‘I have never told you before, boy – the full story – because it isn’t important, and it’s not really your concern. However, seeing as you still wish to know, I will tell you finally. She is… in hospital. Way over in Grangeling’s Sanatorium, near Smudge. She’s been there for years,’ he said and then murmured, ‘and she won’t be out for a long time. A very long time.’ He had stumbled on the words: if when he had lied to his son at other times without conscience, why was it that this falsehood brushed his mind with guilt? He turned his back to Alastair with the pretence of a renewed interest in the wireless set.
Without his father’s face to contend with Alastair felt a surge of confidence and he could not contain his excitement any longer. ‘Mother’s in hospital. Can I go? When? When can I visit her? Please let me see her…’
Stubb was tormented by this outburst and the walls to the dam of his memories burst apart and he was unaware that he had thrown his short arms into the air, attempting to grip a part of it for support as though it were solid. Nor did he realize that he was shouting high above the voices from the wireless set, ‘Never – you will never see her for as long as you live.’
Alastair heard his mouth say, ‘You take life too seriously, William.’ Stubb did not hear. He urgently scratched his head as though to impede the onrush of memory impressions that had begun to activate dormant emotions into being, all of which he had hoped were drowned by ale long ago. He twisted on his heels, bustled through the doorway and down the hall. ‘Never!’ he shrieked again as he jerked open the front door, and slammed it behind him.
Alastair’s face was drained of colour and a numbness pervaded him. The aching for maternal comfort returned and though he knew that crying was too insufficient an emotion to rid himself of a mental anguish that was becoming part of his life, he allowed the tears to flow. A part of his distress would be dismissed for a time. Not caring about the shards of glass which lay about him, he fell to the settee and sobbed; not in loneliness or self-pity but in the realization that he would never see his mother. He felt a juvenile hatred for his father lurch inside. It blocked his torrent of emotion for a moment whereupon the aching welled up again and he resumed his outpouring of grief.
Stubb stood outside, immobile for a second only, then, through years of practice, all thoughts of the occurrence that had taken place were swept away. His anxious face faded and was replaced by his usual one of disgust with the world. Wiping a tear with the back of his hand he tutted and walked the few paces to the wooden gate.
As though waiting for an opportunity to cause havoc, a robust wind sprang from hiding, and after running cold fingers through the hedges of the terraced houses, it leapt along the pavement and swung impishly on unlatched gates, leaves running circles in its wake. The large oak tree which had stood for more than a century at the end of Pepper Lane clung to the last of the foliage as its stark branches swayed gently in the wind. The occasional leaf would flutter to the ground to join those already lying dead, there in a profusion of colours. Autumn had descended upon the village.
On feeling the skipping wind playing with the modicum of hair from the nape of his neck, Stubb mused on the idea of retrieving his raincoat from the house but dismissed the idea. The Bulldog Fish Tavern had already been open for more than twenty minutes.
He noticed her the moment he had stepped out into the street. Unsure as to what to do he gaped stupidly and as contrivances wormed slowly through his mind, the figure shuffled closer. She peered intently through the monocle that snuggled beside the bridge of her nose. Her other eye bulged blindly from its socket at a most obscure angle. Stubb gulped down a pool of saliva that had collected.
‘Afternoon, Mrs. Battlespoke,’ he said reluctantly, ‘I can’t talk today. I’ve got an important job to do.’
‘Why if it isn’t Mr. Stubb; you are looking well, as fit as a fiddler.’ The last of her sentence was stressed with an agitation of her withered hand. ‘I was saying to Mrs. Stick this morning…’ Her croaking voice ceased as she paused for breath and Stubb saw his opportunity.
‘Well, I really must go.’
