Bull Running For Girlsl (13 page)

In silent halls and sheltered dells the air was thick with the fear of cholera. From the corrupted city of Sligo it had spread with leaden wings, bowed down with a history of a thousand corpses, to the very perimeter of Holland Park. It sought fresh victims. The iron gates of the park were locked and the lady of the house (who had just given birth to a tiny daughter) refused any person to enter or leave under any circumstances. Even the vicar was refused entry and all his letters returned unopened. The letters had never been placed into her ladyship’s hands; such was her fear of contamination, and her ignorance in believing that cholera was contagious. No one person could convince Anne Halifax otherwise and, in accordance with the wishes of the Mistress of the house, the gates stayed firmly secure. The father of the child, John Halifax, Captain of the 1
st
West India Regiment, had been killed in action and Anne Halifax had retreated, in her grief, to her private apartment to wait out the rest of her confinement.

The great house was made of blue-grey limestone and looked out at the flat-topped Ben Bulben. Lavender-edged pathways led to the most wondrous ships’ figureheads: Ares, god of war; Boreas, god of the northern wind; a rampaging lion; and the once, most-beautiful mermaid—all beaten by the pounding waves of the Bay of Biscay, and the cruel winds of many storms.

Within the great house life carried on at its languid pace, slower even, due to the day being heavy with the heat and the fact that the new babe was born to a fatherless household.

No governess ruled the older Halifax children and the only movement about the place that afternoon was when the gardener gave white roses to the maid, to place on the mahogany table in the entrance hall. Sometimes, only the sound of the pollen bees could be heard as they lumbered from flower to flower. However, the sickness was an ever-present threat to the peace of the great house.

Tilda Florence, cook to the family for seven years, often wore the expression of one of the figureheads in the garden—that of the wooden sea-maiden, looking as though she didn’t know in which direction to go. Tilda was wondering who would be the next to die from the cholera. She pulled apart the pages of the Sligo newspaper and scoured it for a familiar name and found one instantly.

“Look now, another one gone down.” For a moment her lost look was displaced by an alarmed one. She pushed back a lock of black hair under her cap and glanced up at the gardener, Dewy, looking for a response. No one called him by his real name of Algernon Patrick Moran. He seemed to prefer Dewy.

“Who is it this time?”

“Of cholera, at his residence in Sligo, on Tuesday last, Thomas Little, Esq. Surgeon of the County Infirmary. For upwards of thirty years he enjoyed, deservedly, the highest position as physician and surgeon in this province.”

“That’s a sad loss to us all, Tilda. He was a well respected man.”

Tilda moved on a little too quickly for Dewy’s liking:

“Look, here’s another cure for the cholera too: “Chalk mixture, six ounce; tincture of Catechu, four drachms; Glycerin of kino, four drachms; opium, one half drachm. One tablespoon of the above tincture to be taken after each discharge from the bowels. In case of the diarrhoea being obstinate, let the chalk mixture be made of decoction of logwood.”

“Another cure. I’m real glad that your ma taught you to read.”

“You wouldn’t be so whippy with your tongue if you had cholera and we had to nurse you. I’m thinking I’d just put you on the other side of them iron gates and let you fend for yourself.”

“Now you wouldn’t do that to yer Dewy—would ye?”

“I might not, but the lady is convinced if we touch someone who has it we’re done for.”

Tilda and Dewy had always been close but had never become lovers. They were both in their late thirties, with unusually, no history of marriage, or even a hint of a romance with anyone else. With a sigh Tilda threw down the newspaper and carried on making the dinner. The house was filled with the smell of herbs and roast chicken, which made them both forget about cholera. After all, were they not safe from the cholera or anything else in the Halifax house?

The heat of the day turned into the heat of the night. Even for August it was unusually hot. Not that Sligo, settled between the coastland hills, suffered from heavy downpours, for the island off the bay caught most of the rain. They did suffer terrible storms in the winter though.

