The Beggar’s Curse

“It should be a Wright really,” Winnie explained. “That’s what they’re all grumbling about. But no one will allow me to swap the parts round, or anything. They say it will ‘break the luck’, or some nonsense. Codswallop. So I said, ‘Look, it’s George Massey or nothing’. And they took it, would you believe? His name’s George, fortunately, and that seemed to persuade them. Oh, they are dense. I did point out that the man’s paying for the new costumes this year, so they can’t afford to offend him. He’s dying to be in it, and he’s very good.”

Prill wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of this play, with all this secrecy about the words, all this talk about “bad luck”, the fact that women couldn’t be in it, and all the squabbling. “It doesn’t sound very Christian to me,” she said suddenly.

“Oh well, it’s not dear, anything but. All the religious bits have been stuck on, over the years. It’s not really supposed to be done at Easter either, but you wouldn’t expect Stang people to get a thing like that right, would you? Yes, the whole thing’s pagan really, and when you think how they make the horse’s head. . .”

“Yes, tell us about that,” Oliver said excitedly. It was in his book.

Winnie Webster looked at the three young faces, and paused. It was a bit gruesome, but today’s children seemed to like grisly things. “Well,” she began. “In the play the horse is called Old Hob, and they carry it round on a pole. It’s very important, the one thing they always keep. All the other props and costumes are replaced every seven years. Very wasteful I call it, but there you are. The old things are burned on a bonfire – just an excuse for a knees-up, in my opinion. It’s tonight actually. Did Molly mention it?”

“No,” Colin said. It sounded rather interesting. Perhaps they could go.

“Anyway, everything’s burned except this horse’s head. It’s a real one, boiled down and skinned. They fix wires to its jawbone and someone hides under a cloth and goes round snapping at the audience. The children adore it. Now that really is pre-Christian,” she said, looking at the girl. “It goes right back to horse worship, that does.”

Prill was feeling quite sick. She had just refused to think about a crowd of drunken villagers boiling a poor horse’s head in a great pot. Horses were marvellous creatures, there was a great dignity and peace about them. She could quite understand why, in ancient times, men had bowed down and worshipped them like gods.

“In the old days villages used to steal each other’s heads, apparently,” Winnie said dryly. “It was like robbing them of their magic power, you see. Just the kind of thing the Edge family would adore, I’ve no doubt,” she added, with a queer little laugh. But Prill had gone green.

“Fresh air,” Winnie announced briskly, realizing she’d said too much. “I’ll just put the spinach on, then we’ll go round the garden for five minutes.”

Spinach. Prill felt even worse.

The real inspection of the garden was postponed till after lunch. The meal was such a strange mixture of flavours, and involved so much hard chewing, that they all felt relieved to be out of the stuffy dining room and walking about in the fresh air. Porky Bover was still having trouble with his lawn mower, and he kept stopping to adjust it. The steeply sloping lawns didn’t make the grass very easy to cut, and Oliver couldn’t understand why he was doing it anyway. The turf hadn’t started to grow again yet, it was obviously taking its time. But then, it was so cold in Stang.

“Can’t seem to get the hang of this new mower, Miss Webster,” the fat boy shouted good-naturedly, as she led an expedition up the hill to look at the view. “It keeps stopping.”

“Well, it was you who complained about the old one, dear,” she called rather heartlessly. “Thought this was our answer. All these bits of lawn. All these slopes. Now, would your mother like some bedding plants when they’re ready? I’ll have plenty of spares.”

“You’ve got a good view of the lake, Miss Webster,” Oliver said politely. “As good as Miss Brierley’s.”

“A wee bit better if anything,” she said proudly. “No trees in the way on my side. Some people find it a bit depressing – Molly, for example. Now she wouldn’t give tuppence for this view. I just can’t persuade her to live down here. She doesn’t really like Blake’s Pit.”

“Why not?” Prill asked.

“Oh, that’s Molly; she’s a bit of a Romantic, you know. There’s supposed to be quite a big town at the bottom of it. Well, a city really. Someone did something terribly wicked once, and someone else put a curse on them, and in the middle of the night a flood rose up from nowhere and drowned everybody.”

“What a fantastic story,” thought Prill.

