Great Meadow Read online

  DIRK BOGARDE

  GREAT MEADOW

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Author’s Note

  This book is for

  LALLY

  and to the memory of my parents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  It really wasn’t the sort of morning on which rotten things are supposed to happen.

  All the way up from the little iron gate at the bottom of Great Meadow the larks were singing like anything. The sun was hot and the leaves on the elder and ash at the edge of the gully had just started to turn yellowy-goldish, because it was going to be September in a minute although you would hardly have known it, it was so beautiful.

  The high grasses were full of crickets and grasshoppers and the field curved away up towards the sky, soft and smooth and fawn as a deer’s back. Only very little clouds drifted in high above from the sea at Cuckmere and sort of got melted away by the warm breeze which came in the other way from the Weald.

  We didn’t really know much about the witch. We had spoken to her once, years ago, with all her cats round her. She had been quite nice and showed us a sort of shell thing with Bombay written on it, which is a town in India, because we had given her a bit of a help with some wood for her fire. But that was all, and she didn’t put a spell on us, as far as we knew, although my sister did get the measles a bit later on and I didn’t, which was jolly lucky for me. But that was the only time we’d been really close. I mean, we never spoke again or anything like that.

  We sometimes used to see her hurrying along, shoulders all hunched up in a very witchy way, and her old black felt hat pulled down right to her eyes looking exactly like half an egg, which is why we called her Eggshell, although we actually knew that her real name was Nellie Wardle. She never spoke to us, or even looked, and we didn’t dare speak to her in case of something funny happening. You couldn’t be sure with witches. She just went on past, wagging her head from side to side and muttering awful-sounding things to herself in her long black draggly coat which was really quite green if you saw it in the sunlight, which we didn’t often because she mostly came out at dusk. With the bats. Witches do.

  We never went back to the caravan on Red Barn Hill where she lived with all those cats, because it was a pretty creepy, lonely sort of place, and if you had been ‘spelled’ there no one would ever have known about it.

  But sometimes we saw her on Fridays when Fred the Fish drove in from Newhaven in his shiny little Morris van. We’d be able to see her quite close to, because after everyone had bought what they wanted, and Fred was clearing up his boxes and the big brass scales, she used to get a fat parcel of fish heads and skin and stuff wrapped up in newspaper which he gave her for her cats.

  And that’s how we knew that she was dead.

  This Friday he was scraping the guts and so on into a bucket, and I was putting our herrings into the red and black shopping-bag, and I said to him, ‘Are you saving all those bits for Mrs Wardle’s cats?’

  ‘No. No more I don’t. She’s gorn.’ And he went on wiping his chopping-board.

  My sister looked very shocked and said, ‘Gorn where?’ Which would have got her a box on the ears if Lally had heard her. He just shrugged and said, ‘Gorn,’ again, but he didn’t know where for certain.

  ‘There’s two places, ain’t there?’ he said. ’There’s your Heaven and there’s your Hell. Who can tell where she’s skipped to?’

  My sister looked quite white and said, ‘There’s the other place too . . . the Purgatory place, isn’t there?’

  He wrung out his cloth, squeezed it quite dry and said that was Life. Not death. And then we knew that she was dead. Of course, we had really known as soon as he had said, ‘Gorn.’ I mean we knew it wasn’t to Sea-ford or Hastings or somewhere, but much worse. And further.

  But dead. It seemed very final, sort of. We were quite miserable when we went across to Baker’s the confectioner’s to get Lally her Fry’s chocolate bar and us our Sherbert Dabs. Miss Annie said, ‘Yes, pore soul, didn’t: you know? Jack Diplock found her on the path with all her cats sitting round her, dead as the Dodo.’ She said she reckoned she’d gorn just in time to get ready for the haunting at the end of October.

