My Friend Walter Read online

  When the hammer fell for the first time and Celandine the Twelfth, Father’s favourite cow, was sold, I understood at last the emptiness of Walter Raleigh’s comforting words. They had been false words. Everything he had said had sounded so good, so believable. I saw Mother and Father standing beside the auctioneer, and the fixed sadness on their faces brought tears of anger to my eyes. One by one the cows were driven in and sold, and after them the sheep and then the pigs. Everything was going. It was too late now. There was no hope left. My friend Walter had betrayed me. He had lied to me and I would tell him so.

  ‘I’m going fishing,’ I said.

  ‘All right, I’ll see you down there,’ said Will, who had not taken his eyes off the ring below. ‘I’ll just wait to see Sally sold. I want to know who she goes to. I just hope those horrible Barrowbills don’t get her, that’s all. They’ve bought almost all the pigs, y’know.’

  I began to climb down the haystack. ‘Bessy,’ Will called after me. I stopped and looked up at him. ‘You told me it would never happen,’ he said. ‘And it is happening, isn’t it?’ I couldn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. ‘It’s not your fault, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Not anyone’s fault.’

  I left him sitting there. No one saw me as I went into the house and up into my room to fetch my things. As I crept past Little Jim’s room I could hear Aunty Ellie singing to him while she changed his nappy. The tune was ‘Three Blind Mice’. ‘Mucky pup, mucky pup,’ she sang. ‘Who’s a mucky pup? Who’s a mucky pup?’ Lucky Little Jim, I thought: he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’ll never even remember today. I emptied my piggy bank. If I included the ten pounds I got from Aunty Ellie last Christmas I had almost twenty pounds in all – just about enough to get me to London, and back, I thought.

  It was quite easy to get to Exeter. I got a lift in one of the cattle trucks that had just finished loading in the farm lane. I told the driver some cock-and-bull story about visiting my gran in hospital. He seemed to believe me and so that’s where he dropped me. It was a long walk from there down to the station, but I wasn’t worried. I knew there were trains to London often enough.

  ‘Be along in ten minutes,’ said the man in the ticket office. ‘Do you want a return?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On your own are you?’ He examined me keenly through the glass. ‘A bit young to be on your own, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m thirteen,’ I lied keeping my eyes down as I counted out my money.

  ‘You don’t look it,’ he said.

  ‘Well I am,’ I said. I felt he was still suspicious after he gave me the ticket, so I walked as tall as I could and as quickly as I could through the ticket barrier towards the train.

  The train was crowded but I managed to find a seat next to a lady with silver-white hair who smelt of cough sweets. Opposite me was an old man who slept almost all the way to London with his mouth open. I was so fascinated by the repeated attempts of a large fly to look inside his mouth that the journey passed quickly enough.

  I had been on the Underground twice before but never on my own, and so I was soon lost. The Underground map was a multi-coloured maze to me, so I gave up and tried to ask someone. But there were so many people and they all seemed in such a hurry to get wherever it was they were going to that it was difficult to stop anyone and ask them. In the end I managed to ask a Chinese lady who didn’t speak English very well but she knew where Tower Hill Station was and pointed back in the direction I’d just come from. She even came with me to be sure I got on the right train.

  So I found myself at last, late that afternoon, walking past the guards and the Beefeaters, past Traitors’ Gate and up the hill towards Tower Green and the Bloody Tower. Most people seemed to be coming out already and there were no queues outside the Crown Jewels or the Bloody Tower. On Tower Green three ravens fought noisily over the remains of a pork pie, and a Beefeater posed for a photograph surrounded by a party of raucous children. I took the steps up to the Bloody Tower in twos hoping to find myself alone. I had prepared exactly what I would say to him. I wasn’t going to mince words, I can tell you. He shouldn’t have told me everything will work out just because you think it will. I’d tell him just what I thought of him.