‘I said, ignore your daily constitutional and you ignore a longer life, because you know Mrs. Stick. Doesn’t wash but it’s understandable what with her lumbago and those very cosy veins. Have you heard, Mr. Stick pulled a cartridge in his ankle? Rub olive oil into his joint bone, I told her. My mother swore by it; she worked at the old cotton mill over at Grinding. With all that standing up and having to come home, do the washing and scrubbing and put us six children to bed and then back at the mill by six o’clock the next morning, well, you might imagine. It was like our Mrs. Crowpack before she passed on. Did you know she left me her card table and commode in her will? And that reminds me: poor Edith – that will be Edith Clocks, not the other Edith – got trouble with her drains again. It’s all of that cotton wool I tell her…’
Stubb impatiently huffed through his nose as he towered above the frail shrunken woman who gabbled incessantly before him. He folded his arms across his chest and glared at her. Mrs. Battlespoke had looked after Alastair very well in the past; often supplied brown eggs from her brood; and for those reasons he found it difficult to ignore the old lady. The words emanating from the chattering mouth seemed to curl and be whisked away by the wind that still played in the street. Stubb found himself staring intently at her blind eye which was involuntarily circling and twitching in its socket.
‘How is our young Alastair? I hope he found what he wanted, to make up his collection the other day.’
‘His collection? What’s he up to now?’
‘Why Mr. Stubb, his collection of insects of course. I let him have a good look around the coop; plenty there if the chickens don’t eat them. Oh my yes, he has a good show already, striped beetles, snail shells…’
Stubb shuddered. He would have to put a stop to that.
Mrs. Battlespoke clucked and tutted, sighed and complained, all the while swaying gently on her slight body while she added to her monologue. ‘Of course, you can’t be expected to, what with the price of meat nowadays…’
Stubb noticed that her poor sight was elsewhere. It was wandering through the factory in Grinding or skipping through the fields of her childhood in Stillstone or ranging over the price of bread at Spittle’s bakery, chasing her dusty memories from their nooks and crannies of her over-active mind. The irrelevances of the past and the mundane happenings of the village clouded her sight of the singing gate, the parade of terraced houses and William Stubb. This he saw in a second and he scuttled up the road to leave Mrs. Battlespoke swaying and gesticulating as she told her reminiscences to the wind.
CHAPTER 24
A Fight
ALASTAIR SIGHED AND rubbed his nose. How anyone could muster enthusiasm for Colonel Crotchet’s Poems of Life was beyond his understanding. For a third time he scanned the page but being in no mood to read he deliberately skipped the paragraph that he was next to digest. Telling himself he could not find his place he looked dreamily about the classroom. All of the other children were quiet and intent upon reading.
Through the window, on the playground, stood a beech tree with its branches swaying gently. He mused on what it could be like to be a tree. ‘Fancy not doing anything but stand around all day,’ he thought. ‘A bit boring I suppose, but better than reading this rubbish.’ He tapped the book with contempt. Upon his sight returning to his desk he saw a tiny spider.
His mouth twitched and his eyes fluttered involuntarily and an image of a large and dark room flickered before him; then the vision was gone.
He was fascinated by the patient labours of the spider as it journeyed along a deep furrow that had been carved into the lid of his desk meant for his pencil. Several times it climbed the walls of the wooden corridor only to return to the bottom. ‘The poor thing must be confused,’ Alastair thought. He mentally nudged it along for he felt its claustrophobia. His face creased in concentration but then he grinned as it reached the end of its confinement
. It scuttled rapidly across the desk. Happy in the knowledge of the creature’s escape, he was quite prepared to resume reading his book until a shadow passed over the spider and a fist ground it into the wood.
Alfred Gristle, the gravedigger’s son, had turned in his seat from the desk in front of Alastair’s and was stabbing a finger and jeering in animated mime. Alastair glared for a moment at the boy’s wide nose then looking down at the crushed body of his intrepid climber, its hair-fine legs scattered like eyelashes. He was filled with rage. For a peculiar moment the face of Gristle became the face of William Stubb. Alastair brought his fist to his cheek as though pulling on a bow. To avenge the pointless death of the creature he knew that he must retaliate.
