2003 - A Jarful of Angels Page 19

  Nan poured tea. Cow’s milk and three sugars for Auntie Mary Meredith.

  “I’ve just seen that Hilary Tranter’s daughter, coming up the hill behind that big fat piece from the Old Bake House,” Auntie Mary said.

  “Oh, that’s Lally.”

  “Good God!” said Auntie Mary Meredith. “There’s a pair of tits on her.”

  Iffy rammed her fist in her mouth so as not to laugh and bit her knuckles hard.

  “Mary,” Nan chuckled, “you mustn’t say things like that.”

  “Well, she have! Huge they are. Like bloody big pumpkins,” said Auntie Mary.

  “I know she have,” Nan said, “but you mustn’t say so.”

  It was no good telling Auntie Mary though because she said things like that all the time, the first thing that came into her head.

  Iffy wondered what Hilary Tranter’s daughter was doing with Lally. Hilary Tranter never came near Bessie’s house because her mam had disowned her after she ran away from home, dyed her hair and changed her name to Dolores. And Auntie Mary must have got it wrong anyway because Hilary Tranter didn’t have a daughter she had two boys. Iffy and Bessie had seen them. It was a secret because Bessie wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with her sister.

  One day they’d seen Dolores coming out of Morrissey’s shop and they’d followed her. She wore high heels that clicked as she walked and her skirt was so tight she had to take very small steps. She was pushing two sleeping babies in a battered old pushchair with buckled wheels. Bessie said the babies were twins and were called Cliff and Adam.

  They followed her down over the bridge, past Carmel Chapel, along a lane that led to a farm where the farmer had a gun and a bad temper. She’d turned a bend in the road and as they rounded the corner she was standing facing them, hands on her hips.

  They’d stopped dead in their tracks.

  “You’d never make a pair of bloody spies!”

  They shuffled their feet and looked down at the ground.

  “You want to come in or what?”

  Bessie shook her head.

  “Don’t worry, Bessie, I won’t tell mam you’ve been. I don’t speak to her, remember?”

  Hilary Tranter’s house was wedged in between two wrecked ones. There were still fireplaces in the upstairs walls and scraps of flowery wallpaper flapped in the breeze.

  Hilary went into the house and the girls followed. There were clothes thrown all over the floor and a brassiere hung over the banisters. Hilary stepped through all the mess as if it wasn’t there.

  The kitchen was worse than the hall. There were boxes on the floor full of empty tins and beer bottles. White flour spilled out of a paper bag onto a pile of dirty socks. There were knickers with brown marks on and, on a newspaper in one corner, there was a piece of half-eaten fish that buzzed with flies. There were fag ends and burn marks on every surface. Greasy plates were piled high on the kitchen table.

  “We can’t stay long, Lurry,” Bessie squeaked.

  “I’m Dolores now not bloody Lurry.”

  Bessie began to wheeze.

  Iffy wondered if she was putting it on to get out of there but there was a mangy-looking cat asleep on top of the draining board. Cats always made Bessie wheeze. So did maths.

  Dolores said, “Please your sodding selves. Don’t wake the bloody babies up on the way out.”

  But she smiled kindly at Bessie and she stood on the step and watched them as they walked back down the lane.

  On the way home Bessie said Hilary must have been burgled, but she hadn’t been else she’d have called for the police. Bessie only said that because she was embarrassed.

  She’d made Iffy swear not to tell her mam.

  Auntie Mary Meredith said, “Wasn’t it that queer-faced little man in the sweet shop, that Morrissey fellow who put Hilary Tranter in the family way in the first place?”

  “Well, that was all the talk at the time,” Nan said.

  “Only fourteen, wasn’t she, when she had the baby?”

  “Ay, fourteen or fifteen. Hot in the knickers she was, that Hilary. Calls herself Dolores now. Soft cow. She got a couple of dark babies off a sailor from Newport.”

  “Mrs Tranter took on the one she had by Morrissey, didn’t she?”

  “Oh ay, been rearing her as if she was her own. Mind you, I don’t think Mrs Tranter has a clue about who the father is, so don’t go opening your trap, Mary. Bessie, the girl is called, she plays with our Iffy. Nice enough little girl but mollycoddled.”

