My Friend Walter

  ‘I’m not an expert,’ said Father, ‘but it looks like it to me.’

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s more than one of them about,’ said the Inspector. ‘Chief Constable,’ he spoke slightly differently now, more pompously. ‘Chief Constable. It’s Davidson here, sir. Davidson, from Honiton. You’re not going to believe this sir, but we’ve found it . . . the golden orb sir, the Crown Jewel . . . yes, sir, it’s sitting on the desk right in front of me . . . Yes, sir, I am quite sure.’ He leaned forward and examined the orb. ‘No damage so far as I can see, sir . . . No, no jewels missing, don’t think so anyway. Looks good as new to me sir . . . Who found it? It’s a Mr Throckmorton sir . . . yes sir, it is an unusual name isn’t it? Out walking his dog he was . . . Lucky? I’ll say so sir. Trouble is I’ve got half the town outside the station, sir. Newspapers are probably on to it already, and television. I’ll need an armoured van and an escort to get it back to London, and more men. I’ll need more men on the ground.’ He looked at his wrist watch. ‘Very well sir, I’ll look after it until then. Yes, sir . . . Thank you, sir . . . Goodbye to you, sir.’ And he put the phone down, clasped his hands on his desk and looked directly at us. ‘Well, Mr Throckmorton, I think you are about to become a very famous person. You are all going to be more famous than you ever dreamed. If I’m not much mistaken, by tonight this town will be full of the world’s press and television.’

  Father was on his feet. ‘If it’s all the same to you Inspector, I think we’d better be getting home now. They’ll be wondering what’s happened to us. I mean, we were just taking the dog out for a ten-minute walk. Come on, you two, and bring Humph with you.’ Father bent over the golden orb and examined it fondly, almost as if he was saying goodbye to it. ‘Pretty isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Weighs a bit too, I can tell you. So that’s what ten million pounds looks like. Ah well, easy come, easy go, as Gran says.’ And he laughed and patted it affectionately.

  We were almost out of the door when the Inspector called us back. ‘Just a moment, Mr Throckmorton,’ he said. ‘Can we find you at the farm if we want you?’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ said Father. ‘We moved out today. We’re staying in town for a bit.’

  ‘What address?’ Inspector Davidson asked.

  Father thought for a bit and then looked at me for help.

  ‘Number twelve Huntley Gardens,’ I said.

  ‘Thing is, sir, we’ll need to know where to find you.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well it’s like this, sir – I was about to tell you before I phoned Headquarters. I was about to tell you about the reward.’

  ‘Reward?’ said Father.

  ‘Yes, Mr Throckmorton. They announced it this afternoon. There’s a reward for any information leading to the recovery of the orb. I’d say it’s highly likely you’d qualify for that reward, Mr Throckmorton. You or your dog anyway, and it’ll be a tidy sum, Mr Throckmorton.’

  ‘How tidy?’ Father asked, swallowing hard.

  ‘A quarter of a million.’

  ‘A quarter of a million pounds?’ asked Father.

  ‘That’s right sir. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,’ said the Inspector. Father reached for a nearby chair and clutched it to steady himself. ‘Could I have a cup of tea?’ he said. ‘I feel a bit weak.’

  Will and I looked across at each other and we both understood. I coughed twice, and then four times, but if Walter was in the room he wasn’t showing himself.

  ‘Walter Raleigh!’ Will shouted suddenly, and he threw his arms round Father’s neck and hugged him. Of course Humph began barking at that and chased his lead around and around until he pounced on it.

  ‘Pardon?’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Will recovered quickly. ‘It’s a sort of a new swear word, instead of the ones you aren’t allowed to say. You know, when you’re excited. You know. Walter Raleigh!’ He’d got a nerve, my brother.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said the Inspector. ‘Walter Raleigh! Rather good, that. Walter Raleigh! Haven’t heard that one before. Walter Raleigh! Rolls well off the tongue too . . . Walter Raleigh!’

  ‘Father,’ said Will pulling on his arm, ‘we can get ourselves our own farm now, can’t we? It’s what you always wanted.’

