2003 - A Jarful of Angels Page 27
“Here,” he said gruffly to Iffy. “Mrs Medlicott has saved you some more of those postcards with the foreign stamps you collect.”
“Thanks, Mr Sandicock,” said Iffy, and she took the brown paper bag containing the postcards that he held out to her and put them quickly in the pocket of her gabardine mac.
She had loads of them now. She had memorised all the post marks.
Santander
Bilbao
Calahorra
Logrono
Zaragoza
Teruel
She loved the sound of the foreign names and just saying them made her shiver with pleasure.
She looked up at the upstairs window in the Big House. She and Billy waved every time they passed, but the old woman was too weak to wave back. Iffy knew that something unseen passed between her and Mrs Medlicott, a silent message of hope.
She sat there for hours every day in her bath chair staring down the valley. She was very ill and the doctor called every day and sometimes the figure of a nurse could be seen standing behind her chair. Iffy’d heard Mrs Bunting tell Nan that Mrs Medlicott had had a stroke and could no longer speak, or do anything for herself, couldn’t even understand what was going on around her.
But they were wrong.
Each time a postcard arrived Mrs Medlicott knew that Fatty was a step closer to his destination. When old Sandicock handed them over to Iffy she knew too. It was their secret: that the bravest boy in Wales and probably the whole wide world had nearly made it.
Iffy and Billy passed the rec, climbed the stile and struggled through the drifts of snow in Dancing Duck Lane. They pressed their small noses up against the dirt-streaked windows of Carty Annie’s lopsided house. Their hot breath made rivulets in the grime on the cracked panes as they strained to see inside.
It was dark inside the gloomy kitchen. Ice hung on the cobwebbed curtains. Sunlight slipped into the kitchen and the cobwebs dripped with silver light. Iffy held her breath and clasped Billy’s hand tight.
The large pickling jar stood on the dresser between filthy cracked cups and the leery-eyed Toby jugs.
Holding tightly to one another Iffy and Billy saw with their own wide eyes what Fatty had seen. There, on the dresser, inside the misty jar, the tiny bodies of captive angels writhed and danced an agitated dance. The small, angry faces stared out at them. Their eyes were bright and wild in their pale faces, their sharp, pearly teeth glinted in the sunlight.
“Fuckin’ Ada!” said Billy.
Iffy turned and stared at him.
His words echoed all around.
Iffy’s wild laughter rang out on the crisp cold air. As she hugged Billy she felt the spirit of Fatty all around her.
And then they ran, flying away down the lane as the snow began to fall thick and fast.
The town clock chimed. The moon was high and full. A milky white moon spinning over the mountains. Somewhere on a hill farm a dog barked.
Will pulled on his jacket and put a torch into his pocket. As he was going downstairs his landlady appeared.
“Mr Sloane!”
He turned around in alarm.
“This letter came for you. Marlene Baker handed it over the bar and asked me to make sure you got it. They’ve rushed her mother into hospital, so she couldn’t wait to see you.”
“Is she all right?”
“Apparently she’s had a massive heart attack. There’s not much hope I’m afraid.”
Will took the bulky envelope from her and slipped it into his pocket.
“Thank you.”
He walked up through the deserted town, past the darkened windows of Gladys’s Gowns and on past Zeraldo’s café. He stepped into the archway of the bridge and stood there in the moving blackness. Then he shone his torch over the roof of the bridge.
GEORGE LOVES BRIDGET
CM LOVES EVO
EVO LOVES CM
LB 4 EGM
MERVYN PROSSER IS A FAT BASTARD
Ekaterina Velasco Olivares loves Charlie Meredith.
Will knew that Charlie Meredith had died at the hands of Dr Medlicott. He guessed that the suicide note would have been cobbled together from the letters that Charlie had sent Ekaterina. He had found the letters in the box in the shelter and had read them in his room. They were heart-breaking. He’d found out enough about Charlie Meredith from reading them to know that he had truly loved Ekaterina. He knew the plans they’d been making to run away and make a life for themselves and their baby. Ekaterina would not have left her baby behind.
Something must have happened.
He had also looked through the battered old suitcase that Sister Immaculata had unearthed for him from the convent attic and had held in his hands the mildewed pile of regulation convent cotton drawers and vests, the grey school socks, aertex shirts and flannel games shorts.
Beneath the sensible viyella nightdresses he had found an odd assortment of articles. Reminders of Iffy’s home in Inkerman Terrace: a green glass bottle of holy water from Lourdes and an empty wooden biscuit barrel. And, last of all, wrapped in tissue paper that disintegrated at his touch, a pair of ruined red sandals and a twisted red and white cricket belt.
He’d always known that Iffy Meredith had lied to him.
What was it that Bessie Tranter had said? That Fatty was always talking about running away and making his fortune and coming back for Iffy. She’d said he was sweet on Iffy.
And he had come back for her! Mervyn Prosser had seen her down by the docks talking to a boy.
Will’s one unsolved case was resolved. And yet, instead of euphoria, he felt an awful sense of deflation. His last great challenge was over and all he had left to contemplate was death.
Will turned off the torch and left the dark shadow of the bridge.
Somewhere in the grounds of the Big House an owl hooted as he walked on past the padlocked gates. He passed the rec where the roundabout turned slowly in the moonlight. For a moment he thought he heard the sound of children’s voices. A cool wind blew up the valley from the faraway sea.
