Mr Campion's Fault (10 page)

They found themselves confined in what was clearly a kitchen area, a tight mesh of folding Formica surfaces surrounding a gas hob on which was balanced two unwashed metal saucepans and a battered kettle which looked as though it had been used for target practice. From the ceiling, hung from a latticework arrangement of lengths of clothes line were bunches of dried flowers, herbs and sprigs of mistletoe.

So far, so odd, if not exactly
witchy
, but then the boys’ heads turned in unison to face the front end of the caravan where three hissing gas lights provided a focussed pool of bright light in one corner, casting the rest of the van into dingy shadow. The effect was theatrical, as if an overhead spotlight had been shone down only to illuminate upper stage left – and the actors who were there waiting for their cue.

‘You’re not the ones I expected,’ said the woman. The large, long-haired tabby cat resting across her knees opened its mouth and showed its teeth, but said nothing.

The woman wore a wool wrap or blanket around her shoulders and a headscarf tied in a big knot under her chin. Her face was long, thin and white and her lips pursed as if permanently puckered. She was sat on one of the corner bench seats which all caravan enthusiasts knew converted into a bed. Behind her head were long dark drapes and though she could not have been, given the dimensions of the van, more than twelve feet from the boys (who had stayed close together and within leaping distance of the door), she seemed to be far more distant and, when she spoke, her voice was strangely disembodied.

‘Well, then. What’s Old Ivy done to deserve this, then? It’s a mucky old night to go visiting.’

Roderick felt a friendly nudge in the small of his back and, thus prompted, found his voice. ‘Mrs Neal,’ he began politely, ‘I’m Roderick Braithwaite.’

‘Ada’s lad, aye, I know that,’ said the woman, who remained strangely inert even whilst smoothing the cat on her lap with long, exaggerated strokes. ‘An’ you’ll have come to Ivy about your haunting, I’ll bet.’

‘It’s actually a poltergeist,’ said Roderick with the seriousness of a train-spotter, ‘and we want it gone. We thought you might help us.’

The woman inclined her head slightly but her face remained expressionless, staring not quite at the intruders but off to the side.

‘You’ll have tried our spineless vicar, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ Roderick said quietly, but saw no reason to add that they had also tried three Methodist ministers and a lay preacher.

‘Just what d’you think Ivy can do?’

‘Perform an exorcism. I’m willing to pay. I’ve got over twenty-five pounds in my Post Office savings,’ Roderick pleaded. ‘I just want it gone, for my mum’s sake.’

‘Keep your money, lad and stop roaring …’

‘I’m not crying!’ said the boy defiantly.

‘You’re close to it,’ said the witch harshly. ‘But tears won’t help anybody; they never did. Now I don’t know what you think or what folks have told you I am …’

‘Everyone says you’ve got powers,’ said Andrew in support of his friend’s plea.

‘I don’t do exorcisms – that’s priest work,’ snapped the woman, ‘so you’d be throwing your money away. Now get yourself home before your mother starts to fret. If I could help Ada Braithwaite, I would. She’s a good woman and she’s never done me harm or called me bad behind my back, but my powers don’t run that way. Tell her she won’t have to put up with it much longer, that’s all I’m saying. Now go and leave me in peace.’

‘I could get more money …’ started Roderick.

‘I said go!’

The witch woman known as Ivy Neal slowly rose to her feet and it seemed, under the peculiar light thrown out by the popping gas mantles, as if she was not only standing up but growing taller as she did. She had gathered the cat in her arms and, clearly displeased, the beast showed its teeth again and hissed at the two boys.

Then Ivy Neal took one step towards them and totally disappeared.

Roderick and Andrew looked at the empty interior of the caravan, then at each other, and then scrambled for the door.

Being the rugby player of the two, Andrew easily outstripped Roderick as they beat a very hasty retreat away from the caravan across the Green, aiming for the sanctuary offered by the street lights on Oaker Hill. Through their noses they were able to judge their proximity to safety by the smell of frying fish and chips which hung in the air like the scent of a night-blooming tropical plant.

