2003 - A Jarful of Angels (6 page)

The moon was high and full above Blagdon’s Tump, the air was spiked with danger. Far away Iffy heard the clop of horse’s hooves somewhere on a lonely road. She looked around fearfully but the road was empty, glistening with powdered ice. Behind the high forbidding walls the Big House was a moving shadow, with smoke drifting up from the chimneys.

The smoke was different to their smoke. Wood smoke. Apple and pine. The chimneys of the town breathed coal. Fossil and dinosaur.

She thought of the pond in the garden. She hoped the ice was thick. A thick stopper of ice keeping the lid on him. The twisted old body of dead Dr Medlicott beginning to stir as the moonlight filtered through the black oily waters of the fishpond.

She climbed carefully down over the river bank. The ground was rutted and frozen beneath her Wellingtons and the stiffened clumps of grass crunched noisily. She stepped warily into the blackness under the hump-backed bridge.

Silence.

Her heart was loud in her ears and she felt it battering through her skin against her vest.

“Pssst!”

“Shit!”

She jumped in fright. Torchlight hit her in the eyes. She put up her hands against yellow glare.

“Bloody hell, Fatty! You frightened the life out of me! I could have peed myself.”

Fatty’s laughter echoed eerily underneath the bridge.

“Have you brought it with you?”

“Yep.”

“Gis a look then.”

Carefully, she pulled the green glass bottle out of the pocket in the lining of her gabardine mac.

Fatty shone the torchlight on the bottle. The green glass glowed in the circle of yellow light.

“It doesn’t say holy water on it.”

“No, but it says Lords, only the French can’t spell. See. LOURDES.”

She knew all about Lords. It was a place you could go to play cricket or else get cured.

“Go on then, I dare you to use some, Iffy!”

“No! I only said you could look at it.”

“If you did, miracles might happen, your wish might come true.”

“You can’t wish dead people alive again, Fatty.”

“Well, wish for something else then,”

“But you’ve got to have something wrong with you for it to work,”

“No you haven’t. That woman…Auntie Mary Johanna, the one who wanted a baby…she got what she wanted,”

“I don’t want a baby,”

“You don’t have to have a baby. If it can magic up babies it can probably do puppies and monkeys and other stuff too,”

“No!”

“You just drink a bit and wish for something…like a wishing well,”

“Drink it! You don’t drink holy water,”

“But it’d probably work quicker if you drank it, like syrup of figs,”

“No, Fatty!”

It was freezing under the bridge. Icy air oozed out from the old stones and damp cold seeped up through her wellies, on up her legs right up to her ears. Goose-pimples erupted like volcanoes on her flesh. She shivered, her knees knocked with cold and fright.

“Go on, Iffy,”

She shook her head. She couldn’t drink holy water. It was a sin. A huge one.

“No, my nan will kill me,” she said through chattering teeth.

“How will she know? You can fill it up with river water and put it back,”

“Not on your nelly! Anyway, the river’s all froze up,”

“Double dare you, Iffy Meredith,”

Her heart was a battering ram against her ribs.

“We can’t, Fatty! We’ll get into trouble,”

“No one will know,”

“
No!
God’U know,”

“What’s he going to do? Drop a rock out of the sky and flatten us?”

“He might!”

“Double, double dare!”

“No! Just a smell that’s all you’re getting.”

The sound of the ancient cork popping out of the bottle echoed loudly under the arch of the bridge.

Iffy looked round, fear shooting up her backbone like pins. “Fatty, I can hear someone. Listen.”

But there was no sound except her breathing, fast and heavy, making smoky clouds. Fatty swung the torchlight around in the darkness. Iffy was sure she saw a hunchbacked shadow moving across the arch of the bridge.

“There’s nobody here, only us. Go on, Iffy, just have a sip.”

“No.”

“Cowardy, cowardy custard. Dip your teeth in mustard,” sang Fatty.

She glared at him and shook her head angrily.

“Just a smell, then,” he said.

“Nope.”

“Yellow belly. Yellow belly.”

“I am not!”

“You are too!”

“Not!”

“You’re like Bessie…she’s afraid of everything.”

“I am not!”

“Prove it then.”

“Why should I?”

“No reason. See you, then.”

He moved away towards the far end of the bridge taking the torchlight with him.

