2003 - A Jarful of Angels (2 page)

From her photo frame high on the wall, Great Granny Gallivan, the Tartar, looked down. Her beady black eyes kept guard over the family treasures: the ugly china greyhounds with dead rabbits in their mouths that stared each other out across the mantelpiece; the picture of the bleeding heart that pumped away in the blackness, splashing blood all over the chair backs.

Whenever Iffy had to go through the parlour she avoided Granny Gallivan’s eyes but they followed her, scorching holes between her shoulder blades.

She tossed and turned while outside the wind blew stronger and the dogs howled in the backyards. The clink of their chains sounded like the dance of manacled ghosts. She prayed that she wouldn’t have the nightmare tonight, the worst dream of them all, when an invisible ghost baby cried in a creaking crib and the smell of a foreign perfume crept out from the walls and a dark face came close to her own speaking to her urgently in a language she didn’t understand.

As the town clock struck midnight she thought of Fatty Bevan. Fatty wasn’t fat, just soft and round like the pictures of cherubs in old books, only dirtier. He would be out and about now in the dark on his nightly travels. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. He was the bravest boy in Wales and probably the whole wide world. He would be out in the cold and the winds, alone in the pitch black, there beyond the rattling window where ghosts and blind pirates would be walking the dark gwlis of the hillside.

The windows of Edwards’ bakery were lightly dusted with flour and sugar that flickered like frost in the light from the street lamp. Behind the glass of an upstairs bedroom window Billy Edwards sat on the window seat looking up at the night sky, waiting for the stars to come out. Just as soon as the first star appeared he would hold his breath and, if he could, he would hold it until he had counted a hundred stars. If he could do that, then everything would be all right. The noises in his head would disappear and he would be able to sleep.

The moon was high over Blagdon’s Tump. A giant, cold moon spinning in the liquorice black sky.

As he watched, a kite crossed the surface of the moon. A big red kite the colour of fresh, warm blood, and he knew that out there in the darkness Jack Look Up held the kite strings in his bony hands and would dance in the moonlight until the cock crowed and the dawn came up the river.

Behind him in the bedroom the clock ticked loudly, its doors fast shut on the long-dead cuckoo. He thought he could hear the breathing of his older brother Johnny who slept the sleep of the dead, night after night. He looked over his shoulder into the room. His own bed was unslept in. His clothes were strewn untidily across the rush-backed chair near the door. On the other bed opposite his, his brother’s clothes were neatly folded ready for when he awoke. His brother’s new sandals lay side by side on the floor ready for him to step into. They were brand-new brown sandals with creamy-coloured crepe soles and the price was still written on the bottom: fourteen shillings and sixpence.

The town clock bonged the half hour after midnight.

Still no stars.

He heard the wary tread of his father’s feet as he climbed the steep stairs to bed.

Billy stayed at the window. His father wouldn’t come into the bedroom. He never had in the last five years. His mother was already in bed and she only ever entered the room in the daytime.

“Goodnight, lovely boys,” his father called from the landing.

It was a tired, soft voice. Billy didn’t answer. He never did. There was no reply from his brother’s bed.

He heard the bed creak in the next-door bedroom, as his father sat down heavily and the clatter of the fob watch as it was laid on the dressing table.

There wasn’t much time left. He looked up desperately now for the stars.

One bright star splintered the darkness way above the moon.

He breathed in deeply, the icy air filling his lungs and making him shiver.

Another star lit the sky, and another, until there were five stars in the night sky. Bright as ice. Hot as molten silver.

The sobbing began in the room next door. Growing louder.

He felt his chest expand with pain.

Once again the red kite slashed the moon. Slowly the sky filled with stars, tiny pinpricks of brilliant light.

He counted them, until his pounding head seemed full of stars. His eyes ached and his chest felt as if it would burst. The sound of his brother’s breathing filled his ears and the sobbing in the next room grew ever louder until his head felt as if it would explode.

Still he held his breath and counted.

Once again the red kite danced across the moon.

Eighty nine…ninety.

His head began to swim, hot blood pounded in his ears.

Ninety-five.

In the glass of the window he saw the reflection of his eyes, eyes full of silver fire. Multitudes of stars now where his eyes had been. The drumming in his head grew even louder.

