2003 - A Jarful of Angels Read online

  Fatty bounced the sack onto his knees to take the weight and shook the bottom corners to tip out the treasure. Any minute now and the silver would fall onto the green grass. Billy grabbed hold of Iffy’s arm and shivered. Fatty heaved up the bag to his chest and the treasure tumbled out.

  Billy gasped.

  A bird piped out a tinny song and a fish jumped and plopped back into the blue lake.

  Fatty squealed.

  Billy stared down at the grass open-mouthed, eyes wide.

  Iffy looked from the grass to Fatty’s face. He stood as still as stone looking down at the treasure. His face was mud-streaked, his blue eyes were staring. A wide-eyed statue.

  There was no silver, or gold. No reward to be had.

  On the green mountain grass, among the daisies and the buttercups, lay a pile of broken bricks and five drowned puppies.

  Billy tucked his small hand into Iffy’s, which was shaking. Fatty dropped down onto his knees beside the puppies. He cupped his dirty hands around one of them and lifted it up. It was soggy and limp. Its velvety little face was crumpled up and its eyes were closed tight. The tiny, tiny mouth was twisted into a sad little smile showing two white pointed teeth.

  It was Fatty’s puppy. The miniature Barny lay dead in his trembling hands. Yapper.

  A terrible noise came out of Fatty. It made Iffy’s whole body quiver. It was a sob, a shudder and a moan all at once. It was the worst sound she’d ever heard. He lifted the puppy up to his lips, like Father Flaherty lifting the sacred host at Mass, and he kissed it so softly.

  His mouth crumpled as he said, “I was gonna put a collar on him and teach him to walk on the lead I bought…and teach him to sit…”

  Fatty’s eyes were a blur of blue tears that squeezed between his thick black eyelashes. The tears slid down the sides of his nose, magnifying his freckles and making muddy rivers of his cheeks. His tears fell onto the wet puppy.

  “And teach him not to chase sheep…and let him sleep with me so’s he wouldn’t be lonely and neither would I any more.”

  Fatty’s nose was running, a waterfall of snot, all over his top lip.

  Iffy looked across at Billy. Billy’s eyes were two dark ponds bursting their banks. Her throat felt as though it was stuffed full of sharp stones.

  Fatty rubbed away the snot and tears with the back of his hand. His face was a smudge of sorrow.

  Iffy let go of Billy’s hand and knelt down beside Fatty. She put her arm around his shoulders. She felt the pain run off him and pass through her fingers like electricity. She held him close against her for a long time until his body stopped shaking and the fierce pain that came out of him turned into a dull throbbing ache.

  Billy ran all the way home for a shovel and a candle and came back bringing a red-faced and puffing Bessie Tranter with him.

  They buried the puppies one by one down in the little hollow. Yapper was the last one to be buried. They made daisy chains and hung them over wooden crosses made from lollipop sticks. Fatty lit the candle but it kept on going out.

  All day they stayed on the mountain keeping watch over the graves. As the sun dipped behind the Sirhowy Mountain they stood up. Fatty said, “May the souls of the faithful departed puppies rest in peace.”

  “Aremen.”

  They made the sign of the cross:

  Ace

  Jack

  King

  Queen

  Walking slowly down over the Black Band towards home it was as though the whole world was on fire. An orange-red glow filled the sky and the clouds were lined with gold and silver. The windows of Carmel Chapel blazed with fire and sparks from the dying sun singed the trees with light.

  No one spoke. Even Bessie seemed to know when to keep her trap shut sometimes.

  Down in the valley Zeraldo’s bell rang, but none of them was in the mood for ice cream.

  As they reached the steps that led down to Inkerman, Fatty was first to break the silence, “I know one thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?” said Bessie.

  “Dai Full Pelt is a bloody dead man.”

  Billy nodded. So did Iffy.

  “Well swear an oath,” said Fatty, his eyes bright in the growing darkness.

  “I’m not swearing,” said Bessie.

  They ignored her and swore with their hands on their hearts, “Dai Futt Pelt is a bloody dead man!”

