PUFFIN BOOKS


Under the Autumn Garden



It was half-term, and Mrs Collinge wanted her pupils
to find out all they could about the history of their part
of Norfolk. Any interesting things that they found
would be put in a little museum at school.



Matthew, was head boy, so he felt he had to do
something really good. Simply finding out the date of
his house was too ordinary. But people said his family's
garden lay over the remains of an old priory.



But what would he find if he did start digging? The
search didn't turn out in the least as Matthew had
planned. The builder's children kept getting in the way
and turning his excavations into play-houses. Then Mrs
Collinge kept demanding written work when Matthew
was still only digging, and the people next door were
always worrying when their cats got lost. So he wasn't
finding out much, not even about the local ghost, Sir
Oliver, who was said to come clanking by in full
armour every November. It looked very much as if the
search was a waste of time, until the tide suddenly
turned.



Jan Mark is one of today's most highly acclaimed
writers for the young, having won the Carnegie Medal
twice for Thunder and Lightnings (1976) and Handles

(1983). She lives with her family in the Norfolk village


of Ingham.

Other books by Jan Mark


The Dead Letter Box


The Ennead

Feet and Other Stories

Hairs in the Palm of the Hand

Handles

Nothing to be Afraid Of

Thunder and Lightnings

Trouble Halfway

UNDER THE
AUTUMN GARDEN


Jan Mark



Puffin Books



Puffin Books, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

Viking Penguin Inc , 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Rmgwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Limited, 2601 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada lsr 184

Penguin Books (N Z } Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand


Pint published by Kestrel Books 1977
Published m Puffin Books 1980
Reprinted 1984, 1987



Copyright © Jan Mark, 1977
All rights reserved


Made and pnnted in Great Britain by
Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk
Set in Monotype Baskerville



Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject


to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the

publisher's pnor consent in any form of binding or cover other than

that in which it is published and without a similar condition

including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser



For my mother



Contents


1 Ship Loke and Myhill Street 9


2 In a Glass, Darkly 16

3 Eggs and Angels 20

4 Hare Today 29

5 Owl in the Moon 35

6 Angels on the Roof 42

7 The Antiquary 51

8 The Deputy 60

9 Sheep 68

10 Angels at Large 73

11 Sir Oliver 82

12 Angels in situ go

13 First Frost 95

14 Brass Effrontery 100

15 Museum Pieces 106

16 Bottles 114

17 No Bottles 125

18 Teeth 131

19 Armageddon 137

20 Under the Autumn Garden 146

I.

Ship Loke and Myhill Street



'I'll write to you,' said Matthew.


' Bet you forget,' said Barren.

'I will,' said Matthew. 'I've got the address here, somewhere.'

' Bet you lose it,' said Darren, as Matthew began patting
all his pockets in turn.' Hang on, I've got something for you.
Better not lose this.' From his lapel he unpinned the badge
with Head Boy printed on it and handed it to Matthew.

'Put that on,' he said. 'Let's see how you look.'

Matthew took the blue and white badge and pinned it
on his sweater.

'Very nice,' said Darren. 'You won't like that, though.'

'What won't I like?' One thing about Darren that
Matthew wouldn't miss was Darren's mania for arguments.
He could never hear a statement without turning it over and
worrying at it, like a cat with a frog.

'Being Head Boy,' said Darren. 'You think you will at
first, but in the end you'll wish that it wasn't you. Everyone'll
look at you different once you've got that on.'

'But I won't be different,' said Matthew. He had been
Darren's lieutenant since September and all the time envied
him the seven short days that made Darren the elder, and
therefore Head Boy until he left. Now Darren was going into
hospital and Matthew was Head Boy in his place.

'That's only for a month, remember,' said Darren, in
case Matthew developed ideas above his station.

They dosed the iron gates of the school playground and
walked to the corner. Matthew wheeled his bike. Darren
limped.

'What's up with your leg ?' asked Matthew.

' I'm going to be operated on, aren't I ?' said Darren.

'I thought that was your ear.'

' No one can see if there's anything wrong with an ear,'
said Darren. 'You can't limp with that. Anyway, that makes
me ache all down one side, just thinking about it.'

'You'll miss all that history we've got to do.'

'I'll miss half term, too,' said Darren.

'No you won't. Half term's this Monday and Tuesday.'

'Well, they're carving me up on Monday, that won't
feel like half term,' said Darren, sashaying across the road
as his limp went out of control. Matthew mounted his
bike.

'See you then,' he said, out of habit.

'No you won't.'

'I'll write.'

'Bet you don't.'

The limp became a quickstep, then a gallop and he
skidded round the corner, out of sight, leaving Matthew
to ride home alone.

Home past the recreation ground and the churchyard,
where the moles were stirring; home past the pigsties, past
the dell where the bluebells and the gas stoves grew.

Matthew stopped here to finish the chewing gum that
Darren had lent him. It was banned at home since the time
he had left a piece on the dresser and it had got onto the
sole plate of the iron. He could still see Dad's shirt and the
steaming strings.

The dell was shaded by trees and in spring, when the
bluebells were in flower, the new, broad, sycamore leaves
hid the bottom of the dell from view. Today, halfway
through the autumn term and halfway through the long,
downhill run towards Christmas, he could just see the five


10



abandoned gas stoves, four standing and one lying, on last
year's leaves at the foot of the slope. By the end of term, this
year's leaves would have joined them and the stoves would
be in full view from the road above, where he stood with
his bicycle.

He rolled the chewing gum into a ball and cast it down
among the leaves, watching it bounce and bury itself. A
car drew up behind him and a voice said, 'Have you lost
something?" It was Mrs Bagnall, who owned six cats and
lived in a bungalow at Myhill Street, near Matthew's house.
She was a teacher at the secondary school in Polthorpe,
where Matthew would be going next year when he was
eleven. At the moment she was a good friend: next year she
would be too close for comfort. Mr Bagnall was a teacher
too, but further off, so he didn't count.

' I was looking at the gas stoves,' said Matthew, nodding
towards the delL

'Disgraceful,' said Mrs Bagnall. 'When we first moved
here there was only one of them and a bucket. I don't know
how the rest get down there without someone seeing them
arrive. They must be breeding. I notice someone has slung
an oil-drum in our pond. If I catch him at it again I'll
send him in after it, head first.'

She drove on and Matthew followed. From the dell the
road ran on a shallow slope to the corner of Fen Street, then
climbed again towards Myhill Street, the cluster of houses
round Ship Loke, which was where Matthew lived.

On the way he passed the pond where the oil-drum had
been left. It was only a pond in winter. In summer it was a
green hollow, bearded with rushes, where Mrs Bagnall's
cats lurked and hunted. For Matthew, it was the first sign
of winter when the pond began to fill with water.

By the time he reached the bungalow Mrs Bagnall had
gone indoors, and her car stood in the garage. He turned
left, into Ship Loke. The corner house belonged to Mrs Harrison
and she was in her garden, sweeping away dead leaves


ii



with a birch broom. When she saw Matthew she waved the
broom over the gate to bring him to a halt.

'I see you're going to have company,' she said, as he
stopped. She pointed with the broom to the next house. It
was the one that was joined to Matthew's house and it had
been empty for years. It now belonged to Dad, who was
going to have the two buildings knocked into one. Since
Matthew left home that morning, someone had planted a
wooden notice board in the hedge: geo. angel builder


AND DECORATOR.


'Your Dad's not wasting any time,' said Mrs Harrison.

' He wants to get the roof done before winter,' said Matthew,
turning to look at Mrs Harrison while he spoke. She
was slightly deaf and had to be able to see what he was
saying, but he didn't have to shout. She had more trouble
with the Bagnalls. They made a great effort to speak carefully
but they came from another part of the country and
used differently shaped words.

' Why are we going to have company ?' asked Matthew,
but Mrs Harrison had turned back to her sweeping and
didn't see him speak. He went on, past the sign and into his
own garden where Mum was digging potatoes behind the
garage.

'How's the Head Boy, then?' said Mum.

'Just about the same as he was at lunch time,' said
Matthew, propping his bike against the wall. Mum lifted
her basket of potatoes and followed him indoors. She seldom
had to ask him what went on at school because she was the
school dinner lady. The food came, already cooked, from
the big school in Polthorpe, but Mum, in a white cap and
overall, was there each day to warm the plates, serve the
meals, and wash up afterwards.

She tipped the potatoes into the kitchen sink and gave
Matthew the basket to take outside.

'I'll put the kettle on,' she said. 'Were you surprised
when they said it would be you ?'


12



'Not really,' said Matthew. 'I'm the oldest one there,
now. Anne Lilley's the next one after me. She'll have her
turn next year. Anyway, that only means I'm in charge of
the milk bottles.'

It meant very much more than that for the Head Person
had to keep an eye on things without anyone noticing that
it was being done. He also had to behave slightly better
than anyone else. Taking charge of the milk bottles was
only a sign of office; a rare but useless privilege that singled
you out as being the only one worthy to enjoy it.

' Mrs Harrison said we were going to have company,' said
Matthew. ' What did she mean ?'

' How would she know ?' said Mum.

' Did she mean Mr Angel ?'

'I suppose you could call him company,' said Mum. 'But
he'll be up on the roof, most of the time. You're not going
up there with him,' she added.

Mr Angel was a builder. He lived in the next village but
he kept his lorries at the yard in Polthorpe. They were a
familiar sight and exactly the colour of an Edam cheese.
They were painted yellow with rind-red lettering: Geo.
Angel. Builder and decorator. Matthew liked cheese but he
could never fancy Edam. It tasted of brick dust and rubble
and just seeing it on the shelf in the supermarket made his
tongue feel gritty.

Dad came home early on Fridays, had a special, large
Friday tea, and then went back to work late at his garage.
When he came in he dropped a bunch of keys on the
table.


'You'd better hang those up somewhere, Janey, and
give them to George when he come,' he said. 'I see he've
been round already, by the sign. You'll be having company,
Matthew.'

'Mrs Harrison said that,' said Matthew. 'Who's the
company ?'


13






Mum picked the keys out of the jam, wiped them on a
dishcloth and hung them on a nail behind the door.


' George bring his boys with him at weekends,' said Dad.
'One of them's about your age.'

'That'll make up for Darren being away,' said Mum.
Matthew saw other possibilities, not all of them good.

'Julie and Karen won't come will they?'

Julie and Karen Angel went to Matthew's school. Their
father was Mr John Angel, George's brother and junior
partner.

' What's wrong with Julie and Karen ?' asked Mum, who
only saw them at lunch-time when they were eating; something
they did well.

'Karen tells tales,' said Matthew. 'And Julie nags. She's
never happy unless she's mobbing someone. She goes on,
whaa-whaa-whaa, just like a chain saw.' He thought about
Julie for a bit. 'She'll have to do what I say now, won't she ?'

'I wouldn't bet on that,' said Mum, pushing his duffel
bag to one side to make room for the tea. ' You don't want
to come down too heavy to begin with.'

'She never bothered Barren,' said Matthew. 'He
wouldn't let her, but I don't know how he did it. I should
have asked him before he went.'

'I made bread today,' said Mum. 'Get a new loaf out of
the bin. You don't want to be like Darren. Just be Matthew,
only better.'

Mum had never had much time for Darren.

'When's Mr Angel going to start?' asked Matthew.

'Next week, I hope,' said Dad. 'You never know with
George. You can take a note over to Hoxenham tomorrow,
Matthew, to remind him we're still here. He might think
he've done his bit, else, just putting the sign up.'

'Why not phone him?' asked Mum. 'Who wants more
tea?'

'I do,' said Dad, holding out his Friday teacup which
was as big as the sugar basin. 'Don't never phone George


14


up, Janey, unless that's life and death. He'll chat all day if
you let him. If he want to do that on his own phone bill, he's
welcome, but he's not doing that on ours.'

'Can I go and look at the house?' said Matthew. 'I
won't touch anything.'

'You'd better not,' said Dad. 'You'll have the whole
place down round your ears if you breathe too heavy. Go on,
I'll be round myself in a minute, when I've had another
cup.' He took the Friday teacup, poured the tea down his
throat in a single cataract and pushed the cup towards the
teapot again.

He clearly had a busy evening ahead of him.

2. In a Glass, Darkly


The house next door had a name instead of a number. It
was painted in frayed but dashing gold letters on the glass
panel over the front door: Kingston Villa. Matthew wondered
if Dad intended to take over the name along with the
house. It was too grand a name for such a modest front
door but with the two small houses made into one it might
be a better fit.


Kingston Villa sounded more impressive than 3, Ship
Loke. It would look nice in the school register too, between
Lilley, Anne Patricia, Oak Cottage and Oulton, Stephen
Robert John, Railway Farm, which was a lie in any case
because the railway had gone, long ago. He tried it for size:
Marsh, Matthew, Kingston Villa, Ship Loke, Myhill Street.
It had a good rolling sound and it was far more address than
anyone else had, especially if you added Pallingham, Norfolk.
It quite made up for having less name.

He turned the key in the lock and went in. Standing at
the foot of the stairs he could see that it was identical to his
own house only back to front, as if seen in a dirty mirror. All
the same rooms were there, but on the right instead of the
left, and decorated with green grime and cobwebs instead of
wallpaper and plaster.

In the kitchen there was no sink, only a lone tap lagged in
tattered sacking like a snake with a sore throat. Where Mum
had her shining gas cooker there lurked a black range, still
full of ash, and the floor was laid with pamments instead of
the black and white tiles that they had at home. Matthew


16



knew that under the pamments there was nothing but cold
earth and the chill rose up through the very soles of his
shoes as he stood in the dank and darkening kitchen, so
much darker than his, although the same low October sun
that shone on Mum and Dad at the tea table was shining in
here, also.

He wrote 'Kilroy was here" in the dust on the window,
back to front so that it could be read outside, and drew a
face with ravenous teeth, underneath it. Then he went back
through the hall, past the long-dead telephone, and into the
front garden. Dad was standing at the gate, staring up at
the roof.

'That's a horrible sight,' he said. 'We'll have to strip the
lot. God knows what's nesting up there. If Joe Blakely had
sold six years ago, when I first wanted to buy, that wouldn't
be in this mess now. He always was a silly old fool about
parting with anything. I reckon he pulled down his greenhouse
in case he grew more than he could eat and had to give
the stuff away.'

The Blakelys had moved into Kingston Villa before Matthew
was born and had moved out again before he was old
enough to remember them, but Mum and Dad, and Mrs
Harrison, still spoke of the amazing events that followed their
arrival. They had cut down all the fruit trees, pulled up all
the flowers and let the grass grow. Grass was all that grew
there now. There had once been three sheds and a greenhouse
but Mr Joe Blakely, assisted by his two sons and
watched by his wife, had razed them to the ground and
buried them.

' I went round there,' said Dad, ' and offered to buy the
lot, but he weren't having any. They laid everything on the
ground and jumped up and down, the three of them, until
that was all little pieces. Then they dug a big hole and buried
the bits. Mrs B. had a hammer, she took care of the glass.
And not one of them ever said a word. Just jumped up and
down all afternoon, till there was nothing left. I tell you,


I?



your mother never felt properly safe while they was here.
That were a long five years.'
The Blakelys had gone away at last but they still owned
the house and it had stood empty ever since. Matthew
joined Dad at the gate and looked up as well. On the
Marshes' side the roof was flat and neat, the pantiles
snugly interlocking. The tiles on Kingston Villa were bulging
and rickety, the roof like a quilt thrown over an unmade bed.

'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Dad, sorrowfully. 'George is
going to be busy.'

Matthew was not encouraged to call Mr Angel 'George',
but Dad, who serviced his lorries at the garage, called him
George and a number of other things besides, especially
when he was working on the engines.

'And that's not only the roof,' said Dad, as they walked
round the side of the house. ' There's some bad things in
those front bedrooms. That surveyor bloke looked quite
poorly when he came out of the airing cupboard.' He
thumped the wall of the lean-to as they went by. Flakes and
splinters fell from the eaves. 'Don't you go leaning on anything,
we might have an accident on our hands.' They turned
the corner of the house, into the back garden. 'And that
hedge is coming down, too.'

Dad went back to work but Matthew walked down the
new garden, through the gathering evening, to the wall.
This was the middle section of a wall that ran along the end
of Matthew's garden and ended at the Hoxenham Road,
passing between the gardens of Mrs Harrison and the Bagnails,
on the way. It was part of a much higher wall, all
that was left of a thirteenth-century priory, according to
local maps, where it said Priory (remains of) in crooked
black letters, to indicate great age.

There was no priory now, and no remains, except for the
flint wall which someone, long ago, had levelled off with
bricks.

Matthew leaned on the bricks and gazed at his new view of


18



Hemp's Farm and its fields, and the footpath that passed
through them, across Fen Street and up to the church. He
sometimes used it to get to school and in a way it was his
path because every autumn Charlie Hemp ploughed over it
and whoever first used the footpath after that, set its course
for the whole year. Matthew always tried to be the first
because it was very difficult to walk in a straight line over
ploughland and the footpath came out with interesting
kinks in it. It gave him a powerful feeling to look down the
path as he was doing now, and see the kinks still there, and
to know that they were of his own making, endorsed by the
feet of all the other people who used the path.

It would soon be time for ploughing again. Already the
gangster gulls were gathering daily in the rotting stubble
that had lain there since Charlie cut his wheat and spread
muck, back in September.

November began tomorrow and Matthew, leaning on
the twilight wall, recalled that with November came Sir
Oliver, when he might be seen again on the footpath. Sir
Oliver, if he had ever lived, had died in the fevery fogs of a
medieval autumn, and in the season of his death he could
yet be seen, stomping, as only a knight in full armour could
stomp, down the slope from Pallingham church, and up to
Myhill Street.

Sir Oliver must surely be the most boring ghost in the
county. Other Broadland villages boasted flaming monks,
headless horsemen, phantom coaches, and, excessively, an
entire Roman legion. Pallingham had only Sir Oliver,
trudging glumly up and down the footpath like any lawabiding
citizen.

Matthew knew of no one who had ever seen him, which
rendered him even more boring.

The only person likely to was Charlie Hemp, ploughing his
fields by night. Matthew meant to ask him, this year, if the
lights of the tractor had picked out the figure of Sir Oliver,
clanking silently up the field ahead of him.

3. Eggs and Angels


Mrs Sadler was the school playground supervisor and lived
on the Calstead Road, just beyond the school, with her
mother-in-law and two dozen hens. The hens belonged to
old Mrs Sadler and every Saturday Matthew made his usual
weekday journey, only this time to buy eggs. There was a
sign in the garden to trap casual passers-by, who had to
make their way between the hen runs to the front door,
but Mrs Sadler kept a supply for her regular customers in a
shed near the gate. As well as his own, Matthew collected
eggs for Mrs Harrison and Mrs Bagnall, delivering them on
the way home.


When he called at the bungalow no one answered his
knock, and he was just about to leave the eggs on the step
when he saw Mr Bagnall in the garden, pulling up turnips.
He was very scientific about it, taking hold of each turnip
and gently unwinding it. If it failed to come up in his hand
he wound it up again and left it in the earth.

Matthew was a little nervous of Mr Bagnall. He had a
dislocated look, as if all his bones were threaded on cotton,
and he professed to have a great hatred of cats. Matthew
found it embarrassing to see Mrs Bagnall petting her cats
while her husband scowled at them and made unfriendly
remarks. Mrs Bagnall took no notice at all and occasionally
added another cat to the collection, even as Mr Bagnall was
threatening to slay all the others. They seemed quite fond of
each other, in all other respects, but Matthew often feared


20



that a row would break out involving both Bagnalls and all
the cats.

'I've brought the eggs,' he said, to Mr Bagnall. 'They're
on the doorstep.'

Two cats who were scrapping in the apple tree fell out of
the branches, thudding to the ground like ripe fruit.

'Disgusting creatures,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Infecting the
trees with their poisonous whiskers.'

One of the cats swore and ran up a tree trunk. The other
undulated against Mr Bagnall's ankles.

'She likes you,' said Matthew. ' She's purring.'

'Nonsense,' said Mr Bagnall, with a cruel, rasping noise,
as if he had gravel in his throat. ' She's charging up her
death rays.'

'The eggs are on the step,' said Matthew, again, and
hurried back to the road. Sometimes it seemed as if Mr
Bagnall must be joking, but as he never smiled it was hard
to tell. When he reached his bicycle, Minnie, the smallest
of the six, was sitting in the carrier, on Mrs Harrison's


eggs

'Come
you out of that," said Matthew, hurriedly removing
her. ' He'll pull all your legs off, he always says he
will." He stroked the little cat under the chin and she
pushed her head against his face. Mr Bagnall also claimed
that cats had nothing inside their heads except a damp
passage, from ear to ear, along which the wind whistled
continuously.

As Matthew turned the corner into Ship Loke, Dad passed
him in the Land-Rover, on his way to work.

'Don't you forget that message,' said Dad, leaning out
of the window.

'What message?'

'You have forgot. Where did you leave your head?' said
Dad. 'The message for George. I gave that to your Mum to
give to you. Remember to ask her for it.'

He drove away. Matthew delivered Mrs Harrison's eggs


21



1


and went home where breakfast and the message were
waiting for him.


Ship Loke lay on the parish boundary. Myhill Street was
in the parish of Pallingham but the loke was bordered by a
shaggy hedge, leading down to the woods, and this was the
boundary. On the other side was Hoxenham. The village
itself was out of sight behind trees but it was not far away
and going in a straight line Matthew could have reached it
in five minutes. However, the road had elbows so it took
three times longer to reach even the centre of the village,
and Mr Angel lived on the far side of the broad, much further
on. He rode through the village along the edge of the broad
where the boats, abandoned by summer visitors, rocked on
the still water, disturbed by the slightest movement of wind
or water fowl. Ahead was the deserted road, fenced by alder
and willow, with nothing on either side of it but marshland
and water.

He had travelled in a semicircle since leaving home and
looking across the broad he could just see the elms that
stood at the end of Ship Loke. Myhill Street was not only
on the edge of the parish, it was on the edge of the land
drains. On all sides the dykes and ditches stretched away
towards the grimlie length of Hoxenham Wall, the biggest
dyke of all. In winter it might well have been on the edge
of the world: nothing between Norfolk and outer space but
the bleached reeds. They stood everywhere, dry and coldly
whispering.

Just as he was beginning to think that he had taken a
wrong turning he saw a notice, half hidden by the bulk of a
collapsing willow tree: Geo. Angel. Builder and decorator.

A similar notice stood in the Angels' yard at Polthorpe,
but this was Mr Angel's house. Matthew wheeled the bike
up the drive and stared about him. The scenery inside the
garden was the same as the scenery outside. All the bleakness
of the marshes enclosed by a hedge. It was not so much
a garden as an estate.

22



There were two or three buildings that looked as though
they might be lived in, besides the rusty iron sheds, nissen
huts, hen houses and prefabricated garages that stood
about the grounds. A scabby dinosaur leaned out of the
bushes as he went by. It was a derelict combine harvester,
one of the many wrecks that skulked in the undergrowth.
For a master builder, Mr Angel seemed to lead a ramshackle
existence.

The drive took him to the largest building, an old house,
much added to, with an asbestos garage tacked on at one
side. Matthew could hear scraping sounds from somewhere
but although a car stood in the garage with its bonnet
raised he couldn't see anyone. He went to the nearest door
and knocked, wondering whether it was the front or the
back door. No one opened it and he waited on the step,
considering what to do with the message; there was no
letter-box. He stepped out of the porch and listened carefully.
The scraping sounds were definitely coming from the
garage, as if the car was scratching itself. He stood in the
doorway and called 'Anybody there ?'

He had a nasty shock.

Two clutching hands appeared from under the car,
between the front wheels. For a moment he thought there
had been a horrible accident, then he saw an oily face behind
the hands.
'Hullo,' said the face.

Matthew bent down and saw that the face belonged to
someone who was crouched in an inspection pit under the
car.

' I've got a message for Mr Angel,' he said, upside down,
to the face.

' Hold on,' said the face and retired to the end of the
pit. Matthew heard clambering and the owner of the face
appeared from behind the rear of the car.

'Which Mr Angel is it for?' he asked, from a great height.
Matthew wondered how he managed to fit into the inspec-


23



tion pit. Perhaps he had extra joints and hinges that shorter
people like Matthew could do without.

'Mr George,' he said, looking at the envelope to make
sure. Apart from Julie's father, Mr John, he hadn't known
about any others. 'Which Mr Angel are you?'

' I'm Chris. You want my father but he's out on a roof in
Tokesby. Or do you want Grandad? He's George as well,
over there.' He pointed to a green, corrugated iron bungalow
on the other side of the estate.

'I want your Dad,' said Matthew. 'It's from my Dad,
Mr Marsh. He services your lorries.'

' Now I know you,' said Chris. ' Give that to me, I'll see
he gets it.' He leaned forward and took the note in his teeth,
waving black hands to show why he couldn't hold it. He
spoke through clenched jaws. 'Would you open the door for
me?'

Matthew went back to the house and opened the door. It
led straight into a shining bathroom, all tiles and chromium
plate, with a thick carpet on the floor.

'Mustn't touch anything,' said Chris, still mumbling.
'We've only just finished it. Turn on the taps, will you?'
His voice vibrated through the note like a wasp in a jam
jar.

Matthew approached the sink with respect and turned
on the taps. He had never been in a bathroom that opened
straight on to the garden; it was a draughty thought. Chris
was removing his boots on the doorstep.

'You'd better take your letter back,' he said. 'I might
chew it, by mistake.'

Matthew withdrew the note and returned it to his
pocket.

' This used to be the scullery,' said Chris, scooping green
jelly from a tin under the sink and larding his arms with it.
'We've been working at it since Christmas, on and off.
Got to get that door bricked up, yet.'

' My Dad uses that stuff to shift grease,' said Matthew.


24



' He gets it by the gallon. That's much cheaper than those
little tins.'

'Do you think he'd get me some?' said Chris. 'Very
handy, working in a garage.'

'He owns it,' said Matthew. 'Half of it, anyway. Do you
work in a garage?'

'I'm still at school,' said Chris, rinsing his arms and beginning
on his face. As the dirt came off Matthew saw that
he was quite a bit younger than he had seemed at first. He
began to look like a schoolboy except for the peaty sidewhiskers
that remained round his ears after the rest of the
black had gone. 'I hope to go to London, next year.'

' To work in a garage ?' Matthew put a towel into Chris's
groping hand.

'No, to the university, to read History,' said Chris,
coming out of the towel. 'Where's that note? I'm sure to
lose it.'

'You gave that back to me. Don't lose it,' said Matthew.
' Dad'11 think I forgot to bring it. That's all about our roof,
that needs mending.'

' I won't really lose it,' said Chris. He started to leave the
room by a second door. Matthew thought that he had better
follow as he still had the note.

'It's a bind,' said Chris, 'remembering to lock all these
doors every time you want to use the loo.'

Matthew looked back and noticed a third door, behind
the bath.

' Coal-shed,' said Chris.

The door they were using led into the living-room. Chris
walked on, opened another door and they were outside
again, looking towards the green bungalow.

' The note,' said Matthew, waving it at Chris.

'Yes. Thanks,' said Chris, taking it. He looked distracted.
'What's that whistling noise?'

' Like a siren ?'

' Cistern's overflowing,' said Chris. He returned the note


25



to Matthew and dived into the house again. Matthew waited
in the doorway and looked around. The house seemed
to have fallen apart and been carelessly reassembled without
regard for the original design. At the end of the room a
flight of stairs stopped abruptly where it met the ceiling
and under the wallpaper he could see the outlines of a door.
Perhaps Mr Angel practised building on his own house to
save spoiling other people's. By the time he had finished
with Kingston Villa it might have staircases that emerged
airily from the roof, and all the windows underground.

Chris came back with wet hair.

'That's seen to," he said, strolling away. Matthew still
had the note. He ran after him.

'What was that you said about reading history?' he
asked, catching him up. 'We've got to do history this term.'

' I have to do it all the time,' said Chris.

