Ballad of Favour

by Monica Dickens

  ‘He saw an engine.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to know everything.’

  ‘I know more than you, and that’s no great strain.’

  ‘Knock it off. You give me a pain.’

  That was a fair sample of the conversation in this family. They threw insults back and forth at each other, but nobody seemed to mind.

  Carol sat Davey in his wobbly high chair, which was covered in grease and jam and congealed egg and porridge. His father gave him a sip of beer. His mother put some chips and a spoonful of salt in front of him on the grubby linoleum tablecloth, and he ate contentedly.

  He was wet and grimy and they fed him all the wrong things, but he was healthy and much loved. If anything were to happen to him, they would be desolated, and Carol would never get over it.

  Supper wasn’t much. A few eggs scrambled between them, a mountain of chips, and Arthur had brought home some of yesterday’s cakes from the place where he worked. Rose wanted to go back to her own life. She had a landmark now. She knew she had been looking in the wrong place, near the main railway line, instead of this old abandoned branch line in a completely different part of Newcome.

  She wanted to get back to the wedding. She concentrated hard. She held her breath. She tried to make Carol feel sleepy. But she had no effect on Carol, with her lively mind and quick tongue, who did not feel like going to bed for hours.

  When Carol took Davey up to put him to sleep on the damp side of the bed she shared with him and Gregory, he pointed to the window and cried out something unintelligible.

  ‘What did you see?’ Carol looked out. ‘There’s nothing there. Just the sheet blowing in the wind.’

  ‘Fly?’ Davey asked hopefully.

  ‘Did it look like a big bird flying?’ Carol knelt down and hugged him. ‘Ooh, you are a bright little beggar. Perhaps you’ll grow up to be a poet, like me.’

  When Rose saw him tucked up in the bed, a dark shudder of foreboding gripped her. She wanted to tell Carol, ‘Don’t leave him here. He’s in danger.’

  ‘You’re all right, aren’t you, ducky?’ Carol and Davey exchanged a messy kiss and she stepped carefully over the loose floorboard and went whistling down the stairs.

  ‘Get the wash in, will you?’ her mother shouted.

  ‘Only because I want a breath of fresh air anyway.’

  Outside in the dark, Rose tried to imagine that the flapping sheet was the grey horse, prancing restlessly and swinging his heavy tail. Carol leaned into it to subdue it while she took out the pegs, and Rose was smothered in the sheet. It wound itself about her and took her breath away.

  Chapter Twelve

  When she found herself back on the moor in the bedraggled bridesmaid’s dress, Rose ran in her bare feet as fast as she could to Wood Briar.

  She picked the sandals from the wall and carried them, and picked the wreath off the tree as she ran through the wood. She slipped through the back door and up the back stairs to her own room. There she changed into her waitress clothes, banged a brush into her wet, tangled hair and ran downstairs with a bright smile.

  ‘Where you been?’ Abigail was helping Sam to clear off the buffet. ‘Mr Vingo said you’d gone away because you felt sick, but no one could find you.’

  ‘I’m OK. Here, where’s another tray? I’ll help.’

  ‘Rose, where have you been? I’ve been so worried.’ Mollie turned her round to look into her face. ‘I looked everywhere for you. What’s the matter? Are you all right? Too much rich food?’

  ‘Don’t blame the food,’ Sam warned. ‘Too much champagne, would it be?’

  ‘Half a glass to toast the bride, that’s all I had. Leave me alone, everybody. I’m all right. I felt dizzy and I went out to get some fresh air, that’s all.’

  ‘Too much excitement,’ her father said, coming in on the end of the conversation. ‘I knew no good would come of it all.’

  ‘You sound like Mrs Crabbe.’ Mollie looked round quickly to make sure the pessimistic aunt was not within hearing. ‘It’s been a beautiful wedding. So romantic, don’t you think? Jeannie’s a lovely girl, and they’re very much in love. It takes me back.’

  ‘To those long ago days when you used to be in love with me?’ Philip asked.

  ‘Idiot. I still am.’ She kissed him.

  ‘I love you too,’ he said slowly and seriously.

