The Ghost of Grania O'Malley (17 page)

Jessie felt Jack's hand-squeeze and responded in kind without looking at him. She was tired. The muscles in her legs were cold now and cramping, but she had never felt so happy. Mister Barney had just finished speaking, and the clapping had scarcely died away, when they were aware of a dozen men standing at the top of the track, most of them in blue uniforms and shiny peaked caps.

‘All right.' It was Michael Murphy, beside himself with fury. ‘I've had enough. First of all you sabotaged the diggers, and now this. This is my hill you're on, and I've a legal right to do with it what I will. I've had enough of it, do you hear me?' He paused, and then added heavily, threateningly, ‘You stay up here, and things could turn nasty. People could get hurt. Do you understand my drift?' He seemed to calm down a little. ‘Listen, I'll let you stay here the night so's you can make your point, but I want you off this hill by the morning, you hear me now?'

For some time no one responded, everyone looking to everyone else. Then Jessie's mother walked right up to him.

‘You're not welcome here, Michael Murphy,' she said. ‘This may be your hill, but this is our island, and we all say we're not moving from here until your diggers leave. Now is that clear enough?'

It must have been, because Michael Murphy turned on his heel and walked away down the track, taking the men in blue with him, Panda yapping at their heels.

‘I'm cold,' said Jessie, drawing her knees up to her chest and clasping them to her.

‘You want me to rub your legs?' Jack asked. ‘They hurting?'

But Jessie didn't get a chance to reply. Someone was standing in front of them, in a pair of pale green trainers. She looked up. It was Marion Murphy, and she'd been crying. ‘I came, Jack,' she said. ‘After what you said, I came. And I'm going to tell my dad to put a stop to it. I'll be back later. I'll bring back some chocolate, shall I? I've got a duvet at home, Jessie, if you want.'

‘That would be great,' said Jessie, and she smiled at Marion Murphy for the first time in her whole life.

11
THE BATTLE OF THE EARTHBUSTER

BY THE TIME DARKNESS FELL THAT NIGHT, THE top of the Big Hill had become a village of tents and makeshift huts. It was a fine, dry night, but there was a cold breeze off the sea and they were soon glad of all the cover they had built, and of the fire too. Father Gerald had appointed himself keeper of the fire, and sent every child he could recruit scavenging all over the hill. But the brushwood they found was too small and too dry, and burnt too quickly. There just wasn't enough of it to keep the fire going. So Jessie's father, who had already made several supply trips up and down the hill with the tractor and link box, went off back down the hill again to load up with peat.

Jessie sat in the mouth of her hut next to Jack, both of them swathed in blankets. The hut was built into the rocks, with a bracken roof and a bracken floor. She breathed in deep the warmth of the fire, and at last began to feel her feet again. She was watching the shadows round the fire, hoping always that one of them might materialise sooner or later into Grania O'Malley. But the shadows remained shadows and she didn't come. Mrs O'Leary had brought her barbeque up from the pub and was grilling hundreds of sausages over a bank of glowing coals, with Panda sitting, ears pricked and expectant, right beside her.

‘Do you want one?' said Jack.

‘Two,' replied Jessie, ‘and that's just for starters.' And he left her there alone, gazing deep into the fire. She was conscious of the tractor coming back up the hill, its lights sweeping the bracken, and then her father's voice calling for help to unload. Mrs O'Leary was bellowing that the sausages were well done, that there were beans and bread to go with them, that everyone should come and get it. Shadows flitted past the fire towards the barbeque. ‘And Mrs Burke's doing the drinks, by the rock pool,' Mrs O'Leary announced. ‘And there's potatoes baking in the fire.'

‘Quite a party,' said a voice. There was no one there, not at first; but then Grania O'Malley was suddenly sitting right beside Jessie, holding her hands out towards the fire and rubbing them together. ‘That's a proper fire too.'

‘They'll see you!' said Jessie.

‘What if they do? And anyway who's looking? They're all after the sausages. And besides, to see me, you've got to want to see me; and what's more I've got to want you to see me. When they want to see me, and I want them to see me, then they'll see me, but only then – if you see what I'm saying?' Jessie certainly did not, but she wasn't going to say so. ‘Listen, Jess,' she went on, ‘I may not have time for this tomorrow. I want you to have this.' And she took Jessie's hand and pressed something into it, something hard and cold and sharp.

