The Piper (9 page)

‘Don’t put the earplugs in when I’m reading to you,’ said Daisy sternly, and Sally smiled.

‘I won’t,’ she promised. ‘Are you a good reader, Daisy?’

‘I’m the best in my class. I won a book prize for it.’ Peter knew that she was very proud of this achievement and took every opportunity to tell people about it. She thought for a moment and then added, ‘Maybe the film of
Heidi
will come to a cinema near here and we’ll put you in a wheelchair and take you to see it.’

Sally smiled but she shook her head. ‘I don’t think that will ever happen. There’s a cinema in Hythe but Daddy doesn’t like me going out at night.’

‘We could go to a matinee, couldn’t we, Peter?’

‘Yes, why not?’ Peter smiled. He had another question to ask, but didn’t feel he could speak quite as bluntly as Daisy would. ‘Sally, I hope you don’t mind me asking … but … what about your mother? Mr Sheldon said that something had happened to her, but he didn’t say exactly what it was.’

‘I … I’m afraid she’s gone,’ said Sally.

‘Gone where?’ cried Daisy, misunderstanding.

‘I mean … she died, Daisy.’

‘Oh no.’ Daisy didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

‘Was it a long time ago?’ asked Peter awkwardly.

‘Oh yes, it was when I was just a toddler. A horse-riding accident, Daddy says. I’ve only ever seen her in old photographs. Daddy says she was a handsome woman with flaming red hair.’ Sally smiled. ‘I always think she sounds like a character out of a book.’

‘I would hate it if my mummy died,’ said Daisy.

There was another silence, this one so uncomfortable that Peter was almost relieved when the door opened and Mrs Beesley stuck her cross-looking face into the room. ‘Peter? Adam is ready for you now. Come along and leave the girls to their chatter.’

‘Yes, Mrs Beesley.’ Peter looked at Daisy. ‘Will you be all right if I go?’

‘Of course,’ said Daisy scornfully, but he knew she was just trying to seem grown up in front of Sally.

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He followed Mrs Beesley out onto the landing and back down the stairs.

Following Mrs Beesley’s instructions, Peter soon found Adam in the stables round the back of the house. He was rubbing thick yellow ointment into the scars on Bessie’s flanks. As Peter strolled in, he glanced up guiltily and then looked away again.

‘How is she?’ asked Peter awkwardly.

‘Oh, she’s all right. It looks a lot worse than it is.’ Adam sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Peter. ‘I know the little girl was upset, but these ’orses is tough, they can take a bit of punishment. But Mrs B can be a bit too ’andy with that whip, sometimes.’ He shook his head.

Peter stood there, feeling slightly embarrassed. ‘She said you might have a few jobs for me,’ he said.

‘Did she now?’ Adam scowled. ‘That one’s altogether too fond of finding work for idle hands,’ he muttered. He looked at Peter doubtfully. ‘So, you’re gonna be my baily-boy, are you?’

‘What’s a baily-boy?’ asked Peter.

‘It’s just a local expression. My assistant, I suppose is what you’d call it in the big city. How are you with a spade?’

‘I’ve made sandcastles on Southend beach,’ said Peter.

Adam sniggered. ‘Southend beach!’ he echoed. ‘Bless my soul. You’re a right joker, ain’tcha?’

‘If you say so,’ said Peter. He looked around the barn and noticed, through an open doorway, what looked like a small room with a cast-iron bed frame and a rickety pine dresser. A small metal stove in the corner looked like the only source of heat. He remembered something that Mrs Beesley had said about Adam, that he was just a hired hand. ‘So you …
live
out here?’ he said incredulously.

‘That I do,’ said Adam. ‘It ain’t much, but it suits me fine.’

Peter frowned. ‘But the Grange is
huge
. Surely there must be a room there you could …?’

‘I likes to be out ’ere,’ said Adam, a little too quickly. ‘It’s a space of my own and I can keep an eye on the animals. Sometimes I think animals is better company than human beings. You don’t see animals being cruel to each other, do you? But people now, they can do terrible things. Despicable things.’

Peter didn’t quite know what to say to this.

Adam clapped his dirty hands together and looked around, as though trying to think of something that Peter could do. ‘Well, let’s have a look,’ he said. ‘What could a young lad like yourself be handy for? Well, for starters, you can grab that shovel over there and help me to muck out Bessie’s stall.’