'So do we,' said Matthew. 'But this is special. We've got
to find all the history in our village. I don't know where to
look. That's all fields.'

'You'll have to look under them. Turn archaeologist,'
said Chris. 'You live at Myhill Street, don't you? You've
got the priory there.'

'Not any more,' said Matthew. 'That's only there on the
map. You can't see anything.'

'Well, then, like I said; you'll have to dig for it,' said
Chris. ' Hullo, here comes the mob.'

Round the side of the bungalow ran Julie and Karen,
followed by a very little boy dressed in denim and dirt,
waving a red plastic sword.

Julie's round face became long and quarrelsome when she
saw Matthew. She stopped running and approached him.

'What are you doing here, Matthew Marsh?' said Julie.

'Matthew Marsh, Luke and John,' said Karen. It was
either a greeting or an insult and coming from Karen'
that made very little difference. He had heard it many
times.


26



'We've come to see our Nanny and Grandad. We don't
want to see you,' said Julie.

' I don't want to see you, either,' said Matthew.

'Clive hit me with his sword,' said Karen.

'Don't hit Karen with your sword, Clive,' said Chris.

'Is torque wrench," growled Clive and hit Matthew
instead.

'You don't have to hit me either,' said Matthew, rather
impressed that Clive should know what a torque wrench
looked like.

'You can't tell him what to do,' said Julie. 'You don't
start being Head Boy till Wednesday. You can't tell him
what to do anyway. Chris will hit you.'

This seemed highly unlikely.

Clive made an aimless swipe at everybody and plunged
into the bushes, rewing-up as he went. He seemed to be
about three years old but he sounded as though he smoked
heavily.

' Matthew's a loony,' said Karen, for want of something
more appropriate to say.

In the distance Matthew saw someone else erupt from the
green bungalow and head towards them.

' Matthew's a loony, a poony, a goony, a moony, a foony,'
droned Karen, elaborating on her original theme. Faced with
a seemingly endless supply of Angels from the bungalow, he
handed the note back to Chris.

'I'd better get home now,' he said, and went.

The cries of the Angels faded into the distance as he
pedalled down the road. He took the track that led out past
the Slepe Bridge draining pump and into the Marrams, the
dunes that bordered the coast. He didn't look back as he left
the bike at the foot of the dunes and climbed up, through
Slepe Gap, and down onto the beach. The sands and the
sea were empty: he walked down to the edge of the water and
sat there, letting the buzz go out of his ears. A little fat dog
minced along the sand, glanced at Matthew and sat down a


27



few yards away, courteously looking out to sea instead of
grinning at him, after the fashion of solitary dogs. After a
while it got up and walked quietly away. He was almost
sorry to see it go.

It was such a gentlemanly dog.

4. Hare Today


Charlie Hemp had a freezer into which went everything that
he shot: hares, rabbits, pigeons and ducks. Since he lived
alone and shot more than he could eat he sorted through it
once a month and distributed meat amongst his friends.


'What's this, then?' asked Dad, looking at the frosty
carcase on the draining board.

'A hare,' said Mum.

'That's what he tell you,' said Dad. 'One of these days
we're going to get a fox by mistake.'

Mum put the hare in a casserole and went out to do some
gardening while it cooked. She knelt on a raft of sacking in
the middle of the flower bed, digging up roots, while
Matthew was set to pick up the rotting windfalls that remained
under the apple trees. If they lay until spring the
pips sprouted and little trees began to grow.

'Didn't Mrs Collinge give you any work over the
holiday?' asked Mum, tossing weeds into the grass box
from the mower.

'Sort of/ said Matthew. 'She wants us to think about
something.'

' She'll be lucky,' said Mum. ' Or did she tell you what to
think about?'

Matthew sat back on his heels and practised aiming
apples at the grass box. They struck the curving metal
with soft, fruity explosions. 'You know that festival they're
having in Polthorpe, next Easter? All the schools are doing


29



a history of their village to put on show in the Town Hall.
We're going to do one.'

' I heard about that,' said Mum.' Is that your work then ?'

'We've got to start by finding out about our own houses
and when they were built, and what they're built of.'

'That shouldn't take long,' said Mum. 'You'd better get
on with it.'

'That's so boring.' Matthew looked up at the house.
He had lived in it all his life. Writing about it would be as
entertaining as writing a history of his knees: it was part of
him. ' I could do the priory.'

'Do what? That's all gone,' said Mum. 'I think I'll go
and look at that hare - that smells about done to me.'

'There's Sir Oliver,' said Matthew. 'He's still here.'

Mum stood up and stamped the loose earth from her
shoes.

'He's only a story. You don't want to write about him.'

'He was real once,' said Matthew. 'He must have
been. You have to be dead to be a ghost and you can't be
dead unless you've been alive. He goes up and down to the
priory so he must think there's something there.' Even if
you don't, he said to himself.

' Don't go wasting time with a silly ghost story,' said Mum.
'You've got to go back and do some real hard work, on
Wednesday. You don't want to get wrong, now you're
Head Boy.' She went indoors.

Matthew occasionally got tired of hearing about what he
did and didn't want to do. He had his own ideas about that.
He took the grass box down to the wall, emptied it on the
rubbish heap and stood, looking down the footpath. He had
the beginnings of an idea, of the slow-growing variety. Dad
strolled across the garden but Matthew didn't notice him.
Dad waggled his fingers in front of Matthew's eyes to attract
his attention.

'Wake up,' he said. 'What are you doing, asleep on your
feet?'


30



' I was thinking," said Matthew.

'Not like you,' said Dad.

Matthew sighed, but silently. People seemed to have a
very low opinion of his thoughts: Mum, Dad and Mrs
Collinge. Dad lit his pipe and the smoke mingled with the
smell of the baked hare. It was an amiable moment, a good
time to mention his idea. He approached the subject in a
general sort of way.

'Do you know when they're coming to do the roof?' he
asked.

' George rang up this morning,' said Dad. ' Said he'd just
found my note, stuck behind the clock. Who did you say
you gave it to ?'

This was not a very promising start.

' I gave that to Chris. He was the only one I could find,'
said Matthew.

' Oh, him. If he got his head out of a car for five minutes
his brains might settle,' said Dad. 'When I get their Volvo
in I spend more time repairing his repairs than I would if
he'd let that alone. George said they might be over tomorrow.
That might mean tomorrow, you never know with
George.'

It was sooner than he had expected.

'What's going to happen about the garden?'

'Plenty of time to think of that, later,' said Dad. 'We'll
have the hedge down first, then we'll get the foul-grass out
and dig up the roots. Are you making me an offer ?'

Matthew looked across at the hedge. The foul-grass
sneaked out of the garden beyond, wound itself round the
bottom of the hedge and climbed into the twigs, where it
fixed itself as tight as ivy. It was a privet hedge.

' If you get rid of that hedge I shan't have anything to
feed my stick-insects on.'

'Never mind them,' said Dad, who thought that stickinsects
were unnatural. ' Every time Charlie have his cultivator
out that fill up with dust. That's a sieve, that hedge. I


31



daresay Mrs Bagnall will let you have a bit of privet now
and again. Well, are you going to help?'

'Oh, yes,' said Matthew, wondering how he could get out
of it. 'I was thinking about digging, too.'

'That'll be a while before I start digging,' said Dad. 'I'll
have to go over the grass first, with a scythe. I don't fancy
you let loose with a scythe,' he added, looking down sideways
at Matthew. 'What are you after?'

'I want to dig up the garden,' said Matthew. 'I want to
see what's underneath.'

'Three sheds and a greenhouse,' said Dad. 'And that's
just for starters. If I said there was everything bar the kitchen
sink down there I'd be lying because the kitchen sink's there
too. I saw them bury that. I suppose they meant to put a
new one in, but they never did. Why don't you dig up our
garden? I could do with a hand, this autumn.'

Matthew knew when he was being cornered.

'There's this thing we're doing at school. Mrs Collinge
wants us to find out about history and how old our houses
are. We're going to make a little museum out of all the bits
we find.'

'I reckon that will be little,' said Dad. 'What do you
expect to find here ? You're not going to put old Blakely's
greenhouse in a museum, I suppose?'

'I thought I might dig up the priory,' said Matthew.
He didn't want to tell anyone about his idea, but if he didn't
he might find himself digging the vegetable plot, all autumn.

'You won't find much priory, I can tell you,' said Dad.
'Don't you think Charlie would have had something up, by
now?'

Mum leaned out of the kitchen window and called ' Come
and get washed. That'll be ready in five minutes.'

Dad went straight indoors but Matthew collected the
tools and put them away. Mum wouldn't feel like gardening
after lunch.

*


32



'That's your turn to wash up,' said Mum, when they had
finished eating.

' That's always our turn to wash up,' said Dad.

'That's always my turn to cook. You do the cooking and
I'll wash up.'

'Now, about this here priory,' said Dad, when they were
washing up as usual. 'I don't reckon you'll find anything
but you're welcome to look. All I say is this: you can take
out what you like, but don't you dare put anything in. There
must be enough rubbish under that grass to build another
house with.'

Matthew hung up the tea towels to dry and ran outside.
He went down the garden, through the gap where the
hedge met the wall, and surfaced in the long grass that
would have been hay if anyone had cut it. The hollow stems
were battered and flattened, lying in yellow rags.

It was the wrong time of day for Sir Oliver but Matthew
closed his eyes and saw him like a photographic negative,
black where he should have been white, and furry at the
edges. Sir Oliver trembled and dissolved and he saw monks,
solid and solemn as they appeared in his history book at
school. He had once met a real monk in Norwich, wearing
glasses and walking briskly through the bus station with a
brief-case in his hand; no more than a business man out in
his dressing-gown.

What would he find if he did dig ? What did monks do
in those far-off days before they walked abroad, catching
buses ?

Monks prayed in their priory. He saw a church packed
with bowed bald heads like hazel-nuts; a church with its
roof gone, with its walls gone, a grassy mound embedded
with stones and the monks gone; then the mound assaulted
by men with spades, digging; himself digging; himself at
school, face to face with Mrs Collinge, displaying the things
he had found.

What had he found ?


33



He opened his eyes and he was face to face with Mrs
Bagnall's tabby cat, a swaggering torn tiger who had
started life as a kitten called Skippy but was now known as
Genghis Khan, because of his nasty habits.

Genghis Khan was taking home a rat to put away for
later. He lounged past Matthew and slithered over the
wall.

'Loathsome beast," said Mr Bagnall, in the distance.

Matthew switched off the pictures and looked about him.
Nearby lay a manhole cover, like a big iron biscuit thrown
out for the birds. He pushed it to one side and there was no
manhole under it but it had been there so long that the
earth beneath was bare of plants. It was the one place where
he could begin digging without waiting for the grass to be
cut. He went home and fetched the edging spade from the
toolshed. Dad came in as he went out.

'Where are you going with that?'

' I'm going to start digging.'

'The priory?'

'Yes,' said Matthew. Dad laughed.

'Well, that's all right for a bit of fun, I suppose, but mind
that is just for fun. You do something else for your school
work, and do it properly.'

'Oh, yes,' said Matthew. 'Yes. Yes.' Dad would tell Mum
and Mum would tell Mrs Collinge. He must keep a set of
false papers for school and pretend that the excavation was
only a game until he found something and astounded them
all.

He took the spade back to the new garden and drove it
into the earth. There was no question of digging in earnest
until the grass was cut, but he had begun. This was where
the excavation would be.

5. Owl in the Moon


He meant to make an early start on Monday morning.
There was no one about when he went through the hedge to
the new garden carrying the spade and the shears. A slight
breeze stirred the trees and dry leaves fell from the oak with
the rattle of distant applause. In Mrs BagnalPs garden the
chestnut leaves, yellow as bananas, coasted to the ground
with a soft slapping sound.


The oak was the only tree that the Blakelys had failed to
cut down. Driven aslant by centuries of storms, it leaned
across the garden; its branches grabbing at the house, its
roots under the wall. As Matthew stood by it he heard a
louder rattle and saw a tractor approaching up the field.
Charlie had begun his ploughing, attended by his officious
black Labrador retriever.

The dog was called Yew, after Charlie's uncle. Written
down it was actually Hugh, but as the uncle was dead and
the dog couldn't write, it didn't matter very much. Yew was
supposed to be a gun dog but Charlie, who was very firm
about cats, rats, and rabbits, was soft on dogs so Yew ran
about with a wild white smile, often in the wrong direction,
and brought back the pigeons that Charlie shot squashed
flat in his jaws.

Matthew waved to Charlie as he turned at the top of the
field, and Yew fell into a noisy panic, trying to decide if he
should investigate Matthew or follow the tractor. Already
the first gulls were assembling in the furrows and they scat35



tered angrily as the dog cantered among them. Matthew
turned his attention to the excavation. He took the shears
first and knelt in the damp grass to cut back the growth
round the hole that he had dug yesterday. After a few
minutes he felt that someone was watching him and looking
up he saw Mrs Harrison leaning over the fence.

'Wrong time of year for that,' she said.

'I'm not gardening,' said Matthew. 'Just digging a hole.'

' That can't have been dug for eleven years, you'll need
a pickaxe. You can't dig a hole with shears,' said Mrs
Harrison.

'I'm just cutting the grass so I can see where to dig,' said
Matthew. He tried to add a little dignity to the situation.
'I'm looking for the priory.' It sounded extremely silly, said
to Mrs Harrison, but silly enough to seem like a game and
that was a means of preserving his secret.

'Doing that for school are you?' asked Mrs Harrison.
No secret: Mum had been telling tales. Now that Mrs
Harrison was next door instead of next door but one she
could do it in comfort without raising her voice.

'Not really,' said Matthew, as casually as he could.
' That was the school thing that gave me the idea, that's all.
I might find something.' Mrs Harrison walked down to her
section of the wall and motioned him to do the same on his
side of the fence.

'That's the priory, down there,' she said, pointing to
Charlie's stubble. ' That's where you ought to be digging.'

'I can't dig up Charlie's field. Anyway, they wouldn't
have buried monks in the priory, would they? Didn't they
have to do that outside?'

'Oh, you want to dig up people, do you?' said Mrs
Harrison. 'I remember when they had the archaeologists
at Clipton. They were digging all round by my uncle's
garden and they found a skeleton. They were so excited
he didn't like to say he'd been digging them up for years '
and putting them in the dustbin.'


36



'Why the dustbin?'

'Well,' said Mrs Harrison, reasonably, 'they were in the
way, weren't they? You'd do better to go and dig on the
council tip. They're probably still there.'

Matthew saw that she was not going to provide much
encouragement in this venture. To get away he pretended
to notice Mum in the garden and retreated through the
hedge. As a reward for his deceit he found that Mum really
was waiting for him on the other side, with a shopping
basket.

'Are you busy ?' she asked in a voice that meant that she
didn't think so, whether he did or not.

'I'm digging,' he said, 'my excavation.'

'That nonsense,' said Mum. 'That can wait. I want you
to take this back to Charlie.' She gave him the bag and he
looked inside. It contained the biscuit tin that the hare had
come in, and two cabbages.

' Charlie's ploughing,' said Matthew.

'Then leave that at the door,' said Mum. 'You've got
plenty of time to dig later. Anyway, I don't think Mrs
Collinge meant you to go digging holes. She wants you to
write something, I expect.'

'I will write,' said Matthew, taking the bag. 'But I'll
dig as well. You won't tell her, will you ? If I do find anything
I'd like that to be a surprise.'

'That'll be a surprise, right enough,' said Mum. 'What's
she going to put on your report this term? Matthew has
dug some very nice holes ? Ten out of ten for a big one ?'

He took the bag and went onto the footpath, through the
garden gate. It was very difficult to keep home affairs secret
from school. When Mum had finished washing up after
lunch she joined Mrs Collinge and Miss Cooper for a cup
of tea and a cosy chat before afternoon lessons began.
Matthew often suspected that some of the cosy chats were
about him, so it was equally difficult to keep school secrets
away from home. Roger Hewlett was the school nuisance


37



but if it hadn't been for Mum being the dinner lady,
Matthew might be the school nuisance with Roger a close
second.

As he walked down the path to the farm Charlie came
bucketing up the field trailing his own snowstorm: a wheeling
funnel of seagulls that rose and rolled behind the plough.
Ahead of him Yew ran in tight circles, nose to the ground.
When Matthew went by the dog ran after him, trying to
leap into his arms.

When he was a puppy Charlie had carried him about
tucked inside his jacket, and Yew, now four years old, still
thought that this was a good way to travel although he was
huge and heavy and looked like a torpedo with legs. Charlie
leaned from his cab, shouting and whistling, but Yew ran
round in front of Matthew and waylaid him by rising on his
hind legs and putting his arms round Matthew's neck. He
smiled his silly smile and leaned his head on Matthew's
shoulder, sighing like a furnace. In the end Charlie had to
stop the tractor and come back down the field to fetch
him.

'Come down off of that, you great soft fool,' said Charlie,
seizing Yew by the collar and tail and dragging him away.
Yew sat down on Charlie's feet. He was a big man but he
staggered slightly. 'You ought to be beat,' said Charlie,
not very convincingly. He looked at his watch. 'Half past
ten. Come and have a cup of tea.'

Charlie was a great timekeeper. He always had his midmorning
break at exactly ten-thirty and if he happened to
be at the top of the field when it was time to stop he had his
tea at Matthew's house instead. At the moment they were
marginally nearer the farm so they walked down the field.

'I was coming to see you,' said Matthew, holding up the
bag. ' Mum sent this back, she's put some cabbages in.'

'Very nice,' said Charlie. 'I miss the garden, sometimes.
Have to put a few vegetables in again, one of these days.'

Charlie had ploughed up his garden some years ago and


38



now his fields stretched right up to the kitchen door. He
and Matthew walked out of the stubble and onto the doorstep
without pause. Yew went back to annoy the seagulls
who were settling in the furrows, waiting for Charlie to
return and serve the next course.

'Put that bag down and have a seat," said Charlie,
throwing his cap aside and lighting the stove that stood in
the corner, next to the gas cylinder that fed it.

'Been gardening?' he asked, seeing Matthew's muddy
hands.

' Sort of,' said Matthew.' I've been digging a hole.' However
much he wanted to keep the matter to himself he still
found himself talking about it. Charlie only nodded.

'Why not?' he said.

Then he said 'Why?'

'You know that garden next to ours, belonging to the
house that Dad bought?'

'Old Batty Blakely's?' said Charlie. 'Your Dad have
got trouble there, I reckon.'

'Isn't the priory under it?'

'Priory's under my field, aren't it?' said Charlie, unhelpfully.

' I thought there might be a bit of it in our garden,' said
Matthew. ' I thought I'd try and dig it up.'

'You must be short of a way to waste time,' said Charlie.
He measured six spoonfuls of tea into the pot.' I been turning
up that field for twenty-five years, and I never found
nothing but flints. Sugar ?'

'Yes, please. But you don't plough very deep, do you? I
was going to dig right down.'

Charlie handed him thick, brown tea in a thin, pink cup,
standing in a blue and white striped saucer. The saucer
that matched the cup was on the floor with the remains of
Yew's breakfast in it.

' I don't think depth have got much to do with it,' said
Charlie. 'I just don't reckon there's anything to find, that's


39



all. The only bit I know of was what my old Dad turned
up, and he was ploughing with the horses.'

'What did he find?' asked Matthew, swallowing hard.
The tea was furry and seemed to stick, all the way down.

'You come in here and I'll show you,' said Charlie,
leading the way into the living-room. Matthew followed.
He often visited Charlie but this was the first time he had
got further than the kitchen. Since old Mr Hemp died,
Charlie lived in the kitchen, coming out of it only on
Sundays, to dust.

The living-room was cold and green: green carpet, green
chairs, and a green tablecloth. Green curtains hung at the
windows, faded to the colour of cabbage stalks. Matthew
stayed in the doorway, afraid to soil this green sanctuary
with his boots.

'Here,' said Charlie. 'Take a look at this.' He beckoned
Matthew to the fireplace which stood in the wall, opposite
the door, as high as Charlie's shoulder and as sturdy as a
little stone house.

' My old Dad, he made this himself,' said Charlie, patting
the mantlepiece. Matthew came forward to look. The fireplace
was built of grey stone blocks, roughly faced.

'Did he find all the stone in the field?' asked Matthew.
Charlie was being rather off-hand about it, if so.

'No, he bought that,' said Charlie. 'This here's what he
found.' In the middle of the course above the grate were
three blocks with carving on them. Two were ribbed like
the stones over the church porch but the middle one bore a
figure, a little square bird with staring stone eyes and stout
claws, gripping a crescent moon.

Matthew ran his hand over it.

' Is that an owl ?'

'That's right,' said Charlie. 'The owl in the moon, we
called that.'

'Where's the rest of it?'

' Where's the rest of what?'


40



'The rest of the priory,' said Matthew. 'If that's all that
was left, what happened to the rest of it?'

'How should I know?' said Charlie. 'Maybe this weren't
off the priory at all. That was found up at Myhill Street,
that's all I know.'

' It must be very old.'

'Yes,' said Charlie. 'So don't tell no one or we'll be full
up with people coming to see it.'

' If I dug up something like that, it would be from the
priory, wouldn't it ?'

'That's right,' said Charlie. 'You dig up owls.' He led the
way back to the kitchen. 'Tea'11 be getting cold.'

Yew was in the kitchen, standing on his hind legs with
his elbows on the table, drinking out of Matthew's overturned
cup. He lowered his eyelids modestly as they came
in but he didn't stop drinking.

'Have another cup,' said Charlie, giving Yew a shove
that was supposed to knock him off the table, but only made
him hiccough, resonantly.

'No, I won't, thanks," said Matthew. 'I ought to get
back and start digging.'

Charlie, engaged in pushing Yew to the floor, gave him
an absent-minded wave as he went out.

Walking up the field he could see that something was
happening at home. Figures moved about in the new garden
and a ladder was placed against the wall of Kingston Villa.
As he drew nearer, someone came out from behind the
chimney stack and scrambled across the tiles. Matthew
began to run. Behind the trees he could see one of the
Angels' lorries, parked in the loke. Astride the roof sat
Chris Angel, prising up ridge tiles and slinging them into
the garden.

Mrs Harrison called over the fence ' I see your company
have arrived.'

6. Angels on the Roof


As Matthew entered through the garden gate Mum leaned
out of the kitchen window and jerked her thumb at him.


'Don't stand there unless you want a hole in your head.
He's got as much sense of direction as a turnip."

Matthew stepped aside. Some of the tiles had landed on
the home side of the hedge. As he watched, one came down
in the privet.

Matthew waved at Chris in case he should happen to be
looking that way, and hurried up the garden.

'Where's Mr Angel?' he asked, in the kitchen.

'Banging about inside,' said Mum. 'I can hear him
through the bedroom wall. There's another one with him,
somewhere, and a little boy.'

'That's Clive,' said Matthew. 'Julie and Karen aren't
here, then. I'll get on with my digging.' He wanted to be
out there immediately, to follow the clue of the owl, before
it began to seem ridiculous.

' You're not going out there until that fellow's come down
off the roof,' said Mum. ' In any case, isn't it time you forgot
about digging and thought about your history ?'

'That is history,' said Matthew. 'And I've hardly begun
to dig, yet.'

' If you don't want me to tell Mrs Collinge about it you'd
better think of something you can tell her about yourself,"
said Mum.

This was blackmail. Matthew put his boots behind the


42



kitchen door and went upstairs to his bedroom. It was
strange how everyone found his school work more interesting
than he did. He sat on the bed and looked out of the window.
Down below, in the new garden, someone was standing in
the excavation, drawing the outlines of it with his foot.
Matthew lowered his head behind the aquarium where the
stick-insects lived and peered through the privet stems. One
of the stems moved stiffly away on wiry legs and left a
space for him to look through.

The person in the garden was staring up at the roof.
A pantile, caught on a current of air, volplaned into view
and skimmed over his head. The person only stood there,
his arms folded, like an early martyr who considered it
beneath his dignity to duck. Matthew recognized him as
the unidentified Angel who had emerged last of all from
the green bungalow, on Saturday. He was fair haired while
Chris was dark, but he looked enough like him to be his
brother, flat faced and genial. Another tile went over his
head, close enough to lift his hair as it passed,

'Do you have to stand just there, Paul?' said Chris's
voice, from above.

'I like the excitement,' said Paul, placidly.

'I wish you'd go away," said Chris, and the next tile
came down with more than necessary force. It hit the earth
in Matthew's excavation and a cloud of dust enveloped
Paul's ankles.

'You did that on purpose,' said Paul, surprised but
without resentment. He began to move, very casually, towards
the hedge. Chris sent another tile after him, to make
sure he kept moving. He disappeared behind the hedge and
dodged through the gap into Matthew's garden. Matthew,
still stooping out of sight behind the stick-insects, ran downstairs
and into the kitchen.

Mum was washing clothes at the sink and watching Paul
through the window. He was standing under the plum
tree, making a variety of rude gestures towards the roof.


43



'Where are you going?' asked Mum, as Matthew tried to
slip out of the door. 'You aren't going out into the garden.'

'He's out there,' said Matthew, pointing to Paul at the
moinent when he picked up a clod of earth and hurled it
upwards and out of sight.' He shouldn't be doing that in our
garden.'

«I»Io, I suppose not,' said Mum, too engrossed in the
performance to pay attention.

Jf it had been Matthew out there, delivering missiles at the
roof and using insulting behaviour, he would have been
hauled in at once.

He said as much, since Mum obviously wasn't listening.
'Gait I ask him in ?' he added, more loudly.

'I reckon you'd better,' said Mum. 'I think I'll have a
word with George when I next see him.' Another tile
crashed through the branches of the plum tree. Paul was
being driven into the cauliflowers, behind the garage. ' Go
out the front way and catch him as he comes round.'

Matthew raced to the front door, already curtained and
sealed against winter, drew the bolts and dragged it open
just as Paul jumped backwards into the porch. Chris,
pursuing him implacably, was now throwing tiles into the
front garden.
'He shouldn't do that,' said Matthew, bolting the door.

'You don't have to lock up, he can't throw them in,' said
Paul.

' I know that, but it's meant to be bolted,' said Matthew.
'He shouldn't throw tiles into our garden.'

'He wasn't trying to hit me.'

Matthew thought that Paul took too charitable a view of
the situation.

'My Mum'11 tell him to stop.'

'He's my brother,' said Paul, as if that gave Chris
powers of life and death over him. ' He's all right.'

'He was all right to me,' said Matthew, doubtfully. 'I
met him on Saturday when I took a note over to yours.'


44



'Oh yes. You ran away when you saw me coming,' said
Paul.

'I didn't. I just had to go,' said Matthew. 'Anyway,
Julie and Karen were there. I see enough of them at school.'

'My cousins,' said Paul. 'They're all right.' It appeared
that Matthew was not allowed to criticize Paul's relatives.
'I can't hear anything. Let's go out again.'

I'll just let my Mum know,' said Matthew, making for
the kitchen. Paul stopped him.

'You don't have to ask her if you can go out, do you?'

' Of course not. I was just going to tell her he's finished.
She wanted to know.' Paul was certainly older than he, but
not so much older that he could assume that Matthew was a
little boy. To preserve his reputation Matthew had to go
back to the front door and draw all the bolts again so that
they could get out without Mum noticing.

Matthew looked up at the roof as they left the shelter of
the porch. Chris had not finished but he had his back to them
and the sound of distant smashing told him that the tiles
were landing in the back garden again. The roof had a
threadbare look with the laths exposed.

'It's in a terrible mess, that place,' said Paul. 'Dad said
he'd never seen anything like it. Why did your Dad buy it ?'

'We need more room,' said Matthew. 'We've only got
two bedrooms.'

'Three,' said Paul.

'Two.'

'There's three next door.'

' One of ours is a bathroom now,' said Matthew. Paul
looked like being another Darren when it came to arguments.
'I should know. When my Gran comes to stay I
have to sleep on the settee. And Mum thought we might do
a bit of bed and breakfast, in the summer.'

