2003 - A Jarful of Angels Read online

  The boy stepped back from the statue and crossed the lawn, looking about him, keeping low to the ground. When he got near to the fishpond he knelt down and bent his head to look into the dark, murky waters.

  Agnes Medlicott rang the bell.

  Iffy kept a check on the moon. A half moon. A three-quarter moon. It grew slowly each night. She stood and watched it from from the upstairs bedroom window.

  Down past the bridge, the graves in Carmel graveyard glowed in the moonlight. There were no signs of the graves cracking open yet. There were no skeletons clanking up the hill to find her. No more warnings sent from God. No locusts or famines or boils. No more frogs, leprosy or lightning bolts.

  But one day soon when the moon grew to its full size the pond would start to stir and the bones of old Dr Medlicott would begin to rattle, the statues to move…and Fatty was going to crawl through the pipe to see if it was true.

  He was mental.

  Will stood on the river bank just beneath the bridge. It was damp, and a cold wind swept up the valley. It seemed like such a short time ago that he’d stood in almost the same spot. Then, the sun had been beating down on his head, Rodwell had been standing beside him sweating profusely in his uniform. He remembered that he’d been astounded by the sound of croaking frogs, as if hundreds of them were thronging in the grass. He’d stood looking down at the clothes that had been abandoned. A small pile of clothes laid neatly in the parched grass. He’d picked them up, turned them over in his hands. They were warm from the sun and smelled very faintly of Fairy soap and lavender. A pile of kids’ clothes but, strangely, there was no sign of any shoes.

  Rodwell had told him that an old woman had raised the alarm. A Miss Bridget Thomas who’d been on her way home from Mass when she’d spotted the clothes. She’d been in quite a state apparently, ranting on to Sergeant Rodwell about God paying people back. Rodwell had to call a doctor for her, he’d told Will that she was a bit short-changed upstairs.

  Now, forty-odd years later Will stood in the long wet grass wondering what could have happened to the child. They’d thought immediately of drowning, of course. Most summers, particularly hot ones, claimed the lives of children tempted into the rivers and the mountain ponds. But the river levels had been very low after the weeks of hot weather, there hadn’t been enough of a current to carry a body any distance downstream, although they’d checked the deeper pools further downriver but there was no sign of a child alive or dead.

  There had been no sign of a struggle having taken place on the river bank and if some maniac had attacked or killed the child, God forbid, then surely the attacker wouldn’t have left the tell-tale pile of clothes lying there to be discovered?

  Days had passed and they’d been mystified that a child could apparently just disappear into thin air.

  News had travelled through the town and three witnesses had come forward. If they were to be believed then they could establish that at between approximately three o’clock and four o’clock on the day in question, the child had most definitely been alive.

  Will had interviewed the first witness. A Mr David Gittins, a middle-aged bus driver who lived locally. He stank heavily of sweat and stale beer and there was a peculiar smell of scorched cloth about him. He’d sat down gingerly in a chair and Will had wondered if piles troubled him. Will had thought him a shifty-looking bugger and an incredibly ugly bastard to boot. If Will was right, he probably had a bit of past form did Mr David Gittins.

  They’d checked the records. He’d been had up on a couple of charges of burglary when he was a young man, urinating in a public place, handling stolen goods, but nothing other than that.

  David Gittins claimed that he’d been driving the bus into town and, as he’d turned the corner by the rec, he’d nearly run over the child. It was about three o’clock, just before or just after, he’d heard the town clock chime the hour.

  “Just come out of fuc – flippin’ nowhere…must of jumped over the stile and run right out into the bloody road, not looking right or left, lucky not to have been killed I can tell you.”

  It was a Sunday night. Billy, Iffy and Bessie met up on the bridge after Iffy had been to Mass with her grandparents and Bessie had been to evening chapel. Billy always went to early morning Mass. Fatty was dead lucky, he never had to go at all.

  Voices drifted up from underneath the bridge. They all stopped still, kept quiet, just in case of ambush. Ambushes were always a worry, especially when Fatty wasn’t around to help out. Sometimes kids from other parts of town hid under the bridge and waited. Then slimy mud bombs might be lobbed up in the air, coming down like fat rain. Any kids unlucky enough to be on top of the bridge would be splattered from head to foot with sticky black mud and weeds. And then there was all hell to be had at home when it wasn’t even their fault.