They stumbled on to the road almost opposite the Green Dragon pub and turned right, slowing their pace to a purposeful stride, towards Elliff’s fish shop and the long hill up through the village.

‘She really is a witch,’ said Roderick, catching his breath, ‘if she can disappear like that right in front of us.’

‘That was a trick and a half, all right,’ agreed Andrew, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one had seen their undignified flight across the Green, ‘and it must be a trick. If she had any real magic she’d have turned us into frogs, or would that be toads?’

Roderick giggled nervously. ‘Warty toads in your case,’ he said, then squealed as Andrew punched him on the arm. ‘Ow! Gerroff! Seriously, I reckon it’s best we don’t mention our little meeting with Ivy to anyone.’

‘I’m with you there. We’d be laughing stocks. I won’t say a word to anyone, not that anyone’s likely to ask.’

But within less than a half a minute, Andrew Ramsden was proved painfully wrong and if their experience in Ivy Neal’s caravan had startled them, the two black-clad figures looming out of the shadows down the side of the fish-and-chip shop terrified them.

‘Just what d’yer think you’ve been up to, young ’uns?’

The voice which stopped the boys in their tracks was pitched low and carried menace, but its owner and his companion were little more than half-a-dozen years older than the youngsters they confronted. They were, however, bigger and more muscular. Dressed in dark jeans, leather jackets and crash helmets, and blocking the pavement, their intentions were clearly hostile.

‘Cat got your tongue, then?’ snarled one biker, grabbing the front of Roderick’s coat. ‘Ivy Neal’s cat got your tongue, p’rhaps?’

‘Hey, take your hands off my—’ Andrew began, only to find a leather gauntlet, slick with rain, at his throat, and then his legs kicked from under him by a steel-capped boot.

Roderick, eyes bulging in fright, clawed at the hands that had grabbed him and which were lifting him until he stood precariously on his tiptoes.

‘What were you up to at Ivy Neal’s?’ his attacker barked into the boy’s face, so close that Roderick recoiled at the stench of fried fish and vinegar coming from behind a row of tombstone teeth. ‘What she say to you? You’d better tell me or it’ll be the worst for you.’

‘None of your business, you dozy prat!’ Roderick said with a bravado he did not feel as he caught sight of Andrew landing heavily on the edge of the pavement and rolling into a large puddle in the gutter as a biker’s boot descended on his chest.

‘If you won’t let on then mebbe you’ll learn,’ said his own attacker. ‘You stay clear of Ivy Neal or we’ll come after you again. And this is to make sure you remember the lesson.’

Roderick felt the breath leave his body and his legs buckle before he registered that he had been punched savagely in the stomach. Disorientated, he saw a yellow street lamp, the night sky, the road, the shiny wet concrete kerb and the pavement, which looked very hard indeed. And then he took a blow to the side of his head and a knee came up to meet his face. As he tripped over and on to his prostrate friend, he saw a slash of white light from the open door of the chip shop.

‘Oi!’ came a shrill but authoritative voice, ‘leave my Faustus alone!’

‘I
s it for a lady?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The half of bitter; if it’s for a lady, it needs a lady’s glass,’ the matronly barmaid explained patiently, but Rupert looked no wiser.

‘Of course I’m a lady,’ chirped Perdita, ‘and so I should have lady’s glass.’

The barmaid, who was more than old enough to be Perdita’s mother, adopted the expression of a mildly shocked maiden aunt, but said nothing and busied herself filling a small dimple jug with a handle from an electric beer tap which seemed to know by magic when to stop dispensing beer and leave a half-inch of foamy ‘head’ atop the brown liquid.

‘That’ll be two-and-fourpence.’

‘Good heavens! Is that all?’ Rupert blurted out.

‘Tha’ can pay more if tha’ wants but nobody’ll thank you for it,’ snapped the barmaid. Then she flicked a tea towel at an imaginary spillage on the bar and flounced away.