Unknown to Alastair, young Sidney Pump, the son of the manor house ex-butler, had been watching the proceedings with obvious glee from the school desk behind him. As Alastair’s hand touched his own jaw in preparation for its flight towards Gristle, Pump seized it and pulled it down over Alastair’s shoulder while tugging the hair on the nape of his neck. The victim crumpled his face in pain as a muscle was pulled in his armpit and the back of his neck began to sting. All thought processes were curtailed by the torment and his aching arm did not care to ease its pain for the time necessary to imagine a just retribution for the instigator of his agony. Anger and discomfort were a burning molten core. Gristle chuckled quietly as a tear rolled down Alastair’s cheek. Pump pulled viciously on Alastair’s fingers with both hands. There was no alternative but for him to scream in the hope of lessening the pain that shot through him like a shock from electricity.
Save for the occasional muttering as a child whispered the words from a book or perhaps conversing in conspiring tones with their neighbour, the classroom had been silent. The yelp of a beaten dog caused a few gasps and enquiring looks and it dispersed the intellectual rambling of Miss Crouch who sat at the head of the class with her back as stiff as a new shirt collar. Her cultured head jolted away from the papers which lay in front of her on her large leather-covered desk and darted from side to side as she attempted to ascertain the whereabouts of the animal which had made such a dreadful noise. She was bemused by the fact that all heads were away from her and she followed the lines of sight of the children. They converged onto one point.
Gristle and Pump were scanning the books before them; although Pump was trying to read the few words printed on his closed volume and Gristle attempted to examine his copy which lay upside down.
Miss Crouch watched Alastair as he tenderly massaged his sore arm and fingers. The shuffling of feet and interested chatter that had occurred upon hearing Alastair’s shout had evaporated. A silence spread itself thickly over the classroom. The wind outside weaved through the poplars along School Lane. Miss Crouch rose majestically from her seat, her back never faltering from its straightness. Her long arms stretched their full length downward and she placed her fingertips onto her desk as if it were her pulpit and she was preparing to deliver a sermon. Though instead of speaking, she navigated around the bulky desk that was also littered with books new and old and the ragged exercise pads of her class. Her long legs were covered by yards of pea green material, (which was quite content to drag upon the dusty floor,) and as though floating she made her way to Alastair. Pump and Gristle tired of their pretence of reading and they smiled at the nearing of the schoolmistress, foremost for the apparent act of gliding across the floorboards as though propelled on wheels but also in the possibility that Alastair could receive a severe reprimand.
Miss Crouch reached the boy. She stood with her hands planted firmly on her hips and a wry expression on her plain face. ‘What on earth do you think you are doing, Alastair,’ she demanded and before he could answer, continued, ‘disturbing the class with this outburst? It will not do, you know. I’m sure it was you, wasn’t it? Unless you have a dog tied up in your desk.’ The classroom pupils reacted with laughter. ‘Children, quiet,’ she spoke loudly above the noise. She had not meant to say anything amusing. ‘What have you got to say?’ Alastair could only groan in reply. He rubbed his burning arm. ‘Hmm? What is the meaning of it when you should be reading your poems?’
Alastair drew breath to answer but then expelled the air and winced as Pump gave him a sly jab in the back. He remained silent until animosity overcame his fear and to Miss Crouch’s ‘Well?’ he simply replied, ‘Sidney, miss.’ He still burned inside. Pump cast his eyes with innocence and looked enquiringly to the schoolmistress who folded her arms and expelled a puff of air as impatience. Gristle turned his back to Alastair.
‘Sidney, is this true? Do you have anything to do with this terrible outburst?’
A look of surprise masked Pump’s face and he gasped, ‘No miss, honest. I dunno why he should say such, honest I don’t.’ Slowly his eyelids dropped and he looked sullen. Miss Crouch watched him suspiciously.
‘Now look,’ she said, ‘I am not sure who is telling the truth so you will both stay in later: half hour detention.’ She raised her head and addressed the class after glancing to the clock on the back wall. ‘Right children, it is time to go now, anyway.’
Suddenly there was a cacophony of noise; of books cracking shut and desks banging and coughs and laughter and raised voices of “Goodnight, miss”; the scraping of heels on the floorboards and squeaking on the square of linoleum; the clatter of wooden chairs and clomping of feet that gradually diminished as the class filtered through the doorway. Hoots of delight echoed from outside the room and the clamour of voices became the sound of a solitary pair of feet running down the corridor. A door slammed with a reverberation and all was quiet again.
