[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening Page 2

  'Suppose somebody wants to bring a cart along, or the doctor comes by on his horse?' said Kenneth.

  'In the rain? Oh, they won't. Off you go with your dog and don't be long. As soon as the dog has done what it has to do, back you come, do you see? And hurry it up a bit.'

  'Who do you think you're talking to?' said Kenneth. 'Besides, we wouldn't be given the bath to play with, or be allowed to paddle in the road in the rain. You must be daft!'

  'What can we do, then?' asked the boy, deflated quite obviously by this spirited comment.

  'If you'd like to come with us, you can,' I replied, 'then when we come back you could see our pigs and have a go on our swing in the cartshed.'

  'I'd rather paddle.'

  'Well, look,' said Kenneth. 'I dare say Aunt Kirstie would let us paddle in the bath if we had it in the scullery. There's a big enamel jug in there to fill it. It would be quicker than waiting for the rain. Or there's the brook. That's better still for paddling.'

  'What brook?'

  'Come with us, and we'll show you.'

  'All right. What's your name?'

  'Kenneth Clifton. This is my sister Margaret.'

  'How do you do? I am Lionel Kempson-Conyers. We only began the summer vac. yesterday and already I'm bored. The house'-he jerked his head towards the top of the hill-'is going to be full up with people and nobody's got any time for me. My parents have gone back to France. They live there mostly. They'll bring back my sister, who's at finishing-school over there. There isn't even a pony to ride here. It's just too plain boring for words. Do you play cricket?'

  'Not really,' replied Kenneth. 'Can you box?'

  'No, worse luck. We don't take boxing at school until we're eleven and I'm only nine.'

  This surprised us because of his height, but all Kenneth said was, 'I'm eight and my sister's ten.'

  'Can she box?'

  'Of course. Our Uncle Arthur teaches both of us.'

  'How decent for you.' By this time we were strolling along, with Vicky on her bit of string, towards the end of the village. By the time Aunt Kirstie had tea ready we were back from our walk and were taking turns on the swing. At Lionel Kempson-Conyers' suggestion, we were having a competition to see who could be the first to kick a bit off the cartshed roof, which was made of sheets of corrugated iron.

  Lionel stayed to tea that day. After that, more often than not, he came down the hill into the village to play with us. Our Sarah was contemptuous of our new acquaintance.

  'Hoy, you young Oi say,' she remarked bitterly one morning before Lionel came along, 'who be that there young Oi say as you be goen weth nowadays?'

  'He's a friend of ours,' said Kenneth, 'but, truly, Our Sarah, we'd rather be with you.'

  'So you says. A lettle bet of a lah-di-dah, ennee? Seems loike I heered hem talken to you t'other day loike the gentry talks, and that's talk as Oi don't 'old weth, nor moi dad neether.'

  'I think he's a nobleman's son. His name is Lionel Kempson-Conyers. Wouldn't you call that a nobleman's name? And I think he goes to boarding-school. He calls it a prep. school and they get the cane there ever so often,' said Kenneth. 'I'd hate to go there.'

  'You ever had the cane, you young Oi say?'

  'No,' said Kenneth, 'I shouldn't allow it.'

  'What 'ud ee do, then?'

  'Hit the teacher in the stomach, which is pretty effective, though it's against the Queensberry rules. That's if it was a man. I should take the cane away and break it, if it was a woman,' said Kenneth. Sarah eyed him.

  'Fierce as a maggot, beant ee?' she said sardonically. 'Well, Oi tells ee thes: you ded oughter watch out, 'cos ef thes 'ere young Oi say be one o' them Kempson lot, moi dad do say as they ain't no better 'an they should be.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'Never you moind what et means at your age. You'll know all about et when you be older.'

  'Our Sarah,' said Kenneth earnestly, 'Lionel hates all his relations up at the big house. Will you let him join the band? He isn't really lah-di-dah, I promise you. Can't he come to the sheepwash with us?'

