My Friend Walter

  ‘Did you go to that party with Aunt Ellie?’ he asked after he’d finished telling me all about his camp.

  ‘Went to the Tower of London,’ I said.

  ‘See the Crown Jewels? Wicked, aren’t they?’

  ‘I saw the Bloody Tower,’ I said, ‘where Sir Walter Raleigh lived. He’s a distant relation of ours, you know.’

  ‘Relation?’

  ‘Ancestor then.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Aunty Ellie said, so did Miss Soper.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘Cousin of Aunty Ellie’s.’

  ‘I done him in history.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Walter Raleigh. When we did the Armada at school. Had his head cut off, didn’t he? Traitor, wasn’t he?’

  ‘No he wasn’t!’

  ‘Well they cut off his head, didn’t they? Must’ve done something wrong.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have done. He didn’t do anything wrong.’

  I might have said more than I meant to if the argument had had a chance to get going. But it didn’t. There were sudden loud voices downstairs in the kitchen. We looked at each other, Will and I. We could hear Father banging the table and shouting.

  ‘What’s up with them?’ Will asked. ‘Arguing about Gran are they?’

  It’s true that Gran was the only thing they ever argued about, and that was rare enough. ‘Don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Father’s not been like himself. Something’s wrong, I think, but I don’t know what.’ I had a sudden tickle in my throat, it must have been from the hay dust. I coughed twice. My blue elephant fell off the chest of drawers and landed at Will’s feet. I spoke without thinking. ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ I said, and then I clapped my hand to my mouth.

  ‘Didn’t mean what like what?’ Will asked as he picked up Elephant. ‘What are you on about?’ And he pulled Elephant’s trunk and tied it into a knot like he always did.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, bouncing out of bed and snatching it out of his hand. ‘Didn’t mean nothing.’ But Will was canny and he knew when I was lying. He always did.

  ‘You’re up to something, Bessy,’ he said, looking around him. ‘What little mystery have you been hatching up in here while I’ve been away?’

  ‘Nothing. Don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said and went towards the door. He stopped and sniffed the air. ‘Smells of tobacco in here. You been smoking, have you?’ I shook my head vigorously. He sniffed again. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘And there’s another thing, you’ve been down in my chemistry lab, haven’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Course I haven’t. I hate your smelly chemistry lab. Anyway I never go down the cellar. I’m frightened silly of the spiders. You know I am.’

  He seemed to accept that. ‘Well, someone’s been down there, that’s all I know,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been down there messing about. I know they have.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t me,’ I said, knowing quite well who it was. Who else could it have been? Will seemed satisfied with that and he went out leaving the door open. He always left my door open. I shut it and listened to be sure that he was gone. I coughed four times and nothing happened, not at first.

  ‘You there, Walter?’ I whispered. And he appeared just where I thought he was, sitting in my chair. He seemed to like my chair. ‘It was you wasn’t it? You’ve been down in his chemistry lab, haven’t you? Why? What for?’

  He held up his hands and chuckled. ‘I confess it freely, chick,’ he said. I liked it when he called me ‘chick’. ‘You must excuse me but I have a passion for a knowledge of science, and for chemistry in particular. I was a man of science in my lifetime and did many experiments with plants and herbs and, though I say it myself, I was not entirely unsuccessful. Science to me is like the world – there is much to explore, much to discover. One gains such a paltry slice of knowledge in just one lifetime.’ He bowed his head. ‘Your pardon cousin. Henceforth I shall not indulge myself without greater caution. That much I promise.’

  ‘It’s not going to be so easy now that Will’s back,’ I said. ‘And you’d better stop smoking in the house. He’s suspicious already. I know he is.’

  ‘If you say I must not, then I will not.’

  ‘He’s cunning as a weasel, eyes in the back of his head,’ I said.

  ‘What a weasel cannot see a weasel cannot catch,’ said Walter. ‘Do not trouble yourself, sweet Bess. All will be well.’

  But I knew my big brother Will a lot better than he did, and I wasn’t quite so sure.

