10 THE LAST STAND
THE DIGGER ENGINES HAD TO BE STRIPPED down, cleaned and reassembled. Jack went down to the quay after school each day to watch the mechanics at work. There were rumours, he said with a wicked smile on his face, that some ‘bits’ had mysteriously gone missing. But in the end, as Jack had predicted, their jubilation was to be short-lived. The missing parts were being helicoptered in from the mainland. The diggers would soon be on the move again.
The children were in school on the Wednesday morning when it happened and, much to Mrs Burke’s annoyance, they all ran to the windows to look as the helicopter flew low overhead. That was just before lunch. She was still trying to settle them down to work after afternoon playtime when some of the children began to hear a rumbling, like distant thunder. For some time Mrs Burke managed to keep them at their desks. But when Father Gerald was seen hurrying along the school lane, then everyone was at the windows again, necks craning, and there was nothing more she could do about it. The diggers were on their way. They could see them now. The roar of the engines was rattling the windows, and the classroom itself seemed to be throbbing and pulsating, so much so that Jessie had to clap her hands over her ears to stop them hurting.
She was the only one who stayed behind in her place. She did not need to see. She did not want to see. She looked up out of the window at the Big Hill, and through the mist of her tears she thought she saw someone standing there, right at the very top. She went over to the window. The figure was still there, and beckoning her. She knew at once who it was, and she knew at once what she had to do. She blinked her eyes to rid them of the tears, to see better. When she looked again, there was no one up there.
By this time, every child was fighting for a place at the playground fence. Mrs Burke couldn’t stop them, and Miss Jefferson didn’t want to – she was too excited herself. It was Liam who opened the gate, and then they were all running down past the abbey ruins towards the road. There they were, all four giant Earthbusters trundling towards them along the coast road, a yellow convoy, billowing black smoke, orange lights flashing; and behind them a long line of Land-Rovers and pick-ups. In the fields on either side, the sheep scattered in terror, blundering into each other in their panic.
The children just stood and gaped, flailing at the pungent exhaust smoke and turning away to cough. Then Marion Murphy began to wave and cheer, and very soon they were all at it, all except Jack who had noticed by now that Jessie was not there. He went back inside the school to look for her and found her still standing by the window, still gazing out. She turned as she felt him behind her.
‘It’s what Mum always said,’ she said. ‘Ever since this thing with the Big Hill began, she’s always said it. You want something badly enough, then you’ve got to do it yourself. No use waiting for someone else to do it for you. You believe in something, then sometimes you’ve got to fight for your beliefs, you’ve got to fight for what you care about, like Grania O’Malley did, like you did when you fixed their diggers. Well, now it’s my turn.’
‘What do you mean?’ Jack asked.
‘I thought Grania O’Malley would do it for us, but I was wrong. Maybe she’s done all she could, maybe now she wants us to help ourselves. So that’s what I’m going to do, help myself.’
She fetched her coat and bag from her hook and then called to him across the classroom. ‘You coming?’
‘You can’t just cut school.’
Jessie looked around her and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, everyone else has,’ she said. ‘Come on. We’ve got to hurry. We’ll go across the fields. We can still get there before they do.’
Jack helped her through the fence at the back of the school and then over the ditch at the bottom of Miss Jefferson’s wild-flower meadow. Once into the bracken beyond, they were on the track that would take them around the bottom of the Big Hill towards Mister Barney’s shack. Jessie led the way, fending off Jack’s questions with the same grim determination that drove her tottering legs. She would need all the energy she could muster, all the breath in her body. She could spare none for talking. All the while they could hear the rumble of the convoy as it wound its way out of sight, up the hill past the abbey ruins. Jessie could see them in her mind’s eye coming up the road past the end of the farm lane. Panda would be going berserk. She smiled as she thought of him trying to sink his teeth into one of those gigantic digger tyres.
‘Jess, what’s happening?’ Jack was asking again, for the umpteenth time. ‘Where are we going?’ But she hardly heard him. Her eyes were focused on the ground at her feet. She had to be sure she did not trip. Her heart and her mind were fixed on her plan. It might take fifty days. Fifty days, she’d heard somewhere, was about as long as you could go without food. You had to have water, but there was lots of water where she was going.
Without warning, her knees buckled and then she was struggling to get up. Jack was there, arms under her shoulders, helping her to her feet, then holding her steady. Cross with herself, she shook herself free of him and staggered on. Brambles tugged at her coat, tore at her neck. She bobbed and weaved, trying to dodge them and duck them. She coughed out a fly that she had swallowed and battled on.
It seemed an eternity before they emerged from the track to find themselves in the middle of the grassy clearing, the place where the tracks met. There was the main track up the Big Hill, winding its way through rocks and bracken to the top; and there, just across the clearing from them, stood Mister Barney’s shack, the smoke rising from the chimney. They could see the yellow convoy quite clearly now. It had stopped down by the road at the bottom of the hill. And beyond the yellow convoy, nose to tail behind them, were the islanders in their Land-Rovers and pick-ups. And there were people on bikes, and on foot too, dozens of them, all hurrying along the high road and the coast road. The whole island was converging on the Earthbusters.
