Long Lankin Read online

  It wasn’t Auntie Ida’s voice.

  Every nerve prickled on my skin. I could hardly breathe. Out of the corner of my eye I could make out the rain trickling down the diamond panes in silver ribbons.

  “‘Let the doors be all bolted and the windows all pinned,

  And leave not a hole for a mouse to creep in.’”

  I felt the blood pumping through the vein in my neck.

  “The doors were all bolted and the windows all pinned,

  Except one little window where Long Lankin crept in.”

  “Hello,” said the parrot.

  The singing stopped.

  I gasped, stood up, and whirled round. There was nobody there. The parrot was biting at a seed in his claw. I turned back, and through the black specks scattered on the mirror I saw my white staring face, slashed into two pieces by the crack in the glass.

  Auntie Ida and Mimi clattered loudly down the stairs. In my haste to get out of the room, I picked up the wrong end of the paper bag, and the seeds shot out and scattered all over the floor.

  I grabbed the seeds in handfuls, tearing the bag in my hurry to get them back inside. In the end, I pushed the rest through a big hole in the carpet, then ran out of the door and back to the kitchen.

  It was going to be boiling hot. The edges of the puddles down the Chase were cracking as they dried.

  Pete and I thought we’d chance going down to Mrs. Eastfield’s to see if Cora and Mimi came out. Pete was pretty sure they’d most probably been turned into chickens, but I told him to leave off.

  We didn’t want to get too close, so if Mrs. Eastfield was with them, we could hide in the triangle of trees or scarper quick before she saw us.

  Luckily we only waited about ten minutes, discussing the camp but then thinking it wasn’t a good place after all — too near Guerdon Hall really — when we heard Cora’s voice. She was shouting at Mimi.

  We peeped out first to make sure Mrs. Eastfield wasn’t there, then came out from the trees.

  Mimi was wobbling on one leg while Cora poured water out of her boot, yelling that she was stupid. Mimi lost her balance and put her wet foot down in a big patch of mud. Cora shouted even louder and slapped her arm. Mimi started crying.

  “Someone’s in a bad mood,” I whispered to Pete.

  “Got a booter, then?” he called out.

  “Yeah, she flippin’ well has!” Cora shouted back. “Auntie got us boots, but Mimi’s are too flaming big.”

  “She didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.

  “Well, I ain’t had no sleep, and I’m up to here with her!” said Cora, who frankly did look a bit tired.

  She pulled the corner of an envelope out of her skirt pocket. “Look, I didn’t post this letter on Tuesday because we went down the church, so don’t let me forget to do it today.”

  “Is it the letter about you going home? I still don’t know why you’ve got to go back when you’ve only just come.”

  “I told you — Mum ain’t at home and Dad’s got to work.”

  “So who’s going to look after you when you get back?”

  Cora stared at the ground. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “I suppose I could make sure Mimi was all right.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to stay here until your mum comes home?”

  She pushed some water around a puddle with the toe of her boot. “Auntie Ida’s too busy to have us,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you go to sleep? Was it the rain?”

  “No. Doesn’t matter. Stop asking me things.”

  “Do you want to come down to the church first?”

  “Yeah, but best be quick. Auntie’ll go mad if she knows I ain’t posted the letter.”

  “Don’t like it down there,” Mimi sniffed. “Don’t like it. That church thing. Auntie said not to go.”

  “Oh, just shut up, will you? You’re a flippin’ pest,” said Cora, pulling her roughly.

  “We thought those words, Cave bestiam, might be in Latin,” I said.

  “I don’t know about Latin,” Cora said. “How do you know about it?”

  I plumped out my chest, then said casually, “Everything at church is in Latin. We all talk Latin, you know, every Sunday, like the Romans — well, most Sundays. Sometimes it’s difficult to go because it’s three miles to Daneflete, and there aren’t many buses, specially on Sunday. You can wait and wait and you might as well have walked it. It’s all right in the week because we go up the lane and there’s a school bus picks us up at the top, but it’s hard for Mum to get us all to church, specially now with Baby Pamela, and then if she does manage it, the old ladies turn round and tut-tut at her if the children make a noise.”