  Bessie! Nan meant Bessie Tranter!

  Iffy sat very still under the table trying to make sense of what she’d heard. She rolled the words round in her head. She still didn’t understand. Then she did. It couldn’t be true!

  She wished she hadn’t heard. Perhaps they’d made a mistake, but she’d heard them.

  That meant Bessie’s sister was really her mam. And her mam wasn’t her mam at all, she was her nan.

  Iffy’s head was spinning just thinking about it.

  And Morrissey was the man who had done it with Hilary Tranter. Morrissey and Hilary Tranter had rubbed belly buttons and Bessie hadn’t come out of Mrs Tranter’s bum, but out of her sister’s, well, her sister who was really her mam.

  It was awful. And Bessie didn’t know.

  Poor Bessie! She couldn’t marry Morrissey now. He was her dad. And who she thought was her real dad was her grancha. And the chocolate babies in the pushchair were her brothers, sort of.

  Iffy felt sick. It was the worst secret ever. She knew she must never tell Bessie, even if they argued. Even if she wanted to for spite. Bridgie Thomas had been right about there being secrets in the town.

  Iffy was glad there were no secrets about herself, she was sick of secrets.

  Auntie Mary Meredith stayed for ages and when Nan went out to the lav, and Iffy could finally crawl out from under the table, her legs would barely move they were so stiff.

  Iffy didn’t call for Bessie all the next day and when Bessie came knocking she hid under the bed. She didn’t want to see her now she knew. Things didn’t feel the same any more.

  Iffy kept the secret, but knowing it made her feel bad. It was always ready on the tip of her tongue to spill out. Whenever she and Bessie argued, Iffy thought about telling Bessie the truth, but she daren’t.

  It was horrible having a secret and she’d always thought it would be nice.

  It was too big a secret. It made her afraid and it made her chest hurt. It grew inside her until she was afraid she’d have to let it out. Telling the secret would be like a snowball: small at first but getting bigger as everyone knew. Bigger and bigger, as people whispered it behind their hands, until it was so huge it would roll away and flatten Bessie. Even kill her.

  It was a hunch. Coppers’ instinct.

  Will opened the door to Gladys’s Gowns and went inside. It was like stepping back into another age. The shop even smelled the way life had forty years ago.

  A smartly dressed woman in her fifties came forward and smiled at Will. Behind her in a wicker chair a very old woman sat wrapped in a plaid shawl.

  The older woman looked Will up and down with bright-eyed interest despite her great age.

  “How may I help you?” the younger of the two women asked, clearly quite surprised to see a gentleman in the shop.

  “I wondered…” said Will. “I was looking for a hat.”

  “For any particular occasion?” said the younger woman politely.

  “Well, it’s rather difficult. I have an old aunt, she’s in a home now, but she was always so particular about her hats.”

  “Not so easy these days to get a good hat,” said the old woman. “In my day we wouldn’t go out without one. These youngsters go flying about the place with their heads uncovered, no wonder they’re all suffering from these funny diseases we never had years ago.”

  “That’s just what my aunt says. She’s very fit really, apart from her legs, she’s eighty-nine.”

  Just then the telephone
rang in the back of the shop and the younger woman excused herself and went out the back.

  “I’m ninety-two. Your aunt has the same problem no doubt with her legs as I have. I can’t stand for long periods. Still do a lot of my own cooking, mind. My Marlene has a heavy hand with pastry.”

  “Ah, now that’s one of my weaknesses – pastry,” said Will.

  “I can’t bear all this low-fat, no-fat nonsense,” said the old woman.

  “Wimberry tart, nothing tastes like that. Wimberries seem to have gone out of fashion,” said Will.

  “Not if you know where to look. There’s an old boy who brings me wimberries. Marlene laughs when I call him an old boy, he’s only seventy-five – years younger than me. If it is wimberry tart you want, Inspector?”

  Will smiled. “It’s that obvious, is it?”

  “I can tell a policeman at fifty paces. My husband was in the force, over in the next valley, a bit before your time. Now, if it’s just wimberry tart that you’re after, maybe I can help.”

