Long Lankin Read online

  I looked back to the broken fence the boy had been sitting on. It ran along the front of two small ruined cottages. One of the roofs had sunken in, and the other was nothing more than a jumble of wooden sticks. Dirty splinters of glass from smashed windows stuck out of the long grass behind the fence.

  Farther away, standing across the end of the track, was an old barn with a wide-open doorway and a long low roof full of holes. Tangled heaps of rusty machinery were piled up in the yard.

  Suddenly the deep, hollow sound of barking and the thumping of heavy paws echoed off the walls of the house. An enormous dog came bounding round the corner. Two long strings of dribble flew out of its slobbering mouth and streamed down its shoulders as it ran.

  Mimi let go of my hand and fled back down the track. I should have gone after her, but I didn’t want to turn my back on the dog. I glanced behind and saw her slip on the mud into a pool of water.

  “Shut up, you!” I shouted at the dog. “Look what you’ve flippin’ well made my sister do!”

  It leaped up, but I wasn’t scared. There were dogs like this at home. I stuck my hand out, palm upwards. The dog slowed down a bit, stopped, and sniffed my hand. Then it lolled out its long drippy tongue, moving from one front paw to the other, and gave another few barks, but not so loud this time. I patted its big head, then wiped the dribble off my hand on my skirt. Mimi, grizzling, got up on her own. There were muddy streaks down her coat. Her hands and knees dripped brown water.

  “You flippin’ clot,” I said, brushing her down. “What’s Auntie Ida going to say? Oh, it’s all right, Mimi, for Pete’s sake. He’s just a noisy beggar. Stick your hand out like this. Let him sniff you. Blimey, you smell flippin’ awful now. Look, even the dog’s backing off.”

  Mimi wouldn’t go over the bridge. “Ain’t goin’,” she said with a sniff. “Don’t like it.”

  “You have to. Come on.”

  “Won’t.”

  I stooped down, picked a dandelion clock, and blew towards the house.

  One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock — the little parachutes streamed across the water.

  Mimi stepped closer — six o’clock, seven o’clock —

  “I ain’t never known one do the right time yet,” I said.

  Mimi bent down and tore one up for herself. She blew — one o’clock, two o’clock — and followed the swirl of seeds as they floated over the bridge in a cloud of tiny white stars.

  I called in at the post office on the way back to see if Mrs. Wickerby had any more soldiers.

  Pete and I hate Mrs. Wickerby, because when we did “Penny for the Guy” on Bonfire Night, she wouldn’t let us do it outside her shop because she said it was begging, so we had to drag our guy over the road to outside Mrs. Aylott’s instead. We told Mrs. Aylott we were getting money for the poor, but all we got was threepence from Mr. Rust, which we thought wasn’t going to be much use to the poor, so instead we went into Mrs. Wickerby’s and bought some bubble gum.

  There were loads of soldiers in a cardboard box on her counter. I thought it would be easy to take one without Mrs. Wickerby seeing because the three old Death sisters were in the shop having a chinwag with her. They’re called Beattie, Jessie, and Elsie, and they all wear the same white hats that look like meringues.

  My hand was near the box with the soldiers in, luckily hidden behind Jessie Death’s elbow. I was reaching over the edge when, just at that moment, Mrs. Wickerby stuck her pointy little weasel’s face round the Death sisters and said, “Can I get you anything, Roger, or are you just looking as usual?”

  “Just looking,” I said quietly, and left the shop quick.

  When I got home, Baby Pamela wouldn’t stop crying. It drives me potty sometimes when she goes on and on and you can’t do anything with her. Mum gave her to me while she went out to hang up the sheets. I jiggled her around for a minute, but she started to stink and she puts snot on you, so I gave her to Terry and told him he had to look after her or old Gussie would get him.

  I went in the garden with Pete and Dennis to look for lizards, but it wasn’t really dry enough. They like to sit on rocks in the sun or on the concrete fence post that’s come down by the big conker tree. We don’t tell Terry we’re looking for lizards because he’s cruel and swings them around by their tails until they fly off into the garden. Sometimes the end of the tail comes off in his hand. I know they grow back, but then they always have a kink in. Once he tried it with a newt from the pond, but it dropped before he could whirl it round. They’re a bit more rubbery and slip out of your fingers, and their tails never ever come off.