  “So why doesn’t your dad take you, then?” said Cora.

  “Because he’s a heathen,” said Pete.

  We’d got to the old gate.

  “Trouble is,” I told her, “every Monday morning first thing, Sister Aquinas asks who’s been to church on Sunday, and if you haven’t been, she makes you stand up in front of the whole class for an hour. It’s blinking awful, I can tell you, really embarrassing. Nobody else has to do it as much as me.”

  “Why don’t you just say you’ve been even if you haven’t?” asked Cora.

  “Flippin’ heck!” cried Pete. “Lie to a nun? That’s definitely mortal.”

  “Anyway, there’d always be somebody like that Stephen Mylord,” I said. “He’s so holy, he never misses church ever, and he’d tell on me to Sister just for another gold star.”

  “What’s all this mortal stuff anyway?” said Cora.

  “It’s the worst sin there is,” said Pete importantly. “If you do one, you’ll go to hell.”

  We looked up at the arch where CAVE BESTIAM was written.

  “If only we could find somebody to tell us what it means,” said Cora, shading her eyes with her hand.

  “Yeah, that’s what we were thinking,” I said. “The only clever people we know are the Treasures. He’s a headmaster.”

  “Crikey!” said Pete. “I’m not blinking well going round there. It’s like Buckinum Paliss.”

  “I know — we could try Father Mansell. He’s nice. He lets Pete and me and Dennis go to the big Christmas party in the big room at the back of the pub even though we don’t go to his church — though he might not this Christmas because last year Dennis threw his jelly at the girl who won the musical chairs.”

  “But Father Mansell lives round the back of the Treasures,” said Pete. “You’ve got to go in their garden first.”

  Father Mansell was the Church of England priest in Bryers Guerdon. He did services down at this old church, All Hallows, and over at Saint Mary’s in North Fairing as well, and he took the Scouts on Monday nights in the Scout Hut. There was Wolf Cubs on Wednesdays, and Mrs. Aylott was the Akela. Grandma Bardock wouldn’t let Pete and me join the Wolf Cubs because it was Protestant, but Tooboy let us tag along and help him out when it was Bob-a-Job Week.

  Pete held the wide gate open for us. We’d started up the path towards the church when Cora called out, “What’s this?”

  She was standing beside the remains of a low fancy iron railing enclosing a large overgrown rectangle of ground that stretched all the way to the old chained gate. A gnarled elder tree was growing in the middle, stripped clean of its berries by the birds.

  “Don’t know — most probably graves,” I said, joining her.

  “I’m going in. Coming?”

  We stepped over the railing.

  “You gonna be long?” Pete called, showing Mimi how to stamp through the grass by the path to make the grasshoppers jump out.

  Cora and I made our way slowly across the plot, trying to avoid stepping on the flat gravestones, some almost completely hidden by the weeds.

  “What a poor old thing,” she said, pushing her way past a clump of brambles to reach a straggly rosebush near the far railing, almost at the gate.

  Cora knelt and softly touched the single pink bud that drooped on the end of its s
pindly stem.

  “Look at this.” Cora seemed lost in thought. “Once this has flowered and gone, there won’t be any more. It’s the last one.”

  She began parting the long dry grass beneath the rosebush with her hands. A shallow mat of roots had spread itself over a flat stone slab. I helped her tear the grass away, and with her fingers Cora scraped out the soil from the carved letters of the inscription.

  “Oh.” She sat back on her heels. “It says — it says Guerdon.”

  “There’s something else,” I said, clearing the stone farther down. ‘The time’ … er, ‘the time of the’ … er, ‘the time of the singing’ …”

  “Let’s go in the church,” said Cora, getting up quickly.

  Her face had paled. She ran her hand over her forehead and tramped back the way we had come.

  “Most probably all Guerdons in this bit, then,” I said, following her over the railing.

  “We’re going in the church,” said Cora, pushing Mimi firmly up the path towards the porch.

  “Don’t like it,” said Mimi, and she planted her feet hard and wouldn’t move.

  “You’re a blimmin’ nuisance!” said Cora, grabbing her sister’s hand and dragging her up the path.