'My Auntie Molly does that, over at Tokesby,' said
Paul. 'But she's got a big house and it's near the sea. You
wouldn't get anyone to stay here, would you?'


45



It seemed that Paul could say what he liked.

'Why not?' said Matthew. 'People ask, sometimes. We
had a Mr and Mrs Myhill here, last summer, from America.
They were looking for ancestors, but they couldn't find any.
They wanted somewhere to stay the night but we had to
send them to "The Wherry", in Polthorpe.'

'What made them think they'd find ancestors here?'
asked Paul, looking up and down the flinty loke. 'There's
nothing here.'

'That was the name,' said Matthew. 'This bit's called
Myhill Street.'

'Ship Loke,' said Paul.

'Ship Loke's in Myhill Street.'

'We call it Mile Street,' said Paul.

'So do we,' said Matthew. 'But they didn't. They called
it My-hill Street. They gave me their address, so I could send
them a Christmas card. It was a town called Keswick - but
they called it Kes-wick.'

'I bet they didn't find any ancestors,' said Paul. He
strolled into the garden of Kingston Villa. Mr Angel had
taken the gate off its hinges and reversed his lorry up the
front path.

'Mum showed them the phone book,' said Matthew.
'There are dozens of Myhills in that. I showed them the
priory.'	v

'A priory?' said Paul. 'Where is it? I can't see any
priory.'

'You're standing on it,' said Matthew. 'That's all underground.'
Before he could stop himself, he added, 'I'm going
to dig that up.'

Paul started to look amused and then tapped his chin
and became thoughtful, as though he had pressed a button
to change his expression.

'What makes you think you'll find anything?' he asked.

'Your brother Chris did,' said Matthew. 'That was his
idea.'


46



'If Chris thinks there's something here, there must be,'
said Paul, very gravely.

' I'm not telling anyone until I've found something,' said
Matthew, mentally crossing out all the people he had told
already. 'Don't say anything to Julie and Karen, I want to
keep it a secret from Mrs Collinge.'

'Who's she?' asked Paul. He was looking at the ground
with a speculative eye, considering what might be under it.

' Our teacher,' said Matthew.' I don't reckon she'd think
that was a very good idea, not for school work, I mean, so
I'm going to keep quiet until I've dug something up.'

'We could tell Chris,' said Paul, 'as that was his idea in
the first place. He's reading History at university, next
year. He might be able to help - with advice I mean. He
wouldn't dig.'

Matthew liked the way that Paul said 'we'. He had an
ally at last.

'Of course, archaeologists don't dig in winter,' said Paul,
lowering his hopes again. 'They have to pack up in the
autumn and wait for summer. They go on telly in winter.'

' I can't wait,' said Matthew.' I've only got until January,
I reckon. Dad's going to start digging it properly, after that.
If I don't find anything by Christmas, I'll have to pack that
in. That's been a dry autumn; it's easy to dig at the moment.'

'Yeeeeees,' said Paul, making the word last while he
thought of an argument. ' We might have a downpour any
day. It would be like digging in a Christmas pudding.
Where's your excavation ?'

'Over there,' said Matthew, pointing.

'Not that funny little hole I was standing in? Really?
You haven't got very far, have you?'

'I only started last night,' said Matthew. 'When I came
down this morning, Mum sent me out for something, and
when I came back Chris was chucking tiles about. I had to
go in.'

'Well, he's stopped now,' said Paul, glancing up at the


47



roof. Chris had gone, leaving the ladder and a bald patch
among the tiles. ' It must be time for our tea break.'

He walked up to the kitchen window of Kingston Villa
and looked through the dirty glass, making a little peaked
roof with his hands.

'Nobody there.' He looked frantic.' Where've they gone?
Clive's not there either."

Matthew was disturbed to see Paul so worried by so
little. 'I expect they're round at ours. Perhaps your Dad
wanted to boil a kettle, or something.'

'Yes, that's probably it,' said Paul, looking relieved.
'Let's go and see.' He burrowed through the gap in the
hedge, leaving Matthew to follow. Matthew thought that
it should be Paul following him, since Paul was the visitor,
especially when Paul opened the kitchen door and walked
in, without knocking. Matthew looked over his shoulder and
saw the kitchen full of people. Dad had dropped in on his
way back from a breakdown and he was sitting at the table
drinking tea with Mum, Mr Angel, and Chris.

'What's all this, then?' said Mr Angel as Paul came in.
'I thought you were meant to be helping.'

'When did you go out?' said Mum, to Matthew.

' Oh,' said Paul. ' I was just going up the ladder when I
saw some interesting fungus in the garden. Had to go and
look.'

'He's cursed with perfect eyesight,' said his father.

Mum poured two more cups of tea and pushed the biscuit
tin towards them.
'When did you go out?' she said, fixing Matthew with an
angry eye.

Chris didn't speak. He was looking under the table and
out into the hall. Suddenly he roared, 'Come here!' and
grimy Clive ran in. He didn't stop, but hurtled on, into the
garden. As he passed the table his arm flicked out, quick as a
toad's tongue and the last of the biscuits disappeared with
him.


48



'He don't miss a trick, do he?' said Mr Angel, as though
Clive were a performing seal.' Come on, boys. Back to work.'

The Angels all left together and a few minutes later
thumping broke out again, next door.

'Now, when did you go out?' demanded Mum, ready for
battle.

' Paul wanted to go out,' said Matthew.

'Don't blame him.'

'We did wait till Chris had stopped - stopped throwing
them at Paul, I mean,' said Matthew. 'Is that all the
Angels ?'

'I don't know, I've lost count,' said Mum. 'Lively,
aren't they?'

'Don't stop counting yet,' said Dad. 'George thought
John might be along after lunch, and he usually brings
his little girls with him, to play with Clive. George don't
like to leave him running about on his own.'

'Why bring him then?' said Mum, clearing the table.
'He shouldn't be running about on a building site at his
age.'

Dad looked sidelong at Matthew and said quietly, 'You
know . ..'

' Oh, yes,' said Mum, also glancing his way to see if he
were listening. Matthew tried to make out if this shorthand
had anything to do with him; then he realized what Dad
had said.

'Julie and Karen coming here?' he shouted. If they
arrived and found him digging he would never make any
progress. They would go to extraordinary lengths to avoid
being ignored. He sometimes thought that Julie would
willingly hang herself if it would draw an audience. He ran
to the toolshed to fetch the spade, remembered that it was
already out there, doubled back and dived through the
hedge. All the Angels were indoors but as soon as he began
to dig Paul came out.

'You'll never get through all that grass,' he said.


49



'I've cut enough to be getting on with,' said Matthew.
'Dad will do the rest with a scythe, but he won't let me use
it.'

' I can handle a scythe. Hang on. I'll just ask your Dad,'
said Paul, bounding through the hedge.

He was back, very quickly, with the scythe that was kept,
not in the toolshed, but out of Matthew's reach in the rafters
of the garage. Dad was afraid that Matthew would cut off
his feet with it but presumably he thought that Paul's feet
were his own affair.

Matthew wished that he had refused Paul as well, all the
same.

Paul began his operations under the oak tree, where the
grass was green and silky, untarnished by the weather.
Matthew continued to dig. After a while, Clive wandered
out with plaster in his hair.

' I dig,' he said, succinctly, and flung himself down on his
knees, tearing at the earth with his hands.

'He doesn't look quite human, does he?' said aul,
leaning on the scythe and watching his brother worrying
at the turf. 'When he gets a bit older we'll tie a string round
his leg and send him down holes after rabbits.'

7. The Antiquary


By the time Matthew had finished his lunch there was
another yellow lorry in the loke. He ran round to the
front garden and was just in time to see Mr John Angel
lifting Karen from the driver's cab. Julie was standing at the
gate. Mr John went straight into the house, leaving the
girls in the loke, staring at Matthew.


'We're going into your garden,' said Karen. 'We can
go into your garden when we like. Daddy said.'

' If you behave yourself,' said Matthew. He was holding
the spade. It would be so simple to lift it high in the air
and bring it down on Karen's head.

'We can go in anyway. When we like. You can't stop
us,' said Julie, squeezing past the lorry in the gateway.
Karen skipped after her and Matthew stood and watched
them over the hedge.

'You're not Head Boy here,' said Julie. Clive looked out
of the front door, pale with dust.

'What are you going to do? Smash all the windows?'
said Matthew.

Clive blinked at him. 'I dig,' he said with a dismissive
wave of the hand, and strode unsteadily after his cousins,
round the corner of the house. Matthew returned to his
own back garden and squinted through the privet. In spite
of his threat Clive was not digging. The new garden was
deserted, although Matthew could hear shrill cries from
inside Kingston Villa. He went across to the excavation


5i



and plunged the spade into the earth. As it landed he heard
the blade strike metal and when he pulled it out, along
with a generous helping of earth, he saw something lumpy
in the hole: an iron hand with rusty claws.

He went down on his knees, and dug at his discovery,
holding the spade just above the blade, like a paddle. The
lumpy thing did not come out of the hole, it was too deeply
embedded, but the earth crumbled away round it. He
looked to see if Paul was anywhere near, to help him, but
Paul had been conscripted after lunch and the scythe lay
idle against the oak tree.

He pulled the sleeves of his sweater over his hands and
took hold of the object. It resisted his tugging and the iron
bit into his sleeves, laddering them for a considerable
distance.

'You'll get ever so wrong for that,' said a pleased voice
beside him. Karen was standing in the hole.

'That's only an old one. Go away. Go indoors,' said
Matthew, looking at his sleeves.

' She doesn't have to if you say so,' said Julie, stepping
into the hole beside her sister.

'I've brought my dolly,' said Karen, holding it out. It
was a pale, rubbery creature, heavily tattooed all over with
a blue ball point pen.

'You take your dolly away or I'll bury it, and you too,'
said Matthew, sitting back on his heels. 'Get out of my
excavation.' The object was beginning to work free of the
earth. It was certainly nothing that Sir Oliver had ever set
eyes on. It looked like a piece of roofing iron and he recalled
that the Blakelys had buried their sheds just about
here. Still, it was going to save him some hard labour when
he finally got it out, for there was a large hollow underneath.
'I'm going to tell my Daddy what you said,' remarked
Julie. 'And I'm going to tell Mrs Collinge.' She never used


52



any particular tone with her threats. She might have been
reciting a boring poem.

'Go and tell a tree,' said Matthew. He gave a final heave
and rolled over as the iron jerked out of the earth. The
trench where it had been lying was so full of leggy, leathery
insects that Julie and Karen leaped out of the hole and
cantered back to the house, leaving Matthew in possession.
There was something else in the hole: a green teaspoon
with n.c.c. stamped on the handle. He hoped for a moment
that it was an antique, religious sort of spoon, such as
medieval monks might have used, and that n.c.g. stood for
something holy, but he knew that it was more likely to mean
that the spoon was the property of the Norfolk County
Council and not at all ancient, especially as it said Made in
Sheffield on the back.

That wasn't going to earn it a place in the British
Museum or even the school museum.

Using the new trench as a starting place he began to
dig again where the earth was damp and soft. The soil was
full of whiskery roots that had no plants growing from them,
a secret, underground network that nourished nothing. He
dug with one eye to the ground and one on Kingston Villa,
ready to repel any Angels that might come out. At one point
he saw Julie in the kitchen, adding eyelashes and curly hair
to the face that he had drawn on the window, but she
remained indoors.

The spade struck iron again. Little clods of earth fell
away from the root fronds and he saw another strip of roof.
There was no need to treat it gently this time, as he knew in
advance that it wasn't historic. He wedged the spade under
the iron and pressed down. The iron began to rise out of
the ground with a tearing sound, lifting a long mat of grass
with it.

'That could be the end of a very nice spade,' said Chris
Angel, crossing the garden. He had Paul with him and at


53



their heels shambled Clive, shoulders up, head down, a
little black shadow.

' I dig,' said Clive, laying hands on the spade. Matthew
didn't care to boot him off with his brothers watching but
Chris picked him up and put him down again, a little way
off.

' What have you found ? * said Paul. ' An air raid shelter ?'

Matthew hadn't thought of this. It was a long time since
the end of the war: surely air raid shelters were getting
historic by now?

'Wrong shape for an air raid shelter,' said Chris, holding
Clive at bay with his foot. Matthew's short dream faded.

'That must be the Blakelys' garden shed,' he explained.
'Mr Blakely who used to own this house, he buried three
sheds and a greenhouse. I've got to get past them before I
find anything. Well, I did find this.' He held out the green
teaspoon. ' I think it's a modern one.'

Chris was very serious about the spoon. He examined it
carefully.

'A buried artifact,' he said, turning it over and over.
'You ought to put it back. Someone may come and dig
here when we're dead and gone. Think how excited they'll
be to find this prehistoric cutlery.'

'That's not prehistoric,' said Matthew.

'It will be in three thousand years,' said Chris. 'In three
thousand years those sheds you mentioned - they'll be
prehistoric. At least, they will be if you don't dig them up
first.'

'We'll never be prehistoric,' said Matthew. 'I know
what that means. What about films and tape-recordings
and books? Dinosaurs are only prehistoric because they
couldn't write.'

Chris nodded, but he had to disagree, as people so often
did with Matthew.

'Books and tape-recordings will survive if we look after
them, but just think, when they've all perished in the


54



nuclear holocaust your sheds will still be here, buried deep.
And your teaspoon.'

'What holocaust?" said Matthew, making sure that he
said it right first time.

'Armageddon - the great devastation,' said Chris, tapping
his nose with the teaspoon.

'What's that?'

Chris lost patience.

'Oh Jesus,' he said, and flung the teaspoon into the hole.
Clive dived in after it.

'Don't be hard on him,' said Paul, with a pitying look
in Matthew's direction. 'You see,' he said earnestly, to
Matthew, 'all that stuff you find in museums was what
people threw out as rubbish in the old days. They didn't
know that archaeologists were going to come along
thousands of years later and dig it all up again. The
Martians might come and dig up those sheds. That teaspoon
might end up in a Martian museum.'

' You know what a Martian is, don't you ?' said Chris.

'He hasn't had your advantages,' said Paul. 'He hasn't
been taught history by Frederick Kenworthy Bagnall, m.a.
That is an advantage, isn't it?'

'Is his name Kenworthy?' said Matthew. 'That just
says F. K. Bagnall on his briefcase."

'Do you know him, then?' asked Chris. 'We're great
friends, sometimes.'

'He lives in that bungalow,' said Matthew, pointing over
the wall.

Paul leaped up. 'Let's go and see him,' he said at once.

'You can't. They've gone away for a couple of days,'
said Matthew. ' I've got to feed their cats tonight. That's a
good thing you reminded me."

'You'd better not let him know what you're doing,'
said Chris. 'He can't bear amateurs digging things up.
Damned antiquarians, he calls them.'

'What's an antiquarian?'


55



'Oh Jeeeee - dear, dear, dear,' said Chris. 'Some people
have fairies at the bottom of the garden. You've got
Frederick m.a. at the bottom of yours and you don't know
what an antiquarian is ?'

'I only talk to him on Saturdays,' said Matthew.

'How quaint,' said Chris. 'What do you do the rest
of the week, throw things ?'

'What's an antiquarian?"

'In the nineteenth century,' said Chris, 'a lot of tiresome
old gentlemen with nothing better to do went round
digging for history, just like you. They caused terrible
damage to historic sites because they didn't understand
what they found. They only kept things if they liked the
look of them. They called themselves antiquaries but today
they'd be called vandals and magistrates would be extremely
sharp with them.'

Matthew felt great shame. He was an antiquary if ever
there was one.

'That was your idea,' he said.

'Yes, but I didn't know you lived next door to Frederick
when I suggested it,' said Chris. 'Worse things happened
earlier than that, when people dug for treasure and thought
about its value only in terms of money. Look what happened
to the three crowns of East Anglia.'

'What three crowns?'

'My God, he's hopeless,' said Chris to Paul, and sat
down on the edge of the excavation. It looked like being a
long lecture so Paul and Matthew sat down too. Clive went
on rooting about in the background.

Chris wore a particularly joyless expression. He seemed
to have caught something besides history from Mr Bagnall.
Like him, it was impossible to tell whether he was joking,
if indeed he ever was.

'Once upon a time,' said Chris.

'There were three bears,' said Paul. Without looking
at him, Chris gave him a frightful clout on the head. Paul


56



rolled into the excavation but he seemed accustomed to
such treatment and righted himself without complaint.

' There were three crowns buried in East Anglia to protect
the kingdom from invasion. The kingdom of East Anglia,
that is. In those days they weren't so bothered about the
rest of England.'

'They're not so bothered now,' said Paul. 'Are we?
Home rule for Norfolk. Let's start an East Anglian Liberation
Front.'

'Shut up,' said Chris, drawing back his elbow, preliminary
to another assault. Paul eased himself along the
lip of the hole. ' Those crowns were no joke. People really
believed they were there. In fact, they probably were there.
In the seventeenth century they dug up an ancient silver
crown at Rendlesham, and I hardly like to tell you what
happened to that. It's not fit for young ears.'

'They melted it down.'

'You'd better not melt down your teaspoon,' said Paul.
'But there's one crown left, isn't there, Chris? That's why
we weren't invaded during the war.'

'Fact,' said Chris. Matthew looked from one to the other.
They regarded him with Bagnall-like faces.

'What about William the Conqueror?' said Matthew.

'Tea time,' said Chris, although it was only three o'clock,
and walked away with his brothers in meek attendance,
leaving Matthew to decide whether he was offended or
laughing. He was beginning to notice that if he got things
wrong people despised him, and if he got them right they
thought he was funny. Life was full of jokes that he failed to
appreciate. It was a great conspiracy.

When it really was tea time the Angels were still working
in Kingston Villa and it was growing dark before they came
out and climbed into their several lorries. Matthew risked
seeing them off.

'Will you be here tomorrow?' he asked Paul who was
riding home on the back of the lorry, among the ladders.


57



'We won't. It's Tokesby again, tomorrow,' said Paul.
'Uncle John will be, though.'

'And Julie and Karen?'

'No, they're going out for the day with Clive,' said
Paul. 'We'll be back on Saturday.'

A thought struck him.

'By the way, why do you only talk to Frederick m.a. on
Saturdays ?'

' I don't see him the rest of the week,' said Matthew.
'On Saturdays I deliver his eggs.'

'I didn't know he laid eggs,' said Paul. 'There's a tale to
tell the lads. Bye bye. Have a nice dig.' He knocked on the
rear window of the cab to let his father know he was ready,
and the lorries rolled away.

Matthew went home to collect the key that Mrs Bagnall
had given him.

The proper way to reach the Bagnalls' bungalow was to
go out of the front gate, down Ship Loke, into the Hoxenham
Road and round to the front gate of their garden.
Matthew went through the new garden and over the wall
at the corner, behind the oak tree. Charlie, still ploughing,
had switched on his headlights and the beams swept up and
down the field, dealing Matthew a blinding blow in the eye
as the tractor turned at the bottom of the slope. For some
reason the sight of Charlie's headlights gave him a cold itch
at the back of the neck, but he couldn't remember why.

He walked across the Bagnalls' garden, under the apple
trees, dark against a darkening sky, and felt his way to the
door by following the little pink bead of light that shone
behind the bell push. On the doorstep he felt a soft billowing
about his feet and when he opened the door and switched
on the light, the cats streamed into the kitchen, purring
melodiously.

There was a little wicket gate cut for them at the base
of the door, but they preferred to wait on the step for Mrs
Bagnall when she came home from school.


58



They rose on their hind legs and fell against the furniture,
apparently weak with hunger. Mr Bagnall said
that cats were natural twisters and liked to wave the meat
plate over their heads to make them sing louder. Matthew
took the plate from the fridge and tried the same experiment.
The purring rose to a contralto trill. All six cats were there,
with their curious names: Genghis Khan, Jones the Bookrest,
Furbelow, Supercat, Tokyo Rose, who was foreign, and
Minnie, who was expecting kittens. Matthew suspected
more jokes but was afraid to ask.

He put the plate on the floor and it was engulfed in fur.
He poured fresh milk and water into the special pussy
bowls labelled 'Milk' and 'Water', turned off the light
and shut the door on the diners.

As he turned the key he heard a faint sound in the
darkness, above the distant churning of the tractor. He
stood still, ears expanding, and then ran like hell for the
wall. He had just remembered what Charlie's headlights
reminded him of.

Just a silly story, according to Mum.

Sir Oliver.

8. The Deputy


Matthew rode out on Wednesday morning under low, fast-
moving clouds. The wind swept him down the Hoxenham
Road on a tide of swirling leaves, a brown, autumn river
that ran between green banks where yarrow, white campions
and dandelions were still in flower. He coasted past
the summer flowers and the winter trees until he reached
the dell where the sycamores, standing low in the damp soil,
were as green as September, and the gas stoves were half
hidden from sight.


He paused by the dell and stared down into the hollow;
and remembered what Chris had said about today's rubbish
being tomorrow's history. Every year the falling leaves lay a
little further up the sides of the stoves. One day they would
be covered. One day the leaves would rise to the top of the
dell and the ground would be level again, with the gas
stoves buried, deep down.

In thousands of years, spaceships might land on the recreation
ground. Archaeologists with four arms would
trundle out, carrying complicated implements with which to
excavate the gas stoves, and wondering about the small,
primitive people who had set them up and worshipped
them. It was certain that the people who had dumped
them there in the first place had never thought that they
would become an ancient monument.

Looking over his shoulder Matthew saw the morning
milk-float approaching him from behind, and this made


60



him hurry on again. He had no watch and might be late.
Usually he arrived just in time but now that he was Head
Boy he ought to be there earlier than anyone else, in case a
fight broke out or one of the infants shut her finger in the
gate.

Just before he reached the school there was a slight bend
in the road so that he approached unseen. That way he
knew what was going on before anyone noticed him, so
when he reached the gates and found Karen Angel and
Roger Hewlett shoving up against them, he knew something
of what had happened before he began asking questions.

'Why did you hit her?' he asked, herding them into
the playground.

' I never,' said Roger.

Karen rolled up her sleeve. 'He did. He hit me here.'
There was a small, black bruise.

'You got that on Monday," said Matthew. 'Hitting
Clive. You missed and hit the wheelbarrow instead. My
Mum had to dab that for you.'
Julie came out from behind the cycle shed.

'He did hit her. He hit me too, but I got away,' said Julie.

'He shouldn't have hit my poorly bruise,' said Karen.
' I'm telling of him to Miss Cooper.'

Matthew felt that anyone who hit the Angel sisters was
only obeying the laws of nature, but it wasn't allowed and
had to be stopped.

'You're not telling anyone,' he said. 'Miss Cooper's got
enough to do. What did you hit her for, anyway ?' he asked
Roger, when Julie and Karen had retired to the cloakroom
to whip up a posse.

'Julie said I'd get worms from eating orange peel and I
gave her a shove and Karen bit me so I shoved her too,'
said Roger, plaintively. 'I shoved her with my foot.'

'Biting's worse than hitting,' said Matthew, wondering
what he ought to do about it. 'Let's have a look.' Roger
exhibited his thumb with two faint dents in it.


61



'I don't call that much,' said Matthew. 'Besides, Karen
hasn't got any bottom teeth. That's only half a bite, and
she's smaller than you.' He went after Julie and Karen. 'If
you don't say anything about being hit, Roger won't say
anything about the biting.'

'Just because you're Head Boy,' said Julie, but she
walked away without arguing.

It was hard to have to see them at home as well as in
school, but at least in school he had only to bother with
Julie. Karen was in the infant class on the other side of the
partition. He could hear her squealing but it was only one
squeal among fourteen others. There were eighteen juniors
and that was the whole school: thirty-three of them, or
thirty-eight if you counted Mrs Collinge and Miss Cooper,
Mum and Mrs Sadler at lunch-time, and Roger Hewlett's
granny who was the caretaker.

Roger lolled on Mrs Collinge's desk while Matthew laid
out the registers, looked up the number of today's hymn and
opened the book on the piano.

' Can you get worms from eating orange peel ?' he asked.

'You should have thought of that before you hit her,' said
Matthew. 'I don't expect so, she just likes frightening
people. She told me once that grass grows through your
lungs if you swallow it.' He heard Mrs Collinge's car pull
up on the grit by the gates. ' Come on, you shouldn't be in
here yet. Go and line up with the others.'

Roger left the room and immediately Matthew heard
another fight start up outside because Roger had put himself
at the head of the line and there was someone else there
already. He decided that it was Mrs Collinge s turn to deal
with this one, and went to open the partition between the
two rooms so that both classes could join in assembly. After
it was finished he would have to close it again. Old Mrs
Howlett was in the infants' room, wiping the tables with a
damp rag.

'That Roger,' was all she said. 'I'm off home now. Tell


62



Mrs Collinge there's paint down the sink again and not to
use the tap. I'll see to that this evening.'

'But that was all right on Friday,' said Matthew.

'Miss Cooper were in over half term, doing charts,' said
Mrs Hewlett. 'Paint everywhere. She's worse than you
children.'

Matthew thought that Mrs Hewlett should not say such
things to him. Miss Cooper was certainly untidy; he and
Barren often spent whole playtimes helping her find things,
but she was very nice to him, personally. He sometimes
wished that she and Mrs Collinge would change places. He
heard Mrs Collinge coming into the junior room just then,
and sprang to meet her, wearing a ready-made willing and
eager look.

Mrs Collinge gave him what was meant to be a friendly
smile but which made him feel as if he too needed wiping
down with a damp rag.

'Good morning, Matthew,' she said, handing him some
rolls of paper. 'Any messages ? Will you put these up on the
wall for me?'

' Mrs Howlett says the sink is blocked and not to use it,'
said Matthew. 'Powder paint, again.' He did not mention
Miss Cooper. Possibly Mrs Collinge had the same effect
upon Miss Cooper as she had upon Matthew. He took the
rolls of paper and opened them on the table with a book at
each corner so that they wouldn't curl up. They were
history posters with pictures of bygone people standing in
front of their historic houses: a Stone Age family grovelling
in a cave, a group of hooked-nosed Romans posing in front
of their villa, and three scruffy Saxons scrabbling about in
the earth round a thatched hut.

Mr Stone Age looked remarkably like Chris Angel, with
the same large jaws, flat nose and sloping forehead. Baby
Stone Age could easily have been Clive, smudgy and
matted, searching for grubs under a stone. Mrs Stone Age
looked like anybody's Mum, only wider. Matthew


63



wondered for a moment what Mrs Angel looked like. He
hadn't met her yet.

There were ten posters and Matthew found an acquaintance
in most of them. Mr Saxon wore drooping
moustaches like Roger's father's. Mrs Tudor Person had
Mrs Collinge's habit of spying through her eyelashes.
Mr Middle Ages, with dog and long bow, was Charlie
Hemp out after rabbits with Yew and a shotgun.

As he pinned them up he thought that perhaps the
posters were meant to show that history was about ordinary
people, who had lived lives as ordinary as his. This didn't
make it any more attractive. He always saw the word
'history' with a red line drawn under it to show that it was
finished, just as one day there would be a red line under him
and he would be history too.

By now it was nine o'clock so he went to the door and
called the line in. Mrs Collinge had made them wait outside
for an extra five minutes, without talking, because of
the fight.

'That's your fault,' said Peter Catchpole, who shared his
table. 'We were waiting for you to come and stop us.'

'Why didn't you stop on your own?' said Matthew.

'That's your job,' said Peter, and made a quiet but
disgusting noise that Matthew had never quite managed to
master.


When morning break was over, Matthew collected all
the bottles, put them in the crate, and stood them outside
the kitchen door for the milkman to collect, tomorrow.
While he was out he went round to the back of the building
and looked across the fields to Myhill Street, to see if Mum
was on her way yet. He searched the distance carefully and
saw her at last, crossing Fen Street, a tiny red and white
dot, which meant that she was wearing her new raincoat
over the top of her overall. When he went inside again
Mrs Collinge had arranged the class in a crescent, facing the



64



row of posters. Matthew took a chair at the end of the line,
and sat down.

'May I have your work, Matthew?' said Mrs Collinge,
extending her hand to receive it.

