Annerton Pit Page 4

  “He likes pubs,” said Jake.

  “That one where the cat got into the fridge?” she asked. “That sounds a bit screwy to me. Not really ghosts, is it? I wonder how he heard about it?”

  “He’d have gone to the local newspaper and looked at the files,” said Jake. “That’s how he always started. And if there’s a Psychical Research Society he’d have got in touch with them.”

  “We thought we’d start with the newspaper,” said Martin, as though he’d planned it all out himself.

  “You’ll start by finding somewhere to sleep,” she said. “I’ll ring a couple of places for you, shall I?”

  “That’s awfully kind,” said Martin, unable to keep the note of surprise out of his voice.

  “No it isn’t. I want you to keep in touch. You’ll need to, anyway, in case we pick up a line on your grandfather. But I’m only protecting myself. Now that Mrs McFadyen’s rung me up I’ve got to keep a check on you, because if you do get into a mess I shall be in dead trouble.”

  “Honestly!” said Martin. “That woman!”

  “I expect she thinks everybody’s like Terry,” said Jake. Sergeant Abraham laughed as she picked up the phone.

  She found them a room in a Church hostel. The beds were hard but clean and dry, and the room itself snug. Jake was thankful for this as he lay awake and listened to the dwindling noises of the night-time city. The racket of traffic was steadily being replaced by the rising wind, which had been sharpish from the north-east all day but now was hissing and grunting among the roof-tops, and hooting where an edge of guttering caught it at a resonant angle. Was Granpa lying out somewhere, chilled and helpless under the nag and blunder of this rising storm? He wasn’t in any of the hospitals, so Missing Persons said. Jake’s own last letter was still uncollected at the Post Office. That was twelve days old. The one before had gone. At least that showed that Granpa had really vanished, and it wasn’t just that his letters to Jake had been going astray. But it only made the situation clearer—it didn’t make it any less worrying.

  Of course it was wonderful to have the big police machine working to find Granpa, taking his disappearance as seriously as it took the thousands of other things it dealt with every day. Tomorrow that machine would be doing the routine search while Martin and Jake tried to check up on the ghosts Granpa had been interested in. Jake could see that they’d been extraordinarily lucky in having Mrs McFadyen ring up and pester Sergeant Abraham about them … Yes, but what about Granpa?

  He sighed and turned over. The shifting gusts of the storm echoed the pulses of worry in his mind. Martin had opened the window a crack, so as not to frowst, and as he drew breath for a second sigh Jake noticed something. The smell in the wind … All his life had been spent on the outskirts of a big port where, even among the traffic smells and the, garden smells and the smells from local factories, there had always been a sort of undersmell, too faint and persistent to be noticed. Even when you went inland you weren’t aware that it was missing. It was when you came back … and that’s what he and Martin had now done. He could smell the sea.

  But this was a different sea—not the busy, almost tamed English Channel, that High Street of Europe’s shipping, but the wild, ship-foundering, man-drowning, gale-breeding North Sea. Only ten days ago, the night before Mum and Dad had left, Jake had listened to a TV documentary about oil-rigs, and about how those gawky steel giants had to withstand the hill-high waves and merciless winds of the most dangerous water in the world. The journalist who had spoken the commentary had used that very phrase, and Martin had said “Hey! Come off it! What about Cape Horn?” and Dad had said that the most dangerous water in the world was the puddle that froze outside your back door, and Mum had said whose fault was that when Somebody insisted on washing his car there on frosty evenings … The most dangerous water in the world. It was curious that Jake found its nearness homely and comforting, but he did, and with the smell of salt in his nostrils he fell asleep.

  The man who looked after the old files at the newspaper office was busy but friendly. He remembered Granpa.