Ninety-nine, one hundred.

He let his breath out quickly, hot breath that steamed in the freezing air of the bedroom. He drew in great aching lungfuls of frosty air.

The sounds in his head began to melt away: his brother’s breathing slowed, stopped; the loud sobs became faraway laughter.

His eyelids began to droop, covering the reflected star fire. His head was full with the sound of music now. He waved to the moon, and climbed unsteadily down from the window seat. His brother’s bed was empty now, the folded clothes gone. Only the sandals remained. New sandals with the price still on the bottom.

In her pink bedroom in Inkerman Terrace, Bessie Tranter slept deeply, snoring gently into the frilly gingham pillowcase. The smell of eucalyptus and disinfectant hung in the air and a candle burned softly on the mantelpiece. In a glass cabinet near the window the faces of her foreign dolls had been turned towards the wall because she disliked the feel of their cold glass eyes on her face as she slept.

The bedroom door was ajar and beyond it her mother sat in a high-backed chair keeping guard in case Bessie had a bad dream and called out in her sleep.

Bessie slept on, dreaming her favourite dream. She had walked down the aisle of Carmel Chapel in a fairy-tale dress. The whitest lace you ever saw. White as snow, frothy as a fountain. She carried a bouquet of red roses and gypsophilia and she lost count of the bridesmaids who tripped along behind her. The congregation sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. When she stepped out of the chapel, confetti fell from the blue skies onto her shiny gold ringlets, like soft rain.

She waved gaily to the urchins of the town who had lined up on the hump-backed bridge to catch sight of her. Ragged urchins with grimy faces and running noses. The strange thing was, that among these dirty children stood Iffy, Billy and Fatty and that couldn’t possibly be right because they would have been grown up like her.

Later, in the kitchen of her dreams Bessie was busy making meals for her handsome new husband. She took down plates from the plate rack, dainty plates made of rice paper. From shiny saucepans that reflected her smiling face she served mint imperials for potatoes, spearmint pips for peas, chocolate slabs for meat. She sat up at the pink and white Formica-topped table, opposite her sat her husband, his face hidden by a large newspaper. And a beautiful voice on the wireless sang ‘Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be’.

Fatty Bevan listened, ears cocked for any sound. He heard the sound of his father’s bed groaning under his weight, a loud curse as his feet came into contact with the icy floor, the scrape of the cracked old chamber pot as it was dragged out from under the bed. His father coughed a thick, phlegmy cough. Silence. Then came the hiss as he pissed into the pot. He pissed a river, pissed as long as the Brewery horse did. Once, Fatty had looked in the pot and it had been full to the top – a brown and frothy stench. When Fatty peed it was green like cabbage water and barely covered the bottom. The stink of his father drifted across the landing. Fatty held his breath and tried not to breathe in. He waited and listened for the sound of the front door opening. Not likely. His mother wouldn’t be back until she was sure the old man was flat out. She’d still be in one of the back rooms of some pub, crying into her pint pot of cider. He waited for the sounds of heavy breathing. When he knew it was safe because his father had begun to snore, he pushed back the bleached flour sacks that acted as his sheets and blankets and felt under the bed for his sandals. His feet slipped into them like old friends. He’d gone to bed in his clothes, as he always did, ready each night to make his escape. He knelt on the bed and gently pushed up the window making barely a sound. He dared not use the stairs for fear of waking his father. He didn’t want another beating. He still had wheals on his back from the last one.

He eased his small body out onto the window sill, swivelled round with the dexterity of a monkey and lay, belly down, across the sill. He manoeuvred himself until he hung from the sill by his elbows, his bare knees grazed by the rough stone walls.

He gathered his strength. This was the tricky bit. He had to heave himself up on an elbow, and pull down the window so the draught from it would not wake the old man.

One, two, three. Yes! The window slid shut without too much noise.

He took a deep breath, let go of the window sill and dropped towards the ground, pushing himself out from the wall with his feet. He turned in mid air and landed on all fours in the frost-stiffened, clumpy grass of the yard.

A sharp stone grazed the palm of his hand. He licked the wound and it left a smear of blood on his chin. Then he was up and away hot-footing it off down the lane.

