‘They can’t,’ she said faintly. ‘They cannot do that. I must have him back with me. I must have him here.’ As she spoke she looked at the picture on the mantelpiece and I wondered about her son’s final resting place. If he were one of the thousands who lay somewhere in France in a row of graves, I could see why Buttercup’s news could cause such anguish.
‘It won’t be for long,’ I told her. ‘He’ll be brought back just as soon as can be. You’ll have him here before you know it.’
‘But they can’t… I don’t want them… interfering with -’ She stopped and her face suddenly drained of colour. For a moment I thought she was about to faint but she stayed upright, rigid and still, just her eyes darting around.
‘Don’t dwell on it,’ I said, thinking how unbearable it would be to imagine a post-mortem being carried out on a loved one. Mrs Dudgeon said nothing and did not seem to have heard me and, since Buttercup was jerking her head towards the door in a disgustingly unsubtle signal, I thought the best I could do was go. I gave a murmured goodbye, a last squeeze of her arm and quite a fierce look of my own at her friend, and we let ourselves out of the front door at last.
‘Phew,’ said Buttercup on the doorstep. I saw what she meant but hoped fervently that Mrs Dudgeon had not heard her.
As we made our way back to my motor car, the door of the other cottage opened and three little children – three of the redheads we had seen before – burst out and shot down the path overtaking us easily.
‘Wheesht yerselves,’ a voice hissed behind us, and we turned to see a girl with a baby on her hip and a toddler held firmly by the arm. She looked to be about twelve or thirteen, her own flaming red hair still loose down her back although she was well grown and strong. The toddler keened after its siblings, who were now vaulting or scaling the garden gate according to their age and agility and clustering around the Cowley.
‘Get away in the woods before you make a single sound now,’ their sister said, still in her stage whisper. ‘Or I’ll be after you and then you’ll be sorry.’ She turned to us and gave a sheepish half-bob. ‘I ken it looks bad,’ she said, ‘but I cannae keep the wee so-and-sos quiet another minute, and I thought it would be worse for Auntie Chrissie to hear them whining and bickering if I tried.’
‘Oh quite,’ I said. ‘One can’t stop children playing. I shouldn’t worry.’
The girl looked a little relieved as she hauled back the whimpering toddler and shut the door.
‘Missus! Missus!’ said the largest of the three children as we approached them. ‘Can we get a hurl in your wee car, missus?’ The other two joined in with the pleading; none too quietly and I could see their sister standing at the cottage window shaking her fist, although not liking to rap on the glass and cause a disturbance of her own.
‘Do you know who I am?’ said Buttercup, nonplussed I think by their complete lack of bashfulness, confronted by their liege lady.
‘Aye,’ said the smallest child, a girl whose copper-red hair and ice-blue eyes were ruined by a pink ribbon which clashed and by a runny nose. ‘You’re the wifie from the castle what’s married to a Red Indian.’
Buttercup hooted with laughter at this and so to get her, as much as to get the red-haired terrors, out of poor Mrs Dudgeon’s earshot, I opened the back door of the motor car and shooed them all inside.
They were momentarily awestruck by the wonder of its interior – as overwhelmed at finding themselves in my little Cowley as I should have been upon entering an aeroplane – and I managed to get the thing started, manoeuvre it around on the track and set off for home before they found voice again.
Around the first bend we passed a group of village women dressed in black, all ages, shapes and sizes and all carrying parcels.
‘Thank goodness,’ I said to Buttercup. ‘These must be the sisters at last. Now then, children, where are you off to? Where shall we let you down?’
‘We’re goan in the woods to kill the demon,’ was the startling answer from the youngest, which met with furious shushing from the others.
‘Shut up, Lila,’ said an elder brother. ‘We’re jist playing at monsters, missus, in the woods.’
‘You said we were gonny catch the d-’
‘Shut up, Lila,’ said big brother again. ‘Or we’ll drop you doon a shell hole for the ghostie soldiers to eat you.’
‘Good Lord in heaven,’ said Buttercup under her breath, and I quite agreed.
Soon we passed out of the trees and into the open parkland surrounding the new house, where I drew up and parked.
‘Out you get,’ I said. ‘Run around on the grass and play catch. Or hide and seek. And don’t put your little sister down holes. Now, off with you.’
‘I’m not sure I’d encourage them to rampage around the parkland,’ said Buttercup mildly as we watched them roar off.
‘Oh my dear, no, of course, I didn’t think,’ I said, ashamed of myself, for the various ragged little warriors of Gilverton do not have any such privilege. ‘Well, it’s a special case tonight, isn’t it? But if they keep at it you can tell Cad to buy some ornamental cows. Ones with great big horns. Or stags even.’
‘Who would you fancy, darling, between a poor defenceless cow and those savages?’ said Buttercup. We watched the children throw themselves into the ha-ha and emerge from it again on the other side, red hair almost pulsing with light as the setting sun caught it.
‘Very fair point,’ I said. ‘Do you think there really are shell holes? Has Cadwallader mentioned any?’
‘Oh Dandy,’ said Buttercup. ‘I think we can class the holes with the demons and the ghosties, don’t you?’
I shivered.
‘I’ve never known a place like it,’ I said. ‘Did I tell you? A child watching the greasy pole this evening – quite a tiny child – declared to all around that the Burry Man lived in the swamp and got to and from it on a ghostie pony. And the grown-ups simply laughed fondly and ignored it.’
‘The swamp I can see,’ said Buttercup. ‘I mean the Burry Man is rather fungal, isn’t he? But whence the ghost horse for him to ride on?’
‘Although, if you imagine riding in a suit of burrs,’ I said, ‘our side-saddle torments would be as nothing.’
Buttercup giggled along with me. ‘Yes, a ghost horse would be de rigueur, when you think about it.’
I quelled my laughter.
‘Rather nasty to be making jokes about it,’ I said. ‘We’re as bad as the children.’
‘Hm,’ said Buttercup. ‘Come on, I need another drink.’
‘Another drink?’ I said.
Buttercup giggled again.
‘Yes, Isobel and I did a bit of sampling while you were chatting to Mrs Dudgeon,’ she said.
‘Chatting! Buttercup, you’re impossible. And I’m surprised at “Isobel” too. A taste for strong drink is hardly the norm amongst her sort.’
‘Oh heavens, no,’ said Buttercup. ‘She stuck most resolutely to the tonic pick-me-up – apparently Mrs Murdoch’s bottles of tonic are quite renowned. But actually I’d have said, from the smell of it, that it could knock the cherry brandy into a cocked hat.’
‘Well, who knows,’ I said. ‘Friend Isobel can’t have got that complexion from barley water, can she?’
‘And there’s to be no escape from Ferry Fair day,’ said Buttercup as we reached the castle and ascended to its door, the engine whining slightly at the slope. ‘I must say Cad’s and my year in charge of the thing is hardly likely to go down in the annals as a classic!’
Shocking as it must sound, I too had been hoping that one faintly silver lining in the monstrous cloud of Robert Dudgeon’s death would be that festivities would be suspended as a mark of respect and I would thus be able to avoid the unwanted and unwelcome duty that hung over my head. Mrs Dudgeon’s stoic insistence that Robert would have wanted things to go ahead as usual, however, left me facing the bonny babies with nowhere to hide.