The Book of the Banshee Read online

  Mum wellied in.

  ‘You can’t go to school in that lot!’

  Smirking, Estelle trumped her.

  ‘Fine by me!’

  Quickly, Mum changed her mind.

  ‘Yes, you can! Go off like that if you want. What do I care? What you wear to school isn’t my problem, it’s theirs, so let them sort it out.’ She had a wild look in her eyes as she chuntered on the way Gran does about the state of next door’s dustbins. ‘Teachers get paid, don’t they? It’s their job . . . and if that Mr Scotbeg and Miss Sullivan between them don’t have the sense to insist on a modest and sensible school uniform . . . only themselves to blame . . . can’t expect other busy working people to—’

  She broke off, distracted.

  ‘What’s that stuff on your eyes?’

  ‘Aubergine frost.’

  ‘Aubergine frost!’

  I thought she was going to take off again about that, but she just gave a shudder, and shooed Estelle towards the stairs. I trailed behind because I thought I might get the chance to break in and ask Estelle if she had any of her allowance left that I could borrow to use for lunch money. But Mum was still ranting away as they reached the kitchen.

  ‘Personally, I don’t care any longer . . . done my best . . . if the Powers-that-Be at that school are so slack they don’t mind you girls wandering up and down the corridors looking like dockside tarts . . .’

  Dad interrupted the flow by putting his hands on Mum’s shoulders and swivelling her round to face the clock.

  08:47 hours.

  ‘Oh, God!’

  Mum got a grip on herself.

  ‘Right! Got everything, Estelle? Coat? Gloves? Lunch money?’

  I tried. I did try.

  ‘Now that you mention lunch money—’

  But no one was listening. Together Mum and Dad were herding Estelle towards the door. She didn’t resist. But once she was out on the doorstep she turned to deliver a short speech.

  ‘Listen, you can force me out the door. And I suppose you can even force me to school, out of the rain. But you can’t force me to listen to anything the teachers say. And you can’t force me to learn anything.’

  Dad knows when he’s on to a good thing.

  ‘Done!’ he said. ‘It’s a deal!’

  And before she could snatch away her hand, he had shaken it to make a bargain.

  She gave him one of her seek-and-exterminate looks. But he ignored it.

  ‘Right, then,’ he said cheerily. ‘Off you go. Take care crossing the main road. Try not to be too late. Have a nice day.’

  Then he closed the door gently behind her and leaned his forehead against it. Thud, thud, thud, thud. He was beating his head on the panels while Mum quietly sank at the table and buried her head in her arms.

  I stared at both of them. They were destroyed.

  After a bit, Dad pulled himself together, stopped his head-banging and said:

  ‘Right, Bridget. You’re next.’

  Mum shook her buried head.

  ‘It’s no good, George. I can’t go. I’m too shattered.’

  ‘Nonsense, Bridget. Got to go to work.’

  She lifted her head and glared at him.

  ‘George, there’s no point. I’m so exhausted I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I wouldn’t even hear what my clients were saying. There’s simply no sense in my going. I’ll just stay home.’

  But anyone who can tip Estelle out to school when she doesn’t feel like going is on easy street getting Mum off to work. He simply tugged her to her feet, and stuffed her arms down her coat sleeves.

  ‘Got everything?’ he asked. ‘Purse? Briefcase? Keys?’

  Mum turned on him. It was an action replay of Estelle.

  ‘Listen, George,’ she snapped. ‘You can force me out of the door. And you can probably force me to go to the office, out of the rain. But you can’t force me to sit at my desk and do anything useful!’

  As I said, Dad recognizes when he’s on to a winner.

  ‘Fine! Done!’ He steered her to the door, tugging it open with one hand and shovelling her through it with the other. ‘Bye, Bridget. Drive carefully now. Watch out for that nasty right turn by Budgens.’

  Then, for the second time that morning, he closed the door and rested his head against the panels.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud.

  I was about to tackle him on the subject of dinner money, when:

  Ting-a-ling-a-ling!

  He sprang back as if he’d been scorched.

  The door flew open, nearly hitting him. But it wasn’t Mum again. It was Estelle. She stood on the doorstep – an avenging angel in a bobble hat – glowering malignantly as she reached for her book bag.

