2003 - A Jarful of Angels (19 page)

Fatty kept the head in a box. It rested on a piece of cotton wool that he’d found in the ash tip. He carried the box everywhere with him for fear of his old man going through his room and finding it. It wasn’t valuable, he didn’t think, but that wouldn’t matter to the old man. He’d seen the head in Carty Annie’s cart the night Bessie’d had the frog explode on her. He’d seen it there many times before, but hadn’t realised what it was or where it had come from. It just looked like an old stone covered in moss but when he’d looked more closely at it as they’d lifted Bessie into the cart, he’d seen the shape of a nose, the indent of an eye socket.

That night he’d lain in bed thinking about how he could get his hands on the head and have a proper look at it. He wouldn’t steal it because that would have been wrong. He wondered why Carty Annie had bothered to carry it around for so long, it must have been dead heavy.

The next morning he’d had just the stroke of luck he’d hoped for.

He’d seen Bessie and Iffy coming down the rutted road alongside the Three Rows and was going to run and join them, but he’d spotted a water rat swimming below the bridge and stopped to watch it for a moment. By the time he reached the Dentist’s Stone, Iffy and Bessie were further down the road and going into Morrissey’s shop. He would not set foot in there. He’d told Iffy not to go in, only she wouldn’t listen. He hated Morrissey. He was a filthy old pig. He’d done some dreadful things, and if mad Bridgie Thomas was right then he’d be due for a lightning bolt, boils or a plague of locusts in his shop. Fatty had hung about waiting for the girls and while he’d waited he’d seen Carty Annie come up the lane towards the bridge. He walked towards her and called out, “Mornin’, Old Missus.”

“Morning to yourself, handsome fella!”

Fatty grinned, and Carty Annie looking up at him thought that he truly was the most beautiful child she had ever clapped eyes on. Gorgeous enough to eat, he was.

“Where you going?” he asked, his hands in his pockets.

“Away off home to me bed. I been out half the night looking for them little bastards.”

Fatty looked down. He didn’t want his eyes to give him away. He knew what she was talking about; he knew what she had in her house.

“Want some company?”

“Sure, to the stile though and no further.”

They walked along together, an odd-looking couple, towards the Big House. As they came alongside the gates Carty Annie took a detour, a wide arc out into the road.

“Why d’you always do that?” he asked.

“Just because,” she said tapping her nose with her finger.

“Because what?”

“That nose of yours will get you into trouble.”

“Just wondered, that’s all.”

“Master Bevan, it seems to me you wants to know the ins and outs of a duck’s arse.”

Fatty laughed out loud.

“I keeps me distance, that’s all, and you should too.”

“What’s that?” he said innocently, and pointed into the cart.

Carty Annie stopped and looked down to where he was pointing.

“What’s what?”

He pointed to the head.

“Ah, that now is a missing piece of a jigsaw.”

He scratched his head.

“Doesn’t look like a piece of a jigsaw.”

“Well now, that all depends on the types of jigsaws you’re used to. Are you good at jigsaws?”

“Yep,” he lied. He’d never had a jigsaw, but he knew what they were.

“Well, if you can put together the rest of it, if you find all the other pieces, this head will complete it.”

“Have you ever tried to finish the jigsaw?”

Carty Annie looked him in the eyes. He had quite unfathomable eyes. Deep, deep blue eyes that reminded her of a restless sea. He was a very special boy this one.

“No,” she said with a sigh. “I think I was waiting for someone else to come along. I’m tired of jigsaws. Here.” She bent over and prised the head out from the tangle of piss pot and tinselled Pope. “It’s yours.”

She handed him the head as though she were a headmistress handing out cups at speech day.

Fatty swelled with pleasure. He cradled the head with both arms as he looked up at her in admiration. He didn’t care what people thought about Carty Annie, he liked her. She was a bit like him really, people took the mick because she wasn’t like everyone else, because her clothes were ragged. They didn’t know what went on inside other people’s heads, just looked at the outside and made their minds up. Carty Annie had a lovely face, it was darkened with age and weather, but her eyes were young and alive, deep greeny-blue eyes, eyes that looked right into him as though they might winkle out his deepest secrets.

The moss covering on the head was soft to the touch, but he could feel the hardness of stone beneath.

“Thanks, Old Missus.”

He held the head to one side, leant towards Carty Annie and, swift as a wink, he kissed her on her wrinkled cheek.

Carty Annie smiled. A wide arc of a smile that lifted her face, a radiant smile Fatty would remember for a long time.

“Now feck off out the way, I’ve things to mind to.”

And she was away, trundling the cart on up the road.

Fatty stood quite still for a few minutes and then turned away, unaware of the eyes that watched him from an upstairs window of the Big House.

Iffy sat beside Fatty on the river bank, idly running slivers of shale through her fingers.

Fatty knelt down, leant over the edge of the bank and held the stone head under the water with both hands. He’d carefully peeled away all the moss from the face but it was still stained green with mould. Air bubbles rose up from the nostrils and ears.

He lifted the head carefully out of the water, dried it on his T-shirt and laid it gently on the river bank. It was still hard to tell what it looked like beneath all the green.

The slender neck was jagged as if it had been knocked off with violence when it had been parted from the rest of its body.

“She’s pretty, ent she?” said Fatty.

Iffy threw a handful of shale into the river, looked down at the head and sniffed. “She’s all right, I s’pose,”

Iffy was bored with the head. As far as she could see it was just a dirty old broken statue’s head and there was nothing that interesting about it. It had staring eyes, a chipped nose, a ghoulish green-lipped smile and a small bird’s feather stuck fast to the chin.

“She is though, ent she, Iffy?”

Iffy turned away from him and began to break off daisies’ heads.

“S’pose,” she said without much interest.

