Cry of a Seagull (6 page)

‘If you like horses,' the librarian said, ‘you may know about the old statue of the horse in the north end of the town.'

‘Where?' Rose turned round.

‘In that run-down area the council is always wanting to clean up. The old cattle yard, it once was, but it's more or less a junkyard now, and the statue is broken and quite filthy. Most people don't know it's there. It may not even be the same horse as the Lord of the Moor's legendary charger – what was its name? I've read it somewhere, but I've forgotten.'

Favour
. She would not tell him.

‘Chuck me a dry tea towel, Rose, if you will. Fascinating isn't it, these local legends that weave themselves around history like tangled vines?'

If you only knew how fascinating
. Rose found him a tea towel that was only slightly damp, and smiled confidently into his nice friendly face.
If you only knew what I know – that Favour is still alive for all time, and I am his messenger
!

Rose had worked so well, that next day The General gave her the morning off. She was up early just the same to run on the beach with Ben.

‘Paint's dry on the boat,' he told her, as they slap-slapped along the hard wet sand. ‘We're going to take her round from the harbour and moor her off Sandy Neck, opposite the hotel. You can come with us then, since you don't have to work.'

Rose didn't say anything. She ran on, looking straight ahead.

‘I said, come with us.' Ben turned his head towards her.

‘Ben, I can't, I—'

‘What?'

‘Something I've got to do.'

‘
Got
to do,
got
to do,' Ben said angrily, in time to his strides. ‘Whenever I want you for something, there's always something else you've got to do. You're working yourself into the ground, Rose. By the time you're my age, you'll be an old woman.'

‘This isn't work.' Nothing connected with the horse was work.

‘Well, good, then you can come. I want to show you how to run the boat. We'll go out to sea and put out some lines and trawl for a bit.'

‘Oh, Ben.' Last summer, he had let her come fishing, but he would never let her handle the boat. If she had to turn the chance down now, would he ask her again? Oh, Ben. Did anyone else in the world have to suffer the agony of being torn between two loves?

‘I've got to go to Newcome with Mr Vingo.'

‘I'm going to do my sprint now.' Ben's jaw was stuck out and his eyes looked far ahead, as if Rose didn't exist.

‘I'm sorry, Ben. Perhaps—'

He turned his head to give her a smile that wasn't a smile, but just a movement of the set mouth. ‘Forget it,' he said, and ran on away from her.

Jim Fisher was going into Newcome with the van for supplies, so Rose and Mr Vingo went with him on the hard high front seat, and asked him to drop them off at the northern end of the town.

‘Know where the old cattle market used to be, Jim?'

‘Before my day, and I've been here all my life. Wait though.' Jim was a slow speaker, so when he said, ‘Wait,' you waited a long time. ‘Seems to me my dad used to tell some old tale about meeting a girl at the market once. Carried baskets of eggs for her, and broke em.' Pause. ‘Maisie, her name was.' Jim took time off to chuckle.

‘So where was it? That's where we want to go.' Rose was doing the talking, since Mr Vingo was hanging on to the door, out of breath because Jim drove the van stop and go, braking for red lights at the last minute and taking corners as if he were driving a Roman chariot.

‘Somewhere round here. There's that old church. Never build that up again, they won't. Let's see, we'll have to cross the canal. Filthy old gutter, that is. What do you two want to come round here for anyway?'

‘It's a historical project,' Rose said. ‘For my holiday homework.'

‘Well, be careful.' Jim stopped the van outside the gaunt grey church, which had its door and windows boarded up, and the top knocked off the steeple. The pavements were littered with newspapers and rubbish. An old lady wearing two hats and several frayed scarves crept along, weighed down by carrier bags full of what looked like dirty rags. A small group of boys leaned sullenly against the wall of a corner pub and looked at nothing with dead eyes.

‘Who's looking after who?' Jim called down from the van to Rose and Mr Vingo.

‘Have no fear.' Mr Vingo waved his thick ashplant stick. ‘See you here in a couple of hours then?'

Jim put the van into gear. ‘Don't do anything I wouldn't do!'

With Rose tugging at his arm to hold him back, Mr Vingo approached the boys with the innocence of a baby.