  No embargo was ever placed on our playing in and beside the brook, but the sheepwash at the foot of Lye Hill was supposed to be out of bounds to us. It was a part of the brook which had been artificially deepened and its sides had been shored up, but in our time it was never used for its original purpose, for there were no longer any sheep on The Marsh or on the hill. Whereas the brook itself was nowhere more than a few inches deep, the sheepwash which it fed had a depth of about a foot at its shallowest and almost four feet of water in the deepest part. We often went there in spite of prohibitions, for it made a splendid pool, and there was a game of seeing how far you could wade in without actually wetting your clothes. Kenneth slipped over once and got himself soaked. Our Sarah squeezed him as dry as she could and then ran him all the way home and delivered him to Aunt Kirstie with the remark, ''Ere be your young Oi say, missus. Fell over en the brook and wet hesself. 'Tweren't hes fault, Oi don't reckon. Our Ern gev hem a lettle bet of a shove, loike. Oi'll sort Our Ern when Oi cotches up weth hem.'

  I remember that we debated earnestly that night when we got to bed-for at that time we still shared a room-whether or not we ought to confess that it was in the sheepwash, and not in the brook proper, that Kenneth had had his ducking. However, we agreed, with smug sanctimoniousness, that it would be hard lines on Our Sarah if we let her down after she had told such gallant fibs on our behalf. 'Besides,' added Kenneth, Aunt Kirstie might make us promise on our honour not to go near the sheepwash again, and that would be very awkward.'

  'And, after all, the sheepwash is the brook,' I said, 'when you come right down to it.' (Even at the time I was slightly ashamed of this piece of sophistry.)

  'It was good of Our Sarah to blame it on Ern, because he wasn't even there,' said Kenneth. 'We can't make her out to be a-to tell stories, can we?' (The word liar was on the forbidden list in our vocabulary; so was hell. As for damn and bloody, these were not words we ever heard except from the lips of drunken men, and even then they filled us with pity and terror, as being expressions which even God, powerful though we knew Him to be, could neither excuse nor forgive.)

  It is no wonder that in some ways we were a couple of sanctimonious little prigs. Our nightly prayers, for example, were always said downstairs quite often in front of a circle of admiring relatives of whom Aunt Lally, although not the most loving, was the most sentimental. She would exclaim, when the recitation of our little piece was over: 'Don't they say them words pretty!' Then she would present each of us with a biscuit out of a special tin and we would go up to bed feeling satisfied with our performance, although a little scornful of our aunt, who had not realised what an artistic bit of eye-wash it had been.

  Chapter 2

  Mr Ward

  As usual we enjoyed ourselves down at the sheepwash. Lionel asked how deep it was.

  'Deep enough to drownd two loike you, you young Oi say,' replied Our Sarah. Lionel went over to the hedge which bordered Lye Hill and broke off a long stick. He lay on his stomach and tested the depth of the water at the deepest part, but the stick did not reach the bottom.

  'Oh, good!' he said. 'If you girls would go away, we boys could have a good dip.'

  'That ud be rude,' said Our Sarah. 'You ent got your bathers weth ee.'

  'Oh, no, it wouldn't be rude. Of course it wouldn't. We always bathe naked at school.'

  'Oi tell ee et's rude.'

  'Then you're an ignorant peasant.'

  'No, she isn't,' said Kenneth. 'It depends on the point of view. And it's very ignorant of you to talk about peasants when you only mean villagers.'

  'Can you swim?' asked Lionel. We had noticed that he always retreated in some way or other when he was contradicted or challenged. We also soon found out that he blabbed, so we did not tell him much.

  'He's a bit of a coward, isn't he?' said Kenneth to me, later. 'I mean, I'm a year younger than him and not nearly as tall. He ought to have busted me one.
I quite expected it.'

  'I expect he's been bullied at school,' I replied. In the boys' books we got from the library when we were at home there was always bullying at boarding-schools. 'It would make anybody a coward if they were always being bullied.'

  'Father gave me sixpence last year for punching Tom Speery when he tried it on.'

  'Because Tom was older and bigger than you. I wish I could earn sixpence that way.'

  'I split it with you, didn't I?'

  'It's not the same as earning it.'

  'Do you suppose Lionel gets much pocket-money?'

  'We've never been with him when he spent any.'

  'Perhaps he's a miser as well as a coward, and I know he blabs about things you'd think ought to be a secret.'

  'Some people say the old man who died-that tramp who had the tumble-down place at the bottom of the hill-some people say he was a miser.'

