The Various

by Steve Augarde

  He started to climb down the rope ladder once more.

  ‘We can cook and everything up here. I always do. Beans and stuff. It’ll be more fun with two. Hullo, Phoebs. Did you hear me whistling? Sorry.’ The old spaniel had wandered across the lawn to greet them. She snuffled vaguely at George’s knee, as he reached the ground, but got no response from him. Disappointed at having been falsely summoned, she turned away, and gradually began to track another scent.

  What was it with boys, thought Midge as she got to the foot of the ladder safely and dusted her hands together. They were all crazy, one way or another. She wondered whether George was what her mother would consider a Liability, and a Bad Influence. Probably. But he was nice, too, she decided – saying that she could share the tree house, and being friendly to her in general. Not all boys would be like that. Glancing back at the tree house as they crossed the lawn, she was suddenly reminded of the pods – the wicker tree dwellings of the Ickri. The memory took her by surprise; it seemed so long ago. And yet it was only yesterday. She longed then to tell – to try to explain to someone, to George, all the strange things, incredible things, that had happened. But what could she say? She’d made a promise, and anyway, who would believe her? She could hardly believe her own memory. Once again she tried to put it all behind her, busying her mind instead with thoughts of camping out and cooking spaghetti hoops, and playing records by lantern light, the pleasures of which George was happily promoting as they returned to the farmhouse.

  It took them the best part of an hour to ferry all the bits and pieces from the house to the cedar tree, and up onto the platform. They took everything but the outrageously garish water-cannon, which they left temporarily propped against the banister. (‘It’s no fun if you haven’t both got one,’ said George.) The whole exercise might have taken even longer had Midge not remembered seeing a sack truck in the cider barn, which, once loaded, they were able to pull between them, thus transporting a good deal of their cargo in one journey. It came in especially useful for carting the large wooden ammunition box to its destination, although getting the box up into the tree house itself was more of a problem. George was insistent that they should try, however, as he intended to use it for the permanent storage of his goods. Then, as he put it, he ‘wouldn’t keep having to go through this malarkey’ every time he came to stay. He also felt that the box would serve as a useful table, or even a bench. Midge was not familiar with the word ‘malarkey’. She said it to herself a couple of times and wondered if it was rude. George wasn’t above a bit of cursing here and there, she’d noticed.

  In the end, they managed to raise the empty box up into the tree by using the bungee cord that had once, literally, been George’s downfall. The box bounced and swayed about in a barely controllable manner on its ascent, but between them they eventually hauled it safely over the lip of the platform and slid it into a corner. They both sat down on it simultaneously and wiped the perspiration from their foreheads. It was hot. ‘I’m starving,’ said Midge. They had brought a saucepan, various tins of food and half a loaf of sliced bread, and Midge felt about ready for anything that was going.

  ‘Let’s have some breakfast, then,’ said George. ‘You open some beans and I’ll get things ready.’ He jumped up again and cleared a space among all the bits and pieces that lay strewn around the platform. The little collapsible object that Midge had guessed to be a stove turned out to be just that, an old primus, and George soon had it standing on its legs, near the edge of the platform, ready to be lit. He hunted among his tobacco tins until he found the one in which he kept the Zippo lighter that he used for camping. The stove was primed and lit by the time Midge had found the can opener.

  They sat once more on the edge of the platform, on either side of the primus stove, and dipped bits of bread into the saucepan of beans, taking it in turns to scoop up what they could, and licking their fingers with each mouthful. It was a sociable way to eat, and it tasted wonderful. Neither of them said much until the saucepan was wiped clean, by which time Midge was deep into a fierce reverie that involved living in a tree house with George forever, high above a flooded world, with nobody else in it. They would have a little boat tied to the tree and go fishing in it and look down through the cool waters at the cars and lorries and schools and clarinet lessons all drowned forever.

  ‘How about a sardine?’ said George, delving into his shirt pocket and producing a tin of them, like a conjuror. Midge giggled and gave a little burp. ‘Whoops, sorry. No, I’m full up now.’

