2003 - A Jarful of Angels (32 page)
Read 2003 - A Jarful of Angels Online
Authors: Babs Horton
He took out the jar and showed her. Iffy stared at it.
“What’s so special about that?”
It was grimy old jar with a few holes punched in the tin lid. She looked closer, just an empty, steamed-up jar.
Iffy stared at Fatty as though he’d lost his marbles.
“It’s just an empty jar, Fatty.”
He sighed, put the jar down very carefully, and smiled sadly.
“I’m going to follow the river down to the sea.”
“But you can’t!”
It had been a plan of theirs. They’d always said that one day they were going to follow the river down to the sea. They were going to wear wellies and take sandwiches and fishing nets and sleep under the bridges at night. For a month at least. They were just waiting for the right day.
And now Fatty was going all by himself.
“What will you do when you get to the sea?”
“Get on a boat and hide away.”
He was the bravest boy she knew. The bravest boy in Wales and probably in the whole wide world.
“But Fatty…”
“Don’t worry.”
“When are you going?”
“Tonight. About nine. I’ve got to go and see someone first. Can you meet me here? Promise me, though, not a word to anybody mind. I’ve got to trust you this time, Iffy.”
She felt her cheeks go red with shame.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
She left him then, and ran up the hill towards home. Darkness crept up the river like smoke. The windows of Carmel Chapel blazed with the last glow of the sun and turned black.
A light burned in an upstairs window of the Big House. She felt the eyes of the old woman upon her, but she was no longer afraid. She stopped beneath the lamp post by the Dentist’s Stone. She turned around slowly and waved. The old woman waved back, and then the light went out.
The gaslights began to light up the windows of Inkerman. Somewhere a mouse squeaked.
Iffy slipped out of the back door just as the town clock chimed the first stroke of nine. The breeze was cold and she shivered. A dog howled somewhere in the darkness.
“Wee ooh wit!”
She legged it down the hill, over the slippery bank and under the dark archway of the bridge.
Fatty’s face leapt at her from the shadows, glowing in the torchlight.
“I brought you some sandwiches,” she said. “I made them myself. Bread and butter and sugar. Your favourite,”
“Thanks, Iffy.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Goosegog size.
“Please don’t go.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go, but I promise I’ll be back for you.”
She didn’t believe him.
“Remember the wish you made that night, Iffy?”
“You don’t know what I wished.”
He smiled.
“I’m gonna try and make it come true for you.”
“But you can’t.”
“You’ll understand sometime, Iffy. I’ve got to go.”
His eyes gleamed in the torchlight and she knew that she would always love him.
He blew her a kiss. A steamy kiss that wafted from his warm fingers. That kiss was fragrant with the beautiful smell of bubblegum and horse shit and a million other things.
She tried to smile, but the emptiness of a world without him was too awful to bear. She rubbed the tears from her eyes with the back of her freezing fists and swallowed the lump in her throat, the size of a plum.
Fatty plonked a smacker right on her lips.
Then he was gone. She touched her lips. They buzzed with the heat of him. She watched as he sloped off into the moonlight. Watched as he walked away down the river, past all the farms that she didn’t yet know the name of, all the way down the valley that led to the sea that she had never seen.
The moon was full. Agnes Medlicott stood behind the curtains of the upstairs window of the Big House looking down into the darkness below. The statues in the garden gleamed in the silvery light which dripped through the wavering trees. The water in the fishpond reflected the stars.
She knew now that she had been right to come back. She thought that she’d probably always known the truth, but hadn’t wanted to admit to it. It was one thing to be married to a philanderer, but her husband had been much more wicked than that.
It had happened while she’d been away for a few days. When she came back he’d told her about Kat, only he hadn’t told her the whole truth. He’d said Kat had been pregnant and had given birth early. The midwife, Mrs Bevan had helped him with the delivery, but the baby girl had been born dead.
Agnes Medlicott had thought at first it was his baby, but now she knew that it wasn’t. She had never seen Kat again. He’d said it was imperative to get Kat away, save her from scandal and she had gone away. The baby had been buried beneath the lilac bush and no one had known except Ellen Bevan and he’d paid her handsomely for her trouble. But Agnes knew now! She’d dug up the lilac bush and uncovered the box. It had held no remnants of a dead baby only a pile of old love letters.
Ekaterina had been sent back to Spain having been told that the baby had died! That poor, poor girl. Agnes knew what it was like to lose a child. How could he have been so cruel. No doubt he’d taken great pleasure in telling Kat of her lover’s suicide.
And then that night she had seen the child with her own eyes, the very spit of her mother. Dear God! Looking at Iffy through the gate was like looking at Kat all over again!
And the boy. That beautiful, brave boy. That day when he’d crept through the pipe, she hadn’t meant to scare him so. She’d kept him safe. She’d lied to the Inspector. He was a nice man, a good man and she’d felt bad about it, but she’d respected the boy’s wishes to keep silent.