'Work?' said Matthew, sending his mind into reverse
gear, to see if he could remember what she was talking
about.

'Your holiday work,' said Mrs Collinge. 'Where is it?'

'I thought you asked us to think,' he said. The memory of
Friday afternoon came back to him. 'You did ask us to
think.'
There was a subdued laugh, all along the line, at the
idea of Matthew thinking. When it reached Julie it became
a papery cackle.

'That's enough of that,' said Mrs Collinge. 'I did ask you
to think. I also asked you to write. I suppose you only
remembered the bit you liked the sound of. I can't prove
you haven't done it, can I ?'

'Why try?' thought Matthew. Aloud he said 'Shall I
write something now ?'

'No,' said Mrs Collinge. 'If you do that you'll miss
the next part. I want to be sure that you hear what I say,
this time.' She walked away from him and swung round
to face the class. 'When was this school built?'

Matthew looked along the row of faces, all wrinkled up
with terrible effort, before he raised his hand. Mrs Collinge
looked at him with some surprise.

'Eighteen sixty-nine,' said Matthew.

'Very good.'

'That's not fair,' said Peter. 'That's written over the front
door.'

'Exactly,' said Mrs Collinge. 'So why didn't you know?
You see, even the school is more than a hundred years old.
That's history, isn't it? Now, the church is even older; more
than six hundred years old. Who built it?'

Matthew looked down the line. The faces were wrinkling


65



up again. Peter Catchpole was gasping and hitting his
forehead with the heel of his hand to show how hard he was
thinking. Matthew didn't even consider the question. It
had never occurred to him that anyone had built the church.
It was just there, as it always had been. Perhaps Sir Oliver
had built it. He raised his hand.

'Matthew?'

'Did Sir Oliver build it?" A look of pale despair clouded
Mrs Collinge's face, like sea fog rolling across a field.

'We're talking about historical fact, not fairy tales,' she
said.

' Sir Oliver's a ghost, Miss, not a fairy,' said Anne Lilley.
Roger waved his arms about, making ghost noises but
sounding like a distressed cow. Julie began to shriek at
him. Matthew watched the class getting out of hand and
knew that Mrs Collinge would blame him, privately,
because he had been the first to mention Sir Oliver. Mrs
Collinge couldn't know much about him because she came
in from North Walsham every day by car. Pallingham
people didn't talk about him, perhaps because he was so
dull and they were ashamed of him.

'Sir Robert Coningbrook built the church in thirteen
twenty-five,' said Mrs Collinge.

' All by himself with his bare hands ?' said Peter Catchpole.

'Go
and stand over there,' said Mrs Collinge, pointing
to an obscure corner, and Peter took himself off making
debonair faces because he had his back to her.

Sir Robert Coningbrook lay on the remains of a handsome
stone monument, up by the altar in the church, with
a self-satisfied smile on his face although his nose had worn
down to the level of his moustache and time had whittled
away his ankles. No wonder he looked so pleased with
himself if he really had built the church, bare handed or
not.

Mrs Collinge was still talking. Matthew drifted away. The


66



new police station at Polthorpe had a stone plaque in the
porch with 1973 carved on it, and in the corner, two little
initials, g.a., to show that the police station had been built
by Geo. Angel. Builder and decorator. Maybe, in another
hundred years another teacher would be standing here,
asking who had put up the police station, and when the
four-armed archaeologists came to dig it up, they might
take Mr Angel's piece of stone and put it in a Martian
museum, beside the long, helmeted skeleton of Sergeant
Harvey, labelled 'Twentieth Century Policeman - Earth'.

He was brought back to the present by the sound of the
kitchen door opening and closing. It was Mum, arriving to
put the lunch in the oven.

'Now do you see what I mean?' Mrs Collinge was
saying, and Matthew was glad she was not looking in his
direction because he had not heard a word. 'You've got
until the end of November.'

'When do we start?' said Roger.

'Today, if you like. I'll give out the paper after lunch. To
make it easier, we shall all be visiting the museums in
Norwich on the nineteenth.'

'That's my birthday on the nineteenth,' said Anne
Lffley.

Matthew leaned across her lap and whispered to Roger,
'What do we have to finish at the end of November?'

'The charts,' said Roger.

' Get your fat elbow off my leg,' said Anne.

'What charts?'

'The history charts, like what we started over half term,'
said Roger.

'All except you,' said Anne, with quiet malice, pushing
Matthew out of the way.

g. Sheep


' How did you get on today ?' asked Mum.


' I got a puncture on the way home,' said Matthew. This
happened about once a month, so it was scarcely news.

' I meant at school. How do you like being Head Boy ?'

'That's all right/ said Matthew. 'People do poke at you,
though, to see what you'll do.'

'So long as you don't poke back,' said Mum. 'What did
Mrs Collinge say about your history?'

'Not much,' said Matthew, unsure of what Mrs Collinge
might have told Mum herself. ' We're still finding out about
our houses and any old things in them. Do you know anything
about our house ?'

'That's too small,' said Mum. 'That's all I know. You'd
better ask George. If he doesn't know now he soon will.'

Matthew reflected that people were not, after all,
interested in his school work. They were only interested in
him doing it.

'I'll just go and have a look round,' he said. 'Before that
gets too dark,' and he went out. Mum thought he meant to
go and look at Kingston Villa but instead he went down to
the excavation. It was now a deep pit and piled to one side
were all the pieces of Mr Blakely's shed -that he had dug up.
Whatever Chris thought about their archaeological value,
they had to be moved before he could get any further. The
only alternative was to dig another hole and that entailed
moving sideways and not down.


68



Dad said that he was very pleased to see all the rubbish
coming up and why didn't Matthew find the greenhouse
as well, but he still thought he was wasting his time. He
hadn't dared to fetch the spade while Mum thought he was
looking at the house, but there was an old coal shovel
behind the lean-to and he fetched that. After a week of
damp November winds the ground was softening, but
digging with the coal shovel was as efficient as digging with
his teeth. He stood on the blade and rocked it into the
ground. Something came up with the first attempt: it shone
whitely in the dull light.

It was a bone.

Matthew dropped the shovel, picked up the bone and
examined it closely. For a silly, happy second he thought it
might be a monkish relic, a holy shoulder blade, perhaps,
but strict regard for truth forced him to admit that it
looked more like the kind of bone that came out of the
joint on Sundays. It was probably the remains of a Blakely
lunch.

'What are you doing?' called Mum, from the kitchen.
As he was behind the hedge she couldn't see him and he
hoped that it would be a long while yet before the hedge
was removed.

'I'm just looking at the house,' he called back, slipping
the bone under the iron roofing. To dilute the lie he went
up to Kingston Villa and looked at it, hard.


'Everybody out,' said Mrs Collinge after lunch, on
Friday. 'No excuses, please. You can do that later, Julie.
I don't want anyone indoors while this fine weather lasts;
it may rain tomorrow and you'll get no outdoor breaks at
all. You too, Matthew.'


Matthew was hanging about by the big table, hoping
for another look at the flint axe head that Peter Catchpole's
grandfather had ploughed up on the day that Peter's father
was born. Altogether the Catchpoles had found five of


69



them, and they were usually sent to a museum in Norwich,
but Mr Catchpole reckoned that this one was special so he
kept it, and Peter was allowed to show it off, sometimes. He
had loaned it, temporarily, to the school museum.

'My Grandad's got six fingers on his left hand,' said
Peter, adding glamour to the axe head.

Mrs Collinge said that such things were left behind by
people who had walked across to Norfolk from Germany,
in the days when the North Sea lay far off, beyond the
Dogger Bank. She showed them a map on which Great
Britain was no more than a snout on the face of Europe, a
smooth lump of land before the sea sank its teeth into it.

'Outside, Matthew,' said Mrs Collinge. 'Fresh air.' He
also knew that she wanted a quiet cup of tea with Mum and
Miss Cooper, if Miss Cooper had finished looking for her
cigarettes under a heap of paint palettes, so he left the room
and joined the others in the playground. Mrs Sadler, who
kept an eye on them at lunch-time, was surrounded by the
girls in his own class. The little ones were engaged in one
of their huge games that took up the whole playground.
Most of them were huddled at one end, by the gate. At the
other end stood Mark Catchpole, the organizer and Peter's
little brother.

'Do you want to be in our game?' asked Mark,
generously.

'What is it?' said Matthew. He didn't think he ought to
be playing with the little ones. Darren never did.

' Sheep and Shepherd,' said Mark. ' I'm the shepherd.'

'I'll just watch,' said Matthew, standing well back. All
the infants' games ended with an enormous rush and
minor injuries. Someone ought to watch them and he got
ready to pick up casualties. Mark arranged himself in
playing position. He yelled ' Sheep! Sheep! Come home at
once.'

'We're afraid,' roared the sheep, milling round the gate.

'What of?'


70



'The wolf!'

'He's gone to Devonshire for a hundred years and he
won't be back till December,' said the shifty shepherd.

The wolf had not gone to Devonshire. He was Trevor
Lilley and he was hiding behind the lavatories. When the
trustful sheep surged up the playground he jumped out of his
covert and picked them off as they went past. Matthew ran
to rescue a fallen sheep that looked as if it might cry, and
noticed the usual argument breaking out among the rest
of the flock.

'I'm shepherd now,' said Karen Angel. 'I wasn't
caught.'

'Yes you were. I'm still shepherd,' said Mark. 'The wolf
touched you.'

'That didn't.'

'That did. That touched your hair.'

'That did not.'

'I never touched her hair,' said Trevor, who was too
peaceable to be a successful wolf.

'You touched that with your shoulder; I saw,' said Mark,
rising on his toes and flexing his arm. A small muscle
appeared, just above his elbow.

'You can be wolf, Karen,' said Trevor. He wanted to
get on with the game. Karen made off towards the lavatories
but Julie intercepted her.

'You're not to go round there, you'll get germs.'

'All right, I'll be wolf again,'said Trevor. Mark danced in
among them, his muscle much in evidence.

' Shut you up, Julie Angel, this is my game,' he said. It
was at this point that Matthew liked to retire, and normally
he would have done so, but as Head Boy it was his job to
make peace between boys like Roger and Mark, who didn't
mind hitting girls, and girls like Julie and Karen, who
didn't mind hitting anyone.

'I'll be shepherd,' he said. 'Trevor's still wolf.' The sheep
retreated, growling, to the end of the playground. He had to


?i



stay on as shepherd until someone won the position fairly
and it was safe to leave them.

He sauntered round to the back of the school and sat on
the cloakroom step. Cries of'Sheep! Sheep!' drifted over
the roof, followed by the thunder of feet which made the
step shake. The infants played at Sheep and Shepherd
several times in a week, but this was the first time that he
had ever paid attention to the words although he had
played it himself as an infant. They were utter nonsense
now but it occurred to him that they must have meant
something once. He wondered why they played a game
about sheep at all. Most of them had never seen a sheep,
except in pictures, any more than they had seen a wolf.
There was no longer any wool woven in Norfolk and it must
be many years since anyone had grazed sheep in Pallingham,
although Ship Loke had once been Sheep Loke, and
the bells in the church tower had been paid for with the
proceeds of Pallingham wool.

Perhaps the bone in the excavation had come from an
antique Norfolk sheep.

It was nearly one o'clock, so he went indoors. Miss
Cooper had gone back to the infants' room and Mum
was in the kitchen. Mrs Collinge was preparing the afternoon's
work.

'Can I see that axe again?' said Matthew. She passed
it to him and he held it very gently in both hands. It was so
little and vicious, unchanged by time since the day it had
failed in the hand of some Stone Age hunter and he had
left it lying for Peter's grandad to turn up, six thousand
years later. Matthew thought it would have been nice to
find the Stone Age man as well, his bones folded neatly in
death like the spiders in the toolshed who folded their
legs into little wire baskets and died tidily.

He gave back the axe head and longed to be at home and
digging. Something must be waiting for him, under the
autumn garden.

io. Angels at Large


'How's your archaeology getting along, then?' asked
Charlie, next morning, when he met Matthew going for
the eggs. Matthew's front tyre was still punctured so he
was fetching them on foot. ' Found any more owls yet ?'


'I found a bone,' said Matthew. 'That wasn't an
owl's, though. Get out of that, Yew.' Yew sank his teeth
into Matthew's boot and slew it, still on his foot.

'You'd better get a move on,' said Charlie. 'I'll be over
the footpath, time you get back.'

There was only a narrow stretch of field left to plough
and the tractor was turned uphill, ready to finish the job.
Every night Matthew saw the sweeping headlights as
Charlie ploughed in the dark, and every night he thought of
Sir Oliver.

' Do you believe in ghosts ?' he said.

' I reckon he's haunted,' said Charlie, kicking Yew.' He've
got the devil in him. Do you reckon the parson would say a
prayer over him?'

'He might,' said Matthew. 'You should ask him,
tomorrow. That's evensong here, this week.' Pallingham
shared a vicar with Clipton and Calstead and had no
Sunday service, two weeks out of three. ' Mum's doing the
flowers, that's how I know.'

'What were all that about ghosts, then?' said Charlie.

' Do you believe in them ?'

'Any particular ghost?'


73



'Have you ever seen Sir Oliver?' said Matthew. 'While
you were ploughing?"

'No I haven't,' said Charlie. 'But then, I got other things
to look for when I'm ploughing. When I were a boy though,
some of us sat out all night in the church to watch for him.
Me and my brother Ted, and my cousin Frank and three of
the girls sat up in the choir to see him walk through the
wall, like we'd been told he would. Must have been mad.'

'Did he come?' asked Matthew. He had expected
Charlie to laugh and send him away.

'No he didn't,' said Charlie. 'And we waited till four
o'clock in the morning. Never saw a thing.'

'Didn't you try again?' said Matthew. 'I would have.'
He knew full well that he would never try it, even once.

'Didn't get the chance,' said Charlie. 'The parson,
Mr Hopkins that were, then, he got to hear of it and he
took to locking the church on November nights, after that.5

'Mind you,' he added, after a pause. 'That weren't the
only reason. Just as we were coming out of the porch I
heard this noise.' He looked thoughtful. 'You know what
that sound like when you put down a tin pail, and then
drop the handle ? Well, we heard that, over and over again.
Now who'd be doing a thing like that in a churchyard at
four in the morning? That were when we left,' said
Charlie.

'Is that what armour sounds like?' asked Matthew. He
could imagine the noise in his head. It wasn't the sound he
had heard on Mrs Bagnall's doorstep but if he thought
about it long enough it would be.

'How should I know?' said Charlie. 'I don't wear
armour. Come on, Yew.' He whistled to the dog and
climbed aboard the tractor. Matthew walked on, along the
edge of the dyke, past Charlie's Brussels sprouts, across
Fen Street, and up the footpath to the church.

On his right the graves lay in grey dew, bright with
chrysanthemums; on his left stood the Howletts' pigst'es.


74



The air was filled with the rollicking sound of pigs kept
indoors. As he turned to go through the gate, into the
churchyard, a jagged flash of light caught the corner of his
eye. It was Charlie, turning the tractor at the top of his
field, the ploughshares raised and shining like sharp spoons.

He was in such a hurry to begin digging that he was home
again by nine. As he came out of the Brussels sprouts he
saw that the old footpath had indeed gone, but Charlie had
kindly made a final run with the plough lifted, leaving two
wide tyre tracks for Matthew to walk on. This left him no
chance to blaze his own trail but it made for faster progress.
He would have another opportunity in the spring, after
the sugar beet was set.

While he was delivering Mrs Harrison's eggs the Angels'
lorry turned in to the loke. He broke into a run in order to
be on the premises before the Angels got out of the lorry.
Chris was in the cab, with his father. He raised his hand to
Matthew and walked to the back of the lorry to lower the
tail board. Out spilled Paul, Clive, Julie, and Karen.

' Here's the eggwife,' said Paul.

'Who's that?' said Matthew suspiciously.

'You,' said Paul. 'A midwife delivers babies; an eggwife
delivers eggs.'

'That's rude,' said Julie.

'I've brought my dolly,' said Karen.

' I've brought my doll, too,' said Julie, thrusting it under
Matthew's nose. 'My doll's got high heels and a figure.
She's called Samantha. Her hair grows, look.' She put her
hand under Samantha's plastic raincoat and twiddled a
button. Samantha's short, curly hair suddenly became
waist-length.

'My dolly can talk,' said Karen, turning her tattooed
lady upside down. It moaned faintly.

'You've killed it,' said Paul.

Julie stood Samantha on top of the gate and made her
walk up and down. She had blue boots to match the rain75



coat. Julie turned the button again and the hair shot back
into Samantha's head.

'Just like real,' said Julie.

'Let me have a go,' said Matthew. He turned the button
and Samantha's hair whizzed in and out at high speed.
Then he turned it too far and Samantha had a crew cut.
Julie snatched her out of his hand and flounced into the
garden, followed as usual by Karen and Clive.

'How's the dig?' asked Paul, standing aside to let Mr
Angel and Chris set up the ladder.

'I found a bone,' said Matthew. 'That's round at the
back. Come on, I'll show you.'

'How far down was it?' said Paul, looking at the bone
with the same interest that Yew would have given it.

'Under the iron. I think I've got all that out now,' said
Matthew.

'Blakely Stratum Alpha,' said Paul, patting the heap
of iron. 'First Blakely layer,' he translated, for Matthew's
benefit. 'You're down to the sub-Blakely strata now. Did
you find anything else ?'

'Only the bone. What is it?'

' Shoulder of mutton,' said Paul. ' If it's sub-Blakely it
can't be one of theirs. Must be just a dead sheep.'

'I thought of that too,' said Matthew. 'But where's the
rest of it? Could that be a bit of monk's dinner?'

'Very likely,' said Paul, but he seemed to be laughing.
' I'll get the scythe.' He ducked through the hedge. Matthew
collected the coal shovel and began to dig. The edging
spade was banned, too good a tool to be employed in idle
pursuits.

'Where do you want me to cut now?' asked Paul,
returning with the scythe.

'All round the hole,' said Matthew, flattered that Paul
should bother to ask him. Paul was merely being polite. He
began to work where he had left off, under the oak tree.

'I think you should dig over

way

more,'


76



said. 'You told me yourself that the priory would be by
the wall.'

' I am by the wall."

'Not by it enough,' said Paul. Matthew saw that he
would cut the grass only where he wanted the hole to be.

'I don't want to start another excavation,' he said. 'I've
been at this one for days. I can't stop now."

'You're not finding much though, are you?' said Paul.

'We do stone carving at school/ he added, after a few
minutes.

'We do clay modelling at ours,' said Matthew. So what?
he added under his breath.

'There's this friend of mine,' said Paul. 'He had a big
bit of stone and he started to carve a man out of it and it
went wrong, just after he started. I mean, you could see it
was going to be a mess - so could he, but he wouldn't stop.
He just kept hacking at it. It got smaller and smaller and
in the end he just had this nasty little lump. It took him
all term too. We only get one hour a week.'

'Didn't he get wrong for wasting all that stone?' asked
Matthew. Mrs Collinge made them scrape up even the
smallest bits of clay to put back in the bin.

'No. He said it was meant to be like that. He said it
was modern art, but our teacher said " Of course it's modern,
you fool, you've only just done it." '

' Then what happened ?'

'Nothing happened,' said Paul. 'But you're just the same
with your hole, only the other way round. It's getting bigger
and bigger but you're still going to finish up with nothing
and you won't stop, either. You should have left it ages ago.'

This thought had struck Matthew more than once, but
he wasn't going to act on it while Paul was watching.

Clive staggered out of the house and approached them.

'I dig,' he said, and tried to take the shovel away from
Matthew.

'No,' said Matthew, resisting. 'You don't dig. I dig.'


77



'I bite,' said Clive. It was like talking to Tarzan. Clive
saw something move in the long grass at the foot of the
garden and went to investigate.

'Dog,' he said, hopefully.

It was one of Mrs Bagnall's cats, loitering beside the wall.
He flung his arms round it and brought it up the garden
to show Matthew. It was so long that although he was
carrying the front end, the back legs were walking ahead of
him and the tail scythed angrily against his shins.

'Come, pussy,' said Clive, steering the cat towards
Matthew. It was Tokyo Rose, the half-caste Siamese whose
father had been Charlie Hemp's old black torn. It didn't
look like a Siamese but it sounded like one, and it yelled
all the while Clive was carrying it. Paul left his grass cutting
and ran to the rescue.

'Can't you see it doesn't want to be carried,' he said,
snatching the cat from his brother, and Clive, who had
not thought about the cat's feelings, but only that it was
furry, sat down on the grass and ground his hands into the
dirt with rage and disappointment.
'Is that my Rose I hear?' asked Mrs Bagnall, looking
over the wall. Mr Bagnall reared up from his weeding.

'I thought someone was eating her,' he said, and sank
out of sight again.

Paul ran to the wall and looked over.

'Hullo, Sir,' he said, with great gaiety.

'Good God,' said Mr Bagnall, in the voice he usually
reserved for the cats. 'Don't I get a moment's peace? I had
you for a double period yesterday afternoon and your
brother for an hour before that. Hell's bells.'

Paul took this as an invitation to stay and leaned his
elbows on the wall.

'You must be Mrs Bagnall. How do you do. I'm Paul
Angel. One of Mr Bagnall's favourite students.'

'Good morning, Paul,' said Mrs Bagnall, taking Tokyo
Rose and putting her down on her own side of the wall.


78



'I've been watching you; and you, Matthew. What is it
meant to be, an archaeological dig?'

She thought she was joking and Matthew would have
let her go on thinking it, but Paul said, 'That's right.
Matthew thinks we may find some remains of the priory."

'How exciting,' said Mrs Bagnall, in a teacherly way.
'And have you found any remains ?'

'Nothing to do with the priory, so far,' said Paul. 'Only a
lot of old rubbish. But my brother . . .'

'That oaf,' said Mr Bagnall, ripping up dandelions with
cruel jerks and leaving all the roots behind.

'My brother says that we ought to leave the rubbish
in the ground to be dug up by future generations. Today's
rubbish is tomorrow's history, he says.'

'That doesn't surprise me at all,' said Mr Bagnall.
'Judging by the last few essays he's handed in he seems to
devote his waking hours to producing history.'

Supercat ambled by and thinking that Mr Bagnall was
turning over the earth for his express benefit, began to
dig a hole. Mr Bagnall picked him up, tossed him from one
hand to the other and thence into the cabbages where he
went to ground, his angry tail sticking up like a stormtossed
bullrush.

'Disgusting creature,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Ought to be
put down. They all ought to be put down. They ought to be
put down a deep, deep hole, a thousand miles away.'

'Don't take any notice of him,' said Mrs Bagnall. 'What
do you hope to find ?'
'Opinions differ on this,' said Paul, adjusting his conversation
to include words that he didn't use when he
was talking to Matthew. 'We're operating on different
principles. Matthew was looking for bones and foundations,
but we're hoping for something more, er, glamorous. Altar
plate, perhaps, or coins,' he said, with a gloating hiss on the
last word.

Matthew didn't care for the way he said it, nor for the


79



'I bite,' said Clive. It was like talking to Tarzan. Clive
saw something move in the long grass at the foot of the
garden and went to investigate.

'Dog,' he said, hopefully.

It was one of Mrs Bagnall's cats, loitering beside the wall.
He flung his arms round it and brought it up the garden
to show Matthew. It was so long that although he was
carrying the front end, the back legs were walking ahead of
him and the tail scythed angrily against his shins.

'Come, pussy,' said Clive, steering the cat towards
Matthew. It was Tokyo Rose, the half-caste Siamese whose
father had been Charlie Hemp's old black torn. It didn't
look like a Siamese but it sounded like one, and it yelled
all the while Clive was carrying it. Paul left his grass cutting
and ran to the rescue.

'Can't you see it doesn't want to be carried,' he said,
snatching the cat from his brother, and Clive, who had
not thought about the cat's feelings, but only that it was
furry, sat down on the grass and ground his hands into the
dirt with rage and disappointment.
'Is that my Rose I hear?' asked Mrs Bagnall, looking
over the wall. Mr Bagnall reared up from his weeding.

'I thought someone was eating her,' he said, and sank
out of sight again.

Paul ran to the wall and looked over.

'Hullo, Sir,' he said, with great gaiety.

'Good God,' said Mr Bagnall, in the voice he usually
reserved for the cats. 'Don't I get a moment's peace? I had
you for a double period yesterday afternoon and your
brother for an hour before that. Hell's bells.'

Paul took this as an invitation to stay and leaned his
elbows on the wall.

'You must be Mrs Bagnall. How do you do. I'm Paul
Angel. One of Mr Bagnall's favourite students.'

'Good morning, Paul,' said Mrs Bagnall, taking Tokyo
Rose and putting her down on her own side of the wall.


78



'I've been watching you; and you, Matthew. What is it
meant to be, an archaeological dig?'

She thought she was joking and Matthew would have
let her go on thinking it, but Paul said, 'That's right.
Matthew thinks we may find some remains of the priory.'

'How exciting,' said Mrs Bagnall, in a teacherly way.
'And have you found any remains ?'

' Nothing to do with the priory, so far,' said Paul.' Only a
lot of old rubbish. But my brother . . .'

'That oaf,' said Mr Bagnall, ripping up dandelions with
cruel jerks and leaving all the roots behind.

'My brother says that we ought to leave the rubbish
in the ground to be dug up by future generations. Today's
rubbish is tomorrow's history, he says.'

'That doesn't surprise me at all,' said Mr Bagnall.
'Judging by the last few essays he's handed in he seems to
devote his waking hours to producing history.'

Supercat ambled by and thinking that Mr Bagnall was
turning over the earth for his express benefit, began to
dig a hole. Mr Bagnall picked him up, tossed him from one
hand to the other and thence into the cabbages where he
went to ground, his angry tail sticking up like a stormtossed
bullrush.

'Disgusting creature,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Ought to be
put down. They all ought to be put down. They ought to be
put down a deep, deep hole, a thousand miles away.'

'Don't take any notice of him,' said Mrs Bagnall. 'What
do you hope to find ?'
'Opinions differ on this,' said Paul, adjusting his conversation
to include words that he didn't use when he
was talking to Matthew. 'We're operating on different
principles. Matthew was looking for bones and foundations,
but we're hoping for something more, er, glamorous. Altar
plate, perhaps, or coins,' he said, with a gloating hiss on the
last word.

Matthew didn't care for the way he said it, nor for the


79



way he said 'we'. It was a word that did not include him.
He left them talking and looked for Clive, in case he was
damaging something. He found him in the excavation,
watching a worm, his face cushioned on the earth. Deprived
of the cat he was consoling himself with the next best
thing.

'Good worm, good worm,' he was saying. 'Come here,
darling.'

The dig was rained off before lunch time. A gale blew
up, forcing Chris and Mr Angel down from the roof, leaving
the wind to howl round the bare bones of the rafters. All
the Angels crowded into the kitchen to drink tea because
Chris had put the ladder through the window at Kingston
Villa, which made it too cold for sitting about. They
camped round the table, except for Clive who went underneath
and untied people's shoe laces. The kitchen steamed
like a damp haystack and each rain spot on the window
was haloed with mist until the glass clouded over entirely.

'I don't fancy going down to the church in this,' said
Mum, wiping a spyhole in the mist. 'How would you
like to do that for me, Matthew ?'

'I can't arrange flowers,' said Matthew. 'I'll go and
pick them for you, if you like, though.' He wanted to get
out of the kitchen without seeming rude.

'I'm surprised you've got any flowers to pick,' said
Mr Angel. 'Won't they all be finished by now?'

'Cauliflowers,' said Paul. 'They'll look nice on the altar.'

'Chrysanthemums,' said Mum, handing Matthew the
kitchen scissors. 'We've had no frost yet: the ones by the
hedge are all right, but you'd better cut them all. That'll all
be flattened by the wind, else.'

