The Guardian Stones (2 page)

Chapter Two

Constable Green returned to the hilltop and called off the search for the night. There was little chance of finding Isobel in the dark, he said, and moving lights might attract unwanted attention from the air.

Grace guided Edwin back down and through the forest by shaded torchlight. They emerged on a cart track at the edge of a field. The forest closed up behind them like magic, forming a seamless black barrier. Grace turned and headed toward the village, or so Edwin trusted. He could make out nothing in the darkness. Only after they had walked along the rutted path for five minutes did barns and houses begin to appear, dark shapes cut out of a starry sky. In the distance he heard Constable Green stridently arguing with someone about whether or not a light had been showing round their window.

“He's certainly keen, is Tom,” Grace remarked as she let Edwin into her cottage. “Take the torch and shut the curtains, please. I'll light the lamp.”

Edwin remembered that electricity had not yet reached this remote part of Shropshire. The warm light of an oil lamp sprang up, throwing shadows of well-worn furniture across whitewashed walls. The plain, polished pieces reminded him of his grandmother's neat parlor, where he had often spent evenings reading or playing with lead soldiers.

Now flesh and blood soldiers were fighting.

Grace carried the lamp into the kitchen and poked the wood fire in the stove into life.

“Isn't lamp oil hard to get these days?” Edwin asked.

“Depends who you know.” Grace brought a covered pan out of the tiny scullery. “Now, here's a nice bit of rabbit stew. We'll heat it up and have it with bread and what passes for butter these days. You must be famished, rushing off into the forest practically before you unpacked.”

Did he detect a note of approval in her voice, or was it just his imagination? An attractive woman, Grace was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a broad rosy-cheeked face and wide hips. In a decade or so she would look like the typical farmer's wife, but for the moment she was aglow with youth. Whatever they were to become, at a certain age a person's overwhelming impression was simply one of youth. Or so Edwin had decided observing students during his years of teaching.

“I needed to stretch my legs anyway after that cart ride,” he said. “I didn't expect a horse and cart.”

“What? To get to Noddweir? Nobody has a car, even if you could find petrol.” She brought a tablecloth and cutlery from an antique sideboard.

“Sorry there's no steaks! I hear Americans eat them every meal and twice on Sundays. You stir and I'll cut the bread.”

Edwin shook his head as he stirred. “Never been big on steaks.” He was still amazed at how people got along with wartime shortages. In London he'd been told that in some places you were lucky if you could get an egg a week! What if they dropped it on the way home? How would he eat his? Fried, perhaps. Scrambled was no good. Eggs shrank in a mysterious fashion when cooked that way. Boiled might be a possibility.

No, he decided while spooning stew into the bowls waiting on the table, I'll give it to Grace and maybe she can bake a cake with it.

Grace returned with a jug of cider. “Made in the village, this is. It packs quite a wallop, as you would doubtless say.”

As they ate, Grace plied him with questions about his work. Did his studies of weird stones take him all over the country? How difficult was it to travel these days? How long had he been retired? Did he like tripe?

Edwin fielded the questions but paused over the final query. “Tripe?”

“Sometimes it's possible to get some. Can't stand it myself, but Duncan—the fellow who runs the local pub—is quite fond of it. Of course he is Scottish.”

“That explains it, then,” Edwin replied. “No more cider, thank you.” The cider—what he would have called hard cider—did indeed pack a wallop, particularly for a man used to nothing more than a sociable glass of wine.

“It's difficult to travel what with one thing and another,” he told her, “so I thought I would try the more rural areas, and here I am.”

“You can hardly get more rural than Noddweir.”

“I understand the name is a corruption of the Welsh, noddwer. It means protector. Or so Mr. Wilson told me.”

“Is it? Well, I guess the vicar would know but I can't imagine Noddweir being able to protect anything. How do you know the vicar?”

“We'd corresponded about the Guardians before the war. I expect to see a fair bit of him now. He has a very good library he thinks might be useful. I've found rural ministers are prime sources for information. When I'm unable to dig up something I want to know about a place, I look up a local minister and write to him.”

Grace collected the crockery and took it away, returning with bowls of stewed apples. “I'm glad the vicar mentioned I had room for a lodger.”