  It must be the champagne. He never said that to Rose’s mother – at least, not when anyone could hear.

  ‘No time for fooling.’ He restored his old self again. ‘The bride’s ready to go, thank God, and she’s going to chuck her bouquet over the stairs, for some peculiar reason.’

  ‘So that all the unmarried women like us can fight for it.’ Abigail put down her tray, patted her hair, which was folded in a chignon, licked a finger and ran it over her tidy eyebrows. ‘Whoever catches it, they’ll be married before the year is out.’

  Rose and Abigail and two or three little girls and the other young women who were at the wedding were gathered in the hall when Jean appeared at the top of the stairs in her red going-away suit.

  ‘Good luck!’ she called, and hurled her flowers into the air, their white ribbons streaming.

  The hands went up to grab. Bodies knocked into each other. There was a scramble, and Rose found herself on the floor, holding the flowers.

  ‘Yay, Rose!’ Abigail cheered her. Everyone clapped. Rose got up, feeling the warmth of a blush spreading up from her neck.

  ‘Who’s the lucky fellow?’ people called out, and other witty things designed to embarrass a person. Then their attention switched to Jean and George, and everyone went outside and threw confetti and rice at them, as they ducked to the car and drove away, with Jean’s brother and some of the children running after it down the road.

  ‘Thanks for saying I felt sick,’ Rose grabbed Mr Vingo and pulled him off round the side of the hotel while the crowd was going back inside. ‘You saved my neck.’

  ‘Well, I knew where you’d gone,’ he said.

  ‘Could you hear the tune too?’

  ‘I guessed at it. I can’t hear it as clearly as you can, except when I play it for you myself. But I knew you were hearing it.’

  ‘Because I disappeared?’

  ‘Before that. Because of your face.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It had left us before you did.’

  ‘I’ve found out a lot of things.’ They walked round to the back of the hotel. Mr Vingo looked tired and pale. His hair was untidy. His bow tie was crooked. ‘Clues, you know. But a bit disjointed. Why does Favour make it so hard to see where things fit?’

  ‘Because he’s only a horse, after all. He can only take you to the scenes and trust you to put it all together and know what to do.’

  ‘What I’ve got to do is find these people now. The child’s in danger. I don’t know how or when, but I think I’ve got to warn them. It’s funny. I’ve been with this family twice now, as one of them, so I know them quite well, but now I’ve got to go and meet them as Rose, a stranger. Want to come with me?’

  ‘I can’t, Rose a stranger, Rose of all roses. It has to be you. That’s the way it works.’

  ‘It’s a lonely game,’ Rose said.

  ‘It’s the only game,’ Mr Vingo said.

  ‘We’re lucky, aren’t we?’

  ‘You can say that again.’ He had been picking up some of Abigail’s expressions.

  Rose did not feel so lucky when Mrs King discovered the state of the bridesmaid’s dress. She was leaving tomorrow, to stay nearer the hospital, and she asked Rose to bring the dress to her room so that she could pack it.

  Rose knocked on the door and went in, with the dress on her arm and the sandals dangling from her hand. She had folded the dress so that the worst tears and stains would not show.

  Mrs King was in a plaid dressing-gown, her body bulging all over the place in relief at being let out
of the tight satin suit. An open suitcase was on the bed. Rose stepped forward and was going to put the folded dress into it, but Mrs King took it from her.

  ‘I’ll pack it. I’m a champion folder.’ She shook out the dress, and gave a short, loud scream.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rose mumbled, swinging the sandals against her legs in great embarrassment. ‘It got a bit dirty. I’ll pay for the cleaning.’

  ‘Got a bit dirty – it’s ruined!’ Mrs King stood there with her feet planted wide apart under the dressing-gown, holding up the dress. Then she gathered it to her and hugged it as if it were a wounded child. ‘My Alice’s dress, that I trusted you with. And Alice lying there in pain in that hospital bed while you went gallivanting about in her beautiful gown.’

  ‘Well, here, wait a minute.’ Rose stopped being embarrassed and became angry. ‘I never asked to be part of the wedding. You were the ones who begged me to. I only did it to help out.’

