Long Lankin (33 page)

We went back to the lane, where we found Pete balancing a beetle on a twig.

“If you keep going for half a mile or so, you get to North Fairing,” said Roger, “but there’s not much there, just the church and a couple of farms. The best thing, though, is Mr. Hancock’s bull. It’s in the field next to the lane, and it’s blinking huge. Sometimes it’s standing there hiding behind the hedge and it snorts when you go past and you get such a fright it makes you jump. I wouldn’t go in that field for a million pounds — well, I suppose I might for a million, but not for a hundred.” He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Well, maybe I might for a hundred, but not for ten.”

“Can I see it?”

“Yeah, I’ll take you later, or tomorrow.”

“Maybe tomorrow. My legs are still a bit wobbly. How far is it to the Patches?”

“We’re here.”

A grassy track curved off the lane to the left, just wide enough for a car, although it probably wouldn’t do the car much good.

There wasn’t a scrap of wind. We made our way along a well-beaten path, grateful for the shade cast by the tall bushes and overhanging trees. In clearings behind the high hedges were small wooden houses, many of them painted — green, blue, pink — some with verandas like the Jotmans’.

Each house was surrounded by a garden brimming with fruit, flowers, and vegetables — fat green pea pods ready to burst, tender runner beans hanging among masses of small red flowers twisting their way up wigwams of sticks, bunches of plump scarlet tomatoes shining on their bamboo canes alongside monstrous marrows, feathery carrot tops, bolting lettuces, and juicy red raspberries — while around and about, ignored by the birds, small squares of tinfoil and old polished cans hung limply from strings.

We stood and breathed in the sweetness. Pete wanted to nip in and pinch something, but Roger and I were scared someone might see. Instead we made do with the blackberries that grew along the path, black-ripe and soft.

Everywhere, flowers overflowed their beds, jostling with each other for the light, scrambling through trees or spilling over the tops of the hedges above us.

“Ooh, smell this,” said Pete, pulling down a branch tangled with yellow flowers and squashing it into his face. “Honeysuckle . . . yum, yum.”

An apple tree, bending under the weight of ripening fruit, was leaning out over the track.

“The apples in our garden are still tiny,” said Roger. “These are really early.”

We scrabbled about in the grass looking for windfalls and managed to gather a couple of handfuls. Most were small, hard, and sour, but a few were just about soft enough to eat. Roger said the really unripe apples were collected up and fed to pigs. We cut the maggots out with Roger’s penknife. You have to be careful with maggots. Once, when I was at Nan’s, she got one in her apple and spat so hard her false teeth shot out and landed in the fireplace.

In one of the gardens, two brown cows, tied up on long ropes to a tree, stood and stared at us, chewing nonstop, their mouths going round and round and round. I noticed their huge eyes were ringed with thick eyelashes, just like Cissie Bedelius’s when she spat into her little box with the mirror in and rubbed the wet black cake with a tiny brush and put it on to make her eyes look bigger.

“What sort of people live down here, then?” I asked.

“People came out from the East End of London between the wars and built these places for themselves,” said Roger. “We don’t see much of them in Bryers Guerdon. I suppose they’ve got everything they need here, really.”

“It’s like they escaped, then.”

“I suppose so.”

Dad told me that the chances are we’d have to move to one of the new flats eventually, when the Council had finished knocking down all the old houses like ours in Limehouse. I asked him where Mum would hang out the washing and where the dustbin would go, and whether we could still be in between Auntie Ivy and the Woolletts, but he didn’t know. Then, just after Easter, on my way home from school, I passed a huge iron demolition ball swinging on the end of a crane, and it was only a few streets away.

Now I decided that if the big ball came to our street, I’d tell Dad about the Patches — maybe we could escape like these people had done. Dad could build us a wooden house — I’d help him, and I wouldn’t have to worry about the men who made him have to go to the hospital and have stitches in his face, and maybe Mum wouldn’t go away so much. It would be nice to live in the Patches, and have a garden full of raspberries for nothing.