‘I don’t think that lady approves of me,’ said Perdita quietly. ‘I should have demanded a pint. I bet that would have put a twist in her girdle.’

‘Don’t be so sensitive, darling,’ Rupert soothed. ‘I’m sure all the women in here drink the beer … when there are women in here, that is.’

Perdita lowered her voice to a whisper as she glanced around. ‘So you finally noticed I’m the only one in here not working, have you? We’re probably committing some terrible social faux pas.’

Rupert grinned mischievously and whispered back: ‘I think saying “faux pas” is probably making a faux pas in this neck of the woods, but from what I’ve seen of the locals, they won’t be reluctant to point it out.’

They stood facing each other, toe-to-toe, their heads almost touching, bent down concentrating on their drinks, resembling naughty children awaiting an inevitable and properly justified scolding, glancing around to take in their surroundings in short, sharp, furtive glances. The décor of the main room of the Denby Ash Working Men’s Club (‘and Institute’) was predominantly of varnished pinewood, tables, chairs and the bar itself all stained to make them look older, although the design was spare, functional and modern. There was a small stage – a platform really – at one end with a metal stand which seemed to be buckling under the weight of a large square microphone which had probably, Rupert thought, been declared surplus to requirements by the BBC around the time of the Abdication. At the other end of the room was a raging coal fire and between that and the stage were lines of tables, each with six chairs and two large green ashtrays, arranged with almost military precision.

The tables nearest the stage were fully occupied by groups of men, almost all wearing flat caps, with pints of foaming beer in straight glasses in front of them and the majority puffing on untipped cigarettes so that a blue haze formed above their heads but a foot or so below the nicotine-stained ceiling. The tables and chairs nearest the coal fire were conspicuously empty and the only sound was the
tap-tap
of dominoes being laid.

‘I wonder why nobody sits near the fire,’ said Rupert, partly to engage his wife in conversation and partly to break the uncomfortable silence.

No one in the club had protested at their arrival and none of the inhabitants were actually staring at them, but even so, the atmosphere was a nervous one.

‘They don’t want their beer to get warm,’ intruded an unfamiliar Yorkshire voice.

The Campions had not been aware of his approach, so quietly did he move across the carpeted floor for a broad, muscular man.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Rupert. ‘It just seemed strange to us as in our part of the world a coal fire in a country pub would act like a magnet in winter and you wouldn’t be able to get near it. You must be Mr Exley.’

‘That I am,’ said the short, bulky man, offering neither a handshake nor a smile, ‘and I bet it’s not the only thing you find strange round here. F’r a start this in’t a country pub, it’s a working men’s club. If tha’ wants a pub, we’ve got two: Green Dragon and t’Sun at either end of the village; take yer pick. Mebbe better suit the lady. We don’t get many in here unless it’s a bingo night or a Saturday when they put on a turn.’

Exley nodded his square-shaped head towards the far stage as if to clarify what ‘turn’ meant.

‘This lady,’ said Perdita brightly, ‘is perfectly happy here. Your beer is tasty and remarkably cheap and I’m dying to know what sort of turns you put on here.’

Exley eyed her suspiciously, but Perdita’s face shone with honest curiosity.

‘We have singers – proper singers, none of them rubbishy pop groups – the odd impressionist and even a magician on occasion, but most popular are the comedians. Some of ’em might be a bit blue for you, though.’

‘I doubt that,’ said Rupert, and was secretly pleased that Exley looked slightly shocked.

‘So there’s no proper music here?’ Perdita asked with the briefest flutter of eyelash. ‘I mean brass band music. I thought that was why you asked to meet us here.’

Mr Exley now looked mildly embarrassed and it was his eyes which flashed furtively around the room to see if his encounter with the two strangers, especially the pretty female one wearing the Mary Quant pink alligator cape coat and the soft brown leather boots, was being noticed. It was, Rupert estimated, by at least ninety per cent of the drinkers.

‘I thought here would be convenient for you after school, like,’ said Arthur Exley. ‘Band practice is in the parish room down the hill a-ways, by the junior school and the church.’