  Before she left, she fixed Dad with the evil eye.

  ‘I hope you know,’ she said, ‘that I only get one life. Yes. One. And it’ll probably only be a few years before I’m too ancient and decrepit to enjoy it.’

  ‘Hang on!’ Dad argued. ‘I’m well over forty myself and—’

  She gave him a rattlesnake glare. He fell silent.

  ‘And you are forcing me to use up my precious life!’ she said. ‘Spoil it. Waste my days! Why should I be stuck in that smelly useless classroom hour after hour, day after day, week after week, when I could be out and alive!’

  He stood accused, while she took off down the path again, shouting over her shoulder:

  ‘You’ll be sorry if I get run over. If I die young, you’ll feel so rotten! You’ll wish you’d let me live. You’ll die of guilt.’

  I was impressed. Not just because, when it comes to putting on a good curse, my sister and Miss Adulewebe come out of the same box. But also because, in what she said, there was such an echo of William Saffery. I might have been standing there listening to him in his khaki, not her in her shocking pink. He crawled, exhausted, out of a dug-out one day at dawn. The sky was awash with pink and golden fingers. The air was still. There were no birds – for months, he said, there had been nowhere for the birds to sing – but by his foot he found a baby mole, and scooped it up and felt its little heart thump, and knew in that moment, he says, the value of life, and that each dawn is a gift, and from that day he’d prize each glittering moment as if it were the most precious treasure.

  Dad’s voice broke into my thoughts. For just a moment it seemed he must be reading my mind, because of what he said.

  ‘That’s War for you.’

  But he was only being Brigadier Flowers.

  I reached down for my book bag.

  ‘Dad, I need lunch money.’

  He picked up his jacket. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and look in the van. There are always coins rattling about in it somewhere. And I can give you a lift.’

  He stood back to let me out. As I went by, I looked at the clock for the last time. Impeccable War Reporter getting it right.

  09:07 hours.

  LATE.

  Chapter 5

  I SOMETIMES THINK Estelle leads a charmed life. I sneak in the back door and get savaged by Miss Sullivan. (‘Late! Late! Can’t you even keep your eye on a clock in the morning, Will Flowers?’) Estelle strolls in the front, and Scotbags all but offers to carry her bag as far as the classroom for her. I overheard them in the corridor. Estelle was saying, ‘A bit of a difficult time . . .’ I thought at first she must be rather delicately trying to skive out of games, but when I ran into Chopper round the next corner, he said exactly the same.

  ‘A bit of a difficult time . . .’

  ‘What is?’

  He pointed to a notice on the board, reminding all Intermediate year pupils that their parents were supposed to be in the school hall at seven thirty for a meeting.

  ‘Daft time to pick,’ he said. ‘Last episode of Who Killed Anton Dec?’

  ‘You’re not invited,’ I reminded him. ‘For one thing you’re no longer an Intermediate, and for another you’re not yet a parent.’

  Chopper’s eyes gleamed.

  ‘But it’s the G
reat Secret Briefing.’

  ‘Is it?’ I calculated back. Yes. Though I could remember it still as if it were yesterday, it must have been a year ago to the month.

  ‘So it is!’

  Chopper grinned.

  ‘It was tremendous,’ he tempted me. ‘It was amazing.’

  It was, too. Chopper and I had been detailed to come back into school after the cleaners had gone home, to put out chairs. Chopper set up a race, and so by a few minutes after seven we had finished the job, but the school was still practically empty.

  I’d looked at Chopper. Chopper had looked at me. Then, while I kept a look-out, he had pushed back the gleaming brass bolt on the door that leads under the school stage. Forbidden Territory. Danger Zone. Month after month we’d stood together, belting out hymns and eyeing that little brass bolt. We weren’t going to let this opportunity slip by.

  Chopper had crawled in, grumbling about filth on his trousers. I scrambled after, pulling the door closed behind me in case any of the teachers or the janitor glanced in the hall as they went past, and noticed it was open.

  Chopper sneezed violently, twice. But gradually his nose adjusted to the dusty air, while I got used to the dark.

  ‘Look at all this stuff!’

