My Friend Walter Read online

  ‘Here we are,’ Will whispered as we reached the orchard.

  ‘Where?’ I said.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing at the heap of horse-dung against the hedgerow. ‘We’ll hide it in there.’

  ‘We can’t!’ I said.

  ‘Why not? No one would ever think of looking in there would they?’ And you couldn’t argue with that. ‘We’ll dig it up in the morning when we’ve decided what to do with it. Maybe by that time your friend will come back anyway and then he can take it back to London where it belongs.’

  He climbed up on to the dungheap with a fencing stake in his hand and plunged it into the heap again and again until he had made a deep hole. ‘That’ll do,’ he said. ‘Give it here.’ And he took the orb out of my hand and lowered it gently down into the hole.

  ‘Come and give me a hand,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to fill it in.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing on my feet,’ I said.

  ‘Nor’ve I,’ said Will. ‘It’ll wash off.’

  And so it did. When we’d finished burying the orb we dunked our feet and hands in the water trough in the cow yard and dabbled them till they were clean again.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Will. ‘I’ve been thinking about the robbery. It said on the radio that nothing was broken, no glass, nothing. No alarm set off. When you think about it, it’s got to be a ghost. I mean he just walked right through your bedroom door, didn’t open it or anything, did he? It’s what he must have done up there, walked right through the glass and took it. Brilliant. Magic. If I knew how to melt down gold and if we could sell it . . .’

  ‘Will,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s going back.’

  ‘I know,’ Will said. ‘It’s a pity though. You could buy a fair-sized farm with ten million pounds, couldn’t you; and have a little left over for a graphite rod. They’re the best. I’ve always wanted a graphite rod.’

  ‘It’s cold,’ I said, ‘and I’m going to bed.’

  Back in my room I coughed several times just in case Walter had come back, but he hadn’t and he didn’t. I wanted to say sorry. I had to find him again to make him understand, to explain what I’d meant.

  ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right’ – Gran had said it often enough – and now I understood what she meant for the first time. And she was right. But I hadn’t meant to upset him like that.

  I slept in fits and starts, each time waking up and coughing to see if he was back, but dawn came and I was still alone. As I watched the sun come up over the trees beyond Front Meadow, I knew it was for the last time. Tomorrow morning I’d be waking up at Aunty Ellie’s, and all you could see from her windows were houses and lamp-posts and streets. I wasn’t really sad though, not any more. I knew we were going and that there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. I suppose I had just become used to the idea. Anyway I had more urgent things on my mind, like what the dickens we were going to do with the golden orb, and about how I was going to get my friend Walter back.

  Downstairs I heard Mother talking to Humph and putting him out – you could hear his tail banging against the back door. A little later I heard the sound of the removal van arriving. I didn’t much want to be downstairs and watch everything being carried out so I stayed where I was as long as I could. Besides, it was warm in bed and I hated getting up anyway.

  Will and I didn’t get a chance to talk before breakfast. He came down after me like he always did. He gave me a long confidential look and winked at me. My brother Will loved a conspiracy. In spite of the packing cases everywhere it was an ordinary enough breakfast, except that Humph wasn’t sitting expectantly under Little Jim’s highchair. I fed Little Jim his cereal (a kind of puree of porridge), scooping it off his chin and his cheek and shovelling it in again. Mother said Humph was outside begging the removal-men’s breakfast.

  Father was hitting the top of his boiled egg viciously. ‘Vultures, that’s what they are, always have been.’

  ‘Who, dear?’ Mother said.

  ‘Those Barrowbill twins. It’s just like they’ve been waiting all these years for us to go down the shoot. Did you see what they bought yesterday? Did you? Almost all the pigs, couple of the cows and my favourite tractor, the little Massey 125.’

  ‘Someone had to buy them dear,’ said Mother. ‘Doesn’t much matter who, does it?’

