The Black Mountains (7 page)

“Is there a fire?” he asked eagerly.

Ted began to laugh again.

“Better than that. Come over here, boys, and see what I can see!”

They came, clambering over the beds and a sleepy Jim.

“It's old Mother Durrant's porker!” Fred said unnecessarily. “ He's having a go at her parsnips!”

“Hell have the lot up in a minute,” Jack commented anxiously, and Ted laughed again.

“Pigs do. They'll root up anything. Serve her right, I say, the old misery!”

“Didn't we ought to tell somebody?” Jack asked worried, but before the others could shout him down, a sudden commotion disturbed the Sunday-morning calm.

From almost immediately below their window came the sound of agitated cries and a door banging. Charlie Durrant appeared, clad only in a pair of long woolen underpants, whose baggy seat drooped three-quarters of the way down his thin thighs, and shirt with the tails flapping just above the seat of the underpants. Behind him, her night-gown billowing from beneath a hastily pulled-on coat, came Martha, waving her arms wildly to urge her husband on. Curling rags were still wound in her thin hair, and her plump feet were pushed into a pair of fashionable high-cut shoes.

Across the yard they ran, one behind the other, and down the path between the wash-houses. They reached the pig and began chasing it back to its sty, looking like two animated scarecrows, and the boys' merriment overflowed. Holding on to one another and to the window-sill, they roared and roared, the tears rolling down their cheeks.

“I bet there'll be pork for dinner next Sunday!” Fred chortled.

And Jim added drily, “Pork, but no parsnips, by the look on it!”

That set them off again and they were still laughing when their oddly dressed neighbours came back up the path, both red in the face, Martha's high-heeled shoes caked with mud, and Charlie's white underpants dirt-streaked on the back where he had wiped his hands. And when Martha glanced up and saw the four delighted faces looking down at her from the bedroom window, her anger only amused the boys the more.

“I thought she was going to have a stroke,” Ted said afterwards. “That's just how she looked!—sort of red and popping, and her mouth going, but no words coming out.”

But Martha did not have a stroke. After shaking her fist at the boys, she dragged Charlie into the kitchen and out of sight, and with a sense of anticlimax they realized the free show was over.

They were still chuckling about it, however, when Charlotte called them to breakfast, half an hour later, and they told the story yet again as they watched her turn fried potatoes and rashers of streaky bacon in the pan. But their amusement was not to last much longer.

Just as Charlotte had finished dishing up, they heard someone knocking on the back door.

“What a time to choose!” Charlotte said, annoyed. “Jack, go and see who it is, there's a good boy. And the rest of you get on with your breakfast while it's hot.”

They began to eat, casting curious glances in the direction of the scullery, but when Jack appeared in the doorway followed by Charlie Durrant, knives and forks dropped and six pairs of eyes were fixed on the hesitant and distinctly unhappy figure, whose woollen underpants were now covered by a pair of trousers.

Charlie Durrant drove the winding engine at Grieve Bottom Pit, and enjoyed the freedom of being more or less his own master. It was a pleasure he certainly did not enjoy at home. Martha hounded him mercilessly, and none of the Halls had any doubt that it was Martha who had sent him on this errand.

“Well, Charlie,” Charlotte said, putting down her fork. “ What can we do for you?”

For a moment Charlie did not reply. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stood mopping nervously at a dewdrop that had caught in his stringy moustache.

“You had a bit of trouble earlier on, didn't you?” James prompted him.

“That's right.” With an effort Charlie gathered his courage to begin. “ Our pig got out and a fair mess she's made of the garden, too. There's not a parsnip not damaged, and the swedes look as if they've had their lot, an' all.”

Charlotte clucked sympathetically, and encouraged, Charlie went on: “Martha's had to go back to bed, she's so upset. I reckon it'll bring on one of her heads.”

The boys, who knew Martha's ‘heads' could keep her in bed for a day and sometimes more, exchanged glances of suppressed delight, and Charlotte gave them a warning glance.

“I'm sorry to hear that, Charlie,” she said. “ But what can we do for you?”