  It was incredible. Leftovers from every stage production since the school was built: swords, masks, fans, cradles, cardboard rocks, a dinosaur’s tail, boxes of crowns and pedlars’ trays – even a mock-up of a full-size scaffold lay on its side, complete with shrouded corpse. Costumes were heaped in piles, beards strewn about, and wigs overflowed from a battered old laundry basket I hadn’t forgotten spending a miserable twenty minutes squashed inside when I was one of Ali Baba’s forty thieves.

  ‘Looks like your sister’s bedroom,’ Chopper said.

  I picked Cleopatra’s plastic asp out of the Mad Hatter’s teapot, and waved it in front of his face.

  ‘Remember the way Marisa screamed?’

  Slices of light through the stage boards above lit up his happy smile.

  ‘Best detention ever!’

  ‘We’ll have another, if we don’t get out.’

  There is, says William Saffery, a sixth sense that stays hidden until you need it. A man’s about to reach for the precious letter from home, and suddenly instead he throws himself into the mud. The shell explodes, taking two lives and twenty letters with it, and leaving him to bury more good men and wonder what is happening on the farm – and further down the line. How many brothers does he still have now? Three? One? None? I’d grabbed at Chopper’s arm as he reached out to push the stage door open. Together we froze as, across the hall, came steady footfalls.

  Then Chopper’s eyes met mine as the one upright bar of light rolled up inside itself and disappeared.

  We heard the bolt rammed home.

  More and more footfalls were filling the hall now, along with the clatter of heels, the scraping of chairs and the burble of conversation.

  Chopper swore under his breath. Then he despaired. Snatching the length of rope with which Stormer Phillips strangled Flora every night when she was Duchess of Malfi, he set about garrotting himself quietly. I settled on one of HMS Pinafore’s capstans (an upturned bucket with a nasty rim), and put my head in my hands.

  First I heard nothing but parents jabbering away to one another, calling out greetings and catching up on news. Then, as the minutes passed, a sort of restlessness set in. I could see through a split between two boards. Parents in the front rows were looking at their watches, or craning round to stare at the clock on the back wall.

  And then, at last, the meeting had begun. Clop-clop-clopping down the aisle from the swing doors came Mr Scotbeg and Miss Sullivan. She was in her Chief Prison Officer get-up. He wore his usual sports jacket. Together they strode towards the stage and the gossiping quietened to a murmur.

  She wheeled towards the right. He followed her. And suddenly, above our heads, Chopper and I heard their footfalls reverberating across the boards of the stage.

  ‘Good evening, everyone . . .’

  There was a swell of response, and Scotbags’ shoes thundered overhead, puffing down over us the clouds of fresh dust that marked his progress to the front of the stage.

  ‘Each year,’ he boomed, ‘Miss Sullivan and I invite all the parents of Intermediate year pupils to this meeting. Your sons and daughters are not invited, and that is deliberate.’ There was a little pause. I think he must have been leaning forward confidentially, because the next bit came out in a dramatic whisper.

  ‘For what we have to say to you tonight is not for their ears!’

  It all sounded a bit cryptic. I’d glanced at Chopper to see what he made of it, but to my astonishment he was bent over with his face buried in his knees, covering as much of his head as he could with a large floppy hat. The rope with which Stormer Phillips strangled Flora trailed to the floor, and for one awful moment I thought Chopper might have accidentally throttled himself.

  Then, worse, I realized he was going to sneeze.

  ‘Chooooo!’

  Above our heads, the secret briefing halted in mid-stream. There was a stir of interest round the hall – chairs creaking as their occupants leaned forward, and hurried little whispers down the rows. ‘Did you hear something?’ ‘What on earth was that?’

  ‘Chooooo!’

  I sat on my upturned bucket and waited for death. If Chopper hadn’t sneezed all over it so thoroughly, I might even have reached for the rope.

  ‘Chooooo! Chooooo! Chooooooo! Choooooo!’

  How long was it before the bolt flew back? William Scott Saffery says he learned that fear can make time stretch so much it’s hard to think you’re still in the same world as the fast ticking clockwork and swiftly revolving steel hands that you were watching only moments before. And certainly it seemed an age before light flooded in, almost blinding us, and Chopper and I staggered out.

  We stood in front of them, a hallful of mothers and fathers, all parked on the chairs that Chopper and I had set out. We must have looked a proper pair. Even then, a year ago, I was nearly as tall as I am now, but Chopper was still tiny. I bet we looked ridiculous standing side by side, blinking and sneezing, with Chopper still wearing his huge floppy hat.

