Great Meadow Read online

  In the end it really wasn’t such a bad week. Well, as weeks go. It’s always a bit mouldy if you have a Guest and have to be extra polite to him and do everything he wants to do and make him feel welcome. Even Family Hold Back on the pudding and so on, which was a bit irritating.

  And Brian Thing got quite nice, well, as nice as anyone can who looks like that: all pale and speckled and wearing tin glasses. But Lally kept on saying, ‘Just you both remember he’s got something to worry about with a new mother and all, and he’s a well-educated boy and not used to people like you.’ And that put us in our places, or so she jolly well thought. But anyway, we were all right to him and he wasn’t bad. And he got better after the holey socks time, and especially after the next day when Lally came down with us all to the village – which was a bit funny because she never came down in the mornings and always told us to skedaddle from under her feet and find something to do or go for the messages while she whipped round the house, as she called it.

  They were quite surprised in Wilde’s, the grocer’s, too. And bossy Miss Maltravers behind the post office counter-place said, ‘Well! Miss Jane. As I breathe! What a surprise. We don’t often see you here of a morning.’

  ‘No more you don’t,’ said Lally. ‘Better things to do than traipsing about the shops, Miss Maltravers. Bit of elbow grease up at the top of the hill, that’s what. But now and again I like to keep my eye on things, otherwise you get taken for granted, and as a matter of fact I want a shilling postal order if you please.’ While Miss Maltravers was looking for it in her book, Lally said, really quite loudly in front of two or three people we didn’t even know, ‘Mr Wilde, by the by, that Cheddar you sent up with the children last week was dry as dry. Australian, I shouldn’t wonder, and made the journey all the way on the open deck by the look of it, and you know we always take English. So next time you haven’t got it in, send up a nice piece of Leicester, will you. No fobbing off, Mr Wilde.’ And he looked a bit grumpy and said he was very sorry he was sure. And then, looking up at the ceiling of the shop which was hung with legs of ham, kettles and lids, saucepans, wooden spoons in bundles and tin mugs with Poland printed on their bottoms, as well as lots of flypapers on account of all the flies and wasps which buzzed about because of the sugar and currants in the big wooden drawers behind the counter, Lally said, ‘I wonder if you have such a thing as a pair of plimsolls as’ll fit this young gentleman here.’ She put her hand on Brian Thing’s head to show she didn’t mean me. And Mr Wilde, who was wrapping up some bacon which he’d just sliced, said yes, he thought so, and they were ninepence ha’ penny a pair. What was funny was that she paid for them out of her own purse and not the housekeeping one, which was different and had a handle. It didn’t leave very much in it, because when she paid Miss Maltravers for the postal order she did it with a sixpence and some coppers, and when she shook her little purse nothing rattled in it.

  Anyway, Brian Thing got his plimsolls, which were better than his lace-ups in the country, and he seemed very pleased and asked if he could carry the red and black shopping-bag. That was really my job, but Lally said yes, so I couldn’t say anything because he was a Guest and all. I felt it was a bit Teacher’s Pet sort of thing but remembered about kith and kin and him only having half, if you know what I mean, with a new mother who told him to call her ‘Kathleen’, he said.

  When we got to the long white bridge over the Cuckmere the tide was coming in and there were two swans dobbling about by the far bank with three cygnets, but we didn’t stay looking at them for long because the cob started stretching out his neck and making rather grumpy hissing noises and flapping his wings, and my sister hurried across the bridge and you could hear Brian Thing’s feet going plonk plonk plonk on the wooden boards. At the little bridge over the stream where we used to catch roach sometimes, for Minnehaha our cat, Lally suddenly said, ‘Pouf. But it’s hot! Let’s all have a sit down here in the shade for a couple of ticks. Brian, you can change into your plimsolls, and I’ve got a quarter of Liquorice Ailsorts, who wants one?’

  Brian changed his shoes, and we all had a Liquorice Allsort, but only one because of not spoiling our appetites. And Lally fished about in the red and black bag and took out an envelope and pushed in the postal order; then licked the flap and stuck it down.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘we must get a move on. I’m behind with my work and you’ll get no lunch this morning if we aren’t quick sharp up the hill.’ She bustled about with her bags and purses and we all clambered up to the main road and had a good look right and left, because you never knew if there was a motor car coming or not, although there hardly ever was.

