2006 - Wildcat Moon (2 page)

That was rubbish, though, and even if it was true, Benjamin would hate being stuck up on a fluffy cloud with a bunch of half-baked angels playing the harp and singing hymns. Benjamin hadn’t believed in all that stuff and he had never set foot in Rhoskilly Church until he had no choice.

He’d said that religion was mostly all bloody mumbo jumbo and that it was just to keep poor people in their place, keep tugging their forelocks and saying yes sir, no sir, three bloody bags full sir…

Archie jumped in alarm then as the seagull lifted off the chimney of Hogwash House and flew screaming over the rooftops of the Skallies.

He turned his eyes angrily away from the window and wiped his tears on the frayed cuffs of his shirt.

He was a big boy now, ten and a bit, too old to believe in daft stuff like magic. Or miracles. Or God. God never listened to anything you said to him. However much you prayed he took no notice. Like he had an earache from all that listening and had stuffed his ears with olive oil and cotton wool.

The dead didn’t come back to life. And that was a fact.

Benjamin Tregantle was dead and buried in Rhoskilly graveyard amongst the chipped cherubs and blackened headstones. He was buried in the grave next to Old Mr Greswode who used to live in Killivray House. Everyone said that they’d both turn in their graves because Benjamin and Old Greswode had been sworn enemies and used to cross the road to avoid each other.

Archie closed the window quietly. He opened the cupboard where he kept his few toys and lifted down the box that contained his Detective Kit. He lay belly down on the bed and opened the box. He’d been so excited when he’d found it in his Christmas sack last year. It was like lots of things, though, the outside of the box promised buckets full of excitement but when you opened the box it wasn’t quite like they’d promised it would be. It was a rubbish toy really. He tipped the contents out onto the bed.

There was a magnifying glass, a pair of broken handcuffs that Benjamin had had to saw off Archie’s wrists because he’d put them on and locked them and dropped the keys down a crack in the floorboards.

It was so embarrassing, a detective being locked in his own handcuffs.

There was a wallet, a fountain pen and a recipe for making invisible ink. You had to follow the recipe and then fill the pen up with it and write secret letters. That experiment had been a disaster too. He’d written a letter to Cissie Abelson and told her to warm the letter and see the writing appear like magic, just like it said in the instructions. He should have realized you don’t tell someone who’s not right in the head to play with fire. She’d held the letter over a candle flame, set light to the bedroom curtains and singed half her hair off.

Cissie was real nice but wasn’t much cop as a detective’s deputy, not the sort of Dr Watson he’d have chosen.

He hadn’t been able to solve one single mystery, he hadn’t even found one to solve in nearly a whole year!

Nothing exciting ever happened in the Skallies.

It was dead boring.

He turned over onto his back and stared miserably up at the ceiling for a long time until he drifted off into a fitful sleep.

He woke later at the sound of the wireless being turned off downstairs and he heard the click of his mammy’s ruined knees as she climbed the steep stairs.

She paused on the landing, called out as she always did, “Night, Arch, sleep tight, love.”

“Night, Mammy.”

“Be sure to say your prayers and keep the window dosed, mind, or youll have your death of cold. There’s mention of bad storms tonight on the wireless.”

“I’ve closed the window and I won’t forget my prayers.”

“There’s a beautiful full moon tonight Arch. Take a look and make a wish before you go to sleep.”

“I will.”

He sat up suddenly at her words.

There’s a beautiful full moon tonight
…

The first full moon since old Benjamin Tregantle had died.

Bloody hell!

With a jolt he recalled old Benjamin’s strange words to him, the very last time they had been together. Benjamin had been away for a few weeks and just got back and they’d been down on the beach collecting driftwood.

“When I’m dead and gone, Arch,” he’d said, “I want you to do something for me, boy.”

“Don’t talk about dying, Benjamin,” Archie had replied.

“Death’s nothing to be afraid of, Archie…You been dead before, haven’t you?”

“No.”

“Course you have. You’re alive now and before you were born you must have been dead, stands to reason. And that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“But I can’t remember before I was born.”