  Miss Sullivan leaned over the edge of the stage to give us a long and blistering look, while Scotbags inflated his poison ducts and pointed to the door.

  ‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, lads?’ he suggested. ‘Outside my office.’

  We set off for the swing doors. I don’t know what it was that made Chopper lose his senses. The awful silence? All those pairs of eyes?

  Whatever it was, when we were halfway down the aisle it suddenly got to him.

  ‘Don’t worry, everyone,’ he announced in ringing tones. ‘It was only a stage we were going through.’

  I don’t know for certain who it was who got the joke first. I could have sworn it was Mum’s laugh; but she insisted afterwards that it was Marisa’s mother, and not her, who started everyone off. Within a few moments everyone in the hall seemed to be hooting with laughter. My mother had tears pouring down her face. My dad was clutching his chair. I was mortified. But Chopper took to it like someone born to please the cheering crowds.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, sweeping the huge floppy hat off his head and turning to left and right, bowing and grinning like some triumphant actor taking his tenth curtain call. ‘Thank you so much. Thank you.’

  One or two of the parents took up the joke, and started to clap. Others joined in, and soon the ripple of clapping ran backwards through the hall, louder and louder, till it was steady thunderous applause, marred only by the two sets of bone-rotting gamma rays directed at us from the stage.

  I took Chopper’s arm.

  ‘You do understand,’ I whispered, ‘that you and I are doing to die tomorrow?’

  He didn’t care. I think I’ve mentioned before that Chopper’s not bright. All the attention was rushing to his brain, quite overwhelming the few bits that do gener
ally keep working. He was still grinning in rapture and flourishing his hat as I pulled him through the swing doors.

  Next morning was bad enough. But after we’d got out of Scotbags’ room and peeled off our smouldering socks, Chopper insisted that the worst of it was still not having any idea at all what had gone on at the meeting. Personally, I was a lot more bothered by all Scotbags’ ugly talk about suspension. But Chopper became obsessed. Why had our parents been invited without us? What was not for our ears?

  ‘This year was good fun,’ he kept saying. ‘This year was interesting enough. But next year we’ll do a really good job of sneaking in early and hiding properly. Next year we must stay long enough to hear what they say.’

  The trouble with people like Chopper is that, once they get an idea into their heads, they simply won’t let up. So now twelve months had gone by, both of us were a whole year older, and yet here was Chopper sticking firmly to Plan A in his bone-headed fashion.

  All day I tried to tell him it wasn’t worth the risk. Suppose we were caught again? We’d be expelled. But he wouldn’t even bother to give the idea houseroom.

  ‘We won’t get caught. We’ll hide on the balcony and watch through those holes they drilled for the wiring. We’ll keep our heads below the parapet. We’ll be quite safe.’

  Famous Last Words. William Scott Saffery said things were so bad at Ypres no one would think of tempting fate by saying them aloud. He even tells about a night when Chalky White fell in a fearless mood and tried to get William to crawl with him across the freshly damaged stretch of trench, to reach the rest of the unit. After one last barrage, the guns fell silent, so William was willing enough. Together they inched closer to the gap, where now there was no protection. Then out of the blue, as if he were voicing a charm to protect himself, Chalky said: ‘We’ll be quite safe.’

  Instantly, William went berserk. With all the strength at his command, he threw himself on his friend and pulled him down. When Chalky struggled to rise, William hit him, yelling: ‘We can’t go now! Don’t you see? Now you’ve said that, we can’t go!’ Chalky was by far the more powerful of the two. Pushing William off, he clambered to his feet. ‘Fool!’ he yelled back. ‘You great bl—!’ There would have been a stream of it, William claims. When Chalky took to swearing, nothing could usually stop him. This time the blast from the shell wiped out the rest, and plenty more besides, as Chalky and William stood in the devil’s rain, and even Chalky’s ‘Thanks, mate,’ was drowned by the howling of the shells further along the line. Together the two of them inched through the filthy bitter wall of smoke and flying earth to drag back whichever poor fellow it was who must have been trying to cross the gap the other way, and now lay out there in the splintered dark.