The Old Bugger hooted in Carmel graveyard.

“Fatty! Don’t go. Look!”

She swigged from the bottle and choked. The holy water tasted stale and salty on her tongue, not how she imagined holy water would taste.

It’d be Fatty’s fault if she started growing wings or horns. Then her nan would guess what she’d done and she’d kill her…what if a baby came out of her bum?

She wiped her mouth angrily with the back of her hand and glared at him.

“Quick. Make a wish,” said Fatty.

She closed her eyes and wished. A very secret wish. A scary wish. Once she’d made it, she wasn’t so sure she wanted it to come true.

Fatty grinned at her, his eyes shining in the torchlight.

She passed the bottle to him and he handed her the torch.

He raised the bottle to his lips, tilted back his head and swigged long and hard. The precious water glugged down his throat.

“That’s enough, Fatty!”

Then he did something worse than swallowing it: he spat. He spat out a stream of holy water! An arc of bottled holiness rose in the air and splashed down all over his holey sandals.

“Bloody hell!” he yelled. “It’s horrible! It tastes like…tastes like…”

“Tastes like what?”

“Like…like Father Flaherty’s piss.”

Iffy gasped. She was too shocked to laugh. Hearing Father Flaherty’s name said in the same breath as the filthy word piss made her head spin. She stared at him. She couldn’t believe he’d said such a thing about a priest. He was mad. Dangerous. A bloody lunatic.

He began to dance round and round in the flickering light.

“Stop it, Fatty!”

But he wouldn’t stop.

“Father Flaherty’s wee wee…Father Flaherty’s piss piss,” he sang.

“Pack it in, Fatty!”

He was making her afraid, but there was no stopping him. On and on he sang until the air underneath the bridge was a mangled echo of his filthiness.

He handed the half-empty bottle back, took the torch from her and tucked it into the side of his balaclava.

He held out his hands for Iffy’s. She shook her head and held them tight behind her back. Daft as a bloody brush he was, but it was hard to ignore his laughter. It was catching.

She gave her hands to him, together they danced round and round and the torchlight bobbed up and down.

The soft patter of Fatty’s crepe-soled sandals was like rain on the smooth worn stone. Iffy’s wellies were noisier, slip-slap slopping.

And as they danced she played silently with the word piss in her head. From a wicked thought the word grew until it was vibrating on her lips. Slowly she formed it into a whisper. “Pppppppp…” Louder. “Pi pi pi…” A whispering hiss, slipping over her warm tongue, buzzing on her hot lips, a burning, fizzing rapture of filthiness. “PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISSSSSS.” Her ears hummed and scorched with the sound of her daring.

Fatty’s hands were sizzling in hers. His fingers were soft as warm toffee. Wicked as worms.

The bridge echoed and reverberated with the terrifying awfulness of their words.

Over in the Big House a dog began to bark.

From above their heads there came a loud crack, a splintering sound.

God! Paying them back. They stood quite still, their breath coming hot and fast.

Blood raced round and round Iffy’s body, her head swam with giddiness.

The echoes died away.

Fatty let go of her hands. She felt the warmth in them die. He shone the torchlight on the roof of the bridge.

GEORGE LOVES BRIDGET

CM LOVES EVO

EVO LOVES CM

LB 4 eGM

MERVYN PROSSER IS A FAT BAS…

The torchlight flickered and died.

Their hands joined again in the blackness. There was silence except the sound of their breathing.

Then there was another loud crack. They clutched at each other. An icicle broke away above their heads. It fell from the roof, missing them by inches. Splintered shards of ice exploded around their feet.

The torch stuttered back to life.

They laughed with relief, roared until the bridge was filled with the sound of their laughter. All around, the icicles began to drip, faster and faster, as if their wickedness had started a thaw.

The river of ice below them splintered and cracked. The water beneath the thick ice gurgled lazily…Then came a rushing sound, slow at first, growing louder. Large slabs of ice floated away down the river.

The torchlight played on the water. Iffy looked down and stared in disbelief. A skull was stuck fast in the ice – mouth gaping, front teeth missing. She saw it for a split second, then it was gone.

Fatty turned his back towards her taking the torchlight with him. There was a hissing sound in the darkness.

He turned around and shone his torch – steam billowed from the bottle from Lords.