‘Excuse me, but would you happen to know the place where the old cattle market used to be?'

The boys did not even look at him. The tallest one, who had flat, shallow eyes and who wore a heavy black leather jacket, studded like the door of a fortress, pursed up his lips under the scrappy beginnings of a moustache, and began a monotone whistle that was more ominous than silence.

‘Thank you very much.' Mr Vingo raised his hat and walked on, Rose pulling his arm forward now to hurry him away.

The studded leather jacket, heavy as armour plating, looked identical to the one worn by the motorcycle rider who had almost run down Mr Vingo in the road outside Wood Briar. Was it possible …? When she was in the middle of an adventure with the horse, anything was possible. The familiar became strange. Coincidences had meaning, and events that seemed unrelated suddenly formed themselves into mystical patterns.

Georgie and her mother and the donkey man, Joanne and whiny Derek, the statue of the horse, the librarian, even the invasion of the coach party, which had put Frank Foley into the scullery with time to talk about what he knew – all these
were somehow connected, if only she could find the links. The sinister boy in the black jacket. Why did he happen to be on just that street corner?

‘Come on.' She tugged at Mr Vingo's arm. She was frightened and excited. They had to find the statue of the horse now.
Now
. The electric shivers were doing swooping circuits in her inside, and if she had not had Mr Vingo puffing in tow, she would be running fast.

They went through some rather seedy streets and came to a square behind the church, with more people about and a few shops: a grocer, an ironmonger, a newsagent, a small garage with petrol pumps. One side of the square was partly closed up by a battered hoarding. The gate was broken and they could see piles of refuse and scrap metal and the skeleton of a car. Frank Foley had talked about a junk yard. Rose and Mr Vingo went inside.

Grass and weeds had grown over mounds of rubbish. Prams had been abandoned here, and piles of worn old tyres. This yard had been a dumping ground for so long that some ragged bushes and even a small tree had grown up, one of those heroic town trees that fight for their lives in impossible circumstances.

‘Look!' Rose grabbed Mr Vingo's arm. From behind the tree, Favour looked at them.

It was a small statue, about half life-size. The horse had no ears, and only half a tail, and the hoof of the proudly raised front leg was gone. The stone that might once have been white was pitted and filthy, patched with greenish-grey moss. Chunks were chipped off the crested stone mane. The plinth on which he stood was blackened, and half-buried in rubbish and rusty metal.

But it was Favour. No mistaking him. The short strong back. The arched tail – what there was of it. The small Arabian head carried with just that high, magnificent tilt.

Rose and Mr Vingo stood in awe. Then Rose went cautiously forward and stepped up on to a rusted tank to put her hand on the horse's side. The stone was rough, ingrained with filth, but the line of the sculpted bone and muscle under
her hand was clean and familiar. On so many flights, her leg had lain here, behind the shoulder. She rubbed with her hand, and scaly dirt came off.

She turned round to Mr Vingo. ‘It's wicked, letting him get into this state. Doesn't anyone care?'

Below her, Mr Vingo shrugged. ‘They've forgotten, Frank Foley said. Or they never knew.'

‘But we do.' Rose stepped down, tripped over a plank and arrived at his side in excitement. ‘We can't leave him like this. Let's clean him up.'

‘Groom him, as if he were a horse?'

‘He is a horse. Come on, I've got some money. We can buy scrubbing brushes and soap at the ironmonger's.'

Getting Mr Vingo across the littered yard had not been easy. Getting him out again and then back – with the brushes and scouring powder and a bucket they had filled with water from the garage – was only possible because he was as enthusiastic as Rose.

He stood on a wooden crate and worked away at the statue's legs, while Rose perched on a rickety stepladder and scrubbed as much of the body as she could reach.

‘Hey, you there!'

Rose nearly fell off the ladder. It was the ironmonger, a wrathful man with a bristly haircut, shouting at them through a gap in the hoarding. ‘What the hell do you think you're doing?'

He didn't want an answer. He wanted to rave at them. ‘Ruining an ancient relic – what do you thing you are? If I'd known what you was up to, I'd never have let you have the goods. On sale, too. I'm going to report you, that's what I'm going to do, for defacing an ancient monument and making free with municipal property. Ought to be arrested, you two did. They lock up people like you.'

