2003 - A Jarful of Angels (26 page)
Read 2003 - A Jarful of Angels Online
Authors: Babs Horton
Fatty had done what he’d meant to do: he’d given the statue her head back. Iffy had thought that might have made him happy but it hadn’t and it wasn’t like him to be miserable. He never spoke about the puppies again, but Iffy knew he would never ever forget, and he didn’t once mention that night under the bridge when they’d heard Dai and his mam messing about.
He seemed different somehow. Paler. Like all the hot air had been let out of him.
He mooched about for days. He barely spoke. Head down, hands in the pockets of his huge shorts, kicking out viciously at stones on the road. He only cheered up a bit when one afternoon Bitty came running, pulling them by the sleeves, pointing excitedly, dragging them down to show them the queue down by the Dentist’s Stone.
Carty Annie was holding court, telling fortunes. A tanner a go if she didn’t like you. Free if she did.
Bessie ran off home. She didn’t want her fortune told.
Iffy made Fatty go first. He spat on the palms of his hands and tried to rub some of the dirt off.
Carty Annie saw him and grinned. She took his hand in hers and drew her finger across it this way and that. Fatty giggled. He was very ticklish.
“I see women…”
Fatty looked at Iffy and winked. Iffy nudged Billy in the ribs.
“Women all around you…A half-naked woman in the water.”
Iffy giggled and put her hand over her mouth. Fatty gave her a look over his shoulder, a shut-your-bloody-trap look.
“I see a cap.”
That meant he’d work down the pit.
“And a gown.”
Operations. Poor bugger.
“And a place of learning.”
School.
Iffy didn’t think Fatty would stay in school long. The teachers picked on him because he was scruffy and they didn’t seem to like him even though he was really clever.
Carty Annie let go of his hand for a moment then quickly took it back. “I see a large expanse of water, a restless ocean. Someone coming across the ocean looking for you, looking for a long time without knowing why. Water rippling…a figure slipping away.” She looked hard at Fatty then and a troubled look stole across her face, a long dark shadow of sadness. “You will need to forgive.”
Iffy was next.
Her hand shook when Carty Annie took hold of it. She felt the heat in the old woman’s touch. Carty Annie squeezed up Iffy’s hand into a fist and held it tightly for a long while without looking at the palm. Then she raised the hand to her lips and kissed it very tenderly, a soft whisper of a kiss that made Iffy shiver. Slowly she uncurled Iffy’s tiny fingers and her bright-blue eyes looked carefully at the lines on Iffy’s palm.
After a while, she said, “Iffy, you have a long and winding path to take. I see mountains and eagles on the wing.”
A mountaineer! Carty Annie meant she’d climb Everest and be as brave as Fatty!
“You will have a good guide. A brave and handsome guide paving the way for you.”
Ugh!
Carty Annie closed her eyes but carried on speaking as though no one was there, “There will be much sadness, but then great joy. This will be the greatest journey of your life.”
A tear slipped from the old woman’s eyes and ran down a deep wrinkle on her weather-beaten cheek. It reminded Iffy of a river after a drought. An ancient woman with a face full of rivers, travelling down towards the sea.
“I see a woman. I see tears trailing.”
And more tears rolled down Carty Annie’s face, breaking the banks of the rivers.
“I see the laying down of a head on a damp breast.”
Carty Annie stopped speaking and sat very still for a while and then looked around her as if she couldn’t remember where she was or why they were there.
Iffy looked over her shoulder at Fatty and rolled her eyes at him, but he ignored her. He was staring down towards the Big House as if he had seen something that had shocked him. His face was very pale. He looked back at Iffy, but his eyes were faraway and clouded as though he was looking at her and through her, at the same time. There was a strange, troubled look about him that she had never seen before. He shook his head, blinked, saw her looking at him and smiled. Iffy grinned back.
She was disappointed that Carty Annie hadn’t said that she’d live to be a hundred or be stinking rich or famous. At least she hadn’t said she’d have babies coming out of her bum by the bucketful and a smelly husband.
Billy took his turn after Iffy.
Carty Annie put her hand on his head and ruffled up his curls.
Iffy knew why she did it, because it was what everyone wanted to do to Billy. He was so lovely you could eat him.