  They listened. Ears cocked. No sound of a lookout’s whistle.

  “It’s only the Beynon twins, I think,” Iffy whispered.

  They were afraid it was Mervyn Prosser, because everybody was scared of Mervyn Prosser. Even Fatty was a bit.

  Mervyn Prosser lived up Donkey Lane. He was the roughest boy they knew. He was a bully and had his own gang: Dopey Thomas, Fido and Titch. Mervyn was the boss. They kidnapped kids and took them to their den and pulled the hairs out of their legs with rusty tweezers. Mervyn wasn’t all there up top. Once he shot a woman up the arse with an air gun and the police were called and took the gun off him. It was Mrs Annie Caldwell whose arse it was and she was never right after.

  Walter and Willy Beynon were just little kids from Balaclava. Harmless kids with snot running out of their snouts, down over their lips. Enough to make anyone sick. Snail trails all over their sleeves from wiping it.

  They waited. Listened.

  No bombs came over the top so they climbed up on the bridge and dangled their feet over the edge. Beneath them the water glugged and sucked and rolled away down the valley.

  Music from a wireless escaped through an open window and floated on the soft evening air, “Que sera sera…Whatever will be will be, the future’s not ours to see…”

  “Oy! You lot!”

  Mervyn Prosser came scrabbling up the bank. Behind him came Fido.

  Shit!

  Mervyn Prosser had a big red splash across his left cheek. A birthmark. His mam probably ate plums or damsons when she was having him.

  Iffy thought fruit could be very dangerous: banana skins for broken bones, Auntie Mary Meredith had nearly choked to death on a monkey nut. And prunes. Prunes could make you shit through the eye of a needle.

  “Look what we got!” Mervyn yelled running across the bridge towards them.

  “A great big bugger,” said Fido, behind him.

  They slid down off the bridge in panic. They were trapped. Not enough time to run. Bessie stood behind Iffy for safety.

  Mervyn pulled his hands from behind his back.

  “Look!”

  “Urrgh!” Bessie stepped backwards with a yelp.

  A huge fat frog peeped out from between Mervyn’s filthy fingers.

  Iffy thought the frog looked sad but not afraid.

  “We found it in the grass. There’s millions of ‘em.”

  “Wanna touch it?”

  “Push off.” Bessie flew out the way. She knew that touching frogs gave you warts. Mervyn had them all over his fingers. Fido had one on his chin.

  Fatty had told Iffy loads of cures for warts. Spit. Red match heads. Bacon. Slap a bit of bacon over the wart. Bury the bacon, and when it’s rotted away the wart will fall off. Or else you could pee on them.

  Iffy had read books where frogs turned into princes if you kissed them. Yet they never showed pictures of princesses with warty lips.

  The smell of nettles and coal came up from the river, sweet and bitter and smoky. Dandelion parachutes blew in the breeze and floated over the bridge and away down the river to the sea.

  Bessie didn’t like dandelions. If you got the sap on your fingers it could make you pee th
e bed leaking.

  Fatty once told Iffy that the French called dandelions pees on lee, which meant piss the beds. The French were very vulgar. Iffy would have liked to live in France.

  Billy took the frog off Mervyn and held it. He stroked it on its head with his finger, ever so gently, putting his face really close to it. Iffy and Bessie looked on. Billy liked all sorts of creatures. He wasn’t scared of any of them, even spiders and Black Pats.

  Iffy hated Black Pats. They came out in the dark from cracks and holes. There were loads of them in the lav at night.

  “Gis it back then,” Mervyn said.

  Billy handed the frog back carefully.

  Bessie shifted even further away, holding her skirt down over her knees in case the frog escaped.

  “Right,” said Mervyn, “Let’s get the jar and take it home. See you!”

  Mervyn and Fido went leaping and laughing back down to the river.

  Iffy, Billy and Bessie climbed back up onto the side of the bridge and sat looking down into the water. Gnats gathered around them and a butterfly rested on the bridge, batting its wings. Iffy put out a finger to touch its wing. She liked butterflies. They did the day shift and their cousins, the moths, did the night one. She didn’t like moths. They flew into candle flames and got burned.