  When we got to the porch, Mimi started to cry again.

  “You’re the flippin’ limit!” Cora said. “If you don’t blinkin’ like it, you can stop out here and wait for us!”

  “How long you gonna be?” Mimi asked, wiping her nose on her sleeve. I noticed her glancing at the coffin-shaped grave near the church wall.

  “All blinkin’ day if we want!” said Cora crossly, and dropped Mimi’s hand.

  The three of us went through the big wooden door into the church, and I saw Cora look fleetingly back at her sister. Mimi seemed so small, a dark little figure against the light of the graveyard, framed by the shadowy arch of the porch.

  “I’ll be back in a minute, all right?” said Cora. “Don’t move, d’you hear?”

  “It stinks blimmin’ awful in here,” I said, screwing up my nose.

  “Most probably the rain,” Roger whispered. “Feels really damp.”

  “Blimey, I hope we didn’t bring this lot in the other day,” I said, pointing to a trail of earth soiling the tiles all the way to the altar.

  “Crikey — look at that!”

  Five of the huge silver candlesticks were lying on their sides, and the sixth was on the floor. The candles were missing.

  “Funny,” I said. “There was candles here on Tuesday.”

  “You sure?” said Roger.

  “’Course I’m blinking sure. There was six of them. I counted because I’d never seen great big candles like that before. Where’ve they gone, then?”

  “Perhaps a burglar’s been in,” said Pete.

  “Flipping stupid burglar then,” said Roger. “Taking the candles and leaving the candlesticks. Fat chance he’d have of making a living.”

  We picked up the candlesticks and put them all in a line at the back of the altar where they had been before, three on either side of the cross.

  “I’m sure we didn’t have muddy shoes when we came in on Tuesday,” said Roger.

  On the wall halfway down the church on the left was a huge stone memorial, carved with the names of seven young men of Bryers Guerdon who had been killed in the First World War. I’d never bothered to look at it before, but Cora called me over and we ran our eyes over the names. I recognized all the families. There was a Lieutenant Roland Guerdon, MC; a Campbell; a Holloway; and three Thorstons. I told Cora that Haldane Thorston was an old chap who lived in a cottage down in the Patches. They must have been his sons, three of them lost.

  The last name on the stone was Captain James Eastfield, age twenty-two.

  Ypres, April 1917

  Two more weeks, only two more — less by the time you receive this — and we’ll dance again under the willows in the garden at North End. If they haven’t had the wretched spring mended in the gramophone yet, I’ll get Will to play the piano in the drawing room with the windows open.

  I’m warning you, I’m going to ask you again, so don’t pretend to be surprised. Just so you know, I’m not in the least impressed with all that tosh you came out with last time. You don’t have to hang around forever in the ancient ancestral pile. It’s Roland who’s bagged that job, poor chap, not you. Then, after Gerald Foster caught it at Lesboeufs, I don’t suppose Agnes will be doing anything after this lot is over, and she and Roland are both in line before you, don’t forget. There’s nothing to hold you there, dearest Ida. I can help you fly free of it. Just let me. You have to let the old place go.

  Some little kiddies came round yesterday trying to cadge chocolate. The younger ones will never have known a time without the sound of guns… .

  His last letter. Roland said he waited for him to die for three hours, then lay next to him in the shell hole for another two until the light faded a little and he managed to drag his body back, still under fire.

  Even if he had lived, he would never have danced again under the willows at North End.

  An organ, with pipes painted with leaves and flowers, stood in its own small room beside the altar. A little mirror hung over the keys. I caught a movement — my face in the glass — and remembered the woman singing that horrid song in the sitting room at Guerdon Hall, how I had passed the night listening for her voice and watching Mimi’s chest peacefully rising and falling, too full of fear to go to sleep myself.

  Mimi. Outside. Alone.

  “Mimi! We’ve left her for ages!” I rushed down the aisle. The boys followed, the sound of our pounding feet echoing in the rafters.

  I pulled open the heavy wooden door.

