits from the tin.

  “You know what makes me cross?” said Roger as we waited for the kettle to boil. “Everybody shouts at us for going down the church, but nobody ever says why we aren’t meant to go.”

  “Why don’t you ask?” I said, rooting around the tin for something with chocolate on.

  “Ooh, no,” said Roger. “You don’t use the word why in this house. If we ask Mum why anything, she gives us a clout and says, ‘Because I say so, that’s why.’”

  “And if you ask Sister Camillus at school why,” said Pete, “she says it’s a mystery and you’ll find out when you die. A fat lot of good it’ll do me then.”

  “Anything they can’t explain they say is a mystery. Like me passing my scholarship,” said Roger. “Sister Aquinas said it was the biggest mystery in the History of Salvation. Anyway, we never ask why, Pete and me, because it just gets you into trouble.”

  “I suppose they’re right, though,” I said as the kettle started whistling. “If you can’t explain something, then it is a mystery. Anyway, I’ll ask your mum about the church if you like. I don’t mind.”

  Suddenly there was a noise like ten trains roaring around the house. I nearly choked on some crumbs.

  “Oh, it’s all right,” said Pete. “It’s just Dennis and Terry having a race round the veranda. I expect your sister’s joined in as well.”

  To make matters worse, Mrs. Jotman came in carrying the baby, who was screaming her head off. Not the best time to ask a question.

  “I’m just going to feed and change Pamela,” said Mrs. Jotman in a loud voice over the racket. “There are some cakes in the tin. Dennis helped me make them.”

  “I’m not having any,”
said Roger as she went out. “He’ll never have washed his hands.”

  “Yes, I did, and with soap,” said Dennis, running in with Terry and Mimi, and aiming straight for the biscuits. “Blinkin’ heck! You’ve had all the best ones!”

  He spat at Pete and poked his tongue out at Roger, and Roger, furious, stood up, took hold of him by the scruff of the neck, and nearly lifted him off his feet. He marched him outside, dropped him on the veranda, then quickly, before Dennis could get up, came back in and shut and bolted the door on him. Terry and Pete laughed and laughed.

  Dennis was furious. “I’m gonna break this door down!” he yelled from outside, banging on it so hard that it shook.

  “Just try it!” shouted Pete.

  All went quiet. He’d gone away, but a minute later, Pete caught sight of him through the kitchen window. He was running back towards the house.

  “Flippin’ hell!” yelled Pete. “He’s only gone and got a hammer out the shed!”

  “Blinkin’ heck!” shouted Roger. “Out the front! Quick!”

  We rushed through the house and out of the front door, but hadn’t even got to the steps before we heard him running along the veranda in our direction.

  We tore away from Dennis, shrieking and laughing, round and round, our feet thumping over the wooden planks. Dragging my bad leg, I half turned to shout at Roger that next time we passed the door, we should jump down the front steps and into the road and away, but when I turned back, I stopped dead in shock. There in front of me, on the veranda, was Auntie Ida.

  As I stood there panting, not knowing what to do, all the rest shot into the back of me one by one, Dennis, the last one in the row, frozen like a statue, holding up the hammer.

  Mrs. Jotman came out of the front door with Baby Pamela over her shoulder. “What on earth —? Oh — oh, Mrs. Eastfield — what a surprise,” she said, really amazed, like the rest of us. “Goodness. Do — er — do come in. Dennis, go and put the hammer away. He’s very fond of woodwork, Mrs. Eastfield.”