  ‘Sticks in my craw, that’s all,’ Father went on. ‘They’ve lived across the valley from us for over twenty years and in all that time they’ve never been anything but trouble. They never keep their fences up – their sheep wander everywhere and the damage their pigs have done over the years doesn’t bear thinking about. And did they ever pay a penny piece in compensation? Never. It was like getting blood out of a stone. Still, at least I got their money before they took them away yesterday – cash, too. Paid me a good price for that dung, too,’ said Father, picking the shell off the edge of his boiled egg. We looked at him. ‘Horse-dung – you know, that heap in the orchard. Well don’t look so surprised. You didn’t think I’d leave it behind, did you? Valuable stuff, that is – and we could hardly take it with us to Aunty Ellie’s now, could we?’

  ‘When are they collecting it?’ I asked.

  ‘Done it already. Came first thing this morning and loaded it right up. Said they were going to spread it right now while it’s still dry. There’s rain on the way, they said – needed it for their vegetable patch.’

  ‘Can we go out?’ said Will, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘You haven’t finished your breakfast, dear,’ said Mother.

  ‘Don’t feel like it,’ said Will, ‘do we?’ He looked at me.

  ‘No,’ I said, and I meant it. And we were gone out of the door before they could stop us and running hard down towards the orchard. A flurry of rooks flew up as we opened the orchard gate but one or two were still left busy at the worms where the horse-dung heap had once been.

  There was no point in even looking, but we did it all the same, searching the ground again and again, just to be sure that the unbelievable terrible worst really had happened. It had. ‘Now what?’ said Will, kicking a clod of dung into the air.

  ‘Well, at least no one will find it here now,’ I said. ‘They won’t be able to blame us, will they?’

  ‘And what happens when they find it in the dung?’ said Will. ‘I mean you can’t miss it can you, not a thing like that? They’ll take it straight to the police, won’t they? And they’ll tell them where they got the dung from. That’s what they’ll do, and we’ll be dropped right in it. We’ve got to go after it and get it back before they find it.’

  ‘You have a wise brother, cousin Bess,’ said a voice from behind us. My friend Walter was sitting on a tree stump not five yards from us smoking his pipe. ‘I’ faith ’tis good advice, chick.’ He smiled at me. ‘You see that I have recovered my good humour. I was always too proud a man for my own good, and perhaps endowed with too excitable a spirit.’

  ‘I only meant . . .’

  But he held up his cane and stood up. ‘Enough, sweet cousin,’ he said. ‘I have reflected much through the night and know now that you questioned more my wisdom than mine honour, and my wisdom have I often questioned myself. Come, cousin,’ and he held out his hands, ‘are we friends again?’

  ‘Course,’ I said, and he bent and kissed me on the forehead. ‘Master Will,’ he said. ‘I see you are much like me – intemperate, injudicious,’ (Will looked rather puzzled) ‘but possessed of a fiery spirit that will not accept defeat. Come, we shall find this bauble if it is there, and when it is found, then indeed it will be left to you both to decide what should be done with it. Are we agreed?’ We were.

  The quickest way to the Barrowbill’s farm was across the river. We forded it together, knee-high in the water holding hands to keep ourselves upright against the current. The stones were slippery underfoot and I should have fallen more than once had my friend Walter not held me up. We clambered up through the woods, Will running on ahead to hurry us along. We stumbled o
ver a ploughed field and at last skirted the hedgerow that ran to the house. I’d been there once or twice in the car with Mother to deliver the parish magazines.

  You could smell the dung already. The vegetable garden was to one side of the house and we could not see it. We could only just see the garden fence from where we were. A tractor and trailer were parked near the front gate, and the trailer was quite empty. ‘They’ve spread it already,’ said Will, stating the obvious. We waited for a few moments debating if it was safe to search the front garden. The ‘horrible Barrowbills’ did not like trespassers and did not like children – we knew that well enough from past experience. ‘What are we going to say to them if they catch us?’ said Will. ‘We can’t hardly tell them what we’re looking for, can we?’

  ‘Master Will,’ said Walter. ‘Perchance you have forgotten that I may go unseen where I will. They shall not see me unless I wish it. I pray you rest here awhile and watch. If I find the bauble I shall bring it back to you, you can be sure of it.’ And he walked out across the yard, limping and leaning heavily on his cane.