  ‘Don’t you go counting your chickens,’ said Father and he looked up at the Inspector. ‘So that’s why you asked whether there were any witnesses, Inspector? I mean, if I’d stolen it myself I’d know where to find it again, wouldn’t I, and then I could claim the reward couldn’t I? I didn’t steal it, Inspector.’ Father held up his hand. ‘Not guilty, Inspector, Scout’s honour.’

  ‘I didn’t think you did sir, not really. After all I was out at your place yesterday, the day of the robbery, looking for your daughter, wasn’t I? I was there when your runaway daughter phoned and I was there with you when you met her at the station. ‘Course –’ and he looked right at me – ‘Course, she could’ve done it and brought it back with her from London.’ And the two of them heaved with laughter at the thought of it. I managed a thin smile which was the best I could do under the circumstances. Will never even managed that much.

  We had a police car to drive us back to Aunty Ellie’s and it was just as well because they had to clear a path through the crowd outside to get us through. The hero of the hour – Humph – sat between Will and me in the back seat chewing his lead, oblivious to the cheering and clapping outside. I loved it, and so did Will. He couldn’t stop giggling all the way back to Aunty Ellie’s.

  Father broke the news beautifully, in such a matter-of-fact voice. He went into the hallway of the house and called them. He said he was sorry he’d been gone longer than expected but that Humph had just found the golden orb from the Crown Jewels in a hedgerow; and that was not all, he said, there could be a small reward too, just a quarter of a million pounds. There was a moment of hollow silence and then they all cried like babies. Some people are very strange.

  ‘See, I told you,’ said Gran wiping the tears off her cheeks. ‘I told you there’s a light at the end of every tunnel.’

  ‘Yes Gran,’ said Mother, ‘and age before beauty, and waste not want not, and a stitch in time saves nine, and where there’s a will there’s a way.’ And they all pointed at Will and laughed till they cried again.

  Within half an hour we were besieged in the house by reporters and television cameras. They photographed us for hours outside the front door under the bright lights they’d set up and we all had to cuddle Humph. (He couldn’t understand it – all this sudden affection.) Mother and Aunty Ellie had groomed him till he glistened so that he looked really quite presentable for his press conference. They tried to make him bark into the microphone, but he wouldn’t; and they asked us the same questions again and again and again. How old were we? Where did we got to school? What was it like to find the Crown Jewels? What was it like to be famous? And then the most common question of all: ‘What will you do with all the reward money Mr Throckmorton?’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll buy ourselves a farm,’ said Father. ‘We’d like a place of our own, wouldn’t we?’

  And that made the headlines in most of the papers the next day. ‘Gold sniffing sheepdog finds Crown Jewel in hedgerow. “We’ll be able to buy a farm of our own now,” says Farmer Throckmorton.’

  It was ten days before it all died down and we were left on our own again. They were ten days of endless visits to television and radio studios in London and Plymouth, where everyone smiled at us and gave us sweets, and Humph got brushed at least three times a day. Gran and Aunty Ellie had their hair done every single day. Mother hated it all, and said it was like being in a zoo, and if she had to answer any more questions she would scream.

  At school too we were celebrities. In Assembly one morning the headmaster called us both up to the platform and asked Will to tell everyone about it. (I don’t know why he didn’t ask me.) Will exaggerated – well he would, wouldn’t he? – especially the bit about how he’d seen the sack first and helped Humph to drag
it out of the hedgerow. Anyway they all cheered when he’d finished and I was surprised at how many new friends I suddenly had. Of course, my teacher launched us all into drawing pictures of the orb and Humph, and she picked out mine as being the best and the most brilliant (which it was) and pinned it up in the front hall of the school where only the best pictures go. Well, it should have been the best, shouldn’t it? After all, I had been closer to it than anyone else at school except Will, and he couldn’t paint to save his life.

  In all that time we never saw my friend Walter. Time and again we coughed for him, Will and I. We went out into the garden, we went into every room in the house. We went ‘around the block’ with Humph five or six times a day, and we coughed for him and we called him. He was nowhere; or if he was somewhere he wasn’t letting us know. We knew how much we owed him. He’d been right all along. Everything had turned out just as he’d said it would, and he hadn’t even given us the chance to say thank you. Besides there were a few things I still didn’t quite understand. Surely he wouldn’t just go off like that without saying goodbye. But as the days passed it certainly looked like it.