‘I have to ring the bell for the other two classes, so you will both wait here and don’t get up to any mischief. I will be back soon.’ With that said she glided to the front of the classroom and opened a cupboard beside the blackboard to produce a brass bell. Apparently floating from the room and down the corridor, she swung the bell violently in front of her, the echoing peals resounding through the small school.
Pump grimaced at Alastair. To catch him unprepared he would have to act fast. Realizing that his body had stiffened he relaxed and grinned. He held out a hand and beckoned with a finger. ‘Come on then mate, Alastair,’ he said, stressing the inflexions in the name unnaturally. ‘Let’s be friends,’ he hissed. ‘Shake.’
Alastair quivered in a moment of indecision. Was he to trust this character? He looked at Pump’s clenched fist and he held out his own hand to shake. Pump opened his fist to an outstretched palm and Alastair gazed in horror at the contents of the hand. A blood-matted mouse lay on its back with its paws drawn tightly to its skinny body. Pump sneered and Alastair recoiled from him but was too surprised to guard against attack. Like a coiled spring that had been released, Pump lunged forward. He took hold of Alastair’s head and held it under his arm in a tight grip. Alastair gasped for breath while he was smothered and his ear stung as it was pressed into a button on Pump’s jacket. A tear was squeezed from between his eyelids. With his face reddening and his teeth clamped together, his breathing rasped hoarsely.
‘Hit my mate, would you,’ yelled Pump, ‘tried to hit my mate? Have a bite of this.’ He wiped the tiny corpse around Alastair’s mouth; Alastair choked as the cold bloodied fur smeared his face. A stark terror gripped him, his muscles had contracted so much that he ached. He began to grunt rhythmically, becoming louder until he could not contain himself any longer.
The being who clawed at Pump and tried to bite him was not Alastair but the unsophisticated animal within driven out. Pump let go his hold and he shouted in surprise. Alastair pulled repeatedly on the coarse black hair on Pump’s head with all of his strength, a glint in his eye as scratches on Pump’s face began to show beads of blood. As Pump wailed, Alastair glared and snarled, ‘You idiot, you are nothing but a cowardly drunkard. You should have been thrown out years ago. So you would tell William of Eleanor and me?’
Pump gaped and licked his hand. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘What am I saying?’ Alastair muttered and then without any control of his mouth he spoke the words, ‘You will pay for that as will all the others. Frightened of water, are you?’
‘Are you talking about my dad?’ demanded the frightened Sidney Pump and, before he could speak further, Alastair punched his face; Pump’s lip split and began to bleed. He howled in pain, his mouth open wide, showing his untidy rows of teeth.
The sight of blood and screaming brought Alastair back into control. He saw that he still had a firm grip of Pump’s hair and he relaxed his grip. The boy’s head fell forward with his eyes closed. Alastair stared in horror at the sight which filled his mind only. He held a decapitated head dripping with blood; and death, second by second, was remoulding the face to suit the grave, making it waxen and drawn. With a screech, he let go and ran.
Miss Crouch stepped back into the corridor from another classroom in time to see Alastair pulling open the school entrance door. Blinded with fright, the boy did not see or hear her. ‘Alastair, what mischief are you up to? Come back.’
Alastair gasped and greedily gulped the air that was beginning to chill as the sun prepared to sink below the horizon. He lay on his back on the coarse stubble of one of farmer Solomon’s fields and stared upwards. He followed the flight of a crow as it raced with the ragged clouds which daubed the sky like paint. Slowly, his senses, his breath and the stupidity of his actions returned. He looked at the tight fist that lay beside him as though it was not a part of himself. His mouth curled in disgust and he shuddered and slowly uncoiled his fingers, holding his sweating palm out flat.
A clump of thick matted hair lay upon it.
CHAPTER 25
Mr Badger
MIST HAD TAKEN refuge in the hills and a nebulosity crawled over the horizon towards the abandoned canal. The clock on the green gave its slow chimes; a hush lay over the land then, scratched only by the harsh caw of a crow or broken to a whisper as the stream trickled from the hills, making its way under the stone bridge.
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb Page 14