Billy looked up at Carty Annie, his lips were sucked up inside his mouth, which he always did when he was shy or excited. His eyes were wide, his eyelashes glistened in the sunlight.
Carty Annie took his hand and Iffy thought it looked little and pale against the old woman’s dark skin.
“You will live a long life, Billy. I see two children. I see twins.”
Iffy thought of Rosemary and Rosalind. Billy’s twins would be nice though. She imagined two little dimpled Billies in a pram, smiling.
“I see a foreign place, a wife…”
Iffy wondered who Billy would marry. She hoped it would be someone nice and kind who didn’t mind about him not talking.
“I see a crossroads in your life, Billy.”
There was a crossroads at the end of the Dram Road. There were four different ways you could go: Abergavenny, Merthyr, Trefil or back the way you’d come.
“You must take one of the roads. You must stop looking backwards, Billy. You must put your foot on the road. And walk until you find peace.”
Iffy thought he was a bit young to be thinking about going off on his own, his mam and dad would never let him. Anyway, they weren’t allowed to walk that far. It was miles to the crossroads.
“There’s something you need to get rid of. Something you must give away before you can move on, Billy. But remember, you may have to take the road on your own if no one else will follow.”
That was daft. His mam would never let him walk all that way on his own, somebody could grab hold of him and do him in.
It was growing colder. A restless wind blew through the trees and a few dying leaves began to fall. The sun was going down fast; deep-red fire burned behind the windows of Carmel Chapel and shadows crept stealthily up the valley. The town clock bonged the hour and Carty Annie shooed them away. They went running and skipping down to the river, shrieking and laughing through the long waving grass.
They had picked up the boy’s father in a pub over in the next town and brought him down to the police station. He’d been on a five-day bender. Will had disliked him on sight.
He was of medium height, a fat, sweaty, hard-nosed man with a dying cigarette stuck to his lips.
“So, Mr Bevan, you didn’t know your son had been reported missing?”
“No.”
He stared defiantly at Will across the table.
“You haven’t picked up a paper in the last few days?”
“Now, do I look like a man who reads the newspapers?”
“And you don’t know the last time you saw your son?”
“No, I don’t. Is that a crime?”
“And you’ve no idea where he could be?”
“No.” Mr Bevan spat out a strand of tobacco, re-lit his dead cigarette with a match and blew smoke across the table into Will’s face. He showed not the slightest interest in the whereabouts of his son.
“He’ll be back. You’ll see. He’s always pissing off and turning up again.”
Will’s patience had worn thin.
“And you think it’s perfectly normal for a ten-year-old boy to go off around the countryside on his own?”
“He’s not what you’d call a normal sort of boy, is he?”
“I don’t know, Mr Bevan. You tell me.”
“He’s odd. A bit missing. Picking up half-dead animals and trying to cure them, reading bloody doctors’ books.”
“It doesn’t occur to you that reading that sort of book might be the sign of a very intelligent lad?”
“Ay, well, if he’s that intelligent he’ll find his own way home, won’t he? And then he’ll feel my belt round his arse! Now if that’s it, I’d like to go.”
Will had walked out of the room then, because he’d had an enormous desire to reach across the table and split the man’s fat nose across his arrogant face.
They’d checked out his whereabouts though and he’d been where he’d said he’d been. Numerous landlords and fellow drinkers had vouched for his drunken presence in a multitude of pubs from Neath to Merthyr.
Iffy woke with a start to the sound of someone hammering at the back door. Upstairs the big bed creaked as her grandparents stirred. The noise grew louder. Someone was coming down the stairs two at a time. The hammering carried on, as though someone was battering at the door with a big stick.
Then came a great bashing on the tin bucket.
“Suffering piss pots!” said Grancha as he stepped down into the parlour.
Iffy opened the bedroom door a crack and peeped cautiously round it. Grancha was wearing only baggy underpants, one blue-veined leg stepping into his trousers, braces trailing, hopping and stumbling through the darkened room.
Still the awful racket went on.
Iffy slipped on her shorts and top, pulled on her black daps and followed him into the kitchen.
He bent down and unbolted the back door; daylight came flooding into the kitchen. Quarter past seven on the lop-sided clock that once was pawned.
