Spring Comes to World's End Read online

  ‘Hubble, dubble, toil and bubble;

  Fire burn and clodrun dubble.’

  He chanted like the three witches in Macbeth, which he had been reading to Miss Cordelia Chattaway.

  ‘Eye of noot and toe of fog,

  Wool of bat and tunj of dog…

  For a charm or powful tubble,

  Like a hell-borth doil and dubble.’

  His twigs were damp, and the fire gave out more smoke than heat. Liza ran out and whipped Rodge’s clean shirts off the line with a foul oath. The eggs took about four hours to cook.

  Em shelled them and halved them, and scooped out the yolks and mashed them up with salt and pepper and curry powder and Worcestershire sauce, and put them back into the whites, and arranged them on one of Michael’s trays made from a picture frame, with a soppy picture called ‘Lover’s Vows’ still in it.

  Michael had ridden down to the village on Oliver to borrow a top hat from a friend of his who did conjuring tricks, to collect the money for the Musical Ride.

  He came back at a gallop, wearing the hat down over his ears and eyes.

  ‘Disaster has struck.’ He jumped off in the back garden, where they were collecting things to take to the Fayre. When he pushed back the hat, his eyes were round with horror under the straw-coloured fringe which he had cut across with the stable scissors, to match the style of Oliver’s forelock.

  ‘Uncle Rudolf and Aunt Val are here,’ he said. ‘I saw them come out of the Estate Agent’s.’

  ‘Oh no. Not today.’ Carrie couldn’t bear them today.

  ‘And worse.’ Michael’s voice dropped down to where his boots would be if he had not been barefoot. ‘Rose Harbottle is in the black car.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Em said. Tom would not let her swear, but he and Liza were on the Vicar’s lawn, helping to put up the stalls.

  Rose Arbuckle was Aunt Valentina’s drippy friend, a drag, a moaner, a failed person, who had once announced that she should have been drowned at birth. No one had disagreed.

  ‘Perhaps they won’t come here, if—’ Carrie started to say, when Aunt Val’s ringing ‘Yoo-hoo!’ sounded outside the front door. Lester took off. He always disappeared when Rudolf and Val came. They did not believe he existed.

  Everyone at World’s End used the back door into the kitchen. The front door had not been opened for weeks, and was stuck from the rain. They could hear Uncle Rudolf banging on it with the handle of his umbrella, and shouting, ‘Open up!’ He pounded with his fist, and finally kicked open the door with a splintering crash.

  Aunt Val went on a tour of the house, as if it was hers. Which it was, but it was none of her business whether beds were made or clothes hung up, or there was a baby caribou in the warm place by the chimney, or a sick rabbit in a shoe box on the sitting room mantelpiece.

  From her cries of, ‘Oh, disgusting!’ and, ‘Savages!’ and, ‘Living like pigs!’, and, ‘I am going mad!’, they could trace her passage through the house.

  She emerged from the back door as if she had come through a nasty experience, wrinkling up her painted face, and brushing off her clothes.

  ‘The sooner the better,’ she said to Uncle Rudolf. Sooner the better what? ‘It’s falling to pieces.’

  ‘Did you break down the door, Uncle Rhubarb?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Don’t call me that. It’s broken already. The whole thing will have to come down anyway, if the developer’s plans go through.’

  ‘What developer?’ Em asked.

  ‘What plans?’ Carrie asked.

  But Uncle Rudolf had turned away to poke his umbrella at a bulge in the hammock. The bulge was the black and white half Siamese cat, Paul. He jumped out with a yowl. Em picked him up and stood with her chin on his back, her vivid blue eyes glaring at Uncle Rudolf, as the cat’s green eyes glared.

  Aunt Valentina’s friend, Rose Arbuckle, who was always shedding bits of herself, hairpins, scarves, bracelets - she had lost her upper teeth once in Em’s marble cake - had stayed in the car to look for her gloves.

  She staggered round the side of the house in her tottery heels. ‘I’m such a nuisance. No one should wait for me.’ They hadn’t. ‘Don’t bother about me. Oh goodness, I’m nobody.’

  She fell into the ditch that Tom had dug at the end of the drainpipe, and stood with one leg in the muddy hole, wailing feebly.

