This Funny Old Human Life

I wonder why?
Spaceman
Tick Tock
Dead Man Walking
Tears of a clown
King on the Hill
The laughing man
Underground
Hollow Heart
A Trick of Light
Echo
This Place
Circus Show
Jack of hearts
Disappearing Human
Tea Ritual
Smiles
My distant love
Zombie
Naked Beach
The Devil’s coat
A new flower each time
Salsa
Acid Rain
Tipping the imagination
Remember
Winners
Lonely Star
The Walk
Tiger’s Teeth
A four-letter word
Her Knickers
Om
Parting
In mind
A man of Murder
Marjorie, where’s my cheese?
Whodunnit?
The Devil in me
Let’s burn this house down
Slow down
The Watch Men
Orchestrated
Don’t cry gently stranger
The stone king, what have you done?
There was a Woman I knew quite well
The Fog

Athlingwold

‘Athlingford’s a bit different to Oxford, Dan,’ remarked Astrid as we hurried down Fore Street. Keeping up with her ruled out any real conversation. I’m six foot two and was a runner in those days but she was almost outpacing me with her antelopean stride.
‘Agreed,’ I said, hiding shortness of breath as I looked around at the little Dorset town.
‘This old place has hidden depths, I can tell you,’ she said over her shoulder, with a sardonic laugh. What sort of depths, I wondered. The place was a bit of a mixture. I saw one or two old but rather low life pubs, a bow fronted genteel teashop opposite a greasy spoon cafe and a truly fascinating ironmongers whose stock looked as if it came from a basement in the County Museum. It was generally quite an interesting little town with plenty of people about. Amongst the old style cravat and Harris tweed gents outfitters were one or two others with windows displaying concessions to modernity. There were slimline Farah trousers and even a few rather sharp looking leather bomber jackets.
However, there were also rusty and unsightly former cattle market pens marooned on a huge cobbled island in the middle of the wide street. A converted former railway station lurked sadly in the background. The two would have meant importance and prosperity once. Maybe Dr. Beeching’s axe put an end to much of that twenty years or so before.
Still, there was a branch of Boots and surely the smallest Tesco in the land with a twee cottagey front and apparently two toy sized checkouts inside. It was so small that it looked as if entrance could only be gained by actually unlatching and swinging open the whole of its seemingly dolls house front.
We passed a smart looking newsagents, releasing exciting combined odours of newsprint and tobacco. I just had time to read the latest news on a message board outside.
‘MINERS STRIKE OFFICIAL – SCARGILL CALLS FOR NATIONAL ACTION’
I’d already heard about that from my car radio on the way down from Oxford this morning. Mining country seemed a million miles away but that news would eventually have an effect everywhere, even here in this calm sidestream.
‘Thatcher will sort that out,’ called Astrid who had seen the poster too. ‘Small beer compared to what she dished out in the Falklands.’
‘Wait and see,’ was all I could muster in reply. It said little but at least showed my dissent if she actually caught what I said.
Astrid got ahead of me again as we approached a zebra crossing. Making no attempt to let oncoming traffic slow down she just walked straight across. A battered Transit van screamed to a halt somehow. A cyclist coming the other way wasn’t so lucky, swerving onto the pavement and then wobbling in and out of an ornamental flowerbed before eventually making it back to the street. I sprinted across and caught up with her just before the traffic started again, amused by how oblivious she seemed to the incandescent stream of obscenity pouring out of that van window.
This young woman liked danger. I wondered what she did for relaxation – freestyle climbing of Nelson’s Column, bungee jumping off the Severn Bridge? I hoped the kamikaze attitude didn’t extend to her professional career as a lawyer as well.
I was extremely relieved when we finally reached our destination without actual mishap. The uninspiring detached premises displayed a dull brass plate, secured to the wall at a slight angle by just one surviving rusty screw, saying ‘Bicker and Argue Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths.’ The front of what looked like a late eighteenth century building was downright shoddy. Stonework needed cleaning and repointing. Some small and indeterminate species of sapling was growing out of a cracked pediment over the front door. Flakes of peeling white paint fluttered like moths from almost bare and probably rotting window frames on all three floors. Astrid turned just before she opened the front door, cornflower blue eyes ablaze.
‘Good luck! Pa always said this lot needed a damned good shaking. Now, are you the one to do it?’ she asked.
I welcomed this comment. The few words expressed more than anything else she’d mentioned when I met with her mother and herself for what could loosely be called a job interview earlier that morning. Had she been more forthcoming then I’d have had a better idea of what I was going to be in for now.
We went through a bare hall into a large and dingy waiting room looking onto the street. No carpet, but a floor covering of what looked as if it was ancient brown lino, worn down into bobsleigh tracks round doorways and corners. There was a motley assortment of pensionable Windsor chairs. Two ex-railway waiting room settles stood against the walls, rents in the dirt glazed black fabric allowing one or two lumps of white stuffing to protrude like cotton wool on shaving cuts. On a scratched table was a pile of well thumbed magazines including Country Life, last year’s Christmas edition of The Illustrated London News, Horse and Hound and the like. I caught a sweet odour reminiscent of rotting plums. Old dust perhaps or maybe serious rising damp.
Astrid slid back a glass window looking onto another room behind and casually stuck her head inside.
‘This is Mr. Daniel Aysgarth,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s come to have a look round. If you’re nice to him he might even think about staying to help you out.’
Her eyes sparked again as she turned towards me after that comment. I noticed her refer to the women as you, not us. She tossed her blonde hair in irritation, maybe signalling that now I was expected to say something. I had a good look into the room. It was probably the nearest the firm had to a typing pool. Several women and girls sat at ancient tables topped with chipped formica in clashing colours. On the tables were old fashioned typewriters, several of them manual. I saw two other older women in an alcove behind. Not a dictating machine in sight but several open shorthand books, full of pencilled graffiti. An aged Xerox photocopier mumbled fretfully to itself in a corner as if under the weather and pleading for sick leave today.
The woman at the first table stood up and smiled at me. She was pleasant looking with copper coloured hair plaited tightly into an armature like bun. She wore flat shoes, a navy blue pleated skirt and twinset to match. She met my eyes confidently as she introduced herself.
‘I’m Agnes. These are Bridget, Kirsty, Jenny, Suzy…’ I lost track of the other names as I looked at the owners of the first few. Bridget was tall, solemn and buxom with a very short skirt displaying thighs which wouldn’t look out of place in a rugby scrum. She nodded, but said nothing. Jenny had spiky hair and a hint of punk about her. She looked at me quizzically for a moment then just got on with her work.
Kirsty on the other hand was small and slim with little snake like eyes which darted everywhere. She was dressed outlandishly in bright orange. I could have sworn that as she stood up she bobbed into a mini curtsey. I couldn’t help thinking of a servant girl greeting her new master at the door of some rambling country house.
The girl wore miniature bicycle tyre shaped earrings and a watch the size of a small clock. She managed a nervous smile as she stood up again, but spoiled everything with an inane giggle.
‘Kirsty!’ snapped Agnes as I wondered how many executive staff were tucked away upstairs to keep this secretarial army busy.
‘Good to meet you all,’ I said. ‘But so sorry to hear of Mr. Argue’s death.’ Silence, then Agnes came to the rescue.
‘I’ll get Mr. Carthew,’ she said firmly, picking up the internal phone.
‘A good idea,’ said Astrid with a wry grin. ‘I’ll introduce you to him and no doubt he’ll show you round. That is, if you don’t mind being Dr. Who and time travelling back in the Tardis for a hundred years or so.’
I heard giggling from Kirsty again and this time the thunderous look on Agnes’s face made me wonder if she would have thought about slapping the girl had no-one else been present.
‘Don’t forget,’ Astrid said to me quietly. ‘You’re coming back to the house for another discussion with Ma about the situation here around two.’
We went back and stood in the drab hall. I peered up the stairs, seeing maybe two floors above. No carpet on those stairs either, just more of the lino, secured at the edges by the remains of black rubber treads. The edges of several of those were shredded like strands of bladderwrack seaweed dangling over rocks. How easy it would be for a shoe to tangle there, catapulting the surprised wearer headlong down to where we now stood. No pictures on the dull cream walls, just a huge notice, headed ‘OFFICE SHOPS AND RAILWAY PREMISES ACTS’ in giant letters, followed by a maze of paragraphs and subsections in minute and virtually unreadable print. Had anyone ever bothered to read past the heading? Not if those stairs were anything to go by.
The silence was broken suddenly by the noise in the street of an apparently powerful motor cycle pulling up outside. The engine was turned off and I could hear a heavy machine being cranked up out there onto its stand. I’d had bikes in the past and wondered what make this one might be. Whatever that was I imagined putting it on the stand might require the strength of a burly Hell’s Angel at least. I was therefore surprised when the front door opened soon afterwards and an attractive dark haired woman of medium height, well made but hardly burly, strode confidently into the hall.
She took off a bright red crash helmet, released a tangle of long black hair which dropped to her shoulders, and unzipped a well cut black leather jacket. She went straight into the waiting room. I heard the glass partition being slid back again.
‘Oh, not her ladyship! That’s just what we don’t need,’ said Astrid, clearly annoyed.
‘It’s about my phone call earlier this morning,’ said the woman in a deep and caramel smooth voice. ‘It’s really most important. We’ll be grateful if someone can have a quick look at your list of documents held for clients to see if copies of those missing papers are here somewhere. Poor Miss Bolsover’s in the most frightful state, as you can well imagine.’
‘We’ll do our best, Miss Athlingham,’ came another voice which I recognised as belonging to Agnes. ‘But as you know we’re in quite a pickle at the moment and that sort of search will need Mr. Carthew’s involvement. He’s very busy sorting out some most complicated problems. It’ll take a while I’m afraid.’
‘Mr. Carthew, sorting out problems!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘Forgive me, but that’s the wrong way round, isn’t it? I’ve heard he’s the expert at creating difficulties, not solving them. Ask him the way to Dorchester and he’ll send you round by Lands End!’
There was much giggling, particularly from Kirsty, at that jibe.
‘Oh very clever,’ muttered Astrid indignantly. ‘Pa died only a fortnight ago. You’d think she’d keep away for a few days at least while the staff try to sort things out.’
‘You don’t like her then,’ I said but was immediately irritated with myself for stating the patently obvious.
‘My feelings for her are about as friendly as those of Elizabeth I for Mary Queen of Scots,’ hissed Astrid.
‘I think you said ‘her ladyship.’ Can you explain why?’
‘I’ll maybe tell you later, but you’d be surprised to hear some of the things I’d like to do to her. That is, if they didn’t entail my having to become a long term resident of HMP Holloway.’
The conversation was now interrupted by the sound of distant creaking from one of the upper floors, becoming ever louder, and accompanied by a sound resembling bellows which I eventually realised was nothing more than very heavy breathing. The combined rhythm of the creaking, puffing and blowing reminded me of an historic beam engine I once saw in a Cornish mining museum. It could even have been taken for the sound of a miniature rack-and-pinion railway.
‘Well, please do what you can,’ the woman in the leather jacket continued. ‘I’ll come in again this afternoon with Miss Bolsover to see if you have found anything. Surely you have a list of what’s in that rabbit warren you call a file store. Please do make an effort for the poor woman.’
She gave us both what I thought was quite a pleasant smile as she passed on the way back to the front door. Astrid, however, reciprocated with a scowl which was icy enough to extinguish a blast furnace. ‘So sorry about your poor father’s accident,’ the woman said to Astrid. ‘He’ll be sorely missed round here.’
‘Unlike you,’ Astrid muttered, only just inaudibly to the other woman.
She looked at me momentarily, perhaps wondering what I was up to with Astrid.
‘Do give your dear mother my sympathy and very best wishes, please,’ she said pleasantly. Astrid’s scowl softened slightly at that, becoming just a glower instead.
‘Cup of tea?’ asked Agnes diplomatically as the front door closed. The motorbike roared into life again almost at once, so loudly that it sounded as if it was actually being turned over in the hall.
‘Not for me thanks,’ shouted Astrid, since the noise outside showed no signs of reduction. I, on the other hand, had a gasping thirst.
‘Yes please, one sugar,’ I said as the sound of the bike finally began to move away, glad of the offer of something to drink, and keen to avoid giving offence to Agnes.
The creaking and wheezing from upstairs grew louder.
‘This’ll take a while,’ said Astrid resignedly. ‘Use the time to gather your strength, you’ll need it.’
I could see Agnes at a sink in another room on the opposite side of the hall, mashing the tea in a chipped enamel pot, a process which sounded horribly like a concrete mixer. I was glad it would be tea when I also saw a bottle of some brand of cheap chicory coffee essence on a shelf above her.