‘Oh dear.' Mr Vingo squinted up at Rose. ‘I've never been in prison, have you?'

‘Not yet.' But if the horse had that in mind for her …

‘I ought to call the police.' The ironmonger went on shouting. Interested faces appeared in the gap behind him.
Rose and Mr Vingo had created quite a stir in this dreary little square.

‘Look here.' Mr Vingo turned cautiously round on his box, and steadied himself with a hand on the horse's raised knee. ‘It's really all right, you know,' he said soothingly. ‘We're improving this treasure of the town, not ruining it.'

‘Who says?'

‘We're antiquarians.' As the man became more threatening, Mr Vingo became more gracious. ‘If you will kindly check with Mr Foley, the librarian at the Newcome Library, not too far from here, he will vouch for us, I know.'

‘I'm calling the police.' The ironmonger's shoulders and bristly head disappeared from the gap.

‘We'd better go and warn Frank.' Rose and Mr Vingo stepped down, pushed the bucket and brushes out of sight, scrambled for the gate and ran as fast as Mr Vingo could jog across the canal and towards the large buildings nearer the middle of the town.

Getting him up the stairs to the librarian's office was the final effort. He sank into a wide leather chair, and Rose did the explaining.

‘So if we get arrested, will you stand up for us?'

Frank Foley laughed. ‘Don't worry. I'll tell them I asked you to rescue the statue. The town will probably give you a medal.'

‘Oh no,' Rose said quickly. ‘I wouldn't want anyone to know.'

‘They won't. It will all blow over. That man will never do anything. With his reputation, the police are the last people he wants to have anything to do with.'

‘That's a relief. Thanks.'

‘A pleasure. Now, tell me why you're so interested in the statue.'

‘Well, you see.' Rose looked at Mr Vingo, getting his wind back comfortably in the armchair. ‘Mr Vingo is a composer.' He had not let her tell Frank this in the scullery, but she must now. ‘Quite a famous one, actually,' she added in a whisper. ‘He's working on a wonderful piece of music about the horse,
and how he saved the people of the valley from the flood that was caused by the Lord of the Moor cutting down the trees on the riverbank for his own gain.'

‘Yes, that's part of the legend.'

‘It's true, and Mr Vingo has told it all again in music.' Mr Vingo waved a protesting hand at her, but she went on. ‘It's called
The Ballad of the Great Grey Horse
. He's working on the last part of it now.'

Frank Foley was fascinated. When Mr Vingo was rested, he asked him more about it, and Mr Vingo, who found it hard to believe that anyone was interested in his work, shyly invited him to come to Wood Briar and hear some of the ballad.

Tea was brought, and while they were talking, Rose wandered round the office, looking at the books and pictures.

There was one picture she kept coming back to. It was Saint George in full armour, riding a wonderful rounded white horse with a small head and delicate ears. In front of them, a hapless maiden trembled, her hands tied with a silken cord. The horse had its foot on a loathsome dragon with a fiery jaw full of crocodile teeth, pinning it down while Saint George prepared to plunge his lance into the writhing monster.

The white horse's head was turned round, as if to watch its rider. As Rose stood and stared, the full round eye looked straight into hers, and the horse was Favour, and his message unmistakable.

She mumbled an excuse and went out of the room and down the stairs, and hared back through the streets to the dingy little square, where she slipped through the gate in the hoarding without being seen. She climbed over the junk and up to the plinth of the statue, and on to the horse. He was growing in size even as she settled in to the familiar well-muscled back that was now warm and alive, the dirt gone, the coat bright and glossy. The stone mane had become thick blowing hair for her hands to grasp. The junk yard was left behind, the roofs, the broken top of the church spire, the
ant-sized people plodding about their boring daily business. If only the ironmonger could see her now!

But nobody could see her being carried away into another realm. The secret of the flight was hers alone.

The pulsing energy of the horse merged into a steady floating movement, with a slight vibration under Rose's bare feet. She was leaning on a polished wooden rail, and water flowed slowly past below her. In the dusk, she could see that she was in the estuary of the river that ran into Newcome bay beyond the town and the pier and the beach.