The Beggar’s Curse - Ann Pilling

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made his preparations, he wasn’t born yesterday. He bellowed instructions to Harold and Frank Edge, then tore off to dial 999. Then he got into his brand-new car and backed it down his drive. Thank heaven my insurance is in order, he was thinking, as he ran back to the field. Let’s hope I won’t need it.

      But he hadn’t reckoned with the wind. It was sucking burning brands out of the fire and hurling them into the air. One of them landed on the garage roof, and it was timber. He rang the fire brigade again and told them things were getting out of hand. “Don’t worry, sir,” a calm country voice said on the end of the phone. “They’re on their way. They’ll be with you in five minutes.”

      Oliver, Colin and Prill were told to keep out of the way, with Posie. They stood back and watched, but it was no good telling the Edges what to do. They were all trying to help with the chain of buckets, but there were so many of them and it was so dark. All they succeeded in doing was wreaking havoc. Several buckets got spilt, a child was burned when something fell out of the fire, and Prill heard Sid arguing with his sister about who should help Uncle Frank as he beat at the flattened embers with a broom.

      “Sometimes I think that family can’t help it.” Molly’s words came back to Colin, as he watched their hopeless efforts. Were they really trying to help George Massey? Or were they deliberately being stupid? Half of him suspected that they were quite enjoying themselves, almost willing everything to go up in flames.

      The first call had been answered immediately, and an engine had been dispatched to Stang within minutes, tearing with screaming sirens down the misty April lanes. It wasn’t an easy village to find, but one man on board knew this part of Cheshire like the back of his hand and he guided them.

      But somehow the driver kept missing his way. Two miles out of Ranswick they got lost in a tangle of roads and had to turn back. Then they reached a dead end. “Road Up” one sign said, and another, “Road Closed, Due to Flooding”. The chief fireman was getting frantic because calls kept coming through on his radio. Where were they? Couldn’t they hurry up? Couldn’t honest ratepayers expect more than this from an emergency call? Were they making their wills?

      “This is beyond me,” the man at the wheel said dumbly, turning round yet again and tearing back up a hill. “It’s just like the war. It’s like the day they took all the signposts away because of Jerry.”

      It took them a good half-hour to find Stang, and when they arrived it was all over. The fence was gone, George Massey’s new double garage was a charred ruin, and his wife Brenda was weeping quietly at the kitchen table.

      If the Edges were hoping that George Massey would pack his bags and go, they must have been very disappointed the next morning. Colin could see him out of the bedroom window, clearing up last night’s debris quite cheerfully. It would take more than a fire to shift him. He’d never been happy with that garage anyway and he was already planning a new one, with a games room on top.

      Winnie Webster pedalled past on her bicycle and Colin heard them discussing the new costumes. “I’ve ordered the material,” she was saying to George, “and I’m going into Ranswick later to collect it. But surely, now. . .”

      “Don’t let’s discuss it out here, Winnie. Get them to send me the bill, as we agreed. See you at tonight’s rehearsal,” he called after her, as if nothing had happened.

      Colin got dressed and took Jessie out for a walk. Sid was lolling against Edge Brothers’ shop window, and inside Tony was serving someone with sausages. “Why aren’t you at school, Sid?” said Winnie. “You’ve not broken up yet, have you?”

      The boy gave a big sniff. “Coldansorethroat, miss,” he said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

      “Use your handkerchief, Sid. I suppose that means you’ll miss the rehearsal?”

      “Oh no, miss,” he replied, with another almighty sniff.

      “Go home to bed then,” she flung tartly over her shoulder, and pedalled away.

      Colin walked up the gloomy lane to Stang church. There was a feeble sun shining, but it didn’t feel much warmer. He might join the others in Molly’s studio when he got back; she was showing them how to throw pots. It was always warm in there, even when the kiln wasn’t on; the thick old walls obviously retained the heat. The poodles had discovered that too, and Dotty kept disappearing. Yesterday Molly had found her nesting in a box of jumble she’d left in there for the next church féte, and she was always climbing into drawers and hiding. Dotty was a good name for her; she had a screw loose.

      All the way to the church Colin kept stopping and looking round. He felt he was being followed. It was nothing he could see or hear, the only sound was his feet squelching through last year’s leaves; there was nothing but the damp, dripping lane, and the trees that clasped leafless hands over his head, stealing the light.

      He let Jessie off the lead and she went romping ahead and out of sight. The churchyard was very quiet. He looked round for the builders, but there was no sign of them. No sign either of whoever had followed him up the lane. No one there but the dead. He walked over to the bottom of the tower and peered up through the scaffolding. If he was going to be an archaeologist he’d have to get used to clambering about on old buildings. Anyway, he wasn’t chicken. Not like Oliver, who didn’t even like using lifts.

      He left Jessie snuffling about in the long grass and cautiously made his way up the first ladder to the top of the square tower. But he knew he couldn’t climb an inch higher. Over his head the thin steeple was bending horribly. Colin simply couldn’t look at it. Nausea and dizziness swept over him like a cold sea, and he made his way down again, blindly this time, hardly daring to open his eyes.

      Back on the level he sat down on a flat gravestone and wiped the sweat from his face. He felt so sick he couldn’t raise his face again to look at that awful tower. Then he heard something, a sliding, grinding noise from up above, and a loud rattling, as if someone was working ropes and pulleys. Everything started to move at once. The noises grew louder and louder, all merging together in one massive wave of sound, powerful enough to split an eardrum. The steeple was falling.

      “No, no,” he moaned, shaking his head wildly from side to side. But through closed eyes he could see everything, the crooked finger beckoning, lurching sideways, then crashing down and disappearing into huge clouds of rubble and dust, turning the enormous churchyard trees to matchwood. As it fell, the Edges, Wrights and Bovers leaped from their graves and ran shrieking down the sodden lane towards Blake’s Pit.

      Colin screamed and forced his eyelids open. A black shower of rooks flew up into the sky, but the tower, with its leaning steeple, was perfectly still. The builders’ tarpaulins flapped gently in the wind and in the grass at his feet lay Jessie. She was trying to bark but only made a pathetic little sound, like the mewing of a kitten, and one of her shaggy front paws had disappeared under a large piece of newly cut stone.

      He took her back to Elphins in the builder’s barrow. She was a heavy dog to lift, but he rolled her in somehow and set off. She didn’t struggle, or try to bite him, she just lay there in a heap, uttering dry little yelping sounds. Colin loved this dog. Rage and hatred welled up inside him towards whoever had done such a thing, but as he manoeuvred the barrow over the potholes his hot passions ebbed away, leaving him cold and numb. That stone hadn’t been aimed at Jessie at all; it had been meant for him.

      He tried to keep his eyes away from the sticky pink-and-white pulp that was the dog’s left paw. Her whole leg might be broken, and she might limp for ever. What use would that be to a creature like this? Colin couldn’t bear it. As he thought of her tearing across the fields on their long country walks at home, his eyes filled with tears. She’d be better dead.

      Who was responsible? His first thought was Sid Edge, but that was impossible. He’d climbed up the church tower as far as the base of the steeple, and seen the tiny platform constructed for the two stonemasons. There was no way Sid could

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