‘What is it?'

‘An arrowhead. No it's not Jack's. The boys and me, we looked for it everywhere. Couldn't find it. But maybe this one'll be just as lucky for him. You tell him what you like. You're good enough at the tale-telling – I've heard you. He won't know the difference.'

‘Where did you get it?'

‘America, just like he did. From the arrow the Indians shot at me. Missed me by a whisker, like I told you; but I kept it. My lucky charm, you might say. It worked a treat for me all my life, maybe it will for Jack.' She closed Jessie's fingers round it and smiled into the fire. ‘The night before the battle, just like the old days. The times I've sat up here waiting for the enemy, and we always saw them off, always. I'll be with you in spirit tomorrow, Jess, you can be sure of that.'

‘But there won't be a real battle, will there? No one'll really get hurt, will they?' Jessie asked. But when she looked, there was no one there to answer her.

Her father was walking towards her, dusting his hands off on his trousers. ‘Strange,' he said. ‘I was just unloading the peat a few moments ago, and suddenly there was this woman helping me – long hair, cloak round her shoulders. Don't know who she was. Never seen her before in my life. She said something though, like she knew me, like she knew you. She said I was a very lucky man to have a daughter like you. You know who she is? You seen her?' Jessie shook her head. Her father went on. ‘A vision, I expect. She's right though, I am a lucky man. You're the daughter of your mother, I'd say.'

‘And who else should she be the daughter of?' Jessie's mother said, coming out of the dark into the light of the fire. Jack was with her, and he was carrying a plate piled high with sausages and beans.

They called old Mister Barney over to join them, and he sat with them round the communal plate and dug in just like they did, fingers for the sausages and the one spoon to share for the baked beans. Jack pigged himself on the sausages. There wasn't a mention, Jessie noticed, of peanut butter sandwiches. When she pointed this out, Jack smiled wryly and said in his best Irish: ‘Bog off, why don't you!' They were still laughing when Liam came round with potatoes. They were supposed to be baked, but they were more burnt than baked. They ate them all the same.

‘Like the feeding of the five thousand,' said Father Gerald as he passed by. He wasn't far wrong too. The food seemed to have arrived miraculously, enough for everyone; and, from the spring above the rock pool, all the water they needed to wash it down. Mister Barney burped, apologised, and drank some more water.

‘That's the best water in all the world, make no mistake,' he said. ‘If I live to be a hundred, and it's not far off now, it'll be because of that water. Life-giving, that's what it is. They get digging with their infernal machines, and they'll poison it for ever. Have some, Jessie, have some while you can.' And he passed on the mug to Jessie. Jessie had never thought much about water before. Water had always been just water. It came out of the sky, and there was always plenty of it. She'd drunk it often enough, but now she was tasting it for the first time. It wasn't bitter like other drinks, it wasn't sweet like other drinks. It was cold and it was clean. Whether it was the water or not, Jessie did not know; but she felt a sudden and overpowering sense of complete well-being.

The sausage and bean feast went on well into the night. No one talked of what might happen the next day. With everyone in such high spirits round the fire, Jessie thought she must be the only one even thinking of tomorrow. She could see Jack fooling around in the darkness beyond the great fire with Liam and all the others. She wanted to get him on his own, to give him Grania O'Malley's lucky arrowhead, and to warn him about the battle. When the sausages and beans were exhausted at last, Miss Jefferson got out her squeezebox, and they sang all the songs they knew, and a few they didn't as well. Then there was the dancing, everyone clapping out the rhythm as the feet flashed and flickered in the firelight. In the dying of the fire it warmed their hearts, and their bodies too.

But it was a different matter when it was over. They crawled into their tents and their huts, and wrapped themselves up in their blankets against the cold and the damp. Once the urgent whisperings and the suppressed giggles stopped – and it wasn't long – then the night was filled with a heavy, ominous silence. Jessie snuggled up to her mother on the bracken. Her father and Mister Barney were lying head to toe beside them; and Jack was stretched out at her feet, head in the crook of his arm and facing away from her. He was asleep already, but she didn't want him to be. She kept prodding his side with her toe. She had to find some way to talk to him, she had to. Then she heard him snoring, and knew there was no point any more. She would tell him everything in the morning. Her last prayer that night was to Grania O'Malley, that if there had to be a battle, then please, she didn't want anyone to get hurt.

