2003 - A Jarful of Angels (21 page)

All the green moss had been scrubbed away with a bar of Fairy soap that Iffy had stolen from home. Fatty had dug the mud and dirt out from the nostrils and ears with his penknife. Now the head was as white and smooth as a new candle.

He turned it over in his lap. The stone hair was carved into a tight cap of curls around the head. He turned it back over. The nose tilted upwards towards the sky. The eyebrows were raised, the white lips smiled a secretive sort of smile. They were pretty lips.

“You’re lovely,” said Fatty.

He bent over and kissed the statue full on the lips.

Iffy blew out through her nose and looked the other way. Disgusting.

“It’s just a stone head, Fatty.”

“I’m gonna give it back to her,” he said, laying the head tenderly back in the box.

“To Carty Annie?”

“No!”

“What do you mean then?”

“I’m gonna sneak in there,” he said pointing towards the Big House, “and I’m gonna stick it back on…they say she comes looking for her head. P’raps she’ll be at peace then.”

“You’re mad! What if you get caught?”

“You can’t get done for mending something, can you? I’m doing her a favour.”

“You don’t even know who she was.”

“Carty Annie knew her. That’s why she kept the head.”

“Where did she get it from?”

“She found it down in the grass by the river. She reckoned old Medlicott went berserk, smashed the head off and threw it over the wall.”

“Why?”

“Carty Annie said he was in love with the girl – that she was having a baby by him – only she wasn’t.”

“She wasn’t having a baby?”

“No, she
was
having a baby.”

“You just said she wasn’t!”

“No. Listen. She was having a baby, but it
wasn’t
old Medlicott’s, it was somebody else’s who she was in love with. Old Medlicott found out and went nuts.”

“He didn’t chop her head off in real life though, did he?”

“No. Carty Annie said she thinks they took the baby down to the home for bad girls.”

“What happened to her?”

“The baby?”

“No, the girl.”

“They sent her back to where she came from.”

“Where was that?”

“Spain. It’s dead sad, isn’t it?”

Iffy didn’t answer him. She was sick of the stupid head and his daft ideas.

Fatty stood on the step of Iffy’s house in Inkerman Terrace, hopping up and down, bursting with excitement.

“Guess what, Iffy! The puppies have been born!”

“Honest?”

“Yep! And one of them looks just like Barny! You wanna see them?”

“Will Mr Sandicock let us?”

“No, course he won’t, but they’re out in one of the old sheds, there’s a way to get round the back and see them through the window. Come on, I’ll show you!”

“I’m not going in the grounds, Fatty!”

“You don’t need to, come on,”

Fatty led the way, skirting the walls of the Big House until they came into the cover of trees alongside some outbuildings.

“Up there!” Fatty said, pointing to a window that had bars on it but no glass. “I’ll climb up first and take a decker, she’s used to me, she don’t bark any more when she sees me.”

“How do you mean, she’s used to you?”

“Cos I been coming for ages to get to know her, so’s when she had the pups she wouldn’t be afraid of me.”

Iffy thought that animals always loved Fatty, so did kids unless grown-ups interfered and told them not to bother with him.

“How you gonna get up there?”

He tapped the side of his nose and winked. Then he disappeared back into the bushes and came out pulling two wooden pop crates behind him. He put one below the window and stacked the other one on top of it. Then he climbed up on top of them. He was just tall enough to look in through the window.

“Hello, old gel…we’ve come to have a look at your pups…beautiful they are too, I brought Iffy to see ‘em…Iffy won’t hurt them. She’s nice.”

Fatty jumped down from the crate.

“Have a look, Iffy. See if you can guess which one I want.”

Fatty gave her a leg up onto the crate. He had to steady the crates for her.

At first she couldn’t see much at all. She screwed up her eyes and peered into the darkness. Then she saw! In one corner of the shed a big black dog lay curled on a pile of old blankets. She stared at Iffy with soft brown eyes.

Iffy was afraid she’d bark and that Mr Sandicock would come running, but the dog just whined at her. When Iffy’s eyes grew used to the dimness she saw the pups. Five little humps of fur lying close to the mother dog’s belly. Their little tails were wagging, their wet noses snuffling.

They were really beautiful. Four of them were dark like the mother but one of them was the exact colour of Barny, and it was the most lively one of them all. It would suit Fatty.

“Can you guess?” Fatty asked.