“He told me he regretted I could not stay at his house but he has a family of girls billeted on him. Not too much bother, he said, but noisy and always hungry. Not a good place to pursue studies.”

“You'll have plenty of peace and quiet here,” she reassured him as an elderly woman appeared in the kitchen doorway.

The woman arrived so silently she might have alighted there like the bird her fragile figure suggested. Unpinned white hair fell freely over her thin shoulders. “Entertaining your boyfriend, Grace?” She cackled.

“This is Martha Roper, my grandmother.” Grace's cheeks flushed, more with irritation than embarrassment Edwin thought. “And no, Mr. Carpenter is not my boyfriend. He's the professor I told you about, who has come to lodge with us. I thought you were sleeping, Grandma. There's stew. I'm making tea and can probably squeeze another cup out the pot if you'd like one?”

Martha took an empty chair. “Got any sugar?”

“No. I told you this morning we were out.”

“Don't bother with the tea, then. You always make it weak as maiden's water.” Martha stared at Edwin. Her eyes were pale blue, her gaze sharp. “So you're the Yank with an interest in the old ways? I can tell you a fair bit about them. As for Isobel. She's been carried off by the devil because she ate blackberries last October. The devil, no doubt about it.”

Edwin looked politely surprised.

Martha smiled. “Oh yes, Professor, I know about such things as anyone who lives round here will tell you. I've showed a few little spells—persuasions, I calls them—to Isobel. She took an interest in the old ways, unlike some in my family. Now mind, I told her never to try any of them. Too dangerous unless you know what you might be trying to persuade. They say that swine Hitler practices magic. Do you think he does?”

“I think it highly unlikely.”

The old woman pondered for a moment. “It may be so. You never know, do you?”

“Oh, Grandmother, really. Are you sure you won't have some tea?”

“Didn't you say you got no sugar? No point asking, is there? Still, nice to meet our lodger. We'll talk when you have time, Professor. I can tell you about things you won't find in books. Now I'll leave you two to your privacy.” She got up and went into the front room.

“Sugar, indeed!” Grace set the tea cups on the table hard enough to spill a few drops on the tablecloth. “She wanted to have a good look at you, more like. Couldn't wait until morning. She'll be wagging her tongue to anyone who'll listen. Our privacy, indeed!”

She must have seen Edwin's puzzled expression because she added, “Grandma's been failing the past few years. She doesn't always know what's…appropriate.”

“Well, it's hardly a secret why I'm here. And it's not like I'm twenty-five, after all.”

“Don't worry about Grandmother. She came to stay with Father and me a couple of years ago and we gave her the other downstairs room for a bedroom. She has trouble with the stairs.”

“Your father enlisted?”

“Yes. That left the village without a policeman and that's how Special Constable Tom Green came into our lives. Not that there's much police work to do around Noddweir.”

“Until now.”

“Because of Issy, you mean? She's likely run off, is all. Her father's too fond of drink and it's well known he mistreats the girl.” Grace took a sip of her tea. “Served in the first world war and never been the same since, especially after his wife died having Issy. I saw the girl earlier this week and there were bruises on her arms. I suspect she means to give her dad a good scare. Green will have been to talk to him about it, and Jack Chapman doesn't like the police, as Issy well knows.”

“You're well acquainted with the girl?”

“Yes. She often has her dinner here, and she stays overnight when things get too bad at home. Normally I wouldn't want my grandmother filling up a child's head with nonsense but at least when Issy's here she's not within reach of her—” Her features hardened suddenly. She bit her lip. “Well, never mind that.”

Edwin tried his own tea, finding it weaker than he would have liked. He suspected a second brewing from the same tea leaves. “Strange your grandmother would mention the girl eating blackberries in October. I know the belief, that the devil gets into blackberries that month. It's commonly held here too?”

“You might say so,” Grace replied. “I don't care for them myself, although they do make good jam. If you can get the sugar. See, you haven't been here a day and already you're learning about the mysteries of Noddweir.”

***

Edwin's suitcases sat on a chair at the foot of the metal-framed bed in his room, one of two bedrooms upstairs. Grace occupied the other across the hall.

His room's drawn blackout curtains clashed with the otherwise bucolic ambiance, the whitewashed plaster walls, the rustic dresser, and small table by the bed. Over the dresser hung a tinted Victorian print of
The Light of the World.