  Mrs King gave another short, loud scream. She had just seen the white sandals, which were now mottled brown and green from earth and wet grass. She snatched the wretched sandals from Rose and wrapped them hastily in newspaper, as if they were indecent. The dress lay limply on the bed. As she turned to mourn over it again, her third scream made Rose retreat to the doorway and half way out of the room.

  ‘The sash! You’ve lost the sash. Oh, Rose, you silly girl!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Rose could not say, ‘It’s caught up in the brambles at Noah’s Bowl,’ so she went out and shut the door, and escaped to her room. She felt bad about the dress, but with what she had on her mind she had not got the time to sympathize with Mrs King.

  On Sunday, Rose went off to Newcome before the Kings came down to breakfast. She did not want to be there if the whole thing started up again. Hilda and Gloria and Mrs Ardis had begun to clean up, and were all rather grumpy and discouraged, now that the excitement of the wedding was over and they had nothing to look forward to. But Rose’s excitement was still to come. She was on the brink of her own great adventure of rescue. The goings-on at Wood Briar seemed oddly tame and irrelevant.

  First she had to warn the Morgans that Davey was in danger. She found her way to the part of town where the old branch line led to what used to be an area of small factories, until most of them failed, for one reason or another, and went out of business. There was an ancient, dank canal here, and at one point the branch line rose to cross it. This might be where she would find the brick railway viaduct with the tunnel.

  Keeping the railway in sight, Rose looked in vain for the back of the hoarding, raised above a flat roof on its iron struts. A big advertisement for a car hire firm kept catching her eye – ‘WHY PAY MORE?’ – with a grotesque picture of a grinning family packing themselves into a small silver car, plus the grinning dog. ‘ENJOY MILES GALORE!’

  She put a foot on the ground to stop the bicycle, and looked at the sign again. Of course. Stupid Rose. ‘Silly girl.’ (The thought of Mrs King gave her a small pang of guilt, but not too troublesome). This was the front of the hoarding of which she had seen the back.

  She rode through some streets until she could see the back of it from the same angle, and – Oh, my God, there was the off-licence grocer’s shop where the man who didn’t serve minors served beer to minors for their fathers. It was the strangest feeling to see it as herself, having seen it in her disembodied state, when the only body she had was Carol’s.

  Here was the high kerb up which Carol had tipped the front wheels of the push chair. Here was the piece of pavement by the window full of soup tins and faded cake mix packets where Carol had made Rose anxious by deciding to leave Davey while she went inside, before she glanced up the street and saw a jostling line of boys, and changed her mind and pushed him into the shop.

  And here was the corner which led to the way to the Morgans’ house.

  Rose got off and wheeled her bicycle, rather slowly now, because she was rehearsing what she was going to say. She turned the corner and walked down the street of shabby houses where Carol had walked, singing to Davey while she pushed him with one hand, her head high and the other hand making theatrical gestures to an imaginary audience. Another corner. Rose stopped and sighed deeply, partly with relief, partly to fill herself with oxygen for the undertaking.

  Here was the deserted street at last, and there was the Morgans’ house. There was the gate lying on the ground. There was the window with the dying plants through which Carol had gazed and daydreamed. There was the house across the street, with the cat in the window box again. There was the shadowy entrance to the tunnel.

  There was Carol’s old wreck of a bicycle, leaning against the wall under the kitchen window. There was the front door, with the pram without wheels blocking it. No good knocking on that door. Rose had never seen anyone go in or out of it.

  She leaned her bicycle against the gate post – there was no fence left, so there was no point in the gate anyway – and walked round to the back door.

  She lifted her hand, but the door opened before she could knock. Someone had been watching her from the window.

  ‘Hullo,’ Carol said. She looked like Rose had imagined her, lively, sharp, short curly brown hair.

  ‘Hullo,’ Rose said. They looked at each other. It was funny. Rose knew Carol, but Carol did not know Rose.

  ‘I – er, can I come in?’ Rose had planned that she must say what she had to say to as many members of the family as possible.

  ‘What’s it about?’ Carol looked a bit nervous, as if she was used to people coming to the door for money owed.

