Toast for breakfast again. I pushed the plate over to Lorry who grabbed a piece and sniffed it suspiciously. The butter had gone off so it was just toast scraped with jam. He took a tentative bite and then jammed the whole piece in his mouth and sat there, chewing noisily.
My mother and my dad were getting ready to go out. They had to get my mother registered with a doctor in town so she could get her prescriptions. The doctor at home had refused to give her a supply of Valium to last her for the time we’d be in Wales, and the unspoken suggestion was that she might stockpile them and top herself. My dad had said they would find a supermarket on the way back and stock up on food.
I’d had the dream again the night before, and I’d woken in the early hours when it was turning from night into day and the light that lit up the little arched window in my bedroom was still pale and fragile. I’d lain there, trying to remember what I’d dreamed, thinking that perhaps, if I could remember it, I’d know for sure how Petra had died.
I knew that there had been an accident in the bath, and I knew that she had drowned, and that it had been my mother’s fault for leaving her when she went to answer the phone, but any more than that I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know who had been on the phone, or why it was so important that my mother left Petra on her own while she went to answer it. The dream, and the memory of the dream, had slipped away, and the more I tried to grasp it, the more it wriggled out of reach.
I’d fetched the relics from the altar and taken them back to bed with me and put them on top of the sleeping bag. I’d laid them out in the correct order and said the incantation four times. I’d tried rubbing the crow’s skull with my thumb while I said the incantation but still nothing. That was the thing about the Creed: it didn’t make everything obvious straight away. It made me work things out for myself. Only by trying different things, experimenting, would I discover its secrets. In the end, I decided this approach wasn’t going to work, and I gave up and put the relics back on the altar. At some point, I must have fallen asleep again, because my mother and my dad were already dressed when I went downstairs. It was a couple of days since I’d seen my mother in anything other than her dressing gown, and she looked different in her clothes.
She hadn’t said anything else about Petra since our first night at the cottage. She still spent most of her time in her bedroom on her own, or if she came down for meals she would sit and fiddle with the hollow at the base of her throat, where her crucifix used to hang. But this morning she was different. There was a new lightness to her, something indefinable which suggested that the darkness was starting to lift.
She was wearing jeans that should have been tight around her hips but which were held up with one of my dad’s belts. The blouse she was wearing I recognised as the one she’d had on in the photo, the Christmas photo with Petra. The last photo we’d taken as a family before the accident. The blouse was made from a thin, silky material and it used to cling to her breasts and the curves of her stomach. Now it hung like a shroud.
My dad said a few things about not leaving Lorry on his own and being careful not to annoy the neighbours, and then they went, leaving it up to me to make Lorry his breakfast.
‘Don’t eat with your mouth open,’ I told my brother. He looked up at me, and chewed-up toast spilt from the corners of his mouth.
Sunlight pushed its way through the grime on the window. My dad had cleaned it yesterday, but hadn’t done a proper job of it and the glass was smeared and streaked and made everything outside appear blurred. He’d looked around the house to see what jobs or repairs he could do to repay his colleague for letting us stay there. He’d started a list, with things like fix roof, and repair pointing, but later he’d crossed these out and replaced them with little jobs: repaint kitchen window, clean gutters, dig up concrete. Already he’d made a start on removing the old paint, and had scraped a neat pile of white shavings onto the path outside.
I started clearing the breakfast things and put the plates and tea cups in the sink. I hefted one of the gallon bottles up onto the side of the sink and poured water on top of the crockery. I could smell myself as I worked, each movement causing another wave of my scent to rise to my nostrils. I lifted the collar of my t-shirt over my nose and took a deep breath and relished the animal sourness.
A sharp tap on the window made me jump—I spun round and there was the boy from yesterday, the boy from the stream and the well, his face blurred by the smears on the window. I found myself blushing, feeling like I’d been caught out, and I wiped my hands on my shorts and went into the hall. The little mirror there told me I was still ugly, still freckly and spotty and spiky and ginger.
When I opened the door, the boy stepped straight in without saying anything. The Polaroid camera hung from his neck and it bounced against his chest as he walked. I stood back, on impulse, and he went straight past me and through the doorway to the kitchen. Lorry was still chewing his toast, and he looked up, worried. The boy went over to my brother and crouched down on his haunches so he was at eye level with him.
‘Hey, little feller. What’s your name?’ he asked.
Lorry looked suspicious, and put both hands over his face.
‘It’s OK. I’m good with kids.’ I didn’t know if the boy was talking to me or to Lorry, but then he stood up and took a ten-pence piece out of the pocket of his jeans.
‘Hey, look,’ he said, and Lorry took a hand away from his face, leaving one eye uncovered.
The boy put the coin between two of the fingers on his left hand, and with a rippling motion, passed it over his fingers, up and over each of his knuckles, until it had come to settle next to his little finger. He turned his hand over and repeated the trick, sending the coin scurrying across the undersides of his fingers, his palm upwards and open.