  Mimi wasn’t where we’d left her. For a moment, I thought I saw her, the form of a little child against a gravestone, but I blinked and realized it was the bobbing shadow of a tree. I ran out of the porch. She wasn’t anywhere on the path. A lump filled my throat.

  “Mimi! Mimi!” we screamed, chasing round the outside of the church. My chest was bursting.

  “Roger! What are we gonna do? Where is she? Where is she? Mimi! Mimi!”

  “Shh,” said Pete, putting his finger on his lips. “Listen!”

  It was a wailing noise, coming from a distance.

  “I think she’s in the lane!” cried Roger, and we shot off down the path and out of the gate.

  “Oh, thank God! Look, she’s there!” I shouted, spotting the corner of her little white dress fluttering as she turned left into the Chase ahead of us, running as fast as she could in her big boots.

  We tore up the lane after her. Even though she fell over once, she sped along so quickly we never caught up with her till we reached Guerdon Hall.

  “Auntie Ida! Auntie Ida!” she screamed, rushing over the bridge and banging with all her might on the great wooden door in the porch. “Auntie Ida!”

  From inside the house, Finn started barking furiously. The crying baby stared at us from its place over the arch as Pete, Roger, and I raced over the bridge. Auntie Ida and the dog, bounding with excitement, came out.

  “What on earth is going on?” cried Auntie, lifting Mimi up in her arms and pushing her hair off her face. “Get down, Finn! Calm down!”

  Auntie rummaged in the pocket of her pinny for a hankie and wiped Mimi’s nose. Mimi wouldn’t stop crying.

  “There was this — this — man!” she gulped. “That — horrible — horrible — man!”

  “What are you talking about? What horrible man, Mimi? Where have you been?”

  “That — that place where we went. Down there — that church — it’s nasty — that — that man’s down there!”

  “What man? Who?”

  “That — that scary man with the black dress! They went in. He — he come and said things!”

  Auntie Ida looked up and stared at us. Her eyes hardened into two pieces of jet-black coal. “Cora!” she said in an awful shaking voice. “Have you — have you dared to go down to the chur
ch?”

  My head went dizzy.

  In a moment, Mrs. Eastfield had almost thrown Mimi down to the ground and was on us. She grabbed Cora by the arm and dragged her through the door into the house. Cora could hardly keep up with her, squirming as she tried to get away, but Mrs. Eastfield had her fast, her fingernails digging deep into Cora’s skin.

  Mimi was at their heels, crying, “Cora! Cora! Don’t do that, Auntie Ida!”

  Pete and me didn’t know what to do.

  We hung about on the stone flags in the porch for a second, then quickly walked in through the big front door as it began to creak shut.

  Following the shouting, we got to the open kitchen door just in time to see Mrs. Eastfield land a great wallop on the side of Cora’s face — such a whack that it sent Cora sprawling. As she went down, she banged her leg on the side of the table and then fell hard on her bottom on the stone floor. The money jingled in her pocket. She cried out.

  Mrs. Eastfield was breathless with fury, the whites of her eyes wide in her bright-red face.

  Cora could hardly get her legs to stand her up again, but Pete and I were too scared to go through the doorway to help her.

  I tried to get up, but my backside hurt so and my face stung like burning. I tried to push myself up on my hands, but I couldn’t get them to work. They didn’t seem to belong to me. Mimi was shrieking. I just caught sight of Roger and Pete in the doorway with their mouths hanging open.

  I reached up and got hold of the top of the big table with my shaky hands and managed to pull myself up to standing, but my legs were trembling and I couldn’t let go.

  I didn’t want to look at Auntie Ida, but she slammed her two great fists down from the other side of the table and leaned all the way over so her face was right in mine. I could feel her breath and smell tea. Tears were coming down my cheeks in two hot streams.

  “I told you!” she shouted. “Never — ever — to go down to the church! You don’t know what you’ve done — you stupid, stupid girl! How dare you! How dare you! How could you ever — ever — leave that child on her own! How could you! You don’t know what you’ve done!”

  Then, through the blur, I saw that her eyes had gone down to my skirt. She snatched something out of my pocket. It was the letter to Dad. She made a horrible noise through her teeth and twisted the envelope so tightly in her hands that it almost ripped.