  The water burbled and glugged. No voices from under the bridge. Mervyn and Fido had gone. They must have gone further down the river and then cut up behind the back of the graveyard.

  Suddenly they came running towards the bridge from the direction of Carmel Chapel.

  “Oy, you three!” Mervyn shouted.

  “What?”

  “Cop hold of that!”

  Mervyn threw something high into the air.

  “Blast off!” Fido shrieked.

  It wasn’t mud. It wasn’t a bomb. It was the frog.

  It fell through the darkening skies.

  Iffy put her hands to her mouth and prayed that it didn’t twist its ankles when it landed on the concrete.

  There was something peculiar about the frog as it came down through the air.

  It came down right over Bessie, who screamed as it hurtled towards her.

  There was a great red bang as the frog exploded. Green bits flying everywhere.

  “Bullseye!” screeched Mervyn.

  Frog bits dropped like rain: blood and guts and eyeballs.

  Pieces of the frog stuck all over Bessie.

  Mervyn and Fido hopped and squealed and danced up and down with delight. Their snot was like a river flowing down their pinchy little faces.

  Skin and blood and intestines were stuck all over Bessie’s Sunday-school frock. It was blue gingham with a white bow and puffy sleeves. Ruined now. Spattered with frog guts.

  It was a cruel trick. Iffy knew what they’d done. They’d tied squibs to the frog’s legs and poked gunpowder up its bum. Cruel buggers.

  Bessie no longer screamed. She stood there like a big mama doll with her arms held out towards Iffy and Billy. Her mouth was wide open but no sound came out. Iffy could see her tonsils. Her face was a rainbow of colours: blue, green, shocking pink, purple.

  Iffy ignored the outstretched arms. She didn’t want to touch her because of the bits of frog. She stood at a safe distance behind Bessie and banged her on the back like grown-ups did with babies in case they were in danger of dying from not breathing. There weren’t any bits of frog on Bessie’s back. It took ages for any noise to come out of Bessie.

  Billy began to cry. There was no sound. Just big tears splashing down his soft cheeks.

  Mervyn and Fido stomped up and down, shrieking and pointing at Billy. “Cry baby bunting! Cry baby bunting!”

  Then Bessie sicked up her Sunday dinner. All down the bodice of her frock. Lamb and mint sauce. Iffy could smell the mint.

  “Chick, chick, chick, chick, chicken!” yelled Mervyn.

  Billy stopped crying. His body stiffened, he clenched his small fists by his sides. A pulse moved in his neck.

  A long squeaky sound came out of Bessie. Her shoulders were going up and down. Quiet sobbing. Louder sobbing.

  Fit to bust. Then she was shivering and shaking, trying to grab hold of Iffy but Iffy held her at arm’s length so she couldn’t get too close.

  No one knew Billy could move so quickly. Mervyn and Fido weren’t expecting Billy to go for them like a bloody mad thing.

  Mervyn first. Biff! A fist in the chops. Mervyn’s head rocked backwards, as it came forward droplets of sticky blood drizzled from his nostrils. Thwap! Billy’s small fists battering the stupid face. There was blood on Mervyn’s fat ugly lips: blood and snot mixed. Mervyn was hollering.

  Whap! A left hander on Fido’s snout. Bubbles of snot on Billy’s tiny knuckles. More blood than snot now on Fido.

  Billy went for Mervyn again, grabbing at his hair, twisting and pulling at it until clumps of it came away in his hands and blew over the bridge with the dandelion parachutes. Mervyn, face contorted in pain, squealed like a piglet.

  Thwap! Thwap! Two biffs for Fido. One in the guts, one where his flies were.

  Iffy gasped with shock and pleasure. Serve him right. Copped in the privates. Goolies. Clods. Balls. Nuts. Tentacles was the proper word.

  Bessie was rolling on the ground.

  The sound of voices came from the direction of the Mechanics. Carty Annie was trundling the cart behind her with Fatty close by her side, the two of them talking together, not looking up yet.

  Fido was down in the dust, yelling, sobbing and blabbing.

  Mervyn raced off up the hill, looking over his shoulder.

  Fatty ran towards them.

  “You wait! You bloody wait, Billy Edwards. You bloody fat arse you! I’ll have you for this! I’ll get my father down. He’ll paste you!” yelled Mervyn.