  ‘Now you know what it’s like to have one leg shorter than the other,’ Michael said, as he helped to pull her out.

  ‘I know nothing,’ Rose lamented. ‘I never shall. I’ve been a nuisance all my life.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Aunt Valentina told her crossly.

  ‘You won’t believe me,’ Rose Arbuckle said. No one ever did. ‘But in the lane, I saw the most pitiful sight.’ The drop on the end of her long nose quivered with emotion. ‘I saw a man walking along, leading a poor blind dog.’

  Poor old Rose. She got everything backwards. She would put her shoes on the wrong feet if you didn’t watch her.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re here.’ Carrie ran to meet Wendy and Rodge, wearing his accordion slung round him, and squeezing out a little tootly tune as he came round the house. ‘I was terrified you’d miss the bus.’

  When she introduced him to Rudolf and Valentina, Aunt Val said, ‘Good morning,’ in her bad-smell voice for talking to hippies and weirdos, because Rodge wore a beard and a pair of bleached dungarees, patched by Em with daisies and Peace signs. ‘Is he blind?’ she whispered to Carrie.

  ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s deaf.’

  ‘Has he come to tune the piano?’ Aunt Val only knew of a few things that blind people could do.

  ‘And he’s not half-witted either,’ Carrie said, ‘so you don’t have to talk about him as if he wasn’t there.’

  ‘Look, it’s a guide dog!’ Rose Arbuckle clapped her hands, as if she had made a unique discovery. ‘Oh, look at the lovely doggie. I wish I was blind,’ she babbled to Rodge, who was blushing and stammering and being shy all over again, ‘so I could have one of those lovely doggies.’

  Poor old Rose.

  Sixteen

  Uncle Rudolf had come to tell them that he was sending a surveyor to World’s End to measure the land.

  ‘But you said you’d wait till Dad gets back,’ Carrie protested.

  ‘I said nothing of the kind. If the new by-pass goes through, a lot of people will want to move out this way, and I can’t afford to miss the market. Land to build on … little modern houses, roads … electricity … plumbing …’

  Carrie put her hands over her ears.

  ‘… street lights … petrol stations … a shopping centre…’

  It was Em who cut short the terrible words. Still clutching Paul, she stamped her feet in front of Uncle Rudolf, her wild curls on end and her eyes blazing.

  ‘You can’t!’ she shouted. ‘You can’t sell World’s End to anyone but Dad!’

  ‘My dear girl.’ He took a step backwards. ‘He could never pay my price.’

  ‘He’ll bring lots of money back,’ Em said. ‘And we’re all saving. I get jobs. And Tom and Liza work at night. And Michael’s got a million pennies from Miss Chattaway. And Carrie’s going to give a circus show at the Spring Fayre this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Aunt Val smiled. ‘I thought she was dressed like that because she had no other clothes.’ Carrie was wearing the Robin Hood costume. ‘Are you really going to perform in that ridiculous get-up?’

  Carrie had felt all right. Now she wanted to fall into the grass, and be swallowed up by the kindly earth for ever.

  ‘It really is rather pathetic, Rudolf,’ Aunt Val said, in the amused voice which was the nicest one she ever used for the children. These poor, absurd kids. I suppose we ought to run into Town and buy the girl a proper circus costume.’

  Carrie said, ‘No!’, which made Val say, ‘Yes, I think we should. Come on, Carrie.’

  ‘There’s no time.’ Carrie held back.

  ‘Yes there is. We’ll be back
long before afternoon.’

  Carrie didn’t want to go. But now she didn’t want to wear the Robin Hood costume. Aunt Val had laughed at it. She looked down at the droopy cloak, the holey, wrinkled tights.

  All right, it was ridiculous. She tore off the cloak and hung it on a tree. She threw the pointed hat into the hammock.

  ‘Come on then.’ She banged into the house to pull on a jersey and jeans, and went out to the car.

  It was like a nightmare. It was like one of those terrible dreams when you have to catch a train, and the more you hurry, the later you get.

  You can’t find your clothes. You can’t pack. You can’t find the way to the station. Hurry! Hurry! But you can’t run. You can’t walk. You can’t even lift your feet.

  Later and later and more and more desperate – you wake, and sink through the bed with relief that the dream was not true.