By then Lorry had taken the other hand away from his face and was looking at the boy in wonder.
‘Magic, Nif,’ he said, and he beamed at the boy.
‘It’s not magic, Lorry,’ I said. ‘It’s a trick, that’s all.’
‘Don’t believe her, Lorry. It’s magic alright, and I’m a magician. Mally the Marvellous at your service,’ and he clicked his heels together and gave a little bow.
Lorry was clapping his hands in excitement and saying, ‘More magic, more magic.’
The boy put his hand behind Lorry’s ear and produced another ten-pence piece, which he gave to my brother. Lorry turned it over in his hand and looked at the boy very seriously.
‘Magic man,’ he said.
‘Lorry,’ I said, ‘It’s not really magic. Real magic is…I don’t know…turning people into animals and making things disappear and stuff, not just chucking a coin around.’
‘I don’t think your sister likes me very much,’ the boy said to Lorry in a theatrical whisper, and he ruffled my brother’s hair.
I turned to the sink and clattered the breakfast stuff around. I scraped crumbs off the plates and wiped jam off the knives. I pushed a musty grey cloth around the insides of the cups and put everything on the draining board, and then I turned around and faced the boy. He had his hands in his pockets and his hips thrust forward and there was that grin again. He’d been waiting for me.
‘So, lesson two today then, eh, Nif?’
I found myself nodding, unable to take my eyes off him, this peculiar boy with shaggy hair and eyes like bruises and the tiny pointed teeth of a rodent.
We walked along the lane from the cottage in silence. Mally let Lorry hold his hand and my brother was enraptured, alternating his gaze between Mally’s face, the Polaroid camera, and the lane in front of him. He was mesmerised. It was still early, but a couple of people were out in their gardens, watering flower beds and cleaning windows. I thought one man had caught my eye and I gave him a nod and a little half-smile, but he quickly looked away and went back to tinkering furtively with the hosepipe that lay on the grass in front of him. Somewhere a lawnmower buzzed and a grasshopper creaked out its song, but everything else was silent.
The war memorial stood black against the limpid sky. Small and inconsequential curls tipped the points of the cross, as though put there as an afterthought, and the pillar tapered, wider at the bottom, until it reached a large plinth that was encircled by the stone steps. The whole thing was worn and chipped; it looked ancient.
The three of us stood at the bottom of the monument, the plinth now cleared of the cigarette ends and empty lager cans. Lorry had let go of Mally’s hand and was clambering up the steps. I put my fingers in one of the little concave dips at the base of the monument and marvelled at how smooth the stone there was.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s not a war memorial, is it?’
‘Co-rrect,’ said Mally, feigning the voice of a quiz show host. ‘And for your next point, can you tell me why you think that?’
‘Well, it’s far too old for one thing. The stone’s really worn and it’s all crumbled away in some places.’ I went on before he could interrupt. ‘And there are no names or dates, and that’s the whole point of a war memorial, isn’t it? To remember the dead.’
He was looking mock-serious now, frowning and nodding his head.
‘So, young lady, for another point, and to win the game…can you tell me what it is?’
I stood back from the steps and looked up at the cross at the top. I felt as though the answer was there somewhere, would be obvious when I knew it, but I couldn’t think what it could be and shook my head.
‘Shall I tell you?’ Mally was looking excited, like a kid with a secret he was bursting to share.
‘Go on, then.’ I sat on the stone steps and stretched my legs out, enjoying the light touch of the early sun.
‘It’s a plague cross.’
A faint breeze blew on the back of my neck, lifting the hairs there. Lorry climbed down from the steps and wandered over to the other side of the lane. He started gathering up clusters of sheep’s wool that had snagged on the barbed wire fence.
‘You know about the plague, right?’ Mally said. ‘Sixteen-hundreds and all that. Bubonic plague all over Europe? Hundreds of thousands of people died. A quarter of the population of London was wiped out.’
I nodded. ‘Wasn’t there a massive fire that stopped it, though?’
‘That’s right. It did, but by then it had already spread to other parts of the country. This village had it really bad—I mean, really bad—and most of the people living here caught the plague and died.’
He looked at me from under his eyelashes and then he looked down. I followed his gaze and saw that his fingers were rubbing the inside of one of the little indentations in the plinth.
‘When most of the village was either dead or dying, there was no-one to grow the crops or look after the animals. People from the nearby villages wouldn’t come near, for fear of being infected, and so the people from this village needed to be able to buy food without passing on the disease.’ His voice had lost the showman’s swagger, and had taken on the patiently explanatory tone of a teacher.
‘They built this cross thinking it would protect them and they’d put their coins in the little dips all around the bottom, in order to pay for the food. The traders would take the coins and leave the food and everyone was happy.’