  But we didn’t take much notice of Miss Annie, who was nice but ‘not all there’, Lally said, ever since she had carried a full pail of petrol from the pump outside the shop into the parlour to sponge out some stains from her father’s best suit, in front of the open range. There was a most terrific bang and Miss Annie and the parlour window and most of the wall and a quite big armchair blew themselves right into the middle of the market square. Which caused a terrible fuss and broke everybody’s window as far away as Sloop Lane. She was in the hospital for a very long time and when she came out they said that she had a ‘dicky’ heart and that her poor head was a bit addled. So we didn’t take much notice of what she said really, on account of her being not quite right in the upper storey, as Lally said quite kindly. Anyway, we didn’t believe about the haunting part and Hallowe’en. That was soppy.

  But it was pretty sad about the witch being dead, especially on such a lovely morning. Of course, we did know about people being dead, but we actually didn’t know very many who were. So that made it worse about Nellie Wardle, because we did know her, and had spoken to her even.

  We clambered over the rickety iron fence behind the privy, walked down through the vegetable garden, and when we got to the lean-to, a sort of wooden creosoted shed stuck on to the side of the cottage where we kept sacks of potatoes, marrows, long tresses of onions, and all sorts of things we hadn’t got room for in the kitchen, we heard Lally’s voice quite loudly coming through the open window. She was singing ‘Moonlight and Roses’, which was one of her two favourites. So we knew she was in a very cheerful mood, and this would make it difficult to tell her the sad news.

  She got to the door just as we arrived, with a big stone gallon jar of ginger beer in her arms.

  ‘There you are, then. Dawdling, I’ll be bound. It’s almost eleven and you’ve been gone a fortnight.’ She shut the lean-to door and we all went into the kitchen. But we hadn’t said anything.

  The kitchen was very cool and shady with its red brick floor and bumpy whitewashed walls. We put the shopping-bag on the table, and the little list she had written for Mr Wilde, the grocer, and the change from my pocket.

  ‘My word,’ she said. ‘Mr and Mrs Glum we are. You haven’t got into mischief, you two, have you? Speak up if you have or forever hold your peace.’

  ‘No. We haven’t got into mischief,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got something beastly to tell you.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, standing the big stone jar on the draining-board. ‘And what’s that then? One of you fell into a cow pat, that it?’

  ‘No. It’s not anything like that. But it’s very sad, and perhaps you’d better sit down before we tell you.’

  ‘Sit down!’ she said, quite crossly but looking a bit worried too. You could see that easily. ‘Why should I sit down, pray?’

  ‘Because you might have a turn if you get a shock.’

  ‘You’ve lost the change from my ten-shilling note?’

  ‘No. It’s there, on the table.’

  ‘Well, what is it then? Come along, I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘Well . . .’ said my sister. ‘It’s about the witch.’

  ‘What witch?’

  ‘Who lived up in the caravan on Red Barn Hill.’

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p; We thought that would give her bit of an idea, saying ‘who lived’. But it didn’t.

  ‘I don’t know any witch who lives in any caravan,’ said Lally firmly.

  ‘Eggshell,’ I said. ‘She did.’

  ‘Oh! Nellie Wardle.’ She seemed quite relieved and started to unpack the red and black shopping-bag. ‘You got the herrings, I am hoping?’

  ‘Yes. And the roes.’

  ‘Soft ones or hard?’

  ‘Soft. He said you liked them better.’

  ‘And so I do, and so do you . . . on toast.’ She set the packages on the table and went over to the dresser for a plate. ‘What’s going to give me a turn, I’d like to know if you don’t very much mind, about Nellie Wardle then?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ I said quickly. ‘Jack Diplock found her lying on the path with all her cats round her. Dead.’

  ‘That your sad news then?’ She was unwrapping the herrings and slipping them on to the big Lowestoft plate.

  ‘Yes. Don’t you think it’s sad?’

  She lifted the plate to her nose and had a good sniff. ‘Fresh as fresh,’ she said and covered them with a clean cloth. ‘Of course it’s sad. Always is when someone is deceased. Very sad. But she passed away weeks ago. That’s old news to me.’

  ‘Weeks! Fred the Fish only said today about it.’