  Then we all ran very quickly across the main road to the little iron gate by the barn which led into Great Meadow and all sort of collided and Lally said, ‘Drat the thing.’ The envelope fell on the road and I saw that it said ‘Miss Gladys Cooper’s Beauty Treatment, 121A Hampstead Road, London’, and so I just picked it up and gave it to her, and she looked a bit funny and said, ‘Nosey Parker.’ I said I wasn’t, so she said, ‘Well now that you’ve got it, put it in the post box,’ because there was one stuck on a wooden post by the gate with ‘ER VII’ in curly red letters. So I did.

  ‘Can you see any cows?’ she said as we opened the creaky gate. But there weren’t any, and anyway they were usually Aleford’s heifers and not cows, only, she said that didn’t make tuppence worth of difference to her, cows were cows, whatever you liked to call them and she’d rather go round by road than up the field and be trampled to death by those great things.

  ‘They’d run away if you just shook your fist at them,’ said Brian Thing.

  ‘Would they indeed,’ said Lally. ‘And me in my red and white polka dot? Drive them mad it would. Shake my fist! Bet you’ve never been surrounded by a whole herd of them, have you? All snuffling and thumping the grass, with those huge eyes, and they lower their heads and get ready to charge you. I know. I was caught like that once, wasn’t I?’

  ‘She had a terrible turn,’ said my sister. ‘So would I have.’

  ‘Just up the top, I saw them right down almost at the Court and the faster I went the faster they came until they were all round me. Terrible it was. Enough to turn you white.’

  ‘She had to have smelling-salts,’ said my sister. ‘In a little green bottle, and it makes your eyes stingy.’

  ‘It’s ammonia,’ said Brian Thing.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ said Lally, ‘I had to have it.’

  ‘Smells just like wet beds,’ said my sister and ran up the hill because she knew she’d have got a box on the ears for that.

  ‘Take no notice,’ Lally said. ‘Best ignore that kind of behaviour, I’ll deal with Maddemoselle myself later. Running wild the two of them . . . I don’t know. And me responsible. And by the by,’ she said suddenly turning to me, ‘if you’re wondering why I didn’t send my letter from the post office but from the box by the gate, and I am as sure as sure you are, it’s because I don’t want Miss Maltravers knowing where I send my letters to. She’s a terrible gossip, that woman, she’s got a tongue like the clapper of a bell, all over the place, any bit of news she spreads it. So that’s why.’

  ‘Was it secret then? The letter?’

  “Course not. Secret! Whatever next. Private, that’s all,’ she said. ‘And you just M.Y.O.B.’

  Meaning ‘Mind Your Own Business’. So I thought that was pretty interesting to tell my sister a bit later on. If I could remember the lady’s name.

  The lane beside the Star Inn ran right up on to the Downs. If you went all the way up you would pretty soon come to Long Burgh, which was about the top really. From there you could look all round you and see everywhere, as if it was all your own. Far down, at the bottom, was the village, and quite far away was Alciston and Berwick, and then the river wavering through the valley all silvery in the sun. Past that you could see our house and the church in the trees and right on to Windover Hill. There was never any noise up there, just the larks going twittering up in
the sky, and the wind coming in from the sea where it was all golden and blue, and across it, I mean really miles away so that you couldn’t tell, was France. Brian Thing said that he had been there once and that it was quite decent except they ate terrible mucked-up food. So I didn’t say anything, because I rather liked mucked-up food . . . anyway, French mucked-up.

  We were going to see the witch’s caravan, because it was his last day and I was a bit curious, and wondering about all the cats and so on. But he wasn’t very keen, he said, but was being polite anyway, so it didn’t matter.

  ‘What would you do,’ I said, ‘if you actually saw one? A witch. What then?’

  ‘What would I do?’

  ‘Yes. If suddenly, just coming out of that wood there, hoppity, skippity, an old black witch came?’

