Long Lankin (9 page)

“We thought those words,
Cave bestiam,
might be in Latin,” I said.

“I don’t know about Latin,” Cora said. “How do you know about it?”

I plumped out my chest, then said casually, “Everything at church is in Latin. We all talk Latin, you know, every Sunday, like the Romans — well, most Sundays. Sometimes it’s difficult to go because it’s three miles to Daneflete, and there aren’t many buses, specially on Sunday. You can wait and wait and you might as well have walked it. It’s all right in the week because we go up the lane and there’s a school bus picks us up at the top, but it’s hard for Mum to get us all to church, specially now with Baby Pamela, and then if she does manage it, the old ladies turn round and tut-tut at her if the children make a noise.”

“So why doesn’t your dad take you, then?” said Cora.

“Because he’s a heathen,” said Pete.

We’d got to the old gate.

“Trouble is,” I told her, “every Monday morning first thing, Sister Aquinas asks who’s been to church on Sunday, and if you haven’t been, she makes you stand up in front of the whole class for an hour. It’s blinking awful, I can tell you, really embarrassing. Nobody else has to do it as much as me.”

“Why don’t you just say you’ve been even if you haven’t?” asked Cora.

“Flippin’ heck!” cried Pete. “Lie to a nun? That’s definitely mortal.”

“Anyway, there’d always be somebody like that Stephen Mylord,” I said. “He’s so holy, he never misses church ever, and he’d tell on me to Sister just for another gold star.”

“What’s all this mortal stuff anyway?” said Cora.

“It’s the worst sin there is,” said Pete importantly. “If you do one, you’ll go to hell.”

We looked up at the arch where
CAVE BESTIAM
was written.

“If only we could find somebody to tell us what it means,” said Cora, shading her eyes with her hand.

“Yeah, that’s what we were thinking,” I said. “The only clever people we know are the Treasures. He’s a headmaster.”

“Crikey!” said Pete. “I’m not blinking well going round there. It’s like Buckinum Paliss.”

“I know — we could try Father Mansell. He’s nice. He lets Pete and me and Dennis go to the big Christmas party in the big room at the back of the pub even though we don’t go to his church — though he might not this Christmas because last year Dennis threw his jelly at the girl who won the musical chairs.”

“But Father Mansell lives round the back of the Treasures,” said Pete. “You’ve got to go in their garden first.”

Father Mansell was the Church of England priest in Bryers Guerdon. He did services down at this old church, All Hallows, and over at Saint Mary’s in North Fairing as well, and he took the Scouts on Monday nights in the Scout Hut. There was Wolf Cubs on Wednesdays, and Mrs. Aylott was the Akela. Grandma Bardock wouldn’t let Pete and me join the Wolf Cubs because it was Protestant, but Tooboy let us tag along and help him out when it was Bob-a-Job Week.

Pete held the wide gate open for us. We’d started up the path towards the church when Cora called out, “What’s this?”

She was standing beside the remains of a low fancy iron railing enclosing a large overgrown rectangle of ground that stretched all the way to the old chained gate. A gnarled elder tree was growing in the middle, stripped clean of its berries by the birds.

“Don’t know — most probably graves,” I said, joining her.

“I’m going in. Coming?”

We stepped over the railing.

“You gonna be long?” Pete called, showing Mimi how to stamp through the grass by the path to make the grasshoppers jump out.

Cora and I made our way slowly across the plot, trying to avoid stepping on the flat gravestones, some almost completely hidden by the weeds.

“What a poor old thing,” she said, pushing her way past a clump of brambles to reach a straggly rosebush near the far railing, almost at the gate.

Cora knelt and softly touched the single pink bud that drooped on the end of its spindly stem.

“Look at this.” Cora seemed lost in thought. “Once this has flowered and gone, there won’t be any more. It’s the last one.”

She began parting the long dry grass beneath the rosebush with her hands. A shallow mat of roots had spread itself over a flat stone slab. I helped her tear the grass away, and with her fingers Cora scraped out the soil from the carved letters of the inscription.

“Oh.” She sat back on her heels. “It says — it says
Guerdon
.”

“There’s something else,” I said, clearing the stone farther down. ‘The time’ . . . er, ‘the time of the’ . . . er, ‘the time of the singing’ . . .”

“Let’s go in the church,” said Cora, getting up quickly.

Her face had paled. She ran her hand over her forehead and tramped back the way we had come.

“Most probably all Guerdons in this bit, then,” I said, following her over the railing.

“We’re going in the church,” said Cora, pushing Mimi firmly up the path towards the porch.

“Don’t like it,” said Mimi, and she planted her feet hard and wouldn’t move.

“You’re a blimmin’ nuisance!” said Cora, grabbing her sister’s hand and dragging her up the path.