“Of course, if dear Molly knew her geography and her geology,” Winnie went on, a little peevishly, “she’d know that it couldn’t possibly be true.” And she delivered a short lecture about earth-mass, glaciers, and rock formations. She was almost as boring as Uncle Stanley.

Tea was threatened, but they were saved from it by Violet Edge who came wandering up the garden with some books under her arm. “Our Vi,” Winnie muttered under her breath. “Heavens, it’s nearly four o’clock. I’m supposed to be giving her an English lesson. O Level. A lost cause of course, but there we are. Come on, Violet,” she shouted down the slope. “My visitors are just leaving. Uncanny resemblance isn’t there?” she whispered in Colin’s ear, noticing his eyes fixed on Our Vi.

There was. The flat pasty face was that of a fifteen-year-old girl, but she had that same hard look, sullen and suspicious, and those awful burning eyes.

Just as they were going through the front gate Winnie came running out with a book in her hand. She was feeling guilty about snubbing Oliver. He’d been so interested in the play, and you really should encourage bright children, not fob them off with talk of old superstitions.

“Oliver,” she said. “You might like to read this. It’s not the text of the play, but it is quoted quite a lot.”

He took the small blue book, and read the title: The Stang Mumming Play, Origins and History. It was by Winifred B. Webster B.A. (Hons), Manchester. “Thank you,” he beamed, rather impressed. “I’ll read it, and bring it straight back.”

“No, that’s all right. But do look after it, Oliver. In fact, I’m not quite sure really. . .” and she put her hand out, almost as if she was going to snatch it back again.

“Why shouldn’t I read it?” Oliver said, hardening.

Winnie Webster said nothing for a minute, then she became cheerful and brisk again. But there was something forced in her manner now. “Well, quite. Why shouldn’t you? All this superstitious nonsense, all this secrecy. It’s ridiculous. Keep it at Molly’s though, dear, don’t take it round the village.” Don’t let the Edges see you with it was what she really meant.

Our Vi didn’t hear the conversation because the bungalow windows were all shut, but she certainly saw the book change hands, and as she sat waiting for her lesson an unpleasant smile was spreading slowly across her flat face.

Oliver tucked the book under his arm and followed Jessie along the lane. He was very thoughtful. Miss Webster’s crisp, no-nonsense manner hadn’t been at all convincing. It was as if, deep down, she was frightened of something. What on earth was it?

CHAPTER FIVE

There had been no sign of a bonfire when they walked up to Winnie’s, but now the lanes were full of scurrying children lugging bits of dead tree up the hill, and rooting about in the hedges for branches and sticks. Rose Salt was there, helping some boys push an old pram full of rubbish. A loud argument was going on in the field next to George Massey’s new house; the Edges were building their fire there, and he said it was too close to his fence.

“You’ve got the whole field,” they heard. “Why build it here, for heaven’s sake?”

“Whole field’s no good,” Tony Edge said cheekily. “It’s all waterlogged, that’s what. This bit’s the only place we can build it. Any fool can see that.”

But George wouldn’t be shouted down, and, very grudgingly, they started to dismantle their fire. Sid turned up, with the Puddings in tow, and Our Vi appeared soon afterwards and helped to heave great branches about. The grumpy man who’d yelled at Colin from his bedroom window stood in the gateway and directed operations in a loud, harsh voice. This was Uncle Harold, brother of Uncle Frank. Together they ran the village stores, and they were also the stars of the play, according to Winnie.

“Seen enough?” Sid Edge bawled at Colin, who stood watching outside Molly’s. He turned, and walked up the garden path. The Edges weren’t doing anything constructive, they were just shifting their wood about six feet from the fence. That was no good. When darkness fell, and George Massey went indoors, he wouldn’t put it past them to creep out and move everything back to its original place. They were like that.

“How was Winnie?” Molly Bover asked them at tea. “Did she give you all a carrot juice cocktail?”

Colin and Prill exchanged embarrassed looks, but Oliver said, “Yes, it was awful. And the lunch was pretty awful, too. It tasted most peculiar.” He was totally unpredictable. In some moods he was maddeningly polite to grownups, at other times he said exactly what he thought. Aunt Phyllis wouldn’t approve, but Oliver was clearly enjoying a little taste of freedom.