She saw the movement down by the bridge.
She had said goodbye to Fatty earlier, had given him plenty of money, a map, Ekaterina’s last known address in Valencia and then she’d locked the door to the air-raid shelter for the last time.
Moonlight fell on the boy’s face as he turned to wave back at the bridge. The light picked out his eyes, a glistening blue-black blur. She knew that he was crying. Then he turned and walked away down the river bank into the night.
It was the last time she would ever set eyes on him. She waved from the darkness of the window knowing he couldn’t see her. She waved until her arm grew numb and the numbness spread through all her body.
I
t was winter. The snow lay thick on the Sirhowy Road, puddles of ice gleamed in the pale winter sunlight and the river was a twist of frosted glass. As they passed the gates to the Big House Mr Sandicock stepped out in front of them.
“Here,” he said gruffly to Iffy. “Mrs Medlicott has saved you some more of those postcards with the foreign stamps you collect.”
“Thanks, Mr Sandicock,” said Iffy, and she took the brown paper bag containing the postcards that he held out to her and put them quickly in the pocket of her gabardine mac.
She had loads of them now. She had memorised all the post marks.
Santander
Bilbao
Calahorra
Logrono
Zaragoza
Teruel
She loved the sound of the foreign names and just saying them made her shiver with pleasure.
She looked up at the upstairs window in the Big House. She and Billy waved every time they passed, but the old woman was too weak to wave back. Iffy knew that something unseen passed between her and Mrs Medlicott, a silent message of hope.
She sat there for hours every day in her bath chair staring down the valley. She was very ill and the doctor called every day and sometimes the figure of a nurse could be seen standing behind her chair. Iffy’d heard Mrs Bunting tell Nan that Mrs Medlicott had had a stroke and could no longer speak, or do anything for herself, couldn’t even understand what was going on around her.
But they were wrong.
Each time a postcard arrived Mrs Medlicott knew that Fatty was a step closer to his destination. When old Sandicock handed them over to Iffy she knew too. It was their secret: that the bravest boy in Wales and probably the whole wide world had nearly made it.
Iffy and Billy passed the rec, climbed the stile and struggled through the drifts of snow in Dancing Duck Lane. They pressed their small noses up against the dirt-streaked windows of Carty Annie’s lopsided house. Their hot breath made rivulets in the grime on the cracked panes as they strained to see inside.
It was dark inside the gloomy kitchen. Ice hung on the cobwebbed curtains. Sunlight slipped into the kitchen and the cobwebs dripped with silver light. Iffy held her breath and clasped Billy’s hand tight.
The large pickling jar stood on the dresser between filthy cracked cups and the leery-eyed Toby jugs.
Holding tightly to one another Iffy and Billy saw with their own wide eyes what Fatty had seen. There, on the dresser, inside the misty jar, the tiny bodies of captive angels writhed and danced an agitated dance. The small, angry faces stared out at them. Their eyes were bright and wild in their pale faces, their sharp, pearly teeth glinted in the sunlight.
“Fuckin’ Ada!” said Billy.
Iffy turned and stared at him.
His words echoed all around.
Iffy’s wild laughter rang out on the crisp cold air. As she hugged Billy she felt the spirit of Fatty all around her.
And then they ran, flying away down the lane as the snow began to fall thick and fast.
The town clock chimed. The moon was high and full. A milky white moon spinning over the mountains. Somewhere on a hill farm a dog barked.
Will pulled on his jacket and put a torch into his pocket. As he was going downstairs his landlady appeared.
“Mr Sloane!”
He turned around in alarm.
“This letter came for you. Marlene Baker handed it over the bar and asked me to make sure you got it. They’ve rushed her mother into hospital, so she couldn’t wait to see you.”
“Is she all right?”
“Apparently she’s had a massive heart attack. There’s not much hope I’m afraid.”
Will took the bulky envelope from her and slipped it into his pocket.
“Thank you.”
He walked up through the deserted town, past the darkened windows of Gladys’s Gowns and on past Zeraldo’s café. He stepped into the archway of the bridge and stood there in the moving blackness. Then he shone his torch over the roof of the bridge.
GEORGE LOVES BRIDGET
CM LOVES EVO
EVO LOVES CM
LB 4 EGM
MERVYN PROSSER IS A FAT BASTARD
Ekaterina Velasco Olivares loves Charlie Meredith.
Will knew that Charlie Meredith had died at the hands of Dr Medlicott. He guessed that the suicide note would have been cobbled together from the letters that Charlie had sent Ekaterina. He had found the letters in the box in the shelter and had read them in his room. They were heart-breaking. He’d found out enough about Charlie Meredith from reading them to know that he had truly loved Ekaterina. He knew the plans they’d been making to run away and make a life for themselves and their baby. Ekaterina would not have left her baby behind.
