The Cuckoo Child (15 page)
Sadie, however, did not seem at all impressed. ‘Well, I’m going to play here,’ she said firmly. ‘At home, we’ve got a great big garden, with a lawn and flower beds, and a place where Mr Pritchard grows fruit and vegetables. But am I allowed to dig a little dig? No, I am not. Daddy bought me a wooden spade and a beautiful bucket with dolphins and fishes on when we went to Llandudno last year, but Mr Pritchard is an old beast and told me he’d tan my little hide for me if he caught me digging in his flower beds again.’ She looked up at Dot, eyes limpid with mischief. ‘So I’m going to have my own little garden, right here by this baby’s tombstone. Next time I come, I’ll bring my bucket and spade and I’ll clear all the horrid grass away and dig and dig, and then I’ll plant roses and big yellow daisies and geranymums and lilies . . .’ She seemed to run out of flower names at this point and stopped, looking enquiringly at her companion. ‘Isn’t that a good idea? Wouldn’t it be lovely for the little dead baby to have her own beautiful garden?’
Poor Dot was in a quandary. She thought that Sadie was a contrary young person so if she tried to pour water on the idea of a garden it would probably make her more determined than ever. But if she said it was a good idea, then Sadie would probably ask her to help and Dot’s mind cringed away from what would happen then. Sadie would undoubtedly discover the necklace, but even if by some miracle she did not do so, the fact that someone had been digging would alert any chance person walking through the churchyard to the fact that something might have been hidden there.
‘Well?’ Sadie’s expression was enquiring. ‘It must be a baby ’cos of the tiny tombstone. Don’t you think she’d like a pretty garden, Dolly?’
Dot made up her mind. Now that Sadie knew about the graveyard and had chosen to have her tea party upon little Rhiannon’s grave, it was no longer a safe hiding place. She must come this very night and move the necklace to a better place. And in the meantime, she might as well go along with whatever Sadie said, since the two of them were unlikely to cross paths again, for Dot did not think she would dare re-inter the necklace anywhere in the churchyard, no matter how safe it seemed. Sadie was only small, but she lived in a posh area and had rich, and probably influential, parents. Dot had never come across such people, but something told her that the captain of a big liner could probably get away with things that an ordinary person could not. She was a bit vague as to how Captain O’Brien might be a danger to plain little Dot McCann, but there was no point in tempting fate. She would accompany Sadie to her front door and make certain that she was safely inside, then she would go home and have whatever meal Aunt Myrtle had provided and after that she would snug down on the sofa, and pretend to go to sleep. But when all the boys were home, and Uncle Rupert was snoring, either in the front parlour or in his own bed, she would sneak back to the churchyard and retrieve the necklace. She had not yet decided what to do with it but hoped that inspiration might come fairly quickly. She could easily dispose of it since weeks had elapsed since she had first hidden it, but she would not do so. Even her one glimpse of it, by starlight, had shown her that the necklace was more beautiful than anything she had ever dreamed of possessing. Insensibly, over the weeks that had passed, she had grown to think of it as her own, and knew now that she could not bear to part with it. It would be lovely to bring it home, to gloat over it in daylight, to put it round her neck and see, in the cracked bit of mirror above the sink, how it gleamed and sparkled, but Dot knew this was impossible. Once her aunt or uncle set eyes on it, the secret would be out and the questions would start. No, the necklace must be hidden once more; she would think of a good place whilst she walked Sadie O’Brien back to her posh home on Shaw Street.
It had been a warm and pleasant day but by the time Dot set off for the churchyard once more a nippy little wind had got up, though the starlit sky was black and clear above her. It was after midnight and the streets were deserted, but even so Dot kept close to the shadow cast by the houses and shops which lined the pavements, flitting along as silently as a shadow herself. Occasionally, a cat crossed her path and once she saw a large rat trundling across the road, which made her stop for a moment before continuing, resolutely, on her way. She was afraid of rats, had heard how they would turn on hunters when they were cornered, but told herself that they needed human habitation to thrive and were scarcely likely to inhabit the deserted graveyard. She also told herself that the only people liable to be on the streets at this hour were scuffers or thieves, and this made her extremely cautious, peering round corners to make sure the coast was clear and crossing the wide, deserted streets at a fast run. However, she reached the churchyard without seeing another human being, scrambled over the wall and dropped, gladly, into the sheltering trees. She took a quick look round but knew that, even if somebody was present, she was unlikely to see them in the faint starlight, half hidden, as they would be, by tombstones and the long, wild grass. However, movement was a real giveaway so she stood very still and watched. After a couple of minutes she decided that it was useless because the breeze tossed the branches of the trees and stirred amongst the grasses. But then an owl hooted and she saw its shape as it crossed from the ruined church to the old yew tree; she did not think the owl would have flown to the tree if someone had been hiding there, so she squared her shoulders and set off.
