Long Lankin (7 page)

“What are you going on about now?” I say.

“Look, you get a bit of paper and you put it over the thing you want to copy, like some old tree bark or something, then you rub it with a crayon and the thing comes out on the paper.”

“So where are we going to get a crayon and some paper out here?”

“I’ve got a pencil. It’s still got some lead in,” says Pete. He turns out his pocket and holds out his palm. Pulling away some grubby fluff with his finger, he uncovers a few bits of dead bird, a couple of Quality Streets with bite marks, a dried-up spider with half its legs missing, and the chewed stub of a pencil.

“For heaven’s sake, put that stuff away,” says Roger. “It’s worse than one of Baby Pamela’s nappies.”

“I ain’t touching that pencil,” I say. “You could get typhoid fever from that.”

“I’ll do it, then. Give it here,” says Roger, grabbing it. He spits on it and rolls it dry on his trousers. “Now, where are we going to get paper?”

“Look, here’s some,” I say, taking out one of the books from the back of the chair.
“Hymns Ancient and Modern.”

I open it in the middle and rip a page out. It’s hymn numbers 109 to 112.

“Flippin’ heck!” yelps Roger. “That’s a huge sin, most probably mortal!”

“Well, it’s too late now,” I say, giving him the paper. “You should’ve warned me.”

“You might be all right,” says Pete. “It’s a Protestant book. I don’t think Protestants do mortal sins.”

Roger climbs back onto the chair and places the paper on the beam of the arch. The chair legs wobble dangerously as he scribbles with the stub of pencil.

“This paper isn’t big enough,” he calls down. “I can only get a bit of the writing on.”

As I’ve already torn one page out, I don’t suppose the sin will get worse if I pull out hymn number 113 as well. Roger hands me the rubbing he’s finished and starts on the next.

Jagged white capital letters stand out against the rough grey scribble:
CAVE
.

“What’s
cave,
then?” I say.

“We all know what a blinking cave is,” says Roger, “but there aren’t any round here. Can you pass up another bit of paper? I’ve run out again.”

“Can’t make head nor tail of it,” I say, looking at the second sheet he’s given me. “It says
best
.”

Pete looks over. “Doesn’t make sense,” he calls up to Roger. “
Cave best
. Are you sure you did it right?”

“’Course I did.” Roger comes down off the chair with the last page. “Anyway, it definitely doesn’t say anything about Derek Meacock and Sylvia Sparks. This is it. There’s no more. It says
iam
.”

“
Cave best iam,
” I say. “It’s a load of rubbish if you ask me.”

“I expect he’s got bad breath,” says Pete thoughtfully.

“What are you going on about now?” says Roger. “Who’s got bad breath?”

“Derek Meacock. That’s why Sylvia Sparks won’t go to the pictures with him.”

“Oh, leave off, will you?”

We stare at the paper.

“Hmm,
Cave best iam,
” says Roger, scratching his head. “
Cave best iam
. No idea.”

“It must be foreign,” I say. “Oh, that’s funny. I said that before. Yesterday. At Auntie Ida’s.”

We were really nervous, Pete and me, going over the bridge to Guerdon Hall. I got a nasty dry taste in my mouth, and I could see Pete looking around with eyes as big as Ping-Pong balls.

“Where’s the dog?” he whispered.

“Auntie Ida said she was going out,” said Cora. “She’s most probably taken him with her. Look, Mimi, promise me you won’t tell Auntie we’ve been down the church.”

“Why?”

“Because she said we wasn’t to go, remember? If you tell, I’ll — I’ll chuck Sid down the toilet.”

“All right.”

“It’s here, the writing,” Cora said to us, pointing up as we got close to the house.

A cracked piece of wood was nailed up over the porch at a wonky angle. It had a rough carving of a baby’s face on it. Underneath, all worn and chipped, were the same words as on the gate down at the church:
CAVE BESTIAM
.

“That’s not a very nice thing to have on the front of your house, a blinking crying baby, so you have to look at it every time you go in,” said Pete.

“We don’t go in here,” said Cora. “We go round the back. Come and see.”

We were a bit worried about this, to be honest. Round the back was where the chickens were. Pete and I sort of dragged our feet a bit.

“What’s the matter?” said Cora. “Ain’t you coming?”

“Well,” I said quietly, “it’s the chickens.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a load of flippin’ chickens!” said Cora.

“Well, for a start, are you sure they’re chickens?” said Pete.

“What do you mean,
sure they’re chickens
? What else would they blinkin’ well be — blimmin’ vultures?”

“Nah, well,” said Pete, “we think they’re children Mrs. Eastfield’s put a spell on.”

“Pete does,” I said quickly.

“What a load of stupid rubbish,” Cora said, annoyed. “We had their eggs for tea yesterday.”

“Doesn’t mean they weren’t children first, before they laid eggs,” said Pete. “If you’re turned into a chicken, you couldn’t be a real one if you didn’t lay eggs.”

“It’s still rubbish,” said Cora, and we might have stood there talking about this a lot longer, but there came the sound of barking, and the big dog bounded over the bridge and down the path. Pete jumped behind me.