“I got to get something to clean it up properly. What d’you reckon?”

“Soap?”

“Where can I get some from?”

“Your house?”

He shook his head.

“I could get some off the washing board at home.”

“Shh. Somebody’s coming.”

Fatty put the head back into the box and disappeared into the bushes. Iffy raised her eyebrows. She couldn’t see what was such a secret about a silly old head and yet he’d made her swear not to tell anyone that he had it.

Lally Tudge came waddling along the river bank. She was carrying a baby in a shawl, rocking it gently from side to side, her puckered lips crooning down at the covered head.

“Hey you!” she called out.

Iffy looked behind her but there was no one there. She didn’t want to speak to Lally on her own.

“Want to see my baby?” Lally asked.

Iffy hoped Fatty wouldn’t be long.

She stood up and peeped nervously into the shawl. It wasn’t a baby, it was a doll. An old battered doll that had pen marks on its face from where it had been jabbed, and holes in its head where its hair had been pulled out by the roots.

“He’s ever so good,” said Lally, smiling down at the doll.

Iffy wondered if Lally’d remembered to put her knickers on today.

“You can watch me feed him if you like.”

She began to unbutton the front of her blouse. Iffy looked away quickly.

“Oh, he’s still sleeping I’ll wait a bit.”

Iffy sneaked a look. The buttons were done up again. No titties hanging out.

Close up Lally smelled of over-boiled cabbage and burned fat.

“He’s called Zachariah and he’s a month old.”

She rocked the doll from side to side in her dimpled arms.

Iffy had never been so close to Lally before and she took a good long look at her. Lally’s hair hung down to her shoulders, straggly hair the colour of parched grass. The fringe was greasy and fell into her eyes so that she blinked a lot. Beneath the fringe her eyes were large and round, green speckled with brown and grey. Iffy thought that they were quite nice eyes.

“Rock a bye baby on the treetop, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks-the cradle will fall, Down will come cradle, baby and all.”

Iffy hated that song. It was scary. How could a baby sleep at night thinking it might crash out of the trees at any minute?

Lally finished her song and smiled at Iffy with her honeycomb teeth.

“Go on, hold him,” she said pushing the doll towards Iffy.

Iffy didn’t want to hold it or pretend that it was a baby. It was only a doll. Besides, Lally was too old to play make-believe with. Lally Tudge was twp but not nasty twp.

Nan said pity for her and God help. Poor cow.

Iffy took the doll from her reluctantly. It was wrapped up in a grubby knitted dishcloth.

“You’ll have to rock him else he’ll wake up.”

Iffy rocked the doll.

“Take him for a walk if you want to. I’ve got to get the dinner on for my old man.”

Lally didn’t have an old man.

“I got to go,” Iffy said. “Here’s your baby.”

She held the doll out for her to take.

Lally stared at her with wide speckled eyes, eyes narrowing from circles to slits.

“What you say?”

“Here’s your baby,” Iffy said.

She held the pretend baby towards Lally again and smiled.

Lally bared her rotten teeth.

“I never had no baby! Don’t you go saying I had no baby!”

Her eyes were bulging and her cheeks grew crimson with anger. Just as Iffy was afraid that Lally was about to fly at her, Lally began to cry, great shiny teardrops plopped onto her fat cheeks and slid down her big quivering face.

“Don’t you go telling I had a fuckin’ baby. I’m a good girl, I am!”

Iffy held on to the doll wondering what she’d done to upset Lally.

“Don’t you go telling I been with men. Laity’s kept her hand on her ha’penny, Lally has.”

Iffy was bewildered, she’d never said anything to her about being with men or about ha’pennies.

“You want pasting, you do! Saying things like that!”

Lally stopped crying. She put her fists up in front of her wet face. Iffy stepped back out of the way. Lally was fat enough to hit hard, but fat enough not to be able to run fast.

“I’ll give you what for for saying I done those dirty things!” she yelled.

She dropped one fist and snatched at the doll. Its head came away in Lally’s hands. A bald holey head, the bright-blue eyes rolling back into their sockets.

“Mama. Mama. Mama,” cried the doll.

Iffy jumped in alarm, dropping the rest of doll, and watched in dismay as it rolled out of the dishcloth and fell onto the grass.

Fatty stepped out from the bushes.

“It’s all right, Lally,” his voice was quiet, soft. “Iffy didn’t mean nothin’. I ‘spect you’re just feeling sad because they took your baby.”

Lally dropped the head of the doll. It bounced once and came to rest in the grass.

“Look what you done. You killed it!”

Her hands hung limply by her sides as she stared at the broken doll and her huge body shook, from her feet to her head. Great tears welled up again in her eyes and splashed onto her cheeks.

Iffy looked at Fatty.

He bent down and picked up the doll’s head and twisted it back onto the body.

“There,” he said. “It’s all better now.” He winked at Iffy.

“No. It’s dead now,” said Lally. “I don’t want it any more.”

“We better bury it proper then,” said Fatty.

Lally smiled at him, blinking away her tears. And then she was off, waddling away up the river bank without looking back once.

“God, she frightened me then. I thought she was going to hit me,” said Iffy, breathing hard.

“Pity for her, Iffy.”

“Pity for me if she’d hit me! She’s mad, Fatty. She said I said she’d been with men and she swore!”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“She had a baby.”

“No, she never.”

“She did, Iffy, a couple of weeks ago, that’s why she’s been away.”

“But she’s not married.”

“She was down the home for bad girls.”

“Where’s the baby?”

“They took it off her and that’s why she’s pretending the doll is her baby.”

“Oh.”

“You mustn’t tell anyone, Iffy. Ifs a secret.”

“How do you know, then?”

He tapped the side of his nose twice. Iffy hated it when he did that.