Babs Horton - Wildcat Moon

Babs Horton

Wildcat Moon

2006

The Skallies, a row of tumbledown houses built on the windlashed coast, was a wild and curious place. A place for people down on their luck. A place where people went to hide. Ten-year-old Archie Grimble, with his crippled leg and one good eye, lived a miserable existence there until a chance encounter with an unhappy little girl and the discovery of a secret diary set him on a mission to unravel the mystery of a boy who drowned off Skilly Point in August, 1900. But Archies investigation was to have unexpected consequences. A shocking murder and an unexplained abduction were to shatter his exciting new world forever. Only many years later, on his return to the ruined Skallies, does Archie stumble on the final pieces of a puzzle that has haunted him since childhoodand the extraordinary truth about the death of Thomas Greswode is at last revealed.

DECEMBER 1959

C lementine Fernaud arrived at Paddington Station, bought her ticket and asked a porter which platform she needed for the train to St Werburghs. He pointed her in the right direction with barely a glance at the matronly woman before him.

She stood alone, not seeking to make conversation with other waiting passengers, keeping a watchful eye out; she didnt want anyone spotting her and ruining her plans, though she was sure that no one from her past life would recognize her dressed as she was.

Soon she would be safely out of London and on her way to her new post as a governess. She smiled wryly and stamped her feet to keep warm. Imagine! Clementine Fernaud a governess!

At least no one would think of looking for her in an isolated country house. How her old friends and acquaintances would laugh if they knew what she was up to. The idea to apply for such a job had been a stroke of genius. She had been shown the advertisement placed in The Times on the same day as her own photograph had appeared on the front page. Both started with the word WANTED!

Wanted. Governess to teach ten-year-old girl, French speaker preferred. Large country house close to the coast Immediate start. Good references required.

The wages offered were excellent and accommodation and food were provided. But she was hardly governess material, was she? She was well educated and trilingual, but she was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the serious studious type! She could think of nothing worse than being cooped up in a schoolroom with a bore of a girl.

Still, it would only be for a few months and when the fuss had died down shed be able to go back to France, or Italy perhaps, and make a new life for herself somewhere she was not known.

She looked down at her clothes and grimaced. These sensible lace-up shoes were just too terrible. And the thick brown stockings quite disgusting! The dull grey costume shed bought was drab to the point of being mannish. And her hair! Mother of God! It was changed beyond all recognition. Gone were the stylish golden curls, replaced by a neat grey bun coiled on the back of her head. The round spectacles gave her an air of bookishness, making her look very prim indeed. Why, if she had a best friend who was to pass by now she would not recognize the vivacious and fun-loving girl of her past.

Shed been amazed at how easily she had fooled the woman from the agency. Miss Vera Truscott had seemed perfectly happy with her and not glanced twice at the forged documents. She had telephoned straight away to a Mr Greswode and on Miss Truscotfs recommendation he had offered Clementine the job there and then.

Tonight she would break her journey in a small hotel near Reading and tomorrow take the train to her destination. She was to arrive at St Werburghs Station in the early afternoon and a car was being sent to pick her up and take her to Killivray House near the village of Rhoskilly.

She smoked a cigarette with enjoyment then picked up her valise and boarded the train.

No one could remember how the Skallies got its name, or the name of the lunatic who built Hogwash House on the shelf of rock above the beach at East Skilly.

Legend had it that it was a ragged-arsed Spaniard washed up from the sinking Armada who didnt have the strength to make it as far as Rhoskilly village. Yet this first house was followed by another and another until there were seven ramshackle houses huddled together in what became known as Bloater Row.

It was an inhospitable, unsheltered spot and the winds that blew in from the worrisome sea whipped sand into every widening crack and crevice of the Skallies.

Bag End, the Peapods, Skibbereen and the Grockles faced the sea and took the worst battering and in winter, when the storms came, the waves hit the base of the rock and the spray went up over the roofs trapping all but the foolish inside.

On the right of Bloater Row, backed up against the crumbling rock face, were Hogwash House, Periwinkle House and Cuckoos Nest.

There was a small inn called the Pilchard with porthole windows and a cellar where old bones were buried. And at the furthest point towards Skilly Beach there was a windblown wobbly chapel with a round window fashioned from fragments of glass washed up from the sea.

It was a wild, curious place inhabited by misfits and cripples, foul-mouthed women, talking parrots and wildcats. There were halfwits and Irish tinkers, and an army of bright-eyed kids and toddlers with nits and sharp teeth. A place where, when a house was suddenly deserted, someone miraculously drifted in from somewhere else to take their place.

The sun died and darkness came down swiftly over the Skallies. A frosty-lipped wind blew in from the sea sucking wisps of smoke from the chimneys of the houses in Bloater Row and making the wildcats yowl in the backyard of the Pilchard Inn.

Up in his low-beamed bedroom in Bag End Archie Grimble lit a greasy candle stub and placed it on the battered chest of drawers near the door.

He watched as the darkness weakened around the edges of the room. A whisper of light flickered across the curled-up picture of the Virgin Mary that was hung above the wash-stand and her eyes blinked as though she was waking from a long, deep sleep.

The growing light showed a small iron bed with blurred edges, a frayed rug on the bare boards and Archies own stooped shadow looming on the far wall.

Archie stood in front of the ancient wardrobe mirror and looked at his wobbling reflection in the mottled glass. His pale, bespectacled face stared forlornly back at him, and from behind his round, pink-rimmed National Health spectacles, his lazy eye flickered nervously. The other eye was hidden behind a lens covered with sticking plaster.

One-eyed Willy the other kids called him.

Cripple.

Stickman.

He pulled up his faded grey shirt, tried to puff out his belly and failed miserably.

He had a chest like a collapsed washing board. Tin ribs you could play a tune on.

He turned away from the mirror and glanced over his shoulder.

Jesus! Look at the state of him. The rag-and-bone man wouldnt give a balloon for him.

He had shoulder bones like angel wings. Legs thin as a chickens poking out of his frayed shorts. His even skinnier left leg caged in an ugly metal calliper.

No wonder the other kids took the mickey.

Peg leg!

Peg leg!

He looked like one of the sad-faced collecting boxes that stood outside chemist shops, chalk-faced statue boys with a box at their feet in which to collect pennies and halfpennies.

He clenched his small fists in anger. He hated his bad eyes and his gammy leg, hated the bloody limp and the way it made him walk like an old codger.