Matthew went out. The wind took him and twirled him
as it bowled across the gardens, tearing twigs from the
oak tree and unzipping the hedge. He crouched under the
apple trees and the rain battered the last leaves over his
back as he wrenched at the chrysanthemums with yapping


80



scissors. When he had an armful he butted his way back to
the kitchen where a different kind of chaos prevailed. As
well as the Angels, the room was full of Dad, home for
lunch in a wet oilskin, and Joe Crome, Charlie's uncle from
Tokesby, who delivered the papers and had called to collect
the week's money.

Matthew squeezed in among them with the chrysanthemums
clutched to his chest.

Mr Angel raised his arm with difficulty as if it were on a
ratchet, and looked at his watch.

'Time we were off, boys and girls,' he said. 'You take
your time, don't you Joe? That's half past nine when you
get to ours.'

'This is the end of the round, George,' said Joe.

'I don't complain,' said Dad. 'That give the bad news
time to go off the boil. If the world's going to end tonight
that'll be over before I've read about it.'

'What about the good news?' asked Chris, oozing sideways
while Mum and Dad did a tango round each other to
get at the paper money which was kept on the dresser.

'Good news'll keep,' said Dad. 'Here, Janey, I haven't
danced with you for years. May I have the next waltz?'

They put their arms round each other and glided into the
hall. The Angels looked edgy and stared at the floor.

ii. Sir Oliver


Mum put the flowers in a polythene bag to protect them,
and Matthew prepared for another walk to the church.


'Why aren't you going on your bike?' asked Dad. 'You
can tie the chrysanths to the cross bar.'

'I've got another puncture,' said Matthew.

'Haven't you mended that yet?' said Mum. 'What were
you doing all morning?'

'Digging,' said Matthew.

'Hang on,' said Dad. I'll give you a lift down there. I'm
going through Polthorpe.'

They went out to the car. ' Isn't that about time you saw
to that tyre?'

'I don't think that'll take any more mending,' said
Matthew. 'That's all over patches, now.'

'That's your own fault,' said Dad. 'I keep telling you
not to ride down the loke until they resurface it.'

'I forget.'

'That's still your fault.'

Dad let him out of the Land-Rover by the pigsties.
Roger Howlett was leaning over the wall in the rain,
sucking a liquorice bootlace. A long black string hung
down from his mouth.
' Fishing ?' said Matthew. ' Caught anything yet ?'

'Here come the bride,' said Roger, eyeing Matthew's
flowers. He was too occupied with the bootlace to talk
so Matthew left him chewing and went into the churchyard,


82



running with his head bent until he reached the porch and
was out of the wind.

Someone was in the porch before him: Mr Catchpole
Senior, Peter's grandad, the finder of flint axe-heads and
owner of eleven fingers. He was carrying a bunch of evergreens
and a spade.

'These are for your Mum, when she come,' he said,
pushing the evergreens into Matthew's arms.

'I'm doing the flowers today,' said Matthew.

'Well, you know where everything is,' said Mr Catchpole.
He raised the spade and held it over his shoulder like
a rifle. 'I've got to see to the moles. That's the CliptonCalstead
match tomorrow.'

Mr Catchpole lived in Myhill Street too, opposite the
Bagnalls. He grazed his goat in their ditch. He tended the
churchyard and acted as groundsman to the football
pitch, which was used by all the villages which had no
playing fields of their own. Calstead had a field but it was
under water at this time of year.

'What are the moles doing?' asked Matthew.

'Molehills all round the goal,' said Mr Catchpole. 'That's
all right when Pallingham's playing but that don't look so
good for visitors, moles in goal. They come out of the
churchyard. I reckon they find the mixture a bit rich.'

Matthew thought that this was no way to speak of the
dead, especially as Mr Catchpole had many relatives in
the churchyard himself.

He took the greenery into the church, full of hollow
booming as the wind walloped against the roof. Mrs Sadler
had already arranged the altar flowers and she had left
a can of water by the font. Matthew's flowers had to be
placed in two iron stands, on either side of the chancel
arch. On top of each stand there was a little zinc tub, filled
with dry green sponge to hold the stems in place. It crumbled
in his hands and he had to scoop it off the floor in a hymn
sheet.


83



He spent a long time jabbing stalks into the sponge and
standing back to admire the effect. The chrysanthemums
leaned on each other in the shade of the evergreens as
though they had had a riotous night out before coming to
church. He pushed the stands up against the archway for
support, but as he was moving away someone opened the
door and the sudden draught sent the whole lot swaying,
dangerously.

Matthew thought that Roger had followed him in to
interfere, and shouted 'Shut the door, you silly great nit.
That's all blowing away.'

'Please accept my apologies,' said Mr Bagnall, hastily
closing the door. 'I thought I was alone.'

Matthew always took great care not to offend Mr
Bagnall. Even saying 'Good morning' was liable to make
him frown unless it really was a good morning. He wondered
how to atone for calling him a silly great nit.

Mr Bagnall walked up the aisle.

'I really am sorry,' he said. 'I had no idea you were in

here.'

'I didn't know it was you,' said Matthew. 'I thought
that was Roger Hewlett.'

'I dare say we're very alike,' said Mr Bagnall. 'When did
you take up flower arranging?'

' I'm doing it for Mum. I don't seem to be very good at it
though,' said Matthew. 'They wobble when you walk past.'

'Yes,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Things do tend to wobble,
when I walk past them.' He was heading for the altar
as he spoke, and Matthew walked with him as it seemed
rude not to. Mr Bagnall took a key from his pocket and
unlocked the vestry door. It was strange to see him here, so
much at home. Mrs Bagnall went to church every Sunday,
driving to Clipton or Calstead if there was no service at
Pallingham, but Mr Bagnall always stayed behind, to
threaten the cats in peace, perhaps.

'Coming in?' he asked Matthew, holding the door open.


84



He seemed a very different person, away from Myhill
Street; possibly because there were no cats about.

'Are you allowed in here?' asked Matthew. He had
never seen the vestry unlocked.

' Good Lord, no,' said Mr Bagnall. ' I laid out the vicar
and pinched his keys. I've got to be out of the country by
nightfall.'

'He lent them to you,' said Matthew.

Mr Bagnall sighed. 'You do take the edge off things,
don't you? I'm doing some research for an American
friend: I have to look at the parish registers.'

' Mr Myhill ?' said Matthew. He was the only American
that Matthew knew about.

'Who's Mr Myhill?'

' He was an American who came to our house last year,
looking for ancestors,' said Matthew. ' He didn't find any,
though. I thought that might be him.'

'No,' said Mr Bagnall. 'My friend's name is Morgenstern.
I don't think he has any ancestors in Pallingham.'
He selected another key and opened a wooden
chest, full of books.

'Registers,' he said. 'What a mess.' He took out a thick
volume, apparently bound in cobwebs. 'You might like
this. You're interested in old buildings, aren't you?'

Matthew took the book, amazed that Mr Bagnall should
care about what interested him.

'Paul told you that, didn't he? Him and Chris said I
shouldn't let you know what I was doing because you
couldn't stand damned amateurs digging things up.'

'I don't think you're in quite the same class as Lord
Elgin,' said Mr Bagnall. 'And I don't honestly think that
there's anything to find, let alone damage. It would be
nice if you did, though. There's very little known about it.'

'About the priory? Nobody cares anyway. I can't get
anyone to tell me about it," said Matthew. 'That's the same
with Sir Oliver. They say he's only a story.'


85



' He was real enough
that. In fact, it was his gai(j j^r Bagnall. 'I can show you

'He built it? Like Si^riory_,

'Built and endowed Robert built the church ?'
left a certain amount <t. sai(j j^r Bagnall. 'That is, he
money ran out and in- ^ money for its upkeep, but the
Bishop's commissioners j^^ were a bad lot. When the
he found them guilty examined the prior and brethren
stand that, do you? Tlllf mcc.ntmence. You don't underthe
books.'	\by>d been living it up and cooking

'I didn't know mor^
recalling the bespectacl ^ were ]^.e tnat,' said Matthew,

'Things were differe|,d bore in the bus station,
became monks because ^ tnen > said j^r Bagnall. ' People
the commissioners retu( they had nothing else to do. When
the place empty.' He v^ the following year they found
opened it. 'Here we ^ook the book from Matthew and
same are gone and the re "The religious persons of the
chap thinks they took cnattels wasted and spoiled." This
decamped. Now, he w^ everything they could carry and
ago and nothing's coj g wrjting a hundred and fifty years
Angel imagine that th,^e to jjg^t since. If the brothers
coins they've got anoth fe »re going to find altar plate and

'Good,' said Matth^r think coming.'
suppose Sir Oliver goes fcw 'That's my hole, after all. I
Why does he start here to jqq^ at his priory when he walks.

'That's the mystery p>

he was buried in the , sa^ j^r Bagnall. 'After he died
began to fall down, ad "priory but when the monks left it
who borrowed the ston^sisted; no doubt, by the local lads
Sir Robert, our Sir R \ e for then- Own desirable residences, back and put up a toml wObert, I mean, brought the bones
the one we're standin^ o in tn'e church that he was building:
quite happy where he \tg in now- Presumably Oliver was
get back, along the old was that>s why he keeps trying to

'What's that?'	Q causeway.'


86




' In those days it was the main road between Hoxenham
and Pallingham. Your footpath follows the same route.
When the wheat's growing you can see the outlines of the
old causeway from the top of the church tower. Remind me,
in spring, and I'll take you up the church tower to look.'

' So that's why he sticks to the footpath,' said Matthew.
He was beginning to feel sorry for Sir Oliver, fiddled by his
monks and chivvied from grave to grave after his death.
'Where's his grave gone? Is that the mystery?'

'Not quite,' said Mr Bagnall. 'We know where his grave
went. Robert put it in the Lady Chapel, in the North Aisle.'

'There's no chapel now.'

'No. The roof fell in with monotonous regularity,' said
Mr Bagnall. ' Word went round that Sir Oliver was resting
uneasy and shaking the foundations. By the time this chap
wrote his book, the place was in such a mess that there was
talk of demolishing it. It wasn't quite propped up with old
bedsteads but it looked bad, and they took it down, about
three years later. That was the mystery. When they opened
the tomb - no Sir Oliver.'

'How did he get out?'

'You tell me,' said Mr Bagnall. 'But he's got no grave
now. He walks.'

Matthew looked out of the vestry door at Sir Robert
dozing on his tomb, still looking smug in spite of having no
ankles.

'He's still there,' said Mr Bagnall. 'But even he's in
reduced circumstances. Look at this.' He turned a page or
two in the book and laid it on the vicar's desk where
Matthew could see it. There was a picture, a black engraving
with brown freckles. Sir Robert lay on his slab
complete with nose and ankles and clasping a sword. 'He
had a severed head for a pillow in those days. Charming
chap.' There was a finicking stone canopy over the tomb
that looked as if it had been crocheted. Underneath it said,
Icy gist Monsver Robert Comngbrook Fondevr de cette Eglise et


8?



Dame Johanne sa Compagne auxi Priez Diev de lew Almes eit
Merci.

'What does all that mean?' asked Matthew. It didn't
look like any language in particular, especially not English,
but he could read the words 'Robert Coningbrook' quite
well.

'That's what was written round the tomb,' said Mr
Bagnall. ' It's all worn away now but it was French, or at
least, French as she was spoken in those days. It means,
more or less: Here lies Sir Robert Coningbrook, founder of
this church, and his wife Dame Joan, also. Pray God have
mercy on their souls.'

'Why French? They were English, weren't they?'

'They were Normans. None of your British rubbish,' said
Mr Bagnall.

'That says something else on the tomb now,' said
Matthew. 'Carved on Sir Robert. Gilbert d'Arcy Sinclair
1839.'

'I know,' said Mr Bagnall. 'It's beautifully done too,
must have taken him hours. He was a Victorian vandal. If
he were alive today he'd be spraying his name on lavatory
walls with an aerosol: Gilbert d'Arcy Sinclair Rules O.K. ?'

'Is that Sir Oliver?' asked Matthew, looking at the
next picture. It was much smaller. Sir Oliver lay with his
little dog at his feet and there was no canopy to protect
him. All it said underneath was, Priez pour les Almes de
Monsver Oliver de Hoxenha et Dame Julian sa Femme.

' Pray for the souls of Sir Oliver of Hoxenham and Dame
Julian, his wife,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Myhill Street was in
Hoxenham, then, only it wasn't called Myhill Street until
recently. You know, there wasn't much left of his tomb even
then. At one time his helmet and crest hung above it. The
crest was rather nice, I think. A pun on his name. It was an
owl. Oliver the owl, sitting on a crescent moon. I suppose *a
he borrowed the moon from the Saracens; he was a crusader j
in his youth.'

88



'How do you know all this?' asked Matthew.

'Your Sir Oliver's quite famous outside his own village,'
said Mr Bagnall. 'He was a verray parfit, gentil knight, and
now I'm sure you don't know what I'm talking about.'
Suddenly he was the old Mr Bagnall again, cat-crusher in
chief to the village of Pallingham. ' I've got work to do.
You'd better take yourself off.' Matthew backed out of the
vestry and left him snarling into the parish registers.

So Charlie's owl was Sir Oliver's owl, and the priory was
Sir Oliver's priory, and Sir Oliver, with nowhere to rest and
no monument to remember him by, was his own memorial,
walking the causeway in the long November nights.

12. Angels in situ


The Angels had gone when he reached home, and Mum
was making bread in the kitchen. A bowl of flour stood
warming on the stove and beside it was a jug full of yeast.
He looked to see what kind she was using. Fresh yeast rose
in the jug with an ebullient fizz, dried yeast worked with
silent belches rising from the depths. It was dried yeast today
and he stood and watched the surface plop and shudder
until all the harm had risen to the top.


'Flowers all right?' asked Mum, and she poured the
yeasty liquid into the flour, working them into a dough.

' I think so,' said Matthew, trying not to see the drunken
chrysanthemums in the chancel. 'Has everyone gone
home ?'

'George is still next door,' said Mum. 'But he sent the
children home with Chris. That was too cold for them to be
in that house.'

'Why does he bring them, then?' said Matthew, remembering
that there was some mystery about this. Mum.
was kneading the bread and didn't answer him.

'They left a message for you,' she said, after a while
'Would you like to go over to tea at Hoxenham tomorrow 3
Someone's having a birthday but I can't recall who.'

'Do I have to ?' said Matthew. ' I don't really want to j
to tea with them. They get all over the place. Look at the
here. You wouldn't think that was our house at all.'

'They're all right, poor little devils,' said Mum.


90



'Not poor,' said Matthew. 'Not Karen and Julie. Just


little devils.'


'No, not Karen and Julie,' said Mum. 'Anyway, they're
good fun. You go to tea and have a nice time. You'd better
take chocolates as we don't know who it's for.'

'Myhill Street used to be in Hoxenham,' said Matthew.

'Well, I'm glad that's not now. Their rates are higher
than ours. Where are you going?'

'I thought I'd go and dig for a bit,' said Matthew.

'You can't go and dig in this weather, don't be silly.'

'That's stopped raining.'

'No,' said Mum. 'You go upstairs and get on with your
work for school. Mrs Gollinge will want to see that, Monday.'

Matthew went upstairs. Mum and Mrs Collinge thought
he was working at some pictures for the history chart, but he
had done nothing. He sat on the bed and thought about Sir
Oliver and the owl. After a long time he understood what a
pun was.

He dug all Sunday morning and found a brick. Paul had
made sure that he dug towards the wall by cutting the grass
on that side of the hole and nowhere else. After lunch he
had to tidy himself for the party.

When he arrived at the Angels' estate he saw that he
needn't have bothered. Everything was going on as usual:
Paul in gum boots, Chris in the garage, Clive on a heap of
rubble, lurching from side to side and screeching, whereby
Matthew understood that the rubble was a racing car. Paul
was standing beside him, providing a rapid commentary.

'They're coming out of the straight now and Clive
Angel in the Hard-Core Special is in the lead - he's pulling
away - no, I can see smoke - he's in trouble . . .'

Clive jumped off the heap of rubble, walked to the rear
and kicked it.

'Filler cap,' he said.

'That wouldn't cause smoke,' said Matthew.

'He doesn't understand,' said Paul. 'He just repeats


91



what he hears Chris say.' Olive tore up some grass, stuffed it
into a broken drainpipe and climbed into his car.

'Keep going,' said Paul. 'You'll win.' He walked up to
the house with Matthew.

'Is that a present you've got there?'

'Yes. Who's it for?'

The,' said Paul, taking it. 'I was thirteen on Friday.
The others are watching telly. Come on in.'

They entered the house via the bathroom and went into
the living-room. It was quite dark inside, with the curtains
drawn. Julie and Karen were sitting in front of the television.

'Just like trolls,' said Paul. 'One shaft of light and they'd
turn to stone.'

'What's a troll?'

There were two other people in the room. 'Nan and
Grandad,' said Paul, by way of introduction. Matthew
smiled towards them in the darkness. He could hardly say
'How do you do, Nan and Grandad.'

'You call the boys in, Paul,' said Nanny Angel. 'Tea's
laid in the other room. We'll have that as soon as you're
all clean.'

Paul returned to the bathroom and yelled through the
open door. Chris came in to wash. Clive charged straight
through, into the living-room, and hurled himself at the
television set. He ran his fingers over the control panel,
switching off the sound and altering the colour so that the
ballerinas on the screen turned to silently jigging green
grasshoppers.

' Come you off that,' said Nanny Angel, bearing him into
the bathroom. ' Here, Chris, get some of the dirt off him
before tea.'

They settled round the table in the next room. Nanny
Angel sat at the head, dealing out slices of flan like a
croupier.

' Cream thickens the blood,' said Nanny Angel, pouring
a generous amount over everyone's plate except her own.


92



They started to eat. Grandad Angel took his plate back to
the living-room and switched on the television again.

' Clive's got his arm in the food,' said Karen.

'Take your arm out of the food, Clive,' said Chris, automatically,
without looking up. He was reading Practical Car
Conversion under the table. Nanny Angel lined up the cups
in front of her and began to pour tea, starting at one end
and swishing along to the other without raising the spout
between cups, so that much of the tea went into the saucers.
The Angels merely tipped the tea back into the cups without
comment, except for Clive who upended his cup in the
saucer and drank out of that.

' Clive's drinking out of his saucer,' said Karen.

'Don't drink out of your saucer, Clive,' said Chris.

Clive blew a bubble and continued to drink out of the
saucer. Matthew thought they might be invited to wash up
afterwards, but Nanny Angel joined Grandad in front of the
television and the others left the table, still eating. Matthew
waited to see where Julie and Karen went and then moved
off in the other direction. Paul followed with a handful of
sandwiches.

' Pilchard or cheese and tomato ?' he said, offering them
to Matthew. ' Let's go and see what Frankenstein's up to.'

Matthew thought he was talking about a television
programme but they were heading for the garage. Frankenstein
was Chris and his monster was the car parked over the
inspection pit. He was building it with pieces taken from
other cars. Beside it stood an old Ford Zodiac with Fat Sally
painted across the lid of the boot.

'We're taking her banger racing next year,' said Paul,
patting Fat Sally on the roof.' When we get an engine inside
her.'

Chris looked out of the inspection pit. 'I've got your
present here,' he said, and pushed it out onto the ground,
wrapped in newspaper. Paul knelt down in a pool of sump
oil and unwrapped it.


93



'An exhaust manifold,' said Paul. 'Just what you wanted.
How did you guess ?'

'Got it cheap,' said Chris. 'It fell off the back of a friend.
I'm going to fit it tonight.' He withdrew, taking the manifold.

That was the end of Paul's birthday present.

Matthew thought, personally, that Paul was having a
lousy birthday.

' He's taken your present,' he said.

'We share things," said Paul, defensively. 'And he did
buy it. Last week he took the steering wheel out of Fat Sally
and put it in his. Have a sandwich.'

There was a slithering sound behind them. Matthew
turned round and saw Clive falling out of the HardCore
Special. He hit his chin on it and stood in the desolate dust,
crying for his mother. Chris came out of the garage and
picked him up.

13. First Frost


Two rival games were in session at opposite ends of the
playground and in the middle Peter and Roger were practising
Japanese methods of mayhem, high-kicking like ballet
dancers.


Peter crouched on the ground, his knees level with his
ears, and swayed from side to side.

' My brother taught me this one,' he said. ' But you have
to take a vow never to use it because that kills, instantly.
You'll have to lean down a bit or I can't reach.' He sprang
up and wrapped his feet round Roger's neck. Roger did not
die and Peter fell heavily on the back of his head. He retired
to try again and Matthew, seeing that he was not going to
have a corpse on his hands, continued his stroll round the
playground. Behind the dustbins he found Mark Catchpole,
kneeling on the ground and stuffing something into an airbrick.

'You shouldn't do that,' said Matthew. 'Those airbricks
are meant to have holes in. The wall will get damp,
else.'

' I'll take them out, after play,' said Mark.' I'm a terrorist.
I'm planting a bomb.' He pointed to three other little ones
who were squinnying round the corner, trying to stay out of
sight. 'They're the security forces.'

'That's horrible,' said Matthew. 'What do you want to
do that for?'

'I'm going to blow up the school,' said Mark. 'That's an


95



army post.' He noticed that Matthew still looked disgusted.
'That's not a real bomb, only mud and acorns.'

'Why do you want to blow anyone up?' said Matthew.
'We don't have any troubles here.'
'That's only a game,' said Mark. 'Like on telly.'

'That's not a game on telly,' said Matthew.

'This is,' said Mark, gently, and backed away, keeping
close to the ground. The security forces broke cover and
charged after him, firing with rulers. Matthew saw that it
was no more than the usual game of pursuer and pursued.
As you could be a sheep or a wolf without ever having seen
either, so you could be a terrorist without ever having seen
a bomb. In a hundred years, perhaps, they would still be
playing at bombs and never knowing why: still fighting over
whose turn it was to be the terrorist.

He started after them but Mrs Collinge saw him go by and
called him in. At first he thought of turning deaf for on
present form Mrs Collinge was unlikely to say anything that
he wanted to hear, but Mrs Collinge waved and he couldn't
get away with being blind as well. She was standing by the
history charts, and tapped Matthew's with a piece of chalk.

'Are you ever going to put anything on this ?' she asked,
as he crossed the room. ' You seem to have lost interest in it
altogether.'

Matthew felt like telling her that he had never been interested
in it in the first place, but he could see that this was
not what he was expected to say. Mrs Collinge was looking
sorrowful instead of angry so he had to be nice about it.

' I just can't think of anything to put on it,' he said, also
sounding sorrowful, to keep up his part of the act. 'We don't
live in an historic house.'

'Half the people here live in council houses,' said Mrs
Collinge. 'You can't get much less historic than that, but
they've all managed to find something.'

Matthew didn't think that this was a fair comparison.
The council estate was built in the grounds of the Old Hall,


96



another of Sir Robert's efforts. Wherever you looked there
was something old in view, and it was easy to see which of
the history charts belonged to people from the estate. They
had all drawn the same things.

'Even a council house will be historic one day,' said Mrs
Collinge.

It was the same old story. Everything was going to be
history if you waited long enough.


Mum left a row of tea towels on the line overnight, and
next morning they hung still and stiff, starched with frost.
Matthew tried to take them down and the frozen pegs bit
his fingers.


'Don't fold them, they'll crack,' said Mum.

Matthew tweaked the corner of one of the towels. 'Will
they really?'

'I don't know,' said Mum. 'But my mother always said
they would and I've never liked to find out.'

'Let's try it.'

'Oh no you don't,' said Mum. 'Tea towels cost a fortune.
You take them indoors.'

'This one's got a big hole in it.'

'No.'

Matthew stood the towels in the sink.

'First frost,' said Mum. 'I'll make the cake and the
puddings tomorrow. I'll go into Polthorpe after lunch to
get the fruit.'

Every year, after the first frost, Mum made the Christmas
cake and the Christmas puddings, as her mother had done
it before her. It was a ritual.

'Suppose we don't get a frost before Christmas?' said
Matthew, each time they had a mild autumn.

When he came home from school on Friday the kitchen
smelled of strong drink. The puddings were made from a
rare old recipe with rum in it. There was sherry in the cake
and brandy in the mince meat. The air was so spirituous


97



that it might ignite with a blue flash if anyone struck a
match. Dad, home early for his Friday tea, was eating it off
the corner of the dresser because the table was crowded with
bowls and packets, standing among spilled raisins.

'Come and have a wish,' said Mum, holding out the
wooden spoon.

Matthew reckoned he was getting beyond such things
but he took the spoon, dug it into the mixture, and wished.
There was only one thing that he could wish for - that
he would find something in the excavation, and quickly. He
had one picture for his history chart, a very bad drawing of
Kingston Villa with the roof off, so bad that it was still in his
desk and not on the chart. Even Roger Hewlett had done
more than he had. His chart, which hung next to Matthew's,
was covered in notes and sketches. Some of them were very
strange but at least they were there, and Roger, after all,
was the school nuisance. Matthew felt that he owed it to
them to be a nuisance all the time.

' Finished ?' said Mum, taking the spoon from him.' That
was a record wish, wasn't it?' She began to transfer the
pudding mixture from the bowl to the row of white basins
on the dresser. The black, iron cauldron which was kept
in the larder during the rest of the year was already bubbling
on the stove. The pudding basins were capped with foil,
swaddled in white cloths and lowered on strings into the
cauldron. There were muffled thuds as they bounced in the
boiling water and tipsy steam escaped from under the lid.

The puddings were not for this Christmas but for next.
They would have to sit darkly in their basins at the back of
the cupboard and mature like fine cheese. This year they
would eat last year's puddings, and last year they had eaten
puddings made the year before that.

'Did you have time to wash my kit?' asked Matthew.
'We're playing at Polthorpe tomorrow.'

'Big match?' said Dad. 'I might find time to come down
and watch.'


98



'No, that's only their second eleven,' said Matthew.
' They won't field their first eleven against us.' There weren't
enough junior boys to make up a team at Pallingham, so
they joined forces with Calstead School. The infants would
willingly have joined the team, but they all watched football
on television and spent so much time engaged in fancy
footwork that they rarely got near the ball.

14. Brass Effrontery


Matthew was digging in his football boots. After the match
Mr Overton, the headmaster from Calstead, had dropped
him at the end of the loke instead of taking him back to
school. This saved him having to walk home again but he
had left his shoes in the cloakroom where they would have
to stay until Monday.


It had not been a very good game. Polthorpe had won,
six-nil, and two of those had been own goals. Matthew was
sorry about the own goals, but not too sorry because he was
the goalie and at least he hadn't been so responsible for
those. It was the other four that worried him.

On the way home Peter Catchpole had refused to speak
to him. Peter was the captain and a devoted supporter of
Norwich City. Most of his clothes were green and yellow
and even his bike was painted to match. As he dug, Matthew
treated himself to an action replay to see where he had gone
wrong, but he knew, without having to think about it.
He was simply too slow and all the time his mind had been
on the history charts. He was getting to the stage where he
felt sick when he remembered them.

He stopped work and sat down on the edge of the excavation.
As Paul had predicted, the rain had made the ground
like a pudding and the digging was beginning to hurt his
back. He stirred the pudding with the coal shovel and made
another wish, for dry weather.

Round the edge of the hole lay all the things he had


too



found, airing in the wind. Julie came down the garden and
began to kick them about.

'Why do you want these filthy old things?' she asked.
'Your hand's bleeding. You'll get lockjaw.'

'No I won't. Get your feet out,' said Matthew. Julie
climbed down into the pit.

'That's like a little house in here. You could put a roof
on and camp in it.'

'Get out,' said Matthew. He leaned down and grabbed
her by the hair. Julie began to scream, slowly, conserving
her breath for the final shriek. Matthew expected Karen to
arrive and attack him; instead Paul came out of the house.

' Don't do that,' he said, pushing Matthew aside.

' He pulled my hair,' said Julie. ' I'm going to tell my
Dad.'

' Off you go then,' said Paul, and grasped a handful of
hair himself.

'Just helping you up,' he explained. Matthew recalled
that only Angels were allowed to manhandle other Angels.

' What have you got today ?' asked Paul, searching among
the muddy lumps at the pit's edge. ' I haven't seen this before.'