When we got to the porch, Mimi started to cry again.

“You’re the flippin’ limit!” Cora said. “If you don’t blinkin’ like it, you can stop out here and wait for us!”

“How long you gonna be?” Mimi asked, wiping her nose on her sleeve. I noticed her glancing at the coffin-shaped grave near the church wall.

“All blinkin’ day if we want!” said Cora crossly, and dropped Mimi’s hand.

The three of us went through the big wooden door into the church, and I saw Cora look fleetingly back at her sister. Mimi seemed so small, a dark little figure against the light of the graveyard, framed by the shadowy arch of the porch.

“I’ll be back in a minute, all right?” said Cora. “Don’t move, d’you hear?”

“It stinks blimmin’ awful in here,” I said, screwing up my nose.

“Most probably the rain,” Roger whispered. “Feels really damp.”

“Blimey, I hope we didn’t bring this lot in the other day,” I said, pointing to a trail of earth soiling the tiles all the way to the altar.

“Crikey — look at that!”

Five of the huge silver candlesticks were lying on their sides, and the sixth was on the floor. The candles were missing.

“Funny,” I said. “There was candles here on Tuesday.”

“You sure?” said Roger.

“’Course I’m blinking sure. There was six of them. I counted because I’d never seen great big candles like that before. Where’ve they gone, then?”

“Perhaps a burglar’s been in,” said Pete.

“Flipping stupid burglar then,” said Roger. “Taking the candles and leaving the candlesticks. Fat chance he’d have of making a living.”

We picked up the candlesticks and put them all in a line at the back of the altar where they had been before, three on either side of the cross.

“I’m sure we didn’t have muddy shoes when we came in on Tuesday,” said Roger.

On the wall halfway down the church on the left was a huge stone memorial, carved with the names of seven young men of Bryers Guerdon who had been killed in the First World War. I’d never bothered to look at it before, but Cora called me over and we ran our eyes over the names. I recognized all the families. There was a Lieutenant Roland Guerdon, MC; a Campbell; a Holloway; and three Thorstons. I told Cora that Haldane Thorston was an old chap who lived in a cottage down in the Patches. They must have been his sons, three of them lost.

The last name on the stone was Captain James Eastfield, age twenty-two.

Ypres, April 1917

Two more weeks, only two more — less by the time you receive this — and we’ll dance again under the willows in the garden at North End. If they haven’t had the wretched spring mended in the gramophone yet, I’ll get Will to play the piano in the drawing room with the windows open.

I’m warning you, I’m going to ask you again, so don’t pretend to be surprised. Just so you know, I’m not in the least impressed with all that tosh you came out with last time. You don’t have to hang around forever in the ancient ancestral pile. It’s Roland who’s bagged that job, poor chap, not you. Then, after Gerald Foster caught it at Lesboeufs, I don’t suppose Agnes will be doing anything after this lot is over, and she and Roland are both in line before you, don’t forget. There’s nothing to hold you there, dearest Ida. I can help you fly free of it. Just let me. You have to let the old place go.

Some little kiddies came round yesterday trying to cadge chocolate. The younger ones will never have known a time without the sound of guns. . . .

His last letter. Roland said he waited for him to die for three hours, then lay next to him in the shell hole for another two until the light faded a little and he managed to drag his body back, still under fire.

Even if he had lived, he would never have danced again under the willows at North End.

An organ, with pipes painted with leaves and flowers, stood in its own small room beside the altar. A little mirror hung over the keys. I caught a movement — my face in the glass — and remembered the woman singing that horrid song in the sitting room at Guerdon Hall, how I had passed the night listening for her voice and watching Mimi’s chest peacefully rising and falling, too full of fear to go to sleep myself.

Mimi. Outside. Alone.

“Mimi! We’ve left her for ages!” I rushed down the aisle. The boys followed, the sound of our pounding feet echoing in the rafters.

I pulled open the heavy wooden door.

Mimi wasn’t where we’d left her. For a moment, I thought I saw her, the form of a little child against a gravestone, but I blinked and realized it was the bobbing shadow of a tree. I ran out of the porch. She wasn’t anywhere on the path. A lump filled my throat.

“Mimi! Mimi!” we screamed, chasing round the outside of the church. My chest was bursting.

“Roger! What are we gonna do? Where is she? Where is she? Mimi! Mimi!”

“Shh,” said Pete, putting his finger on his lips. “Listen!”

It was a wailing noise, coming from a distance.

“I think she’s in the lane!” cried Roger, and we shot off down the path and out of the gate.

“Oh, thank God! Look, she’s there!” I shouted, spotting the corner of her little white dress fluttering as she turned left into the Chase ahead of us, running as fast as she could in her big boots.