The Beasts of Clawstone Castle (5 page)

‘You don’t think Rollo’s
too
fond of the cows?’ asked Madlyn. ‘He’s sort of besotted. As though ... they’re creatures from another world.’

‘Rollo’s all right,’ said Ned. ‘No need to worry about him. Come to that, there’s a lot of people who feel as though the cows are special. They’ve been here so long, it’s like having a bit of history right here. My Ma reckons if the cattle went, the village would become a sort of ghost town.’

Meanwhile the summer took its course; bees hung from the flowers, the lime trees gave off a marvellous scent, high white clouds rode across the sky. But if the countryside was beautiful, what was happening inside the castle was very worrying indeed. Because the Honourable Olive had been right: more and more visitors came to Trembellow and fewer and fewer came to Clawstone.

But it wasn’t till she went upstairs to help Aunt Emily sort out the things for the gift shop that Madlyn saw that something would have to be done.

Emily was sitting on the bed. Beside her on the quilt were the three lavender bags, the tea cosy made of Uncle George’s pyjamas, a glove with four fingers, and a bookmark stuck with pressed periwinkle flowers.

And Emily was crying.

When she saw Madlyn she hurriedly dabbed her eyes but it wasn’t easy to fool Madlyn, who came and put her arm round Emily’s shoulders and said, ‘What is it, Aunt Emily? What’s the matter?’

Emily waved an arm at the treasures on the counterpane.

‘Nothing has sold, Madlyn. Nothing. Not one thing. And I’m so tired, and I can’t think of anything else to make. It’s all hopeless, and it will break George’s heart if we have to sell the park. He seems to think the cows came to him from God.’ She groped for a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘Before they opened up Trembellow we could just keep going, but now. . .’

Madlyn moved the lavender bags and sat down beside her aunt. Part of her was feeling rather cross. She had so many friends at school that she worried about and cared about, and there were her parents and Rollo. Loving people is hard work and she had not intended to start caring about her ancient aunt.

But she did care about her – and now it seemed that something would have to be done.

Only what? What would bring visitors flocking to Clawstone? Not more lavender bags, that was for sure, not more burnt scones or tea cosies . . . What would turn people away from Trembellow and bring them to Clawstone?

When she went to bed that night Madlyn tossed and turned for hours, racking her brains . . . Then suddenly she sat up in bed. Of course. She should have thought of it before. It was obvious.

When she had an idea now, Madlyn discussed it with Ned.

‘Well, I suppose you’re right. But I don’t know where we’d get them from. There aren’t any in the village as far as I know.’

‘Why not? You’d think there’d be plenty. People must have drowned in the horse pond or been murdered in dark lanes or buried in the wrong graves.’

Ned was pondering. ‘I dare say, but I suppose this is a quiet sort of place and they just stayed in the ground or wherever.’

‘I’ll have to ask Cousin Howard,’ said Madlyn. ‘He must know.’

Ned looked at her sidways. ‘I’d better come with you. He can be a bit moody like.’

‘All right. I’d be glad if you would, actually. I’ve never talked to him properly and Aunt Emily doesn’t realize that I know what he is.’

Cousin Howard was in his library and not pleased to be disturbed. They had brought Rollo also, and when he saw the three children he hurried away quickly and vanished through the door that led into his bedroom.

But this time the children took no notice. ‘Please, Cousin Howard, we need your help,’ said Madlyn. ‘We really need it.’

Cousin Howard reappeared through the door. He was wearing his usual dressing gown and leather slippers, and his face, which was always pale, had turned quite white with panic and alarm.

‘I’m not . . . I don’t talk to people I don’t know . . .’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t talk to people that I
do
know. I don’t talk.’

He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He had the long scholarly features of the Percivals, and his straggly grey hair was badly in need of cutting.

Howard had lived most of his life at Clawstone, but like all the Percival men he had been sent away to boarding school when he was a boy, where he had been most unhappy . . .