The creaking from above now became almost rumbling as a male figure hove into view on the final turn of the stairs. I moved as if to meet him but Astrid immediately intervened.
‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Let him come to you.’ I wasn’t happy with that, but maybe she knew best.
Eventually ‘he’ did get to us and I had my first meeting with Mr. Dick Carthew. Astrid did manage to introduce us but immediately got ready to leave. As she did she gave me a sharp dig in the ribs with her elbow.
‘See you later, par’dner,’ she whispered flippantly, as if she were Annie Oakley off to round up outlaws in a Wild West Saloon. ‘Now don’t you go falling into bad company.’
Perhaps she was worried I might slope off without taking any of this further. In fact I was beginning to think about that after what I’d just seen this morning. This was hardly a scene I was used to. Then my memory hit me with a sharp reminder of my reasons for coming to look at this odd ball assignment. If I really did need an engrossing distraction for a month or two I would certainly get that here.
I must also play fair with Astrid’s mother and honour my promise to go back for a further talk, however brief. Not my style to do otherwise I told myself. But what was wrong here? Astrid was so offhand and even rude to people. In contrast her mother had been absolutely charming.
‘I’m Daniel Aysgarth,’ I said to Mr. Carthew, offering my hand.
‘So good of you to come all the way down here, Sir,’ he said ingratiatingly. ‘I’m Dick Carthew, the late Mr. Argue’s senior clerk. But just call me Carthew if you like. Everyone else does.’ Like Agnes, he spoke with a soft and very pleasant Dorset accent.
His breathing was poor. I pointed to one of the chairs in the waiting room, feeling sure he should sit down. Instead he leant against the bannisters, shaking his head. He was elderly, a big boned man and somewhat overweight, white haired and with a dark complexion. Lack of mobility suggested arthritis.
‘Your tea Mr. Aysgarth,’ said Agnes. I looked into a large white mug, watching an island of scum rotating in liquid the colour of estuarial mud. No wonder Astrid would have none of it. Tasting must be avoided at all cost.
‘Would you care to come upstairs, Sir?’ asked Carthew.
I was relieved to note the breathing sounded a little more normal now.
‘I should show you poor Mr. Argue’s room,’ he continued. ‘May he rest in peace. What that man had to put up with these last years. And then to be taken from us in that unexplained car accident.’
‘So nobody knows what happened?’ I asked.
‘No-one,’ he said, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘He was the safest driver in town. Never had an accident before. Apparently no-one else was involved either, just his car found at the bottom of a hillside. Went over the edge. Very odd indeed.’
Astrid, who was out of earshot during this exchange, waved from the front door as she slipped out nimbly into Fore Street. I thought of a bird escaping from a cage, yet hardly a gilded one. I was sure her mother hadn’t intended this sort of behaviour from her daughter. I also wondered frivolously if Astrid was actually going to play at being Annie Oakley and pursue the lady biker for a showdown in a Dorset version of the OK Corral somewhere outside town. She had no need of a Colt 45 or any other kind of gun. With her mood and attitude I would lay bets on her winning by a knock out in the first round.
I followed Mr. Carthew, trying not to spill my tea on the stairs, but wishing I could when I looked at the colour of the contents of the mug. As we climbed I had time to take in the ancient, deeply fluted brass light switches, and the pile of large and old fashioned black metal deed tins on the landing halfway up. While we threaded our way round them into Mr. Argue’s room I wondered if our progress was any less hazardous than Franklin’s historic quest for the North West Passage.
There were two rooms on the front of the building and two more at the back. Mr. Argue’s was one of those on the front. The other three appeared to be presently unoccupied. When we finally got there the room turned out to be an absolute fright. It was large and full of more deed tins, cardboard cartons containing various items, and loose paper almost completely covering the floor. There was a huge antique desk with its back to a window overlooking the street, hardly visible beneath a mountain of scroll like files, each one rolled up and tied with pink ribbon. It looked as if clients’ names were scrawled on the outsides of them. Large scale black and white Ordnance Survey maps uncurled like ocean rollers down the desk and even across the floor.
There was an ancient cast iron fireplace within a green tiled surround. The chimney was stuffed with newspaper and other obstructions, presumably to catch downfalls of soot, which wasn’t effective as some of it was working its way like an expanding desert into the worn carpet covering much of the floor. It was obvious that the fire hadn’t been lit for some while but there seemed to be no other source of heat anywhere in the room. I wondered if Mr. Argue kept his overcoat on all day in winter. Or had he just grown immune to hypothermia?
‘By the way,’ said Carthew confidentially. ‘Don’t use the main light in here. The one over there is better.’
‘Why?’
‘Look,’ he said, levering the antique brass switch gingerly half way into the ‘on’ position with a wooden ruler. A firework display of green and blue sparks leaped from the casing until he quickly withdrew it.
‘What happens if you push it all the way?’ I asked.
‘Bangs like a Roman Candle and all the power in the building goes off.’
I realised now there were scroll type files in the cardboard boxes and many more mixed up with the loose paper on the floor. I thought immediately of how all this resembled what we called our ‘Deep Litter System’ in the chicken house at my father’s hill farm in Cumbria. I suspected this version was even more rank and hadn’t been forked over in months, if not years.
And there were so many battered black deed tins, some in towering wrought iron racks, several of which teetered dangerously like leaning towers of Pisa. I thought how the smallest vibration might send the whole lot crashing to the floor in a seismic disaster.
The walls, where there weren’t racks of deed tins, were covered from floor to ceiling with shelves full of even more files of the type already mentioned. There must have been hundreds of them piled tightly inside, probably in some sort of order known only to the initiated, full of dust and highly combustible. No doubt this contravened countless sections of that huge and mostly unreadable safety notice in the downstairs hall. I could detect a hint of that rotten plum odour again and could feel the dust everywhere, much no doubt trapped in the piles of scrolls.
This was very serious indeed and whoever came here would need to have the combustible material cleared as soon as possible. The island of scum floating in my tea had grown bigger. I needed to deposit that mug somewhere and then sit down to take in the scene of disorder.
‘Careful Sir,’ said Carthew after I had begun to ease myself into a chair. It looked comfortable enough, a nice wooden frame with woven cane sides, but I realised too late that it had all the strength of matchwood. As I lowered myself into it the whole thing just fell to pieces, landing me on the floor, my long legs waving comically in the air so that I must have looked like an upside down spider. Carthew hobbled over, his features crumbling into a crazed surface resembling that of a macaroon biscuit. I wasn’t sure if he was about to laugh or cry as he coughed and spluttered above me.
‘Oh dear Sir, oh dear, what a commotion! Nothing broken, I hope?’
‘Just the chair. You might have made more of an effort to warn me off that one. It was a death trap!’
‘Sorry Sir, didn’t think you were going to sit down so quick like.’ How good he probably was at picking his way through quicksands of problematical clients. Collecting the fragments of chair he tossed them casually into a corner.
‘You’ve done us a favour anyway,’ he said. ‘Been trying to get poor Mr. Argue to ditch that chair for years.’
‘My pleasure,’ I replied ruefully.
‘But look here,’ said Carthew, eagerly pulling a sheaf of papers from the Deep Litter where the chair had collapsed. ‘These are about the Athlingham Estate, the ones our client Mr. Jack Athlingham’s been ranting on about for the last few weeks. We’ve been searching high and low for them.’ The unusual name brought me back onto my feet. Surely I’d heard it already somewhere round here today.
I picked up the pieces of my mug, fortunately another casualty of the accident, and put them in a waste bin next to the remnants of the chair. There was now another serious problem in that a large warm and wet patch was beginning to spread upwards in capillary action all over the crotch area of my best suit trousers. It looked as if I’d wet myself.
‘Do come up to my place, Sir,’ said Carthew, now unashamedly overcome with laughter. ‘It’s safer up there. I’ve at least one good chair you can sit on.’
The rack-and-pinion climb of the stairs, this time up to the top floor, was resumed by Carthew, who handed me the collection of papers he had hoovered up from the scene of my accident so he could fully concentrate on the exertions of the ascent. Fortunately the documents seemed to have escaped the deluge of Agnes’s tea. That was somewhere else. I held on to the bannister rail with one hand, clutching the papers ever closer to my trousers with the other one, glad of the practical concealment they provided. I also felt a little shaky after my fall. Carthew called out as we came up onto the top landing. The layout looked similar to below, two rooms at the front, and two at the back.
‘Don’t know what you’ll make of this floor, Sir. Some folk say it’s quite Dickenstinian.’
It was my turn to suppress laughter this time, even forgetting my wet trousers for a moment. The door to the front room on the right was ajar. All I could see inside was rows and rows of pigeonhole shelves crammed full of yes, more of those dreadful old files. The two back rooms seemed, as on the lower floor, unoccupied.
‘That’s our main file store, Sir,’ said Carthew proudly, pointing to the room with all the files.
‘Main filestore? I thought your whole office was one.’
‘Mr. Argue, may he rest in peace, never rented an outside store. Liked to have everything in the building. Said if the files were sent away they might never find their way back.’
‘You mean he never got rid of anything?’
‘He did. About every five years we’d have a big bonfire of all the files he didn’t think needed keeping. That was in his garden around November fifth. Quite a party and all the staff were invited. Mrs. Argue served lovely food, sausages, jacket potatoes and the like. But that hasn’t happened for a year or two so most of the stuff here probably goes back at least twenty years, a lot even more.’
I had a sudden vision of them all having their own version of a Shetland Up Helly Aa, dancing wildly round the fire as the flames from old files burned higher and higher.
‘This is where my crew and I are based,’ said Carthew, opening the door on the left. Now I got another shock. Whereas Mr. Argue’s room looked like a wreck, in here all was stowed away shipshape and Bristol fashion, in a way I suspected Bob Cratchit’s clerks’ room might have looked in A Christmas Carol. Dickenstinian indeed, I thought, if not even older than that. The room was right up in the roof. The only light, and there wasn’t much, came through a few quite small and rather rotten looking windows. Numerous yellowy patches on the ceiling suggested rain penetration, making it look like the badly stained mattress of a chronically incontinent giant.
There were no desks here, but several enormous Victorian tables, this time with the tattered remnants of black leather coverings, piled high but tidily with probably hundreds more of the files. I was relieved to see there were no shelves packed with them in here, but the walls were lined instead in places with even more of the large black metal deed tins I’d seen on the floor below. There seemed to be some sort of improvised partition at the far end, but which had no door. A desk inside looked straight down the large attic chamber. The small room would be Carthew’s cabin, no doubt, from where he could keep a close watch on the others.
There were two fireplaces in the main chamber, one of which contained an aged gas fire which seemed to be the only source of heat today. However, that would need checking as the flames seemed to sputter somewhat fitfully, no doubt because some of the white filaments in the apparatus were broken and the rest looked as if they were fighting off an attack of acute osteoporosis.
I was surprised to hear Carthew suddenly shouting and banging so hard on one of the windows with a heavy ruler that the activity was followed by the pistol shot sound of cracking glass.
‘Go on, clear off you filthy things,’ he yelled at some pigeons on the gutter outside. ‘Little sex addicts, they are Sir. Stand on that gutter all day, fornicating themselves to kingdom come. Most unseemly.’
He mopped his brow after the combined exertions of the climb and the pigeon confrontation, then turned to business once more. The birds completely ignored his antics, continuing their pleasures with increased noise and even more vigour. Carthew stood with his back to the window, presumably to block out the unseemliness and began more genteel introductions.
‘As you can see Sir, this is where I operate. I also share it with these other gentlemen.’
It was only then I realised there were other figures, half concealed behind the ramparts of files on the huge tables before them.
‘This is Victor Stickland, my personal clerk,’ he said. I went to shake Victor’s hand, thinking at first he was still sitting down, then saw he was so tiny that he couldn’t see over the top of his files even when upright. He must have been considerably less than five feet tall and very slight in build. He had a round and very pallid face which reminded me of a soft white marshmallow. I had the tantalising thought that maybe Carthew was a modern version of Bob Cratchit, and Victor was Tiny Tim.