  But there was no waking from this.

  Carrie kept saying, ‘I’ll be late, I’ll be late for the show. Please let’s go back. Where’s Aunt Val? Oh, please—’

  After she bought the clown costume for Carrie, Aunt Val remembered all sorts of things she needed. She was in and out of half a dozen shops. ‘Stop here a minute, Rudolf. Shan’t be a sec. Plenty of time.’

  ‘Oh, please. Oh, please.’ Carrie’s nails were worn down to the quick. She flung herself about in the back of the car, chewing the ends of her hair.

  When Valentina was done at last, she and Rose Arbuckle were getting into the car. There was just enough time, if Uncle Rudolf drove like the wind, to get home, put on the clown costume, climb on to Roy and charge over to the churchyard. Rose Arbuckle tripped over the kerb, bumped her head on the car, and announced that she was dizzy and must go to a hotel and lie down.

  Take me home first,’ Carrie begged. I‘ve got to get home.’

  ‘How can you, child?’ Valentina turned round angrily from the front seat. ‘With poor Miss Arbuckle in such a state.’ (’Nothing but a drag … always my fault …’ from Rose’s corner of the back seat.)

  ‘But Aunt Val, I’ll be too late!’

  ‘You’re the most selfish, ungrateful child I ever met.’

  With a sob that had no tears, Carrie thought of Roy, of Rodge and the accordion, of Michael with the top hat, of the money. It was still a lovely day. There would be crowds…

  Uncle Rudolf stopped for a red light. Carrie opened the car door and jumped out.

  She heard Aunt Valentina’s cry of, ‘Come back!’ as she dodged across the road among the traffic, and ran, ran, through the Saturday shopping crowds, until her legs ached and her lungs were bursting in her chest.

  On the road towards home, she had run herself to a standstill. She turned and held up a thumb. A lorry stopped.

  ‘Bit young for hitching.’ The driver leaned out.

  ‘It’s an emergency, life or death.’

  ‘If you say so.’ He opened the door, and Carrie climbed into the cab.

  The driver wanted to chatter, but she could not talk. She sat with clenched hands, staring at the road, her chest heaving, her breath rasping, pushing the lorry forward with her will.

  The only thing she said was, ‘What’s the time?’ hoarsely, as the driver slowed to put her down at the crossroads.

  ‘Just after two.’

  Carrie and Roy were to start their show at two-thirty. It couldn’t be done. Too late, too late. But she trotted through the wood - it was as fast as her legs would go - rounded the corner, pushed open the white gate, and stumbled across the yard to the cart shed.

  The bars were down. Roy was not there.

  Carrie pulled on the baggy clown costume over her clothes, clambered through the gap in the wall, and trotted on, through the field, and down the path that led behind Mr Mismo’s farm, over the litter of the waste ground, over the stile, across Church Lane among the parked cars, and through the churchyard gate.

  As she ran between the graves, she saw the tops of the tents and the coloured flags on the vicarage lawn, saw a crowd at the fence, and some more people on this side of the open space of grass. Heard the accordion, heard Roy’s plodding hoofs, and the chink, jingle of the sleigh bells on his chest. Saw Lester - Lester who had so hated the idea of this - high in the air above the turned-up faces balancing and turning, his arms out like wings, his body in an old shirt and ragged shorts graceful as a flying bird on the back of the lolloping horse.

  As Carrie panted up behind the group of people who were watching from the churchyard, Lester did a jumping turn, not very well, and a man by the fence shouted, ‘Whoops - missed that one!’

  Lester’s face was set, his eyes fixed on space. He did not seem to hear. But then the man gave a big imbecile guffaw, and the girl with him let out a high-pitched mocking laugh.

  Lester paled, and gasped. In a flash of vision, as if she shared his memory, Carrie saw him in that other circus life, shambling, bewildered.

  They laughed at me, because I couldn’t do the tricks …

  His foot slipped. He lost his balance, clutched at air and fell, while women shrieked, and Roy went cantering obediently on.

  ‘Get a doctor!’

  The gay accordion music stopped. Carrie heard Rodge ask, ‘What’s happened?’