It had nothing to do with convenience, Rupert thought. The Campions had been told by all the dragons in the Ash Grange staff room that Arthur Exley would rather be seen dead than crossing the threshold of ‘the posh school’ and that he would insist on meeting in a place he considered more proletarian. In the club, he would have all the advantages as his ‘toff’ southern visitors would be like fish out of water. Yet this brace of fish appeared to be quite relaxed, particularly the girl, who insisted on standing at the bar rather than taking a seat as most females were expected to, and supping bitter instead of gin-and-orange or a Babycham.

‘Well, as you’re the bandmaster, can I at least pick your brains about the musical element of our end-of-term show?’ Perdita smiled sweetly and then played her masterstroke, producing a purse from the folds of her coat. ‘And you
must
allow me buy you a drink, Mr Exley.’

She had raised her voice enough to make sure she was heard by their unofficial audience, over which a hush had descended. Even the dominoes were being laid more quietly.

Exley cleared his throat loudly before declaiming: ‘I don’t drink, Mrs Campion, but I don’t begrudge others the pleasure if that’s what they see it as.’

Marxism or Methodism? Rupert wondered, for he had been warned to expect both dogmas, but Arthur Exley preferred to play the host and guide rather than the soap-box evangelist.

‘I thought I’d take you down to the parish room so you can meet the lads who’ll be playing in your show. They’re practising tonight,’ he said, then pointed a finger at Perdita’s glass. ‘When you’ve supped up, that is, but don’t swig it down on my account.’

Perdita nursed her glass in front of her face to show she had no intention of being hurried and tried to ignore Rupert taking large, rapid swallows to lower the level of his pint.

‘I hope you haven’t put the band to any trouble on my account,’ she said sweetly.

Exley stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back on the heels of his boots before answering. ‘Band has to practice, otherwise it won’t be right on t’night, will it?’

‘I’m sure the musical contribution will be the one thing that does go right on the night, though I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what the music content is going to be or how it fits with the play. Mr Cawthorne, the music master, seems to know very little about it.’

Exley twisted his head as if exercising the muscles in his thick neck.

‘He’s been warned off by Mrs Cawthorne, hasn’t he? Mustn’t have owt to do with a play about conjuring up Old Nick, not with her being a devout churchgoer.’

‘Didn’t Mr Browne leave any instructions?’ asked Rupert between rapid sips from his glass.

‘Mr Browne was in no position to give the band instructions,’ said Exley stiffly. ‘The committee instructs the band on matters of policy and the bandmaster, reporting to the committee, chooses the music. In any case, Bertie Browne didn’t dare stand up to his sister.
She
wanted to swan on stage to Offenbach!’

‘Not
La Belle Hélène
?’ Perdita spluttered into her beer.

‘Aye, the same.’

‘Did you tell her it wasn’t in your repertoire?’ grinned Rupert, then wiped the grin away when he saw Exley’s stony face.

‘Of course it’s in our repertoire; it’s a recognized test piece in competitions along with “Poet and Peasant” and the “Zampa” overture, but they’re all a bit too happy-go-lucky for your play, I’d’ve thought.’

‘Oh, you’re absolutely right,’ Rupert said, making hurried amends. ‘Those would remind people of cartoons – Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker and such – not conjure up the Devil.’

‘That’s the way I figured it, so we’ve gone for the overture from
Rienzi
. There’s a fanfare leitmotif suitable for when the Pope and the King of Hungary and the Holy Roman Emperor appear, and it speeds up nicely for when the devils come and get Faustus to drag him down to hell.’

‘Richard Wagner,’ said Perdita. ‘Good choice.’

‘Wasn’t he a favourite of Hitler?’ said Rupert casually.

‘Yes, he was; and Hitler was a teetotaller as well, if you want to make anything of it.’

‘Please ignore my husband, Mr Exley,’ Perdita jumped in quickly. ‘He is well known for speaking when his foot is only halfway to his brain. Now, is it far to this band room of yours?’