‘This is Mr. Aysgarth, Victor,’ said Carthew. ‘Now you’ll be able to sort out those queries relating to the firm’s accounts which you haven’t been able to ask poor Mr. Argue about.’
I was puzzled. What did Victor actually do? Carthew gave me a sort of answer.
‘Victor used to carry out some of the duties of a personal clerk to Mr. Argue, but has also done the same for me, if you see what I mean, Sir.’
I didn’t. Carthew had apparently been Mr. Argue’s senior clerk, though he also had a personal clerk of his own. Did everyone, except perhaps the little Kirsty, have this luxury here?
‘Victor’s job was to help Mr. Argue with the office accounts and other general matters like filing, checking the stationery cupboard, ordering the pencils, that sort of thing,’ said Carthew. ‘After that he helps me generally with my matters, Sir. Works out the money and financial statements for house sales and purchases, attends some of the completions, does filing for me and manages the papers stored up here and in the office generally.’
You’ve got it all worked out, I thought. This man Victor looks like a combination of a counting house clerk and an old style army batman, maybe even a fag from Tom Brown’s Schooldays as well. I wondered if Victor also cleaned Carthew’s shoes, made his tea and coffee, got his newspapers and sandwiches for lunch? I even speculated fancifully if the fag master resorted to the cane when the poor little chap was late or made mistakes. I wasn’t allowed to dwell on that for long before Carthew cut in again.
‘You would, Sir, wouldn’t you? Help out Victor, I mean, with the odd accounts query and a few other problems too?’ Seeing the interest, and maybe relief, spreading all over Victor’s tiny face, I knew I’d have to put this right at once, by telling him things straight.
‘Now Mr. Stickland, I’m only having a look round today. If I come here it will be as a manager, just to keep the place going and hopefully get it back on its feet.’
‘Maybe so Sir,’ Carthew interrupted. ‘Let’s not go into detail right now. I’m sure that whatever the position, you wouldn’t mind letting me, Victor and the others just have some friendly advice, like.’
So, I thought, it wasn’t just Victor who needed the help, they were all clearly desperate for a hand on the helm. Maybe as things were so urgent they’d grab anyone’s now. Carthew smiled.
‘And I must say Sir, I expect you’d really enjoy cracking one or two of my tougher conveyancing conundrums.’
Was this to be some form of entrance examination, so he could mark the paper and report back to Astrid’s mother on my abilities, or lack of same? ‘Could do better’ was a comment which sprung to mind.
‘This is Fred Frewin,’ said Carthew. Fred stood up, tall enough just to be seen over his own Berlin wall of files. He was bigger and more healthy looking than Victor.
‘Fred deals with estates of the diseased, Sir.’ I had a job keeping a straight face when he said that. I realised he meant ‘deceased,’ but obviously this was his own idiosyncratic pronunciation. I wondered somewhat uncharitably if he noticed any more.
‘Very good at stocks and shares, he is,’ he continued. ‘Helps us out when things won’t balance too.’
‘That’s most of the time, Sir,’ said Fred with a good natured grin. I wondered if he was going to ask for help with his problems too, but he just smiled broadly, looking generally much more robust than Victor.
I glanced round to see the same general lack of up to date office equipment as in Agnes’s office. Carthew had a manual typewriter covered in a cloth which seemed to be made more from holes than fabric.
I saw scraps of paper on the tables, covered in graffiti like the shorthand books downstairs, but numerical rather than verbal this time. Giant sums in pencil wound up and down as if part of some endless games of snakes and ladders. I hadn’t seen anything like that in years, not since I was at school. There wasn’t a single electronic calculator in sight.
‘Now what about you, Mr. Carthew?’ I asked. ‘Tell me about your work. All go, I’ll bet.’ I admired his spirit and was beginning to take to him a little, but he soon put me back on my mettle when he replied.
‘Before I tell you about all that Sir, would you like to hand to Fred those Athlingham Estate papers you’re holding so tightly? He’s been looking for them for ages.’ Carthew looked pointedly at the papers I still held firmly in front of the puddle in my trousers, now about as comfortable as if I’d stuck a cold wet car sponge down my boxer shorts. Had he deliberately left that warning about the collapsing chair in Argue’s room just too late, I wondered?
I decided attack would be better than defence. I ignored his question, resuming my own about his work, feeling the humour of the situation though I knew it was wholly at my expense.
‘I really would like to hear more of what you do all day Mr. Carthew,’ I enquired
‘I do all sorts of things Sir. I’m in charge up here you see. I keep an eye on these other fellows and make sure everything gets done properly like. We do all sorts really. Fred over there deals with estates of the diseased, Bob in the corner comes in part time to do tax returns, and Sid is an ex-policeman who handles the odd piece of litigation which comes our way, mostly motoring and some petty crime.’
‘Who does the court appearances?’ I asked, getting interested at the mention of court work, some of which I still did myself. Obviously Sid was unqualified, and from what I’d heard of Mr. Argue, court room dramas didn’t sound like his bag at all.
‘No problem with that,’ said Carthew. ‘We use barristers for opinions and actual court appearances. Mr Argue had a long list of counsel who’d do all of that whenever we asked.’
What a shambles, I thought. Several of these workers were only part time, and relying heavily on counsel would have made the litigation prohibitively expensive and probably wholly unprofitable.
Carthew sat down, appropriately enough in a well worn captain’s chair, clearly enjoying having the spotlight on his own activities.
‘When I’m not supervising all that I deal with property of all sorts, Sir. Mr. Argue, now he handled the big matters, the farms, the Athlingham Estate lands and the auction sales. He did all the commercial matters too, Twaddle’s Brewery, Blackwood Haulage, that sort of thing. Me, I deal with the house sales and purchases, the shops and things like that. Here, have a look at my files Sir, if you like.’
He stood up and went through to his little cabin. To humour him, I went in too to give his files a polite inspection.
‘Yes,’ he continued, warming to his subject. ‘I’m the one round here with all the contacts. You know, estate agents, sports teams, the British Legion Club.’
He was like a goods train, taking miles to get up speed but even more to brake.
‘This place is a little goldmine,’ he concluded. ‘Take my word for it, it needs someone like…‘
I stopped him before he could progress any further.
‘Certainly not a manager and practice doctor like me, but thank you, Mr. Carthew, that’s most instructive. Now, I mustn’t delay you any longer.’
I was keen to take some fresh air again. Carthew’s dark complexion paled and signs of panic returned as I prepared to go. The henchmen looked up from their toils too, open mouthed.
‘But surely,’ said Sid the ex-policeman solemnly, ‘you’ll give us an hour or so with our queries, and some of those files of poor Mr. Argue’s?’
‘May he rest in peace,’ intoned Carthew, followed by the others in unison. When was he going to stop reciting this devotional liturgy? I half expected him to cross himself and go down on one knee, genuflecting before a little legal shrine concealed behind the files somewhere, commemorating his ‘diseased’ former employer.
‘I’m sorry about the mess you find yourselves in,’ I said. ‘I’m only here for an interview though, and won’t necessarily be offered or take the job. Now who suggested anything else?’
‘Why, Miss Astrid of course,’ said Carthew. ‘She said you’d make time for us if nothing else.’
Of course, I thought, the swan necked Miss Astrid who couldn’t wait to leap out of this legal quagmire, obviously looking to land somewhere far more attractive and calmer than here. I responded quickly.
‘Did she now? Then I may need to have a few words with your ‘Miss Astrid’ later about that.’
‘Surely you will come down to his room to help me, Sir, just for a little while?’ he wheedled.
‘All right then,’ I said, watching his worry decline at once. ‘I’ve a further meeting coming up with Mrs. Argue, then I need to hit the road home to Oxford. Anything I say is just my view, definitely not legal advice. Understood?
‘Of course, Sir.’
His colour and cheerful facial macaroon crazing reappeared as he grinned at me, so eager to get help with his own problems that he seemed to selfishly forget all about Victor’s and those of the others for the moment. He didn’t even bother to introduce me to one or two more men who lurked in the dark corners of this room.
‘Follow me. Now we mustn’t have you falling out with our Miss Astrid, must we?’ he said. ‘Such a pleasant and attractive young lady. I’m sure he’ll find her most helpful, won’t he, Victor?’
Victor chewed reflectively on the gnarled stump of an old pencil, rather like a dog worrying a worn down bone. Then he did something quite unexpected. He grinned at me and shook his head sadly at Carthew’s broad tweed jacketed back. I smiled, getting the message of the older man’s infatuation with the lissom and elegant Argue daughter. There was probably much more to Victor, when out of Carthew’s sight, than met the eye.
I followed the old man downstairs, passing time during his rack-and-pinion descent to estimate the cost of installing a real stair lift for him. They seemed to work quite well in nursing homes. Why on earth hadn’t something been done to help him long ago? At the very least he could have been given a room on the ground floor. To be fair, maybe that had been offered, but his independent spirit, or just plain cussedness, had possibly made him decline.
‘I think you were talking about professional competition earlier,’ I said, as we got on to the landing outside Mr. Argue’s room. ‘Who are the main contenders?’
Carthew leant on the heavy bannister rail, no doubt tired from going up and down stairs more than usual.
‘There are several,’ he said. ‘But the one we’re most worried about is a big regional outfit. They’re not in this town yet, but they’re talking about opening an office. They’re in Dorchester and Yeovil already, a right gang of wide boys.’
We went into Argue’s shipwreck of a room. It looked even worse the second time round.
‘All right, what was the name of the firm you’re worried about?’’
Carthew scratched his chin.
‘Can’t remember exactly. Prizevales, Bricemails or something like that.’
I felt my own colour draining this time. ‘Grisedales?’ I suggested tentatively.
‘They’re the ones!’ he said, nodding his head. ‘Been buying and merging with firms up and down the whole west country, they have. They’re ruthless. A man called Sinclair’s in charge. D’you know ‘em then?’
I couldn’t believe the coincidence and took what looked like a safe chair, this time behind Argue’s desk, to absorb some of the shock.
‘Oh, I’ve heard of them all right and Mrs. Argue must be warned. They’ll try to get their hands on this place.’
‘We can deal with ‘em,’ said Carthew breezily. ‘And so can she!’
‘Don’t flatter yourselves too much,’ I said, contradicting his confidence. ‘They’re nothing more than asset strippers at heart. They’ll spit out what they don’t want, including staff, and consolidate what they do require with the rest of their empire. They’ll handle Mrs. Argue roughly in the end and pay her much less than she should receive.’
Carthew looked seriously apprehensive at all that.
‘You really don’t like them, do you?’ he asked.
‘Not much. I come up against them from time to time, prowling around some of the practices in trouble that I go to help.’ My dislike was also for other much more painful reasons, I told myself, remembering again why I was getting away from Oxford for a while. At that thought, the cork threatened to come out of a bottle full of very poisonous memories indeed, but Carthew provided a welcome distraction.
‘There’s more,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘These Grimevales, or whatever they’re called, they’ve been getting in with Mr. Jack Athlingham, the local landowner, and trying to take on all the Estate business this office has handled for years. It’s even suggested they’re the ones who’ve put him up to some of the very dirty deeds he’s said to have been doing lately, especially to some of his family.’
‘Tell me more,’ I asked, thinking I knew several characters in Grisedales who would be capable of that, and more.
‘Ah, you’ll have to stay with us if you want to know about all that,’ said Carthew mischievously, this time with a combined wheeze and cackle.
This place really was different. So many challenges, a practice to rescue and revitalise, awkward staff to sort out, and murky dealings involving my old enemies Grisedales. All these gave interest to the possibility of taking on what had looked at first like a very dull assignment indeed.
‘Look, it’s awfully dark in this room,’ I said. ‘Let’s have some light.’
The early spring sun had moved round behind a high building opposite and Argue’s room was now quite gloomy. I got up and went to turn on the light.
‘No!’ yelled Carthew, loudly and more swiftly this time, but still too late to prevent the antique brass switch from shooting out flames, shaking with an electrical seizure, and finally letting off a small explosion, no doubt much louder than a Roman candle today. The switch cover blew off and landed on the floor, leaving the smell of burning rubber to permeate the room. Screams came from the women downstairs, while Carthew cackled away in huge merriment, stopped only by another coughing fit. He spoke again eventually, tears streaming down his cheeks.
‘Well now, Mr. Daniel Aysgarth, I don’t know what we’re going to do with you, I really don’t. You’ll have to stay with us now, won’t you?’
‘Why?’ I asked irritably, trying to force up a warped sash window to let out the burning rubber smell. Carthew came to give me a hand, still laughing.
‘So we can dock your wages to pay for all these accidents Sir, that’s why.’

