Long Lankin (14 page)

They didn’t come and they didn’t come.

Pete was fed up with waiting and had gone over to Mum’s friend, Auntie Barbara’s, to see her cat Flossy’s new kittens. Dennis and Terry were squabbling upstairs.

I hung around the house.

Dad was sitting there with his cup of tea, trying to read the
Express
and have a ciggie. Sometimes he had to go to work on a Saturday morning, but not today, and he was irritated with me.

“Do you have to be under my feet like this?” he said. “Look, it’s a lovely day. The storm’s cleared the air. Why don’t you just go out and play in the woods or something?”

“I’m waiting for Cora and Mimi,” I said crossly.

“Crikey. They sound like a pair of glamour girls with names like that,” he said with a laugh.

“Shut up, Rex,” said Mum, coming in. “They’re the girls I told you about, down at Mrs. Eastfield’s.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “Well, why don’t you just go over there and call for them?”

“Mum won’t let me,” I said grumpily.

“You know I don’t like the boys going down there, Rex,” she said, a bit flustered. “Anyway, the thing is, Mrs. Eastfield agreed for Cora to leave the little girl, Mimi, here so the older ones could go off and play on their own. Cora was going to drop her off, but they haven’t turned up.”

“Well, maybe they just don’t fancy it. Maybe she’s just gone off you, Roger, me old chum,” said Dad, snapping back his paper. My ears burned.

“Make me a cup of tea, will you?” said Mum. “There’s a good chap.”

I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove.

“I’ll have another one, too,” called Dad, “but not so much sugar this time. I could stand my spoon up in the last one.”

I listened to them talking over the noise of the kettle rattling on the gas ring. I couldn’t quite make out everything Mum said because of her quiet way of speaking, but I heard enough. “There’s something not right . . .” and “Mrs. Eastfield . . . bruises . . . Roger shouldn’t go down on his own. . . .”

Dad’s loud voice boomed through the wall. “Why should
I
ruddy go? I work bloody hard all week. I expect a bit of time to myself at the weekend. It’s not too much to ask, is it? Why don’t you stick Pamela in the pram and go down yourself? I don’t even know the bloody kids. That bloody church! You’re all living in the bloody Dark Ages round here. As soon as I get old Clark’s job, we’re moving to Chelmsford, where there’s a bit of civilization.”

When I went back in with the tray, Mum said, “Look, Roger, your dad’s agreed to take you down to Guerdon Hall and you can pick up Cora and Mimi, if everything is all right. They probably just got up late. You may even meet them on the way. Dad won’t take the car because there’ll be a lot of mud after the storm and he might not be able to get it back up the hill. He can bring Mimi back here to play with Dennis and Terry.”

I mumbled, “Thanks, Dad,” but knew he didn’t really want to do it.

He huffed and puffed all the way down Fieldpath Road, but by the time we got to Ottery Lane, he’d cheered up a bit and even took me into Mrs. Wickerby’s and bought some aniseed balls and a
Beezer
for later.

“I’ve hardly been down here,” he said as we went down the hill of Old Glebe Lane, the thick mud clogging our boots. “Your mother’s always going on about her and Uncle Bill being told the church was spooky when they were kids. That sort of thing doesn’t scare me, you know. I fought Hitler.”

“Do you know why they thought it was spooky?” I asked.

“No, I don’t ask,” he said. “I know people don’t like their kids coming down here. Of course, I was born in Great Sawdon, where Granny and Grandpa Jotman live. There was nothing odd in Great Sawdon, unless you count Percy Wheedon, who wore a fez and lived in a shed. I met your mum during the war when she was working in the NAAFI at Colchester — made a great cup of tea, your mum. Let’s have a look at this old church, then.”

We walked past the end of the Chase and carried on down between the trees. I didn’t really like Dad being down here. It was our special place.

“Oh, look at that,” he said, going up to the old gate and rattling the chains. “You know what this is, don’t you?”

“A gate?”

“Of course it’s a gate — it’s a lychgate.”

“What’s that when it’s at home, then?”

“A corpse gate,” he said. “I wonder why it’s all chained up.
Lych
is an old word for a corpse. It’s where they’d put the coffin down on its way to be buried. The priest would come and bless it and say some prayers, then he’d let them take it into the churchyard.”

I wasn’t too surprised at Dad for knowing stuff like that because he was always coming out with all sorts of funny things and knew everything on
Brain of Britain
on the wireless. He read a lot of books, and if he’d been born into a richer family, he’d probably have gone to university.

“Interesting, old lychgates,” he continued as we wandered down to the metal gate farther along. “They’re like doorways between the holy ground of the churchyard and the unholy ground outside.”

“Why’s that special, then?” I asked, unlatching it.

“Well, let me tell you,” he said. “If you’d died by your own hand — you know, a suicide — or were a murderer, or a lunatic, you’d never have been buried in here, not for anything. You weren’t allowed to go to heaven.”

“Where would they put you, then?”

“More often than not, they’d bury you at a crossroads, at night, sometimes facedown.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked, popping an aniseed ball in my mouth.

We strolled up the path towards the church.

“To confuse your spirit, if it decided to rise again and cause mischief,” said Dad, ruffling my hair. “Little unbaptized babies couldn’t be buried in here, either.”

“That’s really sad. It wasn’t their fault.”

