take. On top of a square, chubby tower there was an elegant steeple, but it was definitely crooked; in fact it was toppling to one side quite alarmingly, like the leaning tower of Pisa. The church was obviously under repair. There was a concrete mixer by the door, a litter of scaffolder’s poles, and some piles of newly cut sandstone blocks, all marked with numbers. A man in overalls climbed down a ladder to talk to him.
“Looks dreadful, doesn’t it?” he said with a grin. “Don’t worry, son, it won’t fall over.”
“Are you underpinning?” Colin asked, rather pleased with himself for knowing the right word.
“Oh no, now that really would mean rebuilding, digging into the foundations, and all that lark. No, the spire’s safe enough. They watch it, you know. Lots of buildings lean a bit, in Cheshire. It’s the old salt workings.”
“Yes, I know.” Cleverclogs Oliver had told them that.
“We’re just renewing some of the stonework on the tower. Some old woman died recently and left this place all her money. Good for trade, of course.” He started to go back up the ladder. “You could come up and have a look tomorrow, when the boss isn’t around,” he added in a whisper, pointing a finger heavenwards to a pair of legs.
“I might. . . Thanks,” Colin said. But as he watched the man crawling spider-like up the underside of the toppling spire he felt quite sick and closed his eyes. It was such a delicate steeple and it leaned so horribly. He could see the weight of the cheerful builder dragging the whole thing down. . .
For a while he wandered round the churchyard, looking at the graves. Everything was very overgrown; daffodils had speared up through the grass but they were still tightly closed, and the trees remained a sullen brown. How cold and damp it all was. He had no gloves, scarf, or hat. Just for once he quite envied Oliver all those winter woollies.
The graveyard was dominated by three names: Edge, Wright and Bover. Others had come and gone, but these families had obviously been around for centuries. There were dozens of Wrights, and about twenty Bovers, but the Edges outnumbered everyone else. It was as if they had a stranglehold on the village.
Colin noticed that several people in Stang had lived rather short lives. One stone marked the death of James Weaver in 1803 “Whom Neptune Deprived of Life”. He was only seventeen. There was an Isaac Bostock and his son Samuel who had both died “pitifully”, in a drowning accident. Where? Could it have been Blake’s Pit? But there was nothing to say. Most pathetic of all was the grave of the three Massey children, “tragically lost” on the night of April 21st 1853. How and why they were “lost” the crumbling headstone did not reveal.
The Edge clan, on the other hand, had obviously enjoyed rude health. They’d had large families and most of them had lived into ripe old age. This dank, cold village in the valley bottom obviously suited them perfectly.
At ten o’clock Oliver was walking towards Blake’s Pit with a Thermos flask under his arm. Molly had left it out for Rose to take to a sick old lady in the village. “Now I’ll leave it ready on the kitchen table,” she’d said last night. “Rose? Are you listening, dear? Don’t forget it, will you? Miss Brierley likes her drop of soup. Now don’t forget it, Rose.” But she had, and Oliver had found the red flask still on the table. He didn’t mind taking it to Miss Brierley’s cottage, he was quite used to old people, and they didn’t bother him in the way they seemed to bother his cousin Prill. She’d pulled a face when Molly suggested they might drop in on this old lady, now and again.
Her tiny cottage was called Blake’s End. It was easy to find because it was the very last house in the village. The only other place anywhere near it was an untidy farmhouse, with an ancient caravan in a field at the front. This was Pit Farm where Tony and Sid Edge lived with their parents and their sister Violet.
The caravan was apparently let to a family of cousins. It was moored at the edge of a great sea of rusting machinery, old radiators, car tyres, and lumps of old iron. Oliver walked past slowly, to get a good look. In a place like Stang there might be some old farming tools. There might even be a man trap. . .
As he lurked in the lane the caravan door opened and three small children sidled out to inspect him. They were pale-faced and doughy-looking, overweight and squat, a bit like puddings. They stared at Oliver, all in a row, like a set of small toby jugs.
But he wasn’t going to be put off by three little kids. In the long grass he could see something quite promising, a cruel-looking cutting instrument with spikes. He bent down to look at it but the Puddings never took their gaze off him. They followed every move he made with their hard little eyes. Then one of them yelled, “Mam! Mam!” and a face popped out from the doorway. “Keep your hands off that!” the woman shrieked. “This is private property. So clear off!”
Oliver grabbed his Thermos flask and fled, hardly daring to look up at the cheerless farmhouse where the Edges lived, and he didn’t stop running till he was outside Miss Brierley’s door, at Blake’s End.
Nobody answered his knock, so he just walked in. The old lady’s bed was in a corner under the window. She lay propped up on pillows but her eyes were shut, and her breathing was irregular and noisy. Rose Salt sat on a chair by the bed, reading slowly and carefully from a copy of The Times.
Oliver felt rather ashamed. She could read then, and with some expression and feeling. “Rose,” he whispered. “I’ve brought the soup from Molly. You left it behind.” Her sad brown eyes slid from the newsprint to the red flask, then to his face. She said nothing, only shook her head slightly, and went on reading. The Times was obviously Miss Brierley’s bedtime story. She was dozing off quite nicely now, and Rose was pleased.
Oliver walked slowly down the hill again, towards Blake’s Pit. The old woman was dying, he’d realised that the minute he entered the house. It wasn’t the smell, or the harsh breathing, or the papery chalk-white cheeks, or the lifeless hair. It was something in the air. Death waiting.
It didn’t worry him. Several of his mother’s old people had been carted off to hospital and never brought back. In time, others, equally old, had replaced them. That was life. But a death like this would upset Prill. She was a touchy, nervous kind of person, with too much imagination for her own good. Oliver hoped the old woman would hang on for a bit longer, at least till they all went home.
Her cottage was in a prime spot, with a perfect view of Blake’s Pit down below. Oliver hadn’t realised it was quite so big, and he’d forgotten how round it was. The still waters looked very broody and dark today; there was no sun, and rain was threatening. Black Pit was its original name, according to his father, and the locals said it was bottomless.
He shivered slightly, turned up his collar and headed for Elphins. He didn’t see the three twisted little faces peering at him through the dirty caravan window, or Sid and Violet Edge spying down on him from their upstairs landing, cracking jokes about his skinny little legs.
Prill had got up very late and spent the morning writing a letter to Angela Stringer. On their way up to Winnie Webster’s bungalow she dropped it in the letter box outside the Edges’ shop.
“Dear Angela,” she’d written. “We’re here, and guess what? I’ve won second prize in a competition. First prize – two weeks’ holiday in Stang, Second prize – three weeks’ holiday in Stang. Ha Ha, funny joke. Do you get the message? It’s awful. We’re all freezing to death in this house. Molly Bover’s quite nice, arty, but definitely rather vague, and forgets half you say. Someone lives in called Rose Salt. She cooks and cleans up, and looks a real weirdo. I should think she’s got no parents – Molly’s