Molly grinned. “Good old Winnie. I expect you’re all genned up now. I expect she gave you her lecture about Stang, and the play, and old Cheshire customs. Am I right?”

“Well, yes,” Oliver said slowly. “But I’m still not sure about Blake’s Pit.”

“What about it, dear?”

“She said it was supposed to have a town at the bottom, and that there was a curse on it. She said you knew all about it too, but that it was a load of old rubbish,” he ended tactlessly.

“Ah yes,” Molly said quietly. “Winnie rather likes that word. She just means an old poem, I think, one I’m rather fond of:

“He has cursed aloud that city proud,

He has cursed it in its pride;

He has cursed it into Semmerwater

Down the brant hillside;

He has cursed it into Semmerwater,

There to bide. . .”

Her voice was rich and deep, like a great river. What a pity women couldn’t be in this play, Prill thought. Molly would be marvellous.

Oliver had listened very carefully. “Semmerwater,” he said accusingly. “But what’s that got to do with it? It’s in Yorkshire. I’ve been. My father took me rowing on it.”

“Full marks, Oliver,” Molly said patiently, thinking that the persistent, pernickety Oliver was rather like a dentist’s drill. “But there are legends like that about lots of places, you know, with little variations. Didn’t your father tell you?”

“No. He’s not very keen on poetry.”

“Well, in the poem, a beggar is turned away from the gates of a great city, and he curses it. And the floods rise and drown everyone.”

“Yes, she told us that,” he said impatiently.

“And did she tell you that people have actually seen the city, shimmering through the water?”

“No, no she didn’t. I don’t think she likes poetry much either.”

“Ah well,” said Molly.

“King’s tower and queen’s bower,

And a mickle town and tall;

By glimmer of scale and gleam of fin

Folks have seen them all. . .”

The sheer music of it made Prill’s spine tingle. What a pity Molly Bover didn’t take them for poetry lessons. Their English teacher, old Mr Crockford, read things like that to them with all the feeling of an iron bar. “What about Stang, Molly?” she said.

“Well, nobody’s ever bothered to write a poem about Blake’s Pit, but it’s got the same kind of story attached to it, only in our version it was only the rich people who drowned. The beggar survived and prospered, and built another town by the lake. That’s one explanation of why Stang village is where it is. Old Stang’s under the water, and the oldest houses are just above it.”

“But I thought this house was the oldest in the village?” Oliver said.

“Oh no, dear, Pit Farm’s the oldest, and it’s the third house on that site, apparently. The Edges do go back a very long way, and I suppose when your name’s in the Doomsday Book you can afford to feel a bit superior.”

“They are awful though, Molly,” Colin said fiercely, thinking of Rose Salt weeping over her smashed eggs, and of Sid’s peals of laughter.

“Yes, they are. Sometimes, though, I get the feeling that wretched family just can’t help itself. They were born awkward, somehow.”

“Perhaps it was one of the Edges who cursed that palace into the pit,” Oliver said solemnly. “Perhaps they’re all descended from that old beggar.”

“They claim to be, as a matter of fact,” Molly murmured. “It’s a local tradition. No way of proving it, of course, but the Edges are quite proud of their ancestry. Most people would keep quiet about it, if someone way back had been responsible for a curse, but not that lot. . . Now,” she said briskly. “If you’re going to this bonfire, wrap up well – and keep an eye on Rose for me. She gets rather excited on these occasions.”

What she meant was that Rose Salt had a crush on Tony Edge. They could see her, standing in the shadows, peering at Uncle Harold as he poured petrol on the bonfire. She was still wearing her woolly pixie-hood and the long brown mack, and clinging on to her old shopping bag. Tony was surrounded by a group of giggling admirers. They watched him fit a big harness on to his shoulders, then slot a long pole into it, down a leather pouch, rather like a boy scout carrying a flag. Then he began to sway about, laughing and chasing after all the girls. The bonfire had blazed up already, and in the orange glare Prill saw the outline of a horse’s skull.

“Old Hob, Old Hob, Give him a tanner, give him a bob,” Tony was shouting, and lurching round the field, careering up to little knots of people who stood warming themselves at the fire. Oliver was fascinated by the horse, and stuck very close to it as Tony charged about, but it was too spooky for Prill.