The Lady Vanishes

Of course, there was nothing. Nothing but the shrill screams of the seagulls as they wheeled about the blue sky. Nothing that could have provoked this uneasy feeling. No oddly familiar face in the crowd; no hunched figure with collar turned up and cap rammed down hard over the eyes, loitering by the candy-floss stall, or squinting through a rifle’s sights at the shooting range. In short, nothing suspicious whatsoever.
Martin glanced over his shoulder again, compulsively.
‘So, are you coming on the ride then?’ asked his sister Esther. Her face, burnished a nut-brown from a week of sun and wind, registered impatience.
Martin looked doubtfully towards the gaping black entrance of the ‘Devil’s Hollow’. ‘SCARE YOURSELF WITLESS IN OUR GRISLY GROTTO’ exclaimed a sign above the tunnel entrance. He couldn’t make out anything at all beyond the gloomy cavern, where a rickety cart stood waiting to whisk them into the unknown.
‘I wanted to go in the Hall of Mirrors,’ he said peevishly.
‘What for? They couldn’t make you look any funnier than you do already.’
‘No, but there’d be like three hundred of me. See, now who’s scared?’
A bevy of screams rent the air as the rollercoaster racketed overhead. The seagulls were temporarily silenced; but once the shrieks had died away the gulls started up their harsh complaint again, ark ark ark.
Or maybe they were crows. Martin didn’t know about birds; he only knew that their insistent cries were making him uneasy.
‘Go on Mar, we went on the tea-cups with you,’ Mum said.
Martin pretended to check his watch. ‘You know, it’s been a long day, I think I might just —’
‘Oh, seriously. You’ve been kidnapped by a dangerous lunatic, held at gunpoint, tossed into a lake… and you’re scared of a lame fairground ride?’ Esther demanded with lofty disdain.
‘I’m not scared. I just don’t like spooky rides. And anyway, those tea-cups went really fast.’
‘Come on, Mar,’ said his sister, dragging him by one arm.
‘Mum?’ he appealed.
‘I’ll go on it if you will,’ Mum said, unhelpfully.
‘Sit next to me then.’
And so Mum and Martin climbed into the front of the rickety cart, their knees pressing up against the metal bar, and Esther got in behind them.
‘Why do I ever listen to you?’ Martin grumbled, taking one last nervous glance over his shoulder and gripping the bar tightly.
With a jerk, the cart shot forwards and into the darkness.
‘See, not so bad, is it?’ demanded Esther, as they trundled tamely around bends, past displays where waxworks brandished axes and gorged on each other’s blood. Occasionally the odd hollow laugh would ring out; and once Mum screamed as something brushed against their faces.
The next minute a skeleton in tattered rags loomed across their path, and Martin jumped.
‘You ok Mar?’ Mum squeezed his hand.
‘Hey! I’m not the one who screamed at a fake cobweb,’ he retorted.
Suddenly there was a loud bang and a flash of light up ahead, like an electrical explosion, and the cart lurched to a halt. The emergency lights flickered on, then off again. A low electrical hum fizzed and stuttered and the cart they were sitting in swayed alarmingly.
‘I don’t think this is part of the ride,’ whispered Mum in a terrified falsetto.
After the first stunned silence, people were beginning to talk all around them. In the darkness, the welter of muttering voices was more sinister than anything. Martin couldn’t shake off the sensation that there was someone watching them…
And then, the hands gripping his shoulders.
Of course, it could be Esther. It must be Esther, trying to reassure him. Her hands were cold and clammy. Perhaps she was scared too. Her fingers were long and bony, with a powerful grip. Martin could have sworn his sister’s hands were neither so big nor so powerful. He sat frozen, paralysed, unable to turn around, unable even to make a sound. If this was her trying to reassure him, it was having quite the opposite effect.
The hands released him, as lights from mobile phones began swooping around in the blackness. An automated voice told them to please remain seated in the cars. No sooner had it spoken, than the carts jolted forward again without any warning, throwing Martin hard against the backrest. They began careering down the tunnel with a dreadful grinding of gears and clanking of wheels, hurtling through the darkness, and now the disembodied laughter seemed to be mocking them… until finally they burst out into the welcome light of day.
Everybody on the ride uttered a collective sigh of relief. For a minute they just sat blinking like rabbits at the bright lights of the amusement park.
‘Well, I don’t think even Esther would describe that as ‘lame’,’ joked Mum shakily. ‘Would you Est? Est?’
Martin and Mum both turned round in their seats to look at Esther, who was being unusually quiet.
But the seat behind was empty. Esther was gone.

Esther put the story down and looked blankly at Mum.
‘What – that’s just it? ‘Esther was gone’?’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘Well… it puts rather a different spin on last summer’s events.’
‘For your information, I did not go on the tea-cups,’ Martin said. ‘But apart from that I think it’s a great ending.’
‘Thirteen-year-old girls don’t just vanish,’ said Esther stubbornly.
‘But we live in hope,’ said Martin.
He dived across the room, deftly avoiding a punch thrown by his sister.
‘If you’re not happy with it I’ll change it,’ said Mum. ‘I mean, it’s your story, yours and Martin’s. You two went through hell and high water – literally. You have the right for the story to be told the way you want it to be.’
‘That could be a good name for it,’ said Martin. ‘Through Hell and High Water.’
‘No – what about: Under Loch and Quay?’ said Esther.
‘Under Loch and Quay… hmmm, I like it.’
Esther appeared slightly mollified now that Mum had chosen her suggestion for a title.
‘So why the vanishing girl?’ she asked. ‘Was it not exciting enough having your identity stolen and nearly drowning?’
‘I was struggling with the ending,’ said Mum. ‘And then I thought – that would be neat: solve one mystery and open the door to another…’
‘You’re going to write more books then?’ asked Martin.
‘I might. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving you two leave to go gallivanting off around the countryside, looking for source material. The next adventure is going to come purely out of my head.’
‘Whilst we’ll be safely at school, where the chances of anything interesting happening are about as likely as Martin being the most popular boy in the year,’ said Esther gloomily.

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Chapter One

A man with a beard sang of a distant battle while a woman played softly on a three-string. Tess sat quietly on a stool near the bar and drank her mead, listening to the tale. Her short silver-grey hair lay flat on her head, and from behind anyone could easily mistake her for a young man. Her pale skin did not resemble that of the locals of Heimyal, but rather that of the Easterners from the Marshlands. She wore a reasonably clean, white, hooded tunic and dark linen trousers that had been cut short at the ankles.