  “Pleasant old bird,” he said. “Knew what he wanted, which is all that matters in this dump. (Brring) Drat that phone. ’Scuse me … Library … no, no, nothing on that, not one column inch. Not in my time … Course I’m sure … if you want to come and look for yourself you’re welcome, but you’ll be wasting your time … Bye. (Ting) Where were we? Yes, ghosts. File on that. Cold patch in St Fredegund’s? Lot on that, all dead boring because it isn’t there. Least, thermo meters won’t measure it. What I say is, tell people there’s a norrible mysterious cold patch somewhere and shove ’em into it and naturally they’ll shiver a bit, supposing they got any imagination at all. (Flip-flip-flip) There you are—that’s your cold patch for what it’s worth. Start by asking the verger—now, what’s his name? Here. That’s it—Hewison. Good Newcastle name, that. Used to be a greengrocer’s … (Brring) ’Scuse me. Library … Couple of minutes, Mac—I’ll send ’em straight down. (Ting) Where were we? Cats in fridge—that’s not on file. Collier’s Arms, Barrow Way, tidy little pub. Told him that one myself. Footsteps in warehouse—only a couple of paras on that, last November wasn’t it? (Flip-flip-flip)

  Thought so. That’s all. Mice, I should think. Now, if you’ll ’scuse me …”

  Granpa had stayed at the Collier’s Arms.

  Mrs Rankin, the landlord’s wife, had a refined voice which slipped every now and then into a half-twang. She sounded as if life were one long fret to her.

  “ … ooh, I do hope nothing’s happened to him,” she said. “Such a nice gentleman, and done us a real good turn. Didn’t leave no address, except somewhere down Southampton way …”

  “That’s us,” said Martin. “Our home, I mean. He didn’t say where he was going.”

  “Up north a bit, but he did say as he might be back, or he mightn’t. I wasn’t expecting him, exactly … Shall I show you the room he had? There’s been no one in since.”

  They followed her up the narrow creaking stairs, but Granpa hadn’t left anything behind, of course. The room didn’t even smell of him. The three of them were hesitating in its musty silence when Martin said, “Did he have any joy with the cats?”

  Mrs Rankin drew her breath in sharply, then sighed.

  “I suppose you’ve a right, sort of,” she said. “But you won’t tell anyone? He said not to tell anyone. It was our Tyrene. I still don’t know how he got it out of her. We’d asked her, of course, but she’s only three. She was jealous of the new baby, Mr Uttery said—course, he does take up a lot of my time and I hadn’t really noticed how I wasn’t paying so much attention to little Tyrene—there’s a pub to run and all, you see? Anyway, it seems when the baby was on the way I’d explained about it to Tyrene, and the way I’d done it was telling her about the time the cat had kittens, and poor little scrap she’d got muddled in her mind and she thought she could stop any more babies coming by shutting the cats away. Do you see? You probably can’t remember how your own minds worked when you were that small.”

  Jake couldn’t, but he remembered Granpa sitting in the lounge in the early morning telling a small boy a story about crocodiles.

  “My husband wanted to wallop her,” said Mrs Rankin. “Two of the cats had died, you see. But Mr Uttery talked him round and we took her to the circus instead, and I always give her a bit of a cuddle when she goes to bed and now far as I can see she’s as happy as a lark. Oh! There’s that dratted baby. I must run now. I do hope you find him, really I do.”

  “Mice!” growled Mr Smith. “Mice scuttle, that’s what A told him. Why yes, that’s what A told him.”

  “But there’s a sort which hop,” said Jake. “If the space between the floor-boards and the ceiling below is just right you get …”

  “And that’s what he told me!” interrupted Mr Smith, making it sound as though he’d scored another point in the argument by bei
ng told the same thing twice.

  They sat in his stuffy little front room. It smelt of dust and polish and coal. The chairs felt as though they weren’t often used—prickly and slightly dank. Mrs Smith, who had a creaking limp, had brought Mr Smith’s tea-tray in from the kitchen and gone away without saying anything, but the tea had included a plate of smoked haddock whose lively pungency cheered the glum air of the place. Mr Smith’s voice had the same effect. He sounded elderly and spoke with a real Newcastle accent, a twanging lilt with most of the sentences rising up the scale as if they were trying to become questions. Jake had heard snatches of this talk in the streets and had barely understood a word because of its quickness and its strange, hard vowels, but Mr Smith spoke it like an actor, as though everything he said was full of enormous interest which he wanted to share with his listeners. He was the security guard at the warehouse and had been sleeping most of the day.

  “What happened?” asked Martin impatiently.