The huge, grinning skull, hung with tattered ribbons, waved and dipped in the flickering light, and bonfire sparks showered up over it like gold rain. “Come on, Posie,” she whispered, skirting round the edge of the bonfire to avoid Tony and his horrible horse. “Your dad’s brought some sausages out. Should we have one?” Prill had acquired a little friend, George Massey’s two-year-old daughter. They had seen her that afternoon helping her father in the garden, and Prill had crossed the road to say hello.

She was the complete opposite of their small sister. Alison was solid and dark, with a red face, and charged about in a state of perpetual stickiness. This child was doll-like and fragile-looking, with a mass of curly blonde hair. Colin had christened her Goldilocks. Her mother Brenda was at home, trying to get Posie’s six-month-old brother Sam to sleep. Prill was only too delighted to look after her while George Massey carried food round on trays.

The Edges weren’t at all grateful. “It’s not Bonfire Night, y’know,” someone grumbled, inspecting a baked potato, then putting it back. “We don’t normally have food. Any road, it’s burnt this is.” But the Puddings were out in force, all standing in a line and staring into the flames, the fierce light splashing their intense little faces. They grabbed all that was offered, sausages, potatoes, ginger parkin, and gobbled away in silence. “I don’t know,” George Massey muttered to the Blakemans. “There’s no pleasing some people. They might say thank you.”

After about ten minutes the two butcher brothers dragged an old hamper up to the fire and opened the lid. From all over the field dark shadows flocked to it, like wasps to a jampot. Tony left Old Hob in the grass and shoved his way to the front. “Clear off, Rose Salt,” they heard. But the adoring little figure still trailed after him, keeping her distance, in the darkness.

Before the costumes were thrown on the fire people put them on and tore round noisily. There was a definite excitement in the air now; this was obviously much more important than spuds and sausages. George Massey was rather surprised. “I didn’t know this went on,” he said, watching faceless shapes struggle into flopping garments.

Winnie had told them that the Stang Mummers’ costumes were rather special, very brightly coloured, and each one decorated with a special emblem to tell you who it was. On the night all players wore hoods that fell over their faces.

In the dark everything was reduced to a black silhouette, and there was a lot of pushing and shouting. They watched two figures fight over something and eventually tear it in two. Then, quite suddenly, the bobbing shapes separated out like a line of paper men, and went dancing crazily round the bonfire, hand in hand.

“I want to, I want to,” grizzled Posie Massey. She liked dressing up. Her father was feeling rather peeved. His wife had gone to all this trouble with the food, and they’d treated him like dirt. It was his field anyway, the Edges only rented it, and the bonfire was much too close to his fence. They couldn’t do anything properly.

“All right, kid,” he said. “Let’s find you something pretty. Don’t see why those boys should have all the fun, do you?”

“And I want ma horse,” the child whimpered. Posie Massey had a new playroom full of toys, and pride of her collection was a painted hobby horse on a wooden stick. She’d heard there was a horse at the bonfire and she’d brought hers.

It was a night for horses. As they went over to the hamper, Prill heard whinnying in the field by Elphins. Did fire frighten horses, she wondered, or did they warm themselves against the flames, like great cats? She thought of the three horses in the field below her window, Mister and Lucky Lady, the two chestnuts, and William, the lame old carthorse. What had those peaceful creatures to do with this devilish dancing, with these hateful, snapping jaws? Prill longed to be clopping down a quiet country lane on old William’s back, far away from the Edges, Stang, and that brooding pit in the valley bottom.

In helping to dress Posie, and getting her astride her tiny horse, George Massey made his first mistake. “Old Hob, Old Hob,” the child chanted in a little squeaky voice, and went tottering off towards the bonfire where the faceless black dancers were wriggling out of their costumes, rolling them into balls, and hurling them into the fire with hoarse shouts and squeals.

Everything happened very quickly after that. A hand shot out of the shadows and stopped the child in its tracks; in seconds she was surrounded by thrusting figures, a yelling, jostling scrum, all trying to grab the pathetic little prize. She screamed, and a voice said, “You can’t wear that, chuck. Off with it, come on. Got to go on the fire, that has.” Then another voice broke in, a girl’s, hard and peevish. “It’s not fair, any road. Girls can’t be in this. Give it me, will you. I’ll throw it on. Ouch! Give over!”