  CHAPTER 4

  NOW THAT WILL WAS BACK HOME I SEEMED TO see less and less of my friend Walter. That’s not to say that he wasn’t there. He was, but not so often. Before he had stayed by me almost all day and every day. I only had to cough to be sure he was there. But more and more now my coughing signals brought no response and I began to wonder where he was and what he was doing on his own.

  It didn’t help that when he was with me we could no longer be sure of being alone anywhere. However hard we tried, Walter and I could not lose ourselves for very long. Somehow, wherever we went Will would appear sooner or later, and all too often he had caught me talking to myself, or so he thought. This everlasting game of hide-and-seek upset both Walter and me. Perhaps that was why he stayed away. I made every effort to winkle out of Walter what he did when he was alone – I was curious, that’s all – but the most he ever revealed was in these few cryptic words: ‘A ghost knows well enough how to pass the time,’ he said. ‘He’s had time enough to learn.’ And he said no more. However, I was to find out soon enough how my friend Walter was passing his time.

  One morning just before breakfast Will came storming into the kitchen waving his fishing rod like a weapon. He was crying with rage. ‘Who said you could borrow my rod?’ I gaped at him. He appealed to Mother. ‘Look what she’s gone and done. The line’s all caught up and the reel’s jammed.’

  ‘I never touched it,’ I protested. Right away I knew who the culprit was. ‘Honest I never. I haven’t been fishing since you came back.’

  ‘P’raps your father took it,’ said Mother, trying to calm the storm. ‘You’d better ask him before you go accusing your sister like that.’

  ‘I have asked him,’ Will shouted. ‘And he told me he’s been too busy to go anywhere near the river for weeks. It was you. Couldn’t be anyone else, could it?’ And he waved the rod in my face.

  ‘I never touched your silly rod,’ I screamed, knocking it aside. ‘Only that once while you were away. I didn’t think you’d mind, just once.’

  ‘I’m not talking about then, am I?’ Will said. ‘You messed up my rod, and you’re going to pay for it. The whole thing’s jammed solid.’

  At that very moment Gran came in from the pantry carrying a plate and on the plate were four gleaming silver trout. ‘Well someone’s been fishing,’ she said. ‘And I can tell you it’s not me. Fresh as daisies, these are. Found them on the kitchen table when I came down this morning. Straight out of the river, I’d say.’ She put the plate down on the table and wagged her finger at me. ‘I’ve told you before, Bess. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ And she had told me – often. It was one of her little sayings – Gran had hundreds of them and she trotted them out whenever she could.

  Father came in from milking and kicked off his boots by the door. ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ he said. ‘You two been at each other’s throats again?’ And Will told him the whole story and pointed in triumph to the plate of fish on the table. He picked it up and carried it across the kitchen and presented it to Father as evidence. ‘Sea trout again – couple of pounds each. Nice fish. Well?’ Father said, looking down at me. ‘What have you got to say to this, my girl? Could hardly catch ’em without a rod, could you?’ There was nothing for it but to confess. I made the best of it I could.

  ‘I thought you’d like the fish, that’s all,’ I cried. ‘You’re always saying money?
??s short and we’ve got to go careful, and so I thought I’d try and catch a few fish.’ And the tears flowed as freely as I could manage.

  ‘She didn’t mean any harm, Will,’ said Mother, putting her arm around me and drying my eyes with the dishcloth.

  ‘All right,’ said Will. ‘But she’s got to ask, that’s all, or get her own. What am I going to do about this line? I’ll never get it undone.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand with it later, Will,’ said Father, and he ruffled my hair. ‘You went out and caught these?’ he asked. ‘Last night?’ I nodded. ‘Should’ve been in bed, shouldn’t you?’ There was some consolation at least in the admiring look he gave me, but things were getting out of hand and I knew I’d have to speak to my friend Walter, and soon.

  I found him that evening out in Sally’s field. I’d been coughing for him everywhere, increasingly angry at the predicament he had landed me in. When I told him he just roared with laughter. ‘I commend you, Bess, for your quick wit,’ he said. And then he went on. ‘Did you see the moon last night, chick?’