Billy came falling into the kitchen along with the daylight. His small face was twisted with fear, his dark eyes were wild and wide. He pulled at Grancha’s arm and didn’t even seem to notice Iffy.
“What’s up, little fellow? Dear God, it’s not half past seven yet. Is somebody after you?”
Billy’d been to early Mass. Iffy knew because she could smell the candle smoke and polish on him.
He began to pull at Iffy’s sleeve, yanking her out over the step and into the deserted bailey, dragging and pulling her roughly up over the steps and on down the hill. Grancha followed behind, puffing and wheezing. Slipping and sliding down over the river bank, past the spot where they’d launched Lally’s baby into the river. Away on down towards the Leaky Pool. Billy pointing and sobbing.
“Jesus Christ!”
Grancha made the sign of the cross.
“Turn away both of you! Iffy, take Billy with you. Run. Run to Morrissey’s and ask him to telephone for an ambulance.”
She was floating face down in the deep water of the Leaky Pool. Her pale arms stretched out wide, like Christ on the crucifix. Her clothes spreading out around her. Close by a silver fish jumped and plopped.
Grancha went into the water, losing his footing, turning her over onto her back, pulling the weeds from her face. A soft white breast slipped from her unbuttoned dress.
Iffy and Billy ran. Ran and ran and banged on Morrissey’s shop door. Hammered, screeching for him to open up.
On Thursday afternoon Will walked to Gladys’s Gowns. True to her word Gladys Baker had asked Marlene to leave the door on the latch and he called out as he entered the back entrance of the shop.
“Straight up the stairs and the room in front of you,” she called out cheerfully.
Gladys Baker sat in a high-backed chair near the window. Will looked around him and he felt as though he had stepped back into a bygone age. The room was like a set from an old-fashioned stage play.
Arsenic and Old Lace
sprang to Will’s mind.
Will was in seventh heaven as he went against doctor’s orders and indulged himself in three slices of wimberry tart and cream, served up on beautiful old china. He didn’t see the point in worrying any more about his cholesterol levels, his allotted time was running out fast.
“Does your wife make pastry?” Gladys asked.
“My wife has been dead for years. She’s buried up in the Catholic cemetery.”
Gladys Baker nodded, smiled sadly and said no more on the subject and Will was glad.
The old woman was fascinating company. She’d opened her gown shop before the Second World War. Her daughter Marlene had worked there from the day she left school. Never married, see, the old woman said, got let down badly.
“Now, what is it that you really wanted to know? Not the price of hats, I’m sure.”
Will smiled and blushed, there were no flies on Gladys Baker.
“Yes, well,” he said. “Actually, the old aunt story was rather a ruse,” and he told her about his quest.
She listened, her eyes closing from time to time as though she was dropping off to sleep, but Will knew she was listening intently.
“And it’s been bothering me subconsciously all these years,” he finished.
“And you have to know before you…a heart problem, I suppose?”
Will was taken aback, he nodded.
“I have a problem like that. Had it for years. I take herbal stuff for it, kept me going well past the time limit the doctors gave me. I got the herbal cure from an old Irish woman, long dead now. Marlene makes it up for me. I’ll give you a bottle of it sometime.”
“Thank you. What I can’t understand,” said Will, “is that from that day to this there’s never been any sign of him. No sightings. No news. No body. It’s as if he vanished into thin air.”
“There was another case like that back in the thirties. A toddler disappeared from a farm up Worcester way. Terrible thing. It was said that the gypsies had taken him. Never found him until years later when they were doing some improvements on an old farm worker’s cottage. Found his skeleton down an old disused well…Most things have a rational answer.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I read about a similar case in Spain. I suppose sometime, tomorrow, next year, maybe in a hundred years the skeleton will be found. Long after anyone will remember the case of Lawrence Bevan.”
“There was a skeleton found a few years ago further down the valley,” said Gladys.
Will stiffened with interest.
She smiled sadly.
“Not your boy, I’m afraid. It caused quite a stir, though. They reckoned it was about forty years old. They couldn’t match it with anyone reported missing from around that time. Besides, it had no head.”
Will sighed. “Do you remember Lawrence Bevan, Mrs Baker?”