Charlie carefully folded his handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket, but before he could reply, Amy asked, “How did the pig get out, Mr Durrant?”

The innocent question brought Charlie to life like a dummy in a pier peep-show when the penny dropped. His head came up with a jerk, a muscle in his left eyelid twitched violently, and he whirled around to point an accusing finger at Ted.

“You'd better ask your brother that question!” he cried, his voice trembling and high with indignation.

They all stared blankly, but Charlotte was the first to recover her wits.

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

Intoxicated by his own daring, Charlie rushed on.

“You know as well as I do that your Ted's a proper varmint. He's got a name round here that I should think you're ashamed of.”

“Just a minute!” James began warningly, but Charlie, in full spate for the first time in twenty years, was not to be interrupted.

“He's a bad boy,” he went on. “He's plagued the life out of Martha, and led others to do the same, and if she wasn't such a good woman, you'd have heard about it before now. But this time, he's gone too far. Letting out our pig is beyond a joke, and …”

“I never!” Ted cried indignantly. “I never did!”

Charlotte silenced him with a look.

“What proof have you got of this, Charlie?”

“Martha saw them boys down the garden last night when it was getting dusk. Now I know for a fact that I put the catch on the pigsty after I went in to see to the porker. This morning, it were off, and you don't need to be no politician to know how it got undone. As Martha always says when they've been aplaguin' her, boys will be boys. But when it comes to letting out folks' pigs and the like, that's when it's time something were done, I reckon.”

“Just a minute, Charlie,” James was on his feet now, his face like thunder. “ What have you got to say to this, Ted? Is there any truth in what Mr Durrant says?”

“No, Dad, there's not!” Ted asserted, and James turned back to Charlie.

“You'd better go on home, then, Charlie. And I'm warning you, there'll be trouble if you go saying things like that with no proof.”

“I don't need no proof! I knows what I knows!” Charlie began, and James wagged a threatening finger at him.

“I mean it, Charlie. I won't have it, not in my own home.”

His temper, slow to rise, was up now, and Charlotte intervened hastily.

“Off you go, Charlie, I'll get to the bottom of this. And I promise if Ted or any of the others are to blame, we'll see your parsnips are replaced out of our garden. I can't say fairer than that. Go on now!” She shooed him to the door, and behind her the stunned silence fragmented as the boys all began talking at once, and Amy burst into noisy tears. James scraped aside his chair to follow Charlie out, but Charlotte laid a restraining hand on his arm.

“No, James,” she warned. “We don't want brawling on a Sunday.”

“But I didn't do it, Mam, honest I didn't!” Ted protested.

“Didn't you?” Charlotte was annoyed at the sight of the bacon congealing on the plates, and took out her annoyance on Ted. “ I'm fed up to the teeth with getting complaints about you, my lad.”

“You were up early this morning, Ted. I saw you looking out of the window ages ago,” Amy put in. Then her lip wobbled and her eyes filled with tears. “ Oh, Mam, what will happen? Will they put Ted in prison?”

“Not this time,” Charlotte said heavily. “ Though the way he's going on, it's only a matter of time, Amy. But I'll tell you what's going to happen, all right. First thing tomorrow morning, we're going to dig out half our parsnips and take them round next door. I know they're better left till the frost's been on them, but I can't stand Martha Durrant's long face looking at me till then. We'll help her put them back in the ground. It's the least we can do.”

“But our Ted says he didn't let the pig out,” James objected.

“I'm not so sure about that,” Charlotte argued. “ Between these four walls, I agree with the Durrants. Our Ted is a pickle, and it's time he was taught a lesson. Shifting him off the screens and underground was just water off a duck's back. Well, if he misses his parsnips this winter, maybe he'll think twice before he gets up to his tricks again.”

“But what about the rest of us?” Jim asked. “ Do we have to go hungry too?”

“We'll starve!” Amy cried, dramatically bursting into a fresh spasm of weeping. “And I'll faint in class like Edie Presley did.”