  “Why, nothing,” said Mr Smith. “We sat up all night and not a footstep anywhere. Your Granddad said it was mice and our voices frightened them away, but A told him it was a ghost and the same applied. A got him there, didn’t A?”

  “Are you sure it was Granpa?” said Jake. “His name’s Mr Uttery.”

  “Why yes. That’s him.”

  “Only usually he doesn’t let people even whisper while he’s after one of his ghosts.”

  Mr Smith cackled.

  “There’s silence enough in the warehouse other nights,” he said. “A get sick of the sound of it. Why, yes, A got your Granddad gossiping soon enough. It’s only natural—a feller like him as doesn’t believe in ghosts and a feller like me as does, we’d want to talk it over, wouldn’t we? Talked all night, matter of fact. He knew a pile of good stories, spite of putting the wrong answers to most of ’em, and A told him two or three good ones back. A’ve got to keep my end up, haven’t A?”

  “What did you tell him?” asked Jake.

  “Did you tell him any new ones?” said Martin at the same instant. Both boys almost yelled their question.

  “Did A?” said Mr Smith triumphantly. “You ought to have seen him scribbling away in his little black notebook. Course, he knew already some of what A told him, but …”

  “Could you tell us the ones he wrote down?” said Martin.

  “Why yes,” said Mr Smith. “A’ll lend you my pen, young feller, if you want to write ’em down too.”

  “No, it’s all right,” said Martin. “Jake’ll remember.”

  Mr Smith grunted, accepting the fact as if it were one of his ghosts, strange but true.

  “Were they all in Newcastle?” asked Jake.

  “Why no. But all up this bit of the world, if you follow me. A told him about the Bandon Curse for a start, but he knew that one. Amazing how thorough he’d been into it, reading all the books and that. Said it was a pile of coincidences and half of ’em hadn’t happened either. Almost got me thinking there never was a curse at Bandon at all … Why yes, but he’d never heard of the Roman soldiers up on Sloughby. Sloughby Moor, that’s getting along twenty miles north of old Hadrian’s Wall. You get a lot of fogs up there, coming down sudden, catching hikers and such. Twice, far as A’ve heard tell, there’s been a man up on Sloughby when a fog come, and he’s lost the path and cast about to find it again. There’s bogs up on Sloughby too, deep enough for a horse and cart to founder in but looking like good firm ground—so these fellers A’m telling you of, when they heard shouts in the fog they’d make towards them, running a bit when they get nearer, and all of a sudden they see the Romans, nine or ten of ’em, wearing skirts and brass armour, drawn up in a ring back to back and staggering around and slashing with their swords like they were fighting, when all the time there’s nothing to fight but bits of mist. And then it comes on thick again, and the shouting stops, and when it clears there’s not a Roman to be seen.”

  He was a good story-teller, quiet but dramatic. No wonder Granpa had decided to chat with him rather than listen for hopping mice.

  “What do you think, Jake?” said Martin.

  “It’s his sort of thing, I suppose. At least it would be worth taking the bike up to Sloughby and asking the people who live round there …”

  “Live round there!” exclaimed Mr Smith. “Who’s going to live up on Sloughby, saving it’s a few grouse and ravens?”

  “I think Granpa would go and look, anyway,” said Jake. “What else did you tell him?”

  “Why yes, A told him about Penbottle Pele. You lads know what a Pele is, then?”

  “’Fraid not,” said Martin. Jake could hear that he was interested and excited by the feeling that they were making progress in their hunt, but at the same time irritated by having to listen to a lot of stories about ghosts and longing to get on the BMW and roar up to the moors.

  “A Pele’s sort of half way between a house and a fort,” said Mr Smith. “You see, for years and years those murdering Scotties would come raiding down across the border, burning what’d burn and stealing what’d steal. You’re a farmer, miles out from any walled town, so what do you do? You build your house like a fort, stone walls a yard thick, doors of four-inch oak, not a window less than twelve foot from the ground and those no bigger than a man can poke his head through. You have just the one big room downstairs and that’s your cattle-barn or byre, and you have steep little steps, like a ladder almost, running up the outside of the house to the rooms above where you live. So when the reivers come raiding you can shut your cows in the barn and your family and yourself in the upstairs. And the Scotties take a look at your Pele and go off to find a softer nut to crack, or failing that they get into your barn and drive your cows away, but they leave you and your kids unmurdered, not being worth the trouble. That’s a Pele.”