  ‘Why does he limp?’ Will asked.

  ‘He told me he was wounded in the leg when he was capturing Cadiz from the Spanish,’ I said. ‘And he was, too – I read it in a book I’ve got. He got a wooden splinter in it when a cannon ball hit his ship.’

  We saw him open the gate and then walk up and down the vegetable garden prodding at the dung with his cane. Once in a while he would stop and bend down so that he all but disappeared from our view, but when he stood up again he would shake his head in our direction.

  ‘But it’s got to be there,’ Will said, biting on his wrist. ‘It’s got to be.’

  ‘P’raps they’ve found it already,’ I said. It was almost as though Walter heard me because he suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked towards the house as if he’d heard something. Only one small window looked out on the vegetable garden. Walter walked over to it and peered in. He rubbed the window and looked again, his face against the glass. Then he was waving his cane to us and beckoning us over.

  We left the cover of the hedge and ran low across the yard and into the vegetable garden, a trio of hens scurrying away as we came. I followed slipping and slithering on the horse-dung that clung to the bottom of my wellingtons. Walter was pointing at the window, his finger to his lips. We rose from below the window slowly until our eyes were over the windowsill and we could see everything. The ‘horrible Barrowbills’ had their backs to us. They were standing by the kitchen sink and the tap was running. They were washing something, and it wasn’t their hands. We could only catch a glimpse of it, but it was golden and it was round, and they were washing it carefully, very carefully indeed.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘WELL, THAT’S IT,’ I WHISPERED AND WE DUCKED down below the window. ‘We’ll never get it back now.’

  ‘What if I went and knocked at the front door?’ said Will, ‘then you could sneak in the back way and grab it.’

  ‘There’s two of them,’ I said. ‘They won’t both answer the door, will they?’

  Will thought for a moment. ‘You could always chuck a stone through a window round the front,’ he said. ‘They’d soon come running then, both of them.’

  ‘You can’t!’ I said, though I must admit I quite liked the idea of it.

  ‘Faith, dear Bess,’ said Walter smiling broadly, ‘you have too kind a heart, too generous a spirit. Have you not often told me of these men? Did they not shout at you and drive you off their land? Did they not shoot at your dog? What’s one broken window after all that? A broken window is but a trifle and can be afterwards mended.’

  ‘A trifle?’ said Will. ‘What does he mean, a trifle?’ I didn’t know what Walter meant either, but I could guess. After all I was more used to his strange language than Will was.

  Walter crouched down beside us. ‘You have something of the pirate in you, Master Will,’ he said. ‘Would that I had you by my side at Cadiz when we burnt the Spanish fleet, or when the Armada came and we harried them up the Channel. I had need of such men as you in those days.’ He peered in through the window once more. ‘But I think I may have a way to resolve this, cousin Bess; and moreover we might do it in such a way that we would have no need to break any windows.’ He was smiling wickedly. ‘Watch at the window, I pray, and you shall see that I can whine and scream and jabber as well as any other ghost if I choose to.’

  A few minutes later he was no longer beside us but standing in the kitchen behind the ‘horrible Barrowbills’ who were still bent over the sink together. Walter turned and winked at us. He was smiling like a naughty boy. I saw him take a deep breath and very slowly and deliberately he lifted his arms up inside his cloak so that he looked like a giant black bat, a vampire bat, and then he let out the most hideous skin-crawling cry I have ever heard. It echoed around the house before dying away to a whining, tremulous whimper. Behind us the chickens flew up out of the vegetable garden in a panic. The ‘horrible Barrowbills’ had turned and were backing away along the kitchen wall. I felt sorry for them – honestly I did. Worse was to come, though, for as Walter advanced slowly towards them arms outstretched, his hands reached up towards his head, and took it off.

  ‘Cripes!’ said Will beside me.