A large tabby cat twisted itself around our legs to be petted, then turned its tail and wandered off towards a green railway carriage under a tree. The brightly polished brass fittings gleamed in the sunshine. Lace curtains hung at the windows, and a crooked chimney, with a small steel hat like a Chinese coolie’s, poked out of the roof. Tethered to a post in the garden was an old white nanny goat.

“Is this where Mr. Thorston lives?” I asked, excited, but Roger pointed to an ancient thatched cottage on the other side of the track.

“He isn’t the same as these other people,” he said. “He lives there.”

Mr. Thorston’s cottage was like the picture on the lid of the huge box of chocolates that lay for months in Mrs. Prewitt’s shop window. It was much too dear for anybody around us to buy, even if they spent their Christmas Club all at once. One day the box was gone. I expect Mrs. Prewitt ended up eating the lot herself.

The place looked as old as Guerdon Hall. Tall purple and pink flowers reached the windows, and the huge straw roof hung down almost to the top of the frames. The thatch was a dirty grey colour and was covered with chicken wire. A bird with a tail like a V swooped out from under the roof.

Pete pushed the gate, and it creaked open. We followed as he marched up the path between the tumbling plants to the low front door and banged loudly with the iron knocker. Nobody answered.

“I’ll pop round the back,” he chirped. Before we could stop him, he ran down the side of the house. Seconds later, we heard his feet thudding back. He turned the corner, hopping from one leg to another, holding his head and yelling, “Oi! Oi! Flippin’ heck!”

The front door opened, and an old face looked out, half of it hidden under a white bush of a beard.

“What the blazes is going on here?” the man called in a voice like the prime minister’s on the wireless, well spoken, deep.

“I don’t know,” said Roger. “Pete ran round the side.”

The man stepped out, and was so tall he seemed to unfold himself upwards.

“Idiot boy!” he scolded Pete, who was red and cross and crying. “You ran straight through my bees’ flight path.”

“How the heck was I supposed to know?”

“For heaven’s sake, come here,” Mr. Thorston snapped. “Get your hands down a minute. How am I supposed to help if you won’t let me see?”

The old man peered at Pete’s face. Then he pinched it a few times here and there, checking his fingers after each pinch.

“You’re a nincompoop,” he muttered. “You’ve killed some perfectly good bees! These black specks, they’re their poor little backsides!”

“I don’t care about their blinkin’ little backsides!” cried Pete. “Me face is on fire!”

“Come in, then.” The old chap bent and led us through his low front door. I decided I might have been better off in London after all, where we were unlikely to be troubled by bees. The only wildlife around us came out after the pubs shut on a Saturday night.

The front door opened straight into the sitting room. A few framed photographs, brown and faded, of young men in uniform stood on windowsills that must have been all of a foot and a half thick. I lowered my eyes, not wanting to look in their faces.

The brick fireplace was almost as wide as the end wall, and on either side was a deep flowery armchair, comfortable with cushions. In the chair on the right, I was surprised to see a thin, frail-looking old lady, fast asleep with her head bent over her chest, gently snoring. A ginger cat lay curled up on her lap, napping with her.

Against the side wall behind her chair was a large wooden chest, so old it was almost black. Carved on the front was a row of arches, and inside each arch was a little wooden person in old-fashioned clothes, looking out with tiny hole eyes.

The floor sloped even more crazily than at Guerdon Hall. I was surprised the furniture had stayed where it was and hadn’t slid down the boards and ended up in a heap at one end.

“Sit down there,” Mr. Thorston told Pete, pointing to a small cane-bottomed chair. Mr. Thorston’s head barely cleared the dark heavy beams, and he had to bend quite low to get through the door into the next room.

Pete sat down, writhing and moaning.

“Shut your cakehole,” Roger whispered loudly, “or you’ll wake up Mrs. Thorston over there.” Then, behind his hand to me, “I never knew there was a Mrs. Thorston still in the land of the living.”

Through a crack in the door, I could see a round wooden table and chairs, and a dresser brimming with cups, plates, and jugs. Mr. Thorston was in yet another room beyond. We heard splashing water, mixing, stirring. He returned carrying a tin cup. Dipping his finger in, he dabbed a thin paste onto the pink bumps that had swollen up on Pete’s face.