‘Muck … out?’ murmured Peter. ‘I’m not sure …’

‘For Lord’s sake, boy, you know what mucking out is, surely?’ He looked at Peter’s blank expression for a moment, then went on. ‘We takes a couple of shovels and we dig out all that muck in there.’ He pointed into Bessie’s stall. ‘We tip it into that wheelbarrow there …’ He pointed again. ‘… and then we wheel it outside and heap it on the ruddy big pile out in the yard. Once we’ve done that, we get some fresh straw from those bales over there’ – he pointed again – ‘and we fill the stall with it. Couldn’t be easier.’

Peter nodded. ‘All right,’ he said, eager to help. He thought for a moment. ‘But … why?’ he added.

‘Why?’ Adam looked at him incredulously. ‘What do you mean, “why?”’

‘Well … why take straw out if you’re just going to put a load more back in?’

‘Because it’s dirty, innit? Not to put too fine a point on it, Bessie has gone and made a mess of what’s already in there, so she needs clean straw, don’t she? Lord, it’s not that difficult to work out. I thought you was Mr Clever Clogs!’

Peter nodded. He fetched one of the shovels and then went to stand in the entrance of the stall. He wrinkled his nose. ‘It smells terrible in here,’ he observed.

‘Nah. Good ’ealthy smell, that is. You sniff that up, boy, you sniff it up good. Do that and you’ll come to no ’arm.’

Peter frowned. ‘Do you have any gloves?’ he asked.

‘Gloves, he says!’ Adam shook his head, as though he’d never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. ‘What you want them for?’

‘It looks dirty in here,’ said Peter.

‘Dirty, he says! That ain’t dirt, boy. I’ve ’ad me ’ands in that stuff since I was a nipper and I’ve never ’ad a sick day in me life. Not one.’ He reached into the pocket of his coat, took out a metal flask and uncorked it. He had a crafty glance over his shoulder before he raised it to his lips and took a gulp from its contents. Then he returned it to his pocket.

‘What was that?’ asked Peter.

‘Medicine,’ said Adam.

‘But you just said you never got sick!’

‘Never mind what I said, you get muckin’ out!’ Adam left Bessie and went to fetch the wheelbarrow for Peter. ‘There, that’s where you want to put it. Fill that up with straw. Now, off you go, let’s see ’ow good you are.’

Peter swung the spade into the thick mixture of straw and dung, the motion stirring up an even worse smell than before. He tried not to gag as he transferred the first spadeful to the barrow.

‘That’s the ticket,’ said Adam. ‘Just keep at that until it’s all gone. Couldn’t be easier.’ He found a spade for himself and came and stood beside Peter. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’ll take it in turns. A shovel each until the barrow is full.’ He showed Peter how to do it, swinging his spade deep into the straw and lifting it into the barrow. Peter followed suit and pretty soon they’d established a rhythm between them. In a matter of minutes, the barrow was heaped with dirty straw.

‘Excellent,’ said Adam. ‘We’ll make a farm worker of you yet. Now, wheel that load out to the back of the yard and dump it on the heap. Then come back for more.’

Peter did as he was told. He pushed the barrow out into the yard and round the back of the stables where he soon found a huge pile of used straw, stinking in the sunshine. Thousands of shiny black bluebottles buzzed and swooped around it, as though it was some kind of treasure. He found that he was enjoying this simple exercise, which for the moment at least, allowed him to push all his worries to the back of his mind. He upended the barrow against the base of the pile, the action stirring the flies into restless movement, the concerted buzz of them filling his head. He turned and looked across the yard to the house, which seemed to shimmer like a mirage in the morning sunlight. In the daytime, it seemed a much less forbidding place than it did at night. He hoped that Daisy was getting on all right with Miss Sally. It would be good for her to have a friend right now. He thought for a moment about the little house back in Dagenham and he wondered what his mother was doing. He wondered too what Mrs Beesley had done with that postcard. He made a mental note to ask her about it the next time he saw her.

When he got back to the barn with the empty barrow, Adam was sitting on a pile of filled sacks, smoking a cigarette and staring down at his scuffed old boots, as though trying to puzzle something out. Peter went back to the stall and recommenced work. ‘It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it?’ he said at last.

Adam looked up at him. ‘What is?’ he muttered.

‘Miss Sally being ill, not being able to go anywhere.’

Adam studied him warily as he replied. ‘Yeah, bad enough,’ he said. ‘What d’you know about it?’

‘Only what she told me. That she has this … illness.’ He glanced at Adam. ‘What do you suppose is wrong with her?’