  “Did it always work?” asked Martin.

  “Why no. Maybe the Scotties would starve you out, or maybe they’d burn you out, but that’s not what happened at Penbottle. The Pele there belonged to a rich farmer, a sort of cousin of Lord Percy, A’ve heard it said, and he’d built it like a castle. One night when the Scotties came they battered at his door till morning without getting in while he mocked ’em from above. And the dawn came, and they started to skulk away, and the farmer took his cross-bow and shot at the last man and nailed him, and that man was first son of the chief of the Scotties. And when the second son saw his brother was dead he cried out a vengeance on the farmer, and the farmer laughed. But for all his mockery and laughter he was a careful man so he sent word of what had happened to his cousin Lord Percy, and next time the Scotties came he let ’em get into the barn, but it was full of Lord Percy’s soldiers and they killed almost every man of the Scotties, the chief’s second son among them. Now that chief had three sons, and the last of ’em had gone to soldier for the King of France. But when he heard of how his brothers had died he came travelling back through England, making out he was a Frenchie and peddling bits of silk and pretty trash. So in course of time he came to Penbottle Pele asking for shelter. A’ve forgotten to tell you this farmer had a wife … Why, don’t they say there’s more ways through a door than kicking it down? That third brother, he must have been a handsome lad, and known it. The farmer gave him supper, and by way of thanks he sang French songs at the hearth side, and gave the wife a fine silk scarf from Paris, and went his way in the morning … So there … Course, there were days when the farmer would have to travel to town, or to his cousin Lord Percy’s castle, and he’d come late home, and one such night he rode up the path and saw the lantern shining in his little window and the smoke going up from his chimney, silver in the moon … you go to Penbottle Pele on a night like that, young fellers, and maybe you’ll see …”

  Mr Smith stopped and coughed a little embarrassed cough. “It’s all right,” said Jake. “I know what you mean. Go on. What’d I see, supposing I could?”

  “Sorry, laddie, A got
carried away. There’s no roof to Penbottle Pele now, and no floors neither, only the four thick walls and the little stair leading up to the narrow doorway. But on a moonlit night a man who climbed the stair and looked through the door might see a woman opposite him. He might think she was standing, or maybe dancing, though there’s no floor to stand or dance on; and then he’d see that she wasn’t either, but she was hanging, not that there’s a beam to hang from. And he’d know that he was seeing just what that farmer saw before the Scotties cut him down, his own wife that had betrayed him hanging from the roof-beam in front of his own hearth.”

  There was a longish pause before Martin said, “Nasty,” and Jake said, “What did Granpa think?”

  “Questions, questions,” grumbled Mr Smith. “You’re as bad as he was. How did A learn the story? My grannie told me. How’d my grannie learn it? Her grannie told her.”

  “Granpa says you hardly ever find somebody who’s actually seen a ghost,” said Jake. “They always know somebody else who saw it, only that somebody’s dead or something.”

  “Obstinate old feller,” said Mr Smith. “That’s what he said when A told him about Annerton Dyke Mine. Coming from the south you won’t have heard of the Annerton Dyke Disaster.”

  “Can’t say I have,” said Martin.

  “Why yes,” said Mr Smith. “Annerton Dyke Disaster, 1837, and your granddad expects me to find someone still alive for him that was there!”

  “Is that a ghost too?” asked Jake.

  “Why no. Not a ghost exactly. Can’t say A know what it was. My grannie told me again, and that’s as good as you’ll get because her uncle Jack was the only one, man, woman or boy, to come out of the mine alive that day. Annerton Dyke, up beyond Alnwick. A don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s no good natural harbours between the Tyne and the Tweed, so to fetch their coal away the coalmasters had to make harbours. Why yes, even Blyth, that’s a made harbour. Annerton Dyke was a middling pit for those days. There was about a hundred men and women working it, right on the coast, with its own little harbour. There’d always been mining there, since Domesday. Why yes, Annerton’s in Domesday. Think of that! But at first they’d only drifted in from the cliff …”