Costume, mask and hood were torn off the terrified toddler and thrown into the leaping flames, and the toy horse followed. With mirthless shrieks the dancers melted away into the dark, and Posie Massey was left alone on the grass, sobbing for her mother, and with Prill down on her knees, trying to comfort her.

George Massey suddenly saw red. He left Prill and Posie together and stormed off. In less than a minute he was back at the bonfire with something held high above his head. It was Old Hob.

Afterwards he swore that he thought it was part of the custom, that the horse was burned too, along with everything else, but nobody ever believed him. George simply wanted to take part in his own bonfire. They’d laughed at his food, hurt his child, and ignored his instructions about the fence. Nothing was left to burn now, except this great grinning puppet on a stick.

He was a tall man. With one heave he raised the thing right above his shoulders like a dumb-bell, twirled it round twice, then hurled it into the heart of the fire. Tony Edge let out a scream, then he went mad. Gibbering like an idiot he looked round wildly, then he ran to the gate and pulled something out of the grass, an old ladder they’d used to build the bonfire.

“Leave off, Tone!” someone shouted, but he was almost weeping with rage. He dragged his ladder to the fire and managed to lift it up on his own. The children stared, hypnotized, amazed at his brute strength. He was actually trying to crawl along it. “We’ll save him,” he was bellowing. “We’ve got to save him.” His voice was half a scream, half a sob, and for one crazy moment Prill felt quite sorry for him.

But the uncles had taken over and were pulling him back. “Don’t be stupid, Tone! Leave off, will you!” Then – “Look at the fire, man!” No one had been watching it, and the weight of the ladder had made it slump over towards the freshly creosoted fence. Slowly the bonfire fell to pieces, there was no heart to it and it was shoddily built, like everything the Edges had a hand in. The crowd gasped and George Massey shouted hoarsely “I knew it. I knew something like this would happen.” The fence was alight already, and the flames were spreading right along. It was like watching the fuse go up on a huge firework.

There were buckets of water lined up behind the fence. George had made his preparations, he wasn’t born yesterday. He bellowed instructions to Harold and Frank Edge, then tore off to dial 999. Then he got into his brand-new car and backed it down his drive. Thank heaven my insurance is in order, he was thinking, as he ran back to the field. Let’s hope I won’t need it.

But he hadn’t reckoned with the wind. It was sucking burning brands out of the fire and hurling them into the air. One of them landed on the garage roof, and it was timber. He rang the fire brigade again and told them things were getting out of hand. “Don’t worry, sir,” a calm country voice said on the end of the phone. “They’re on their way. They’ll be with you in five minutes.”

Oliver, Colin and Prill were told to keep out of the way, with Posie. They stood back and watched, but it was no good telling the Edges what to do. They were all trying to help with the chain of buckets, but there were so many of them and it was so dark. All they succeeded in doing was wreaking havoc. Several buckets got spilt, a child was burned when something fell out of the fire, and Prill heard Sid arguing with his sister about who should help Uncle Frank as he beat at the flattened embers with a broom.

“Sometimes I think that family can’t help it.” Molly’s words came back to Colin, as he watched their hopeless efforts. Were they really trying to help George Massey? Or were they deliberately being stupid? Half of him suspected that they were quite enjoying themselves, almost willing everything to go up in flames.

The first call had been answered immediately, and an engine had been dispatched to Stang within minutes, tearing with screaming sirens down the misty April lanes. It wasn’t an easy village to find, but one man on board knew this part of Cheshire like the back of his hand and he guided them.

But somehow the driver kept missing his way. Two miles out of Ranswick they got lost in a tangle of roads and had to turn back. Then they reached a dead end. “Road Up” one sign said, and another, “Road Closed, Due to Flooding”. The chief fireman was getting frantic because calls kept coming through on his radio. Where were they? Couldn’t they hurry up? Couldn’t honest ratepayers expect more than this from an emergency call? Were they making their wills?

“This is beyond me,” the man at the wheel said dumbly, turning round yet again and tearing back up a hill. “It’s just like the war. It’s like the day they took all the signposts away because of Jerry.”