  Then something happened that gave us reason to believe that my friend Walter was still very much with us, and that he was still weaving his web – if you know what I mean. I never saw him myself, and neither did Will; but Mother did – though of course she didn’t know it. He’s a cunning old spider, my friend Walter.

  CHAPTER 11

  EVER SINCE FATHER TOLD THE WORLD HE WANTED to buy a farm the post box at Aunty Ellie’s had been full of letters from estate agents and farmers offering this farm or that for sale. Father didn’t like the look of any of them. He wanted a farm not too far away, a couple of hundred acres or more, and good buildings. He hadn’t liked anything he’d seen so far and he was becoming quite dispirited. Anyway, as Gran kept reminding us we mustn’t go putting the cart before the horse or start counting our chicks before they were hatched. After all, we hadn’t yet had the reward money.

  Then one Saturday morning Mother came back from the shops pushing Little Jim and running up the front path; going like a train she was. Now that was very unusual, because Mother would never run if she could possibly avoid it, and anyway she’d often told us never to run while we were pushing Little Jim in his pram. It was too dangerous, she’d said. She was all excited and couldn’t get her coat off before she told us. ‘I think I may have found the perfect place, dear,’ she said to Father who was still opening the pile of post in the kitchen. She sat down at the table and pushed the letters aside and went on, ‘You’ve got to listen. He said it’s only just come on to the market. Thatched house, couple of hundred good acres just like you wanted.’

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ said Father. ‘How d’you find out about it? Who told you?’

  ‘This man, this old man I met. He was sitting on the bench outside the church feeding the birds, and he said he recognised me from my picture in the newspapers. Strange-looking old man he was, kind of old-fashioned in a long black coat and a stick, but most polite. Anyway, he said he knew of a farm a few miles away which was up for sale. Good land, he said.’

  ‘Walter Raleigh!’ said Will. Mother looked at him somewhat bewildered. Father assured her that it was just a new-fangled expletive. ‘Instead of “Cripes”,’ he said.

  Mother seemed satisfied with that and went on, ‘Well, this old man, he told me he was born and brought up there. Best farm in the world, he said. Said we should go and look at it right away, soon as we could, before someone else snaps it up. He was such a sweet old man, dear. He said how we were such a fine-looking family, and he talked all about you two children.’ She turned to Will and me. ‘Y’know it was almost as if he knew you, the way he spoke about you. Uncanny it was. He said he’d like to think of you growing up on the same farm he’d grown up on. And then your children could stay there and then their children and then their children. He’d like that, he said. And then he just upped and went off. He had a terrible limp, poor old man.’

  ‘Did you get a name?’ asked Father.

  ‘He never said his name,’ said Mother. ‘I never asked.’

  ‘Not him. The farm, dear. What’s the farm called?’

  ‘Ooh, I’ve got that somewhere, I wrote it down. He made me write it down.’ And she fished in her shopping basket and pulled out an envelope. ‘I put it on the bottom of my shopping list. Where is it? Where is it? Ah, here it is. It’s called, let me see, I can’t read my own writing these days. It’s called Hayes Barton, near East Budleigh. Not far from the sea, he said.’

  I knew it. I knew it. I didn’t have to search the back of my brain. The moment Mother said the old man had been born there I knew the rest. So that was his plan. That had been his plan all along, to buy back his own birthplace, to keep it in the family.

  I thought it all out in the car on the way to Hayes Barton that afternoon. I thought back to the great family gathering Aunty Ellie had taken me to in that hotel by the Tower, how no one knew who had invited everyone. It was him, my friend Walter. It must have been. And hadn’t he said again and again how he would have his revenge, how he would take back what was rightly his? Hadn’t he promised me he would put his family back where they belong? But why me I wondered? There were lots of other relations at that party. Why had he chosen me?

  I knew before we ever saw Hayes Barton that Father and Mother would love the place on sight. And they did. I knew there would be room enough for Will and me, for Little Jim and Gran, and for Aunty Ellie when she came to stay; and there was. The fields and hills around were lush and green, even after a dry October. It was a fine farm, the best farm in the world, just like he’d told Mother.