  We had sausages and mash for dinner. Mum sticks the sausages in the spuds like they do in The Beano. I started to tell her about the two girls at Mrs. Eastfield’s, but she had her hands full with Pamela and told me to tell her later. It’s a good job she wasn’t really listening or she’d have known I’d been down near the church. I nearly put my foot in it there.

  I’ll go back tomorrow with Pete and see if the girls are still around. If they are, we’ll tell them about Mrs. Eastfield capturing a German airman during the war when his plane crashed on her farm, because they most probably won’t know about that. Mrs. Eastfield gave the chap a cup of tea, then stood over him with her shotgun until the police arrived to take him away. I once said to Mum I thought Mrs. Eastfield was brave to do that, but Mum said people didn’t like her. They talked about her behind her back.

  Thick dirty grey roots of ivy were clinging to the crumbling front wall, the leaves brown and crispy, coated with dust. Only a few small green shoots up near the roof showed the plant was still living.

  Not quite in the middle of the house, a huge porch, with a room above, jutted out onto the path. The dog followed us in, its paws clattering on the uneven stone floor. Dead leaves had blown into piles in the corners. It smelled mouldy.

  The massive front door was studded with big iron nails. Threads of spiders’ webs, spotted with the dried-up bodies of little flies, fluttered lightly in the cracks. Long deep lines ran down the door, as if the dog had got into the habit of standing up on its hind legs, scratching to come in.

  I lifted the great iron knocker — the head of a lion with a ring hanging out of its mouth. It was so stiff it would only go down slowly. When it made its dull thud against the door, some dust fell down on us from the rafters.

  “She obviously doesn’t have a lot of visitors,” I said to Mimi.

  I shouted, “Auntie Ida! Auntie Ida! It’s us!” but it just made the dog bark and start dribbling again.

  “Let’s go round the back,” I said, leaving the porch and turning to the left along the weedy path. I expected Mimi to follow, but I’d got all the way to the corner of the house before the dog whined and I looked back.

  Mimi was standing on the path, staring up at the arch over the porch. I’m not sure I would have noticed it myself — an old piece of wood nailed lopsidedly across the angle of the arch, a couple of feet long, bent, cracked, blackened round the edges as if it had been burned. There was some carving on it, worn almost smooth in places — probably from hanging outside in the wind and rain for years on end.

  As I got nearer and saw it more closely, I caught hold of Mimi’s coat sleeve and tried to pull her away, but she wouldn’t come.

  “Who is it?” she said.

  “How the hell do I know?” I said. “It’s like — well, I think it’s supposed to be a baby. Hard to see it really.”

  “Why’s it crying?” she asked.

  “Perhaps it’s hungry,” I said. “Come to think of it, I’m a bit peckish meself. Come on.”

  She wouldn’t move.

  “What’s the writing?”

  There were two words under the face, carved out roughly in thick capital letters, but they weren’t like words I’d ever read anywhere.

  “I don’t know. Must be foreign. Come on, Mimi. You can see it later.” She wouldn’t move. “Look, I’ll fetch you one if you don’t hurry up.”

  “Will
Auntie Ida eat us with mash?” she asked as we walked round the corner of the house.

  I looked over to the deep ditch as it curved around the overgrown garden. There was hardly any water left in the bottom. At the edges, the drying mud had begun to crack.

  “Don’t be daft,” I said, pushing Mimi in front of me. “We’re family, ain’t we?”

  Finn is scrabbling at the gate. One of the hinges is half off — he’ll push the whole fence down one of these days if I don’t see to it.

  What’s he barking at? If it’s Harry’s girls — God, I hope it isn’t Harry’s girls — the man will just have to take them straight back.

  The letter said Saturday, definitely Saturday, not Monday. I was so relieved when they didn’t turn up.

  I bend to get through the henhouse doorway. Only four eggs today. Is it really worth hanging on to these wretched chickens? Pushing Finn away, I shut the gate in the fence behind me, then pull a piece of straw out of my hair and tuck my fringe under my scarf. Then I catch a movement.