  ‘Who is it?’ A yell from within, breaking on Mrs Morgan’s cigarette cough.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Isobel Forest.’ Rose had always liked the queenly name of Isobel, and Forest was near enough to Wood.

  ‘Come in or go out,’ Mrs Morgan’s voice said. ‘There’s a wicked draught.’

  Carol stepped aside and Rose stepped in. Mrs Morgan was by the window in the armchair with the sagging seat, her bottom almost on the floor. Mavis was writing a letter at the table, with the remains of breakfast pushed aside. Davey was on the floor with a crust. Gregory came up to Rose with round trusting eyes, and said, “Ull-’ull-’ullo.’

  Rose crouched down to him, as Carol always did, to make herself his size. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Gregory,’ he said through his fingers, which were all crammed into his mouth.

  ‘That’s nice.’ Davey crawled over to Rose and held out his chewed crust. ‘And who are you?’

  He couldn’t or wouldn’t say.

  ‘Who have you come to see,’ Mrs Morgan wanted to know, ‘us or the babies? Are you someone from Carol’s school?’

  ‘No,’ Rose and Carol said together.

  ‘I live near here,’ Rose said, ‘and I was wondering if you’d seen my puppy. I lost him, you see.’

  ‘Oh, poor you,’ Carol said. Mrs Morgan tutted and shook her head sentimentally, and even Mavis looked up.

  ‘What’s he look like?’ she asked.

  ‘Little and brown, sort of rough-haired,’ Rose invented. ‘Only half a tail.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It got caught in a door when he was tiny.’

  ‘Oh.’ The family drew in their breath.

  ‘I saw a black and white dog that looked lost,’ Mavis said. ‘Almost brought him home. But he had a long tail.’

  Rose shook her head. ‘That’s not Mousy.’

  ‘Mousy? That his name?’

  ‘Because he’s mouse-coloured. I dream about him every night. He’s been gone four days.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  They were so nice and sympathetic that Rose felt bad about making it up, but she had to get on with the dreams. ‘I dream a lot,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, so do I,’ said Carol. ‘Last night I dreamed I was in a film studio, and –’

  ‘I see things in dreams sometimes.’ Rose had to interrupt her, to get to the important part. ‘As a matter of fact, I h
ad a dream about this house.’

  ‘What about it?’ The mother leaned forward, looking a little less nice and more suspicious.

  ‘Da- The little boy was here, and he was in danger,’ Rose said quickly. There, it was said. She had thought they would be shocked or alarmed, but they all laughed, including Gregory, and then Davey, who liked to laugh, ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha,’ on one note, when the family laughed.

  ‘Sometimes my dreams come true,’ Rose persisted. ‘Please be careful of him.’

  ‘Come off it,’ Mavis said. ‘He’s the most cared-for kid in the universe.’

  ‘Apple of everyone’s eye, he is.’ His mother bent, coughing, to pick him up, and hugged him, blowing cigarette smoke all over his face. ‘No one’s going to hurt a hair of his little head.’

  ‘Well.’ Rose did not know what else to say. ‘I’m just telling you.’

  ‘Thanks, but don’t bother.’ Carol edged her to the door. Behind her, she heard Mavis whisper to Mrs Morgan, ‘What’s wrong with her? Bit barmy, I’d say.’

  ‘I hope you find Mousy,’ Carol said as Rose went out.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Before the door closed, she heard them explode in laughter at the ridiculous idea that anything could happen to their precious Davey.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rose’s warning hadn’t worked. What could she do now?

  All the way home, frustrated from having failed to make the Morgans understand, Rose puzzled once more over the few clues that she had.

  A child was in trouble, or danger. Was not in trouble now, since Davey was perfectly all right, so it must be something that was going to happen.

  She knew the house, and where it was.

  Mr Morgan was taking his family to a fun fair.

  Gwendolyn had a date for her birthday. Where did she fit in? Was she a friend of the family? Was she going to the fun fair with them on her birthday? When was her birthday?

  The fun fair was starting next week, Rose knew, but it would be there for several days. Was she supposed to go there every day and try to find the Morgans? Was she supposed to go to their house every day, in case something bad happened? They thought she was barmy already. They would have her arrested if she kept turning up.