It was easy to pick out the small headstone, thanks to Sadie who had flattened the grass in order to have her tea party. Dot squatted down, cast one last look around her and then seized a handful of grass and heaved. The grass, dry as tinder, promptly broke and Dot realised that the earth, which had been soft and friable in March, was now hard as iron; she should have brought something to dig with, even if it was only an old fork, or the big spoon which Aunt Myrtle used when she dished up blind scouse.
Dot sat back on her heels and frowned. There must be something she could dig with. There were cracked and ruined urns . . . she got to her feet. Over the opposite side of the churchyard, hard up against the ruined church, there were a couple of box-like graves which were protected by rusty iron railings. She was pretty sure that the last time she had walked by, one at least of the railings had been loose. If she could just detach it . . .
To think was to act. Dot hurried across the churchyard, jumping over fallen headstones and skirting patches of bramble. There were nettles, too, which she did her best to avoid, but soon enough she found what she was searching for. It was only half of a railing and it was rusty and rotten, but it ended in a sharp spike and Dot knew that it was as near ideal as she would get for the task in hand. She picked it up and banged it against the nearest headstone to rid it of as much rust as possible, wincing at the noise she had made, but comforting herself with the recollection that most kids would think the hollow booming was made by ghosts and that scuffers, no matter how keen, would be unlikely to investigate since it meant climbing over the wall and scuffers had their dignity – as well as their uniform – to consider. Besides, she knew that a number of animals lived here and supposed that any one of them, scuttling through the ruined church, might dislodge a fallen slate, or brick, or rotten branch, causing a noise similar to that which she had just made.
Holding the broken railing like a sword, she slashed at a patch of nettles and with considerable satisfaction saw them keel sideways; she had brushed against them on her way to the old graves and now, she thought, they were paying for the stings which even now patched her skinny legs. She contemplated having a go at the brambles as well – a branch had scratched her from knee to ankle – but decided against it. She was fond of blackberries and in a few weeks there would be rich pickings; but not, of course, if she laid about her with her spiked railing.
She reached Rhiannon’s grave without further incident and began to tear and claw away at the weeds and grass until she had a couple of feet of bare earth. Then she picked up her spike and began to batter it into the earth, using a large stone which had once been part of a grave coping. She wanted the spike to go down deeper than the burial place of her necklace; with a bit of luck she might bring it up as soon as she began to lever the railing, for she had not forgotten that the necklace lay a hand’s length from the gravestone and in direct line with the initial letter of the child’s name.
She wished she could have pushed the railing into the ground soundlessly, but she could not avoid the thump, thump of the stone. However, the wind was gusting now in the trees and she was pretty sure that no one, beside herself, could hear it, so she continued to thump until the railing was eight inches into the earth. Then she seized it and began to pull sideways.
Within a very few moments, she realised that she had, indeed, struck lucky. A large clod of earth shot into the air, with a curl of dried grass at its base, and Dot remembered how she had folded the necklace in the grass before burying it. Triumphantly, she plunged her hand into the hole, scarcely able to believe her luck, for she had expected to make several attempts before finding her treasure. Her fingers closed round the stones and she drew the necklace forth, seeing the glitter of it even in the faint starlight. With a satisfied sigh, Dot sank back on her heels and eyed her booty lovingly. ‘Well, I managed to find you without too much trouble, but what the devil I’m going to do with you now I honestly don’t know.’
‘If you’ve no use for it, you might as well hand it to me.’
The voice, husky and menacing, almost stopped Dot’s heart. She whipped round, knowing that the speaker was close, but not knowing whether it was male, female or ghastly apparition, for all her self-confidence had fled and she was sure she was about to be both robbed and killed or, if it was an apparition, frightened to death, which would come to the same thing in the end. The figure stood behind her and seemed immensely tall. She looked up and up until she saw, in the moonlight, a dark face, grinning down at her.