“You’d remember, though, if it were bad, wouldn’t you, you silly young bugger!”

That was the thing Archie had loved about Benjamin, he made you think about things in a different way. He wasn’t like the other grown-ups. Most of them had their minds made up about what they believed but not Benjamin.

“When the first full moon comes after I’m gone, take yourself down to the wobbly chapel, Arch, you might be lucky, find yourself a proper mystery to solve there, a real piece of detective work.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Most of us don’t understand what’s really important but you’ve a good head on you, Archie Grimble. You’re a scholar and a gentleman, the type of boy who could find out things like a proper detective if you put your mind to it and stopped being so afraid of every bloody thing.”

“But no one’s allowed to go in the wobbly chapel, it isn’t safe, and anyhow, it’s locked.”

“There are no secrets locked away in this world that the curious can’t find a key to open up.”

He listened to the sound of the shutters being closed in his mammy’s room, the soft rustle and the breathless puffing as she pulled on her voluminous winceyette nightdress.

He heard the scrape of her rough heels on starched sheets as she climbed into bed, the slither of the threadbare eiderdown as she pulled it up over her enormous bosom. The sound of her false teeth clinking, sinking like a holed boat down to the bottom of the glass that stood on the bedside table. Once she’d had beautiful teeth but the porker had knocked them out over the years.

Mammy settling down in the big, high bed where they’d once slept together on winter nights. That was in the good old days when the hairy porker had been away sewing mail-bags up London way.

He imagined Mammy dosing her eyes. Her red raw hands clasped tightly together. Lisping prayers.

Prayers for Archie’s gammy leg and his wonky eye.

Prayers that his father, Walter the Pig, wouldn’t come back from the Pilchard Inn dead drunk again tonight and start his antics.

Then the hushed secret prayers for her long-dead sister whose name was never mentioned out loud.

Her name was just a lisp of a name, like wind blowing through the long grass of the sand dunes.

Lissia.

Archie opened the bedroom door and stepped out on to the landing. Through the arched window that faced out to sea he could see the full moon. A huge moon bursting at the seams, hovering in the peat-black sky.

It was so beautiful it made the tears prick again.

There was no point in wishing, though. Wishing was daft; it was kids’ stuff.

Oh God, there was no way that he could keep his promise to Benjamin and go down to the wobbly chapel in the pitch dark. It was too terrifying.

There were ghosts that roamed the Skallies at night Loads of them. Donald Kelly had seen one down by the Pilchard Inn. It was naked and it had no head and chains around its ankles.

There was a Spanish pirate too with one eye and hooks where his hands should have been.

But the worst one of all was the Killivray ghost A great big black fellow who came wandering down through the grounds of Killivray House, moaning and sobbing and wringing his hands.

It made Archie feel sick with fright to even think about it.

He’d promised Benjamin, though.

Why had he when there wasn’t a hope in hell of him keeping a promise like that?

And why had Benjamin asked him? He should have asked one of the Kelly boys, they were all daredevils. They weren’t afraid of anything or anyone, except mad Gwennie.

Everyone knew Archie Grimble was a coward. He was famous for it.

Archie Grimble is a bloody big bobby
.

Archie Grimble wears nappies and suckson a titty bottle
.

He’d promised, though, with his hand on his heart.

“You’ll find a bunch of keys in the porch of my house, on the third hook along from the door; take them and keep them safe. After I’m gone they’ll belong to you. And anything they open, Arch, will be yours.”

The wobbly chapel had been closed up for years because it was dangerous, about to tumble into the sea at any moment. And why had Benjamin got the keys to the chapel? He’d had no time for churches and stuff like that.

It was no good. He couldn’t do it.

But a promise was a promise. You must honour the wishes of the dead.

Archie waited until it was quiet in Mammy’s room. When he was sure that she was asleep he sat down on the side of his bed and put on an extra jersey. It was cold enough inside the house tonight but out in the Skallies it would be perishing.

He pulled a pair of old, darned fisherman’s socks over his boots and up over his calliper so as not to make too much noise.

