The Beggar’s Curse

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

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

Spinach. Prill felt even worse.

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not?” Prill asked.

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

“What a fantastic story,” thought Prill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_3be42c98-e1f1-5a63-a7a6-90d84cf460be)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What about it, dear?”

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

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

“He has cursed aloud that city proud,

He has cursed it in its pride;

He has cursed it into Semmerwater

Down the brant hillside;

He has cursed it into Semmerwater,

There to bide. . .”

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

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

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

“No. He’s not very keen on poetry.”

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

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

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

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

“Ah well,” said Molly.