  Even Bessie.

  PART THREE

  Fatty called a meeting, he said they had to do it properly. It was no laughing matter. It was tamping down with rain so they’d sneaked round the back of Mr Edwards’s bakery and crept into Billy’s coal shed.

  “We could boil up bags of mushy peas and pelt him on the way home from the pub,” Iffy said.

  “Where we gonna get all those peas from, stupid?” Bessie said.

  Iffy glared at her.

  “You think of something better then!”

  “We’ll make bombs out of horse shit!” said Fatty.

  Bessie sniffed.

  “Dynamite,” she suggested.

  Iffy roared with laughter. Fatty stared at Bessie.

  “Got some have you?” he asked.

  Bessie sulked.

  “Fireworks,” Iffy said.

  “I’m not going in Shanto’s shop after what the dirty pig done to me with that discustin’ false eye of his,” said Bessie.

  Then Fatty yelled. He whispered something to Billy, who grinned and his eyes lit up.

  Fatty whispered to Bessie. She went white and shook her ringlets.

  “No,” she said.

  Fatty whispered in Iffy’s ear. They couldn’t! They’d get killed if they got caught, or go to jail. It was terrifying! It was brilliant! Fatty was a genius! Or a nut case.

  The door to the chapel was well-oiled and opened with barely a squeak. Will stepped into the gloomy interior. Diluted sunlight filtered in through the high arched windows and he shivered in the chill air. The pungent smell of disinfectant and polish made his eyes water.

  At the front of the chapel a plump middle-aged woman sat at the organ, swaying gently from side to side as she played.

  Will’s footsteps rang out loudly on the stone floor. The organ music petered out and the woman turned to face him.

  “Oh, hello. You must be Mr Sloane. How do you do?”

  Will stared at her, his head began to spin and the painful thump of his heart reverberated in his ears.

  The ringlets were gone. They had been replaced by a fierce tight perm, the dark-blonde hair was greying at the temples. She was much fatter than she had been all those years ago but the wheezing noises still came from her chest.

  “Bessie Tranter?” said Will, and his voice wavered with surprise.

  “Ugh! It’s years since anyone called me that! I prefer to be called Elizabeth.”

  She still had that squeaky tremulous voice. She held out a hand to Will.

  “My husband Mervyn said you were going to call and tell me how beautiful that garden used to be. Mervyn asked me to invite you to tea. I thought Friday perhaps?”

  “That would be fine, thank you. Where do you live?”

  “We’re rather tucked out of the way. I’m going home now, and if you fancied a walk I could show you, it’s not too far.”

  Will walked with Elizabeth Prosser through the graveyard. Suddenly she stopped at a well-tended grave, knelt down and straightened a vase that was filled with freshly cut flowers.

  “My mother’s and father’s grave,” she said. It was of black marble, polished to shining, the gold inscriptions on the headstone gleaming in the weak sunlight.

  “There’s another grave over there,” Will said indicating the far end of the graveyard. “Dolores Tranter. Any relation of yours?”

  Bessie stood up stiffly and straightened her skirt.

  “No,” she said and brushed an imaginary fleck of dust from her jumper.

  They walked a long way in silence. The only sound was the wheezy noise that came from Bessie’s chest.

>   As they turned a corner she said, “Here we are, Mr Sloane, our humble dwelling. Of course once the Big House is ready we’ll put this on the market.”

  Will stared at the house in fascinated horror.

  “All Mervyn’s own work,” Elizabeth Tranter said proudly.

  Dear God! Will had a fleeting vision of the architectural horrors that Mervyn would soon inflict on the Big House.

  It was an old house, really a row of three small terraced houses that had been joined together into one at some stage. It had been covered in cladding and painted a ghastly, luminous strawberry pink. All the old sash windows had been ripped out and replaced with mock-leaded double glazing. A monstrously huge satellite dish was attached to the roof.

  “Well, now you know where we are, do come for tea on Friday. About four?” said Elizabeth Tranter.

  “Thank you,” said Will, with more enthusiasm than he felt.

