The Various (25 page)

‘Really, I’m fine. I just got . . . frightened, that’s all. Don’t worry. I shouldn’t have gone there. It was stupid.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. Midge, another thing, whilst the others aren’t here – I should perhaps tell you to take no notice of Katie, if she’s a bit, ah, stroppy. She can be a moody old thing sometimes – but it’s just her way. She’s fine once you get to know her. But the fact is that they’ve had their holiday with their mum cut short. They were supposed to be going to some resort, some park place, and now they can’t – so they’re here instead. Don’t think George minds too much, but Katie’s a bit jarred off about it, so if she seems grumpy with you, don’t take it personally.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t noticed,’ Midge lied, politely. ‘But thanks.’ She carried her bundle into the washroom, and stuck her tongue out at no one in particular.

* * *

She found George and Katie leaning over the gate that led into the Field of Thistles. George turned round as he heard her footsteps on the cobbles and gave her a smile.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘What do you get when you cross an elephant with a jar of peanut butter?’

‘An elephant that sticks to the roof of your mouth,’ said Katie in a very bored voice, continuing to gaze out across the fields, her back still turned. ‘That is sooo
old
, George.’ She punched his shoulder and he lost his balance, slithering down from the metal bars of the gate. But he was laughing all the same.

‘I saw your mum on the telly at Christmas,’ he said. ‘I
think
it was her. With an orchestra on BBC2. Our mum said it was her, anyway.’

‘Yes,’ said Midge, cautiously, slightly awkward. ‘Probably.’ It wasn’t something she cared to talk about much. Once or twice a year there would be a televized concert in aid of something or other, and she had seen her mum on a number of occasions, doing that other thing that her mum did – playing, or perhaps waiting to play, concentrating, watching and reading the music until it was time, raising the instrument gracefully to her chin, poised for a second – and then dipping forward, launching herself, drawing the bow across the strings in confident purposeful strokes, neat, precise, in perfect unison with all the others. Doing what she loved, being what she was. And not thinking about Midge.

She changed the subject. ‘I’m sorry about your holiday,’ she said. ‘What happened?’ A sore point, she
realized
instantly – though she didn’t much care, it was just something to say.

Katie grunted and turned to face her, acknowledging her presence at last. ‘Yes,
we’re
pretty sorry about it too,’ she said, bitterly. ‘Stuck in this dump, instead of Center Parc.’ She looked at the little blue surfer top that Midge was wearing, unbuttoned, over a clean white T shirt. ‘Hey, get you,’ she said. ‘Nice top. Off to Newquay, are we,
dude
?’

‘What?’ said Midge. But Katie had already turned around again, hunching her shoulders against the world. ‘What a dump,’ she muttered. ‘You’d think he’d at least
pretend
to make an effort.’

Midge was getting cross, but said, as calmly as she could, ‘I really like it here. I like it how it is. It’s friendly.’ Which is more than
you
are, she wanted to add. She looked at George, hoping for an ally, and George responded by flicking his hair back and saying, ‘
I
don’t mind it.’

‘Yeah, but
you
don’t mind rock cakes.
You
don’t mind disgusting rice pudding with skin on it.
You
don’t mind rusty old cars.
You
don’t mind
stupid
music, like jazz. You’d live in a shed full of sheep manure, and not
mind
it. Hick.’

George looked at Midge, and gave her an exaggeratedly loopy grin. ‘It’s true,’ he said, with a mad cackle, ‘I don’t mind
anything
.’ He jumped about, suddenly full of boy-energy, pretending to tap dance. He couldn’t tap dance. Boys never can. ‘How old are you?’ he said, pirouetting gracelessly and coming to a standstill.

Midge laughed at his antics. What a twerp. ‘Twelve,’ she said.

‘So am I,’ said George, and then added ‘nearly,’ realizing that if he didn’t correct his statement then Katie soon would. ‘Do you remember when we went to Exmouth?’

‘I remember the seaside,’ said Midge – and suddenly she really did. There had been swingboats on the beach. And men with trumpets, playing on a balcony – a hotel? – and George . . . crying. That’s right.