Adam shrugged his big shoulders. ‘Blessed if I know,’ he said. ‘I ain’t no doctor. Maybe it’s just this place.’

Peter frowned. ‘You mean the house?’

Adam shook his head. ‘The Marsh. The whole area. It’s … addled.’

‘What do you mean? What’s wrong with it?’

Adam shrugged. ‘I’m only sayin’ … some people have got strange notions about the Marshes. They hear things. They
see
things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Ah well, that would depend on how long you’ve got. There’s stories about these marshes that goes back for generations. Some people will tell you it’s one of the most haunted places that ever there was.’

‘What, you mean ghosts?’

‘That’s what some people calls ’em. And others reckon they’s a natural part of the Marsh, as natural as the grass and the water. Why, I could tell you stories of—’ Adam broke off as a shadow fell across him. They both looked up and saw that Mrs Beesley’s tall figure was standing in the entrance to the barn. Peter noticed how Adam got quickly to his feet and made as if to lift one of the sacks that he’d been sitting on.

Mrs Beesley fixed him with a glare. ‘What stories would they be, I wonder?’ she asked, and Adam seemed unable to meet her gaze. He made a pathetic attempt to lift the sack to his shoulder, but it must have been heavier than he thought because he lowered it again, with a grunt, and dropped it back onto the heap.

‘I was just telling the lad a few things about the Marsh.’

‘What about it?’ growled Mrs Beesley.

‘I was just sayin’ that some people ’ave odd stories about it,’ stammered Adam. ‘You know, things like—’

‘You ’aven’t got time for idle tittle-tattle,’ she told him. She stepped into the barn and held out two grey canvas knapsacks. ‘I bought the pair of you some bait for later on,’ she said.

‘Bait?’ Peter was puzzled. ‘Are we going to be trying to catch something?’

Adam grinned, showing nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Bait is just a local word for grub,’ he explained. ‘We’ll be eatin’ our lunch on the hoof, see. Thanks, Mrs B!’ He went to take the knapsacks from her but she held onto them for a moment and fixed her eyes on his.

‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she muttered. Then she released her hold on the knapsacks. She aimed one of her fake-looking grins in Peter’s direction. ‘I ’ope Adam isn’t working you too hard,’ she said.

‘Umm.’ Peter looked down at the mixture of hay and dung at his feet. ‘No, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Is Daisy all right?’

‘Her and Miss Sally are gettin’ on like an ’ouse on fire,’ she assured him. ‘They’ll be thick as thieves afore you know it. You’ll ’ave your nose put right out.’ She smiled as though enjoying the idea.

‘I wanted to ask you about the postcard.’

She looked at him. ‘What about it? I filled in the address, didn’t I? Gave it back to you, like you asked.’

‘Yes, and … me and Daisy wrote a message to Mum, but … it’s still on the hall table, where we left it. It should have been posted by now.’

‘Don’t you worry about that. You and Adam will be going into Hythe in a few days’ time …’

‘Will we?’ asked Adam, who seemed puzzled by the remark.

‘Yes. You will.’ Mrs Beesley fixed him with a stern look, before turning back to look at Peter. ‘So you can sort it then,’ she said. ‘Let your parents know what a lovely time you’re having out here on the Marsh.’

‘I just think …’

‘Yes?’

‘I just think they’ll be worried if they don’t hear from us soon. We don’t have a telephone at home or anything, so …’

‘Be patient. We’ll sort it all out in good time,’ she assured him. She turned to leave but not before throwing another quick glance in Adam’s direction. ‘Keep the lad occupied,’ she told him, and then she strode out of the barn.

Adam glared after her for a moment, and Peter got the distinct impression that he didn’t like Mrs Beesley very much, but that he was also, in some way, afraid of her. There was a silence, broken only by the sound of a cow lowing from somewhere nearby.

Adam looked at Peter and then gestured towards the stall. ‘Well, come on,’ he said, ‘we’d better get on with it.’ He picked up the other shovel and came over to join him and, working together, they filled the wheelbarrow again.

Grandad Peter stops talking again. Helen realises she has been listening intently to his story, so intently that she has lost all sense of place and time. She is vaguely surprised to find that she is sitting in his room in the rest home, leaning forward in the rocking chair, her hands clenched at her sides. Outside, it has started to rain. She can hear the steady rhythm of it pattering against the window. She looks out into the garden and notes the way the winds are blowing the trees, making them lean to one side. It’s a foul afternoon and she’ll have to cycle home in this. But she’s not ready to leave yet.