He sat down next to me and I was conscious of my dirty t-shirt and the acid smell that lifted to my nostrils.
‘They put vinegar in the holes where the coins went. They thought that vinegar would kill the plague germs.’ He snorted, as if affronted by the sheer naivety of these people, hundreds of years ago.
‘But we’re miles from London.’ I thought of the journey we’d taken only a couple of days before, the car eating up the miles as we’d driven through the heat. ‘How did the plague get all the way over here?’
‘It found a way in.’ He looked me right in the eye. ‘It came in from the outside. You see, however hard they tried, the villagers couldn’t keep all the evil out.’ He said the word ‘evil’ with relish, drawing it out and making it sound dramatic. He was grinning. ‘And that’s why they hate us. You and me. We’re outsiders.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re evil.’
‘I haven’t even met anyone here yet—apart from you,’ I said. ‘Why would they hate us?’
‘Trust me. They will. If you’re not from around these parts, you’ll get no welcome here. You and I need to stick together.’
Without warning he sprang up and pointed the camera at me. Before I could move away or put my hand up over my face, there was a click.
‘What’s that for?’ I asked, conscious of my spiky hair and spots.
‘Call it a souvenir,’ he said.
‘A souvenir?’
‘Yeah. A memento of when we first met.’ He had turned the camera around and was looking intently at the slot at the bottom, waiting for the photo. He looked up at me and he was grinning again, tongue just visible between his teeth.
‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’
He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. His fingers were surprisingly cool. We started to walk back the way we had come. I dragged Lorry away from the fence and saw that he’d accumulated a little pile of greasy, dirty wool that he clutched in one grubby hand. As we walked over the little bridge Mally kept on fiddling with the camera, impatient for the photo to appear. We walked in silence for a while, the dust lifting from the lane beneath our feet, the grass on the verges defeated and parched. A pair of rabbits stumbled into the lane and stared at us vacantly. Lorry ran after them, his hands outstretched, and they dragged themselves lazily away from him and disappeared into the cows’ field.
Mally hadn’t even seen them. He was still playing with the camera.
‘We’re friends now, Nif,’ he said. ‘And friends have to stick together. What you have to remember is that there are three sorts of people in the village.’ Now he looked over at me. ‘There are the outsiders: you, me, our parents. There have been others, but they’ve never stayed for long.’ He went back to tinkering with the camera.
‘Then there are the normal villagers. Well, I say normal, but most of them are weird. My mum says they’re inbred and that affects their…mental faculties.’ He looked at me again, cross-eyed, and rapped his knuckles against the side of his head. Despite myself, I smiled.
‘They’re mostly harmless, that lot. People like Tracy Powell and Fat Denise and the rest. Not a lot going on upstairs but not too much of a problem.’
The camera started to make a churning sound. Slowly, the photograph appeared from the slot, just a grey square in a white rectangle. He pulled it out gently and wafted it in the air, waiting for the picture to appear.
‘And the third sort?’ I couldn’t help asking.
We were standing outside the chapel by then, nothing inside visible through the blank, unseeing windows. The gates were resolutely padlocked. My parents’ car was back, parked on the little gravelled area at the top of the stone steps.
‘They’re the ones you have to worry about. The chapel-goers.’ Mally tossed his head at the chapel as he said this, and I thought about the day before, when I’d seen the congregation arriving, and the strange ritual they’d performed. ‘They’re the troublemakers. You see, they hate everything about me and my mum because we’re outsiders. It has nothing to do with religion or with not going to chapel. There are plenty of people round here who don’t go to chapel and they all manage to get along. It’s because we’re different, that’s all.’
‘So why do you stay here, then? If no-one likes you, why do you and your mum insist on staying?’
‘Sheer bloody-mindedness on my mother’s part,’ he said. ‘She knows that they don’t like us here, don’t want us here, but she’s always been one for antagonising people.’
‘What about your dad? Where does he fit in?’
‘He doesn’t. I never knew him. Didn’t stick around. Disappeared before I was born.’
‘Did you ask your mum about him?’
He smiled a tired, resigned smile. ‘Of course. Each time she’d give me a different answer. Travelling salesman, just passing through town. Lorry driver, likewise. Airline pilot. Every time I asked her, she’d come up with something different, so I gave up asking.’
We were outside his house and he turned to the gate in the picket fence and pushed it open, the bottom of it scraping along the yellow grass. I noticed a pattern that had been scratched into the wooden gatepost, an arrangement of sets of concentric circles, overlapping and intertwining, that made me think of the simpler patterns I used to make with my Spirograph.
‘Welcome to Chez Mally,’ he said, with an ironic twist of his eyebrows, and he bowed down and swept his arm in a magnanimous invitation to enter. I felt no surprise that this peculiar boy lived in the house opposite ours. It was inevitable.