He decided to put off unpacking until the morning. Springs squeaked and sagged when he sat on the bed to take off his shoes. Although it was a strange room in an unfamiliar place, Edwin did not feel any more or less out of place than he had for the past year. Since his wife's death his life had become a foreign country. After over thirty years of marriage he was ignorant of the customs of this place in which Elise no longer lived.

His life had lost all impetus. Before long he would simply roll to a complete stop.

He bent over and opened his briefcase filled with notebooks and research materials. He took out the framed photograph of his wife and sat it on the table.

They had joked that in all their years of marriage they had never spent a night apart because in those very rare instances when Edwin had traveled, usually to a academic conference, he had taken her picture with him. The thought ran through his mind as he positioned the photograph so he could see it when he awoke.

Chapter Three

Friday, June 13, 1941

The excited auburn-haired little girl in the doorway grabbed Grace's arm and tugged, trying to pull her across the step. “Come quick! Those bad children are being ever so bad! You must catch them!”

Edwin came downstairs blinking sleepily behind his eyeglasses. He felt embarrassed. After the train trip and the cart ride into Noddweir, followed by perambulations in the forest, he had slept until what he considered an unconscionable hour. “What is it? Have they found the girl?” He searched his memory, which was being sorely tested in his new surroundings. “Have they found Isobel?”

“No. This is Violet Gowdy. Her parents run the pub.” Grace gently broke the girl's grip on her arm.

Violet, seeing Edwin, retired a few steps from the door, her arms clasped across a thin chest.

“All right, Violet, we'll go and deal with the bad children,” Grace told her, adding for Edwin's benefit, “I always helped my father with these sorts of things.”

Edwin tagged along, welcoming the opportunity to observe another slice of English country life.

Several children were running back and forth in front of the public house down the street.

“Eggs! They're throwing eggs!” Grace quickened her step.

“Bad children!” Violet kept saying, breaking into a skipping run to keep up with the two adults. “Bad!”

Though outraged she appeared to be enjoying the excitement.

Several miscreants scattered, disappearing quickly between the cottages and behind the hedges along the street.

“There go Betty's twins,” Grace muttered. “I'll need to speak to her!”

A number of taller boys advanced. Edwin recognized the boy who had pretended to be a corpse the night before. He looked lively this morning, carrying a basket of ammunition. Although they were merely children, armed with nothing more dangerous than eggs, there was genuine menace in their defiance. Born predators.

The boys fired a salvo.

Edwin took an egg to the chest. Two others splattered against Violet's flowered dress. Her excitement vanished. She burst into tears and ran for the safety of her parents' pub.

Grace sprinted forward. Edwin noted with admiration that unlike Constable Green the night before, she caught Mike Finch. She wrenched the egg basket from his grasp.”Where did you steal this from?”

“Dunno,” came the surly reply in the flat accent of Birmingham. “Me brother gave it to me. Found it lying about, I suppose.”

Grace gave the lad a rough shake he hadn't expected, judging from his ugly glare. “There's a farmer's wife somewhere wondering where these eggs went. It's not just theft, Mike. We can't afford to be wasting food, considering everything that's already being rationed. You should be locked up!”

“Gawn! You wouldn't bloody dare!” He twisted around, escaped her grasp, and raced down the street making a rude sign over his shoulder.

Grace made as if to follow. As she passed a hedge she leaned over it without warning and yanked into view a chubby boy whose eyeglasses were mended with sticking plaster.

“Bert Holloway! I might have guessed! How many times have I told you to keep away from the Finch brothers? You know they'll get you into trouble.”

“Well, see, I—” the boy stammered. “I told 'em it was wicked. They'd be helping Mr. Hitler by wasting eggs, but…but….”

“Not another word. Do I have to write to your parents and tell them what you did? What do you think your mother would say if she knew?”

The boy hung his head, mortified. Finally dismissed, he nearly blundered blindly into Edwin before lumbering off.

Grace sighed as she watched him. “He's a nice kid but runs with a bad crowd. Or I should say waddles. Not too fast on his feet and they never let him forget it. Some of those boys will come to bad ends, I'm convinced of it. One of these days they'll go too far.”

Edwin glanced down at the yolk on his shirt. People were lucky to get an egg a week. What kind of children would use someone's single weekly egg to ruin someone else's shirt?