‘What’s the
point
of Percival, can anyone tell me?’ one of the prefects had sneered when he first saw Howard. ‘I mean, what’s he
for
?’

No one knew the answer to that, and all through his time at school Howard had been called Pointless Percival. That kind of thing can leave its mark and it was not surprising that Howard was so withdrawn and shy and spent his life sorting and cataloguing books. But though the children were sorry for him, they had no time to waste.

‘Cousin Howard, we’ve got to do something to make more people come to the castle. We’ve simply got to,’ said Madlyn. ‘Otherwise the cattle will have to be sold and maybe the castle too and—’

‘Oh, don’t say that!’ The thought of leaving his home made poor Howard tremble. ‘So we have to find a way of attracting more visitors, and we thought if we could show them some proper ghosts – real spectres – they’d come and tell their friends and—’

A heart-rending wail – a wail of true despair – came from Cousin Howard.

‘Oh, no . . . No! It’s impossible. It is quite out of the question. George has asked me, and Emily too – but I’ve had to refuse. Showing myself to all those people . . . Appearing and disappearing. I couldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t.’

And he began to shiver so badly that his outline became quite blurred.

The children looked at each other. They were very distressed by the misunderstanding, and the pain they had caused poor Howard.

‘We don’t mean you, Cousin Howard,’ said Madlyn.

‘We wouldn’t think of asking you,’ said Rollo reassuringly.

‘We need
proper
ghosts. Really scary ones with . . . oh, you know, heads that come off, and daggers in their chests, and that kind of thing,’ said Ned – and then blushed because it seemed rude to suggest that Howard was not a proper ghost.

But Cousin Howard was terribly relieved. ‘Oh, I see. Well, that’s all right then. I really don’t think I would do, you know. I tripped on my dressing-gown cord on the stairs and broke my neck, but it was a clean break – there’s no blood or anything.’ He bent his head and leaned forward to show them, and really there was hardly anything to see – just a slight dent in the ectoplasm. ‘And I have never felt inclined to gibber or howl or anything like that,’ Howard went on. ‘It isn’t what I
do
. But if it isn’t me you want, why have you come?’

‘We thought you might know where we could find some other ghosts. The kind that would be terrifying,’ said Madlyn. ‘We thought you might have friends.’

Howard was shocked. ‘Friends! Oh, dear me no! I don’t have friends. I don’t go out much, you see. I hardly ever go out.’

But the children just looked at him steadily.

‘Please could you try and help us?’ said Madlyn. ‘Please?’

‘It’s for the cows,’ said Rollo.

O
live Trembellow was perfectly correct, as she always was. On the following Open Day there were three hundred and fifty visitors to Trembellow – and the number of visitors going to Clawstone was down to seven.

So now she was doing what she liked best in all the world.

She was doing sums.

She was multiplying the number of visitors who had come to Trembellow on the last Open Day by the amount each of them had paid, and the answer was coming to a figure with a lot of noughts at the end. Olive liked figures with noughts on the end. She liked them very much.

When she had checked her calculations she went to see her father in his study.

Lord Trembellow was doing business with his son Neville, who had come up from London, and a builder he had brought with him, but he didn’t mind being interrupted. Olive was almost a business partner herself.

‘Look, Daddy – we’ve taken nearly four thousand pounds today. We had three hundred and fifty visitors and Clawstone only had seven – and one of those was a spy.’

Lord Trembellow nodded. He had sent one of his staff, a man who was new to the district and would not be recognized, to join the visitors going round Clawstone.

‘You’ve never seen such a ramshackle place,’ he had told Lord Trembellow when he came back. ‘They’ve just got a kid taking the tickets, and no guides or anything. And the rubbish in the museum – you wouldn’t believe it. There’s a sewing machine and a jar of caterpillars and something called a Hoggart.’

‘What’s a Hoggart?’ Lord Trembellow had asked.