“You'll faint in chapel if you don't eat your bacon,” her mother told her, and, realizing the futility of arguing with Charlotte when her mind was made up, the family resumed their breakfast. Even James sat down again, muttering, “Your mother's right, you know. We can't see neighbours lose all their vegetables and do nothing about it.” Then, picking up his knife and fork, he began his breakfast once more.

Only Ted pushed his plate away defiantly.

“I told you I didn't do it, Mam!” he cried.

“Sit down, Ted,” Charlotte warned him, but he shook his head.

“It'd choke me,” he said, pushing past her chair. “I never let that pig out. But I'll tell you something, I bloomin' well wish I had!”

Outside it was pleasantly warm, the air singing with the promise of another good day, but Ted scarcely noticed.

He crossed the yard, cutting down through the gardens, and the gardens of the rank below theirs, his feet slithering as the ground grew steeper. At the bottom he scrambled through the hedge and on to the road, crossing the first railway lines by means of the foot-bridge and the second by a narrow subway. Then, skirting the town centre, he headed for the part of the river that lay beyond the churchyard and in the shelter of the grassy slopes that formed yet another side of the valley bowl.

The river here moved slowly through deeps and shallows overhung with trees and bushes. In places it widened to form natural pools where the young men swam when the weather was warm enough. Ted had heard talk of making a proper swimming pool here, and forming a club, but this morning he was fairly sure he would be alone. It was early yet for a Sunday, and most people who were already up would be going to church or chapel.

As he waded through the waist-high grass, his bad humour fell away. Here, with the constant soft cooing of the wood-pigeons and the soothing murmur of the brook, it was impossible to be anything but happy. It was the place of a thousand dreams, where he and Redvers Brixey had spent so many happy hours.

Here, they had fished, lying flat on their stomachs on the bank, a makeshift oven of an old toffee tin with a couple of rusty stair-rods laid across it all ready to cook a delicious supper. But they had never actually caught anything.

Here, they had watched the placid moorhens and seen them scuttle fearfully when they clapped their hands.

And here, they had learned to swim, holding one another up with shrieking, splashing merriment, and swallowing a great deal of river water in, the process.

But this morning, not a sound disturbed the peace.

With a quick look round, Ted stripped off his clothes and dropped them into an untidy heap under a bush. Then, when he was quite naked, he waded into the water.

It was cold, so cold he let out a yell, but as the first sharp shock gave way to a pleasurable tingling Ted glowed with exuberance.

So much for wasting a morning like this in chapel! he thought. And why did he need to go anyway? Here, with the sky high and blue above the tracery of green, he was closer to God than he could ever be there.

After a while, he began to feel the coldness of the water once more. He turned for the bank, and saw something move among the trees. Automatically he stopped, treading water. All was peace, and he was just beginning to think he had imagined it when a twig cracked sharply, and turning towards the sound he saw a flash of white amid the green.

“Who's there?” he called.

For a moment there was silence, then the branches parted to reveal a girl—a skinny child of ten or eleven. Her black hair was knotty and unbrushed, and her stockings and smock were stuck with burrs, but in her narrow face her dark eyes sparkled behind thick lashes, and her lips were parted to reveal teeth that were white and perfect.

“Rosa Clements!” Ted said, annoyed. “What are you doing here?”

She came to the edge of the bank, guilty but defiant.

“You followed me!” he accused. “You're always following me. Why can't you leave me alone?”

Her guilt was spiked by a look of sudden pain, so transparent he felt almost sorry for her.

She was a strange child, very much one on her own, and quite different from the rest of the Clements children, with their pale, freckled complexions and gingery curls. He'd even heard talk that her father was not Walter Clements at all, but one of the travelling fair folk who wintered each year in the market yard, and certainly she was as dark and lithe as any gypsy—and as wild. But he'd never learned the truth of it. Charlotte refused to have the subject talked about, saying there was ‘none of us so lilly white we can afford to gossip about others.'

Rosa never played with the other children, either. While they drew hopscotch squares on the path with chalky stones, and ran shrieking round the rank, she went off by herself, sitting in the hen-pen for hours, or going off across the fields. But lately Ted had noticed that, wherever he was, Rosa was likely to turn up too, and it was beginning to annoy him.