and Molly saved them from the vet’s needle! They obviously get on her nerves, but she felt sorry for them. ‘One of life’s nice people’, as your dad would say.
Everyone round here is either old or peculiar, or both. There’s a vile family called Edge that seems to rule the village and has a finger in every pie. Nobody likes them, not even Molly. Their Tony (18) is the local heart-throb. Honestly, you should just see him.
I am going riding by the way, Molly’s said she can fix it up for me. There are some horses in the village, three in a field just outside my bedroom window. But guess what? On closer inspection the one I really fancied turned out to be an old carthorse!
Now don’t forget to write.
In deepest gloom, Prill.”
It really was a masterpiece of spite, and Prill put it in the letter box feeling rather uncomfortable. She hoped the Reverend Stringer wouldn’t read it too. If he did, he’d probably drop straight on to his knees and start praying for her soul.
Winnie Webster must have been lying in wait for them behind her front door, because the minute they knocked it opened quickly and they were ushered inside. She talked non-stop as she drew up chairs and made them sit down in a small, crowded room. Jessie, curiously cowed by the atmosphere, came in rather unwillingly and slumped at Prill’s feet. But the minute she wagged her tail all the ornaments on the mantelpiece rattled.
“Oh dear,” Miss Webster said doubtfully. “I didn’t know you had a dog. I’m a cat person myself. Do you think—”
“I’ll take her outside,” Colin said abruptly, getting up. Nobody wanted Jessie in Stang; even Molly had forgotten she was coming. He felt rather depressed as he knotted her lead round the bars of the garden gate, and the odd cooking smells that issued from Winnie’s kitchen didn’t do much to cheer him up. Molly had warned them that she was rather keen on health foods, and it was hours since breakfast.
She gave them all a pre-lunch drink, with hard seeds at the bottom and what looked like dead leaves floating about on top. “Cinnamon,” she explained crisply, watching Prill trying to fish her bits out. “Nothing added. All freshly squeezed. Drink up now, lunch in twenty minutes.”
The three children swallowed the strange brew obediently. Winnie Webster was like that; very small, but with a hard steel core, bustling and energetic – a little human dynamo. She was also a mad keen gardener. Outside the window a plump young man in jeans was scratching his head over an obstinate lawn mower. “That’s Porky Bover,” she explained. “No, no relation to Molly, except way back. He’s my right hand in this great garden. A marvellous worker. Now then, let’s have a chat.”
But all they did was listen. Oliver had Winnie Webster taped in about two minutes. Women like her were always coming to see his mother. She was a Committee Lady. She went on and on about church fétes, and Christmas bazaars, and children’s pantomimes. Her life blood was in all this, now she’d retired from school teaching. But what she most wanted to talk about was the play. “You do know about it, of course?” she said, pausing only to draw breath before rushing on.
“Sort of,” said Colin, though all Molly had told them was that some of the men and boys in the village put a play on at Easter time. It was very ancient, something to do with St George and a lot of other knights. There was a great deal of fighting in it, but everyone made friends at the end. The dead men came back to life, and they all danced round together.
“King George actually,” corrected Winnie. “But yes, he’s a saint, of course. My dears, you wouldn’t believe the trouble I have every year with Stang Mummers.”
“Mummers?” Prill repeated. “Aren’t there any words?”
“Oh yes, pretty crude and simple they are too, like nursery rhymes really. But people still have trouble learning their lines, and of course the Edges are quite hopeless.”
“But I thought mumming meant miming?” Oliver said cleverly.
“Oh it does, and you’d expect it to be performed in silence, I know. Pity it’s not; I wouldn’t have quite so many problems then.”
“So who’s in the play?”
“Just the three old village families, the Wrights, the Bovers and the Edges, worst luck, and only the men. Women can’t take part. Porky’s always in it, he does the women. Oh, he doesn’t mind, he’s one of the more sensible members of the cast. Pity the others don’t copy.”
“I’d quite like to read it,” Oliver said. His father hadn’t told him much about this, and it sounded interesting. “Have you got a copy of the words?”
Winnie Webster hesitated. “Ye-es,” she said slowly. “But I can’t let you borrow it, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
A dark pink flush was creeping slowly over her cheeks. She looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Well, it’s silly really, but there are a lot of funny customs connected with this play. It’s been done for so many years, you see. Certain families always take certain parts, and everything’s got to happen in exactly the same way. One of the things they insist on is that only the players have the words. They think it’s bad luck if an outsider sees them, or a woman.”
“But you’re a woman,” Oliver said rudely. He was now determined to get his hands on it.
She laughed. “True, but I’m the producer, dear. If I wasn’t around they’d end up fighting. Anything that involves the Edge family is always impossible to organize. They’re so difficult, I just can’t tell you. And this year we’ve got another problem, we’ve no King George.”
She took a framed photograph down from the mantelpiece. “Dear Noel,” she murmured. “This is my nephew, Noel Wright. He’s a very distant cousin of yours, Oliver. Noel usually plays George, and he’s a splendid actor. But this year his company decided to send him to America for six months. Well, of course he couldn’t turn that down, not even for Stang Mummers, so I’ve asked young Mr Massey to do it.”
They all looked dutifully at the photograph. “Dear Noel” was a chinless wonder, with piggy little eyes, a spotted bow tie, and sleek hair parted down the middle. George Massey, a TV producer, who’d recently moved into a brand-new house opposite Elphins, just had to be an improvement. He’d waved to the children that morning as they came out of Molly’s gate, a big man, with a bushy blond beard, and a red T-shirt that said “Ranswick Thespians”. He was a very keen amateur actor.
“It should be a Wright really,” Winnie explained. “That’s what they’re all grumbling about. But no one will allow me to swap the parts round, or anything. They say it will ‘break the luck’, or some nonsense. Codswallop. So I said, ‘Look, it’s George Massey or nothing’. And they took it, would you believe? His name’s George, fortunately, and that seemed to persuade them. Oh, they are dense. I did point out that the man’s paying for the new costumes this year, so they can’t afford to offend him. He’s dying to be in it, and he’s very good.”
Prill wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of this play, with all this secrecy about the words, all this talk about “bad luck”, the fact that women couldn’t be in it, and all the squabbling. “It doesn’t sound