‘I don’t know, my lord. It’s a thing like half a skinned Pekinese rolled into a sort of ball and it’s just labelled “The Clawstone Hoggart”.’

Lord Trembellow turned to his son. ‘Get me one of those in London, will you? If they’ve got a Hoggart I’ll have one too. No, get me two Hoggarts.’

‘Why only two, Daddy?’ asked Olive. ‘Why not three . . . or five . . . ?’

‘Good idea, my little sugar plum. Make a note of it, Neville. Five Hoggarts.’

Spread out on the desk in the study was an aerial photograph of the district. It had been taken from a helicopter and showed the grounds of Clawstone very clearly: the castle, the gardens – and the park surrounded by its high wall. If one looked carefully one could just make out the specks of the cattle.

Neville and the builder were bending over it while Lord Trembellow told them his plans.

‘As soon as I’ve got old Percival out I’ll get it properly surveyed, but this shows enough. The park’s a perfect building site; the drainage is good and so’s the soil – no danger of flooding. There’s room for two hundred houses easily.’

‘Why just two hundred houses, Daddy?’ said Olive in her high, prim voice. ‘Why not three hundred? Or even four? People like that wouldn’t mind living close together. Then we’d get twice as much money.’

‘Well, maybe.’ He smiled fondly at his daughter. Some people’s children were a disappointment to them, but Olive was exactly the kind of daughter he had wished for.

‘We’d have to get round the planning people but I dare say it could be done. And then – in with the bulldozers, cut down the trees, lay concrete everywhere . . . make things tidy.’

Lord Trembellow loved concrete. Grass and flowers and trees were so messy. Grass needed cutting, flowers could give you hay fever and trees blew down in the wind. But concrete . . . concrete was smooth and trouble-free, concrete gave you a level surface.

When he thought of the countryside covered in giant cement mixers pouring out streams of the wonderful stuff, Lord Trembellow was a happy man.

Lady Trembellow was quite different. She longed for a garden and she loved animals – again and again she asked her husband if they couldn’t get a dog. But his answer was always ‘No’, and when she tried to argue he changed the subject.

‘It’s time you went to London again and had something done about your nose,’ he would say. Or he would suggest that she had the cartilage in her ears cut so as to make them lie flatter against her head.

And because she had been brought up to think that a wife must please her husband, Lady Trembellow said no more.

T
he children had come away from Cousin Howard feeling very discouraged.

‘I suppose we were silly to think he could do anything,’ said Madlyn. ‘He’s led such a sheltered life.’

They didn’t try to see him again and he didn’t come out of his room. But three days after they had waylaid him in his library, something strange happened. The children didn’t see it – they were in bed and asleep – but Sir George saw it and it surprised him very much.

Just as the clock struck midnight an old rusty bicycle with upright handlebars rode slowly out of the lumber room and crossed the courtyard. There was nobody on it, and nobody pushing it, but the pedals could be seen to move and the un-oiled wheels gave off an occasional tired squeak.

Quite by itself, with only the slightest of wobbles, the riderless bicycle made its way towards the gateway, turned into the drive and was gone.

‘Well, well,’ said Sir George, moving away from the window. ‘Who would have thought it? It must be years since Howard went out at night.’

Some ten kilometres south of Clawstone stood an old rambling house completely covered in ivy. The house was called Greenwood and it belonged to an old lady called Mrs Lee-Perry, who lived there alone.

Mrs Lee-Perry was immensely ancient; she was quite transparent with age; her voice was hoarse and faint, her wrists were as thin as matchsticks and it took her nearly five minutes to get up from her chair.

But she was not dead. She should have been – she was only a year off her hundredth birthday – but she was not.

The trouble was that all her friends
were
. Her husband was dead and her brother was dead and all the many friends who used come to her house. Mrs Lee-Perry loved music and poetry and she had been famous for her Thursday Evening Gatherings when people played together and sang together and read aloud from books that they enjoyed.