Chapter Four
FOUR
The parish of Banathel lies in a valley of rich purple heather and high hedges of hawthorn, heavy with bees. Sam drives slowly along the narrow one-way street bordered by a handful of small shops; a café, a newsagent, a butcher with the blinds drawn against the sun. There is a row of granite cottages opposite a pub with tables outside on the cobbled stones. It’s pretty, but run-down. Sam had mentioned Banathel was a poor town in a poor county—a result of the closing of the mines and china clay pits—and here and there I start to notice empty shops and houses with newspaper taped over the windows, CLOSED signs in doorways. I notice something else, too, as we make our way through the village—stacks of pebbles with holes worn right through them, strung on beads and ropes and string and hanging in doorways.
“What are the stones for?”
“What stones?”
“The ones with the holes. Outside the houses? Haven’t you seen them?”
I point as we pass a small cottage with a recessed doorway. A large iron nail has been hammered into the brickwork from which hangs a cluster of lumpy, misshapen pebbles in grays and blacks and creamy whites.
Sam pulls down the sun visor and smiles at me.
“You know, when I was a kid, my granddad in Yorkshire had a stone hung outside his kitchen window. He told me it was his weather forecaster. When I asked him how it worked, he said, ‘If the stone’s wet, it’s raining. If it’s swinging, it’s windy. If you can’t see it, it’s foggy.’”
I laugh, turning back to the window. The newspaper that morning had been full of the weather; sunburn and ozone and a packed Blackpool beach, fears of food shortages, roads buckling in the soaring temperatures. Sam collected me from Penzance station in his old maroon car with the pine freshener hanging from the mirror. We made polite small talk on the drive toward Banathel, heading inland away from the glittering sea and the barking, listless gulls. I leaned out the window to taste the air: the shimmer of salt on my tongue; the softening tarmac; the smoky, parched heat. We drove through hedges of gorse studded with little yellow flowers and jostled over cattle grids and through a dry ford littered with pine needles, tarry with clay. Sometimes the lanes grew so narrow I could hear branches scraping the sides of the car, my skin freckled with sunspots in the flickering light.
We crest the rise of the hill where two roads intersect in a simple X, a signpost toward Prussia Cove to the right, an overgrown churchyard to the left. Sam indicates the left turning and as the car swings around, a small, dark shape darts out in front of us so quickly that I feel the jolt of my seat belt before I can even cry out. Sam stamps on the brakes and utters a single expletive, leaning over the steering wheel to better see the figure that charged into the road, now fleeing through the mottled stone archway of the churchyard beside us. We look at each other in disbelief.
“You saw that, right?” Sam is sweating, running his hand through his hair. “That little girl? She came out of nowhere!”
I nod, unbuckling my belt. Sam looks at me, frowning.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure she’s okay. Wait. I’ll be two seconds.”
Sam nods, almost panting in shock. He’s reaching for his cigarettes before I’ve even closed the car door behind me. I cross the road in three short strides, ducking through the ivy-clad archway and into the churchyard of crooked, moss-covered gravestones, grass grown long and yellow underfoot. Beside the low wall separating the churchyard from the road, the young girl is crouching and aiming a gun at me, a small, red toy revolver. Spears of sunlight fall through the branches of the large, spreading yew beside her.
“Hey.” I take a cautious step toward her, hands raised. “Don’t shoot. I’m not armed.”
She looks at me with such pantomimed suspicion that I almost laugh.
“I mustn’t talk to strangers.”
“Very wise,” I tell her, crouching down. “Is your mum around? You’re very young to be running around like that on your own. We nearly hit you.”
She shakes her head solemnly.
“Mum’s working.”
“You got a babysitter? Anyone meant to be with you?”
She squints along the barrel of the revolver.
“Bert. But he’s old and can’t run as fast as me.”
“Okay. We should probably get you back to him, huh?”
“My name’s Stevie,” the little girl says. “What’s yours?”
“Mina.”
“Now we’re friends,” Stevie says, before adding darkly, “so I s’ppose I mustn’t shoot you.”
She holds the gun up to my face and mimes pulling the trigger. “Pow,” she whispers. I laugh. She’s cute, with round cheeks flushed pink and hair as shiny as a chestnut, cut along her jaw. When she smiles, she is missing a front tooth.
“I was wondering, Stevie, do you know what all the funny-looking stones are for? The ones hanging outside the houses?”
“Hagstones.” She sniffs noisily and wipes her nose on her sleeve leaving a silvery trail of snot. “To keep the witches out. Witches can hurt you.”