  Oh, God, there they are, the two of them standing on the path beneath the washing line, under the row of laddered stockings.

  For a sickening moment, I see Susan and Anne.

  I shut my eyes and rub my forehead, then look again.

  It isn’t Susan and Anne, but Susan’s daughters. They are scruffy, unwashed.

  “Hello, Auntie Ida,” says the older one, almost bobbing to a curtsey. “I’m Cora.”

  My mouth has gone dry. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to a child.

  “I — I thought you weren’t coming. I was expecting you on Saturday.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s when Mr. Burridge was supposed to bring us,” Cora says, “but we waited and waited and he didn’t turn up. Then Dad asked Mr. Bates because Mr. Bates owed him one, and Mr. Bates is a bookie, so he’s busy doing bets of a Saturday, then yesterday his car wouldn’t start for love nor money, but Mr. Harrow couldn’t fix it because he had to get hold of this special bit and it was Sunday, so he had to do it first thing this morning. You ain’t got no telephone or Dad would’ve rung you from the pub.”

  Finn barks. The little girl jumps.

  “All right. Quiet, Finn, quiet!” I say. My head aches. I am shaking a little, along my arms and in my chest.

  “This here’s Mimi,” Cora says, pushing the little girl towards me.

  “What sort of silly exotic name is that!” I snap at her. “Isn’t she Elizabeth?”

  “Yeah, well, she’s Mimi because she used to run after me when I went playing,” Cora says in a rush, “and she used to call ‘Me! Me!’ because she wanted to come, too, and my pals used to say, ‘Oh, Gawd, it’s that “Me Me” again,’ and after a while it stuck, and now she really thinks that’s her name.”

  “It’s utterly ridiculous,” I say. “Not that it matters, because you’re not staying here — not for a moment. Nobody asked me if I minded you turning up, and the fact is, I do mind, so you’re going straight back to London, where you came from. Where’s this Mr. Burridge?”

  “It weren’t Mr. Burridge. I told you,” says Cora. “It were Mr. Bates.”

  “Where’s this Mr. Bates, then?”

  “He dumped us at the end of that muddy road there —”

  “The Chase —”

  “Yeah. He’s gone.”

  “What? You mean he just left you on your own?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. He didn’t want to get his wheels stuck. Mimi fell in a puddle when your dog came out.”

  “He’s called Finn —”

  “Yeah, Finn then,” says Cora. “If you want us to go home, you’ll have to leave a message for Dad with Alf at the Half Moon. We ain’t got no telephone neither. Then maybe Mr. Bates or somebody’ll come back and get us. Or you’ll have to write a letter. D’you know where we live? We’re at number nine.”

  “We have white eggs,” Elizabeth says.

  I notice she is rubbing her cheek with an old, filthy, stuffed woollen toy. I look more closely and am overcome by a hot wave of anxiety. I’ve seen it before. My heart begins to thud. My head feels as if it’s being pressed in a vice.

  They can’t stay here.

  They mustn’t stay here.

  Don’t do this — don’t do that — don’t go here, there, upstairs, except to your bedroom or the bathroom — don’t go round that side of the garden, because there’s an old well there and you or Elizabeth (“It’s Mimi, Auntie Ida; she don’t know she’s Elizabeth”) might fall in — you absolutely must not go down to the marshes — it’s extremely dangerous there — don’t even think about going down to the old church — absolutely forbidden — don’t open the windows — ever! (That’s why the house is so stuffy you almost can’t breathe, and it smells horrible.) Don’t even try to get into the locked rooms. Lock the back door when you come in and hang the key up on the big iron hook (there are scratches on the back door as well, and next to it on the inside a great huge axe on the wall with such a long handle it takes three hooks to hold it up). Always check who’s at the door before you let anybody in — not that anyone ever comes. I’m writing the letter to your father this evening, so don’t get any ideas about getting too comfortable (no chance of that in this dump). If you hear any strange noises, it’ll be the parrot (really old and half-bald — hasn’t even got a name, not even Polly) in the sitting room through there. Don’t — never — mustn’t — can’t — don’t — never — mustn’t — can’t — (Like a flippin’ prison.)