“Yep! The brown wriggly naughty one! When you gonna ask if you can have him?”

“They got to be about six weeks old before they can leave their mam.”

Then, with a crash, Iffy fell off the crate.

Fatty grabbed her and she put her finger to her lips, “Someone’s come in the shed,” she hissed.

“Stay still,” Fatty whispered. “Get up against the wall in case they look out of the window.”

They flattened their bodies against the wall. Iffy could hear her heart beating and hoped that whoever was inside couldn’t hear it knocking against the wood.

They kept quiet and listened. The sound of angry voices came through the window.

“Take a look at them, you half-baked clot! Get her covered by a bloody black Labrador! It wasn’t a bloody black Labrador that covered her or I’m a bloody monkey’s uncle!” said Mr Sandicock.

“Honest to God! It was, mun, I watched them at it!” said Dai Full Pelt.

“I’ll tell you what, Dai, I want my bloody money back! I paid you good money to get that bitch covered by a pedigree and what have I got? A litter of bastard mongrels!”

Fatty nudged Iffy and whispered in her ear.

“Told you so. You watch. They’ll give them away when they’ve been weaned.”

“Honest to God, Mr Sandicock, it
was
a black Labrador. On my mother’s life!”

“On your mother’s life! Your mother’s been dead for years. You must be a bloody dull bugger! You couldn’t tell a black Labrador from a bloody polar bear. I want my money back!”

“P’raps you can sell them a bit cheaper, Mr Sandicock.”

“Sell them! You can sell pedigrees, Dai! Mongrels are two a sodding penny. These you’ll have to bloody give away. I’ll leave that up to you, you stupid bloody article, you.”

“Told you,” Fatty said, grinning. “And when they’re old enough I’m gonna ask for one. I’m saving up for a lead and a collar.”

He would ask too. Fatty wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. He’d be dead lucky to have a pup all of his own.

They waited until the voices died away, checked that no one was about and scuttled off back up the lane.

Bessie had five shillings to spend, and Iffy was going with her to buy sweets, but when they got to Morrissey’s shop the blinds were pulled down on the windows, so they went for a walk to pass the time until he opened up.

Iron Row was narrow and dark, it wasn’t a proper street just four little cottages joined together. They would have been pretty if they’d been whitewashed, but they were caked with black dirt and moss grew from the cracks in the walls. There were slates missing off the roofs and the chimneys were crooked.

The flagstones in Iron Row were loose and a smattering of black mud sloshed up over Bessie’s new socks. They were nice socks, shiny white cotton with two pale-pink bands around the tops.

Bessie made it worse by rubbing it. She said her mam would kill her, but she always said that. Her mam hardly ever even told her off.

A skinny brown dog with three legs followed them and tried to sniff up Bessie’s frock. It belonged to Mrs Maloney who lived down in town. She had a husband called Custard Lungs although no one could remember why.

Bessie squealed as the dog’s nose disappeared up her frock.

“Sniff, sniff, sniff,” went the dog.

“Eek, eek, eek!” went Bessie.

She ran round and round in circles trying to get away from him but he thought it was a good game and carried on until he got giddy and fell over. He hopped away down the Row, peeing as he ran.

Two girls came out of the second house along and stood on the step looking them up and down, especially Bessie. They raised their eyebrows at her posh clothes. Done up like a dog’s dinner she was, even for playing out.

Iffy thought they looked a right rough pair of bruisers. They were twins. Red-haired and white-skinned with thin pale-pink lips like kittens.

Bessie stared back at them.

“Don’t stare, Bessie! Look the other way.”

Bessie always gawped and it made people mad.

“Oy, you! You dropped something!” one of the girls shouted as they drew level.

Ifyy didn’t look round, she wasn’t going to fall for that old trick.

Bessie did.

“Too late, the flies are on it!” yelled one of the girls. They laughed and pointed and stuck out their tongues.

Bessie glared at them.

“Keep it shut, Bessie! Just keep on walking.”

“What do they mean, the flies are on it?”

Iffy spoke between clenched teeth, staring straight ahead, “They mean you’ve just shit.”

“Ugh! You dirty filthy pigs!”

The girls were already halfway down the Row.

Iffy pulled Bessie roughly by the arm, “Run, Bessie!”