‘I remember you crying!’ she said, marvelling at how clear the picture was. She could see his little-boy face, screwed up in anguish. ‘You had an ice cream – we all did – and you dropped yours. It was pink. The ice cream fell out of the cone and landed plop in the sand. I can see it! And then someone bought you another one, and the ice cream fell out of the cone
again
! The exact same thing happened twice!’

‘Typical,’ muttered Katie.

‘And you had to give me some of yours,’ said George, glancing at Midge with a faintly puzzled look on his face, trying to remember. ‘And yours was . . .’

‘Banana!’ They both said the word at the same time.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ said Katie, jumping down from the gate. ‘And I really,
really
, hope the video’s working.’ She walked away across the yard, immaculate, with all the self-conscious grace of a pretty thirteen-and-a-half-year-old who believes herself to be the object of all attention.

‘She’s mad because you’ve got her room,’ said George, once Katie was out of earshot.

‘Oh,’ said Midge.

‘Though I don’t know why it would bother her,’ continued George, leaning back against the warm bars of the metal gate. ‘She always says she hates it, and wishes Dad would make her up a bed in the little end room – which is where she is this time.’

‘Well,
I
don’t mind,’ said Midge. ‘I mean, I’ll swap if she likes.’

‘Shouldn’t bother. That’d be wrong too.’

‘Which is your room?’

‘The one next to Dad’s. I shall sleep there
tonight
,’ George glanced surreptitiously at Midge, ‘but most of the time I shall probably sleep in my tree house.’ He watched her reaction to this.

‘You’ve got a
tree
house?’

‘Yes,’ said George, airily, pleased that Midge had obviously not discovered his hideaway. He flicked his hair back. ‘I’ll show it to you tomorrow. You can help me set it up, if you like.’ He looked at his hands shyly, putting his knuckles together and waggling his thumbs. ‘That time with the ice cream,’ he said quietly, ‘you didn’t
have
to give me some of yours. Nobody told you to. You just did.’

A few yards away, behind the half open door of the first of the disused stables, the four woodlanders listened to the muffled rise and fall of the children’s voices outside. The sound entered the stable through the gaps between the loose pan tiles and the whitewashed end wall. Half-buried beneath the frowsty old hay, Tod, Pank, Spindra, and Grissel had spent the last
eighteen
hours or so waiting for nightfall to come round once again. It had been a dismal time. Pank’s injury had hardly seemed any better after a restless and wakeful night, and it was clear that he would be quite incapable of walking all the way to the Far Woods and back again in the search for Pegs. In fact it was doubtful whether he would even be able to return to the Royal Forest unaided. The four had discussed the possibility of dividing – two to go on with the search and one to return with Pank – but this idea seemed unworkable. Spindra had been willing, desperate even, to press on regardless, but neither Tod nor Grissel would return without the others. Tod felt that if Grissel and Spindra were allowed to continue alone, then their lack of knowledge regarding the ways of the Gorji would almost certainly bring them to grief. Grissel, for his part, felt that if Tod and Spindra were to continue alone then it would seem as though he were deserting his post – running away from danger whilst leaving others to brave it. He had no wish to try and justify such an action to Maglin – or to face the inevitable jeers of his fellow archers. In the end they had decided that they must all return – and this made the fate of poor Lumst seem doubly pointless, for what had been gained by this expedition? Nothing, it would seem. And yet what else they could do? Again, nothing. Spindra was heartbroken at having to give up the search, and Pank, of course, felt thoroughly miserable at having been the cause of all their problems.

And so they had passed the long hours, without
food
or water, in more or less perpetual fear, sometimes arguing, sometimes comforting one another. Every tiny sound ravelled their fragile nerves. The
vruma-vruma
that came and went, the big red birds that scratched and clucked or, worse, appeared silently and unexpectedly in the doorway before passing by; the voices, clumping boots, unexpected bangs and clatters – all served to keep their senses at an almost constant snapping point. There had been a period of respite. The heavy heat of the mid-afternoon had finally brought a long humid silence upon the yard, and the woodlanders had talked some more, examining their situation in reckless whispers, going over the same ground again and again, trying to find another solution, another plan. They had no choice, in truth. There was no plan. From the outset their mission had been dependent upon good luck, and they had found only bad. Lumst was dead. Pank was injured. They had failed on all but one count: they at least knew where Pegs was
not
.