“Call me Gladys. Oh yes! A hard boy to forget. He was well-known around here. A bugger of a boy he was. Bright lad, he would have done well for himself if he’d had a chance. Course a lot of people had a downer on him.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, the family was rough and ready. The boy got blamed for things he never did. Then again he never got caught for a lot of things he did do!” Gladys Baker laughed.
“You liked him?”
“Couldn’t help but like him. I used to feed him up a bit. He used to come round here and I always gave him chocolate or sweets if I saw him about the place. He never asked for anything, mind. Very well-mannered he was.”
“What did he look like?”
“Oh a handsome-looking boy he was, the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen. Dark, dark blue. I felt for him. A lot of people pick on kids like that, make a scapegoat of them, makes them feel better about their own devious offspring. I would have been proud to have had him for a son.”
“What was his family like? I met the father briefly when we eventually found him. Drunk over in the next valley. He’d been on a bender, didn’t even know the kid had gone missing.”
“He was a good for nothing waster. He was in the army for years; a big bully of a man.”
“The mother killed herself, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Threw herself in the Leaky Pool just down from the bridge. Got fished out, but it was too late. Very sad affair that.”
“What was she like?”
“Fine, until she married that old thing. A beautiful girl she was. She used to do a bit of acting in the thespians. She was good too. I remember her playing Ophelia. I think I’ve still got some old programmes somewhere, with her photograph. She was trained as a midwife, but something went wrong. The drink got to her. Picked up with the wrong sort of man. She went to pieces after her old man came out of the army. There was talk that she’d had the boy by someone else. He certainly didn’t look like he was out of the same bloodline as his no-good father.”
“We had the father down as a suspect but he was well out of the way at the time, out of his head on drink. We checked, and he was where he said he was.”
“My guess is, Will, that if the boy didn’t drown, then he ran away. He was a resourceful little bugger, streetwise as they say nowadays. He was used to fending for himself. He had to be.”
“He didn’t have any other relatives who would have taken him in?”
“No. They would have put him in Bethlehem House with the Sisters Without Mercy and that would have finished him off!”
“I took a walk round where he disappeared the other day. It’s changed beyond all recognition.”
“Yes, well, they pulled down all the old ironworkers’ houses in the sixties. Built them horrible council-box things. Not the same at all. All the old neighbourliness went when they did away with the baileys. They were great them old baileys, everybody out having a chat, sitting out on a summer’s night keeping their eye on the kids. It’s all gone now.”
“It was a better place in the old days?” said Will.
“In some ways, in other ways it was worse.”
“In what way?”
“Well, I don’t agree with all these young women having babies outside of marriage like they do today. It’s not the marriage bit that bothers me. That’s not always all it’s cracked up to be. I just think it’s better if a kiddie has two parents, but I wouldn’t want to go back to the way it was.”
“In what way?” Will asked again.
“There used to be a home for unmarried girls further down the valley. For the poor little buggers who got pregnant. They were carted off there, whisked away out of sight, then they took their babies away. It caused a lot of unnecessary misery. Misery that still goes on today for those it happened to.”
Will didn’t want to talk about the home for bad girls. He changed the subject, but he was sure that Gladys Baker knew he’d done it deliberately. “I met a chap called Prosser and his wife the other day.”
“Oh! Mervyn Prosser. Bloody horrible child he was. Nasty, sneaky thing. He married that peculiar little girl, all ringlets and dull as a Toc H lamp. Done well for himself moneywise. A bit of a wheeler-dealer by all accounts. He’s bought the Big House, hasn’t he? You watch, he’ll ruin that place.”
“It’s pretty ruined now.”
“Ay, I know, but damn, in its day it was beautiful. I knew Mrs Medlicott, you know. Nice woman she was. We did a lot of trade with her and the girls from the school she ran.”
“Did you know Dr Medlicott?”
“Knew him as much as I wanted to. He was a queer old thing. We used to call him the Horse Doctor. Never let him near me or mine. I never liked him. Wandering hands he had. A friend of mine, Esther Jones, worked as a maid there in the war. She had to spend a night in the air-raid shelter on her own with him and she had to fight him off all night!”
Will stayed talking to Gladys until Marlene came back, then he took his leave.
“Come back another time,” said Gladys. “It’s done me a power of good talking about the old days.”