  His room was packed with people on a guided tour. I did not recognise the language they were speaking – it wasn’t French, I knew that much – all I know is that the guide loved to talk. He spent ten minutes rambling on and on, and it all ended when he gave himself a mock chop on the back of the head, and everyone roared with laughter. They took a few photographs and then they were gone and I was alone. I coughed four times. Nothing. I tried again, louder this time. Nothing. I whispered ‘Walter! Walter! Where are you?’ Still nothing.

  I made for Raleigh’s Walk. At the far end there were a few people leaning out over the wall and calling out to friends below. But they were some way away and so I coughed anyway, loudly and deliberately four times. They turned and looked at me rather sharply, almost suspiciously; and so I got out my handkerchief and continued my coughing fit, just to convince them.

  ‘I hear you, cousin. I hear you, cousin.’ I turned around. My friend Walter was standing by the doorway, his black cloak wrapped around him; and he walked towards me now, his arms outstretched to greet me.

  CHAPTER 7

  ALL THE ANGER INSIDE ME EVAPORATED AS HE embraced me and then, putting his cloak around me, he led me back through the narrow doorway into his room. ‘Dearest cousin,’ he said, ‘you cannot know what joy it brings me to see you again.’ As he looked at me his brow furrowed suddenly into a frown and the smile left his lips. ‘Yet I dread to know why you have come. There is something in your eyes that tells me it is not just to see your friend Walter. Is it bad tidings that you bring me, cousin? Your grandmother?’

  I shook my head. ‘She’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘Then it needs must be the farm,’ said Walter. ‘Has it happened so soon? My poor Bess, have they taken the farm from you, and your home too? I see from your face that I have hit the mark.’

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked.

  ‘It is in the nature of the spirit, cousin,’ he said, ‘to be a spy, to eavesdrop. Many a time I sat with your mother and father in the kitchen as they tried to find a way out. I saw the papers, cousin, I read the letters from the bank and from the landlord. I thought this might happen in the end – your mother thought so too – but your father is a fighter and I thought matters might yet be put right. I hoped as he did that a good harvest might save him. Is there no hope at all?’

  ‘The sale’s today,’ I said. ‘We’ve had to sell everything, even Sally.’ My friend Walter shook his head sadly and looked away. ‘We’re moving out tomorrow,’ I went on. ‘We’re going to live at Aunty Ellie’s till we can find somewhere else.’ And he put his arms out and hugged me to him. ‘You said it would be all right,’ I cried, burying my face in his cloak. ‘You said that if I believed it enough then everything would turn out all right, and I did believe it like you said but nothing turned out right.’

  I felt him stiffen. Then his hands were on my shoulders and pushing me away from him. When I looked up, his face was smiling and his eyes shining with excitement. ‘And so it shall be, chick. So it shall. I will meddle just once more in your world but to better effect this time, I trust. I had a mind to do this before but I did not dare to for fear of blundering. But now I see I have no choice.’ He wiped my eyes with his cloak. ‘Be sure dear cousin, that all that can be done will be done to restore your family’s fortune, and mine too.’

  ‘But it’s too late,’ I said. ‘I told you the sale’s today. It’ll be over by now.’

  ‘It is never too late,’ Walter replied, turning to go. ‘But we must make haste. I may not be able to restore your home and your farm, but I have something else in mind that will do almost as well; and in doing it I may kill two birds with one stone. I pray you, cousin, bide here a few minutes for there is something that must be done before we leave.’ He laughed aloud
, a triumphant, almost a vengeful laugh. ‘I have thought of it often, but never before had just cause or purpose. Now I have. Fortune may be fickle but she can sometimes be sweet. Stay where you are, cousin, and I will return.’ And he was gone.