  Will had taken a liking to this old lady, there wouldn’t be much that she didn’t know about the happenings of years ago.

  “It’s half-day closing on Thursday. Marlene goes to visit a gentleman friend – she thinks I don’t know! I’m not as green as I’m cabbage-looking! You come round the back about three o’clock – I’ll get her to leave the door on the latch.”

  Jack Look Up flew his kite when the moon was full. They called him Jack Look Up because he looked up every couple of seconds. It was a twitch. They used to watch him and count: One, two, three, and Jack’s chin twitched twice. His head jerked up towards the sky and one eye winked. One, two, three, then it happened all over again. Over and over.

  The children were watching him from the bridge. The big red kite was like a badge against the darkening sky above Blagdon’s Tump. Jack Look Up held on to the reel of string and danced backwards and forwards across the Tump. Mad as a hatter, Jack was. Nan said he was a gentleman and a scholar. He lost his only son in the pit. He was only sixteen. They were working on the same shift. There was a bad fall and the son got trapped. Jack had to cradle him in his arms and watch him die. He was never right after. There were lots of people in the town who were never right after.

  Jack Look Up wouldn’t set foot down the pit again. He said thank Christ the days of coal were nearly over. They’d sucked the valleys dry and spat out the bones. And one day when they’d had all they wanted, they’d shut up shop and leave them to scratch about for a living.

  No one believed him, though. It was just daft talk. Grancha said there was tons of coal left in Wales. There’d always be a pit in the town and all the other towns. Like it or not, coal was the lifeblood.

  Jack Look Up might have been mad, but he was very clever. He built giant matchstick castles and cathedrals and sold them in the markets in Merthyr and Swansea. Iffy wondered how he managed not to drop all those matchsticks when his chin twitched and his head shot up.

  They watched him flying his kite until it was too dark to see him any more. Just a glimpse every now and then of his kite passing across the big milky moon.

  Fatty and Billy walked Iffy and Bessie back to the steps of Inkerman. On the way Fatty showed them the little lead and collar he’d bought ready for when he got the puppy. It was tiny and made of red leather, attached to it was a little silver barrel. Carefully Fatty unscrewed it and took out a small piece of folded-up paper. They could just make out the writing in the light of the lamp post: This dog belongs to Lawrence Bevan, Coronation Row.

  “What you gonna call the puppy?”

  “Yapper!” Fatty said.

  Bessie sniffed.

  “Why Yapper?” Iffy asked.

  “Cos he’s always yapping every time I go down and look through the window.”

  As they came level with Inkerman, Fatty pointed up towards the Black Band. “Look, there’s Dai Full Pelt!”

  Dai was creeping across the Black Band. He had a sack slung over his shoulders, he was looking all around him as if he was worried about being followed.

  Fatty pulled them back into the shadows of the houses, and they watched him. He went past Iffy’s grancha’s chicken coop and on up towards the ponds.

  “Probably been out burglaring,” said Fatty.

  “No,” said Bessie. “Burglars wear striped jumpers and masks when they’re working.”

  “Only in comics, you daft sod,” said Fatty. “Otherwise everybody’d know who they were!”

  Bessie sniffed and turned her back on him.

  Bessie-O!

  Second time of calling.

  “G’night.”

  The girls ran hell for leather.

  Down in the graveyard the Old Bugger hooted and Barny the bulldog howled and rattled his chains like a ghost.

  Fatty called for Iffy in the morning, standing on the step red-faced and puffing.

  “Iffy, I got something important to tell you!”

  “Whafs up! Not about that bloody head again?”

  “Shhh! No.”

  “Ask him if he wants some toast,” shouted Nan from the kitchen.

  “Yes please, Mrs Meredith.”

  Fatty always said please and thank you even though he was rough. Bessie didn’t always and Billy couldn’t.

  They sat side by side on the step and Nan gave them huge culfs of toast and butter.

  “Thank you, Mrs Meredith.”

  Fatty ate the toast hungrily and in between bites he said, “You know we seen Dai last night going up the mountain with a sack?”

