Long Lankin (18 page)

Cora didn’t say anything. I knew that meant trouble. Malcolm didn’t like it when people ignored him.

“Cat got your tongue, then?” he said, walking around her, obviously narked.

“Leave it, Malc,” said Tooboy.

“Fell down the stairs,” Cora said in the end.

It was worse than saying nothing. Malcolm started to make fun of her.

“Cor blimey! Fell down the stairs — apples and pears! Proper common little tart, ain’t we! Cor blimey!”

He took one of her plaits in his hand and started twisting it around his finger. She stood stock-still, looking straight ahead of her. I could see she was getting upset, because she was blinking a lot.

Suddenly Malcolm took a small flick knife out of his back pocket and clicked it open. Pete and me jumped back about three feet. Cora didn’t move an inch. In a second he’d laid the knife across her plait.

“I could cut this right off,” he said, his face in hers, really close. Still she didn’t move.

“I said, leave it, Malc,” said Tooboy. “Look, I’ve got half a crown out me mum’s purse. Let’s get the bus and go to the pictures.”

Malcolm laughed his head off, let go of the plait with a swing, and put the knife away.

“Come on, mate!” he said, putting his arm over Tooboy’s shoulder. As they went off, Tooboy looked behind and gave me a secret thumbs-up behind Malcolm’s back.

We just stood there. I felt my legs shaking.

“I don’t want to come to the woods again,” said Cora.

We went back to my house.

It was quite late in the morning when Roger and Pete came down to Guerdon Hall. They were on their bikes.

They told Auntie Ida they were taking us back up to Bryers Guerdon, but she obviously didn’t trust us, because she came with us all the way to the end of the Chase and watched us nearly to the top of the hill.

We saw her turn back towards Guerdon Hall and waited until she was out of sight. Then Roger and Pete took it in turns to whizz down.

“Do you want me to show you how to ride?” cried Roger as they walked the bikes back up to the top.

“I’d love it!”

The flattest bit of the road, without too many potholes, was at the bottom of the hill. To begin with, Roger held the saddle while I tried to pedal. My legs were still aching and bruised, and after a few tumbles, I had scraped both knees and one elbow as well, but in the end, I was able to get along on my own. Mimi pulled up clumps of grass and threw them at the wheels as I went wobbling by.

“See if you can do the hill,” Roger said. At first I squeezed the brakes almost all the way down, but after a couple of attempts, I managed to reach the bottom without them. I took my feet off the pedals and stuck my legs out as I flew, just like Colin Mole, who delivered for the butcher back home. Colin showed off on his bicycle all the time, going round in a circle in the middle of the street and lifting the front wheel in the air when there were girls around to watch him. The bike had a huge wicker basket over the front wheel to carry the meat in, and sometimes Colin didn’t get the balance right when he was trying his fancy tricks. Once he went right over and dropped some liver in a pile of dog’s business in the gutter. We were in fits, laughing at him.

After an especially good run down, I turned the bike round, all ready to walk it back up again, when I saw someone standing on the brow of the hill, dark against the bright blue sky. There was no mistaking who he was. Mimi had already spotted him.

“Daddy! Daddy!” she yelled, and started running up the road. I threw the bike down and charged after her. Dad had come to take us home!

When we had almost reached him, he smiled that big crinkly grin of his, put down his old kit bag, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and chucked it in the grass. Then he held both arms out wide, and we jumped into them, Mimi giggling like a mad thing. I could smell the lovely familiar smell of his suit. He tickled us, and we wriggled about, laughing. I picked up his kit bag and swung it over my shoulder. Dad lifted Mimi up, and we marched happily down the hill to Auntie Ida’s.

I knew it had to be their dad straight away. He was much younger and a heck of a lot better looking than our dad. He had a big scar down his cheek, so he looked like some sort of handsome pirate.

Cora had dropped my bike, and the front wheel was still spinning round. I picked it up and checked the handlebars were straight. Pete was looking over at me, and I jerked my head up the hill and we started to push the bikes back up to the top, but I didn’t really feel like going down again. The sky had clouded over a bit, so it was best to go home.

Cora, Mimi, and their dad were laughing their heads off when we passed them. Pete said he’d found a penny in his pocket, so we thought we’d call in at Mrs. Wickerby’s on the way back and get a couple of gobstoppers.