  But my friend Walter hadn’t finished with them yet. He tucked his head under his arm, glared at them through baleful red-rimmed eyes and set up a soft cooing sound that wound itself up into a reverberating ululation that shook the crockery on the dresser. All this time I had not looked at the horrible Barrowbills but I did now. Bertie was clinging to Boney’s arm (or perhaps it was the other way round – I could never tell them apart), his face screwed up with terror, and Boney was trying to push him off as he edged away from Sir Walter towards the door.

  The golden orb must still be in the sink, I thought, for neither of them had it with them. In their scramble to get to the door Bertie knocked against the dresser and brought cups and plates crashing down to the ground around him. Boney tripped over a chair and almost fell out of the room after the other one. Cursing and roaring, they tore out of the house and we heard them running up the footpath towards the gate. A car engine started. Gears crashed, wheels spun and they were gone up the lane, a cloud of dust rising behind them. You could hardly blame them. I mean I was terrified, and I knew it was only my friend Walter playing games, my friend Walter who wouldn’t harm a fly; and as for Will – and remember he knew Walter quite well by now, too – Will had fainted clean away beside me and was lying in a crumpled heap at my feet.

  By the time I’d shaken him to his senses Walter had his head on again. ‘I fear I may have been overly enthusiastic,’ he said, walking through the wall and kneeling down beside us. He took out a bottle from his waistcoat. ‘I keep it by me always,’ he said. ‘It is my own remedy. Do you not recall, good cousin, ’twas this that revived you when first we met in the Bloody Tower those many weeks past?’ How could I ever forget! ‘It worked well enough for you then,’ he went on, ‘and now it will restore your brother. Have faith.’

  And indeed it did. Within a few moments Will was sitting back against the wall and his eyes blinked open. He coughed until his eyes ran with tears and he pushed away the bottle from his face. He looked at both of us. ‘Have they gone?’ he asked. I nodded.

  ‘You fainted,’ I said, and with some satisfaction.

  ‘Well you can’t hardly blame me, can you,’ said Will. ‘You might have told me you were going to take your head off like that, Walter.’

  ‘My humblest apologies, Master Will,’ said Walter. ‘They will not be back for some time though, I think. I wanted to be quite sure they would not have the time nor the inclination to take the bauble with them.’

  ‘You’ve got it then?’ said Will pushing himself up on to his elbows.

  ‘I have it,’ said Sir Walter, but there was a certain tone in his voice and he did not look very pleased or relieved about it. He sighed. ‘I fear however it is not quite as we expected,’ he sa
id, and he opened his cloak and held out a shining brass ball with a short length of pipe attached to it.

  ‘What the dickens is that?’ I asked taking it from him. ‘It’s not the orb.’

  ‘It’s one of those, you know those thingummyjigs,’ said Will, searching for the word he wanted. ‘You know a thingummyjig . . . a ball something . . . a ballcock. You see them in all the drinking troughs out in the fields. It’s got to be somewhere. It can’t just disappear, can it?’ We all stood up and began to search again through the vegetable patch. ‘Still,’ said Will turning over the dung with his feet, ‘it was good to see Bertie and Boney scared rigid. Father would have loved that. At least I didn’t faint till after I’d seen that. You were brilliant, Walter. Wicked, wasn’t he, Bess?’

  ‘Wicked?’ said Walter somewhat perplexed and almost offended.

  ‘Cool,’ said Will. ‘Y’know bril, magic, wicked.’ Walter looked none the wiser.

  ‘We still haven’t found the orb, have we?’ I said. ‘And if we don’t find it someone else will.’

  Walter had picked up something from the ground. It looked at first like a mucky carrot or a rotten turnip. ‘’Tis a bone, cousin, and I have noticed that there are many others here.’ He prodded his cane to the ground and flicked a blackened ball towards us. ‘In truth I think the heap was a burial ground for that dog of yours that follows me like a shadow everywhere I go.’

  ‘Humph!’ I said. ‘Of course! That’s it! He’s always digging in there and coming back to the house stinking to high heaven. Perhaps he’s found the orb and dug it up and buried it somewhere.’