  Iffy nodded and licked butter from her lips.

  “Well, after you’d all gone in I hung about for a while, and after a bit Dai come back down, but guess what?”

  “Give in.”

  “He didn’t have the sack with him.”

  “So?”

  “So, he’s hidden it somewhere. And coming up through town just now I heard that someone broke into the presbytery the other night and pinched the silver. I reckon it was Dai and he’s hidden the swag up the mountain somewhere.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “Find it and get the reward.”

  “Is there a reward?”

  “Bound to be, mun, for silver.”

  Fatty hid round the corner while Iffy called for Bessie but Bessie’s mam, who wasn’t really her mam, opened the door and said she was otherwise engaged.

  That meant she was in the lav having a pwp.

  Iffy banged on the door of the Tranters’ lav but Bessie wouldn’t answer.

  Iffy called out, “Bessie!”

  Bessie grunted. “Go away, Iffy Meredith!”

  “Bessie, it’s important.”

  “I’m on the lav. Now get lost.”

  “Get lost yourself,” Iffy hissed. She wanted to say more, but instead clamped her mouth shut and ran after Fatty, leaving Bessie there grunting and blowing.

  Billy came up the hill and Fatty told him the plan.

  “We’ll look round the shale tips,” Fatty said.

  They climbed up onto the Black Band and walked up the hill towards the shale tips. They searched all round the huge grey tips, but there was no sign of the sack.

  “Tell you what, let’s spread out and walk towards the pond, see if we can find any clues,” Fatty said.

  They spread out and walked, heads low, towards the blue lake searching the ground for clues.

  Billy started jumping up and down and beckoned to the others. He pointed to a fag end on the ground.

  Fatty picked it up and sniffed it. “Fresh, my dear Watson. No more than a day old!”

  He gave it to Iffy and Billy to smell. It stank. Capstan Full Strength.

  “Well done, Billy!”

  Billy grinned from ear to ear.

  “Which way do you reckon he went?” Iffy asked.

  Billy pointed towards the blue lake.

  They went at a run and found another clue. There were footsteps in the sand leading to the edge of the lake and footsteps leading away ag
ain.

  “He’s hidden the loot in the lake!” yelled Fatty. “Let’s get in and look for it.”

  Iffy shook her head and so did Billy. The lake was full of drowned wild boys and drunk men.

  Iffy and Billy kept a lookout, while Fatty paddled out into the murky waters. He told them to keep their eyes peeled for Dai or anyone else who might come along.

  “Chuck us a stick, Iffy.”

  Iffy scrabbled about, found a stick and threw it out to Fatty who was up to the top of his legs in the water. He poked about for ages.

  “Geronimo! Got it!”

  Whatever it was, it must have been heavy because he was tugging at something under the surface of the water that didn’t seem to want to budge.

  “Gonna have to drag it out, it weighs a ton!”

  Iffy thought that it must be the stolen treasure from the presbytery. A bag full of precious silver! And maybe even gold!

  Fatty dragged the sack to the edge of the pond. It was an old coal sack tied at the top with string.

  Iffy grinned as she thought of the reward. They’d be rich. Have their pictures in the paper. Bessie would be dead mad that she’d missed being a hero!

  “Open it, Fatty! Quick! Untie the string before someone comes.”

  Iffy and Billy hopped about in excitement but still kept a wary eye out for Dai.

  “Hang on, Iffy. Give me a hand to drag it into the dip out of the way in case anyone sees us.”

  Iffy grabbed a corner of the sodden sack and helped him drag it down into a hollow. Fatty was soaked to the skin, his legs were streaked with weed and scum, black mud squelched out from the holes in his sandals but he didn’t seem to care a bit.

  The three of them stood close together staring down at the sack hardly believing their luck.

  “Go on, Fatty, open it!”

  Billy was so excited he was clapping his hands and jumping up and down on the spot.

  Fatty cut the string with his penknife.

  Iffy wanted to pee.

  “Ready?” said Fatty.

  “Yep.”

  Iffy sang a hymn from school, “Daisies are our silver, buttercups our gold. This is all the treasure we can ha a a ave or hold!”