  Fatty was in charge of the plan: the boss, the general.

  “We have to get to know our enemy,” he said.

  “We do,” said Bessie. “It’s Dai Full Pelt.”

  “I know it’s Dai. But we need to know everything about him, what he does, every move he makes. We can’t afford to make a mistake. Now, listen.”

  And they did. All ears.

  For days they followed Dai to find out all his habits. Everything he did was written down in Bessie’s notebook until they knew his movements by heart.

  At six o’clock he parked the bone-shaker of a bus down near the town clock. It took him fifteen minutes to walk home. They followed him through town, ducking and diving into doorways if he stopped to light a fag or looked behind him. They stalked him past Morrissey’s shop, left down the hill, over the bridge, and watched him go in through the doors of the Mechanics.

  They hung around for ages outside the pub, hidden behind wooden beer barrels waiting for him to come out, checking the time on Bessie’s Cinderella Timex.

  Bessie wrote, one hour and thirty minutes and five pints, in the notebook.

  Three minutes, while he stopped to piss in the river.

  Ugh. Poor river. Poor fish.

  Five minutes to waddle back up the hill to his house in Sebastopol. Close on his heels they crept across the bailey behind him, weaving between washing lines hung with dancing clothes that acted as camouflage.

  Outside Dai’s house Fatty stood on a battered bucket and then one by one, except for Bessie, they took a turn on the bucket and peeped through Dai’s filthy window.

  They watched as Dai kicked the cat off the grandfather chair and sat down by the fire. His wife Ruby served tea at eight. She stumbled across the kitchen and launched a chipped plate bearing a mountain of bubble and squeak and scorched sausages, all drowned in brown sauce towards the table.

  It took five minutes for Dai to shovel it down his neck, then there was forty-five minutes of sleeping.

  At ten to nine Dai came out the back to the outside lav.

  Each day they watched and made more notes.

  They made the final plans in Billy’s coal shed. Fatty sat them down in a half circle as if they were kids in school. He drew plans on an old piece of wallpaper he’d found up at the ash tip. He put on a really posh voice, swanky English with plums, the way they talked on the wireless.

  There was a lady on the wireless who Fatty copied. She sang dead daft songs. “I love little pussy. She’s so soft and warm. And if I don’t hurt her she’ll do me no harm!” It made them roar with laughter the way she sang it. They had to bend up double and hold their bellies. She sounded like a mental case.

  “Are you sitting comfortably?” said Fatty.

  They grinned up at him from the coal-littered floor where they sat, except for Bessie, who was wearing wellies and was perched on her hanky on top of a box.

  “Right! Shut your traps, and then I’ll begin!”

  And they listened. Goggle-eyed and open-mouthed, hardly believing they were going to do such a fearsome thing.

  “Fatty, I’m afraid!”

  “Just stand by the gate and keep your eyes peeled. Whistle if anyone comes. You can see the house from there,” Fatty hissed.

  “What if the dog barks?”

  “She won’t. She knows me by now.”

  “Fatty, don’t leave me.”

  Iffy stood by the gates of the Big House, too close for comfort. Fatty had been into the grounds of the Big House several times and pulled away some of the overgrown bushes that shielded the house from outside view. There was a small gap now and if Iffy got up close enough she could see the French windows.

  Iffy was shaking uncontrollably with fright.

  “I’ll be in there in a couple of minutes, just the time it takes to get through the tunnel.”

  He disappeared over the river bank with the statue’s head under his T-shirt and, in his pocket, a small bag of concrete mix he’d scrounged from some builders in town.

  Curiosity made Iffy look into the grounds. She only had a small view through where Fatty had managed to tear away a few branches. The lights behind the French windows were burning brightly. They were fancy lights, loads of them hanging from the ceiling like dripping tears.

  Seconds slowly built into minutes.

  The lights were like a magnet, drawing Iffy in like a moth to the candle flame.

  Barny the bulldog howled from Old Man Morgan’s farm. The Labrador in the Big House howled back hopefully. Iffy turned her back on the window.