She was woken suddenly. Someone was calling her name. Marion Murphy was inside the hut and bending over her, tear-stained and crying.

‘What is it, Marion?' said Jessie's mother, sitting up.

Marion was looking at Jessie. ‘I couldn't come last night. I tried, Jessie, honest.' She was breathless with crying. ‘My dad, he caught me with the duvet. He locked me in my room. I wanted to come.'

‘It's all right, Marion,' said Jessie's mother.

‘No.' Marion was shaking her head vigorously. ‘It's not, it's not. You don't understand. They're coming. They've got over more of those men, those security men. They came last night on the ferry. There's a whole army of them now, and they're coming for you. I heard them plan it, the Earthbusters first, like tanks, and everyone else behind. They're coming, they're coming now. They want to surprise you. I jumped out of my window. I hurt my arm.' Jessie's father was already pulling on his boots and crawling out of the hut. He patted Marion's head as he passed.

‘Good girl,' he said. ‘Good girl.'

Jessie smiled at Marion. ‘You staying then, are you?' she said.

‘If you want me?' Marion was looking at Jack.

‘Course we do, don't we, Jack?' said Jessie. ‘If there's going to be a battle, then we'll need all the good fighters we can get.'

‘Who said anything about a fight?' Jessie's mother spoke sharply. ‘This thing's got to be settled peacefully. I don't want anyone else getting hurt. Now let's have a look at that arm, Marion.'

There were no sausages left for breakfast, and no beans – they'd eaten them all. So everyone chewed on a cold charred potato or two, then cupped their hands under the spring, and had a long, cool drink of water to wash away the taste. Where the baseball bat appeared from, no one knew; but Liam was brandishing it around his head. And that wasn't the only weapon Jessie had noticed. There were garden forks, iron pokers and several long sticks sharpened into lances. They watched and they waited. There was, in the cold light of that dawn, a sense of awful expectation. When they heard the engines starting up at the bottom of the Big Hill, they gathered together, as sheep do, for protection. Jessie was frightened, frightened by what she had started, by what might happen. There was no stopping it now.

Her mother spoke out, her voice ringing with authority. ‘We'll drop the weapons, all of them. We'll not be needing them. There'll be none of that.' Liam took some time to drop the baseball bat. When at last he did, then all the others, grown-ups and children, followed suit. ‘We'll join hands, shall we?' said Jessie's mother. ‘We'll make a circle, a circle round the top of the Big Hill that no one can break.' Jessie found Jack beside her and took his hand. She had her father on the other side. She clung to both of them, and just hoped. Only Mister Barney did not join in the circle. Leaning on his sticks, he stood in the middle like some ancient chieftain, Jessie thought. They could see the first puffs of black smoke now above the bracken and glimpses of yellow as the Earthbusters came grinding on slowly, inexorably, up the hill towards them.

Some, like Father Gerald, closed their eyes and prayed, while the gulls wheeled overhead, screaming, echoing the fear in their hearts. Then a voice came from behind them, clear and firm. It was Mister Barney. ‘We'll see them off. We'll see them off, so we will. Stand firm, hold the line, and we'll send them packing.'

And then they saw the first Earthbuster rearing up the track towards them. Panda barked at it furiously, hackles raised. There was an initial, instinctive step backwards, but that only served to close the circle and tighten it. With arms linked now, they watched the first digger move on to the top of the Big Hill, crushing the bracken, bumping over the rocks towards them. It wasn't long before they found themselves completely surrounded. Michael Murphy was there, flanked by hard-faced security guards, a small army of them, just as Marion had said. The engines died and a stillness fell over the hill. Even the gulls were silent.

Michael Murphy was flushed in the face even more than usual, and it was the flush of rage. ‘What the devil's the matter with you people?' he began. ‘You all agreed, didn't you? Well, almost all of you anyway? How come you changed your mind, eh? Just because of what Jack said? He doesn't even live here. Haven't I told you and told you? This gold mine will bring us all work, keep the island going, just like the salmon farm did.' No one spoke. They only stared. Michael Murphy felt the resentment in their eyes, and their fierce determination. There was desperation in his voice now. ‘For God's sake, didn't I say we'd put it right after? You won't even notice the difference, I promise you. The Big Hill will be here, just the same, and everyone will have their share of the gold, just like I promised. What more do you want?'