Bessie was hopeless at running and the twins were hot on their heels. Iffy looked behind her. Their pink eyes were deepening to red, sharp teeth, fists like bananas. The Price twins!

“Shit!”

She’d heard of them. Rosalind and Rosemary Price – they were nutcases – they’d even beaten up Mervyn Prosser. They were gaining on her and Bessie by the second.

Then, suddenly, they stopped dead in their tracks.

“Go on, piss off back up your own end! You carrotty pair of bastards.”

Iffy recognised the old woman as soon as she saw her because she’d met her once with her nan outside the wet fish shop in town. Disappointed, the twins hotfooted it away, back up the Row.

Iffy nudged Bessie, and whispered, “That’s Dulcie Davies.”

“Who?”

Iffy knew loads more people than Bessie did because Bessie’s mam hardly spoke to anyone.

“Dulcie Davies! She’s a lunatic. She used to do
it
with sailors for money and she pees in milk bottles.”

“Ugh.”

Iffy thought it would be hard to pee in a milk bottle.

“Once she took all her clothes off in the Black Prince and danced a hornpipe.”

“She never did! She’s about ninety. Come on, let’s go.”

Dulcie Davies stood on the step of the last house squinting down the Row towards them. Fatty had told Iffy that she ate live eels and fish eggs and sucked raw fish heads like they were sweets. Fatty said he’d seen her and that if you cut open her belly it would be full of millions of tiny fish that had hatched out from all the eggs she’d eaten.

Iffy knew they were trapped: the twins were behind them; Dulcie was in front. She walked on quickly, telling Bessie to look the other way, but they weren’t quick enough. Dulcie Davies came off her step and came towards them. She walked sideways like a crab. She stopped in front of Iffy.

“Come in, pretty girls, and give an old lady a hand to light the fire,” she said, and before they had a chance to run she snapped her bony hand over Iffy’s wrist.

“Don’t go in!” Bessie said.

Dulcie Davies held on to Iffy tightly and though she was nothing but a bag of skinny bones, she was very strong. Iffy grabbed hold of Bessie’s sleeve and tried to drag her along too, but Bessie wriggled her arm out of her fluffy bolero and was off and running, her skinny pins going nineteen to the dozen.

“Just a little hand to light the fire. My poor old hands are too weak to strike the match these days,” Dulcie said.

Too weak! She had a grip like a navvy.

Iffy’s knees shook with fright. Dulcie was a lunatic. Iffy wasn’t sure if she was a dangerous one or not.

The smell inside the house smacked Iffy full in the chops as Dulcie lugged her struggling through the door. It stank in there like nothing she’d ever smelled before. The smells went in through her nose and came out through her ears. Then they went in again. Round and round they went until her whole body was full of them. She felt sick to her stomach. The house was scruffy enough on the outside but inside it was even worse. It was filthy, stinking’ dirty. There was straw on the floor and lumps of dried cat shit. All the walls were cracked and peeling, wooden bits stuck through the broken plaster like the ribs of a ruined ship.

The light inside the house was strange. Green, moving light, as if it was underwater.

The floorboards rolled under Iffy’s feet. The house rocked, pitched and tossed until waves of sick bashed against the inside of her ribs.

Under a table in one corner of the room a red-eyed, scabby cat coughed up fish skeletons in a pile. There was a tin bath standing on an old milking stool, it was full of brown water and scum and bubbled as if it were a magic cauldron.

Dulcie Davies loosened her grip on Iffy’s arm, but not enough for her to escape. She pushed a box of matches towards her. Iffy took them. The box felt damp and greasy. She wasn’t much cop at lighting matches at the best of times. She tried to stop her hands from shaking, but soon a pile of burned matchsticks lay in the hearth.

“We need something to help it along a bit, I fancy,” said Dulcie with a cackle.

She stared into Iffy’s face. Too close for comfort. She smelled of boiling haddock and sardine oil. She had a face like a codfish, round glazed eyes, wet lips and a mouth that opened and closed even when she wasn’t speaking.

“Who are you belonging to?” she said, her mouth close up to Iffy’s.

“M-M-M-Meredith.”

“Old man Meredith from up Inkerman?”

Iffy nodded.

“Brave old bugger, he is…I remember him years ago giving that dirty old doctor a pasting.”

Iffy stared at her.

“Aha! Wop, he went, smack! Took the smile off the evil old bastard’s chops. Whose kiddie are you then?”