  The red kite sliced across the moon above Blagdon’s Tump. Red as blood.

  “Whee ooh wit!”

  He was in.

  “Hurry up, Fatty!”

  The Old Bugger hooted.

  Iffy leapt with fright. A light had gone on in an upstairs window of the Big House.

  She saw a black shadow cross the lighted window, a hooked nose, coiled plaits, a Bible.

  “Hail Mary full of grace. Shit! Shit! Fatty, come on!”

  The light went out in the upstairs room and she heard the sound of a window opening. Torchlight shone into the blackness of the garden.

  There was a shout from the house.

  Someone screamed, a wild mad scream.

  Iffy was paralyzed with fear. She heard the waters of the fishpond begin to stir and the soft pad of a statue’s feet in the damp grass. Bubbling noises filled her ears.

  All the lights in the Big House went on.

  A hand came out of the blackness and grabbed her.

  On his way back through town it began to rain heavily and Will decided to take shelter. There were only a few people in the café when Will entered. He sat down at a table and the old man he had seen in the cemetery came out from behind the counter to take his order.

  He smiled at Will, a gold-toothed smile of welcome. He took his order and then disappeared back behind the counter singing softly to himself.

  He delivered the ice cream and coffee to Will’s table with a flourish.

  “I hope a you enjoy. Iss a long time I think since you have a knicker a bocker a glory, eh?”

  “A very long time,” Will said. “Too long.”

  The old man laughed, and retired behind the counter. He busied himself washing and polishing cups and glasses. Then he settled himself on a high stool behind the counter, took up a battered book and began to read.

  Will glanced at the book cover. Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer’s Morning. He’d read it himself many years ago. He’d always thought he might try and follow in the writer’s footsteps and walk the route from the north-west of Spain down to the south, but like so many other things in life he’d put it off.

  Will got up, paid his bill and held open the door for a young woman who was carrying a small child into the café. The child was soundly asleep in her arms. His head lolling backwards, a sweet smile of contented relaxation on his flushed face.

  “Hiya, Mario! Give us a coffee please,” the woman said. “I’m knackered. I been all over the place with him to buy new trainers. You need a mortgage with
the price on them!”

  Will glanced back at the child. He was wearing pristine white trainers and Will blanched when he caught sight of the price tag stuck fast to one of the soles.

  As he left the café the sun slid out from behind grey clouds and a glorious rainbow hung above the houses of the town.

  The hand that grasped Iffy’s wrist was strong and the fingernails were sharp against her skin. The scream that grew inside her chest never made it to her lips. As she opened her mouth the sound died away inside her. She stiffened with fear.

  The face that stared back at her from behind the gates of the Big House was old Mrs Medlicott’s. The face was close enough for Iffy to reach out and touch and was contorted with terror, with wide staring eyes and lips stretched back over yellow teeth.

  The hand loosened its grasp. The eyes closed, the bushes folded together like curtains, and she was gone.

  Fatty was suddenly behind Iffy, pulling her arm, dragging her down over the river bank and shoving her under the black archway of the bridge.

  The Labrador began to bark again in the grounds. Old Sandicock was shouting out to someone. The geese began to honk.

  They stood together catching their breath. Fatty could feel Iffy’s heart pounding through her T-shirt.

  There were muffled voices close by, in the darkness. Fatty put his finger to Iffy’s lips. Someone else was there under the bridge, hiding in the shadows.

  Fatty squeezed Iffy’s hand tightly.

  Somebody groaned.

  “Now, I think you’ll do what I want. You wouldn’t want me to spill the beans to that little bastard son of yours.”

  There was a rustle of clothes and a whimpering noise like that of a wounded animal.

  “So let’s have it nice and easy.”

  “Let me alone. He’s a good boy.”

  “Your old man knows, does he? It’s a wise child who knows its own father.”

  More grunting noises and the sound of a woman sobbing somewhere near them. The groaning noises came faster. It was a man: Dai Full Pelt; and a woman crying quietly.

  Fatty pulled Iffy up over the bank, the sound of his wild sobs hung on the night air.