Dad bent over a grave and picked up one of the wreaths, now brown and soggy, that we’d made with Cora and Mimi. “What’s this old thing doing here?” he said, and chucked it in the bushes.

“In Yorkshire, they used to sing a creepy song called ‘Lyke-Wake Dirge,’” he went on as we tramped through the grass around the back of the church. “Same word, you see,
lych
and
lyke
. The neighbours would keep a watch, or wake, over the corpse on the night before it was buried, to protect it from being taken over by evil spirits before it could be tucked up safely in consecrated ground. A newly dead body was thought to be very vulnerable, you see, with the spirit being not quite in this world yet not quite in the next, either.”

As we walked back along the path and out onto the road, Dad started singing the song. I joined in, stamping in and out of the puddles on our way up the Chase to Guerdon Hall.

I looked in the small mirror on our bedroom wall. My right eye had half closed up and was black and swollen. Down the middle of my bottom lip was a line of dark dried blood. Mimi had cried when she woke up and saw me.

When I went out of our bedroom to go to the bathroom, I saw there was an enamel bowl on the floor, full of white water smelling of Dettol and, next to it, a sponge in an old saucer. Auntie Ida must have left it there. I took the bowl to the bathroom and dabbed as best I could, but it stung. I was so sore and miserable, but my eyes couldn’t make any more tears. In the morning, my pillow was soaking, tears mixed with pink watery blood from my mouth.

I went back to my bedroom and just sat on the bed and stared out of the window. It was a lovely sunny day, and the heavy rain had washed all the trees and grass so they looked bright and clean.

Mimi brought me up a boiled egg and soldiers, and then just stood and cried quietly when I said I didn’t want it. She climbed on the bed and put her arms round my shoulders and her cheek against mine, but I felt like a stone. After a while, she left and I went over to the mirror, brushed my hair, and tried to put my own plaits in.

I heard banging on the big front door, voices, then Mimi running back up the stairs.

“Cora, Cora, it’s Roger! Come and play, come on — oh,
please,
Cora, come
on,
” she pleaded, pulling my arm. “Auntie Ida says you can.”

I didn’t want to go anywhere.

Mimi ran back downstairs. After a while, I heard someone coming up. They knocked on the door. I knew it had to be Auntie Ida. I didn’t want to see her.

“Cora, Cora, it’s me.” It was Roger’s voice. “What’s the matter? Why won’t you come and play? Dad’s bought us some aniseed balls from Mrs. Wickerby’s. Come and have some.”

I opened the door a crack, and when he saw me, he gave a long, low whistle.

“Tell you later,” I mumbled.

“Here, have a sweet,” he said quietly, holding out the paper bag.

“I don’t think I can.”

He fiddled around in his back pocket and got out a liquorice pipe, wiped off the fluff, and held it out. “Try this — it’s softer,” he said. When I smiled, my lip split.

We went downstairs. I heard Auntie Ida going off into the kitchen. Standing just inside the front door with Mimi was a tall man I didn’t know. Finn was sniffing around the man’s feet, and he patted the dog on the head.

“It’s all right — it’s Dad,” said Roger.

“Crikey! Hello, Cyclops,” said Mr. Jotman. “You’ve been in the wars.”

“She tripped down the stairs,” muttered Roger.

“Has Mrs. Eastfield seen it?”

“I’m all right — honest, Mr. Jotman.”

“It could do with a warm flannel on it,” said Mr. Jotman. “Mrs. Jotman will sort you out.”

There came the loud clatter of washing-up from the kitchen. We left the house but Auntie didn’t come to say good-bye.

Mr. Jotman sang Mimi silly songs all the way along the Chase and up Old Glebe Lane. I hadn’t seen her giggle so much in a long while.

We crossed the main road in front of the Thin Man.

“Look, Dad, can you leave us here?” Roger said. “Cora can’t keep up. Could you take Mimi down and we’ll see you later?”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” said Mr. Jotman, saluting, then, to Mimi, “Are you ready there, shipmate?”

Mimi laughed and saluted back, and they went off together towards Ottery Lane.

Roger and I sat down on the bench under the swinging sign.

I said I had found Old Peter and that
Cave bestiam
was written on the picture. I even told Roger about the little clothes and the cot, but for some reason I couldn’t even explain to myself, I didn’t mention the woman in the room.

“Dad told me about that old gate,” said Roger, and he explained about lychgates, burials, and wakes. Then he added, “We’ve got to find out what that
Cave bestiam
means. We’ll have to try Father Mansell.”

I’ve no idea how old Glebe House is, but it’s not as old as Mrs. Eastfield’s. Mum says the whole house used to be the rectory, but it’s so enormous, it’s now divided into two. Father Mansell, the rector, and his wife live in one half, the bit round the back, and the grand bit at the front with the great big shiny black door is where Mr. Treasure and his family live.

Mr. Treasure’s the headmaster of Lokswood School on the other side of Daneflete. Mum says the boys’ parents pay a lot of money for them to go there — that’s why the Treasures can live in that big house and have a gardener with a petrol lawn mower you can ride on.

Father Mansell and Mrs. Mansell are really quiet. They have grown-up children who have left home and have families of their own. I wonder what it’s like living joined onto the Treasures. I wonder if they can hear them being smart and posh on the other side of the parlour wall.