‘Well? Don’t just gawp at me, tell me what all this is abaht, and what you’re doin’ diggin’ up jewels in the middle of the night? You’re a bit on the young side to be a grave robber, ain’t you? And besides, how did you know which grave to rob?’ He jerked his chin at Rhiannon’s small headstone. ‘This here’s a baby’s grave and babies don’t usually get buried with all their worldly possessions. Come to think, it’s only ancient Egyptians what have jewels stuck in their tombs, ain’t it?’
Dot nodded dumbly, and as she did so the full awfulness of the situation overcame her. She had begun to say that she wasn’t robbing anyone, that the necklace was hers, when she burst into tears. It was all too much. She had been so careful not to be seen climbing over the wall; she had had to work extremely hard to dig the necklace out; and here was this boy – she could see he was a boy now, probably only a couple of years older than herself – walking up as cool as you please and obviously going to rob her, even if he stopped short of murder.
‘Hey, what have I said? For Gawd’s sake, girl, stop makin’ that awful noise unless you want to bring the law down on our ears. Look, I ain’t gonna do you no harm an’ I don’t mean to steal your necklace, or whatever it is, because I’m in enough trouble on my own account, without adding thievery to my sins.’ He knelt on the crushed grass and put a consoling arm round Dot’s heaving shoulders. ‘Now just you stop cryin’ like a bleedin’ fountain and tell me what’s been goin’ on.’
Dot gave an enormous sniff, then wiped away her tears with the heels of both hands, and looked both long and hard at the boy in the faint starlight. She decided that he had a nice face, not particularly handsome, but kind, and his expression was rueful, as though he had suddenly realised how much he had frightened her, how close she had come to hysteria at the sound of his voice, coming suddenly out of the dark, when she had believed herself alone. Dot opened her mouth to speak, to begin to explain, then suddenly changed her mind. ‘It’s – it’s a really long story and I don’t know who you are or how you come here and – and if you were to tell someone else about my necklace, then I could be k-killed,’ she said, in a strained and wobbly voice. ‘Do you live near here? I live with me aunt in one of the courts off Heyworth Street, but if you tell me where you live I’ll swear on me own life that I’ll come round to your house in the morning and explain.’
The boy grinned again but shook his head. ‘That won’t do, ’cos I don’t live anywhere proper at present,’ he said. ‘Truth to tell, I’d snug meself down in an old shed, close up agin the boundary wall of this churchyard. It’s so overgrown I were lucky to find it; it’s pretty tumbledown – covered with creepers an’ that – but it suits me fine. I were actually sleeping in there when I were woken up by someone banging something on a gravestone, but if you want to come back to my shed we can exchange stories there; only it’s got to be you first,’ he added firmly.
Dot stared at him. She thought she knew the ruined church and the graveyard pretty well, but she had never come across a shed. However, she realised that despite their short – and strange – acquaintance, she already trusted him, felt that he was the sort of person who would keep his word. So when he rose and pulled her to her feet, she followed him meekly, stuffing the necklace into the pocket of her skirt, and clutching the back of his jacket, though he was a good deal less careful around nettles and brambles than she had been – no doubt because of his boots – and ploughed across the churchyard with little regard for his companion’s bare feet.
They reached the corner of the graveyard, which was, as the boy had said, just a wide tangle of saplings, creepers and low bushes, and, to Dot’s surprise, there was the small, tumbledown wooden shed he had described, so overgrown by trees and bushes that it was almost invisible. The boy pushed the door wide and ushered her in, then produced a box of matches, struck one and lit a candle wedged in the neck of a bottle. Then he pulled the door shut behind them and sat down on an upturned wooden box, waving Dot hospitably to another one. ‘I’ve been using this place to sleep in ever since my money was stolen from me when I first arrived in the city,’ he told her. ‘I’ve managed to feed myself so I’ve not starved, but I need to be getting a job soon, ’cos this shed ain’t weatherproof – he pointed at the sagging roof through which Dot could see the stars – ‘and when winter comes I’ll have to move into lodgings or get some sort of proper roof over my head. I might make this place weatherproof, I suppose, and go on living here, but if I do I reckon someone will realise it’s occupied and I’ll wake up one morning to find a couple o’ rozzers on my doorstep.’
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