Back to Blackbrick (12 page)

IT TURNS OUT that the place where we put Maggie was where Cordelia's brother once used to live, except that he didn't live there anymore. He didn't live anywhere. He was dead. He'd died on a break from being a soldier. There at Blackbrick. To me it sounded like freakishly bad luck, someone dying when they were on
holiday
from the war.

Kevin told me that ever since then, George Corporamore had been a different man. All angry and restless and often loitering around the place in the middle of the night, or wandering down to the stables early in the morning before the sun came up, whispering his son's name and generally behaving like a bit of a loolah.

I didn't ask for any details because it wasn't any of my business, but Kevin told me a few things about Crispin too: that his parents had loved him very much, which I'm sure was true; that he had been a pretty courageous guy; and that he had been by far the most popular Corporamore at the Abbey for generations. From what I could make out, he'd helped a load of people to escape from some terrible battle in the middle of the war, even though their faces and
arms had been blown off and even though it has been quite difficult for him because he'd had something inside him called “shrapnel” and also because he'd been in a permanent state of horror.

Crispin had been a hero, which just goes to prove that having a weird name doesn't necessarily predict how you're going to behave in a crisis.

Later that night I was feeling a bit on my own, so I went off to Crispin's wing myself, and Kevin was there, sitting on Maggie's bed. Maggie said hello and Kevin smiled. It made me feel really good the way they both seemed happy to see me.

Pretty soon we were chatting among the three of us. She asked us when she was expected to start work and what her jobs were going to be.

“Maggie, just to let you know, you don't really have a job here,” I explained helpfully, and I also confirmed that my name was not Cyril and that I wasn't a Corporamore.

“Oh, Kevin, you haven't!” she said, turning to him again. I couldn't tell whether she looked happy or sad.

“Haven't what?” he asked. I couldn't tell whether he looked guilty or proud.

“You have. I knew it. You've SMUGGLED me in here. Oh, for the love of God.”

“Well figured out,” I said a bit sarcastically. But Kevin was very good at soothing a person when a person had just realized that something dodgy was going on. He told her for
around the fifteenth time that she was to trust him. He'd work on everything and it was all going to be grand. Eventually she didn't even seem that annoyed or worried that she'd been brought there under false pretenses. In fact she seemed a little bit thrilled, as if it made everything even better than she'd thought—as if as far as she was concerned it made Kevin even more fabulous than ever.

He kept saying he was on top of it, and that all he had to do was have a few conversations with some people at Blackbrick and she wouldn't have to be kept a secret anymore. But I knew he was thinking on his feet. He hadn't a clue how things were going to work out with Maggie. He didn't know how anything was going to work out. Nobody does.

I'd forgotten to tell Kevin about how Maggie's parents had asked for a letter, so I filled him in. And when I did, Kevin was all, “Can you write it for me?”

“Why don't you do it yourself?” I asked him.

“I can't,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I haven't got around to learning.”

He told me to stop looking so shocked. He reminded me that I hadn't known how to hitch a horse to a cart. He said that he'd had quite a busy childhood in which he had learned to do lots of useful things, but writing didn't happen to be one of them. And neither was reading.

“You can't
read
?”

Maggie said that neither could she. She didn't sound as if
she thought it was anything to be particularly embarrassed about.

It's amazing the things you can find out if you go to the past; for example, you might learn that your own grandfather was illiterate when he was already sixteen years old. If either he or Maggie had been in my year, they'd have been made to go to remedial after-school with D. J. Burke and the Geraghty twins. It was disturbing, this information about their very bad education, and I wasn't too eager to dwell on it. I had enough on my plate already.

But I did tell them that while I was here, I might be able to give them a few quick tips on how to read and write, and Kevin said, “Do if you like,” but he didn't sound that enthusiastic or appreciative about it or anything.

I went to see Maggie on my own the next morning before anyone else was up. I told her I was sorry for calling so early, but she said it was fine. She'd been awake anyway.

And I said, “You must be starting to be sorry that Kevin picked you up, seeing as you don't really have a job here or anything.”

“I'm not sorry at all. To be honest with you, I consider it the most wonderful thing anyone could ever have done for me. I've been wishing for this for I can't tell you how long.”

“Don't you find it a tiny bit disturbing? Aren't you worried about it?” I asked her.

“Worried about what?” she said, her massive brown eyes
shining at me all round and big and, well, you know . . . lovely.

“About what those Corporamore owners would do if they found you here? About being in a massive amount of trouble for trespassing and illegal entry, and for being a stowaway?”

She said that it was pretty much impossible to be scared or worried now that she was with Kevin. She was still talking about him like he was the most fabulous guy on the entire planet, and I think I already knew that nothing I said was going to make any difference. But I didn't give up for ages. I tried to explain to her all about what a lousy place this was to work. I told her about Cordelia and her brattishness, and how Kevin spent more or less every morning trying to make a perfect breakfast for her but it was never good enough, and how he always had to apologize to her for basically nothing. I kept on saying, “Really, Maggie, it might seem like a superb place to be, but to be honest with you, working here is lousy.”

All the more reason for her to stay, she explained. To be company for Kevin and me, and to keep our spirits up.

“You're wrong, Maggie. You're much better off cutting your losses and going home again. I'm not hanging around here for too long myself. I have a home to go back to. I'll be gone by the end of the week, and if you have any sense, you will be too.”

She wasn't listening to me. I don't think she would have listened to anyone except Kevin.

I asked her about all her little brothers and sisters, and I said they must be missing her a lot and maybe some of them were crying, wishing for her to come back, and wouldn't they be so thrilled if she did. It was below the belt, I know, but when you're desperate, you have to use whatever tactics happen to be available at the time.

She said that she did miss her family, and she admitted that it had been heartbreaking to say good-bye, and her eyes got a bit misty. For a second I thought I had her, but then she swiftly went on to say that Kevin was her savior, blah blah blah, and she didn't want to be anywhere that he wasn't, blah blah blah . . . and what a prince of a guy he was.

I only had a couple more days before I had to get back home and give Granddad lessons about the past so that he'd pass the memory test and nobody would take him away. It wasn't a heck of a lot of time. But it's a big job, trying to split people up who were never meant to be together. Plus, neither of them was making it very easy for me.

A little later the same morning, for example, Kevin had legged it off to Crispin's wing to be with Maggie before I even got to the kitchen. Mrs. Kelly was there smoothing down her apron, and when I arrived, she straightened my hair a bit like she was a gran and not a strange woman in an old house, and she said, “Now, Cosmo, Kevin was supposed to be doing all manner of duties today, but he is busy and he's said you'll do them instead. And of course, it's irregular
to have visitors working for their keep, but times have changed, as we keep telling you, and I daresay it might do you a world of good.”

“Yeah, I daresay that as well,” I said, and the whole time I was thinking that I knew exactly what Kevin was “busy” with. Busy trying to snog Maggie in Crispin's wing, that's what. Anyway, the point was that I definitely couldn't leave those two alone together for very long. It wasn't safe. I could picture him going on about exactly how much he fancied her the whole time, and then asking her to marry him, and I already knew that it wouldn't take too much persuasion before she said yes.

I was about to tell Mrs. Kelly that I had no time to do anyone's chores, least of all Kevin's. I was on the verge of heading off to Crispin's wing myself with the intention of being a tactical third wheel, when something crept across my brain. It was an idea, and the idea was that I was going to rat out my own granddad.

Chapter 12

IT'S QUITE interesting how someone can go from being a loyal, trustworthy grandson to being king of the rats in a relatively short space of time. All it takes is a few changes in your life circumstances.