Now, the older children of the house were ten years of age. A boy named George, and a girl called Geraldine. Albino twins they were, pink-eyed with moon-white hair. Their looks made a few people wary of them but that didn’t matter to the cook and the gardener. They simply had no liking for the children, as they thought them to be rude and churlish. George would pull up plants that had been tended with loving care by Dewy, and Tilda had caught Geraldine more than once sticking her grubby little fingers into pies, puddings and cakes in the pantry, spoiling them for the dinner table. George was far too fond of finding a hollow reed, catching a frog, sticking it in its backside and blowing it up to overwhelming proportions. Dewy, who would not harm any creature (unless ordered to by the mistress of the house), had often wondered if he could cure George of his zealous nature. He had been working on an idea for over a month now, but had yet to put a plan into action.

Unknown to all, the children had taken to midnight ramblings and had escaped Holland Park, bound for the house called Elsinore on Rosses Point where their cousin Alex lived. They had found a way out that even Dewy hadn’t reckoned on. It was behind the laurel bushes where no gardening was ever done and there was a small hole in the stonework of the ten-foot-high wall. There was just enough room for a ten-year-old child to get through, and if Geraldine had picked at any more pastries in Tilda’s pantry it would have been a tight squeeze.

The children had put a great deal of thought into their nighttime excursions. During the day they wore white cotton clothes to keep cool. But on these trips they toned down the colour and wore their winter greys and blacks. They made their way past the enormous, brooding gargoyle that had once adorned the prow of the
San Juan de Silicia
, wrecked at Streedagh on the coast close by.

Alex was to meet them on the beach below Rosses Point to play with the things that they had found there and had kept hidden for the last year in a cave. Again the entrance was only big enough for a child to enter.

Over the years many ships had run aground on Perch Rock, near Rosses Point, on their way past Coney Island and a formidable structure had been erected on the rock to warn the mariners. Upon a fifteen-foot limestone base stood a twelve-foot metal man, dressed in the garb of a Royal Navy sailor in a Petty Officer’s uniform. The effect of moonlight on the statue created an eerie sight, reflecting off the metal man, as one arm pointed to the safest part of the channel to pass through.

Alex was sitting on a rock waiting for her cousins. She had, by nature, been given the
correct
colouring of the Halifax family, following the male line of descent, and had coppery hair and apple-green eyes. The twins ran across the silver sand to greet her.

“And about time too. I don’t like sitting here with the metal man staring at me like that. He gives me the willies.”

“Why would you be scared of that? I’d have thought you would have been more afraid of the fairy folk coming for to carry you off. You’re always talking about them—you’ll draw them to you, you will,” said George.

“No, the fairy folk are gentle, kind in their ways.” Alex smiled and then frowned as she looked out apprehensively at the metal man.

“It’s all shite anyway.” George had brought a lantern with him and was trying to light it.

“Says you who looks under the bed every night and checks the closets. Hey, don’t light that yet, wait till we get to the entrance. We don’t want anyone to see it,” replied Geraldine.

“The only person to see this dim bugger would be the metal man. Come on, let’s get in.”

Once in through the narrow entrance, the children found some candles and lit them. They had quite a place there. Alex had, before the cholera, begged for the thrown away things that her parents were going to get rid of and between herself and her cousins had brought them down to the cave. George had to dismantle a large chair to get it through the entrance, but with a few nails and a hammer had done a reasonable job of putting it back together on the other side. Of course, no one except him was allowed to sit in it. There was a box of old wooden toys that Alex had rescued and an old, Indian rug, which the girls sat on to hear George tell his tall stories.

“What’s it to be tonight, George? Pirates, ogres with great hammers, water spirits?”

“The only watery spirits we will have tonight are those that belong in that bottle,” he laughed as he pointed to a bottle of rum he had taken from his father’s cellar two weeks ago.

“For your enjoyment tonight, my audience, it shall be your very own tale, Alex, the one you have heard so very often but love so very much.”

Alex raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“Get the skull,” said George as he cocked one leg over the side of the chair, smoothed his white hair away from his pink eyes and tried to make himself comfortable, shifting about on the damp, blue cushion.