' I got that out just now,' said Matthew.' I haven't looked
at that properly yet. It's only a bit of old metal.'

Paul picked up a stick and gouged the mud out of the
crevices. 'Here, come and have a look at this, Chris.'

Chris was on the lean-to, carefully removing a colony of
house leeks that were growing among the tiles, before he
stripped the roof. In response to Paul's shout he climbed
down and came towards them carrying the house leeks in
his hands, all in one clump.

' You'd better put these back when we've finished,' he said,
passing the house leeks to Matthew. 'They keep the lightning
away.'

Matthew put the house leeks down quickly, for they were
sharp. They sat in the grass like a green hedgehog.


101



'Look what Matthew's found,' said Paul. 'Mind you, he
didn't know he'd found it. Thought it was rubbish, didn't
you,' he said to Matthew.

'No I didn't. I never had time to look at it properly,'
said Matthew, not caring to admit that he had indeed
thought it was rubbish.

'This is very interesting,' said Chris, turning the object
every way. He took out a handkerchief and scrubbed at it.
'It's the thermostat off a Morris 10 - you know, Paul. The
ones that were put on the radiator caps.'

Matthew stood up to look. The thermostat was two glass
discs in a circular brass frame, with an indicator needle
between them. From the frame grew a long brass stalk.

'That's the sensor unit,' said Chris, stroking the stalk.
'The part that went down into the radiator. The driver
could see the dial from inside the car.'

' Is it rare ?' said Matthew. His wish had been answered
although not, perhaps, in quite the way he had hoped.
Sir Oliver had never driven a Morris 10.

' It's extinct,' said Chris. ' They went out of production
in nineteen thirty-seven.'

' Hmm,' said Paul. 'At that rate, we ought to get down to
the thirteenth century in about ten years' time. Give me a
shout when you get there, Matthew, and I'll come and help.'

'My Dad would like to see that,' said Matthew. 'He
knows about old cars.' He held out his hand for it.

'Keep digging,' said Chris. 'There may be some more
of it, somewhere. I'll just put this in the cab,' and he took it
away.

'That's mine,' said Matthew. 'I found it.'

'You didn't want it. You're looking for bones, aren't
you ?'

'You said you were looking for coins,' said Matthew.
'Why do you want it? That's mine.'

' It's on loan,' said Paul, soothingly. ' I was joking about
the coins. You knew that.'


102



'And the altar plate?'

'Of course I was.'

'Mr Bagnall said you'd never find anything like that,'
said Matthew. ' What are you looking for, then ?'

'Anything that comes up,' said Paul. ' It's all interesting.
You've got another spade in your toolshed, haven't you?
I'll get it.'

'I'm not allowed to use that any more,' said Matthew,
when Paul came back with the spade.

'Ah, but I am," said Paul. ' I asked your Mum.'

Chris returned with a builder's trowel. 'A real archaeologist
doesn't dig, he scrapes,' he said.

'We're going to a museum on Thursday,' said Matthew.
'I shall know what to look out for, then,'

'We've got something doing on Thursday,' said Paul.
'What is it, Chris?'

Chris took a little diary from his pocket and consulted
it. 'Eclipse of the moon,' he said. 'Begins about eight, if you
want to watch it, Matthew. Let's hope it stays clear, it's
total this time.'

'We're going to watch it from the inspection pit,' said
Paul. ' If Chris can get the car out of the way.'

'I'll try and start her tomorrow,' said Chris. 'Wasn't it
Aristotle who thought that the stars looked bigger if you
sat down a hole to observe them ?'

'Who was Aristotle?' asked Matthew. Perhaps he was
another Angel.

'Ancient Greek,' said Chris. 'It's strange, isn't it? You
still get Greeks called Aristotle and Socrates.'

'Let's have that trowel, a minute,' said Paul. 'It must be
embarrassing to be thick and Greek and called Socrates.'

' Who was Socrates ?' asked Matthew.

' Like being thick and Jewish and called Solomon.'

'Or thick and English and called Shakespeare,' said Paul.

'Dad used to know a brickie called Shakespeare,' said
Chris.


103



'William?'

'No, Raymond.'

'That doesn't sound right, Raymond Shakespeare,' said
Paul. 'It's like Bruce van Beethoven or Melvyn Sebastian
Bach.'

'Everyone called him Shakes,' said Chris.

Matthew, ignored, crouched at the bottom of the pit,
while the cat's cradle of conversation ran back and forth
over his head. He could tell that it was meant to be funny
from the smiles in their voices, but the jokes went over his
head too.

Mum called through the hedge that there was tea brewed
for anyone who wanted it. The door of Kingston Villa
burst open and Angels issued out. Mr Angel and Mr John
Angel came down from the roof and Charlie Hemp, who
was rabbiting in the field, looked over the wall and asked if
he might come too.

Chris and Paul followed the others, but Matthew stayed
in the hole, unable to face the overflowing kitchen. When
he next raised his head he saw Mr Bagnall leaning on the
wall at the corner. Alongside him sat Minnie, now perfectly
spherical and fluffed up like a hen in a high wind.

'Airing her musty fur,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Aren't you going
to have tea with your nice new friends ?'

' You can hardly get into the kitchen when they're here,'
said Matthew. 'I'll have mine when they all come out
again.'

'Don't be too hard on them,' said Mr Bagnall. 'I think
they feel they have to stick together these days.'

'Why?' said Matthew. 'They do what they like. Everybody
lets them do what they like. Everybody likes them.'

' Everybody ?'

' Mum and Dad.'

' I suppose that is just about everybody,' said Mr Bagnall.
'But I don't think you'll find they like them so very much.
They're sorry for them.'


104



' Sorry!' said Matthew.' They're doingall right on it, then.'

Mr Bagnall cleared his throat.' We are not alone,' he said
and pointed over Matthew's shoulder. Clive was standing
by the hole, looking down into it.

'All gone,' he said, puzzled.


'They're at mine,' said Matthew. 'Having tea. Do you
want some ?'



'Tea. I have,' said Clive. He held out his hand and Matthew
led him towards the hedge.


'Goodbye,' said Mr Bagnall. Matthew turned back. The
light was bad but he had the distinct impression that Mr
Bagnall was stroking Minnie.

The light was very bad.

'Where did you get to?' asked Mr Angel as Matthew
ushered Clive into the kitchen. ' I thought he was with you
Paul.'	'

'I thought he was with Julie,' said Paul.

'Well, you keep an eye on him,' said Mr Angel. 'He'll
be out on the road next.'

Mum gave Matthew the green mug which he hated
because it made the tea taste foggy. Yew and Charlie were
propped up by the sink, Charlie drinking from the Friday
teacup and Yew from the washing-up bowl.

'He like the detergent,' said Charlie.

Clive sat on the floor and gave Yew's tail a tentative tug.
Yew got down from the sink and sat on his lap, his middle
across Clive's knees and the rest of him spread out on either
side. Clive's mouth opened and all the air came out of him
in a startled wuff. He put his arms round Yew's neck and
they collapsed together against the skirting board.

'Here, come you off of that,' said Charlie. 'He'll crush
him to death.' He reached out for Yew's collar but Clive
tightened his hold.

'Good dog,' he said, ever so quietly.

'I should leave him there,' said his father. 'At least we
know where he is.'

15. Museum Pieces


Mrs Collinge borrowed the minibus from Polthorpe
School and before lunch she backed it up against the school
gate and they practised getting into it. They had to make
themselves very thin indeed and it took a long time to rearrange
people so that the narrowest ones were in the right
places on the narrowest seats. Matthew, Peter, and Roger
were the broadest so they sat in the front with Mrs Collinge.


Miss Cooper came out after lunch to help squeeze them
all in. She was staying behind with the little ones who were
going to move into the junior classroom for the afternoon
and bake lumpy cakes in the school oven.

Matthew went to Norwich once a year for Christmas
shopping. He went on the bus with Mum, a long and entertaining
journey because the bus took to the lanes, stopping
at secluded broad-side villages where no one got on. Mrs
Collinge went straight down the main road and they arrived
in half an hour, not nearly as long as the bus took, but still
plenty of time to serenade Anne Lilley.


Happy birthday to you,
Squashed tomatoes and stew.
Bread and butter in the gutter
Happy birthday to you.



It took another half hour to get through the traffic and
into the car park. They unfolded themselves and climbed



106



out of the minibus. Mrs Collinge arranged them in twos
with Matthew and Anne Lilley at the back to keep the line
from straggling.

The Castle Museum, a big, square biscuit tin of a building,
stood above them on its hill, but they were not going there.
Mrs Collinge led them down narrow streets and alleyways
until they came to a wide doorway in a wall. She fanned
them through it with flapping hands and they found themselves
standing in a courtyard.
'This is Stranger's Hall,' she said, backing them up
against the wall. ' It's a very old house and it's been beautifully
cared for. Don't touch anything. Roger! You must all
stay together, but if anyone does get left behind, stay where
you are. We'll come back for you. Don't come looking for
us or you're sure to get lost.'
They followed her up the steps to the front door.

'What's that funny smell?' said Julie, looking round for
something to complain about.

'Beeswax,' said Mrs Collinge. 'They use it to polish
wood. Before modern polishes were invented, there was
nothing else to use.'

Matthew made a note of this in his work book. He thought
it would be rather pleasant to have a museum devoted entirely
to smells. This wasn't his idea of a museum at all.
He had expected glass cases full of treasure: rings and buckles
and coins and stuffed animals, perhaps a skeleton or two
with interesting head wounds . . .

But as Mrs Collinge had said, this was just a very old
house.

Each room represented a different time in history, starting
with a terrible red Victorian drawing-room, so full of
furniture that walking through it would have been like
walking through a maze only they couldn't walk through it.
All the rooms had thick ropes across the doorways in case
anyone sneaked in for a quiet nap on the furniture, perhaps.
One little room was locked and had to be viewed through a


107



glass panel. According to the notice beside it all the furniture
in that room was made of papier mache.

Mrs Collinge told them that papier mache was pulped
paper that dried very hard.

Paper furniture?

Matthew went back for another look and found that the
others had gone on without him. He didn't want to be the
one that Mrs Collinge had to come back for. It was the
kind of thing that seemed to be happening to him lately.

Stranger's Hall began to live up to its name, a big trap
for people who didn't know their way about. He took a
wrong turning and found himself in a room possessed by
clothes: clothes to be christened in, clothes to be married
in, clothes to wear to a funeral. The sort of clothes that
looked as if once in them you would never get out. They were
all displayed on stiff people without heads, and were so
stiff themselves that they too might have been made of
papier mache.

He escaped from the menacing clothes and came upon
the worst room of all. It was full of toys in glass cases. They
were the oldest, saddest toys in the world, toys to frighten you
into growing up. Dolls with pale, pinched faces and dingy
dresses, endless lines of wooden animals queuing in front
of an ark that they would never get into, a painted cart
full of teddy bears: wizened, withered teddy bears, moulting
and bald teddy bears, all nursing a secret sorrow, who had
been told to get into the cart and look as if they were having
a good time.

Matthew had never had much time for teddy bears. His
own was in the attic and he hadn't seen it for years, nor
wanted to, but now he longed to smash the glass, overturn
the cart and tell them to run for it. He had a vision of all
the liberated bears scrambling out of the cart and rampaging
down the stairs, disturbing the public.

He left the toys and hurried down corridors and stair108



cases, looking for the rest of the class. Away in the distance
he could hear familiar voices and rounding a corner he ran
into Mrs Collinge.

She was wearing the expression she kept especially for
him, these days.

'I didn't expect to lose you,' she said. 'You're supposed to
be keeping the others together. When I said that people
who got left behind were to wait I meant you as much as
anyone else.'

They trailed through more rooms until they came out in
the entrance hall where the class was waiting. There was a
certain amount of nudging going on. Julie said loudly,' Matthew
got lost,' and everyone else said 'Aaaaah' to show how
sorry they were.

' I think we have enough time left to look in the cellars,'
said Mrs Collinge, and they all went through a door and
down steps to the passages under the house.

'How did you manage that?' said Roger, in his ear.

'What?'

' How did you manage to get left behind ?'

' I didn't manage it,' said Matthew. ' I went back to look
at that paper furniture and when I turned round you'd all
gone.'

' Oh,' said Roger.' I tried to get lost but they kept coming
back for me.'

They left Stranger's Hall and filed back along the narrow
lanes to the Bridewell Museum.

'What's bridewell?' said Anne. 'Somewhere you get
married ?'

'It used to be a prison,' said Mrs Collinge, and Roger
began to drag his feet like a man with a ball and chain.

'All stay in line, this time,' said Mrs Collinge, on the way
in.' Go straight up the stairs and wait for me there. You too,
Matthew. In fact, you'd better go first, to lead the way.'

Matthew knew that this was not why he had to go first


109



and so did the others. They stood back and bowed as he
went to the head of the line.

Stranger's Hall had shown how people lived at home.
The Bridewell showed how they lived at work: room after
room lined with eel traps and looms, ploughs and sewing
machines. One room was full of elderly shoes, ancestors of
the ones that were still made in Norwich. It didn't seem
possible that any of the shoes had ever contained feet. They
were shrivelled little things, the kind of shoes that vampire
bats might wear.

They went downstairs again, among wagons and windmills
and the faces of people outside in Bridewell Alley,
looking in.

In one corner was a cabinet full of bottles. Matthew
paused to have a look because the bottles had a bright,
fantastic appearance, quite unlike the bottles that lived in
the sideboard at home, but the others piled up behind him
and he had to move on.

Mrs Collinge caught him up.

'Was there something you wanted to see, Matthew?'

He shook his head.

'I don't want you to miss things,' she said. 'So long as I
know where you are.'

He knew that she was trying to be kind but it was too late
and he got an angry sort of pleasure from walking away.
In the entire afternoon, the bottles were the only things
that he had wanted to see. Bottles, after all, were the kind of
things that got thrown out and were therefore the kind of
things that might be dug up.

On the way to the minibus they passed the castle again.

' What sort of a museum is that ?' asked Peter.

'They have all sorts of things in there,' said Mrs Collinge.
'There's an art gallery, and a section on natural history,
and archaeology: suits of armour, mummies, pottery. It's
really half a dozen museums rolled into one.'

Matthew, eavesdropping, trailed again, kicking himself


no



across the car park. The whole horrible afternoon lay waste
behind him. He had been in the wrong museums.


'You'll get lead poisoning if you do that,' said Julie.


'No I won't,' said Matthew, pushing the pencil further
into his mouth.

'Your fingernails will turn blue and fall out.'

'They don't put lead in pencils any more.'

' Why are they called lead pencils then ?' said Julie. ' You
don't know everything.' She amended this. 'You don't
know anything.'

They were thin on the ground this afternoon. The junior
boys had gone off to play a match against Clipton and Matthew
had been dropped from the team.

'I'm sorry,' said Peter, trying to look it. 'I daren't risk
that. We'll be relegated at this rate.'

'Don't be daft,' said Matthew. 'Relegated from what?'

' I mean, no one won't want to play with us, soon. We're
a joke. We've played seven games this term, lost six, drawn
one, won nothing. We've scored three goals in seven games.'

'You can't blame me for that,' said Matthew. 'I'm the
goalie.'

'Were the goalie,' Peter corrected him. 'I can't let the
team go downhill like this.'

'But who will you substitute? No one else is big enough.'

' I have conferred with Calstead,' said Peter, who studied
First Division managers in his spare time,' and we've decided
to play Trevor Lilley. He's come on a lot this season.'

'But he's hopeless,' said Matthew. 'He falls over.'

'That's one way of stopping the ball,' said Peter, nastily.

'You're in a bad mind,' said Matthew. 'That doesn't
matter whether we win or not, does it? Not the way we
play.'

This was the wrong thing to say.

' I wish Darren was back,' said Peter.

Matthew thought guiltily about Darren, as he sat with


in



the girls. It was a good thing that he had not accepted
Barren's bet because he had not thought about him, much
less written to him, since Darren went into hospital. The
class had sent a card and some sweets but Matthew had
promised to write personally. He tore a page from his
arithmetic book and began to compose a letter.

'You're not allowed to do that,' said Julie.

' Go and tell on me then,' said Matthew, but it was not
necessary. Mrs Gollinge was standing behind him, reading
the note out loud, over his shoulder. ' "Dear Darren Catchpole
have drop me from the team I'd like to push . . ." '

'What's this then?' said Mrs Collinge. 'A get-well note?'


One way and another it was a relief to reach home that
evening. Mum was upstairs when he arrived so he slipped
into the new garden, very quietly, and fetched the coal
shovel, equally quietly, and went down to the excavation.


Since the discovery of the thermostat on Saturday, nothing
more had come up except a sash weight and a bicycle
pedal. He was in two minds what to do with them. If he
threw them away they would probably turn out to be valuable.
Unless he showed them to Chris he wouldn't know if
they were valuable or not. If he showed them to Chris,
Chris might take them away.

Mum came out of the house and joined him.

'Who's been in trouble, then?' she asked.

Matthew wondered which of his troubles she was talking
about. She had left school before the letter episode so she
could mean either the football row or the history chart,
which was a chronic complaint. He decided that she meant
the history chart.

'Did Mrs Collinge tell you?'

'I didn't need to be told. What have you been doing?'

'That's what I haven't done,' said Matthew. 'I said I'd
done something and I hadn't.'

'Well serve you right, then," said Mum. 'Serve you right


112



for not doing it and serve you right for saying you'd done
that when you hadn't. Now cheer up, she won't be cross for
ever.'

'I haven't done that yet,' said Matthew.

'Oh, get along with you,' said Mum. 'Too busy digging
holes, I suppose. You deserve whatever's coming to you.'
She cuffed him gently and went indoors. It was a friendly
cuff, but not so friendly as a kiss.

Dad was even less friendly about it. He suggested that
whatever it was that Matthew hadn't done, he had better
go upstairs right now, and do it.

And when was he going to mend his puncture ?

16. Bottles


Jones the Bookrest was the eldest of Mrs Bagnall's cats. He
was named after the people she had bought him from and
he spent most of his time asleep in people's laps, so mountainous
and immobile that you could prop a book against
him and he wouldn't disturb it. At the moment he was lying
on the path at the side of the house, watching Matthew trying
to repair his puncture. Occasionally he would stretch
out his neck and take an idle drink from the bowl of
water that Matthew was using to test the inner tube for
leaks.


In the distance Mrs Bagnall called her flock in to breakfast
with high pitched cries of' Meat! Meat! Meat!' Jones
the Bookrest got up, very slowly, and waded through the
grass to the hedge, his fur skirt trailing round his paws.
Matthew followed him into the new garden because Jones
was too infirm to climb over the wall without assistance. He
picked him up, his hands sinking deep into the thick pile of
Jones's coat, and lifted him over, lowering him gently onto
the rockery that was built in the angle of the wall on the
Bagnalls' side.

'Pathetic,' said Mr Bagnall, glaring through the bare
boughs of his apple trees. ' Cats that have to be lifted over
walls ought to be put out of their misery.'

'But he's not ill, is he?' asked Matthew.

'Only

stiff.'

'He'd be even stifFer if I had my way,' said Mr Bagnall

114


and drove Jones the Bookrest indoors, leaving Matthew
to hope that he didn't mean what he thought he did.

He returned to the bowl of water. The inner tube lay
across it, so like a dead eel that his fingers twitched when he
bent to pick it up. It was not a dead eel, but it was certainly
a dead inner tube and he threw it down again. There was
no chance of using the bicycle now until he bought a new
one.

He went upstairs to see how much money there was in the
tobacco tin that he used for a money box. The coins rolled
out, smelling of Golden Virginia, and fell in a very small
heap on the bed.

He was saving up for Christmas presents, but when he
saw how small the heap was he realized that if he bought the
tube there would be about enough left over to treat his
family to a liquorice bootlace each. He put the money back
in the tin and resigned himself to the fact that there was a
lot of walking to be done between now and Christmas.

He went for the eggs on foot.

The early morning shadow of the house stretched down
the field and Charlie stood upon the chimney stacks with his
shotgun. Yew ran up and down the furrows, pursuing game
that no one but himself could see.

' Morning,' said Charlie, as Matthew went by. ' Met Sir
Oliver yet?'

'No,' said Matthew. 'Have you?'

' I reckon the tractor frightened him off,' said Charlie.' If
anyone see him, that'll be Yew, and he don't say nothing.'

'You know that bit of stone in your fireplace,' said Matthew.
' Mr Bagnall told me about that. It's Sir Oliver's crest
that he wore on his helmet. He built the priory.'

'He had a strong old neck, then,' said Charlie. 'That
block must weigh about fifty pounds.'


When Matthew came back Charlie had gone although
Yew was still roistering in the field. The Angels' lorry was



"5



in the loke but when Matthew came out of Mrs Harrison's
garden it was disappearing down the Hoxenham road. He
went into the new garden and found Paul was there before
him, already digging. He had started a new hole nearer the
oak tree and Clive was sitting on the back doorstep, watching
Paul and growling softly.

'He's winning the r.a.c. Rally,' said Paul. 'Don't take
any notice and he'll drive for hours.'

'What are you doing here?' asked Matthew. Paul's
excavation was neatly marked out with string wound round
pegs.

' Dad dropped us off on the way to Tokesby,' said Paul.
'He'll be back later on. I had to bring Clive with me;
Chris is out too.'

Matthew wondered, not for the first time, why Clive
didn't stay at home with his mother. Even at this early hour
he looked as if he had been wearing his clothes all night, and
his hair stood on end like brown grass.

'Is Chris here?' asked Matthew, looking round. There
was no sign of anyone else, but the Angels had a habit of
appearing suddenly, like partridges from a seemingly empty
field.

' No, he's with Dad. They've got a rush job on,' said Paul.
Matthew realized that he was going to be stuck with Paul
all day.

'What are you going to do about food?' he asked,
wondering if Paul had it in mind to pay them a visit towards
lunch time.

' I made some sandwiches,' said Paul. ' But I had to hide
the bag in case he started on them.' He nodded towards
Clive who had stopped droning and was kicking away
the loose mortar round the edge of the step.

'Won't he get bored?' asked Matthew. Clive never
seemed to have any toys to play with. He broke into a
frantic heehawing.

'Air horns,' said Paul. 'He'll be all right. Look, are you


116



going to dig in your own hole or do you want to help me
with this one?"

Matthew had no desire to become Paul's assistant. 'I'll
start a new one of my own,' he said. If he wasn't careful, the
Angels would take over the excavation and there would
be nothing left for him to do but stand back with an admiring
smile while they dug up the priory and removed it, bit by
bit.

The coal shovel was lying in the excavation where he had
left it last night. He took it a little way down the garden,
towards the wall, and drove it into the cropped grass. The
turf lifted easily: he removed two or three slices and threw
them aside. He could never get his turfs quite square and he
wished he had thought of pegging out the area before Paul
had done it. If he did it now it would look like copying and
although he didn't see much wrong with copying, himself,
he had discovered at school that very few people shared his
opinion, especially the ones who were being copied. He
didn't care very much what Paul thought of him; what
Paul might say was another matter.

Clive grew tired of demolishing the step and wandered
towards him.

'I dig.'

'Go and help Paul,' said Matthew. Clive approached
his brother.

'I dig.'

'No,' said Paul. 'Go and drive your car.'

Clive didn't argue. He looked defeated and went back
to the step where he sat stroking his own hand, comfortingly,
and talking to himself.

'He's learning,' said Paul, to Matthew.

' Cheer up, darling,' said Clive, to Clive.


It was mid-afternoon when Paul made his discovery. He
and Clive had eaten their sandwiches on the site while
Matthew went home for lunch.



117



'Wouldn't they like to come in here?' Mum had asked.

'No,' lied Matthew. 'They're having a picnic.'

He was just returning when he heard the crunch of
crushed glass and Paul shouting. He ran to see what had
happened and found Paul on his knees in his excavation,
holding Clive at arm's length with one hand and scrabbling
in the earth with the other.

'Look at that,' said Paul. Matthew looked and looked
again, trying to locate the source of the excitement. All he
could see was a mud-encrusted heap of green glass. Paul had
dug up a bottle and smashed it in the process.

'What a fantastic bottle,' said Matthew, trying to sound
both interested and sarcastic, depending on whether Paul
was serious or not.

'This one's nothing. It's a pity I smashed it, but I didn't
realize it was there until I hit it. There's a lot more underneath,'
said Paul. Matthew had a flashback of the bottles at
the Bridewell museum and wished that he had spent more
time in looking at them. He had at least expected to find
bottles.

' Have you got a hearth brush ?' asked Paul.' We must do
this properly; we can't afford to break any more.'

'You're getting tidy, all of a sudden,' said Matthew.
'You don't have to sweep up.'

'We have to proceed with great caution now,' said Paul.
' Some of these might be valuable, they look very old. Go
and get that brush.'

Matthew fetched the brush from the living-room fireplace.
He was leaving with it when he ran into Mum.

'Now where are you going with that?' she said, when
she noticed him trying to conceal it under his coat. ' Is this
more of your digging nonsense ?'

Matthew explained about the bottles.

'Well, I've heard of some daft pastimes, but I suppose
Paul knows what he's doing.' She let him take the brush.

Paul was using the trowel to scrape away the broken


118



glass. He took the brush and dusted the soil. More bottles
began to appear, lying on their sides in orderly rows.

' It's a glass graveyard,' said Paul. ' Old bottles come here
to die. Was your Mr Blakely a secret drinker?'

'Not very secret,' said Matthew. 'He used to go down to
the Bull at Calstead every night.'

'That's closed now,' said Paul, still brushing.

'Yes. Dad said they closed soon after he moved. He
reckoned they couldn't make that pay after he'd gone,'
said Matthew.

'When did he come here?'

'About eleven years ago,' said Matthew. ' I can't remember
him very well, but everyone else can. If anybody does
anything extra daft they say, that's just the kind of thing old
Batty Blakely would have done.'

'Eleven years,' said Paul. 'These bottles are older than
that. More like a hundred years. I'm not sure, but they
look like they've been blown. They must be old. Who lived
here before Blakely?'

'I don't know,' said Matthew. 'These used to be tied
cottages before old Mr Hemp sold them. All sorts of people
lived here. That bit of car wasn't Mr Blakely's, either. I
asked Dad and he said they'd never had a Morris 10. Can
I have that back?'

Paul inserted the point of the trowel under the topmost
bottle and lifted it out of the earth. It was as black as
treacle.

'I'll wash it in your sink,' said Paul. 'Your Mum won't
mind ?'

' Not if you do it,' said Matthew, sourly. 'Anyway, she's
gone shopping.'

' In that case I'll borrow the phone as well,' said Paul.' If I
may? Chris might be home by now. I'd like him to see
these.'

'That's in the hall by the front door,' said Matthew.
' Where's Clive got to?' The doorstep was vacant.


"9



Paul was too interested in the bottle to bother about
Clive. He headed for the hole in the hedge.

'You know, this really is worth finding,' he said, as he
vanished. 'He can't have gone far; his legs are too short.'

Matthew thought that Clive could get up a fair turn of
speed when it suited him. He looked in the hole first, and
then searched around Kingston Villa, but all the doors were
locked. By now, Clive might be rioting round Myhill
Street, causing damage for which Matthew would be
blamed.

Or he might be run over.

Matthew hurried down the loke to the Hoxenham Road.
It was empty in both directions, except for Mr Catchpole
Senior's goat which was looking through his front gate.
Matthew went to ask if the Bagnalls had seen Clive. Mr
Bagnall was behind the hedge, breaking up clumps of
Madonna lilies.

'Clive?' he said, when Matthew inquired. 'The little lad
with the black eye ? He came over the wall ten minutes ago,
looking for cats. He's with Marge, indoors.'

Marge was Mrs Bagnall.

'He didn't have a black eye when I saw him last,' said
Matthew, alarmed.

'Well, maybe it was dirt,' said Mr Bagnall. 'That child
needs a good scrape with silver sand. Hey, get out of that,
you horrible mog,' he roared, hurling a lily bulb at a passing
cat.