  He laughed, but it sounded like a bit of a sniff really. ‘Always presupposing that I believed in them, which I don’t, I’d say, “Good-day,” and that’s all.’

  He really made you feel quite rotten, all those words, he was terribly stuck-up and Londony. I quite went off him when he spoke like that, but otherwise he was all right, I suppose.

  ‘I expect it’s because you live in London, and don’t believe in things like that. Of course I don’t suppose you could have witches in a city really, but you can in the country. We’ve got lots here in Sussex. They do spells, you know, and sometimes they kidnap children and sell them to the gypsies. Mrs Fluke, who’s lived here all her life, had a spell put on her by this witch to stop her chilblains. And it worked. So there. She told me.’

  ‘I think someone’s pulling your leg,’ he said, and ran on up the hill to show that he could. Without getting out of breath. Only, when I got up to him he was. And quite red in the face too, which served him right.

  Where he was standing there was a little break of twisty elder bushes, all bent by the winds, and just below, the track from the village faded away into scrubby grass and chalk ruts, and there, all by itself looking very creepy and forlorn, was the caravan. But there were no cats anywhere and it looked, from where we were, very closed up. The little tin chimney with the pointy top was all rusty and the pink and blue paint was grey now, and all peeling off.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said in a whisper because it seemed a whisper sort of place, like church or a museum. Because she was dead, I suppose.

  ‘It’s a caravan,’ said Brian Thing. ‘How ever did they get it up here, I wonder?’

  ‘I suppose with a horse, but years ago, because the shafts are all broken, look.’

  And they were, just lying rotten in the grass.

  ‘Where’s the cauldron then?’ he said with a twisty smile.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But there’s an old milk churn over there.’

  ‘Witches always have cauldrons, to do their spells round. They boil up toads and newts and things and make a brew. And curse people. Didn’t you know?’ He was smiling in a very sarcastic manner so I was just about to say, ‘Well . . . let’s go back now . . .’, when there was a very strange thing. The closed shutter slowly, slowly, creaked open. We looked at it. I didn’t breathe. Then the other one did. And there was no noise, just the creak and then stillness. And there was no wind so it wasn’t that. Then suddenly there was a dreadful little ‘bonk! bonk! bonk!’ noise. It was quite clear. And it was coming from the tin chimney stack. From inside it. And just as I was going to start back into the elder bushes there was a terrific noise of ghostly rattling and the pointy tin lid flew off, right up in the air. So I just turned and ran, and Brian Thing came with me, and his face was quite white now – only, his ears were red. And just as we pushed into the bushes there was a terrible noise from the caravan. ‘Wooooo! Wooooo!’ it went, very high and wavery, like an owl but louder, ‘Woooo! Woooo!’ And Brian Thing said, ‘Hells bells,’ to himself and was running far ahead of me when there was a most fearful explosion. And I just turned quickly enough to see an old iron stove come sailing out from where the front door of the caravan must have been, and it exploded, sort of, in the grass. And I was so astonished that I tripped over a twisty root and as I was getting up there was a booming loud voice yelling, ‘Come ‘ere you two sneaky barstards,’ and it was Reg Fluke and his best friend Perce. So I felt quite silly, but not nearly as silly as Brian Thing, who had almost got down to the village by this time, with his glasses off.

  ‘Wot you up to, then?’ said Reg. He was standing on the steps of the caravan and Perce was leaning out of the little window. ‘Couple of sneaks.’

  So I told them, and Brian Thing came dragging back, and we all looked at each other, and Reg said, ‘Stinks terrible inside. You want to smell it?’

  So we went up to the caravan and it was all ruined inside, with bits of old rag and papers everywhere. The roof had a huge hole in it which I hadn’t noticed before, but there was nothing inside really. Reg had chucked the stove out anyway, but there was an old frying-pan, all rusty, and a little glass-fronted door hanging on its hinges, and more old rags and a torn mattress, and on a wall a cardboard picture of a lot of people sitting in rows, like a school group, with a big ivy-covered house in the back, only, it was quite hard to see because it was all mouldy. And that was all.