  That was a laugh. Mr Prosser only weighed about six stone wet through. He was as weedy as hell.

  Iffy’s nan once said the best part of Mr Prosser ran down his father’s leg.

  Fido got up and tried to run but his legs were wobbly, he was clutching at his dooh dah through his trousers.

  Fatty was staring open-mouthed at Bessie.

  “Bloody ‘ell! Woss up with her?”

  Bessie was wheezing and rattling nineteen to the dozen.

  “What happened, Iffy?” Fatty said, looking from Billy to Bessie.

  “They exploded a frog all over her.”

  “What?”

  “Put bangers up its arse and it landed on Bessie.”

  “Bastards! You all right, Billy?”

  Billy nodded, breathing fast, wiping the snot-streaked blood from his knuckles.

  “Bloody hell, Billy! I didn’t know you could fight.”

  Carty Annie drew the cart to a halt on the bridge.

  “You best have a lend of my old cart to get her home.” She nodded in Bessie’s direction. “She doesn’t look very feckin’ healthy.”

  Bessie was crumpled up in a whistling heap. None of them had ever seen her in such a mess. Her frock was spattered with blood, there was snot on her face and dust on her sandals and socks.

  Billy took hold of the reins on the cart. Iffy and Fatty cleared a space among the jam jars and the other junk in the cart.

  Fatty nudged Iffy and pointed into the cart, “Look.”

  Iffy looked. Nothing special, only the usual old piss pot and stuff.

  Fatty and Iffy took Bessie under the armpits and managed to shove her into the cart between them. She was light, just skin and bone.

  Billy pulled and Fatty pushed and they dragged the cart slowly up the rutted road.

  Iffy ran on in front all the way to the steps that led down to Inkerman. Mrs Tranter was playing the harmonium when she knocked at the door. ‘Rock of Ages’. Practising for a funeral. Bessie’s by the look of her.

  Mr Tranter limped across the bailey behind Iffy, grunting as he climbed the steps. His false teeth were clickety clacketing, pink and white castanets doing overtime.

  Bessie was lying flat out i
n the cart like a landed trout. Bloody and squeaking, mouth opening and closing, her glassy eyes staring.

  Mr Tranter puffed and blew, muttering between his dancing teeth.

  Fatty’s arm was around Bessie’s shoulders and she wasn’t even fighting him off. Her lips were purple, she was groaning and gasping for air.

  Mr Tranter pushed Fatty roughly out of the way. “Get your filthy dirty hands off her!”

  “Hang on! I’m only trying to help.”

  Mr Tranter lifted Bessie up out of the cart. He carried her all the way home in his arms. Iffy saw her knickers. Posh lacy ones with pink and white flowers. Iffy’s were plain old aertex with baggy legs, and they went up the crack on hot days.

  The three of them followed Mr Tranter, but when they got to Bessie’s house he bared his clacking teeth at them, slamming the door without a word, and pushing the bolts home. They waited outside for ages for news of Bessie, but no one came out, so they trailed back down the hill to where Carty Annie was waiting by the Dentist’s Stone.

  Fatty thanked her for the lend of the cart and they watched her as she trundled away, muttering to herself on her way back to the house in Dancing Duck Lane.

  Bessie eventually recovered from the frog explosion and was allowed back out, scrubbed and disinfected. The blue gingham frock had been thrown out with the rubbish.

  Iffy and Bessie were going for sweets. Bessie always had pounds of money for sweets. The baby teeth that she still had left were brown from eating too many.

  Iffy’s nan said Mrs Tranter would kill Bessie with kindness.

  Iffy would’ve liked a mam who would kill her with kindness. Not a baggy-arsed, misery-guts of an old mam like Bessie had. Not a knitting, hymn-playing mam who smelled of Jeyes Fluid and hard toilet paper. She wanted a mam who smelled of Pond’s cold cream and bent down without showing her stocking tops. A mam with her own teeth and a proper brassiere, not one big enough to carry the shopping home in.

  Bessie always insisted on going to Morrissey’s for sweets. Iffy wasn’t supposed to go there, because Fatty had warned her not to. And her nan. Once her nan bought a quarter of Riley’s Chocolate Toffee Rolls and when she opened them there were teeth marks in them and it turned her stomach to think of it.