Tess sat by the bar for a while, waiting. The red-faced man she was watching was seated deeper within the tavern. For a while he just sat there, staring at his mug, perhaps entranced in the tale or maybe dreading going back to his master. After he had emptied his mug he rose from his chair. The singer in the background ended his story and was being cheered on by the crowd gathered in the barely-lit tavern. Tess swallowed the remainder of her mead and as the man left, she followed him out into the streets of the Commons.
Outside, the wooden sign, which read ‘The Meadery’, dangled in the wind. The red-faced man walked in the direction of the Grey Market. With the ease that comes from repetition he passed through the scattered crowd of commoners coming back from the market after working since sunup.
Tess pulled the hood over her head to avoid standing out from the crowd, and to shield her face from the cold evening winds that blew across the city.
As the man entered the Grey Market district, the number of people coming back and forth increased significantly. Tess doubled her pace to catch up with the unsuspecting victim, skilfully dodging people coming towards her. She was as a fish in water, flowing gracefully to and fro, avoiding impatient individuals hurrying home. Her eyes remained fixed on her target.
She bumped into the man and apologised, ‘It was my fault.’
Her beautiful face and deep russet-brown eyes made the man’s already ruddy face light up like a torch. ‘It is all right, I should watch my step.’
As she disappeared back into the crowd she held a little key firmly in her palm. The man might check his pockets to see whether his key was still in it, and if he did he would find the fake one Tess had placed in its stead.

Tess sat in her little house studying the old key, waiting for the darkness to settle on the city. It was, she had been told, at least two-hundred years old. The metal was muddy green and had black marks of wear on it. Besides the obvious signs of age, it was very plain, having one end in the form of a circle, but the remarkable thing about it was that instead of the one head that normal keys had, this one had three. The three heads meant two things, first that the key belonged to an old house in the rich part of the city, and second that no thief Tess knew of could pick the lock, to which this key belonged, not even Jack.
She held the dagger in her hand, wondering if she should bring it along. Usually she did not need weapons when she broke into a place, but this was different. It was not just any house she was robbing. There had been a reason why she had to think everything through, rather than just pick the lock of the house, walk in and steal the specific item, and then leave again without a trace.
The difference was that this time she was hired to rob one of the King’s Men. If she was caught, she risked severe punishment, and most likely, death. Tess had heard stories about the brutality of the King’s Men from other thieves and once when she was younger she had witnessed a public punishment of a captured thief. The man had been branded and they had broken every bone in his hands.

She left the stinking Beggar’s Corner, later that same day, wearing the black hooded jacket and trousers that Jack had given her. They were tailored for another thief who had been taller than her, but she had remedied the fact that the outfit was too big by rolling up the sleeves and the legs.
Without a sound she crept through the city, through the smog-ridden district of Anvils and past the glowing Great Forge, where skilled smiths would hammer all manner of weapons into shape. She passed through the streets of Hangman’s Square that during the day was a sprawling centre of people from all over the land of Heimyal, but at night was so deserted it seemed impossible that people actually lived here.
She came to the gate of Old Town. Behind it lived all the rich, important and powerful.
Stationed on this side of the gate were two guards. One was asleep in a standing position, while the other polished his short sword with an absent look in his eyes. These guards were the usual lazy, half-poor and abusive types, who took care of all the districts except Beggar’s Corner and Old Town. Beggar’s Corner had no law, and the guards generally avoided it. Old Town was a different story though, the gate might have been guarded by the regular guards, but inside Old Town, the King’s Men were the law. Throughout history the Kings demanded a special guard to keep the rich safe. These guards went through ten years of training, and less than half the trainees ended up qualifying. Many tried to become a King’s Man, because being a one meant power and wealth, two very appealing aspects to common folk, but most of them had no grasp of how hard the training would be.
After observing the gate for a bit, Tess decided exactly how she would get past the guards. Jack had taught her to approach every situation with an open mind, and take all options into consideration.
After her mother died, Jack had taken care of Tess. He taught her everything he knew about being a thief, as well as installing some manner of decency into her.

Tess picked up a small rock, one of the many that lay scattered throughout Hangman’s Square. She held it firmly in her palm, and threw it in an arc above the guards. It hit a wall some distance away from them, far enough for them not to see where it landed, yet close enough for them to hear the sound it made.

The guard polishing his sword put the cloth in a side pocket of his leather vest, and tapped the sleeping guard with the flat side of his blade. The man awoke and grumbled something unintelligible, to which the first guard responded with a sigh and walked off in the general direction of the sound.
Tess smiled to herself. She came out from her cover and sprinted towards the wall on the right side of the gate. In one leap she hit the side, planting a foot on a brick that stuck out from it. In the second leap she secured a tight grip on the top of the wall. With ease she hauled herself up onto the wall and dropped down to the cobbles on the other side. Her worn leather boots creaked as she landed firmly on her feet. The remaining guard at the gate noticed nothing, though this might have been because he was fast asleep again.
Tess stood a short distance from the wall that separated Old Town from the rest of Modai, and pulled out the map Jack had given her earlier that day.
‘You will need this for later,’ he had said, explaining that Old Town was such a mess of streets and back alleys that without a map an outsider would never be able to find one specific house.
She peered at the creased paper map, frowning and trying to find ‘Septimer Street’, the main road that went through Old Town. She put her finger on her location on the map and traced it along the main street until it came to a crossing, her finger then followed the west-going road that went past The Winery and ended in Parcel Street.
It was a long way to Parcel Street, and to avoid detection by the patrolling King’s Men she would have to stick to the smaller streets and alleyways, which meant it would take a while to get there.

After skulking through the unknown district for a long time, she reached Parcel Street. Thankfully, it was still dark.
The house, when she found it, was at the end of the street. From the second floor candlelight shone out through the windows. Since the nights in Modai were as dark as soot, candles were generally used to find one’s way around inside. Of course there were lanterns and torch-bearers scattered throughout most of the city, but their light was never sufficient for moving about in a house at night. The candlelight indicated that the resident inside was not asleep. Tess knew that only one man would be in the house, as Jack had promised to take care of the servant from whom she had stolen the key, but she had not expected the resident to be awake at this time.
With silent steps she crept to the big door. It looked similar to the key, muddy green with spots of black. The grey brick walls of the house were cracked and moss-covered. The roof was tilted so that rain would pour off, and this was very important for any house in Heimyal, since it rained incessantly during Fall. The small houses in Beggar’s Corner were cheaply made and usually had flat roofs, which often cracked under the weight of heavy rain. Fortunately Tess’ own house, one of the older houses in Beggar’s Corner, had been built with a slanted roof.
She pulled out the key and inserted it into the old door, turning it slowly until three hollow thumps were emitted from the lock. She took her hand off the key and held on to the handle of the door. Her heartbeat doubled as she pushed it. To her relief the door made not a sound and swept open, revealing a room darker than the night outside.
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, waiting for her eyes to adjust, but alas they did not.
With a sigh she put her palm on the hilt of the dagger, closed her eyes and focused. When she opened them again, the room was a dark grey, and she could see the outlines of all her surroundings. She almost fell backwards in surprise when she found herself face to face with the open-mouthed head of a bear, hanging proudly from the wall in front of her.
She looked around. The room was big and looked as though it was used for guests. The walls and shelves bore numerous trophies collected by the resident, and at one end some comfortable chairs circled a small table. A display case with a glass window stood against the far wall and she crossed the room to look closer. A sword with a leather-covered handle and a curved spike on the hilt lay inside. Its blade was the length of an arm and was decorated down its spine with a repeating symbol etched into the metal. The etchings were black and seemed to be glowing without giving off any light. She thought back to an earlier conversation with Jack.

‘An enchanted sword?!’
‘Keep it down, there are other people here,’ Jack said.
‘I’ve never seen an enchanted sword before,’ Tess said eagerly.
‘That is because they are rare and illegal. It makes sense that he is willing to pay three gold crowns for us to retrieve it.’
‘But Jack, what does he need such a sword for?’
‘That is none of our matter, but I am sure it is for nothing good,’ he looked her in the eyes.
‘So?’
‘Yes. I’ll do it.’
‘Good. Here’s what you do first…’

The pulsating beat of the glowing symbols matched the rhythm of Tess’ heart.
She leant forwards to open the case, but it was locked. She cursed silently for having forgotten to bring her lock-picking tools. She would have to find the key, which would most likely be in the upstairs bedroom, along with the man she was robbing.
Stalking in the shadows she passed through the house, passing the kitchen and climbing the staircase as silently as a wolf tracking its prey. Candlelight flickered from what she guessed was a bathing room, and a crack under the door cast a sliver of light onto the landing. As Tess reached the top step of the staircase, the light seemed to disappear before it hit her skin, as if it was being absorbed by the air around her. With her palm still resting on the dagger’s hilt she crept across the wooden floor, which, to her surprise, gave off no sound.
There were three rooms upstairs, the bathing room that was currently occupied, what she guessed was the servant’s quarters and the master’s room. Upon entering the master’s room Tess was overwhelmed by the awful smell of rosewater, a scent that was, and had been for many years, the favourite of the rich. When the liquid was cast into the air or rubbed on skin it produced a scent so sweet that even bees despised it.
The carpet was made from a Sand Wolf, a beast twice the size of a bear. She had not known how big that was until she saw the pelt strewn across the floor. The mouth and eyes were, similar to the mounted head downstairs, wide open.
She searched around the room for the key. There was a cabinet, presumably for the resident’s clothes, a wooden desk with a chair under it, the large pelt on the floor and of course an enormous bed, which every rich person in Modai seemed to have. Tess was one of the few ‘lucky’ people in Beggar’s Corner to actually own a bed, something that had caused some minor fights with her peers, however her bed was not even half the size of this one and still took up most of the space in her little house.
Tess walked over to the desk and pulled the chair back so that she could open the drawer underneath it. In the background she could hear someone humming a jolly tune and splashing about in what she imagined was a tub. It amused her that the dreadful and horrific King’s Men could be so peaceful when left to themselves. She had pictured them all as brutes, who drank wine from the skulls of their enemies.
The drawer slid back gracefully on its oiled mechanism to reveal a mess of letters or at least it was a mess after Tess had gone through it searching for the key. She found it though. It lay under some personal letters smelling pleasantly of lily-of-the-valley and quite clearly the resident had not done his best to hide it.
With the key in her hand she descended the staircase silently, and in the receiving room, fitted the key into the small lock. It opened with a low click.
‘Careful,’ a voice said.
‘Be quiet,’ Tess whispered back.
She pushed open the display case and grabbed the handle of the sword, grazing her thumb across the metal as she did. With a cry of pain she threw the sword away. The touch of the blade had sent a searing pain through her hand as if she had burnt it on an open flame. The weapon fell to the ground with a clatter.
Muffled footsteps crossed the floor upstairs and began creaking down the staircase. She froze, her heart pounding, and in the silence, heard a blade being unsheathed. She was still in shock from the pain in her hand, and by the time she came to the man had reached the bottom of the staircase. His figure loomed in the doorway, lit by a flickering candle in his hand, its wax dripping unnoticed onto his skin. He was naked except for a piece of cloth wrapped around his waist. In his left hand was a slender knife, the kind used for stabbing. Water fell from his short golden hair as he positioned himself awaiting Tess’ first strike.
He had not noticed the sword lying between the two of them, until Tess darted across the floor with the dagger in one hand and her free arm outstretched, reaching for it. As she got a firm grip on the handle she shouted, ‘Now Mhran!’
‘As you wish,’ echoed the voice and just as Tess was about to be run through with the King’s Man’s knife, she turned black as the night outside, and disappeared into the shadows.