  'I wonder! If he was, he could have left a hidden treasure-money, you know, or jewels.'

  'In that cottage?'

  'Well, he might have done. Such things have been known. Maybe he left a code message to say where he buried it.'

  'Or a map, like Treasure Island.'

  'We might go and see.'

  'Would we take Lionel?'

  'Why? It's our idea, not his. Besides, he's been to tea with us twice, but he's never asked us back.'

  'Perhaps he can't. Besides, what would we do in a big house like his? There might be all sorts of difficulties. Suppose we spilt our tea or knocked something over?'

  'It wouldn't matter. Rich children always have tea in the schoolroom or the nursery. They never have meals with their parents downstairs.'

  'Anyway, what about the old man's treasure?'

  We decided to try our luck at the cottage without Lionel's assistance. Breakfast for us was at eight and we always had it without Mr Ward, who did not often come downstairs until ten. Aunt Kirstie was never known to grumble at having to cook a separate breakfast for him. He seldom appeared at lunch, either. Our Sarah told us that she reckoned he got his mid-day meal at the pub and added the further information that he was a dirty old man.

  'I wouldn't call him dirty, would you?' Kenneth said.

  'He takes snuff and blows his nose rather a lot,' I replied. 'Perhaps that's what she meant.' It was eight o'clock on a fine Saturday morning. We were surprised to find a used cup and saucer and a greasy plate in Mr Ward's place at table when we came down.

  'He came early for his breakfast,' Aunt Kirstie explained. 'Got to go out and do a bit more digging, he told me. Well, what's it to be? Bacon and egg and a bit of black-pudding?'

  'And fried bread,' said Kenneth. We never took long to eat our meals, but that Saturday morning we were even quicker than usual. We had exchanged glances when we heard that Mr Ward had had his breakfast at least two hours earlier than usual and had announced that he was going out to dig, and the same thought was in both our minds. Mr Ward must have had the same idea as we had. He must have got wind of treasure buried under the floor of the hermit's cottage. There could be no other explanation.

  We cleared our plates, thanked God for our good breakfast, Amen, and rushed out of doors. Breakfast was always in Aunt Kirstie's big basement kitchen, so the quickest way out was through the scullery into the back garden and up the sloping side-walk.

  Mr Ward was not at the hermit's cottage. He was shovelling away among Uncle Arthur's gladioli. We were delighted to see him there, although we thought Uncle Arthur would be less pleased.

  'We'll go to the cottage,' said Kenneth, 'and have a good look round for any clues to the treasure before he gets there.'

  'I believe we ought to tell Aunt Kirstie what Mr Ward is up to,' I said. 'It's a pity Uncle Arthur isn't at home.'

  'She may not like to interfere. He pays for his board and lodging, you know.'

  We debated the point as we walked towards the road and by the time we got round to the front of the house I had gained my way, so we went back again to tell Aunt Kirstie that Mr Ward was digging up the gladioli, but, when we turned in at grandfather's big gates, Mr Ward had found a new place to dig.

  He was in the middle of grandfather's big chicken run and was busy there scooping away with his spade, while the hens were squawking and fluttering and the Rhode Island Red cock, always the bravest bird, was making little, abortive rushes at Mr Ward's elastic-sided boots.

  'A good thing we did come back,' said Kenneth, as Mr Ward took a swipe at the cock with his spade. 'Come on, quick!' We ran towards him and Kenneth bravely shouted out: 'Mr Ward! Mr Ward! Aunt Kirstie wants you!' Then we went in at the garden gate to find Aunt Kirstie for ourselves. When she came with us, however, having waited to take off her apron and tidy her hair-but really, I think, to pluck up courage before she tackled Mr Ward, of whom we knew she was somewhat in awe because of his superior social status-he was no longer in the chicken run, so off we went towards the cottage.

  At that time we had to go down the village street to get there, although we found a better way later. However, just as we were opposite Mrs Grant's house-she was seated on her doorstep as usual, rocking herself and moaning about her ague-a man on horseback caught up with us and reined in. We recognised him as Doctor Matters' assistant. His name was Doctor Tassall.

  'You youngsters want to earn a penny?' he asked.

  'Each?' asked Kenneth. The young doctor laughed.