  The owners weren’t there (they’d already left, it seemed); but we were shown round by a neighbouring farmer who said the house needed a lot doing to it. It looked wonderful to me, though I did see a lot of spiders in the bedrooms and one whopper in the bath that scurried down the plughole when Humph jumped up to look; but spiders apart it was as Mother had said, perfect. We walked the farm from end to end and Father seemed to like what he saw better and better with every stop.

  We were getting back into the car when the farmer led Father away by the elbow to speak to him confidentially. He didn’t take him far enough because I could hear every word he said, and so could Will – but then, of course we were listening rather hard. ‘Course I don’t want to put you off Mr Throckmorton, but there’s been talk, you know.’

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘Well,’ said the farmer whose flat tweed hat was so thick with age and sweat and dirt that it sat stiff as a board on his head. ‘I don’t like to say this, doesn’t seem fair to them that’s just left, but I got to be fair to you. You’re a farmer like myself. After all I’ve got no axe to grind, have I?’ His voice dropped even lower and he looked over his shoulder before he spoke again. ‘Well, you may not believe this, but it was the ghost that drove them off. They told me as much themselves.’

  ‘The ghost?’

  ‘It’s true, honest it is. It drove their tractors off. It left gates open. It started up the milking parlour in the middle of the night.’ Father laughed. ‘You can laugh, but they saw it.’

  ‘Saw it?’ said Father.

  The farmer nodded. ‘Headless, they said. It walked headless up and down the passage every night, moaning and groaning like goodness knows what. They couldn’t sleep, not a wink. Every night, it was. And it was him they said.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘That Walter Raleigh. He was born here you see. Lived here, he did. And in the end they chopped off his head. They said he’d come back to haunt the place.’

  Father roared with laughter and clapped the farmer on the shoulder. ‘I’ve heard some stories in my time,’ he said, ‘but that takes the biscuit.’

  The farmer looked a bit put out. ‘All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you, that’s all.’ Father turned away still laughing and got into the car.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Mothe
r asked.

  ‘He was rabbiting on about some ghost haunting the place – lot of old nonsense. Don’t believe in ghosts myself. Never have done. He probably wants the place for himself – good block of land next to his own, with a good house on it. He wants it for himself, the cunning old codger.’

  ‘Still,’ said Mother, ‘we’d better not say anything to Gran about it, had we? We don’t want her having one of her turns again, do we. Which room do you think she ought to have?’

  ‘Oh we’re taking it are we, then?’ said Father smiling. ‘We’re moving in, are we?’

  ‘Yes, we are, dear,’ said Mother. ‘You know we are. We all know we are, don’t we, children?’

  Father nodded slowly. ‘Do you think she’s right?’ he asked us.

  ‘Course,’ said Will.

  ‘And what do you say, Bess?’

  ‘I think . . .’ I said, ‘I think somehow we were meant to come here.’ And Little Jim seemed happy with the idea. He waved his soggy biscuit in the air and kicked his legs in delight.

  ‘Well, who am I to argue, then?’ said Father. ‘Of course there’ll be things I’ve got to look into first. So I’m not making any promises, but all being well I don’t see why we shouldn’t be moved in by Christmas.’

  A few miles later, after we’d all been quiet with our own thoughts, Father said suddenly, ‘You know the nicest thing about it all?’

  ‘What dear?’ said Mother.

  ‘Do you know who lived in that place years ago?’ Mother shook her head. ‘Sir Walter Raleigh,’ said Father.

  ‘Walter Raleigh?’ said Mother. ‘Isn’t he an ancestor of yours? I remember Gran said something about it once.’

  ‘Think so,’ said Father. ‘Strange how his name keeps cropping up.’ I could see him thinking about it, but he said no more.

  ‘Then we’ll be buying a place that belonged to your family hundreds of years ago, won’t we?’ said Mother. ‘I think that’s wonderful. It’s like Bess said, perhaps it was meant. Good thing I bumped into that old man outside the church. I wonder who on earth he was. Tell you one thing, I hope I bump into him again. We’ve got a lot to thank him for.’