Preface

Long before the first wire fences were made, when farmers wished to separate one field from another, they planted hedges.

Out of all the bushes they used in this way, the barberry was the favourite as its many stems made a thick hedge, while its thorns kept both men and animals at bay.

It was of course from this very bush that these fields surrounding the Hobgood farm were given their name; although, perhaps by the end of this tale the name may take on an entirely new meaning…

Chapter One

Return of the Prodigal

Tranquil and glistening the water continuously tumbled over the rocks. It could be quite mesmerising to the watcher, caught up in my own thoughts. But there it was again; that bitter cold wind to remind me that winter was just in the distance. As the eyes grew heavy, staring at the stream, it was best to make a move before the cold bit right through to the bone.
So I stretched my body, before taking a rather lethargic trip back to the edge of the Copse. Across the Fields I saw a bored and expectant young hare, Tipps, waiting for me. Perhaps, I could avoid him a little longer? Though, that wouldn’t be polite, as he was waiting for me. I had forgotten about him, but it didn’t appear as though he was about to let me away with my promise. He called over in frustration, ‘Hey! Where have you been?’
I had no excuse… But when the Elders were in charge the young would never have dared question an adult. But then, this was Tipps, and as I’d found; as with rabbits, he could be far too cheeky for his own good. ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Twit!’ I’d promised to tell him how the Fields had changed over many seasons. How once, the Fields were a happy and peaceful place to live. Where animals didn’t fear man, and there was no other danger to our very survival than what winter had in store for us all.
I guess, thinking about that, while looking into the flowing water, just before returning, had made me a little melancholy for almost forgotten summers… Though the impatience of youth was unlikely to wait for another creature to collect their thoughts. ‘Come on then, Twit – I’m ready.’
‘Okay,’ I began…

 

Winters in the past were truly terrible; the cold alone claimed many animals. Then it fell to a single, great, Elder who decided all the stories that had gone before; of the Maker and his safe paradise of Summerland was where the creatures should build their collective futures. He spoke of peaceful cohabitation between all the species native to the Fields.
This would be a place where they could all get along and exist side by side happily. So upon that glorious Summerland, the Elders aimed to build their own happy hunting ground, here in the Fields.

 

Then, I was interrupted. ‘Oh please, Twit, don’t preach! I know all that, I came here to listen to how the troubles began. What started it…?’ He asked tilting his head, his long ears lolling down to the side. I thought for a while, strumming my talons against the branch of the tree I was perched on. But still the stubborn leveret stared up, awaiting another tale. A far different story from that of Summerland and how the wonderful peace of the Fields began.
So, if Tipps, the young hare, wanted a nice, dark story then that was what I would give him. For the reason the Fields was no longer the peaceful place was complex. Then Tipps began to thump his impatient foot at the bottom of my tree. ‘Hey, stop that!’ I squawked.
‘Well I’m bored.’ He moaned.
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ I muttered. Then – in a deeper, darker, tone of voice – I told him, ‘Okay, you win! It began in the autumn…’
Looking downwards, Tipps’ eyes began to roll in his head, listening to the start of another whimsical tale, but there was another side to hear.
‘Like, those dangers beyond the Hawthorne Hills, and what lives there.’ His eyes widened further still, ‘The haunted woods of the Copse; the agonising cries of pain and loss.’
‘Ooh, really? Go on…’
‘The shadows and eyes that watch from behind the shaded trees. But if it isn’t them, then it is the human menace whose powerful magic could wipe us all out entirely.’
I paused, creating the desired effect… ‘Or then, something even more powerful – the contrary elements of the weather. Some brought about by mythical creatures, with a nasty streak that certainly aimed to keep the young in check.’
‘That’s what I want to hear.’
‘In that case…’

 

The story begins many seasons past, in the autumn. That dreaded season when early light brings with it rolling mists across the fields and dew twinkles on the abandoned spiders webs. Autumnal changes increasingly mean the sun becomes as reluctant to warm the earth as the creatures are to venture out first thing. Always avoid leaving tracks or beware disturbing that crisp frost under claw, or paw.
That was a matter of survival for many of the species of animal in the small, self-reliant habitat of the Fields.

 

Just getting into my stride when Tipps begins to thump his large back foot again. ‘What now?’ I ask. ‘You are not going to keep interrupting, I hope!’
‘No, but what does au-tim-yel mean?’
‘Autumnal.’ I sternly corrected him. ‘It means the autumn, I was setting the scene…’ Now I’m trying to remember where I was.

 

Imagine the wide-open spaces, a beautifully tranquil farmhouse in the distance and high placed Copse where the vast majority of larger animals dwelt. The area existed in peaceful cohabitation where a long-held agreement and belief system among the animals maintains life’s gentle balance. Their collective, shared past, as well as paranoia, had kept generations of animals large and small – happy.
But to a wiser creature, neither balance nor happiness appeared anything but a carefully placed lie. While without the respected Elders who created the stories and myths on which begun ‘the lasting peace of the Fields’, all was not well. Recently, the younger animals had started to question the existence of such a delicately poised harmony. It was alright for them to do this; they never knew what the Fields or Copse were like before.
They were right about that, however. Beyond these fields, over the Hawthorne Hills and on the other side in the hinterland was where the more predatory animals found their food. While whenever a lone animal disappeared over that hill, never to return, the Elders simply said, ‘They must have lost their way.’ That was the thing of the Elders; they always included an element of truth in anything they said. Only now, few were willing to accept the mythology any longer.

 

For an animal that didn’t want to hear those fables, he suddenly appeared quite fixated. ‘And so…’

 

That was especially the case when Scruffy a returning badger found his way back that autumn. All the Fields were alive with rumour of the young badger’s return from the dead. As the stories of animals becoming lost had disappeared in the minds of the creatures. They had been replaced by the real potential horrors beyond their boundaries. Scruffy hadn’t been seen for several seasons, and not since the previous summer.
The noisy chattering birds were first to relay that Scruffy had appeared again at the top of the Hawthorne Hills. Looking a little dishevelled, as always; he had taken a while to get to the Copse, perhaps hoping for a welcome reception from everyone. If he was thinking that, he was very much mistaken, and a tad disappointed. Though for the other creatures it was good to see one of their own back amongst them.
It did call into question what life was truly like to live beyond their set boundaries. Of course, Scruffy was quite prepared to dispel those myths, while maybe embellishing a few of his own heroics. While he talked, all the other assembled creatures listened. He had them captivated with his bright, new world which he had just come from. Several of them had also been there, but not to stay, not to settle down.
From the sound of things, Scruffy wasn’t about to settle either. ‘Why have you come back Scruffy?’ Scarlet the squirrel had asked as he walked by her tree. ‘Just passing through; I’ll bed down in the main sett for the winter and venture away come spring.’ He had smartly replied; mind a little occupied and his poor gaze searching for familiar faces. ‘Where are my parents?’ He asked finally.
‘I’m afraid, you’ve been gone a long while, and so too have they…’ A sad and rather lonely voice of a rabbit told him.
Scruffy’s head went down and he nestled the dried leaves beneath his paws. He was tough, and certainly didn’t wish to detract from his conjured image as the brave badger. His stories were impressive, something along the lines of what the Elders used to speak of. Scruffy’s father, Brisket, the final Elder of the Fields had passed, making his son the next in line. That was of course the reason Scruffy wasn’t genuinely welcome back to the Fields or Copse. The animals didn’t want a new leader.

 

Then the hare coughed, ‘In line for what? What was he in line for…?’ I cringed, did we have to go through all of that… ‘Scruffy’s father was an Elder, like a chief, and he was the last. So when the badger turned up, he was next.’
‘Oh, so that’s why they were unhappy?’

They’d existed perfectly fine without one, and any ‘calamity’ as the Elders always warned of, hadn’t come about. Yet the free-spirited Scruffy didn’t want confining to the Fields. That temperament of his wouldn’t have been favourable to the role either, but his homecoming wasn’t quite what he had dreamt of. The main sett he’d remembered was forgotten and hidden beneath the overgrown bushes.
The Copse which had thrived once with badgers only had Scruffy now, but for exactly how long would that be? No matter, he thought to himself, as he snuggled down for a rest ahead of venturing out to forage at dusk back on his stomping ground of season’s past. The dark after sun-down left only the bright, glistening moon to light the way for the partially sighted badger. Scruffy – tiring and almost ready to hibernate – happily reacquainted himself with the Fields.
The soil and the memory of its smell had stayed with him, not to mention all of those other scents that hung in the air. Then, there in the distance was an owl’s call. It made him shudder; he’d always hated that squawking sound, though it made the Fields familiar and he smiled. Twit watched him that sun-down. With just Honey, the opinionated, matriarch rabbit, nearby. Twit was still glad to see the return of the brave, Scruffy.
Although, could that be said of all the other creatures? ‘That’s a turn up.’ Twit said, jovially. But Honey didn’t appear quite in the mood to agree.
‘What is?’ She replied, calling up to Twit in his tree.
‘Scruffy. Back where he belongs!’ Twit told her. However, the huffy doe had a very different perspective.
‘Huh, let’s hope he doesn’t see it like that.’

 

He started again, ‘Twit, is that our Honey?’
‘The very same! Why?’ I told him.
‘She doesn’t talk like that. And what was up with her?’
‘Well, her repeating herself has been omitted for purposes of storytelling. So just continue listening, you’ll work it out.’

 

Twit had expected a better reaction from the rabbit, ‘Why not?’ He hesitated to ask.
‘Come now, Twit!’ She began again, ‘Do we really need another badger dictating our lives?’
‘He isn’t like that. Besides, we do need leaders.’ He told her, defending the young badger.
‘Dictators more than likely.’ She fired back, stretching out her back legs before kicking up some earth behind her. ‘We rabbits are better off underground away from it.’ She sneered before hopping away. Of course, Honey would never be a dictatorial bunny, he thought.
As the sour doe, bunny-hopped away, she caught some strange scent in her nostrils; the like of which she had never encountered before. The cows all around her were acting up too, she thought. In the middle of the field she stopped to listen, her ears changing direction to hear all around. With an eerie whistling breeze, she decided to take no chances and thumped her back foot in warning. When she did that all of her brood, as well as the rest of the burrow listened.
Right away, they headed for their underground chambers, and wouldn’t be out again before sun-up. After dark – in the peculiar light of the moon – the shadows appeared different, to Scruffy somehow. He sniffed the air and stretched his legs stiff from his nap back in the family sett. In the air were so many familiar smells, and then, there was a scent he really didn’t like the smell of.
Maybe it was something he could dismiss as a memory fresh from over the Hawthorne Hills he’d brought back with him – he thought to himself. Despite his best attempts, he hadn’t slept too well. Again, perhaps it was memories – while Scruffy wasn’t being honest with himself nor the animals of the Fields. However, there suddenly appeared bigger things to worry about than his secret past. He could tell there was great danger in the Fields.
What he had dismissed as memory – now clearly wasn’t. The herd of cows were acting very odd. Between them, in the darkness slowly and very sneakily crept a sly red menace; that’s a fox. For any of the wild animals of the Fields, a fox was something to be quite wary of, while the code would always mean a warning would be given of any such intruder.
But then, cows are livestock, they are protected by man and are almost oblivious of the usual perils that wild creatures relate to. Cows are very much like their digestion systems – slow to take anything in.