As we tramped down the Chase, Dad asked us what it was like at Auntie Ida’s, and what on earth had I done to myself to get a black eye and so many bumps. I mumbled something about playing with the boys in the woods and flashed a look at Mimi not to say anything, but she was up on Dad’s shoulders trying to twist his hair into two horns and didn’t seem to be listening. I told him about Finn and the chickens, and he told us a joke about a three-legged pig.

Dad’s hair was usually slicked back off his forehead like James Stewart’s, but today his thick fringe flopped around almost into his eyes. He probably couldn’t find his Brylcreem. Mum and Dad looked like a pair of film stars. Mum’s hair was lovely and soft and wavy, and she never ever had to put curlers in like the other ladies in our street, who wore them all the time under their scarves and only took them out for Christmas and funerals.

“Is she back? Mum?” I whispered excitedly in his ear.

I could see from the way he turned his eyes away that she wasn’t.

I heard them coming long before I saw them. I got his short scrappy letter, but I didn’t say anything to the girls because Harry was never reliable and I didn’t want them to be disappointed if he didn’t turn up. I’ve lived in this wild place all my life and can predict the direction of the wind more easily than which way Harry is going to blow.

I watch as they come tramping up the Chase, laughing, Mimi up on his shoulders, clapping her hands. He’s like Saint George to those two, just like he was for Susan.

Mind you, he’s turned up, I’ll give him that. Some dodgy deal must have fallen through for him to make his way here in the middle of the week like this.

I stand on the bridge and wave. Finn shoots off towards them, barking as usual, but even the dog is bowled over by him. Finn gives him no trouble at all.

Harry grins and gives me a quick peck on the cheek. “Ooh, I could murder a cup of char, Ida. Nice and strong, two sugars. Ruddy long walk from the station. Don’t the ruddy buses run out here?”

“Oh, come on, Harry, it’s only a few miles.”

I lay in bed, excited, catching the smell of Dad’s cigarette from downstairs, a warm, safe smell. Every Sunday morning, I’d go down to Mrs. Prewitt’s and get ten Player’s Navy Cut for Dad, five Weights for Mum, and a packet of Spangles for Mimi and me, but the last week at home before we came out here, I just went for the Player’s.

I was hoping that when Mum did come home again, she wouldn’t have got any thinner. She’d changed a lot since their wedding photo was taken. They’d married just after the war. Mum was only eighteen, and Dad wore his demob suit, the blue with red pinstripes that’s still hanging in the cupboard. Dad was so young he wasn’t long in the war before he was out of it again. Sometimes, when they thought Mimi and I were fast asleep, I could hear Mum and Dad shouting downstairs. Once I heard her yelling that the most Dad had seen of any action was behind the huts at Catterick Camp.

Maybe one day they’d go back to those dances at the British Legion and she would fit into the lovely black dress with the pink roses and ballerinas all over the wide skirt with its layers of white netting underneath. Perhaps this time it wouldn’t show up the long bones just below her neck. Sometimes I’d go and look at the dress where it was hanging on the back of their bedroom door and run my fingers over the roses and ballerinas. It made everything else in the room look worn out and grubby. Mum called it her Golden Slippers dress. Dad had won a lot of money on a horse called Golden Slippers, and Mr. Bates had come round and yelled at Dad in the kitchen, and we had cream cakes twice in the same week.

When Mum was in one of her funny moods and went to their bedroom and lay there with the curtains shut for hours and hours, I’d sometimes take Mimi next door to Auntie Ivy’s — that’s Mrs. Bedelius next door to us on the other side to the Woolletts — for our tea. Auntie Ivy had six children in a house the same as ours, and once, when they were little, they all had to go to the hospital at the same time because they got a disease with sleeping in the same bed, three up one end and three down the bottom, and one of them died and never came home, and that’s why there’s only five now, though they’re nearly all grown up.

Auntie Ivy’s oldest girl, Cissie, was my best friend, even though she was much older than me. She was really funny and made me laugh a lot. Once she told me that the scruffy old geezer at the end of the street called Mr. Pickles had said that if she gave him a penny, he’d show her something worth looking at. Then Cissie laughed and laughed and said that she told Mr. Pickles if he gave her ten bob, she’d go and get her brother Mike, and he could show Mr. Pickles something that was in a jolly sight better condition than anything Mr. Pickles had on offer.