And now the Gorji were hovering nearby, talking of things that were incomprehensible to them. Seasides. Ice creams. What were these? Eventually the sound of the voices faded away as the giants walked back across the cobbles to the house, and a sleepy quiet fell once more upon the yard outside.

Spindra, tired almost beyond caring, lay back amongst the hay and gazed dully at the walls of their prison. Here were hung strange objects, unfamiliar to him for the most part – ancient metal hoops from long gone cartwheels, gin traps, horseshoes, a wheel
brace
, a small bow-saw (which he
did
know the purpose of, and which, moreover, he considered to be well worth stealing) and various straps and bits of chain, hanging from the rusty nails that were hammered into the rough-rendered walls. One particular object – a horse’s bridle – was so familiar to him that he barely glanced at it, being more interested in guessing the possible uses of the other things. However, the bridle finally claimed his attention as he began to realize what a good one it was. The leather, although old and mildewed, was intricately tooled and embossed, and there were three little bells, green with age, mounted on the headpiece. A fine piece of work. And yet there was something odd about it, something wrong. The answer came to him, suddenly, and he sat up. The bridle was only familiar to him because it was of
Naiad
design and construction. It was not Gorji. To Gorji eyes it would be a tiny thing – far too small even for one of their hounds, let alone one of their horses. What was an old Naiad bridle doing in a Gorji byre?

He stood up and walked over to the wall to take a closer look, brushing the hay from his tunic, and squinting up at the long neglected little object, shading his eyes against the dusty sunbeams that fell through odd chinks in the sagging roof of the stable. The others watched him, mildly curious as to what he had seen.

‘What be looking at, Spindra?’ said Tod.

Spindra didn’t reply. A strange feeling was slowly creeping over him – a feeling of revelation, and
certainty
. He turned to face the others, a puzzled look on his brown lined face.

‘Pegs is back,’ he said. ‘Back home, in the forest. He’m there, I knows it.’ A few moments of silence, then a general rustling of hay as his three companions sat up.

‘How do ’ee know that?’ Tod said, moving his head to one side in order to get a better view of the thing that Spindra had been looking at. It was a bridle. What did that mean?

‘I just knows it,’ said Spindra, puzzled himself as to how this should be. ‘I knows he ain’t
here
– knew that all along. But now I knows he ain’t nowhere else, neither. Not in the Far Woods, not lost between here and there. Not nowhere ’cept where he should be. He’s back.’ And the little horse breeder scratched his balding head, perplexed at his own words, yet sure of his feelings.

Pegs had been born into Spindra’s small herd some four years previously – an object of wonder and great pride to the Naiad, and as precious as a child to the herdsman. Pegs had been cared for as no other horse had ever been cared for, and none knew the magical creature better than Spindra. The animal was witchi, moreover, and could communicate in ways that were beyond their fathoming – perhaps even at this distance, for all they could tell. The other three were inclined to believe Spindra, then, when he said that Pegs was come home. If he knew, then he knew – as a father might know. Such things were possible. In the end they believed it to be so because they wanted it to be so.

Their decision was clear to them, then – for it had been Spindra who had been the most anxious to continue the search, and it was Spindra who was now satisfied that there was no need. All ideas of pressing on to the Far Woods were finally abandoned. They would return to the forest at nightfall – but they would not return completely empty-handed. They would take the opportunity to profit a little from their ordeal, and justify an otherwise fruitless expedition. A bundle of bean sticks was propped up in one corner of the stable, and, as the light grew dim, they used the longest to reach up and quietly unhook some of the objects that hung on the wall. The small bow-saw they took – for this was real treasure – along with the horseshoes, four of them, which were useful lumps of metal – and although none could guess their original purpose, they might be fashioned by the Tinkler smiths into usable implements. The bridle Spindra lifted down and slung over his shoulder, sniffing curiously at the stiff fusty leather, and shaking the tarnished bells very gently. He would clean it up and it would be a fine adornment for one of his herd.

If Pegs were truly home then they would be glad, and if Spindra were wrong then at least another expedition could be planned. This thought comforted them somewhat, yet the sum total of their gain seemed a poor exchange for the life of Lumst, and it was a sombre little foursome who later peered out of the stable doorway to watch the moon rise over the hill. Their efforts, their fear, suffering, and ultimate loss, had largely been pointless.