“Just a bit of bicarb,” said Mr. Thorston. “Here, hold the cup yourself. Every time you feel stinging, slosh some mixture on.”

“Rub them over with an onion,” someone said. To our great surprise, we realized it was Mrs. Thorston. No sooner had she uttered the words than she dropped her head again.

“No fear,” said Pete, rudely snatching the cup. “This stuff’ll do, thanks.”

Mr. Thorston turned to Roger and me. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he said. “And what’s the hurry? For heaven’s sake, give an old codger a chance to get to his own front door.”

“Sorry, Mr. Thorston,” said Roger. “Pete, say sorry.”

“Sorry, Mr. Thorston,” said Pete, as though he really thought Mr. Thorston should be saying sorry to
him
.

“Sorry, Mr. Thorston,” I joined in. “We only wanted to ask you a couple of things.”

“Sorry, Mr. Thorston. Very sorry, Mr. Thorston,” said Mrs. Thorston from her chair in a childlike, quavering voice, without raising her head. She was so odd she made me want to giggle, but I knew I mustn’t. Not Pete, though. He just couldn’t stop himself having a bit of a smirk at poor Mrs. Thorston’s expense. Roger kicked his ankle, and some of the bicarb spilled out of the cup onto Pete’s knee.

“You all right, Gracie?” said Mr. Thorston.

“I’m all right, Hal. You all right?” returned his wife, her head on her chest, her eyes closed.

“Now I know you are two of Rosie Jotman’s boys, but who might
you
be — from the East End, if I’m not much mistaken?”

“I’m Cora Drumm, Mr. Thorston,” I said, “and Mrs. Eastfield is my great-auntie Ida. Her sister Agnes, my gran, went and died in the war. Me and me little sister Mimi — that’s Elizabeth — we’re stopping with Auntie Ida for the time being ’cause our mum ain’t at home at the moment.”

“And how old is Elizabeth?” he asked, looking at me intently, his eyes narrowing.

“Oh, please say Mimi, Mr. Thorston. Mum and Dad called her Elizabeth after the queen, but she don’t look nothing like an Elizabeth. She’s four, but she’s very small for four.”

He sat for a moment, staring at a spot on the floor, then he got up and went back through the door into the other room without saying a word. Roger and I pulled questioning faces at each other. Pete slapped more fingerfuls of bicarb onto his face until it was covered with thick white blobs.

“You look a right stupid bonce,” Roger hissed at him. Pete flicked his fingers in Roger’s direction, but the mixture landed on the floor. I stretched out my foot and rubbed it in.

Mr. Thorston came back carrying a plate glistening with yellow waxy lumps. He passed across the window, bending to show us the plate more closely, and a ray of sunlight caught the pieces of wax as they dripped strings of molten gold into a thick syrupy pool.

“Would you like some?”

“Cor, thanks, Mr. Thorston,” cried Roger. “Look, Pete, honeycomb!”

“Come and sit round the table in the other room,” said Mr. Thorston, “then it won’t matter if you get messy.”

Pete looked as if he wasn’t sure he should eat something that had come from his enemies the bees, but in the end the plateful of shining honeycomb was too much to resist.

We sucked and slurped, swallowing the sweet running honey and spitting out the largest pieces of wax into our sticky hands.

Mr. Thorston smiled as we gorged ourselves, and he told us he had three hives and a machine out in the shed that spun the combs to extract the honey. Then he disappeared out of the back door for a few minutes and returned with an enormous veiled hat, big thick gloves that stopped the bees stinging his hands, and a metal smoker that made them sleepy so he could get into the hives.

“Even with all this stuff on,” he said, “I still get stung sometimes, but it doesn’t bother me.”

A voice reached us from the next room: “What do you want to show them all that stuff for? They don’t want to see that stuff.”

“It’s all right,” Mr. Thorston called out. “I’m putting it away in a minute. You all right, Gracie?”

“I’m all right, Hal. You all right?”

Mr. Thorston soaked an old towel in water in the sink, and we cleaned ourselves up. Pete asked to put on the big hat and looked a proper charlie in it.

“Now, then,” said Mr. Thorston as we helped him wipe down the table, “why have you come all the way down here to see me?”