you wouldn’t expect Stang people to get a thing like that right, would you? Yes, the whole thing’s pagan really, and when you think how they make the horse’s head. . .”
“Yes, tell us about that,” Oliver said excitedly. It was in his book.
Winnie Webster looked at the three young faces, and paused. It was a bit gruesome, but today’s children seemed to like grisly things. “Well,” she began. “In the play the horse is called Old Hob, and they carry it round on a pole. It’s very important, the one thing they always keep. All the other props and costumes are replaced every seven years. Very wasteful I call it, but there you are. The old things are burned on a bonfire – just an excuse for a knees-up, in my opinion. It’s tonight actually. Did Molly mention it?”
“No,” Colin said. It sounded rather interesting. Perhaps they could go.
“Anyway, everything’s burned except this horse’s head. It’s a real one, boiled down and skinned. They fix wires to its jawbone and someone hides under a cloth and goes round snapping at the audience. The children adore it. Now that really is pre-Christian,” she said, looking at the girl. “It goes right back to horse worship, that does.”
Prill was feeling quite sick. She had just refused to think about a crowd of drunken villagers boiling a poor horse’s head in a great pot. Horses were marvellous creatures, there was a great dignity and peace about them. She could quite understand why, in ancient times, men had bowed down and worshipped them like gods.
“In the old days villages used to steal each other’s heads, apparently,” Winnie said dryly. “It was like robbing them of their magic power, you see. Just the kind of thing the Edge family would adore, I’ve no doubt,” she added, with a queer little laugh. But Prill had gone green.
“Fresh air,” Winnie announced briskly, realizing she’d said too much. “I’ll just put the spinach on, then we’ll go round the garden for five minutes.”
Spinach. Prill felt even worse.
The real inspection of the garden was postponed till after lunch. The meal was such a strange mixture of flavours, and involved so much hard chewing, that they all felt relieved to be out of the stuffy dining room and walking about in the fresh air. Porky Bover was still having trouble with his lawn mower, and he kept stopping to adjust it. The steeply sloping lawns didn’t make the grass very easy to cut, and Oliver couldn’t understand why he was doing it anyway. The turf hadn’t started to grow again yet, it was obviously taking its time. But then, it was so cold in Stang.
“Can’t seem to get the hang of this new mower, Miss Webster,” the fat boy shouted good-naturedly, as she led an expedition up the hill to look at the view. “It keeps stopping.”
“Well, it was you who complained about the old one, dear,” she called rather heartlessly. “Thought this was our answer. All these bits of lawn. All these slopes. Now, would your mother like some bedding plants when they’re ready? I’ll have plenty of spares.”
“You’ve got a good view of the lake, Miss Webster,” Oliver said politely. “As good as Miss Brierley’s.”
“A wee bit better if anything,” she said proudly. “No trees in the way on my side. Some people find it a bit depressing – Molly, for example. Now she wouldn’t give tuppence for this view. I just can’t persuade her to live down here. She doesn’t really like Blake’s Pit.”
“Why not?” Prill asked.
“Oh, that’s Molly; she’s a bit of a Romantic, you know. There’s supposed to be quite a big town at the bottom of it. Well, a city really. Someone did something terribly wicked once, and someone else put a curse on them, and in the middle of the night a flood rose up from nowhere and drowned everybody.”
“What a fantastic story,” thought Prill.
“Of course, if dear Molly knew her geography and her geology,” Winnie went on, a little peevishly, “she’d know that it couldn’t possibly be true.” And she delivered a short lecture about earth-mass, glaciers, and rock formations. She was almost as boring as Uncle Stanley.
Tea was threatened, but they were saved from it by Violet Edge who came wandering up the garden with some books under her arm. “Our Vi,” Winnie muttered under her breath. “Heavens, it’s nearly four o’clock. I’m supposed to be giving her an English lesson. O Level. A lost cause of course, but there we are. Come on, Violet,” she shouted down the slope. “My visitors are just leaving. Uncanny resemblance isn’t there?” she whispered in Colin’s ear, noticing his eyes fixed on Our Vi.
There was. The flat pasty face was that of a fifteen-year-old girl, but she had that same hard look, sullen and suspicious, and those awful burning eyes.
Just as they were going through the front gate Winnie came running out with a book in her hand. She was feeling guilty about snubbing Oliver. He’d been so interested in the play, and you really should encourage bright children, not fob them off with talk of old superstitions.
“Oliver,” she said. “You might like to read this. It’s not the text of the play, but it is quoted quite a lot.”
He took the small blue book, and read the title: The Stang Mumming Play, Origins and History. It was by Winifred B. Webster B.A. (Hons), Manchester. “Thank you,” he beamed, rather impressed. “I’ll read it, and bring it straight back.”
“No, that’s all right. But do look after it, Oliver. In fact, I’m not quite sure really. . .” and she put her hand out, almost as if she was going to snatch it back again.
“Why shouldn’t I read it?” Oliver said, hardening.
Winnie Webster said nothing for a minute, then she became cheerful and brisk again. But there was something forced in her manner now. “Well, quite. Why shouldn’t you? All this superstitious nonsense, all this secrecy. It’s ridiculous. Keep it at Molly’s though, dear, don’t take it round the village.” Don’t let the Edges see you with it was what she really meant.
Our Vi didn’t hear the conversation because the bungalow windows were all shut, but she certainly saw the book change hands, and as she sat waiting for her lesson an unpleasant smile was spreading slowly across her flat face.
Oliver tucked the book under his arm and followed Jessie along the lane. He was very thoughtful. Miss Webster’s crisp, no-nonsense manner hadn’t been at all convincing. It was as if, deep down, she was frightened of something. What on earth was it?
There had been no sign of a bonfire when they walked up to Winnie’s, but now the lanes were full of scurrying children lugging bits of dead tree up the hill, and rooting about in the hedges for branches and sticks. Rose Salt was there, helping some boys push an old pram full of rubbish. A loud argument was going on in the field next to George Massey’s new house; the Edges were building their fire there, and he said it was too close to his fence.
“You’ve got the whole field,” they heard. “Why build it here, for heaven’s sake?”
“Whole field’s no good,” Tony Edge said cheekily. “It’s all waterlogged, that’s what. This bit’s the only place we can build it. Any fool can see that.”