  Auntie points out her bedroom door. I lean over the heavy rail and look down the huge staircase, at the monstrous carved post that marks the place where the stairs bend at a right angle and go down past the window towards the hall. The edges of the treads have worn pale and smooth and slippery. Next to the bottom step is a tall clock. Even from here, I can see that it doesn’t stand straight. The wooden floors slope so steeply in places that you start to walk faster without being able to help yourself. The clock is silent. All the clocks in Guerdon Hall are unwound.

  Above me, cobwebs hang down from the ceiling in loops and bunches like dirty lace, swaying in the draughts that come under the doors or up through the narrow gaps between the floorboards. Dust lies in strips along the skirtings and outlines with grey the curves of the carvings on the spindles. I blow on the dust, but it is so thick that it doesn’t move.

  Our bed is huge, with a faded pink quilted eiderdown. Auntie turns down the top sheet and plumps up the pillows and tells us the bathroom’s down the landing to the left.

  When we’re sure she’s gone all the way back down the stairs, Mimi and I bounce and bounce on the eiderdown. Dust floats down on us from the rafters overhead. Auntie comes thundering back up and shouts that we’ll break the bed and we’re not to fib about it because she heard the springs going.

  We have two eggs each for our tea, with bread-and-butter soldiers for dipping. Auntie only boils the eggs for a couple of minutes so there is jelly around the yolks. I peep under my first strip of bread and see it is flecked with green. I worry Mimi might make a fuss, but she doesn’t notice the mould under the butter and is so hungry she spoons up all the runny egg and scrapes out both her shells afterwards.

  Auntie says it’s time for bed, and I daren’t argue even though it’s so early, especially for me. We go back upstairs. I get our pyjamas out of our duffel bags and take Mimi to the bathroom.

  I push open the door. It isn’t a bathroom at all but a shadowy room full of old paintings. The Guerdons look down on us from the walls as we stand in the doorway. I see no likeness to myself at all, dark haired and dark eyed as I am, but in almost every face I see Mimi’s pale eyes, Mimi’s mouth, and her fluffy fair hair.

  The walls are covered with red material, most of it torn and faded. Up near the ceiling on the outside wall are dark patches of damp, and some of the fabric has come away and hangs loose and frayed over the window.

  In a dark corner nearby is a portrait of a lady with the same straight nose as Auntie Ida, but she is young and
pretty, in a pink dress and lovely shiny pearls. I can’t resist running my finger along the top of the frame to see how much dust there is. It comes down in a long thick string and I sneeze two huge sneezes, which makes Mimi laugh.

  Beside the fireplace, there is a short dark passage. At the end of it, I can just make out the shape of another door. “Must be the bathroom down there,” I say to Mimi, and push her in front of me.

  Suddenly, without warning, she opens her mouth and screams — so loudly that the sound bounces from one side of the passage to the other.

  Something crashes in the kitchen downstairs.

  “What on earth’s the matter? Be quiet, Mimi — shh.”

  I clamp one trembling hand over Mimi’s mouth and fumble for a light switch with the other but find nothing.

  I look up. On the wall over the bathroom door is the face of an old man, glaring down at us out of the darkness. His eyes are two piercing white dots. A few thin grey wisps of hair hang down on each side of his skull. His outstretched hand is raised, the curved fingers spread out towards us like a claw.

  I hear Auntie Ida rushing up the staircase. She is out of breath, her face white. She follows our gaze. I expect her to be angry, but when she sees the painting, she just shuts her eyes for a moment, panting slightly.

  “Oh,” she says quietly, putting her hand on Mimi’s shuddering shoulder, “that’s — that’s only — we called him Old Peter. He’s been up there for years and years. You get used to him. It’s all right — really. There’s no lamp here, but leave the doors open when you come out, and the light from the bathroom window will brighten up the passage a bit. I’ll — I’ll wait for you here while you get washed, and take you back to your bedroom. Be careful: there are three steps down behind that door.”

  What a daft place to put steps. If she hadn’t said anything, we most probably would have fallen smash down headfirst on the hard wooden floor and broken our necks.