  I did not have long to wait. The tourists I had seen out on Raleigh’s Walk passed back through the room. They looked at me somewhat strangely, whispering to each other. It occurred to me then that they might have witnessed my sudden disappearance under Walter’s cloak, and I smiled at the thought of what they must have seen. One of them looked as if they were going to talk to me so I turned away and pretended to be engrossed in the view from the window. When I turned around a few minutes later they were gone and my friend Walter was back, a wicked twinkle in his eye. ‘We should not tarry here one moment longer, cousin,’ he said. ‘I have taken the honey from the hive – the honeycomb itself – and would have thee far from here before it is discovered. I fear it may make them mad.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Why, the bees, dear cousin,’ he said with a chuckle. He was talking in riddles again.

  ‘What honey? What bees?’ I asked.

  ‘All in good time, dearest Bess. I promise you shall know all I have done and all I intend to do. But this is not the time for explanations. All will be well. Just believe it and all will be well.’

  ‘You said that once before,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed I did, cousin Bess, but sometimes faith needs a little encouragement, and belief a helping hand. But no more of this. We must be gone. Lead on, chick, and I shall follow. Make haste and be sure that I shall be with you all the way back to Devon, whether you see me or not.’

  The ravens were still squabbling over the last of the pork pie on Tower Green as we came down the steps of the Bloody Tower. A Beefeater was removing an upturned ice-cream cone from the railings where someone had stuck it. He was muttering to himself as we passed. ‘Mucky pups,’ he said. ‘Mucky pups.’

  And that set me thinking about Little Jim at home, and how they would all be worried sick about me. I should have left a note or something. I should have told Will. I should have told someone. I just never thought of it. It was already the worst day of their lives and I had to go and make it worse. And for what? For a trip up to London to shout at my friend Walter about how he’d let me down. And I hadn’t even shouted at him, and he wasn’t going to let me down. He had something up his sleeve – that was all I knew; but I had no idea what it was, and there was no time to ask him, not now. What was I going to say to them when I got back? ‘Sorry Mother, sorry Father, sorry Will. I didn’t mean to upset you but I’ve got this ghost friend I went to see. He’s sitting here right beside me, and he says everything will be all right. He’s come home to help us, but I don’t know how.’ It didn’t sound very convincing. No, I could tell them nothing, only that I was sorry to have worried them and that I was coming home.

  I found the telephones on Paddington Station. Most of them didn’t work, but I found one that did and put in my money. The telephone rang. Father answered. ‘Cripes, Bess, where the dickens have you been? You all right? Where are you?’

  ‘Paddington Station.’

  ‘Paddington?’

  ‘I’m catching the next train home, Father,’ I said. I could hear him shouting to Mother that I was all right. She came to the telephone, her voice heavy with crying. ‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to. I was upset. I just ran away. I had to.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, dear,’ she said. ‘All that matters is that you’re safe, and you’re coming home. We’ll meet you at the station. You frightened the life out of us, Bess.’ And then she began to laugh. I could hear Humph barking in the background. I could see it all – Will jumping up and down, and Humph bounding around him in his excitement. The pips went on the phone and we were cut off.

  I coughed as soon as I found an empty part of the carriage to be sure Walter was still there, and there he was sitting beside me in the window seat swamped in his black cloak. ‘I fear you have very little faith in me, cousin,’ he whispered. ‘Have I not promised I will not leave your side?’ And he lit up his pipe and sat back in his seat. When I looked again he wasn’t there; but he was, if you know what I mean.

  Of course no one else could see the smoke, but they could smell it all right. And they did. I wasn’t to know that I had chosen a No Smoking seat, was I? I hadn’t even thought to look. At the first stop – Reading, it was – a lady got in and sat down opposite us. She kept coughing and wiping her eyes and eyeing me angrily. So I held my nose and shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t long before she got up and moved away and we had the whole carriage to ourselves. Then the ticket collector came round. He must have been about seven foot tall. He sniffed the air deliberately. ‘Are you on your own?’ he asked, taking my ticket. I nodded. ‘Someone meeting you at the other end, are they?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said the ticket collector sniffing again. ‘Bit of a pong in here. I’ve had a complaint. Lady back there says you been smoking. You been smoking, have you?’ I shook my head. He handed me back my ticket. ‘Bad for you, you know. Stunts your growth. Never had one in my life.’ And he was gone.