 

Tipps began chuckling, ‘Can I continue?’
‘Go ahead.’ He sniggered.

 

Not something a fox could ever be accused of. They’re as sly, stealthy and devious as anything known to the Elders. Which was why the animals kept to the safety of their boundaries. Between the cows the red menace went, using the large animals for cover, blindsiding the unwitting hares, present in the field.
Scruffy was just out for his twilight forage, but not exactly bestowed with the greatest eyesight, he was unable to see the intruder in his midst. The fox was staying a step ahead of any warning, covering his scent by navigating around the stench of fresh cow pats. This was a particularly wily creature, a fox to beware of. Bold, brazen and still very young, not the kind of fox to be allowed to feel welcome in these lands either.
It was made all so easy, as their young had few survival instincts in such a protected habitat. They didn’t know what danger smelt like. While the fox’s natural instincts were far from blunt. He’d spotted his target, a lone leveret on the edge of the herd. In a swift rush of blood there was a short chase, a pounding of feet, a curdling squeal and the snatching of the young leveret from the outskirts of the terrified brood. Scruffy had tried to make a dash towards and head off the fox – but too late.

 

I could see the look on Tipps’ face, ‘Eek, was that a leveret like me?’ He stuttered.
‘Not quite, he was a little younger, not as earthly wise.’ I didn’t want to leave him to dwell on that. He wanted dark… Then I was going to show him the sun-down, with only the moon as its light.

 

The starving and salivating fox had his kill – his meal – quite satisfied, and now out of range he trotted away back over the Hawthorne Hills. There was a haunting silence which had descended over the Fields just after sun-down. But that was now broken by the strange cries of a hare for her youngster. ‘I’m so sorry. I tried to stop the red menace.’ Scruffy breathlessly told the other hares, but his bravery was no use here.

 

‘I’d have liked to have said he was the hero, but not that sun-down.’
‘Then when?’
‘Patience… Little hare.’

 

Indeed, he’d soon be made to feel less than welcome. It was a shame really; the Fields had certainly missed him. Even if the animals fear of him taking his father Brisket’s place was all too plain to see. Animals, like Honey didn’t want to be lectured, they believed they were free without any wise Elders or leaders to answer to. The problem with rabbits though, they spread and multiply – conspiracy as well as themselves.

 

‘Oh well, enough about Honey and her brood, anyway; Scruffy, the prodigal son of the Fields had returned.’
‘What does prod-ic-le mean?’ Tipps asked.
‘Prodigal.’ I corrected, ‘Means he’d been away, and was sorry upon his return. Although, it wasn’t known quite how sorry he was…’ Confusion then spread across Tipps’ face, ‘Get yourself back to the others.’
‘Okay, can I bring more with me for the story next sun-up?’ He asked.
‘Perhaps…’

Chapter One

Months before the disaster I stood at the vista above those squatter huts. I imagined myself inside, feet on a dirt floor in the windowless dark, the corrugated tin roofs pounding like a thousand bongo drums when the afternoon rains came. What a way to spend a life, I thought. Se vende, for sale, read the realty sign by the road. Back then I thought the sale would be nothing short of liberation from misery for those people. Zapata himself would rise from his grave and shake the seller’s hand. The property beckoned its own demise, waited a row of pastel colored condos, gardens manicured with bougainvillea and tropical blooms.
But mostly I remember the quiet of the place, as though its inhabitants had suddenly abandoned the site for no apparent reason, other than poverty itself. It waited its new era.
I passed by the settlement many days over, during my morning jogs, but this time I stopped, and that is where my story begins.
It was a third way up the hill, along the old salida a Querétaro road. Spray paint had scrawled jamas, never, over the for sale sign along the road. I looked both ways, and then walked in between the shacks to the ridge on the edge of the property. A panorama of gothic spires, ochre domes, cypresses and shade trees between houses opened up before me. I scanned the horizon. Vast open plains led to the Guanajuato hills.
A door hinge squeaked behind me. I turned around. A boy had come out of one of the shacks, looked at me. He stared at me until I smiled, then ran to his mother who stood at the end of the hut. He buried his face against the side of her dress. The mother looked at me, smiled, wrapped her arm around the boy. Her long dress embroidered with colorful flowers enveloped his silhouette. He looked back at me but held onto his mother.
‘¿Cerraste la puerta, hijo?’ she asked, ‘Did you close the door?’
‘Sí, mami.’
She smiled at me once more. She had piercing hazel eyes that invited a thousand voyages to exotic lands. Lipstick covered her full lips, her hair was tied into a bun, long silver earrings dangled between waves of jet black.
Mother and son turned away, walked between the houses to the road. Her figure, a wisp of fabric that waved like curtains in a breeze, faded down the hill.
I stood there, as though another apparition was going to make its way through those squatter walls. But only the silence returned.
I walked to the ridge, turned and looked at the property. A row of about twelve shacks stood in two rows. Some of the wood walls looked new and were tightly interlaced. Others were worn fence boards with cracks that didn’t stop the neighbors from peeking. Some homes had more planks as roofs, but most had corrugated tin, Mexico’s signature brand for the poor.
The irony of the place was the view. Below, colorful tiles covered turrets, vaults with archways led to courtyards with water spewing from gargoyles into stone pools, church domes jutted between houses, cypresses pointed above rooftops, grand ficus trees spread through villas.
I turned and walked between the houses back to the road. As I passed the door of my new acquaintances I noticed a crack; the door lay un-latched. I stopped. The drone of a car engine rose and faded.
Then I heard them, distant clanging, but loud, church bells that echoed through the valley. I wondered if I’d imagined them, they seemed to appear like a dream, but they were loud and made me shudder. That sound that beckoned one to some unknown place, but there was something about my footsteps here, before this door, that seemed familiar.
I looked over my shoulder, put my foot to the door, pushed it open. Light shone onto a table, like a baroque painting. The church bells continued at intervals. I searched for anyone looking. Even then as I stepped through that door, I thought I had crossed some unknown precipice, like a hint of a distant dream one cannot remember.
I left the latch open, scanned the darkened room. Two framed beds, pots and dishes in a large plastic bowl appeared. A small beam of light shone between two wallboards onto a pine table. The light beam ran along the table’s edge, as if scanning an important object it couldn’t find. I moved closer, knelt down. Before me was an oil painting of a woman in dress. I slid the tin retablo to the edge, into the beam of light. I moved my finger along the white muslin shawl of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Her eyes were closed and her hands were crossed against her bosom. I ran my fingers down the length of her dress. Beside her lay a candle and two roses in an earthen vase.
I crept along the perimeter of the walls. A dark frame enclosed a picture on the wall. An outline of a mother and child. I grabbed the frame, lifted it off the hook, and moved it to the beam of light. It was the woman and child who left the hut. As though they had just left the picture; the flowers on her shawl, her arm wrapped around the boy.
I placed the picture back on its hook and walked to the door. Another shadow appeared on the wall. An outline of a young man wearing a traditional serape. I couldn’t make out his face in the dark. Several buttoned shirts lay across the metal headboard.
Voices from outside the hut broke the silence.
‘Jesus,’ I whispered. I paced the floor, as though an escape door was about to miraculously save me. The muffled voices continued. I knelt down, slid on my back across the hardened dirt under the bed. The voices seemed to crescendo near the hut. My breathing and pounding ears drowned them. Saliva stuck in my dry throat.
The door latch creaked. Black shoes stepped forward, shuffled and turned before the corpse crashed onto the bed above me. The coils gave way, pressing against my chest. The man made a deep sigh, then lay lifeless for several minutes as I lay and tried to breathe without making a sound.
Soon the body rose. Clothing shuffled against skin. I saw the movement of shoes. The door swung open, the man stepped outside.
I lay there and listened. Silence. I lay for a long time, listened to my now heavy breathing, then inched sideways across the hardened dirt, until I was on open floor.
The silence of the place returned, as though I had witnessed the last intrusion of a vanquished ghost.
I stood up and walked to the door, opened it slowly, peeked my head outside. The passageway lay empty and quiet again. I closed the latch behind me and stepped along the shacks to the ridge, then kneeled down. Breathed deeply, listened. The place was quiet again.
‘Jesus,’ I repeated, shaking my head.
I looked down the hill, to a grand villa with pink walls covered in orange trumpley vines and purple bougainvillea. My breathing subsided. I saw an enormous mesquite entranceway of a villa, an arcade through the archways along the front entrance, a cobbled road that meandered into town. She’ll want that, I thought, that’s why we came to San Miguel.
Voices broke my reverie. I listened for a while, but the sounds were faint. I stood up, walked along the ridge to the end of the squatter huts. I placed my ears close to the wall of the last hut.
‘Hijo, hijo, my child, my child, not again,’ came a hoarse, tired woman’s voice. ‘We left this misery, and now you want to start again?’
‘We did not leave everything to be.’ The voice paused. ‘I need to do something. For you, for papa. For the family. For everyone here. There is no other choice.’
‘Hijo, hijo, have you forgotten your savior?’
‘When these people take over, there will be no savior helping us.’
The female voice broke into choked sobs.
‘Please don’t, hijo. I cannot lose another son.’
Silence. I waited. Finally, the man’s voice broke,
‘We will not lose our home again, momma.’
‘Marco, Marco!’ The woman’s voice was now only a helpless plea.
A door screeched open. I turned and rushed along the ridge, veered around a hut and waited. A man passed between the houses in front of me. He was short and stout, had raven hair. I edged forward and peeked around the last hut. The man walked down the road towards El Centro. I turned to the woman. She appeared frozen in her long dress and leathery wrinkled skin, as she watched her son as he disappeared down the street. Dark circles covered her drooping eyes that looked on as though staring at a deceased loved one moments before the coffin closed.
The silence returned, the walkways between the huts lay empty. I crossed the street. The figure had diminished as it descended. I walked along the sidewalk until I was half a block behind my new acquaintance Marco, then kept pace with him as he descended. The road curved, Marco turned, walked onto Calle de la Grita. I walked to the corner, peaked around a mortared wall. The man continued at a steady pace, zigzagged through an intersection to Calle Hospicio. I followed, on the other side. He never turned back. He turned another corner to Calle Recreo, then darted across the street and stopped before a grand pine door, rang a bell. I looked at him, out of the corner of my eye. Marco waited, then turned suddenly. I sensed his eyes on me.
At the end of the street I turned around. It lay empty, save for a pick up truck near the door where Marco went in. I could wait, I thought, till he comes out that door, but it may be a long wait. I peeked around the corner, and then decided to walk the street for a while.