He climbed over the rotting stile and stopped in alarm. He thought he saw the shadow of a body hanging from the gnarled old tree, but it was just a trick of the moonlight. He walked on down the silent lane. Dancing Duck Lane.
He turned on his torch. Only the rubble remained of an old house.
He stood there in the moonlight for a long time, then felt in his pocket for the envelope and shone the torch onto the crumpled paper.
Dear Will,
My time is coming to an end. All potions have their sell-by dates. I think you may, by now, be nearing the end of your search. I have enclosed a photograph for you. Somehow I felt it was important. Ellen Bevan, she was Ophelia, you know. And a very beautiful one.
Will held the photograph in his trembling hand. A yellowing photograph cut from an old theatre programme.
He looked with astonishment at the woman in the photograph and felt his throat constrict with emotion.
He read on.
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, that would not let me sleep…There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will…
A quotation from Hamlet.
Will, she gave you a little love and comfort in your time of need. You gave some back and then, out of guilt, you steeped yourself in grief. Forgive yourself now.
Look at her face and remember. Look at her face and know.
He had betrayed his wife. He had taken another woman in his arms. He’d met her on a routine call at the home for bad girls. They’d arranged to meet for a drink. Jenny she’d said her name was, he’d never known her second name. It hadn’t been love but it had been comfort of a sort. Afterwards he’d felt suffused with shame and guilt.
With a heavy heart he read the last lines of the letter.
When I first saw you, you reminded me of someone. Now I know without a doubt who that someone is. I pray, Will, with all my heart that you have time enough left…
Tears clou
ded his eyes, the writing on the page wobbled and blurred. He wiped his eyes and tried to focus. His hands shook uncontrollably, his heartbeat was erratic.
I pray, Will, with all my heart that you have time enough left to find him, because Will, your son, Lawrence Bevan, is out there somewhere.
They were Gladys Baker’s last words to him.
The moonlight was growing brighter. Dandelion clocks, stinging nettles and yellow poppies grew in wild profusion. He took out a bottle from the envelope and turned it over in his hands. Gladys Baker had asked Marlene to make him up a bottle of Carty Annie’s herbal brew.
He unscrewed the top, put the bottle to his lips and drank. He only hoped it would work and he would have enough time left to find the boy.
The long lost boy.
His son.
All those achingly long years of loneliness after his wife had died. All those years he’d punished himself. And yet…
The emptiness that had filled him up for so long evaporated now in the moonlight.
His heart beat steadily for the first time in many years. He felt the warm blood pumping through his veins.
Dear God. Out there, out there somewhere at the end of all this darkness was his son.
My son.
My son.
My own flesh and blood.
Not a boy any more now. He must be at least…No, it didn’t matter how old he was. He was his very own boy.
Will looked up at the moon. A huge spinning moon in a dark starless sky. And as he looked he thought for a moment that a red kite crossed it. One bright star splintered the darkness way above the moon. Then another, until there were four stars in the night sky. Stars as bright as ice, hot as molten silver.
The red kite slashed the moon.
One star wobbled and left the sky. The space where it had been glowed brightly for a few seconds. The star fell towards the spinning earth.
He dropped down onto his knees, ran his fingers through the damp soil and let it trickle through his fingers. There in the coal-black earth he found the splintered remnants of tiny bones and the fragments of a hundred broken jars. Jars that once held so terrible and marvellous a secret.
He stood up slowly.
Tomorrow he would follow the river down towards the faraway sea to search out his own miracle.
Glossary
Alley Bompers: shiny silver marbles
Bailey: backyard, but often, as in the iron workers’ cottages, a communal yard that ran the length of the terraces
Belloching: roaring or shouting
Black Pats: the local name for cockroaches
Bosh: kitchen sink
Churros: popular snack in Spain, loops of deep-fried batter usually in a spiral shape
Cop: name for the local co-operative society
The Corn Shop: shop that sold all types of chicken feed, horse feed, etc
Cwtching: cuddle
Daps: local word for plimsolls
Doubler: working a double shift
Duiv: God
Fausty: damp-smelling, dirty
Fussell’s Milk: a thick white condensed type of tinned milk
Grandfather chair, high-backed chair, often called a Captain’s chair
Gwli: the gwlis were the back lanes or alleyways that divided the rows of houses
Had her⁄his hair off: (Bessie had her hair off) Bessie was in a temper
Haisht: hush, ssshh!
Half-soaked: not all there, dopey
Jackie Long-Legs: Daddy Long-Legs
Kidney beans: runner beans
Peed the bed leaking: wet the bed in a big way
Pwp: shit
Spanish: liquorice
Tamping down: (as in tamping down with rain) raining very heavily
Toc H lamp: (She was as dull as a Toc H lamp) used to describe someone dopey. Badges worn by members of Toc H had an oil lamp on them (oil lamps burn with a very dim light)
Tom Pepper: liar
Tump: hill⁄hillock
Twp: dopey, not all there
Wetted: as in wetted the tea (brewed, mashed)
Wimberries: another name for bilberries or huckleberries
Yellow poppies: the Welsh poppy. Meconopsis Cambrica
(Latin)
EOF
Table of Contents
Cover
Prologue
Glossary