'Can I go and fetch him?' said Matthew, anxious to
get away. Mr Bagnall seemed to have forgotten their friendly
chat in the vestry.

'Please do,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Remove him at once. Take
the cats as well if you like. And Matthew,' he added, more
gently, 'don't nag him.'

' I never nagged him,' said Matthew and knocked at the
back door. Mrs Bagnall answered it.

'Looking for Clive?' she said. 'He's in the living-room,


ISO



with the cats. Isn't he a bit young to be wandering about
on his own?"

'They let him do as he likes,' said Matthew. 'He's such a
pest I think they're quite glad when he does go away.'

Clive was sitting beside a big fur rug in front of the fire. A
live coal rolled across the hearth and the whole rug swelled
sideways.

It was the cats.

The rug was deep and soft in the middle, where lay
Furbelow and Jones the Bookrest, lumpy at one end, which
was pregnant Minnie, and ragged at the other, where Tokyo
Rose and Genghis Khan reclined on their elbows and swatted
at each other with limp paws. Supercat was in the garden,
annoying Mr Bagnall.

Clive stared with round eyes and both hands in his mouth.
Then he swooped, arms spread wide, and the rug ran away
in several directions. He was left clasping Minnie.

'Don't squeeze her,' said Mrs Bagnall, trying to free the
cat. 'She's going to have kittens.'

'Ought to be shot,' said Mr Bagnall, coming in with a
basket of lily bulbs. 'You can give these to your mother,'
he said, handing Matthew the basket.

'Kittings,' said Clive. 'I have.'

'We'd better go home now,' said Matthew. 'Your Dad
might come and wonder where you are.' He put his hand
on Clive's shoulder. Clive made himself very small and
heavy. He wrapped his arms more tightly round Minnie.

' I stay,' he said.

'You can come and see her again,' said Mrs Bagnall, 'but
you must let her go now. You'll hurt her.' Minnie struggled
and wailed.

' Singing cat,' said Clive, blandly.

Mr Bagnall stepped in. ' Put her down at once, Clive,' he
said. Clive obeyed.

'Thank you,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Now you're going home
with Matthew. Yes?'


121



'Yes,' said Clive. Matthew dragged him out of the bungalow
towards the gate.

Mr Catchpole's goat smiled at them from across the
road.

' Dog,' said Clive, attempting to visit it.

'Goat. Goats bite,' said Matthew, untruthfully, for it
was an elderly nanny goat with a coy nature.

The new garden was empty and so was the old.

'All gone,' said Clive, looking under a flower pot. Matthew
heard a tapping sound above them. Paul was in Matthew's
bedroom, knocking on the window.

'What are you doing up there?' Matthew shouted, and
ran to find out, tucking Clive under his arm to save time.
Paul came out of the bedroom as they reached the top of
the stairs.

'There was no one in when I rang,' he explained, 'so I
thought I'd look round. What's that you've got on your
window sill?'

Matthew set Clive on his feet. 'Stick insects,' he said.
'Who asked you to go into my room?'

'I thought they might be,' said Paul. 'But I couldn't
see them.' He went back to the bedroom, still uninvited, for
another look.

'Oh yes, there they are. What are they for?"

'They're not for anything,' said Matthew. 'They're my
pets.'

'Yes,' said Paul, looking at him out of the tail of his eye.
'They would be. Most exciting pets in the world, after
house bricks.'

' What have you got, rats ?' asked Matthew.

'Anything worth watching on telly?' said Paul, leading
the way downstairs to the living-room. ' Is it a colour set ?'
He switched it on.

'We can't afford colour,' said Matthew. 'But we get
foreign stations. We can get the news in German and motor
racing from Holland, but we don't get any sound with that.'


122



The set warmed up and a painful pattern of zig-zags buzzed
up and down the screen.

'Makes your eyeballs click, doesn't it?' said Paul, taking
liberties with switches that Matthew was not allowed to
touch. 'Not much point in getting German news if you
want to watch Match of the Day, is it ?' He made another
adjustment. ' How about University Challenge with Belgian
subtitles ? Oh look, there's that fellow who plays the brain
surgeon in wotsitsname.'

' I don't watch that,' said Matthew.' University Challenge
isn't on today. Why don't you let that alone? You'll break
something.'

'No I won't,' said Paul. 'What's this?'

'That's our barometer.'

'Why's it all done up like a cuckoo clock?'

'My Gran bought that in Margate.' Paul began to unhook
it. ' Leave that alone!'
Paul was so surprised to hear Matthew snap that he did
leave it alone. His eyes orbited the room, looking for new
prey. Matthew heard a vehicle on the loke and looked out
of the window.

'Here's your Dad,' he said, with relief. Paul went out
and Matthew heard him undoing all the bolts on the front
door. Clive followed him, then he changed his mind and
stood in the doorway, waving politely to Matthew.

'I go,' he said.

Matthew watched round the curtain until the lorry
reached the end of the loke. Then he ran to the new garden.
Paul's excavation was covered with a sheet of corrugated
iron with 'Do not remove' chalked offensively across it.

Matthew considered this advice for a moment, and then
lifted the iron. The bottles were his for the taking. How
pleasant it would be to lift them all, now, and leave an empty
grave for the Angels to find tomorrow.

How very unpleasant, on the other hand, to lift them all
and break them, which was almost certainly what would


123



happen. He put the corrugated iron back again, making
sure that it was in exactly the right place, and wrote a rude
word under 'Do not remove'. Then he rubbed it out again
because it wasn't quite rude enough for Paul, and far too
rude for Mum, who might see it first, by mistake. And he
wasn't sure that he had spelled it right.

17. No Bottles


Matthew walked round the garden, enjoying the loneliness,
and making grey footprints in the frost until he was disturbed
by the sound of a car, and Mr Angel's Volvo drew
up at the gate. Chris was driving with Paul beside him and
Julie and Karen holding down Clive at the back.


As Paul got out of the car, Matthew saw that he was
empty handed.

'Where's our bottle?' he demanded. Paul shrugged.

' I left it at home. It'll be safer there.'

'That would be safer here,' said Matthew. He had felt
misgivings last night when he saw Paul bear the bottle
away, cradling it in his arms, while Clive trundled backwards
behind him, dragging the bag that had contained their
sandwiches. Now he might never get it back.

Chris nodded to him and strode into the back garden,
followed by Paul, then Julie, then Karen. Clive went last,
as he always did, and Matthew was about to follow, but he
refused to bring up the rear, inferior even to Clive. He
waited till they were out of sight and then ran round to his
own garden, so that he was approaching from his own
territory. None of the Angels seemed to notice, but he felt
he was making a point, if only to himself.

Chris removed the sheet of corrugated iron and propped
it against the wall. On top of the bottles lay a dead starling.
Chris nicked it aside.

'Who put that there?'


125



happen. He put the corrugated iron back again, making
sure that it was in exactly the right place, and wrote a rude
word under 'Do not remove'. Then he rubbed it out again
because it wasn't quite rude enough for Paul, and far too
rude for Mum, who might see it first, by mistake. And he
wasn't sure that he had spelled it right.

17. No Bottles


Matthew walked round the garden, enjoying the loneliness,
and making grey footprints in the frost until he was disturbed
by the sound of a car, and Mr Angel's Volvo drew
up at the gate. Chris was driving with Paul beside him and
Julie and Karen holding down Olive at the back.


As Paul got out of the car, Matthew saw that he was
empty handed.

'Where's our bottle?' he demanded. Paul shrugged.

' I left it at home. It'll be safer there.'

'That would be safer here,' said Matthew. He had felt
misgivings last night when he saw Paul bear the bottle
away, cradling it in his arms, while Clive trundled backwards
behind him, dragging the bag that had contained their
sandwiches. Now he might never get it back.

Chris nodded to him and strode into the back garden,
followed by Paul, then Julie, then Karen. Clive went last,
as he always did, and Matthew was about to follow, but he
refused to bring up the rear, inferior even to Clive. He
waited till they were out of sight and then ran round to his
own garden, so that he was approaching from his own
territory. None of the Angels seemed to notice, but he felt
he was making a point, if only to himself.

Chris removed the sheet of corrugated iron and propped
it against the wall. On top of the bottles lay a dead starling.
Chris flicked it aside.

'Who put that there?'


125



'I didn't,' said Matthew. 'I expect one of the cats caught
that and it escaped and died of wounds. They won't eat
starlings.'

' Go and bury it, Karen,' said Paul. ' You can have a little
funeral.'

'Don't touch it,' said Julie. 'Birds have fleas.' Clive picked
it up by the tail to stroke it and Julie slapped it out of his
hand. 'You get rid of it, Matthew.'

'Why should I? I don't want fleas.'

'I don't mind fleas,' said Chris, taking the starling and
throwing it over the wall. ' But they're so difficult to catch.'

' I spit on them,' said Paul.' They can't jump when they're
wet.'

Julie's eyes became pieces of cold green soap.

'That's disgusting,' she said. She took Karen by the arm
and pulled her away. Clive went after them and Chris
availed himself of the extra room. He took up the trowel
and began to scrape away the earth. As each bottle came
loose, Paul picked it up and laid it on the grass. Matthew
started to pick one up.

'Don't do that,' said Chris. 'They must be handled very
gently.'

' I'm not going to break it,' said Matthew, and picked up
the bottle anyway. Paul took it from him and put it back in
the grass.

'Wait till they're all up,' he said. 'Then we'll take them
home and wash them.'

'No. We'll wash them here,' said Matthew, certain that
once the bottles left the premises they would never come
back. He picked it up again. ' I'll wash this one now.'

'Put it down,' said Chris. 'Don't fight over it.' Matthew
considered crowning him with the bottle. Instead he turned
away, still holding it. Paul came after him.

' Chris said to put it down.'

'Why should I do what he says?'

'But he knows all about these things. Those bottles are


126



real antiques. That's why I waited till today to get them
out.' Paul trotted beside him, his head on one side, like
Yew after favours.

' I know,' said Matthew.' I'm not that thick. I could have
got them out myself, couldn't I ? After you'd gone. But I'm
going to share them now.'

'Of course,' said Paul. 'So put it back.'

' I'm going to wash it, that's all. I want to see what that
looks like.'

' It looks just like the one we found yesterday,' said Paul.
'You can see that without washing it.'

'Yes,' said Matthew. 'But I never saw the one we found
yesterday. You took it away before I saw that clean.'
He managed to get into the kitchen ahead of Paul, and
started to fill the sink with warm water. 'Why haven't you
brought that back ?'

He lowered the bottle into the sink. Paul put his hand on
it, intending to take it back. When he saw that Matthew
wasn't going to let go he went on holding it, to imply that
the bottle was safe only under his supervision.

Matthew stirred the water with his free hand, sending
quite a lot of it up Paul's sleeve, by accident. He wanted to
reach for the scrubbing brush, but he dared not let go of
the bottle while Paul was touching it.

Mum came into the kitchen with a bag of potatoes.

'Now what are you two doing in the sink?' she said.
' Stand aside, I want to clean these potatoes now.'

Paul and Matthew stood aside, still hanging on to the
bottle. Mum looked at the dirty water in the sink.

'What on earth are you up to?' she asked and without
waiting for an answer she plunged her arm into the sink,
seized the bottle and whipped it out of the water before
either of them could get a good grip on it. A stream of
muddy liquid, water and other things, poured out of the
bottle and hit the draining board, splashing up against the
wall behind the sink.


127



Mum turned the bottle upside down, shook it to make
sure that it was empty, and put it on the high shelf above
the cooker.

' If you want to wash dirt you can do that in a bucket
in the garden," she said. She drove them outside and shut
the door. Matthew didn't argue. At least the bottle was
safe from the Angels for a time.

'You make trouble,' said Paul. 'I told you not to wash it
here.'

'You don't tell me anything,' said Matthew, but quietly
so that Paul should not hear. Paul was one of many.
Matthew was one alone.

'Pest,' said Chris. 'Pain in the neck.' Matthew stayed at
the other end of the garden after that, while he and Paul dug
up the rest of the bottles. He looked into the original hole
and found it occupied. Across the top was the piece of iron
with 'Do not remove' on it. Ignoring the instruction he
lifted the corner to see what was going on below and found
Julie, Karen, and Clive installed with dolls and biscuits.


'Go away,' said Karen. 'This is our house now.'

'That's not your house, that's my hole,' said Matthew.

'Well, we've got that now,' said Julie. 'Paul said you
weren't using that anymore. He said you were digging
another hole. He said you'd go on digging holes till your
head fell off if nobody stopped you.'

Matthew moved the roof to one side and they sat there,
blinking palely at him, like a nest of night-loving animals
surprised by the sun. The hole had changed since he last
looked in it. There was a newspaper carpet on the floor,
an upturned seed box to act as a table, a flower pot full of
earth with dead Michaelmas daisies stuck in it. At one side
stood a broken step ladder for getting in and out.

Clive was sitting on the bottom step of the ladder. He
was not permitted to join the party on the carpet.

'When did you do all this?'


128



'Just now,' said Julie. 'While you were mobbing Paul.
See, you didn't even know we were doing it. That's ours
now. Put the roof back. Go away.'

' I wasn't mobbing Paul,' said Matthew.

'Go away.'

He went. Mum had left the kitchen so he sneaked indoors.
The sink was drained and the potatoes were bubbling on
the stove. He looked up at the shelf above it, intending to
repossess the bottle, but the shelf was empty. He could hear
the vacuum cleaner in the living-room and stormed in
there to find Mum.

' What's happened to the bottle ?' he said, but he was down
wind of the vacuum cleaner. Mum turned to face him, her
hand cupped to her ear.

'What happened to the bottle?'

'What happened to what?' said Mum, shaking her head
to show that she still couldn't hear him.

'What happened to the bottle?' shouted Matthew. The
steaming rage that had sent him out of the kitchen was
beginning to lose pressure. He stamped on the button at the
end of the cleaner and the wheezing died away. 'The
bottle,' he repeated. 'Who took it?'

'You're in a mind,' said Mum. 'Don't take it out on the
Hoover.' She pulled it out of his reach. 'Chris came in and
asked for it so I gave it to him.'

'You shouldn't have,' said Matthew. 'They won't give
that back.'

'Don't shout,' said Mum. 'If he wants to collect dirty
bottles, why shouldn't he? Though I'd have thought he'd
have something better to do at his age.'

'Those bottles are ours. They were dug up in our garden.'

'Yes, but we don't want them, do we?' said Mum, who
could never see that her ideas about dirt were not shared
by Matthew.

' I want them,' he said. 'They're the first properly historic
things we've dug up and they won't let me touch them.'


129



'Who dug them up?'

'Paul did,' said Matthew, 'but that was my idea. If he
hadn't seen me digging in the first place he'd never have
thought of it. He didn't know there was anything to dig for
when he first came. He didn't know he was going to find
bottles and now they won't let me have even one. They're
taking them all. They're taking everything.'

'Do you want me to ask for it back ?' said Mum, knowing
quite well that he didn't.

'No,' said Matthew. 'They'd talk you out of it. They can
get round you.'

This was the wrong answer and Mum switched on the
Hoover again, to show that the conversation was at an end.

18. Teeth


The day of the school photograph was a moveable feast,
but it usually fell in November, in plenty of time for
Christmas, so that grannies and aunties could be given the
portraits as Christmas presents. On Monday Mr Postle
arrived, hung about with cameras, and lessons were abandoned
while the rooms were rearranged for the photographs.
Miss Cooper and the infants moved into the junior room,
and the juniors were all squeezed up together at the end
tables to make room for them, while Mr Postle set up his
equipment on the other side of the partition. Then they
went in, one after the other, to smile at the camera.


Mr Postle had odd ideas about making people smile. He
liked to see plenty of teeth and only little ones, with gaps at
the front, were allowed to smile with their mouths shut.
Matthew liked Mr Postle, but hated to be photographed
with his mouth open because it made him look barmy.

' Mum says she wants me to look normal," he said, when
it was his turn.

'So you do,' said Mr Postle, cheerfully. 'Dead normal.'
Then he added, as he always did, 'Open wide, let's see all
those teeth.'

'You should have been a dentist,' said Matthew, soundlessly,
between clenched jaws.
'You look like a terrier with a rat,' said Mr Postle,
sighing. They had this argument every time. 'O.K. Close
your mouth; but at least look happy. Your Mum wants you
to look happy, doesn't she?'


'Si



Matthew was not feeling happy. He still had his row with
the Angels to think about and in the other room Mrs Collinge
was looking at the history charts. All the charts but his own
were finished and some people, those with large handwriting,
had started a second. One of these was Roger Hewlett. His
charts hung on either side of Matthew's, making it look
emptier than ever.

Mr Postle looked out of the window.

'Here comes the vicar on his religious-type motor bike,'
he said.' He won't start praying, will he ? I've got nine more
to do, yet.'

' He's going to be in the big photo with all of us,' said
Matthew. 'Can I go now?'

' I suppose so,' said Mr Postle.' I can't do anything more
for you. Why don't you practise smiling?'

Matthew produced a horrid smirk and went through the
partition to fetch Peter who was next in line for a photograph.
He had just arrived at school, an hour late.

'Open wide,' said Matthew as he passed Peter in the
doorway. Peter shook his head.

'I've got a gap, now,' he said, displaying it. All his
top front teeth had gone, leaving a fang at each side.' I got
them kicked out on Friday at Clipton. I've just been down
the clinic. My Mum, she didn't half howl when she saw
that.'

'Didn't you howl?' asked Matthew, feeling the kick himself.

'Not much, but that do make you spit,' said Peter, retreating
in a cloud of fine spray.

The vicar, his crash helmet under his arm, was admiring
the history charts with Mrs Collinge. Matthew sidled out
to fetch the milk for break, but they were waiting for him
when he got back.

' Matthew's having a bit of trouble with his, aren't you,
Matthew ?' said Mrs Collinge. Matthew inferred that there
was more trouble to come. He looked at his feet and waited


132



to see if the vicar would say anything before it was his turn

to speak.

'It seems very promising,' said the vicar, looking round,
uncertainly, for he didn't know which of the charts they were
talking about.

'Very promising,' said Mrs Collinge. 'All promises and
nothing else, so far. Did you do anything over the weekend ?'

Matthew tried rapidly to edit the events of the last two
days so that he could say something that was both true
and would satisfy Mrs Collinge.

At last he said,' I found some bottles in the garden. They
were very old.'

He had forgotten about Julie. She bounced out of her
seat, tightly plaited and frilled for the photograph, and
pushed past him.

'Miss, that's not true. My cousin Paul found the bottles
and Matthew tried to take them away from him.'

'That's not true either,' said Matthew. 'Paul took them
away from me.'

' Paul found them.'

'He found them in my garden.'

'It seems to me,' said Mrs Collinge, 'that neither of you
knows what the truth is. You'd better go away and decide
what really happened, and don't tell tales,' she called after
Julie, not a moment too soon for Matthew's liking.

He waited for Julie to stop and argue and give his
secret away. It would be better to tell Mrs Collinge himself
than to have it come out in that false fashion, but as soon
as he started to speak Mrs Collinge said, ' Matthew, don't
talk about it, for Heaven's sake. Go and do something.'

Sooner or later he would have to admit that he hadn't
done anything for the chart and all his secrets about Sir
Oliver and the priory would be exposed to ridicule and contempt.
He would have to admit that he had been digging a
hole instead of doing his homework: that the pictures he
had been drawing to keep Mum happy were rubbish. It was


'33



Matthew was not feeling happy. He still had his row with
the Angels to think about and in the other room Mrs Collinge
was looking at the history charts. All the charts but his own
were finished and some people, those with large handwriting,
had started a second. One of these was Roger Hewlett. His
charts hung on either side of Matthew's, making it look
emptier than ever.

Mr Postle looked out of the window.

'Here comes the vicar on his religious-type motor bike,'
he said.' He won't start praying, will he ? I've got nine more
to do, yet.'

' He's going to be in the big photo with all of us,' said
Matthew. ' Can I go now ?'

' I suppose so,' said Mr Postle.' I can't do anything more
for you. Why don't you practise smiling?'

Matthew produced a horrid smirk and went through the
partition to fetch Peter who was next in line for a photograph.
He had just arrived at school, an hour late.

'Open wide,' said Matthew as he passed Peter in the
doorway. Peter shook his head.

'I've got a gap, now,' he said, displaying it. All his
top front teeth had gone, leaving a fang at each side. ' I got
them kicked out on Friday at Clipton. I've just been down
the clinic. My Mum, she didn't half howl when she saw
that.'

' Didn't you howl ?' asked Matthew, feeling the kick himself.

'Not much, but that do make you spit,' said Peter, retreating
in a cloud of fine spray.

The vicar, his crash helmet under his arm, was admiring
the history charts with Mrs Collinge. Matthew sidled out
to fetch the milk for break, but they were waiting for him
when he got back.

' Matthew's having a bit of trouble with his, aren't you,
Matthew ?' said Mrs Collinge. Matthew inferred that there
was more trouble to come. He looked at his feet and waited


132



to see if the vicar would say anything before it was his turn
to speak.

'It seems very promising,5 said the vicar, looking round,
uncertainly, for he didn't know which of the charts they were
talking about.

'Very promising,' said Mrs Collinge. 'All promises and
nothing else, so far. Did you do anything over the weekend ?'

Matthew tried rapidly to edit the events of the last two
days so that he could say something that was both true
and would satisfy Mrs Collinge.

At last he said,' I found some bottles in the garden. They
were very old.'

He had forgotten about Julie. She bounced out of her
seat, tightly plaited and frilled for the photograph, and
pushed past him.

'Miss, that's not true. My cousin Paul found the bottles
and Matthew tried to take them away from him.'

'That's not true either,' said Matthew. 'Paul took them
away from me.'

'Paul found them.'

'He found them in my garden.'

'It seems to me,' said Mrs Collinge, 'that neither of you
knows what the truth is. You'd better go away and decide
what really happened, and don't tell tales,' she called after
Julie, not a moment too soon for Matthew's liking.

He waited for Julie to stop and argue and give his
secret away. It would be better to tell Mrs Collinge himself
than to have it come out in that false fashion, but as soon
as he started to speak Mrs Collinge said, 'Matthew, don't
talk about it, for Heaven's sake. Go and do something.'

Sooner or later he would have to admit that he hadn't
done anything for the chart and all his secrets about Sir
Oliver and the priory would be exposed to ridicule and contempt.
He would have to admit that he had been digging a
hole instead of doing his homework: that the pictures he
had been drawing to keep Mum happy were rubbish. It was


'33



too much to think about all at once. He sat down at his
work but his mind was weak with despair. It was too late
to do anything now and the charts were supposed to be
finished on Friday. He would stop being Head Boy on
Friday. The world ended on Friday.

Julie read his thoughts.

' Barren will be back this time next week. You won't be
Head Boy any more. That's a good thing. You're a liar.'

'I'll kill you. I'll wring your neck, kkkkkkh!' said
Matthew, but not out loud. He couldn't sit at the table with
Julie's venomous hissing in his ear and there was really no
room to work until Mr Postle left, so he went to the back of
the class and made a discreet show of tidying the museum.

The prize exhibit was the Catchpole axe. Hardly anything
matched that for impressiveness because it was so untouchably
old. Roger had brought some pieces of stained glass
from the Old Hall and Anne Lilley had loaned a brass
bedknob that had to go back on the bed at the end of term,
but many of the things did not properly belong in the
museum at all, such as the dried bracket fungus, the wrens'
nest and the grebe's feet. Matthew had argued for a long
time with Trevor Lilley, who owned the feet, but Trevor
insisted that they ought to be on show because they were
old, which was certainly true. They were practically mummified
and stood with stiff pride in the middle of the table.

When it was time for the big photograph they all went
into the playground with Mr Postle. Mrs Sadler and Mrs
Hewlett arrived in their best coats and Mum came out of
the kitchen to sit in the middle of the picture with Mrs
Collinge, Miss Cooper and the vicar.

'Hurry up,' said Mr Postle. 'This isn't the weather for
sitting out of doors.'

It was a bright day, and cold. Matthew and Peter brought
out the long benches from the cloakroom.

'I'm a vampire,' said Peter, fangs glistening. 'I saw the


134



dentist and he's going to make me false teeth like Grandad's
got.'

'Not a whole set?' said Matthew.

'No, just some front ones with a little pink thing like
a crab at the back,' said Peter. 'I can take that out and
frighten the girls.'


A cobweb of mist lay round Myhill Street, held there by
the trees. As Matthew walked up the footpath Mr Angel
floated into sight, sitting on the roof like Noah adrift on his
ark.


'Almost finished,' called Mr Angel, when Matthew was
within earshot. The house wore its new roof with a jaunty
air and the chimney, which Mr Angel was repointing, stuck
up like a feather in its cap.

' Won't you be coming back any more ?' asked Matthew,
with a sudden rush of hope to his head.

'No,' said Mr Angel. 'Not till Saturday. Got to get on
with the inside after this.'

' Oh.' For a happy moment Matthew had thought he had
seen the last of the Angels.

'I reckon we'll be in and out till Christmas.' Mr Angel
began to reverse down the ladder. ' Is your Mum about ?'

' She's delivering parish magazines with Mrs Sadler,' said
Matthew. 'Can I give her a message?'

'Just tell her what I told you,' said Mr Angel.' Got to pick
up Clive from his auntie's.' He wiped his dirty hands on his
dirtier overall and began to leave. Matthew had an idea and
stopped him.

'Can I have my bottles back, please?'

'Bottles? What bottles? I haven't got any bottles,' said
Mr Angel. 'What are you talking about?'

'Paul borrowed a few bottles belonging to me,' said
Matthew.' I need to have them back.' That was true enough.
The bottles were his only hope on Friday.


'35



'Well, you'd better ask him,' said Mr Angel. 'Ring him

up.'

That would be no good. Paul would escape too easily.
No one ever went to war on a telephone.

'When does he get home from school?'

Mr Angel was in a hurry to leave and he walked backwards,
Matthew trailing him.

'What's today, Wednesday? He stay late on Wednesdays.
Try him tomorrow about half past four.'

He climbed into his cab and the lorry skidded down the
loke, flints cracking out from under the wheels.

'I'm going over to Hoxenham tomorrow, after school,'
said Matthew, when Mum came home.

'Have you mended your puncture, then?'

'No, I'll get the bus at the church,' said Matthew.
'There's one goes by soon after we come out.'

'You ought to mend that.'

'I need a new inner tube,' said Matthew. 'I can't afford
a new one until after Christmas.'

'Well, don't ask Dad for that,' said Mum. 'He's always
telling you to walk down the loke. You never listen to what
people tell you. Since you got to be Head Boy you've become
sillier and sillier.'

'I won't be Head Boy after Monday,' said Matthew.
'Darren's coming back.'

'Did you ever write to him?'

'I forgot.'

'Why don't you go and see him?*

'I don't know.' Darren had become faint and foreign
since he went away. Matthew had nothing to say to him
and when Darren found out what he had been doing he
would have nothing to say to Matthew. Darren's idea of a
good time did not include digging holes.

i

19. Armageddon


'When are you going to get your chart done, then?' said
Peter, closing the gate. 'That's got to be finished tomorrow.'


' I've got some things on loose paper,' said Matthew.' I'll
stick them on in the morning.'

Friday was waiting for him like a burning fiery furnace
and there was no way of avoiding it unless he died tonight.
All that concerned him was; the number of lies he had to tell
between now and tomorrow morning. After that he could
stop lying, stop pretending and stop digging. The Christmas
pudding had failed him and he had found nothing. At this
moment it seemed quite crazy that he had ever expected to,
and yet he had believed for so long, and his faith had failed
him because all the time he was digging he had been sure
that Sir Oliver had wanted him to find something too, to
ease his lonely ghost as it walked on the causeway.

' Mrs Collinge will kill you,' said Peter, cheerfully.' You 'we
gone all to pieces this term.' As a First Division manager in
the making he had to practise being ruthless. He made a
sprightly leap onto his bicycle and sailed off down the Calstead
Road, while Matthew walked to the bus stop.