  ‘Well, let’s sort all this stuff out then. Tell you what – I usually put the camp bed along the back wall here, but if you’re going to stay as well, then we could have one of these side walls each, put the beds along there, like that, and then have the box in between us. Like a table.’ This seemed a good idea, and, although Midge’s bed was imaginary as yet, they arranged the space according to George’s plan. The stove they left at the front of the platform, and put the lantern next to that. The big box went end-on against the centre of the back wall, and they re-packed it with anything not immediately required and some of the tins of food. The heavy old-fashioned records, in their strange paper sleeves, were left out and stacked neatly on top of the green crate. And pride of place went to ‘The Academy Nippy’, which was revealed by George to be a wind-up gramophone. Midge had never seen such a thing. George placed it on top of the ammo box, undid the chrome clasps and opened the lid. Inside there was a turntable, covered in brown felt, and a complicated piece of chrome work, a swinging arm of some sort, which looked like a bit of fancy plumbing. There was a little winding handle, with a black plastic knob on the end of it, and a shiny lever that moved backwards and forwards in an arc. The whole thing appealed to Midge’s fascination with things mechanical, and she loved it instantly, without completely understanding how it worked.

  ‘Make it go,’ she said. ‘Play a record.’

  ‘Well, pass one over then, whilst I wind it up.’

  Midge took a record from the top of the pile and looked at it. The yellowing paper sleeve was mottled with age. She drew out the shiny black disc – how heavy it was! – and examined the label. It was red, and there was a picture of a dog listening to a gramophone – His Master’s Voice. She’d seen that before. The song title was ‘The Road To Mandalay’ and under that it said ‘Tommy Atkins’. Beneath that, in smaller letters, it said – Pianoforte: Mr Forbes Eaton.

  George wound the handle a few more times, then took the disc from her and gently put it on the turntable. He moved the little lever, which started the disc turning, lifted the chrome arm and brought it towards the turntable, carefully lowering it onto the spinning disc.

  Immediately there was a crackling noise, and a piano began to play. It was surprisingly loud, and yet somehow the deep rumbling piano chords seemed far away as though the sound had had to travel many years before it could reach them. A man’s voice began to sing – ‘By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking eastward to the sea, there’s a Burma girl a-sittin’, and I know she thinks of me . . .’

  Midge looked at George who had turned away slightly, and now sat cross-legged on the bare planks, hunched forward, gazing out across the hazy wetlands, lost in the sound. Midge tried to listen, but the words were strange, and she had been instantly struck by how George seemed to be just like the Burma girl, looking eastward to the sea. How funny he was. ‘On the road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play . . .’ the voice sang. How weird was that? Why would flying fishes be playing in the road? She couldn’t figure that one out at all, yet she liked the sound of it. She watched the gramophone arm rising and falling slightly as the disc went round. It must have been a bit warped. The man sang how the girl was smoking a cheroot, ‘and wasting Christian kisses on an ’eathen idol’s foot.’ What an odd song. But she liked the bit with the flying fishes, and recognized it when it came round again. The man’s voice went up very high on the last line – ‘And the sun comes up like thunder out of China crrooorst the bay!’ The ch
rome arm reached the middle of the record and remained there, crackling, as the disc kept on going round and round.

  George continued to sit staring at nothing in particular for a few moments, then turned and gently lifted the arm from the record. With his other hand he moved the chrome lever and the black disc came to a halt. He glanced across at her. The little white patch of skin on his scarred nose was shiny in the sunlight.

  ‘Good, eh?’ He sounded just like his dad. Midge wondered if she ever sounded like her mum. She hoped not – and then felt slightly ashamed of herself.

  She wasn’t too sure what to say. ‘I love it – well I love the gramophone. Where did you get it?’

  ‘It was already here – so were the records, most of ’em. I’ve collected a few since. There was tons of junk piled up in the little end room, before Dad cleared it out. He threw lots of it away, but he let me have a look at it all first, and I kept this.’

  ‘It’s a funny song,’ said Midge. ‘Is it what Katie said – jazz?’

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘I don’t know what it is. Don’t know what it means either. I like it though. It’s different, and – well, I just like music anyway.’

  ‘What do you play?’

  ‘What – like an instrument? I don’t play anything.’