  ‘I reckon someone’s been through this before, and more than once. Probably come up here and do a bit of snogging from the village, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  I didn’t know what he meant, and anyway it was terrifically smelly and sad looking and there were no cats, and it did stink rather of them. So we all got out and Perce started kicking away at a big log under one of the front wheels.

  ‘Wouldn’t take much to shift this,’ he said.

  ‘And do what?’ I said.

  ‘Shove it down the hill, why not?’

  ‘I don’t think we should, it’s not our property,’ said Brian Thing suddenly speaking for the first time.

  ‘Coo. ‘Ark at ’im! Toff-talk! “Not our property” indeed! Don’t belong to no one anyway. No kith and kin she didn’t ‘ave,’ said Perce and started really kicking the log. Then Reg started at the other, and they got a bit of tree branch and started to bang about with it. The caravan started shaking all over, and then bits fell off it, and the shutters closed and opened like eyes, and it felt awful really . . . like a person struggling sort of. But they got the two big logs rolled away so that the rickety caravan stood just tilted at the top of the track, and you could see it wouldn’t take much to send it down the hill.

  It was quite an exciting feeling suddenly, and when Reg yelled at us two to come and help we just went and did what he said. The four of us all pushed very hard at the back part and it started shaking and wobbling and groaning and Reg kept yelling, ‘Shove!’ So we shoved like anything and suddenly it went away . . . just like that. Everyone jumped aside and the caravan started to rumble very slowly down the track, hit a bump somewhere, and went high up over it. A bit of the roof fell away, and then the whole thing went clattering and crumbling down the track and exploded into a mass of wood and wheels and the tin chimney stack when it hit the chalky bank at the bottom. Then everything was quiet except for the sound of the larks and somewhere a sheep bell going ‘tonkle tonkle’, which made Perce a bit worried because he suddenly said, ‘We best be off then . . . ruddy old shepherd about somewhere,’ and he and Reg started running down the track, laughing and waving their arms in the air. When they got to the wreck of the caravan he picked up a long piece of broken pink-painted wood, waving it over his head like a cricket bat, and they disappeared into the woods.

  ‘I think that was a pretty foul thing to do,’ said Brian Thing.

  ‘But you did it,’ I said. ‘When they said, “come and shove,” you did.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. Part of me wanted to and another part didn’t. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I did but I didn’t . . . and I felt a bit sad myself, but after all it was all falling down anyway, and terribly smelly, and she was dead and had no kith or kin to claim it. So I just wand
ered down the hill to the ruins and poked in them with a stick, and underneath a long bit of stripy rag stuff I found a curious round thing. And the really funny point was that it was the big spotted shell with open lips and Bombay written on it which she had showed us years ago when we helped her with some wood. So I took it. Because perhaps she would have liked me to take it and not leave it lying all alone up on the Downs, because she had taken care of it and showed it to us as a special treat. Her son had sent it to her. But he was dead. No kith or kin.

  We walked slowly down the track just as the sheep came spilling over the ridge above us, all baaing and skittering with skinny legs. They started nibbling away at the place where the caravan had stood, and the big sheep dog lifted his leg on the rusty milk churn which was lying on its side in the grass . . . and Mr Dick, the shepherd, waved to us and went on with his flock. It was as if no one ever had seen the witch, or known that her caravan had stood there. It was a rather sad feeling. So I just held the shell to my chest and we went on home.

  Chapter 3

  The very first sign of all that it was about to be Christmas was when Lally took down the big mixing-bowl and she and our mother started to make the pudding. It took a long time because all the fruit had to be cut up into little bits, and my sister and I had to de-seed the sultanas that had been steeping in warm rum, which was fearfully boring even though we were allowed to eat a few, without making pigs of ourselves, as they said.

  Then it all got lumped together, somehow, by our mother, who was very particular about that part, and everybody had to have a stir with the wooden spoon for luck. The best moment of all was when we scattered the lucky charms into the mixture. They were made of silver, because otherwise you had to wrap them in a titchy bit of paper and you could quite easily swallow them unknowing and they’d pass right through you, Lally said, and then you wouldn’t have any luck in the New Year – which was what it was all about.