The Beggar’s Curse. Ann Pilling

Oliver Wright.

      It was all a big mistake, and Prill blamed her father. He was an art teacher who really wanted to earn his living painting portraits, and when he got a chance to spend his Easter holiday doing a retired judge, up in Scotland, it sounded too good to be true.

      It was. There’d been a misunderstanding somewhere. The children liked the sound of the pine forest and the moors; there was even a river with salmon in it. But Judge Cameron’s last letter had ended with a firm “P.S.”: “By all means bring your small toddler, but we regret that we cannot accommodate the older children, or dogs, as we have dogs of our own.”

      Dad’s second plan had been to ask Grandma Blakeman over to “live in” for three weeks. But that fell through too. At the last minute she phoned to say she couldn’t come because the old friend she lived with had broken her hip and gone into hospital. Mr Blakeman was stuck. He couldn’t persuade Grandma to leave her little house locked up, she was too worried about burglars and burst water pipes, and besides, there were two cats to feed, not to mention all the hospital visits. But he didn’t want to give the portrait up, and he couldn’t really afford to.

      Then Oliver’s parents came to the rescue. Grandma spoke to Aunt Phyllis and Aunt Phyllis spoke to Uncle Stanley. Why didn’t Colin and Prill go to Cheshire for the holidays, with Oliver? He was going to stay with a relative called Molly Bover, who took paying guests and would be delighted to have all three of them. And it would be so nice for Oliver.

      “Here’s Uncle Stanley’s letter,” Prill said glumly. “And here’s the address. Use the back of the envelope.”

      Angela nibbled her pencil and copied carefully, “Miss Priscilla Blakeman, c/o Mrs Bover, Elphins, Stang, near Ranswick, Cheshire.” Colin had come into the kitchen and was reading the address over her shoulder.

      “I wonder who ‘Elphin’ was?” he said.

      “A saint.” (Well, Angela’s father was a vicar.)

      “Really? It sounds more like a goblin to me. And Stang Ugh, nothing very saintly about that. It’s a horrible name.”

      “It isn’t in the guidebooks,” said Prill. “Dad looked. So it can’t be very interesting. It looks quite pretty though, on these.”

      They spread Uncle Stanley’s postcards out on the kitchen table. They were brown and faded, and had a faintly musty smell, like everything he sent them. Oliver lived in a shabby London terrace overlooking the Thames, in a small flat on top of a tall, thin house occupied by elderly people in bedsitters. Aunt Phyllis, his mother, was the housekeeper. She cooked their meals, made them take their pills, and ruled them all with a rod of iron, including Oliver.

      “It’s very pretty,” Angela murmured. “It’s got a duck pond with real ducks. And look at those nice old cottages. . . and those are stocks, aren’t they? It’s quite oldey worldey. What are you moaning for? I wish I was having the last week of term off, to go on holiday.”

      But Colin had turned one of the postcards over, to examine the back. Suddenly he gave a loud snort. “Stang Village,” he read, “1938. These pictures are nearly fifty years old. Isn’t that typical! Oliver’s father’s really stingy you know, he’s probably been hanging on to these for years, ‘just in case’. Honestly.”

      “Those ducks have probably died of pollution by now,” Prill said gloomily. “There’ll be a motorway running through the middle, I expect, and they’ll have a petrol station, and a great big supermarket.”

      Angela laughed loudly. It was such a hearty cackle that even Prill smiled. Then she caught sight of the ironing board and pulled a face. “Oh heck, I promised Mum I’d have a go at that lot while she was out. She’s got to pack up the minute she gets back, and just look at it.”

      “It’s not too bad. You can just skim through it all, cut a few corners. . .”

      “Angela,” Prill shrieked, “we’re leaving home at eight tomorrow morning, and the ironing in that basket goes back to the ice age.”

      Euston Station was like Oxford Street on Christmas Eve, and the train was even worse. Half the people in London seemed to be trying to get on, shoving and pushing and wandering grumpily up and down, looking for seats. And to cap it all, The Blakemans were late. The train was so full the guard agreed to let them put their dog in his van. She was a large Irish setter, lovable but mad, and crowds excited her. They were still trying to settle her down with all the parcels and packages when the train left the platform, and she was barking furiously at whoever walked past.

      “Quiet girl, quiet,” coaxed Colin. He felt sorry for the poor dog, squashed in between two bicycles with nothing to lie on and nothing to eat. “Molly Bover must be OK,” he said to Prill. “She said she liked dogs, when she wrote to Dad. Gorgeous walks round the village she said, too. It could be all right.”

      Prill remembered the note, written on what looked like the back of a butcher’s bill, in the most beautiful, flowing handwriting. “Yes, she did sound nice. Not a bit like a relation of Oliver’s. Where is he by the way?”

      “Up at the front. In a reserved seat. I bet Aunt Phyllis got him to Euston at about five o’clock this morning. We’d better go and find him, I suppose.”

      They followed their parents down the train. Prill soon lost sight of her mother, but there was no danger of losing Alison, her little sister. She hated the jolting carriages, the noise, and the big sweaty faces thrust up against her as people squeezed past. She howled solidly till Mrs Blakeman found a spare seat and sank down into it with a sigh of relief.

      “I’ll take the kids up to Oliver,” Mr Blakeman said. “There might be a couple of spaces, you never know.”

      Alison bawled louder as Prill disappeared, and the sight of that crumpled little face made Prill want to bawl too. Her mother had told her to look on the bright side about this holiday. Alison had been a good baby but she was going downhill fast, and now she could walk nothing and nobody was safe. She broke things, pulled things apart, and yelled for hours when she couldn’t get her own way. Grandma said she was getting herself ready for the Terrible Twos.

      But Prill loved Alison. She was twelve and her sister was one, but they were friends. She’d much rather put up with a bit of howling and mess than be dumped in some lonely village all on their own for three weeks. Colin was OK, but Oliver. . .

      There he was, installed in his corner seat, with his neatly labelled suitcase in the rack over his head, a small packet of sandwiches on his knees, and his nose deep in a book. “Hi, Oll,” Colin said cheerfully.

      “Oh, hello. You made it then. Good job I kept these.” Across the aisle were two empty seats, one occupied by a yellow bobble hat, the other by an anorak.

      “Thanks, Oliver,” Mr Blakeman said. “That was clever of you.”

      “It wasn’t my idea,” the boy said coolly. “My mother did it. She knew you’d be late.”

      “Well, you saved our bacon anyway. I had visions of us all standing up for three and a half hours. Now I’m going back to your mother,” Mr Blakeman told Colin and Prill. “I’ll pop back, but you know we get off at Crewe, don’t you?”

      “Of course I do,” Oliver said quite irritably. “That’s where Molly’s picking us up.” And he pointedly turned the page of his book.

      Mr Blakeman vanished. The brother and sister exchanged looks, then they both glanced across at Oliver. “He’s not improved much, has he?” Prill whispered. “He looks as weedy as ever. And why does he always dress up for an antarctic expedition? It’s not that cold.”

      They hadn’t seen Oliver since last summer, but he was much the same; a bit taller perhaps, but still pale and droopy-looking and thin to the point of boniness. The glasses were new. Behind them his pale bulgy eyes gobbled up the print. They were large eyes, a curious washed-blue colour, with the hardest, coldest stare they had ever seen in anybody. “What are you reading, Oliver?”