  ‘Oh. Do you sing then, in a choir or something?’

  ‘No. I can’t sing. I’m terrible. I just listen. I just . . . well, I just like listening.’

  ‘I play the clarinet,’ said Midge. ‘But only ’cause they make me.’ Her feelings about music were mixed. She liked it – some of it – but music was what took her mum away. And she didn’t much enjoy her clarinet lessons. She could do it, but it was boring. Practice, practice, practice, her mum said. Why? She didn’t want to play in some old orchestra and be on BBC2.

  ‘I like clarinet,’ said George. ‘And saxophone. I really like that. I’ve got a good one here – with clarinet, I mean.’ He began to rummage through the stack of records.

  ‘George! Are you up there?’ It was Katie’s voice. She was standing in the middle of the lawn, wearing jeans and a white blouse (how many times a day could a girl get dressed, Midge wondered?) and peering up through the branches. ‘Oh, there you are. Lunch is ready.’

  * * *

  Lunch was a slightly uncomfortable meal. None of the children were hungry – Midge and George were still full of bread and beans, and Katie had bought herself a sandwich in Taunton – so Uncle Brian, who had gone to the effort of making a cauliflower cheese, was not best pleased. He’d been in a bad mood all morning, and, to make matters worse, he burnt his mouth on the hot cheese sauce and that made him crosser still – especially as everyone was watching him eat, whilst leaving their own food more or less untouched. So George’s announcement that you couldn’t beat good old baked beans straight from the pan could have been better timed – likewise his casual request that Midge be allowed to come and stay in the tree house with him.

  ‘Don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ said Uncle Brian, who had left the table to get a glass of water. He stood with one hand on the tap, and sipped at the glass, letting the water cool his tongue before swallowing.

  ‘Why not?’ said George. ‘It’s not as though she’s going to . . . molest me, or anything.’

  ‘George . . .!’ spluttered Uncle Brian, ‘Your being molested, as you put it, is not what concerns me. What concerns me is that in your company – and I’m going on past experience here – Midge has an excellent chance of ending up with her hair on fire and a couple of limbs broken. I’d like to be able to hand her back to her mother pretty well intact, and the way things stand at present it’s already touch and go. And that’s on her own account. Stick the pair of you up a tree with a box of matches for company, and I can see myself presenting Christine with the remains of her daughter in the matchbox. Like I said, not a very good idea.’

  George let it rest for the time being, but remained hopeful. He gave Midge the thumbs up sign, whilst his father’s back was turned, and nodded reassuringly.

  Then Katie said, unhelpfully, ‘Don’t know why anyone’d build a stupid tree house in the first place. Asking for trouble, to build a tree house for a nimrod like George.’

  ‘Who are you calling a nimrod, pig-nose?’ said George, and Uncle Brian said that that would do. He put the glass down heavily on the draining board and took a deep breath, but said no more.

  Midge felt embarrassed and tried to think of some way of changing the subject. She looked at the big black-and-white photograph that hung on the kitchen wall.

  ‘Who’s that girl,’ she asked, ‘in the photograph?’ Nobody said anything for a few moments.

  Then Uncle Brian turned round and leaned back against the sink, his arms folded. He still looked a bit cross. ‘It’s my . . . let’s get this right . . . it’s my grandfather’s sister. So that makes her my great-aunt. She’d have been your great-great-aunt.’

  ‘What, she’s Midge’s great-great-aunt too?’ said George.

  ‘Well, yes, you see, Midge’s mum is my sister, Christine. So my grandad was Christine’s grandad too. So my grandad’s sister, my great-aunt, was Christine’s great-aunt too. Which makes her Midge’s great-great aunt as well as yours.’

  ‘It is confusing though,’ said Midge. ‘I never knew that I had a great-great-aunt.’

  ‘Well, I could probably explain it better on a piece of paper,’ said Uncle Brian, ‘but, yes, she’s one of your relatives, ancestors, whatever.’