‘It’s the parish room and it’s tacked on to the village school down the ’ill a step, next to the church. The band rents it off the Parochial Church Council and I reckon what we pay keeps old Twiggy in Bourbon biscuits for ’is coffee mornings.’

‘Twiggy?’

‘The Reverend Cuthbertson-Twigg,’ said Exley, curling a lip as if the words tasted bitter, ‘vicar of this parish for longer than anyone cares to remember and no earthly good to man nor beast. He’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot.’

‘Isn’t that a bit harsh?’ said Rupert. ‘I’m sure he means well. Country vicars usually do.’

‘Singing hymns, smelling of incense and consorting with the landed gentry isn’t my idea of looking after the needs of this community, but I’m an atheist so it’s none of my business what he does. For them that wants religion, we’ve no shortage of chapels in Denby Ash.’

‘We’ve noticed that you seem well served by all the known branches of Methodism,’ said Perdita.

‘Aye, and I bet there’s a few branches you’ve not heard of. It’s all the same to me, but Old Twiggy ’asn’t got much of a flock left.’

Exley looked at his wristwatch, then at Rupert’s pint glass, then back at his watch. ‘We’d best get a move on, otherwise they’ll have finished their practice afore we get there.’

‘Well then,’ Perdita beamed, ‘let us make haste to Wittenberg.’

‘Nay,’ said Exley, smiling for the first time, ‘we’re not goin’ that far. It’s nobbut a step down Oaker Hill.’

The Campions deposited their empty glasses on the bar, thanked and wished the surly barmaid a good night, which she acknowledged with a nod but no change of expression. As they followed Arthur Exley across the bar towards the small entrance lobby, they felt all the silent eyes in the room tracking them but their escape was delayed as Exley held open the door to allow a small, shambling figure to enter.

It was an older man who walked with a pronounced stoop. He wore a dark suit with a scarf knotted around his throat in lieu of a tie and was vigorously shaking a flat cap. The cap and his suit jacket were shadowed with wet stains.

‘’Evening, Tom,’ Exley greeted the newcomer. ‘Is it raining?’

‘Just now started spittin’, Arthur,’ came the answer as the man wiped a hand down his face and strode firmly towards the bar where the barmaid was already pulling the pint with Tom’s name on it.

Perdita peered out of the open door and into a night curtain heavy with rain, through which the street lights shimmered weakly.

‘I’d hardly call this a few spits of rain,’ she said, pulling a tightly folded polka-dot plastic rain hood from the folds of her coat. ‘It looks positively torrential. Does it always rain this much here, Mr Exley?’

‘Might do; couldn’t really say. It’s difficult to know if it’s raining when you’re seven hundred feet below ground.’

Arthur Exley did not seem to mind the rain; in fact, he seemed impervious to it and as they trooped and splashed their way down Oaker Hill he played the role of tour guide as if escorting visiting dignitaries around a county show. He pointed out the ‘pit house’ he had been born in, though even with the street lighting is was difficult to pinpoint exactly which part of the terrace would one day be adorned with a commemorative plaque. On the nearside of the road – Perdita remembering the road safety adage to always ‘walk on the right, especially at night’ – Exley indicated a new road leading to a new housing estate, an area called with a breath-taking lack of imagination ‘the New Houses’. And then another, older road where there were no street lights, which ended, their guide assured them, in not one but two dissenting chapels: the Zion Methodists and The Mission.

‘To be honest,’ Exley said, ‘the Mission is little more than a glorified garden shed rented from the Zion Chapel and it probably has less of a congregation than St James’, but most folk of that persuasion go to the Primitive Methodists up the other end of the village near the Co-Op.’

Perdita noticed that once outside the working men’s club, Exley’s Yorkshire accent had almost disappeared.

‘You seem well provided here with the opiate of the people,’ she said, but Exley did not break stride.

‘I wondered when you would start to quote Marx at me but it doesn’t worry me. It’s you that should be worried because all the God-botherers we have in Denby – whatever they call themselves – are all dead against your
Doctor
Faustus
, and have been from the start.’