  ‘Fred the Fish doesn’t live here, does he? Lives over Southease . . . and you don’t see him that often.’ She started unwrapping the soft roes, and put them into a small pudding basin with a saucer on top and went to the meat-safe on the wall by the sink. ‘Mrs Fluke told me when I was in Wood’s last week. It clean slipped my mind. Anyway, it was probably a happy release for the poor soul, all on her own, damp and cold up on that hill. You know what it’s like in the fog up there, don’t you? And she had no kith or kin . . .just herself.’

  ‘What’s kith or kin?’ said my sister, pulling up her socks, which had got all runkled from hurrying up the hill.

  ‘Oh. Uncles and aunts. Mothers and fathers. Relations.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘None. No one could find anyone. Beattie Fluke and Doris Pratt went to the churchyard, just for the look of things.’

  ‘What a dreadful thing. To have no one in the whole world when you are dead,’ said my sister. ‘But I suppose she wouldn’t have, would she, if she was really a witch.’

  Lally had put the herring roes away in the meat-safe and was washing her hands at the sink. ‘Now, let’s have no more of this silly business about witches. Nellie Wardle was a poor unhappy old woman, and that’s no cause for you to poke fun at her.’

  ‘It’s not fun,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit frightening really . . .’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense. You’ve been got at by the village children. I’ve told you and told you, they’ll fill your head with all kinds of balderdash. Now get from under my feet, I’ve a busy morning what with young Master Bromley coming in on the six o’clock and your lunch to cook. And I hope you got the currants or no cake for tea.’

  Brian Scott Bromley was a bit boring. He was one year older than me, and his father worked with our father at The Times. He was half an orphan because his mother had died one day, so he went to boarding-school, and we didn’t really like him very much. But he was coming to stay for a week with us before the summer finished because his father had gone off and married another lady and they had gone to somewhere in France for a holiday, and he was alone. So our mother said come and stay with us at the cottage, we would love it. But we really rather hated it. I mean people staying. You always had to do what they wanted, at least if Lally was about, and never what you wanted. It seemed very unfair. And Brian Scott Bromley was a bit showy-offy. And spoke in a very soppy voice, which was, Lally said, because he went to boarding-school, but she thought it was very nice and gentlemanly. We thought it was ghastly, but we had to be a bit nice because he had a secondhand mother, instead of the one he had got used to, and we had both of our parents, which was pretty lucky, except we only had one set of grandparents, which worried my sister very much indeed.

  ‘About kith and kin,’ she said, settling herself down beside me under the elderberry bush up by the privy. ‘It’s a bit muddly. How many ought you to have, then?’

  ‘As many as you like. I mean, it doesn’t matter. They just happen.’

  ‘But we’ve only got two grandparents, haven’t we, so that’s a bit wonky, isn’t it. Anyway, they’re our mother’s and they live in awful Scotland in the mist or something.’

  ‘Our father hasn’t got any. Only Granny Nutt, and she doesn’t count really.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s not really our grandmother, she’s our father’s aunt. But she just says she’s our grandmother so that we don’t feel out of it.’

  ‘Out of what?’ said my sister, eating a handful of elderberries and spitting the pips out all over my bare knee. So I hit her and she started coughing.

  ‘It’s very silly to do that to a person who is eating things. They could choke.’

  ‘Well, you spat all over my knee. Look. Pips everywhere.’

  ‘I don’t like the pips. Do you mean our father is a orphan then? These aren’t ripe yet.’

  ‘Yes. Except we don’t know if his father is dead or not. Just disappeared in the jungle or somewhere. Perhaps he is. Then he would be an orphan. And you have to say “an” orphan, not “a”.’

  ‘Why?’ said my sister.

  ‘I don’t know. But you have to. It’s the rules.’

  ‘You just make up your own rules. I know. Oh! It’s such a rotten day. The witch being dead, Brian Scott Bromley coming to stay, and we haven’t got enough kith and kin and I bet you Brian Scott Bromley’s new mother is wicked. Bet you.’

  ‘Why should she be?’

  ‘Because she’s his stepmother, silly, and stepmothers are. That poor Snow White girl had a dreadful one. And she turned into a witch pretty quickly.’