Both girls in unison chanted. “Oh no, not the skull
—
”

They scrambled over to the corner of the cave and came back with a round object wrapped in a green paisley shawl.

“You do it, Geraldine; you know how I don’t like to touch it.”

“Why should I?” asked Geraldine, edging away from the object that lay in between them, within the tattered shawl.

“Fannies,” exclaimed George and tugged at the edge of the bundle.

The skull tumbled from it and barely touched the edge of Alex’s dress. It was a recent skull, not yet stripped of the base gristle that clung to its chaps and mottled head.

Alex screamed and that made the twins laugh.

“I don’t see what’s funny. Get on with the story George.” Alex took a deep breath and settled as far away from the skull as she could, but not too close to the dark corners of the cave with its half-shadows. The sea usually never came into the cave and only in the worst winter storms was the interior blasted by the driven sea.

“On—nay,
mostly
on the foggiest of nights when the cold sea lay dead off the point, the smugglers would come along the pathway that went up to Elsinore to store their ill-gotten gains far below the house. The previous owner had built passageways that tunnelled deep under the very house you live in, Alex. Underneath the very kitchen you eat your breakfast in. Underneath the very floor where you sleep in your warm, comfortable bed.”

Alex moved closer to Geraldine and shivered. A shadow loomed upon the cave wall behind George. Alex shivered even more and Geraldine took hold of her hand.

“In those passageways, the pirates led by Rove Maloney, hid the spoils of their wrecking. Along with Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy it is said that they brought with them more than treasure, but human prisoners whom they tortured and ate in some terrible ritual. All this happened in the very passageways that lie under these hills, perhaps in the very cave we’re sitting in now.”

Alex was staring into the flame of the lantern and then at the back of the wall behind George where the shadow seemed to be growing larger with each uttered word.

“Rove Maloney, Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy.”

The shadow seemed to grow larger and ripple slightly.

“Rove Maloney, Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy. Rove Maloney, Pen Willy, Craven Blackstock and Gin McCarthy. ”

With the names sounding like some incantation the shadow suddenly split into five distinct outlines, one being George and the others looking like grotesque shapes, shifting and lurching around the wall of the cave, seeking some prey to take down.

Alex screamed and tried to bolt out of the cave. Geraldine caught her and tried to hold her still. “Alex. It’s only a story, don’t scream, someone might hear.”

Alex began to cry inconsolably. “No it isn’t, they’re here. With George saying their names and three times and all—they’re here.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s only George firing up your imagination, that’s all.”

Alex insisted on leaving and began to make her way up the side of the hill back to Elsinore. The twins mooched around for a while and then decided to go home, as the mood had been thoroughly spoilt by Alex going off.

Tilda heard the back door bolt and wondered what the children had been up to in the garden. Anne Halifax heard nothing but the cries of her little mewling daughter.

The next night the twins left with a lantern, with the shutter a little way open to guide the way, so that they would not be discovered. The looming, wormwood shapes of the ships’ figureheads guarded each walkway, and more than once Geraldine looked over her shoulder to see if they would follow. Once a little way from the house and out of the walled garden, they opened the shutter of the lantern a little more and made their descent down to the shore.

Alex was once again waiting for them.

“I didn’t think that you would show up tonight,” said George.

“No thanks to you, George. I really think you shouldn’t call names up like that, made up or otherwise.”

“I didn’t make them up; old Griff told the story to me. It’s true—all of it.”

The three of them sat on the shore with the lanterns carefully positioned so that the light shone inwards towards the land and not out to sea. They didn’t want to confuse some foreign captain and cause a shipwreck. Many a ship in the past had fallen foul of pirate wreckers with lanterns, leading them astray and onto the rocks.

“What do you want to do now?”

“I never did finish the story.”

“No thanks.” Alex took a deep breath. “We could go up to Elsinore and play in the old shed. That would make a good den as no one goes there or into the cellar. There is a room off the main cellar corridor. I have a key to it.”