Officially it was by the church gate but the road was so
narrow that it was safest to wait by the dell until the bus
came into sight, down at Iken's Fen. The sycamore leaves
had fallen at last and the gas stoves were white in the blue
shadows. Matthew looked down, and suddenly realized
what they reminded him of.


137




Stonehenge.

Stovehenge.

It was a pun, like the owl and Sir Oliver, only it was a
much better pun and his own invention. Matthew took a
few minutes off from his private worries to feel pleased with
himself.

Mrs Bagnall was driving towards him and she stopped
when she saw who was standing there.

'You're not watching those wretched stoves again, are
you,' she said. 'What do you expect them to do; get up and
dance ?'

'Stovehenge,' said Matthew, and Mrs Bagnall laughed.
She was still smiling as she drove away. Matthew stared
after her. For the first time in his life he had made somebody
laugh on purpose, and it hadn't been difficult. He might be
able to do it again.

When the bus came he sat well away from all the people
who might talk to him and rehearsed what he was going to
say when he met Paul. He hoped there wouldn't be a fight.
Paul was bigger and the Angels' resemblance to Stone Age
man wasn't wholly facial. Matthew hadn't fought anyone
since the day he caught Roger Hewlett testing a new pen
knife on his Wellington boots, and they had both been
infants then.

Hoxenham was empty when he got off the bus at the
staithe. The boats and the ducks had the broad to themselves
and the seagulls cruising overhead were tinted pink underneath
by the low-lying sun.

He had an hour to accomplish his mission before the last
bus left for Pallingham so he set off for the Angel estate, a
long way from the bus stop.

The garden was as silent as the broad. The wrecked
vehicles loomed in the cold air and there was no one about.
Matthew looked first into the garage but the inspection
pit was bare and Chris's car had gone. Fat Sally, now
missing all her wheels, stood forlorn in the corner.


138


He knocked at the bathroom door and tried the handle
but it was locked and no one came. He walked all round the
house. The windows were blind and when he pressed the
bell at what would have been the front door, if the house had
had a front, it rang in the hollow, deserted way that bells
do, in an empty house.

He had forgotten that all the Angels might be out; they
didn't know he was coming. He was about to leave when he
heard footsteps on the road. He withdrew into the shadow of
the garage and watched the gateway where the willow tree
stood with its notice. Geo. Angel. Builder and decorator.
Paul walked round the tree and began to stroll up the drive.
Matthew was glad to see that he was alone. He thought he
could deal with Paul if Paul had no one to reinforce him.
He stepped out of the garage and propped himself against
the wall of the bathroom so that Paul wouldn't see him until
he turned the corner. The footsteps paused as Paul stopped
by the garage. Matthew could imagine him standing there,
ears pricked, sniffing the air, conscious that strangers were
in the area.

He looked round the corner and said ' Hello.'

Paul jumped slightly and smiled. Matthew was almost
inclined to forget about the'bottles but he had a dark suspicion
that Paul knew why he had come.

' Have you been here long ?' asked Paul.' Our school bus
was late.'

'Not long,' said Matthew. 'I came by bus too.'

'All this way on a bus, just to see me?' said Paul and he
made the smile stretch even further.

' I came to see how the bottles were getting along,' said
Matthew.

'All this way just to see the bottles?'

' I'd like to have a look at them,' said Matthew.' I haven't
really seen them yet. And I need one for school.'

'They're quite safe,' said Paul, still smiling, with something
in the smile that was intended to remind Matthew


'39



that the bottles were behind locked doors and Matthew was
outside. He made no move to go in.

' Well, can I see them ?' said Matthew.' I must have one.'
The lines round Paul's smile vanished and a new set appeared
on his forehead. Suddenly he was frowning.

' I don't know if I ought to get them out. Chris isn't here,'
he said, his eyes sliding about under the frown. He and
Matthew both knew that Chris had nothing to do with it. It
was merely a matter of waiting to see which of them gave in
first. Paul had finished his piece. It was Matthew's turn.

'They aren't Chris's bottles,' he said. 'And they're mine
as much as yours. Why shouldn't I see them?'

He stopped to see if Paul would refuse outright or think
of a better excuse.

'We could have a quick look at them,' said Paul, suggesting
that he was as helpless as Matthew over the fate of the
bottles. Matthew stared him out.

'Go on then.'

'We mustn't touch them.' Perhaps he could grab one
and run.

Paul produced a key and unlocked the bathroom door.
Matthew crowded in behind him in case Paul swung round
and locked him out. The bathroom had been transformed.
There were three distinct rows of fingerprints round the
walls, at diminishing heights, from Chris down to Clive.
The bath was encircled by a whiskery tide mark and the
carpet was crossed by three divergent paths; from door to
door, from door to bath and from door to lavatory.

'What's happened?' asked Matthew, gazing about him
with a brilliant memory of his first sight of the bathroom.

Paul seemed surprised. 'We've just been using it.'

They went through the living-room to the kitchen. ' Care
for a drink ?' said Paul as if he were about to produce brandy
and cigars. He reached for the kettle.

'Just the bottles,' said Matthew. Paul hesitated, seeking
further delaying tactics, and then shot out of the door so


140



fast that Matthew had no time to see where he was going,
and he was back before he had a chance to look out of the
door himself. Paul was carrying one bottle, a poor relation
of all the other bottles, with a wry neck and a cracked lip.

'I don't suppose Chris would mind too much if you kept
this one,' he said, generously.

' Where are the rest ?' asked Matthew, turning the bottle
about so that they could both see how decrepit it was. Paul's
eyes began to swivel again.

' Chris locked them up. I can't get at them,' he explained.
'We were afraid that Clive would break them.'

' I told you to leave them with me,' said Matthew.' Clive
wouldn't have got them at ours. I must have one for school I
shall get into a terrible row tomorrow if I haven't got anything.'

'You have got one,' said Paul.

' I don't want this horrible old thing, that's broken.'

'They're all like that.'

Matthew gaped at him. ' I thought I was supposed to be
the liar,' he said. 'You think you can have anything you
want. What's so special about you ?'
He thought it was time for Paul to thump him and he put
the bottle on the kitchen table, so as to be ready. Paul shook
his head, gleaming with satisfaction because he could keep
his temper and Matthew was losing his.

'You only want them because we've got them,' he said,
in a voice calculated to hasten the process.

'They're out of our garden,' said Matthew. 'If you
hadn't started digging it up all over the place, I'd have
found them.'

'Oh yes,' said Paul. 'And what would you have done
with them? You'd have chucked them away, wouldn't
you? You think everything's rubbish unless it shines.'

He took a step forward and Matthew, thinking that this
time Paul really was going to hit him, took a step back. His
hip caught against the corner of the table and the two legs


141



nearest to him were jolted clear of the ground. The bottle
tipped, shuddered, and began to jig down the sloping table
top. When it reached the edge it spun on its rim, stood for a
second poised exquisitely on nothing, and then the virtue
went out of it and it dropped to the floor.

All this seemed to take a very long time but it still happened
too fast for them to stop the bottle. Matthew thought
that Paul made no effort to move anyway.

When he could bear to look at him again the smile was
back in place.

' Whose fault was that, then ?' said Paul.

Matthew stared at the bottle. The neck lay where it had
fallen, still intact and surrounded by black glass stars,
dashed to the furthest corners of the kitchen.

'You can't have another one,' said Paul. 'It wouldn't be
safe. What a good thing we didn't leave the rest with you.
They'd all be like that, by now. Aren't you going to clear
it up?'

Matthew walked towards the door.

' I'm not clearing that up,' he said. ' Get your mother to
help you. You do what you like in my house. I'll do what I
like in yours.'

Paul watched him, his fist in front of his mouth. Matthew
understood that after saying nothing for so long he had now
said too much.

'Get out,' said Paul.

' Go on, get your mother to clean it up,' shouted Matthew.
'No wonder she's never here. She must be as sick of you as I
am.'

Paul's voice rose to an ugly scream.

'Get out! Get out! Get out!'


He was in the blackest disgrace and the blank history
chart shone down on him like an accusing spotlight. When
Mrs Collinge had finished telling him, in front of everyone,
exactly what she thought of his work, or rather the lack of it,



142



he was left to contemplate his sins while the others went out
to play. He sat at the empty table: Mrs Collinge sat at her
desk with a cup of tea, and looked at him from time to time.
From time to time Matthew looked at Mrs Collinge and at
last they both looked up at the same moment.

'Why did you lie about it?' said Mrs Collinge. 'I can't
understand why you lied. You don't need me to tell you it
was wrong, but it was so silly as well. You've done nothing at
all for a whole month. You must have known I'd find out.'

'I was doing something,' said Matthew. 'But that's all
gone wrong.'

'Well let me see it, even if it has gone wrong. At least I'll
know you've tried.'

'That's at home.'

'Bring it in then. I want to see it,' said Mrs Collinge.

'I can't,' said Matthew. 'I really can't.'

'Then I can't believe you,' said Mrs Collinge. 'And I
think I'd better speak to your mother about it.'

Matthew's resistance gave way.

'That's a hole,' he said.' I dug a hole in the garden. When
I said I was doing something, that's what it was.'

Mrs Collinge gave way too. She bowed her head low over
the table.

'You mean you've been digging a hole in the garden for
four weeks and calling it your homework ?'

'That was work,' said Matthew. 'That was hard. I
thought I was going to find something historic. There's a
priory under our garden.'

' The priory would have been interesting - if you'd written
about it instead of digging for it,' said Mrs Collinge. 'Did
you honestly imagine you'd find anything by digging a
hole?'

'I found out about Sir Oliver,' Matthew began. It was a
mistake to mention Sir Oliver.

' I told you right at the beginning that we weren't interested
in ghost stories,' said Mrs Collinge.


143



'He's not just a story. He really lived. He was famous,
once,' cried Matthew.' He was a verray parfit gentil knight.'

'I dare say,' said Mrs Collinge.' But he hasn't done much
for you, has he? And you haven't done much for him.'
She looked pleased, for a moment.' Do you know where that
quotation comes from?"

'What quotation?'

'About the parfit gentil knight?'

'I didn't know that was a quotation,' said Matthew. 'I
don't even know what it means.'

'Take the bottles away,' said Mrs Collinge.

When the rest of the class came back he crept outside
with the milk bottles and parked them by the door. It was
the last time he would do it; Barren took over again on
Monday. Fortunately the row had taken place before Mum
arrived. He looked over the fence to see if she was coming,
but the mist hung low over Fen Street, and he could see
nothing.

He was going to see quite enough of Mum later on.


'That's final then,' said Mum. 'No more digging. No
more holes. No more lies. In future you come straight home
and get on with your work.'


' What about when there isn't any work ?' said Matthew.

'Let's get this straight,' said Dad, very weary. 'There's
to be no more of this nonsense at all. You are not to go into
that garden again until we cultivate it.'

'Yes,' said Matthew. 'Not even to talk to Mrs Bagnall?
She might call me, or something. Or Mrs Harrison. I have
to stand near her.'

'Stop looking for excuses,' said Mum. 'You are not to
play in the garden any more.'

' It wasn't a game,' said Matthew. 'That wasn't playing.
I only pretended it was so I could keep it a secret. I really
did think I'd find something. And what about the Angels?'
he demanded. 'I suppose they can go there when they like.'


144



'I'm not worried about the Angels,' said Dad. 'I'm
worried about you. Very worried.'

'That means they can. Can't I just go over there and tidy
up? I left some tools out when you called me in.'

'Hurry up, then,' said Dad. He reached for the Friday
teacup, cooling beside him.

Matthew went into the garden and looked at it, seeing
the excavation at last for what it was.

Nonsense.

He put the coal shovel away and tidied all the rubbish
that he had dug up. There was only one place to put it,
back in the hole. As he was leaving Mrs Bagnall came out on
her step and began calling. ' Meat! Meat! Meat!' The cats
pushed past her into the kitchen. Mrs Bagnall looked worried
and called again. 'Minniminniminni.'

'Have you seen our Minnie?' she asked, noticing Matthew.
'She hasn't been home since last night.'

Matthew hadn't been paying much attention to the cats,
lately. He tried to recall whether he had seen Minnie or not.

'I don't think so,' he said. 'Perhaps she's having her
kittens.'

' I hope not,' said Mrs Bagnall. 'They're due any day and
I want her at home. It's her first litter.'

' I'll bring her round if I see her,' said Matthew.

'You do that,' said Mrs Bagnall, and walked among the
apple trees, calling again.

' Minniminniminnimin!'

20. Under the Autumn Garden


'Found any owls yet?' asked Charlie as Matthew went by
on his way to collect the eggs.


'No,' said Matthew. Now that he was finished with the
excavation everyone would keep talking about it.

'Seen Sir Oliver?'

'No.'

'You'd better hurry up,' said Charlie. 'That's his last
night tonight. First of December tomorrow.'

It didn't matter any more.

Mr Bagnall, fierce and bristly in a dressing-gown, was
snuffing fresh air at the back door when Matthew returned
with the eggs. Beside him sat Jones the Bookrest, so immersed
in fur that Matthew couldn't tell which end his head
was.

' I don't think he knows which end his head is,' said Mr
Bagnall, taking the eggs. ' The Living Blob. I suppose he is
still alive,' he murmured, nudging Jones with his slipper.
Jones allowed one eye to drop open for an instant.

' Still functioning,' said Mr Bagnall. ' I believe that there
are certain organisms that can live for days after their
brains have been removed.'

' Has Minnie come home yet ?' asked Matthew and waited
for Mr Bagnall to make an unkind remark.

All he said was,' I'm afraid she hasn't. Keep an eye open
for her, won't you? She's Marge's favourite.'

When Matthew reached the gate he turned to wave and


146



saw Mr Bagnall tickling Jones under the chin. He was
beginning to form a theory about Mr Bagnall and the cats.

He rounded the corner into Ship Loke and the Angels were
there already. He started to go into the garden of Kingston
Villa, then recalled that it was forbidden and walked on to
his own gate. Chris was removing a window frame in the
front bedroom. He saw Matthew pass, but he didn't wave.

Clive and the girls were in Matthew's garden, hanging
round the kitchen door.

'Go on over your own side,' said Matthew. 'You've got
that all to yourselves. You don't need to come here.'

'You're not digging any more,' said Julie. 'I know why.'

'No you don't,' said Matthew. 'Where's Paul?'

'He didn't want to come,' said Julie. 'He says he's had
enough of you.'

Karen said, ' Olive's eating something.'

'That's not chewing gum, is it?" asked Matthew, glancing
towards Mum, in the kitchen. Clive might go indoors
and park his gum in a tactless place. He put out his tongue.
Coiled upon it was a red, elastic band.

Julie tried to take it, but Clive retracted his tongue and
clamped his mouth shut.

'That'll get round your heart,' said Julie, balked. 'If
you swallow that it will wind itself round your heart and
choke you. You'll die.'

Clive chewed loudly.

'Don't be daft,' said Matthew. 'How could that get
anywhere near his heart? What you swallow goes down a
tube to your guts.'

' Guts is rude,' said Julie, turning her back. ' Come on,
Karen, let's go and sit in our house.'

They ran to the gap in the hedge and Matthew went into
the kitchen. Left alone, Clive sat down on the step and
started the motor, his jaws working springily as the rubber
band went round and round.
Julie's complaining face looked in at the door.


'47



'Someone's left rubbish in our house.'

' I did,' said Matthew.' I was clearing up. I forgot that was
your house.' He was fairly sure he had not forgotten at the
time. 'Can't you clear that away?'

'That's too heavy for me,' said Julie, trembling hand to
trembling lip.

' Go and move it, now,' said Mum to Matthew.

'You said I wasn't to go there any more.'

'Well now I'm telling you you must go there. Get on with
it.'

He followed Julie, stepping over Clive as he went.

Karen was sitting on the edge of the hole. When she heard
them coming she set up a carefully modulated boohooing.

'You've spoilt our nice house,' she said.

Matthew didn't answer. He jumped down into the hole
and threw out the rubbish. Julie stood over him with hands
on hips until he had finished. He knew she was taking advantage
of a situation she didn't understand, but this made
it no less of an advantage.

'You've got to go back now,' she said, descending into
the hole and pulling the roof into position. He could hear her
voice drifting up through the corrugated iron. 'Don't do
that, Karen. You'll get a disease.'

Mrs Harrison looked over the fence.

'Not digging today?'

'I've given that up,' said Matthew. 'You were right,
there's nothing there.' Mrs Harrison failed to hear him.

'I told you there was nothing there,' she said. Hearing it
twice in ten seconds was too much. He went down to the
wall and watched Mrs Bagnall ranging the footpath and
calling ' Minniminniminniminnimin!'

Mr Bagnall, on his side of the wall, was also watching.

'This is all very sad,' he said.' I fear our Minnie may have
met with an accident.'

'Everything's sad,' said Matthew.


148



Mr Bagnall looked thoughtful. 'Yes, you do seem to be
persona non grata at the moment.'

'What's that?'

'Nobody loves you,' said Mr Bagnall. 'What happened?'

'I got into trouble at school,' said Matthew. 'Then I got
into trouble at home because I'd been in trouble at school,
and that was all because of the hole. Everyone thinks I've
been fooling about. They wouldn't think that if I'd found
anything.'

'You didn't find anything?'

'Just rubbish,' said Matthew. 'Chris and Paul said that
wasn't rubbish. They said it would be archaeology in three
thousand years' time if I left it there, but when they found
something they took that away.'

' Can you face an unpalatable truth ?' asked Mr Bagnall.

'What's that?'

'Something you won't like but ought to know. They were
humouring you. Playing with the child to keep him happy,
and amusing themselves at the same time. Not very kind but
entirely understandable. You may feel like that yourself when
you're older.'

'They weren't playing when they found the bottles,'
said Matthew. 'The bottles were real antiques and they
took them all. They wouldn't even let me keep one, and I
needed that for school. That wouldn't have been so bad if
I'd had something to show. I only kept digging because I
thought I'd find things in the end. After you told me about
Sir Oliver I was sure.'

'It was all my fault, was it?' said Mr Bagnall. Matthew
thought he was offended but he stood there smiling with
folded arms, turning himself into a skull and crossbones.

'I tried to get the bottles back,' said Matthew. 'I went
all the way to Hoxenham by bus, and Paul gave me an
old broken one and it got smashed. Then we had a row.'

'This has all come as rather a shock to me,' said Mr Bag149


nail. 'I thought you led such a quiet life. What did you row
about?'

'I said something about his mother,' said Matthew,
scraping at the wall with a bit of loose flint.' I said no wonder
she was never there, she must be sick of him.'

Mr Bagnall shook his head. 'That was bad.'

'I know that now,' said Matthew. 'But why? Nobody
tells me, they just mutter. Is she dead?'

Mr Bagnall looked quickly at the house and then said,
'She left them, just after Easter. Did you really not know?
Didn't you notice?'

Matthew had thought that things were so bad they
couldn't possibly get any worse. Now he was in even rougher
water.

' I thought she was away a lot, that's all. I didn't know
she'd gone. I only wanted to make him angry: he kept smiling
at me.'
'You did that all right,' said Mr Bagnall. 'You hit him
in a very tender spot. Why on earth didn't you just hit him
on the nose instead ?'

' I didn't think,' said Matthew.' I didn't know. What shall
I do?' With the bit of flint he had engraved 'i hate you'
on one of the coping bricks. He didn't know who it was
addressed to: perhaps to himself.

'Well don't cry, for a start,' said Mr Bagnall. 'And for
God's sake don't go charging round there to apologize.
That won't do any good.'

'But he's my friend,' said Matthew.

'Is he?'

' I thought he was going to be friends at first,' said Matthew.

'You aren't friends,' said Mr Bagnall. 'Be honest. You
don't even like him.'

'He looks nice.'

' Of course he does,' said Mr Bagnall.' He is nice. But that

I


150


doesn't mean you have to like him. I do, but why should
you?"

'I don't seem to like anyone much,' said Matthew.
'No one likes me, either.'

'Clive does,' said Mr Bagnall, putting his hand over I
hate you. 'Look how he follows you about.'

'He only wants to dig.'

'No he doesn't, he wants you to play with him,' said Mr
Bagnall. ' He thinks you're fantastic.'

' He's only a baby.'

'And what's he going to grow up into ?' said Mr Bagnall,
glumly. ' Good Lord, you've got a devoted admirer, there.
Take care of him.'

'He's got Chris.'

'Would you like to be brought up by Chris?'


Clive, on the doorstep, felt that something was missing.
The rubber band had gone. He must have swallowed it
while he was being air horns. He dimly remembered Julie's
threats about what rubber bands did when they got inside
people and although he didn't know where his heart was,
or even what it was, he knew what dead meant: the dull
stiffening that turned a rat or a rabbit into a dirty rag in the
ditch. Keeping very still, he felt the rubber band coiled like
a wicked worm at the base of his throat.


He sat on the doorstep and waited to die.

Matthew, coming up the garden from the gap in the
hedge, saw him crouched there, all drawn together with
grief. Mum, on her way out with a basket of washing, stooped
over him.

'Now whatever's the matter here?" she said, kneeling
down.

Clive put his hands round his neck and whispered,' That's
gone.'

'What's gone?' said Mum. Clive opened his mouth.


151



'He's swallowed the band,' said Matthew.

'Has he?' said Mum. 'And what were they playing?'

'That was an elastic band,' said Matthew. 'He was chewing
it and Julie said that would wind itself round his heart
and kill him.'

Mum frowned at that and took Clive on her lap. 'Now
listen to me, my man. That rubber band is down in your
stomach along with your breakfast. That's all in little bits
now. You won't die.'

Clive began to cry, because he was safe and because he was
sorry for the band, all in bits and lost inside him. Mum
lifted him up and carried him indoors to the biscuit tin.

'That Julie's a harpy,' she said.

'Julie's a harpy,' said Clive. It was a long sentence, for
him. Matthew hoped he might try it again some time, when
Julie was listening.

'Hang out that washing for me, will you,' said Mum.
'That's only your Dad's overalls.'

Matthew lowered the washing line on its pulley and
pegged out the overalls. As he raised it again they filled with
wind and bounced and bobbed against the sky, fat men
playing hopscotch from cloud to cloud. The pulley squeaked
in time to the bouncing, and Matthew became aware of
another squeak from somewhere else; from the rubbish
heap.

He went to look behind the withering flowers and cabbage
stalks and potato peelings, and found the grass box from
the lawn-mower that he had left there long ago, on the day
that he had first begun the excavation. Inside it sat Minnie,
suddenly grown thin. He bent down.

'Have you had your kittens, then?' he asked. Minnie
climbed out of the grass box and leaned on him. At the
bottom of the box were three little creatures, almost kittens,
but only fur. He lifted them gently and they didn't move.

'Wait there, Minnie,' he said. The cat started to follow
him and then went back to the grass box and sat beside it,


152



looking at the kittens. Matthew took the laundry basket
indoors. Mum was in the living-room with Clive so he went
out again, closing the door without a sound. He returned to
the rubbish heap, picked up Minnie, buttoned her into his
jacket and tucked the grass box under his arm. Then he
climbed over the wall to the Bagnalls" garden.

Mr Bagnall was sawing wood in his garage. When he
noticed what Matthew was carrying he put down the saw
and came to meet him.

'They're dead,' said Matthew. 'I found them just now.
I'm sorry."

Mr Bagnall looked at the kittens and then held out his
hands for the cat. Matthew undid the buttons and handed
Minnie over. Her ears were hot and she wailed, thinly.

'Oh, silly Min,' said Mr Bagnall, soothing her head.
'Why didn't you come home?" He ran his hands gently
through her fur. 'No milk. She was too small to have
kittens. Why didn't you come home ?' he said again.

'Perhaps she was frightened,' said Matthew; then he
looked at Minnie, clinging with all her claws to Mr Bagnall's
coat, and saw what a ridiculous idea that was. He smiled
at Mr Bagnall.

'It was a joke, wasn't it?'

'Not a very good joke,' said Mr Bagnall. 'But it amused
us. Look, Matthew, would you mind burying them for me?
I don't want Marge to see them.*

' I'll do it now,' said Matthew, and left with the grass box.

From the toolshed he fetched the little hand-fork and
trowel that Mum used for weeding and went to make the
grave. In a garden fall of holes he didn't know where to
make another. It had become a public garden: nowhere
private, nowhere safe. In the end he went to the corner where
the wall met Mrs Harrison's fence and the roots of the
oak tree made secret caves. Under the most twisted root
he dug the grave, too deep for night animals to disturb, and
laid the kittens in it. Then he filled it again with earth and


'53



planted on top the house leeks that Chris had taken from
the lean-to.

'They'll keep the lightning off,' he said.


'I see you've been digging again,' said Dad, at tea time.


'I haven't,' said Matthew.

'Well who have left the trowel and fork all muddy in the
shed?'

'Oh, that sort of digging,' said Matthew. 'I was doing
something for Mr Bagnall.'

'Fair enough,' said Dad. 'But go and clean them up before
they rust. Your mum don't like her tools to be spoiled.'

It was almost dark outside. The toolshed was lit by a
bright bulb that hung high, without a shade, among the
spiders. Matthew took a stick and scraped the mud from the
trowel. There was a stone jammed between the tines of the
fork and when he forced it out with the point of the stick
it fell on the concrete floor with a far-away clink. It rolled.

It was not a stone.

Matthew had to climb behind the lawn-mower to reach it.
He held it under the light, rubbed away the dirt that clogged
it, and burnished it on his sleeve. He was holding a ring, a
black band that lay in his palm and defied the light. It
looked as dark as lead but he felt no weight. It might be
silver.

He rubbed it again on his coat and although it would not
shine the surface became clear. On one side of the ring
was a flat disc and on the disc was a figure, cut into the
metal.

There was a sound outside. He stood still and clenched
his hand over the ring, in case he was discovered, but no
one came. A breeze seeped through the crack above the door
and the shifting bulb set the shadows swinging against him.
He made a pile of seed boxes in the middle of the floor and
climbed on them to be nearer the light. The figure on the
ring had a hair-line shadow of its own. To one who did not


154



know it might have been nothing more than an idle scribble,
accidental scratches, but Matthew knew exactly what it
was; and the two curved lines beneath it might even be
taken for a crescent moon.

He stood on his tottering tower of seed boxes and wondered
what to do with it. It had come too late to save him, and
after a while he was glad because there was no need to
trade it for a good opinion.

He heard the sound again. Perhaps Mum in the kitchen
or Dad in the garage. Perhaps someone putting down a
tin pail and letting the handle drop. Matthew waited for
the cold fear at his back, but it did not come. He slid the
ring on to his finger and it fitted. Sir Oliver had been a small
man with a slender hand.

He stood down from the boxes, opened the door, and
looked into the night across the autumn garden.

' I'll wear that tonight,' said Matthew. 'And you can have
it back tomorrow.'

The ring grew warm on his finger.

Some Other Puffins


Thunder and Lightnings



Jan Mark



Victor knew more about aeroplanes than anyone Andrew
had ever met. His room was full of models and pictures.
His lamp was especially dimmed so that it looked like a
bomber's moon. Andrew was fascinated by Victor's
devotion to planes, but as their friendship grew, Andrew
became more and more worried about what would
happen to Victor when he discovered that his beloved
Lightnings were to be replaced by Jaguars. . .



A Pair of Desert-wellies



Sylvia Sherry



A vivid and enthralling story about a daredevil
gangleader who cheeks everyone and lives by his wits.
Sequel to A Pair of Jesus-bools.



The Machine-gunners


Robert Westal]



Chas McGill and friends build a nest for the German
machine-gun Chas 'liberated'. And while they plan their
own part in the war, the Tyneside authorities hunt for the
lethal weapon. A Carnegie Medal winner.



The Butty Boy



Jill Paton Walsh



Harry is miserable to find that her new home is not by the
seaside but deep in the countryside. So imagine her
delight when she catches sight of a boat drifting past the
garden fence - the next thing she knows, she's on board a
horse-drawn narrow-boat with Ned the butty boy and his
sister Bess, helping out as they make their slow journey
along the canal carrying coal to the paper mill.



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