afterwards and helped to heave great branches about. The grumpy man who’d yelled at Colin from his bedroom window stood in the gateway and directed operations in a loud, harsh voice. This was Uncle Harold, brother of Uncle Frank. Together they ran the village stores, and they were also the stars of the play, according to Winnie.
“Seen enough?” Sid Edge bawled at Colin, who stood watching outside Molly’s. He turned, and walked up the garden path. The Edges weren’t doing anything constructive, they were just shifting their wood about six feet from the fence. That was no good. When darkness fell, and George Massey went indoors, he wouldn’t put it past them to creep out and move everything back to its original place. They were like that.
“How was Winnie?” Molly Bover asked them at tea. “Did she give you all a carrot juice cocktail?”
Colin and Prill exchanged embarrassed looks, but Oliver said, “Yes, it was awful. And the lunch was pretty awful, too. It tasted most peculiar.” He was totally unpredictable. In some moods he was maddeningly polite to grownups, at other times he said exactly what he thought. Aunt Phyllis wouldn’t approve, but Oliver was clearly enjoying a little taste of freedom.
Molly grinned. “Good old Winnie. I expect you’re all genned up now. I expect she gave you her lecture about Stang, and the play, and old Cheshire customs. Am I right?”
“Well, yes,” Oliver said slowly. “But I’m still not sure about Blake’s Pit.”
“What about it, dear?”
“She said it was supposed to have a town at the bottom, and that there was a curse on it. She said you knew all about it too, but that it was a load of old rubbish,” he ended tactlessly.
“Ah yes,” Molly said quietly. “Winnie rather likes that word. She just means an old poem, I think, one I’m rather fond of:
“He has cursed aloud that city proud,
He has cursed it in its pride;
He has cursed it into Semmerwater
Down the brant hillside;
He has cursed it into Semmerwater,
There to bide. . .”
Her voice was rich and deep, like a great river. What a pity women couldn’t be in this play, Prill thought. Molly would be marvellous.
Oliver had listened very carefully. “Semmerwater,” he said accusingly. “But what’s that got to do with it? It’s in Yorkshire. I’ve been. My father took me rowing on it.”
“Full marks, Oliver,” Molly said patiently, thinking that the persistent, pernickety Oliver was rather like a dentist’s drill. “But there are legends like that about lots of places, you know, with little variations. Didn’t your father tell you?”
“No. He’s not very keen on poetry.”
“Well, in the poem, a beggar is turned away from the gates of a great city, and he curses it. And the floods rise and drown everyone.”
“Yes, she told us that,” he said impatiently.
“And did she tell you that people have actually seen the city, shimmering through the water?”
“No, no she didn’t. I don’t think she likes poetry much either.”
“Ah well,” said Molly.
“King’s tower and queen’s bower,
And a mickle town and tall;
By glimmer of scale and gleam of fin
Folks have seen them all. . .”
The sheer music of it made Prill’s spine tingle. What a pity Molly Bover didn’t take them for poetry lessons. Their English teacher, old Mr Crockford, read things like that to them with all the feeling of an iron bar. “What about Stang, Molly?” she said.
“Well, nobody’s ever bothered to write a poem about Blake’s Pit, but it’s got the same kind of story attached to it, only in our version it was only the rich people who drowned. The beggar survived and prospered, and built another town by the lake. That’s one explanation of why Stang village is where it is. Old Stang’s under the water, and the oldest houses are just above it.”
“But I thought this house was the oldest in the village?” Oliver said.
“Oh no, dear, Pit Farm’s the oldest, and it’s the third house on that site, apparently. The Edges do go back a very long way, and I suppose when your name’s in the Doomsday Book you can afford to feel a bit superior.”
“They are awful though, Molly,” Colin said fiercely, thinking of Rose Salt weeping over her smashed eggs, and of Sid’s peals of laughter.
“Yes, they are. Sometimes, though, I get the feeling that wretched family just can’t help itself. They were born awkward, somehow.”
“Perhaps it was one of the Edges who cursed that palace into the pit,” Oliver said solemnly. “Perhaps they’re all descended from that old beggar.”
“They claim to be, as a matter of fact,” Molly murmured. “It’s a local tradition. No way of proving it, of course, but the Edges are quite proud of their ancestry. Most people would keep quiet about it, if someone way back had been responsible for a curse, but not that lot. . . Now,” she said briskly. “If you’re going to this bonfire, wrap up well – and keep an eye on Rose for me. She gets rather excited on these occasions.”
What she meant was that Rose Salt had a crush on Tony Edge. They could see her, standing in the shadows, peering at Uncle Harold as he poured petrol on the bonfire. She was still wearing her woolly pixie-hood and the long brown mack, and clinging on to her old shopping bag. Tony was surrounded by a group of giggling admirers. They watched him fit a big harness on to his shoulders, then slot a long pole into it, down a leather pouch, rather like a boy scout carrying a flag. Then he began to sway about, laughing and chasing after all the girls. The bonfire had blazed up already, and in the orange glare Prill saw the outline of a horse’s skull.
“Old Hob, Old Hob, Give him a tanner, give him a bob,” Tony was shouting, and lurching round the field, careering up to little knots of people who stood warming themselves at the fire. Oliver was fascinated by the horse, and stuck very close to it as Tony charged about, but it was too spooky for Prill.
The huge, grinning skull, hung with tattered ribbons, waved and dipped in the flickering light, and bonfire sparks showered up over it like gold rain. “Come on, Posie,” she whispered, skirting round the edge of the bonfire to avoid Tony and his horrible horse. “Your dad’s brought some sausages out. Should we have one?” Prill had acquired a little friend, George Massey’s two-year-old daughter. They had seen her that afternoon helping her father in the garden, and Prill had crossed the road to say hello.
She was the complete opposite of their small sister. Alison was solid and dark, with a red face, and charged about in a state of perpetual stickiness. This child was doll-like and fragile-looking, with a mass of curly blonde hair. Colin had christened her Goldilocks. Her mother Brenda was at home, trying to get Posie’s six-month-old brother Sam to sleep.