  'All right, Shylock my son, a penny each,' he said.

  'To do what?' I asked.

  'To post a letter in the box on Mrs Honour's wall. I've got to go in and have a look at this patient, and I don't want to miss the post.'

  We noticed then that Mrs Grant had retreated into her cottage. The doctor dismounted, handed Kenneth the letter and a penny, gave me a penny, tied his horse up to Mrs Grant's railings and went into the cottage. We walked on down the hill to post the letter in Old Mother Honour's pillar-box. It was not really a pillar-box, just a post-office opening in the shop wall with the times of collection on it. Of course we read the envelope before we posted it.

  'Miss A. Kempson-Conyers,' I said. 'Hill Manor House, Hill, Oxon. It must be to one of Lionel's relations.'

  'He said he'd got an older sister,' said Kenneth. We put the letter in the box and then had a short discussion on how best to lay out the pennies we had been given. We had our usual Saturday pennies with us as well, and such riches merited careful thought in the spending. In the end we agreed to tackle the treasure-hunt first and lay out our augmented income on the way home.

  'We shall have to watch out,' I said. 'Always a crowd of hangers-on when they know we've got anything to spend.' This sounds a mean kind of remark, but we had learned the hard way and had grown cagey about sharing our sweets with anybody but one another. There were some rapacious characters in the village.

  'Bloody cormorants!' said Kenneth. 'Heard a man say it when Uncle Arthur took us to the covered market,' he added, seeing my look of horrified admiration. 'Shan't say it again, I promise you, but some of the big ones are.'

  I stored up the phrase for use in our London school playground and we crossed the road and approached the decrepit cottage. Away on The Marsh we could hear the village children at play. Inside the cottage another sound was being made. We halted and listened. It was plain enough what was happening there. Nobody could mistake the sound of a pickaxe.

  'We've been out-smarted,' muttered Kenneth. 'Let's sneak up and see who it is.'

  The cottage had no front door. That, like the floor-boards, had disappeared long since and, from previous peering through the iron railings which shut off the back garden of the cottage from grandfather's land, we knew that all the other doors-the kitchen, the woodshed and the earth-closet-had gone the same way. We also knew that the cottage was 'two up and two down'. The stairs, however, were now completely unsafe, although Our Ern, a foxy, freckled little boy as thin as a skinned rabbit and as active as a squirrel, had once climbed up them as a 'dare' and had endured a punishing punch-up with Our Sarah af
terwards for risking his neck, because part of the staircase had come down with him when he descended.

  All the cottages on that side of the street had narrow back gardens which abutted on to grandfather's land and, as he owned all of them, grandfather had seen to it that they had no back entrances, so that the tenants could not trespass on his small-holding. The hermit's cottage was no exception. I once heard Aunt Lally ask grandfather why he had not turned the hermit out, repaired the cottage and let it, but all he said was, 'Live and let live, my lass. Remember what happened to Dives, who also had a beggar at his gate.'

  'They're in the front room,' said Kenneth, 'whoever it is. Let's go round the back.'

  'We can't,' I said. 'Not to sneak in, I mean. We can't get over that iron fence, and, if we did get over, we might not be able to get back.'

  'Oh, that's all right. There's a ladder in the cartshed. We could use that.'

  'To get over? Well, perhaps, but we still couldn't get back without lifting the ladder across, and I don't believe we could manage it. The ladder's too long and heavy.'

  'We'll worry about that later on.'

  'We could get in over the side wall,' I said, eyeing the only part of the property which grandfather kept in repair to mark the boundary of his jurisdiction, for the cottage was the last one in the road, 'if it wasn't for all that broken glass on top.'

  'Yes, that's no good. Well, come on. Let's get that ladder. We'd better go in through grandfather's big gates again, not the side entrance. We don't want anybody to see us. There might be questions asked.'

  The big gates were those through which we had passed to get to the chicken run and through which, at one time, when he and Polly the horse were younger, our grandfather had driven the wagon to market. They were always wide open nowadays and nobody except ourselves used them. We trudged up the hill, darted in through the big gates to the smallholding and took the broad path to the well. Here we turned at right-angles for the cartshed and found the ladder. It was long and heavy. In the end it proved too much for us.