  She pushed through the crowd that had collected at once, like flies. Lester was sitting on the ground with his face twisted, holding his arm and saying, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’

  ‘Is it?’ Carrie knelt down. The arm was limp and strange.

  ‘No.’ He looked at her. ‘Sorry I messed up the show.’

  ‘But you did it,’ she whispered. ‘You did it for me.’

  ‘I was up in the hammock tree, and I heard—’ he winced

  —’I heard Rudolf say … about World’s End. Street lights, plumbing, petrol stations … I did it for World’s End.’

  When Liza had taken Lester off to the doctor in someone’s car, Carrie went to the fence to see how much money Michael had collected in the hat.

  ‘Why are you dressed like that?’ he asked her.

  ‘Like what?’ She looked down. She had forgotten that she was wearing the baggy clown costume, red and white, with ruffles at the wrists and ankles. It looked just as silly as the Robin Hood outfit.

  Michael stood on tiptoe to pass the hat over the fence. In it, there was two pounds and fifty-six pence, in various coins, a brazil nut, and a plastic badge that said, ‘Say Hullo to a Green Plant Today.’

  Seventeen

  That night, Carrie and John and Roy went up to the Star to talk it over with the Little Learned Military Horse.

  Because he was a nice friendly little horse, he didn’t say, ‘It was silly to try it. It takes years to make a bareback rider.’ He was clever enough to understand why people do the things they do.

  ‘Horsey people boast that they understand horses,’ he said in his funny little precise voice, like a professor. ‘But much of the time when the training goes well, it’s because the horses understand the people.’

  ‘Did you understand why I took you into the Junior Jumping at that show?’ Carrie asked John.

  ‘Because you wanted to win, wasn’t it? And we would have, if—’

  ‘Never mind that.’ Carrie put her arms round his head, to hush him. Everybody on the Star didn’t have to know that she had chucked him in the mouth at the triple bar, and wrecked the whole thing.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ Roy sometimes used the French of his ancestors, ‘but some people take a bit of understanding, you know. ‘I had a groom once, very careless, he used to leave the hay fork in the stable, with the prongs up. Mr Rosinella - he was alive then - he used to rave at him that I would step on it and hurt myself.

  ‘“What a stupid fuss,” the groom used to shove me around when the boss wasn’t looking, “over a great ugly brute like you.”’

  ‘But one day, he stepped on the fork himself, and you could hear him yell for miles. Laugh!’ Roy swung his head up and down, with his deep, throaty chuckle. Little Learned giggl
ed, and flicked his curved ears. John snorted.

  As Roy moved off to get a drink at the stream, Learned called after him, ‘That right fore looks a bit worse.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Roy tried not to favour it, but Carrie had seen, as he stepped through the wet ground near the bank, that he was rather lame.

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to perform.’ She went after him.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He looked back over his shoulder. ‘Touch of gout. Just old age, my dear.’

  He dropped his grey head to drink. On the earth, a drinking horse is instinctively nervous, ears going back and forth, ready to flee if an enemy tries to catch him off guard. On the Star, there were no enemies.

  Carrie put a hand on the softest of all places, the little whirl of hair between the ear and the top of the head.

  ‘You’re not old,’ she said. ‘You’re in your prime.’

  On the Star, it was always light, because nobody needed to waste time sleeping. As Carrie and John and Roy went slowly down towards the darkling earth, Roy did not try to disguise his slight lameness, and Carrie said, ‘Even though you’re not old, I won’t ask you to work any more.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. He was the politest horse she had ever known. Most horses will step on your toe if you are not careful. Roy would move his big feet carefully out of your way. ‘That would be very nice, if it’s all the same to you, Miss Carrie.’

  John called her She. That was the name he called when he came to her window at night.

  Roy continued to call her Miss Carrie, a little bit formal, very polite.

  Next day, the postman stopped his van in the lane, and blared his horn. Since Gilbert had moved in, he would not get out of the van.

  ‘It looks like a wolf,’ he complained, when Carrie and Michael and Gilbert bounded down the millstone path.

  ‘But a wolf,’ Carrie informed him, ‘has a narrower chest and a turned-in elbow. That’s how you can tell it from a dog.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ The postman handed out a postcard, and rolled up the van window, just as Gilbert rose up, slavering amiably, to put his paws inside.