  They sat in silence and looked at the picture. The girl seemed to stare back at them, and past them, the dark eyes far away, looking beyond the camera at something else. The pale round face was echoed by the blurred clock face in the background. Twenty-five past ten. Unusual, those dark eyes seemed, in combination with such fair hair – a flossy cloud that must have been the despair of whoever had charge of it. The girl’s dress had many buttons and the high collar was drawn up tight about her slim neck. Her boots, Midge thought, must have taken all morning to put on – so long and complicated were the lacings, criss-crossed from instep to shin. She could imagine what it must have been like to put them on . . .

  ‘What’s that in her lap?’ said George. He had asked this question before – had had this conversation before – but was secretly intent on improving his father’s temper, till such time as he could safely reintroduce the topic of the tree house.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘Looks like a rattle or something. Although she’d have been a bit old for that. They might be bells, those little round things. She lived here, you know – in this house – grew up here.’

  ‘And went nuts,’ said Katie, bluntly.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Katie – always useful to hear the informed opinion of a medical expert. Certainly she had . . . problems.’

  ‘But she’s so beautiful,’ said Midge. ‘I love her hair. She doesn’t look, you know . . . mad . . . or ill or anything. What was her name?’

  ‘Oh, lovely name,’ said Uncle Brian, cheering up a bit. ‘Celandine. Unusual, I think, for the time. They were quite a well-to-do family, so to be named after anything less exotic than a rose or a lily would have been a little out of the ordinary. A celandine isn’t even a garden flower, really – more of a woodland thing. I like it, though. Celandine. Has a ring to it.’

  ‘What was the matter with her?’ said George, encouraging his father more, letting him talk his way out of his bad mood.

  ‘Oh, voices, I think – hallucinations. Seeing and hearing things that weren’t really there.’

  ‘Like what?’ Midge started to say – although her tongue seemed to have gone all funny. She swallowed and tried again. ‘Like what things that weren’t really there?’

  ‘Well . . . like . . . fairies, I suppose, for a kick off. And for want of a better word.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE DRONE OF the Counsellors’ voices below mingled with the surrounding hum of summer insects, and Little-Marten’s aching head began to droop. Hig
h among the bleached and leafless branches of the Rowdy-Dow tree, there was nowhere to hide from the glaring sun, and no escape from the dull drubbing beat that thumped at his temples. Sick with apprehension, and dizzy with long hours of waiting in the heat, he clung miserably to his Perch and cradled the polished clavensticks – almost too hot to hold – against the soft leather of his jerkin.

  After closing the wicker gates of the East Wood tunnel upon the Gorji maid, Little-Marten had fearfully made his way back through the humid forest, keeping well away from the main paths – and expecting at every minute to be waylaid by Scurl. He was alone and frightened among the silent looming trees, from any one of which a sudden arrow might come, and so by the time he had reached the relative safety of Counsel Clearing his clothes were sticking to him with the perspiration of terror. He thought in desperation to fling himself before Maglin, to tell all and beg protection – but why would the fearsome General take the part of the lowly Woodpecker against his own captain? And Scurl’s cronies would back their leader’s word, for certain sure. Snivelling would do no good – ’t would make things worse, if worse they could be.

  In the end he had sought out Aken and simply reported that the giant had gone. His other troubles he had kept to himself – he said nothing of what had happened at the spring. Aken, preoccupied, had merely glanced at him and sent him home. Little-Marten had then spent a fearful night, sleepless in dread anticipation of the wrath of Scurl, who would surely come and strangle him if he once closed his eyes.

  And now, today, he had been forgotten. He had sat upon his Perch, hour after hour, awaiting orders with his head bowed, and slowly roasting in the unforgiving sun. The voices of the Elders and the tribe leaders rose and fell, endlessly. It was supposed to be a closed Counsel, yet few could keep away, and around noon more of the Various arrived in the clearing below, to listen, respectfully at first, to the long arguments of their leaders – but gradually, as the impossibility of their predicament became clearer, to disrupt and argue. The farmers and fishers, their wives and children, came in from the plantation, until soon all but the Tinklers and Troggles were gathered beneath the Rowdy-Dow tree – summoned, not by the clavensticks, but by rumours of disaster. The Gorji were coming. The Gorji were coming – nobody knew when, but soon. The noise grew louder. Little-Marten could hear Maglin’s voice, calling for order.