He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them on his jersey and put them back on. Then he took the tiny silver capsule that contained the battered saint from beneath his mattress and pushed it down into the pocket of his shorts. For good luck.

Finally he made his way awkwardly down the stairs and let himself quietly out of the front door and into the wild windy night.

Up in the nursery in Killivray House Romilly Greswode lay in bed, ears pricked for any noises.

Downstairs in the drawing room a decanter clinked. Crystal on crystal. Whisky on ice. Muffled voices.

A stray dog barked nervously over in the disused stables.

Romilly sniffed the air warily, just the usual nursery smells: mothballs and starch; cold cocoa; goose fat and liniment to ward off chills.

There was just a faint whiff of something different tonight though.

Midnight in Paris
.

Mama’s perfume still lingering after a hurried goodnight kiss. Perfume and held-back tears.

More ice clinking downstairs. More whisky.

Papa has been home for two whole nights and he is angry again.

Papa is always angry.

Tomorrow Mama is going away again for the sake of her nerves. And a new governess is coming.

Boo!

Miss Naylor, the old governess, has left Hooray!

Miss Naylor was a bossy britches and smelled of cold cream and damp woollen vests. Once Nanny Bea whispered to Miss Naylor that Mama was a blousy trollop.

Romilly rolled the words around on her tongue.

Trollop. Trollop. Trollop.

Blousy. Blousy. Blousy. .

Mama is a blousy trollop.

Nanny Bea smells of cough drops and dying roses. She wears a hairnet at night and has varicose veins that look like swollen rivers beneath her skin.

Nanny Bea was Papa’s Nanny when he was a little boy and she does not like Mama although she pretends to.

Romilly sniffed again and then drew in her breath sharply.

There it was, the peculiar smell growing stronger, a strong musty whiff of a smell. The smell she dreaded most of all.

The smell of tigers on the prowl.

Nanny Bea said that on a damp day the house still stinks of tiger’s piss that no amount of scrubbing can remove.

Romilly shivered.

Once, when Great Grandpa Greswode was alive, Killivray House had been full of wild animals that he had brought back from foreign places.

There were servants with black faces at Killivray then and there were parrots in the drawing room and peacocks on the lawn. Monkeys with red fez hats climbed the shelves in the library and fat snakes coiled in wicker laundry baskets frightened the scullery maids.

And once a baby elephant ran amok, crashing through the rhododendrons and flattening the pergola.

Amok is one of Romilly’s favourite words. She would like to run amok.

She would like to turn cartwheels down the smooth striped lawns, swing through the branches of the horse chestnut trees, kick cow pats and roll over and over in the mud at the end of the far field.

She would like to take off her clothes and run into the cool sea on a hot summer’s day.

All of Great Grandpa Greswode’s animals were dead now; some of them had been stuffed and given awful eyes made of glass.

But sometimes in the night, the animals come alive again and stalk the corridors of Killivray House.

Mama once said they should have had Great Grandpa Greswode stuffed and mounted in the study.

Romilly is glad that they hadn’t. If they had then he may have walked at night too, like the animals did. Great Grandpa Greswode is buried in the overgrown graveyard beneath a giant stone angel with feathered wings. She was put there to keep a lid on him, making sure that he can’t get out.

Charles Lewis Lloyd Greswode.

Romilly stiffened.

From across the room the black and white rocking horse eyed Romilly fearfully, the whites of his eyes bright in the moonlit room.

He could smell tigers a mile off. They spooked him.

The one-eared teddy bear perched oh the window seat stared ahead unfazed.

The tiny light inside the dolls’ house illuminated the lattice window panes.

All was safe inside there.

Romilly wished that she could magic herself so tiny that she could go in through the little front door, climb the stairs, and get beneath the pretty pink gingham counterpane in the spare bedroom.

Inside the house the doll people would be sleeping soundly. The mother and father dolls were cuddled up snugly beneath their pink and blue patchwork quilt.

In the nursery two identical girl children slept in single beds. Sisters. A black and white collie dog was curled up in a basket in the corner of the room.

Up in the attic the two maids were asleep, lying top to tail, their wooden feet and mob caps peeping out from beneath the grey blankets.