  ‘I was asleep last night,’ I said, wondering what that had to do with anything.

  ‘Had you seen the moon, and the mist rising from the valley floor, you could not have stayed abed.’ Walter went on. ‘Fish rise on such a night, dearest cousin. I could not but go. And what a night it was, filled with the cries of owls and foxes, and the piping and splashing of otters. On such a night a soul can be at peace – even one such as mine.’

  ‘How did you mess up his reel?’ I asked.

  ‘Alas, I became entwined with an unfortunate overhanging branch,’ he said. ‘One of the perils of fishing at night. I did all I could, cousin. I climbed the tree to retrieve it, and that was no easy task for a ghost of my years. Despite my best endeavours however I ended up with a bird’s nest for a reel and had to come home. I ask you, what was I to do? Was I to leave the fish I had caught for the otters and the herons? I wanted to keep them for you, so that we might cook them again by the river as we did once before, remember? Would you scold me for that, dear cousin? I brought them back for you. I was in the kitchen with the fish laid out on the table and trying to unravel the infernal line, when the door opened.’

  ‘Gran?’

  He nodded. ‘She made at once for the stove to put on the kettle for her morning tea. She always rises with the birds for her cup of tea, and I had forgotten it. She took one look at the fish and straightway scooped them up and set about washing them and gutting them. I thought it best not to steal them away from under her nose. The shock of such a thing I thought might indeed have grave consequences. So there you have it all, cousin. I own the fault was mine, and if I have harmed you, dear Bess, then I beg you humbly to forgive your wretched cousin, who loves you tenderly and would have you love him as well.’ How could I be angry with him for long? ‘Am I forgiven, cousin?’

  ‘I suppose so, but we’d better not pinch his rod again, that’s all,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if I can borrow Father’s for you from time to time if you want. He likes me to go fishing – he won’t mind.’

  Walter became suddenly thoughtful. He looked out across the fields to the hills beyond and patted Sally’s neck. ‘I think I shall not be fishing for some time, cousin,’ he said. ‘There is somewhere I have to go. There is something that must be done.’

  ‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’ I asked, but he never replied. I thought he had not heard me. ‘Will you be gone for long?’ I asked.

  ‘Fear not, dear Bess,’ he said, putting his arm around me. ‘I shall be back and soon. You can count on it.’

  Looking back now I should have foreseen what would happen. The very next day Sally went missing. Gran was the last to see her. She had seen her first thing in the morning when she went to fill up her water bucket as usual. (Gran loved Sally, and in spite of her creaky knees always took it upon herself to look after Sally in the summer time. She said the regular exercise would do her good). I did not know anything about it until the afternoon when I came back from the dentist with Mother. There was a police car in the yard. Father broke the news. ‘Sally’s disappeared,’ he said. ‘She’s worth over a thousand pounds to me, that mare. It’s a sound fence, I tell you. She couldn’t have got out, not on her own. She’s been taken, I know she has.’

  ‘What, in broad daylight?’ said the policeman, who looked hot in his uniform and kept wiping his neck with his handkerchief. ‘Hardly likely, sir.’

  ‘There’s been no one here most of the day. Would’ve been easy,’ Father went on.

  ‘Well of course we’ll keep an eye out for her, sir,’ said the policeman, ‘but I think you’ll find she’ll come trotting up the road before the evening’s out. P’raps someone left the gate open.’ And everyone looked at Gran who was almost in tears.

  But Sally never did come home that evening, nor the next, nor the next. Of course I knew who’d taken her. I went out around the farm coughing for Walter. I even risked shouting for him. But I knew it was no good even as I was doing it. I went everywhere we’d been together, into the tractor sheds, down to the river, along the marsh field, into the meadow; but he’d gone and I knew well enough who he’d taken with him on his travels.