“Good job you’ve got your pistol.”
“It’s not real. See?”
She pulls the trigger and there is a snapping sound and a little puff of smoke escapes the barrel. I’m instantly thrown into the memory of a Christmas morning, Eddie and I in our pajamas, hands trembling with excitement. He pulled a cap gun just like Stevie’s from his stocking and when he fired it had smelled just like this: spent matches and a smidge of sulfur.
“All right, Annie Oakley, put it away,” I hear a man’s voice say. I turn to see a dark figure leaning over the churchyard wall, silhouetted against the sun. Stevie grins and pokes out her tongue, hightailing it around the corner and out of sight, trailing her laughter like ribbons. An older man with a bolt of gray hair extends a hand toward me. His eyes are a rich, marine blue which crease as he smiles.
“There are two types of people in this world.” His voice is a rich baritone. “Those who are Cornish and those who wish they were. Which are you?”
“Well, I was born in Devon, so the second one I suppose.”
“Well, then, you have my condolences. Next best thing to being Cornish is being here, so you’re a step in the right direction.”
He shakes my hand, his grip firm and steady.
“Bert Roscow. I’m guessing you’re part of this circus on Beacon Terrace, aren’t you? It’ll be television cameras next.”
I stare at him blankly. Circus? Beacon Terrace? I’ve no idea what he’s talking about, so it is with some relief that I realize Sam has parked the car a little farther up the road and is walking toward us. Bert sees him and grunts, planting his big hands on the wall and leaning a little farther forward.
“I was just saying it’ll be television cameras next!” Bert calls to him. His voice is loud but he doesn’t seem angry, although it’s hard to tell. I can’t seem to place his age—his hair is white and his face netted with wrinkles—but he’s sprightly and hale, well-dressed. Sam smiles at him, shaking his head as he speaks.
“I shouldn’t think so, Bert. They’re all too busy filming this weather, aren’t they? Half an hour of it on the news last night. I almost lost the will to live.”
“So you’ve come back for another go, have you?” the man asks. “You must think there’s something in this story.”
“I do, as it happens.” Sam nods. “Public interest. Last year The Herald ran a story about a gray monk haunting the site of an old friary—pure fiction of course, with a few blurry snapshots—but our readership increased threefold and we got more post that week than we could manage. People came down from all over to visit the supposed Friars Walk behind the big Tesco.”
“I meant about the girl. Alice. You think there’s some truth to what they’re saying?”
Sam laughs uneasily. I can’t help feeling that he has been caught out somehow. Like a child pointing out to a magician that he can see the mechanism of the trick up his sleeve.
“You’re asking if I think the house is haunted?”
“I’m wondering what could possibly have brought you here if you didn’t. I’d hate to think you were pursuing a story without a thought for Alice’s welfare.”
“Ah,” Sam says. “On that note, let me introduce you to Mina Ellis. She’s a child psychologist and she’ll be assessing Alice to see if there isn’t some more, uh, fundamental problems at hand. Mina, this is Bert. He lives next door to the Webbers.”
“Number Twelve,” Bert tells me, eyes twinkling. “Me and my wife, Mary, the light of my dreary old life. We both watched Alice grow up and she never gave us a jot of bother. Seems like one minute she was playing with her dolls under the kitchen table and now I’m being told she’s a high priestess who can communicate with the dead. I told her, I said, ‘Alice if you’re in touch with the spirit realm, speak to my brother and ask him where he put the keys to his bloody garden shed.’” He laughs, looking from me to Sam and back again. “I’m sure I’m showing my age here but who was it who said ghosts were a product of digestion? ‘A blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese—there’s more of gravy than the grave about you,’ something like that?”
“Dickens,” Sam says, lighting his roll-up. “It’s from A Christmas Carol. ”
“That’s right! Good man. Good man.”
A little way behind him I see the young girl again, holding her gun against her hip. Stevie is watching us cautiously and when I smile at her she dashes behind a gravestone in the shape of a Celtic cross. Before I know it Bert is shaking my hand warmly and saying, “Well, whatever’s going on in there, I hope you both get to the bottom of it. Give us a knock if you need anything and you can meet Mary, if she’s having a good day.”
As Sam and I walk back to the car he calls after us, “You know I used to be in the newspaper business myself, Sam—might be able to give you some tips!”
“What was all that about a circus?” I ask Sam who frowns and shrugs.
“Not a clue,” he tells me.