  It was dark by the time we got back to Exeter. They were all there waiting on the platform: Mother, Father, Will and Little Jim. Mother and Father hugged me so I could hardly breathe and I think they cried a bit, even Father. Little Jim grabbed my nose and pulled it which made me screech – he had such sharp little nails. Will was the only one who didn’t seem at all pleased to see me. He just looked at me coldly; and I could see that Father, although he was relieved to have me back, was angry under it all and trying hard not to show it.

  ‘Everyone’s been out looking for you,’ he said as we walked back along the platform. ‘What were you thinking of, going off like that?’

  ‘I told you, dear,’ said Mother, ‘she was upset, weren’t you Bess?’ I nodded.

  ‘I thought so,’ Mother went on. ‘She just couldn’t take any more, could you dear? I mean there was times today when I would have done the same thing myself given half a chance. We didn’t even know you were missing till after the sale, teatime it was.’

  ‘To go running off like that without so much as . . .’ Father was getting into his stride but Mother looked at him and stopped him before he got going.

  ‘Never mind all that, dear,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s no real harm done, not now she’s back.’

  ‘But she’s got to know the trouble she’s caused,’ Father insisted. ‘I mean, we had the police out looking along the river bank. They put frogmen in the river. Will said you told him you were going fishing. We thought you’d fallen in and drowned.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean it, honest I didn’t. It was all those people and then Sally was going to be sold and I just wanted to get away, that’s all.’

  ‘We understand, dear,’ said Mother.

  ‘I’m not so sure they will,’ said Father, nodding towards the ticket barrier.

  Two policemen were standing there; I recognised one of them as the same one who had come when Sally went missing. They were both looking hard at me as I came towards them. Neither looked very pleased to see me. ‘And where have you been, young lady?’ said the one with the peaked cap, the one I’d seen before.

  ‘London,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve put a lot of people to a lot of trouble, you know that?’ I nodded and looked down at my feet because I didn’t want to look him in the eye. ‘I don’t know why you went, but don’t you ever go off like that again, do you hear me? Promise me, now.’

  ‘Promise,’ I said, and I meant it.

  ‘I’ll call off the search then, Mr Throckmorton.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Father shaking his hand, ‘and I’m sorry we’ve put you to so much trouble.’

  ‘It’s what we’re here for,’ he said. ‘All’s well that ends well, eh?’ He’d borrowed another of Gran’s favourite sayings.

 
Will never said a word to me, not in the station and not in the Land Rover all the way home. But I sensed he was looking at me in the darkness and it made me feel uncomfortable. I coughed four times and with some relief I saw the dark shape of Walter appear beside him.

  We were back home in the kitchen before Will said a word to me. Mother had taken Little Jim up to bed and Father was taking Humph out for his walk as he always did last thing at night. At first there was a silence between us. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Will said suddenly. ‘I wouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t want me to come with you, did you?’ Will went on. He was hurt more than angry.

  ‘It wasn’t that,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to be alone, that’s all.’

  ‘And I’ve been thinking,’ he said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘That you wouldn’t hardly go off like that unless you had a reason, and a good reason. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I told you, I wanted to be alone.’

  ‘You can be alone down by the river,’ said Will. ‘You don’t need to go all the way to London to be alone, do you? There’s something you’re not telling me, Bess.’ Mother came in at that moment and it was just as well. It was obvious that Will didn’t believe a word I’d said.

  ‘Little Jim’s fast asleep,’ Mother said. She put the kettle on the stove and sat down heavily. ‘Well, there’s a day I never want to have to live through again. Still, it’s over now. All we’ve got to do is clear up this mess tomorrow and we’ll be gone. I want to be out of here as quick as possible now.’

  Humph scratched open the back door and came bounding in nose to the ground. He dashed straight through the kitchen, skidded in the hallway and thundered up the stairs. ‘He’ll wake up Little Jim,’ said Mother.