It was a street of many in San Miguel. Meandering cobble roads, mesquite and pine doors, ironed grill covered windows, pastel pink, burgundy and white walls. This street veered to Parque Juarez where grand pecan trees towered to a small flock of egrets that landed for a rest. Above, the October sky was blue with a hazy stretch of dissipated cloud. Rows of pink and purple bougainvillea covered wrought iron railings. The warm breeze blew down the street against my face and the rippling leaves of the trees sung the song of eternal spring that brought so many gringos who sought refuge from cold winters. I walked along the bougainvillea vines for a while, then returned to Calle Recreo, towards the house the man had entered.

A motor revved around the bend. The truck that had been parked came down the street towards me. I kept my eyes straight ahead, but as the vehicle approached I shifted them towards the cab, locked glares with the man from the shack. My heart banged into my throat as I looked away. Where had I seen that face before? My mind raced through places I had been, but couldn’t make the connection. And after the truck passed I thought it may be better for both of us, or at least for me, that we not meet again.

Chapter One

‘Are you blind or something, woman?’
‘Well, thank you very much, that’s charming’, that is.’
My brief was to interview Welsh-gold prospector, Tom (Digger) Johns, back at his cosy cottage. Never, in my wildest nightmares, did I imagine myself conducting it straddled across a flamin’ rock, nowhere to stuff my digital recorder for safe keeping, with an icicle dripping from the end of my red-raw nose.
Not a particularly glamorous look, especially when your editor has instructed you to make a good first impression. Quite apart from insulting my eyesight, he now expects me to hang on to him by his ankles.
‘Come on, now, Kate,’ Tom nudges me hard. ‘Let go of that tree stump and show me a bit of your English metal.’
‘I’m not showing you… a bit of my English… anything.’
‘Whoa, slow down, lady, we haven’t even been out to dinner yet.’
Tom reckons he’s spotted a gold nugget, lodged just out of his reach in a rock crevice, right by the edge of the river. I guess it must have glinted in the one, measly ray of sunshine we’ve had this morning, but I can’t see it, despite the fact that Tom is leaping up and down on a rock and pointing, frantically.
‘There it is, Kate! Look! There!’
‘No!’ I shrug my shoulders. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘I thought you journalists were supposed to be observant.’
‘You should ask for your money back from the charm school,’ I tell him, but he isn’t listening. He’s too busy scrabbling about, trying to find the easiest route to reach the object of his desire.
Truth is, I am afraid to lean over the edge of the rocks to get a better look and this is the closest I’ve been to water, especially the fast-moving variety, since I was ten-years-old. If it was down to me, the nugget would have to stay put, no matter how valuable and rare it might be.
‘What’s your hurry?’ I ask Tom. ‘If it’s been lodged quite happily in its little hidey hole for the past several thousand years, a few more hours won’t hurt, will it? Can’t you wait till one of your fellow prospectors comes to help you?’
He looks at me aghast. ‘Oh, aye, those philistines will be all for chucking it straight in the crucible and melting it down.’
‘Well, yes, isn’t that the reason you come up here searching for gold?’
‘That would be bloody sacrilege, Kate, with something as rare and beautiful as a butter-yellow, Welsh-gold nugget.’
And, to think, it had all started out so promisingly earlier on this morning…

*

My ancient Citroen 2CV had skidded his way up the steep farm track to Tom’s remote cottage. It was a nightmare of a drive and George’s exhaust pipe – yes, my much-loved little car has a name – grated over several hidden rocks, which seemed to be dotted like booby traps all along the path.
I might be a townie right down to my bones, but even I had to admit to myself that the sight of the snow-covered mountain peaks stretching away into the distance, took my breath away. Please don’t tell anyone I said that.
I can just hear my stepfather. ‘You, Katie Hartley, taking time to look at scenery, that’ll be the day. You were never interested when I’d take you up to Godley Gill, were you? Used to say it were boring, if I remember rightly, and then you’d sit and sulk all day wi’ a face like a wet kipper.’
I hope that I’ve grown up a bit and matured since then.
Despite being labelled the world’s worst navigator, I knew I’d found Tom’s cottage. Well, there was nothing else for miles around, unless you counted the small flock of goats terrorizing a poor shepherd in a field. They must be a formidable breed up here… even his black and white collie was backing away from them.
The normally chatty woman on the Satnav had given up telling me to ‘turn around when possible’ and had taken to filing her nails, the little directional arrow on the screen just floating around dejectedly in a vast, uncharted sea of emptiness.
The name, Bryn Mawr, etched, with a hot poker, I presume, on a lump of wood nailed above the cottage door, was also a bit of a giveaway, as it matched what I’d scribbled down on the front of my notebook. The sign had broken loose from one of the two nails that secured it and was whizzing round in the tumultuous wind like a propeller on speed. I reckon it powers the electricity up here.
Any visitor with expectations of finding a chocolate-box cottage at the end of their epic climb would be sorely disappointed. Think Heathcliff meets the Adams Family. My mum used to love that celebrity house programme on telly. Who lives in a dump like this?
Parking George in the lea of a stone wall, I crossed the icy yard, my feet slithering in all directions, like Bambie. A wretched gust of wind threw my unruly hair right over my face, just as Tom opened the door. Actually, it took Tom a few hefty tugs on the heavy, wooden door before it relented and scraped across the lino’. I pulled my hair to each side of my face with both hands, like a nosy neighbour peering at him through her curtains and Tom gave me a cheeky, schoolboy grin.
‘Oh! I wasn’t expecting a visit from an auburn-haired Yetti this morning,’ he said. ‘You must be Kate Hartley?’
I resisted the urge to make a wise-crack, like, ‘no, I was just passing’, and said instead, ‘Y…y…yes, h…h…ello,’ or something equally impressive and worthy of a proficient, cool, calm, well-travelled, journalist.
At first sight, Tom (Digger) Johns didn’t look half bad for a slightly older man and the tall, slim, tousled-haired guy, late thirties, it said in my notes, standing grinning at me from the doorway, was better looking than I’d imagined. In fact, I was momentarily struck dumb, which doesn’t happen often.
Sadly, I’ve changed my opinion of him since this morning and can now add obsessive nutcase to that list of attributes.

*

And, the obsessive nutcase is here, on his belly, hanging over the edge of the rocky riverbank, a little metal instrument in his hand resembling a hoof pick, with me holding on to him by his ankles.
‘Daddy’s coming to find you,’ says Tom, inching his way down to the nugget.
What was it that Martin Foley, the magazine’s editor, said to me, back in his centrally-heated office? ‘Never allow your interviewee to take control of the situation, Kate.’
Well, thanks to laughing boy, here, that particular piece of advice has now gone right out of the window, or, should I say, out, over the foaming, peat-stained waters of this raging river, the Avon Mawddach? I can’t even bring myself to look at the Devil’s Cauldron, as the sight of the huge whirlpool in front of me is making my stomach churn around in sympathy with it.
Let’s just say, I am definitely regretting that extremely greasy fry-up I had for breakfast down at the Drovers’ Trudge Inn this morning.
I’ve pushed my frozen feet deeper into a drift to get a better grip, but some snow has fallen inside my wellingtons. I can hardly let go of Tom in order to free up a hand to scoop it out again, which means my trendy, but inappropriate, calf-length wellies feel as if they’re now stuffed with ice daggers.
‘Are you going to be much longer, Tom? I’m freezing me wotsits off.’
I might as well save my breath, because, Tom can’t hear me above the clamour of the waterfall, which is just up-river to our left, here. Annoyingly, we’re positioned close enough to the thing for wind-blown spray to soak right through this hideous, bright-orange ski outfit that Tom persuaded, no, bullied, me into wearing.
‘You should have come better prepared for our Welsh weather, Kate,’ he’d said. ‘That jacket won’t be anywhere near warm enough.’
I’d wanted to say, ‘Yes, but I’m only here to interview you, I wasn’t planning to grab myself a pick and shovel and have a go at gold mining.’ Perhaps Tom was labouring under the misapprehension that we’d be starring in an outdoorsy programme on television and that I was prepared to get my hands dirty, like one of those overly-enthusiastic presenters.
Right! I’ve had just about enough of this fiasco with the nugget. I’m beginning to think Martin Foley was right and it’s about time I took control of this situation.After all, did I not make a pact with myself in front of the mirror last week? ‘I will not allow anyone to push me around anymore. No one will hold me back from my hopes and dreams. I will be one of life’s achievers and afraid of nothing.’ Don’t know about that last bit.
‘HEY!’ I tug on Tom’s trouser leg. ‘YOU DOWN THERE, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, TOM (DIGGER) JOHNS?’
‘Watch what you’re doing, woman,’ Tom shimmies backwards a bit and twists his head to look at me. ‘You’re nearly pulling my bloody trousers off. What do you want?’
‘If you don’t get back up here within thirty seconds, then I shall let go of your ankles and push you in the river. Got it?’
He’s giving me a look as much to say, ‘Yeah, right,’ and is now slithering back over the edge of the rocks to resume his treasure hunt.

*

I have never seen such a smug grin on a man’s face, since, well, hmmm.
Tom scrambles back on to the riverbank and opens his palm to show me the peanut-sized nugget. ‘Just look at that, Kate,’ he breathes, his eyes shining, triumphantly. ‘Isn’t she beautiful? Worth the wait, wasn’t she?’ he adds, pointedly.
‘It’s… stunning.’ I’m trying my best to sound enthusiastic, although, if I’m honest, the nugget is downright mingin’, as my kid-sister, Sam, would say. I suppose I must show a bit of journalistic interest. ‘How much is it worth?’
‘How much is it worth?’
‘Well, it’s a bit misshapen. Will that affect its value?’
Tom’s mouth drops open.
‘When you sell it, I mean? Will that affect it?’
‘Let me just get this straight.’ Tom is agog. ‘You think I should… sell it?’
Oh, dear, what’s that saying about nails and coffin lids?
‘Well, you just said it would be sacrilege to melt the nugget down, but it’s not pretty enough to be put on a pendant, is it?’
‘Put on a pendant?’ Tom looks as if he’s about to burst a blood vessel in his neck. ‘Good God, woman!’ His laughter is bouncing around amongst the rocks like a ricocheting bullet. ‘Pendant, she says.’
‘I was only… trying to make conversation,’ I say to his retreating back, as he slopes off towards the waterfall, still laughing. ‘Hey, wait for me,’ I call after him.
‘You stay there!’ Tom’s voice reverberates back from the opposite bank. ‘She thinks you should be attached to a pendant, my darling!’ More whoops of laughter.
‘Oh, why don’t you just… get married to the flamin’ thing and be done with it?’
Tom stops in his tracks and turns round.
‘Aye, that would be a great idea.’ He puckers his lips and kisses the nugget. ‘Come along, my lovely. Let hubby-to-be put you somewhere safe until our wedding day.’
I said the guy is a nutcase.

*