A voice with a broad Scottish accent boomed out from the pub doorway. “Saw you coming down the street, Grace, so I left the majesty of the law to deal with those little swine. I was about ready to give them a thrashing myself.”

The speaker was a short, chunky man with sandy hair. “What a waste of eggs,” he continued as Grace and Edwin walked over the pub. “Not to mention someone's just lost a bit of income from black marketeering. Come in for a minute. The wife wants a word. Whose are the eggs, anyway?”

“Can't say, Duncan. My official investigation is not yet completed.” She smiled.

“You'll have to give the evidence to that fool Green, then. I'm sure he'll ferret out the culprit in less than an hour, like he found out who stole my wife's best blouse off the washing line last month.”

“The blouse has never been seen since,” Grace told Edwin, before introducing the men. “Edwin, this is Duncan Gowdy. Duncan, this is Edwin Carpenter. He's here to study the Guardians. The stones, that is, not your pub.”

“Oh, aye?” the publican replied, glancing up at his sign, which presumably depicted the stones in their heyday. Their size compared to the trees on the slopes below them seemed disproportionately large. The sign looked as if it had been copied from a postcard of Stonehenge.

Duncan led them down a stone-flagged corridor to living quarters at the rear of the building.

“That circle's an interesting bit of history, Mr. Carpenter,” he said, “only nobody knows what it is, so everyone feels free to make up their own stories. Mind you don't take any notice of what Martha, for one, tells you, begging your pardon, Grace.”

Violet was in the kitchen, having her dress scrubbed with a damp cloth by a plump redhead Edwin immediately recognized as the girl's mother. He was struck by how closely Violet mirrored the older woman's looks in miniature.

Meg Gowdy muttered a disinterested greeting when introduced to Edwin and continued fulminating about wild children who should be locked up. When she'd done the best she could to clean Violet's dress, she sent the red-faced and teary-eyed child up to her room to read.

“How many eggs you got left in that basket, Grace?” Meg asked.

“Half a dozen.”

“What you going to do with them?”

“Duncan suggests I should give them to Tom Green. He can find out whose they are and return them.”

The woman made a harrumphing noise. “Eat them himself, more like. I don't suppose you would consider selling them to—?”

“She's joking,” Duncan cut in quickly when Grace looked uncomfortable.

His wife scowled and tossed the rag into a bucket by the back door. “Can't you and Green do something about these wretched kids, Grace? Nothing's safe. Mud thrown at washing, dogs tormented, knocking on windows at night scaring everyone.”

“Boys will be boys,” observed Duncan.

“You call those vicious animals boys? We should send them all back where they come from.”

“I'm afraid we don't have much say over the evacuees we're sent, Meg,” Grace replied. “Besides, the farmers are glad of the labor.”

“Oh, I'm sure Harry Wainman is glad to have his little slaves. He can sit on his arse all day.”

With that she grabbed her cigarette and stamped off.

Duncan shook his head. “We used to live in town. She misses the crowds and bustle and all that. Too quiet here. And Violet, playing with the village kids, she's picking up their ways, Meg says. Thank heavens she avoids these new city kids who've been forced on us. Some of the things they come out with! When I was their age, well…anyhow, thanks for sorting that lot out, Grace. I would offer you a drink but it's out of hours. What a life, eh?”

“And where was Green when the kids were fighting?” Grace asked.

“Long gone with another search party,” came Duncan's reply. “Lucky you were still around or those kids would be smashing up someone's fence or worse.” He hesitated. “You know Green's staying with us. Well, I noticed last night he had a drink or two with Joe Haywood.”

“Oh?” Grace looked interested.

“Just thought I'd mention it. He'll have to be cleverer than he thinks he is to catch Joe out.” He glanced at his watch. “The dinnertime news will be starting. Let's see if there's as much excitement in the rest of the world as there is here in Noddweir.”

“I hope not,” Grace said. “It's Friday the thirteenth, you know. Grandma already warned me not to spill the salt, or break a mirror, or walk under a ladder.”

“And watch out for black cats crossing your path?” offered Edwin.

“Yes, we could use a black cat now.”

“What do you mean?”

“For good luck,” Grace replied. “Aren't black cats good luck in America, too?”