Then Mrs. Eastfield appeared, carrying a huge, scruffy leather suitcase with its straps straining. She had to lean to one side to balance herself.

“Crikey! We’re trapped!” Pete whispered to me.

Mrs. Eastfield saw us and put the suitcase down. The lines on her forehead set themselves into a nasty frown.

“Cora!” she said. “I thought I told you to stay in the Chase if I wasn’t back — near the cottages, I said!”

“Blimey, I forgot —”

“I will not be disobeyed! While you’re here, you’ll do what I say! I won’t have this, Cora! I won’t!”

“Sorry, Auntie.”

Mrs. Eastfield wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Then she took off her scarf and, fanning herself with it, looked Pete and me over. I felt hollow around my knees. Pete’s eyes had grown into tennis balls.

“And who are you?” she said.

“Roger and Peter Jotman,” I blurted out. Crikey! I’d actually talked to Mrs. Eastfield.

“Jotman? Two of the Jotman boys? Does your mother know you’re here?”

“Um, pardon?”

“You heard me. Does she know you are here?”

“Er —”

“Obviously not! You know full well she would be furious if she knew you had come down to Guerdon Hall.”

I heard Pete gulp at the same time as me.

“Better go. Bye, Mrs. Eastfield. Thank you, Mrs. Eastfield,” I said.

Pete and me shot off like lightning bolts. Halfway down the Chase, we stopped to get our breath.

“Cor, narrow escape, there,” panted Pete, leaning forward with his hands on his knees.

“Yeah, but what was in that great big suitcase?”

“Most probably stuff for spells,” said Pete. “New supplies.”

Auntie Ida wouldn’t open the suitcase until she’d had a cup of tea. Mimi and me stood quietly on the sunken floorboards by the kitchen door while she made it. I knew the case had to be something to do with us or Auntie wouldn’t have kept us waiting there. When she finished her tea, she put the cup and saucer in the big stone sink. Then, with a grunt, she lifted the suitcase up onto the kitchen table, undid the strap buckles, and threw the lid back. As the case burst open, I caught a wave of light-coloured material and a lovely fresh smell on the air, but Mimi and I stayed where we were, not daring to move until Auntie called us over.

The case was full of lovely clean clothes — perfect, no holes or patches or darning: gingham dresses for me, one blue and one mauve with a white collar; skirts; green trousers with yellow stitching on the pockets; a white cardigan with pink roses in two lines next to the buttons; flowery pyjamas; and (I couldn’t believe it) a pair of red slip-on shoes without any straps or buckles. Amazingly, they fit pretty well. There were dresses for Mimi, too — one pink with coloured smocking, another in white — pairs of knickers with rows of lacy frills, socks, little black shiny shoes, and pyjamas with yellow ducks on. At the bottom of the case, wrapped in brown paper, were some wellingtons.

Everything was much nicer by a million miles than anything we had in London. Clothes went round in Limehouse, all used before, the elbows worn out by some other child, the patches sewn on by someone else’s mum. The only things I ever had new were the jumpers Nan knitted, striped in odd colours from old scraps of leftover wool. When I grew out of them, Nan unravelled them, washed the yarn to get the kinks out, then knitted bigger ones, the stripes always in different places to where they’d been before.

It was wonderful of Auntie Ida to go to all this trouble for us, to buy all those lovely things, but I didn’t say anything other than a quiet “Thank you, Auntie Ida,” because it wasn’t good manners to draw attention to the fact that money had been spent. Dad always said there was quite a lot of it — money, that is — on that side of the family, Mum’s side. He even said that they were actually toffs, but that my Grandma Agnes, Mum’s mother and Auntie Ida’s sister, had been a black sheep. I know that that sort of black sheep has got nothing to do with the nursery rhyme. It means somebody in your family who has done a bad thing and can’t ever be forgiven for it.

Pete and I walked back up the hill.

“What do you reckon
Cave bestiam
means, Pete?”

“I dunno,” he said, shrugging. “‘Best cave’ or something. I dunno. Is it French? You’ve done French in your class.”

“Yeah, but only counting to ten and days of the week, and I can’t remember anything after Thursday,” I said.

“It’s not German, because it doesn’t sound like a war film, like when they’re escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp.”

We spent a bit of time discussing how we would have got out of Stalag Luft 5.

“Do you know what
Cave bestiam
sounds a bit like to me?” I said after a while. “I think it sounds a bit like Latin.”

“Like in church?”

“Yeah, the priests are always saying
quoniam
s
and
gloriam
s
.
Bestiam
’s the same.”

“I dunno. Maybe.
Cave
is English, though. How could we find out?”

“We’ll have to have a think. We can’t ask Mum. You know what she’s like, and Dad’ll just go along with her. She won’t stop asking questions, like where did we get it from. We’ll have to ask someone clever.”

“Crikey. Where are we going to find someone clever?”

“I dunno. I wonder what we’re having for dinner. Hope it’s rice pudding for afters. If it is, I bags the skin.”

“That’s not flippin’ fair. Let’s dip for it.”