  From the elderberry bush you could see almost all the back of the cottage and the orchard part. Only it wasn’t really an orchard, just about four or five big old trees – and the apples were getting quite red already except for on the Granny Smith, and they never got red, just yellowy-green, and there was a big bunch of mistletoe on one. Lally said we’d have a bit in the house for Christmas, because this year, which was terrifically good, we were going to have Christmas at the cottage, and not in boring old London, for a treat.

  I felt quite cheerful thinking of that and I began not to mind Brian Scott Bromley coming, because at least he wasn’t coming at Christmas.

  ‘Isn’t it funny,’ said my sister, undoing her sandal and pulling at her sock, which had got all ruckled under her foot. ‘Isn’t it funny about Mrs Fluke and Mrs Pratt going to the churchyard?’

  ‘I don’t see why. People do at funerals and things.’

  ‘But being a witch, she ought to have been buried at the crossroads, with a huge big wooden stick stuck in her.’

  ‘You heard what Lally said. She isn’t a witch. We just made her one.’

  ‘And what about the haunting Miss Annie said about? At Hallowe’en? If they had stuck a stick in her she wouldn’t be able to haunt, would she.’

  ‘It’s all silly. You know Miss Annie isn’t right in the head.’

  ‘The top storey,’ said my sister, and pulled off her other sandal. ‘Oh dear! I do wish this Brian wasn’t coming. I wonder what happened to all her cats?’

  I wondered too. There would be no one to feed them now and that made me feel a bit miserable, especially as Fred the Fish just shoved all the guts and things into a bucket and no one would have taken them to the cats who, probably, were starving. I felt miserable and forgot about Christmas because it was ages and ages away and this was today. And I should have asked him for them for our cat, Minnehaha.

  ‘Perhaps we could go up to the caravan, with Brian Thingummy. And see.’

  ‘See what?’ My sister looked quite worried and waved a sock in the air.

  �
�About her cats? If they were all starving or something.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare. I wouldn’t simply dare go up there ever again. You can go. With Brian.’

  ‘Well . . .’ I said, not feeling very comfortable. ‘Perhaps I might then.’

  It was shepherd’s pie and runner beans for lunch, and Daddies Sauce. Which was a particular treat because it was never allowed in the dining-room when our parents were there, which seemed a pity because it had a quite interesting picture on it of a very happy mother and father and their children, and the father was smiling like anything and holding the bottle of sauce. That’s why it was called Daddies, you see. But it was very good sauce anyway, and it went down a treat, as Lally said, with a bit of shepherd’s pie. And then there was treacle tart for pudding, only because it was still summertime, and we’d had it hot the day before. We had it cold with clotted cream from the Court Dairy, and it was really pretty good, all sticky and crinkly.

  I was quite enjoying everything until Lally said suddenly, ‘And I hope you’ve got the hole dug.’

  ‘Hole?’ said my sister making a place with her spoon in the cream so that she could see the treacle on her bit of tart. ‘What hole?’

  ‘Don’t come the Madam Ostrich with me, my girl. You know very well what hole.’

  My sister shrugged, but her mouth was full so she couldn’t say anything.

  ‘It’s dug,’ I said. ‘Up by the old bit of flint wall, where we did the last one.’

  ‘And not in the same place, I’m hoping?’

  Well she knew it couldn’t be in the same place because it would have been pretty awful if it had been, and we wouldn’t have been allowed in ‘her’ kitchen, as she called it. We might not have even had any lunch come to that. And she didn’t really think that it was, because she was licking her spoon, not taking much notice. Except, had we dug the hole. Well, we had. I had, anyway.

  Every Friday night, just as it was getting dark, we had to go up to the privy and cart away the big bucket of Night Soil. That’s what it was called, but my sister called it the Bindie Bucket, which was her name for it, and if Lally heard us use it we got a box on the ears all right. We would push a big thick stick under the handle, lift it out of the privy, and hump it across the vegetable garden to the ‘hole’, which had to be dug earlier in a special place.