Something must have happened.
He had also looked through the battered old suitcase that Sister Immaculata had unearthed for him from the convent attic and had held in his hands the mildewed pile of regulation convent cotton drawers and vests, the grey school socks, aertex shirts and flannel games shorts.
Beneath the sensible viyella nightdresses he had found an odd assortment of articles. Reminders of Iffy’s home in Inkerman Terrace: a green glass bottle of holy water from Lourdes and an empty wooden biscuit barrel. And, last of all, wrapped in tissue paper that disintegrated at his touch, a pair of ruined red sandals and a twisted red and white cricket belt.
He’d always known that Iffy Meredith had lied to him.
What was it that Bessie Tranter had said? That Fatty was always talking about running away and making his fortune and coming back for Iffy. She’d said he was sweet on Iffy.
And he had come back for her! Mervyn Prosser had seen her down by the docks talking to a boy.
Will’s one unsolved case was resolved. And yet, instead of euphoria, he felt an awful sense of deflation. His last great challenge was over and all he had left to contemplate was death.
Will turned off the torch and left the dark shadow of the bridge.
Somewhere in the grounds of the Big House an owl hooted as he walked on past the padlocked gates. He passed the rec where the roundabout turned slowly in the moonlight. For a moment he thought he heard the sound of children’s voices. A cool wind blew up the valley from the faraway sea.
He climbed over the rotting stile and stopped in alarm. He thought he saw the shadow of a body hanging from the gnarled old tree, but it was just a trick of the moonlight. He walked on down the silent lane. Dancing Duck Lane.
He turned on his torch. Only the rubble remained of an old house.
He stood there in the moonlight for a long time, then felt in his pocket for the envelope and shone the torch onto the crumpled paper.
Dear Will,
My time is coming to an end. All potions have their sell-by dates. I think you may, by now, be nearing the end of your search. I have enclosed a photograph for you. Somehow I felt it was important. Ellen Bevan, she was Ophelia, you know. And a very beautiful one.
Will held the photograph in his trembling hand. A yellowing photograph cut from an old theatre programme.
He looked with astonishment at the woman in the photograph and felt his throat constrict with emotion.
He read on.
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, that would not let me sleep…There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will…
A quotation from
Hamlet
.
Will, she gave you a little love and comfort in your time of need. You gave some back and then, out of guilt, you steeped yourself in grief. Forgive yourself now.
Look at her face and remember. Look at her face and know.
He had betrayed his wife. He had taken another woman in his arms. He’d met her on a routine call at the home for bad girls. They’d arranged to meet for a drink. Jenny she’d said her name was, he’d never known her second name. It hadn’t been love but it had been comfort of a sort. Afterwards he’d felt suffused with shame and guilt.
With a heavy heart he read the last lines of the letter.
When I first saw you, you reminded me of someone. Now I know without a doubt who that someone is. I pray, Will, with all my heart that you have time enough left…
Tears clouded his eyes, the writing on the page wobbled and blurred. He wiped his eyes and tried to focus. His hands shook uncontrollably, his heartbeat was erratic.
I pray, Will, with all my heart that you have time enough left to find him, because Will, your son, Lawrence Bevan, is out there somewhere.
They were Gladys Baker’s last words to him.
The moonlight was growing brighter. Dandelion clocks, stinging nettles and yellow poppies grew in wild profusion. He took out a bottle from the envelope and turned it over in his hands. Gladys Baker had asked Marlene to make him up a bottle of Carty Annie’s herbal brew.
He unscrewed the top, put the bottle to his lips and drank. He only hoped it would work and he would have enough time left to find the boy.
The long lost boy.
His son.
All those achingly long years of loneliness after his wife had died. All those years he’d punished himself. And yet…
The emptiness that had filled him up for so long evaporated now in the moonlight.
His heart beat steadily for the first time in many years. He felt the warm blood pumping through his veins.
Dear God. Out there, out there somewhere at the end of all this darkness was his son.
My son.
My son.
My own flesh and blood.
Not a boy any more now. He must be at least…No, it didn’t matter how old he was. He was his very own boy.
Will looked up at the moon. A huge spinning moon in a dark starless sky. And as he looked he thought for a moment that a red kite crossed it. One bright star splintered the darkness way above the moon. Then another, until there were four stars in the night sky. Stars as bright as ice, hot as molten silver.
The red kite slashed the moon.
One star wobbled and left the sky. The space where it had been glowed brightly for a few seconds. The star fell towards the spinning earth.
He dropped down onto his knees, ran his fingers through the damp soil and let it trickle through his fingers. There in the coal-black earth he found the splintered remnants of tiny bones and the fragments of a hundred broken jars. Jars that once held so terrible and marvellous a secret.
He stood up slowly.
Tomorrow he would follow the river down towards the faraway sea to search out his own miracle.