  No one actually blamed Gran, not in so many words, but the trouble was no one had seen a van or a horsebox coming up the farm lane that day and the field did not open out on to the road. It was difficult to see how Sally could have been stolen without someone seeing something, and if Sally had not been stolen, there could only be one other explanation. Somehow the gate must have been left open. But then, as Father said, someone must have shut it because he’d found the gate closed. Horses don’t shut gates after themselves, he said. He was still sure she’d been taken.

  But Gran blamed herself anyway, whatever anyone said. As the days passed and Sally didn’t come back she became more and more upset. Everyone tried to console her, even Father, and he wasn’t always that kind to Gran. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Gran, I know it wasn’t,’ I heard him tell her. ‘She’s been stolen, must’ve been: but you never know, they may still find her, she’s got a brand on her after all. Don’t you worry, Gran.’ But Gran shook her head and plunged deeper and deeper into silent misery. Aunty Ellie came in every day and sat by her to cheer her up, but that didn’t seem to help much. She wouldn’t even eat Aunty Ellie’s walnut cake – usually her favourite. She just didn’t seem interested in going on living.

  It was a fortnight later – the first day of the new school year, I remember – that Gran had one of her turns and the doctor was called out. He said that if she wasn’t any better by the next day then she’d have to go into hospital. That same evening after I’d had my tea I was out picking blackberries in Front Meadow and I heard a horse snorting. I turned around. Sally was standing under the shade of the chestnut tree at the bottom of her field. She was grazing peacefully and hardly bothered to look up as I approached. She had sweated up I noticed, but she was groomed nicely, and when I lifted her feet up I could see that they were picked clean. ‘Where have you been, Sally?’ I said.

  ‘With me,’ said a voice from behind. Walter was standing there leaning on his cane, a wicked half-smile on his face. ‘Well, dear cousin, are you not pleased to see me? Have you not missed me sorely?’

  My anger boiled instantly and explosively. ‘You steal my father’s horse. You go away for days and days without saying a word. Do you know what you’ve gone and done? You’ve nearly killed my Gran, that’s what you’ve done. She thought she’d left the gate open by mistake and let Sally out, and now she’s had one of her turns worrying about it. You don’t think! You don’t care about other people. It may just be a ghostly game to you and we may be just puppets you play with, but I’ll never speak to you again, never.’ I was steamed up and would not stop now. ‘They were right to cut off your head. They were. You can go back to your Bloody Tower and rot there for all I care.’ And I ran off.

  They thought I was crying with relief when I burst into the house and
told them about Sally. They came running out to see for themselves. Walter was nowhere to be seen as Sally came trotting over towards the house to greet us.

  But the glad news did not seem to help Gran. That evening she refused her supper again and turned her face to the wall. In the kitchen the five of us sat around the table – even Little Jim seemed quiet and dejected.

  ‘Can’t understand it,’ said Father, shaking his head. ‘A horse can’t just go off and come back like as if it’s been on holiday or something. Can’t understand it at all.’

  ‘You should shoot her,’ said Will vehemently.

  ‘Will!’ said Mother.

  ‘Well, if Gran dies it’ll be Sally that killed her,’ said Will, wiping away his tears with his grubby hands.

  ‘Wasn’t Sally’s fault,’ I said, before I could stop myself; and they all looked at me at once. I thought then of blurting the whole thing out, but they’d never have believed it anyway. Will would have scoffed at me and my Mother and Father would think it was just one of my stories; and it was true, I was always telling them stories. They never really believed them and I knew they didn’t, but I went on telling them just the same. I wasn’t a liar, exactly. I just liked making up stories, and this one they would certainly never believe, not in a million years. Well, who would?

  ‘If it wasn’t Sally that brought on her turn it would’ve been something else,’ said Mother. ‘The doctor says we had to expect this sometime. There’s no sense in getting all het up. She won’t die, Will. She’ll come through it, I know she will.’ She gripped Father’s hand on the table. ‘She will, won’t she?’ she said to him, and she buried her head in his shoulder. Father waved us out of the room and we went outside, Will still wiping his eyes. He put his arm around my shoulder. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘She’s got to be.’ I decided I quite liked my brother after all.