He kept close to the high walls that surrounded the Big House and when he heard the rumble of wheels coming over the hump-backed bridge he stepped into the overgrown gateway to the gardens of the house and pressed his body deep into the shadows.

The sound of the wheels came closer and he could hear Carty Annie cursing loudly to herself.

Carty Annie fascinated Fatty. She was mad, but only with grief; she wasn’t a dangerous lunatic. She was ancient, over a hundred years old people said. She was Irish and years ago she lost all her babies in one go. They got drowned in a storm in a lake in Ireland.

She had arrived in their town one day, pulling the same old cart she had now, trundling up the road that led from the faraway sea. She had moved into a tumbledown house in a place called Dancing Duck Lane and had stopped there ever since. They called her Carty Annie because she never went out without her cart. It was a wooden cart with buckled wheels and a piece of old rope for pulling. It was always full of queer old stuff that was no use to anyone: empty tin cans; clods of earth cut from the mountain; dead rabbits; jam jars; an old stone covered in green moss and slime; a cracked piss pot; a rusty tin bucket with no handle and a picture of the Pope with faded pink tinsel round the frame.

Sometimes, when the wind was in the right direction, she set up shop on the Dentist’s Stone. In the olden days the dentist came on a horse and people sat on the stone to get their teeth pulled out with pliers. No gas or nothing. There were still bloodstains on the stone and marks on the ground where they’d dug their heels in deep. She told fortunes.

Free if she liked you, a tanner a go if she didn’t. The queue often went right down over the hump-backed bridge almost as far as Carmel graveyard. Someone always kept an eye out for Father Flaherty and everyone scattered if he came on the scene.

Fatty never called her Carty Annie to her face, none of them did, just Old Missus. He didn’t know anyone who knew her real name.

He peeped through the bushes that wrapped him round and caught a quick glimpse of her as she passed. She walked with her head bent low and as she came level with the Big House she walked in a wide arc into the road, just the way all the kids did who believed it was haunted.

He’d watched her before as she wound her way towards her cottage. He knew her habits now. If he gave it ten minutes she would be back home, she’d park the cart in the lane and would head straight to her pile of sacking in the bare back bedroom. Another five minutes and she’d be fast asleep and when she was, he was going to peer through the windows and take a good look at whatever it was she kept in there.

The moon was high over Blagdon’s Tump and a candle still burned in the Old Bake House where the Tudges lived. There wasn’t a Mr Tudge because he’d run away with a fancy woman from over the mountain. Lally Tudge was fat. Her sister Dylis was fatter. Mrs Tudge was the fattest. That was the rule they learned in school.

Fat. Fatter. Fattest.

Daft. Dafter. Daftest.

They didn’t use the word daft much. Twp was the word they used. Twp meant not right in the head, but not dangerous. Lally Tudge was twp. Two splashes short of a birdbath. Ninepence to the shilling. No lights on upstairs. That made him smile. It was probably Lally who had the candle still burning now, too afraid to blow out the flame for fear of goblins and the sandman. He wasn’t afraid of anything like that. It was the living he was afraid of: he had reason to be.

The wind was icy now and blowing much stronger. He shivered in his thin clothes and hugged himself. He waited. The Old Bugger hooted down in the chapel graveyard and the dogs in the Three Rows began to yelp and howl.

He slipped out of the shadows and walked on past the Big House. Over to his right on the lonely piece of ground they called the rec the roundabout turned slowly in the wind. He climbed the stile. No sign of Carty Annie anywhere up ahead.

The twisted branches of the withered tree were black against the sky and their shadows dripped onto the path. Once an old man had hanged himself there by his bootlaces. They had found him on Christmas morning, his arms and legs splayed out as though he were doing a star jump the way they did in games lessons at school. They had to cut him down and defrost him with a blowtorch so they could fit him in a coffin.

Fatty reached the house, which had grass and moss growing from cracks in the walls and an old bird’s nest sitting on the crooked chimney pot. He stepped stealthily up to the darkened windows and pressed his small nose up against the dirt-streaked glass. His hot, loud breath made rivulets in the grime on the cracked panes as he strained to see inside.