Iffy gasped. “You dirty, filthy pig!”

Fatty rammed the steam into the neck of the bottle with the cork.

Iffy knew they were done for. She made the sign of the cross: ace, jack, king, queen.

Ace on the forehead Jack – just above the belly button King on the left nipple Queen on the right nipple.

“Shit! What was that!”

The town clock bonged for the first time in weeks.

Then Fatty kissed her. Hard and soft right on the lips. Just the once.

And then they were away out of the shadowy, dripping darkness. Up over the river bank, slipping and sliding as they went. They stood together on the hump-backed bridge. The moon was spinning fast. The sky an uncharted map of glimmering stars.

A red kite crossed the moon. Jack Look Up. Alone on Blagdon’s Tump trying to reach the stars for his long-dead son.

Agnes Medlicott stood alone in the upstairs drawing room of the Big House. She stood quite still looking down towards the bridge that spanned the river.

In all the years she’d been away the view from this window had stayed the same. She’d stood there so many times as a young woman, newly married, watching the road for her husband’s car when he’d been out on a call. The years had passed and she’d grown tired, tired of waiting, tired of the same old excuses. A call to a difficult labour over in another valley, a child taken to hospital. All lies. It was always another woman somewhere. Another brief liaison which wouldn’t last. They never did. When she’d fallen with child she’d thought things might improve, that love for his child, if not for her, would keep him closer to home, but she’d lost the baby at eight months. A little boy. She still kept a tiny shoebox containing the clothes she had knitted. Tiny matinee jackets and hats, mittens and booties wrapped in tissue paper. Stillborn. She hadn’t even seen him or held him in her arms, the nurses had whisked him away. On the anniversary of his birth and death she updated him in her head, a new image of him every year. From the dark-eyed baby through to the chubby toddler, a bright-eyed child, then a teenager. Now, if he’d lived, he would be a man of fifty, a father, a grandfather even.

There hadn’t been any more children, much to her regret. She could have stood her husband’s infidelity if she’d had a child of her own. All those years she’d grieved for the lost child, grieved for all the children she’d never have.

The pain of it had been barely tolerable. The ache she felt when she saw a baby in a pram, a mother holding the hand of a toddler, wiping a tear away from an eye. Until in the end the pain had made her afraid, and for a long time she had barely left the house for fear of what she might do.

C
hristmas came and went. The wishes that Fatty and Iffy had made beneath Jack Look Up’s tree and under the bridge didn’t come true. Neither were there any thunderbolts sent from God as a punishment for drinking the holy water.

Spring eventually came slowly up the valley. First came the call of early lambs born on the hill farms. The mountain ponds filled up with murky clouds of frogspawn. Then the apple trees in the Big House exploded into dusky pink clouds and sent showers of petal confetti over into the lane. Ragged daffodils pierced the black soil on the hillsides and Barny the bulldog broke his chains and rampaged through the town in search of love.

It was dusk. Darkness drifted up the river like bonfire smoke.

The four of them, Iffy, Fatty, Billy and Bessie, were sitting on the Dentist’s Stone. Midges hung in a shifting cloud over the hump-backed bridge. The long grass down by the river was alive with the sound of frog song and the sly rustle of bright-eyed cats out on the razzle. Far down the valley the bell of Zeraldo’s ice-cream van clanked out its tired old tune.

Behind the high walls, the Big House turned from dusky grey to a menacing black.

The moon was coming up fast, spinning dizzily over Blagdon’s Tump. The Old Bugger hooted down in Carmel graveyard.

A light came on in an upstairs room of the Big House. Electric light. Quick and yellow and sore on the eye. No soft build up like gaslight.

They watched the big arched window, eager as moths for its glowing light. A snapshot into that other world. Just a peep to whet the appetite.

The walls surrounding the house were too high to climb and creepers and bushes overgrew the big wrought-iron gates set into the walls, so this was the closest they ever got.

They were fascinated and terrified by the place.

No one had clapped eyes on Mrs Medlicott since that night in the winter when Fatty had seen her getting out of the car. She hadn’t stepped outside the door once. Old Sandicock, who had lived alone in the house since Dr Medlicott had died, did all the shopping. He was a bad-tempered old man, he never spoke, and he kept a shotgun for apple thieves.