It was some distance away, but Jessie could see her mother. She was standing in front of the leading digger, talking to the driver. And then she was pushing at it, kicking at it, drumming her fists on it. Jessie’s father put his arms round her from behind and turned her towards him. The diggers towered above them, snorting black smoke from their chimneys. Her mother had stopped struggling now, and her father was stroking her hair, then leading her away, her head on his shoulder.
‘That’s your mom down there, isn’t it?’ said Jack. Jessie didn’t reply. There wasn’t the time. The diggers were on the move again.
Jessie couldn’t run properly. She’d never been able to run, not like the other children could, but she was as near to it then, going across the clearing, as she’d ever been. She was going so fast now. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t falling over, but somehow she wasn’t. Somehow her body kept up with her legs and she didn’t topple. Jack was having to run to keep up with her. She had worked out the exact spot to do it: where the main track up the Big Hill left the clearing. There were granite posts on either side, and boulders all around – it would be the perfect place. They would have to stop. They would have no choice. The diggers were still crawling up the hill. Jessie felt a great surge of joy as she knew for sure that she was going to make it to the clearing before them. There would be time enough too to catch her breath and tell Jack everything she had in mind, her whole plan. Nothing could stop her now. Nothing.
The driver in the first digger was the same driver who had talked to Jack down on the quay a few days before. He was still shaken by what had just happened down by the road. Until recently he had never given a lot of thought as to what his Earthbuster did. He had operated diggers all over Ireland and in England, motorway work mostly, and quarry work sometimes. He loved the power of them, the smell of them. There had been some talk back in Mrs O’Leary’s pub where he was staying about the few cranks on the island who didn’t want the gold mine. He’d laughed it off like all the other drivers; but after the machines had been tampered with that night, they had all taken it a lot more seriously. He was genuinely puzzled that someo
ne out there hated his machine that much.
And then, just a few moments ago, there was this woman, eyes blazing at him, screaming at him to go back, that what he was doing was an obscenity, a sacrilege. She’d stood there, pushing at his digger, kicking it. He hadn’t known what to do, what to say. She’d looked up at him one last time and begged him. ‘Please don’t do it. Please . . .’ He’d revved up his engine so he didn’t have to hear any more. He was still thinking about her, wondering what was so special about the hill up ahead that she wanted to save it. He peered up at it. It looked ordinary enough to him, just rocks and gorse and bracken. What was she making such a fuss about?
The boy came out of nowhere, and was waving him down. He braked hard, as hard as he could, and slithered to a stop. He hadn’t noticed the girl until then. She was sitting right in the centre of the track over on the far side of the clearing, legs crossed, hands on her knees and still as a statue. The boy was shouting up at him now, and that was when he recognised him. It was the same American lad he had shown over his engine down by the quay. He remembered he had been impressed by how much he knew about engines for a boy of his age.
He turned off the ignition and opened the door of his cab to give him a piece of his mind, but the boy didn’t let him get a word in. ‘She says you’ve got to stop right there, sir. She says you can’t go any further.’
The digger driver was suddenly aware of an old man emerging from the door of a shack on the edge of the clearing. He was inching his way down the garden path, balanced between two sticks. If the old man hadn’t been there, the digger driver might really have let rip, language and all. He tried to calm himself. ‘Will you tell the young lady to shift herself?’ he said. ‘We’ve got a job of work to do. We’re days late as it is. You tell her, will you?’
‘Won’t do you much good,’ Jack replied. ‘See, she doesn’t want you here. She doesn’t want you digging up the Big Hill. Nothing will change her mind, not when it’s made up. And it’s made up.’ The digger driver felt his anger boiling, but he held on to himself. The old man from the shack was leaning on his gate now, chickens pecking around his boots.
Neither of the children moved a muscle. ‘Listen, son,’ the digger driver thumbed over his shoulder as he spoke, ‘there’s three more of these behind. And we’ve got security men too, a dozen of them. After what’s happened, the company’s taking no chances. We don’t want anyone getting hurt, do we now?’ But he could see from their set jaws, their cold, defiant eyes that he was getting nowhere at all. He tried again, a gentler tack. ‘Look, all this. It won’t do any good, you know.’
Jack interrupted. ‘She’s not going to let you dig. Isn’t that right, Jess? Tell the guy.’
‘I’m not going to let you dig,’ said Jessie.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Jack.
By now all the other Earthbusters and Land-Rovers and pick-ups had come to a standstill in a long line that stretched all the way back down the track to the road. Everyone was getting out to find out what was going on, what was holding everything up. They were swarming up the track past the machines and into the clearing. Father Gerald tiptoed round a puddle, his cassock tucked up under his belt. Behind him came Mrs Burke, teetering along in her tight skirt. Liam was there, and Marion Murphy too. They were all there now, every child in the school. They stood and stared, just like everyone else.
Jessie was looking for her mother and father, but she still couldn’t see them. She noticed Michael Murphy talking animatedly to one of the digger drivers, and Miss Jefferson was picking up one of the infants – Jessie couldn’t see which – who had fallen over and hurt his knee. Very soon the entire clearing was filled with islanders, and digger drivers in their orange overalls, and security men in their blue uniforms and shiny peaked caps – like the Garda, but they weren’t. Last of all came Jessie’s mother and father, pushing their way through the crowd to the front.
When she saw Jessie sitting there on the path in front of the diggers, she made to rush forward, but Jessie’s father held her back. ‘No, Cath,’ he said. ‘She won’t come to any harm. I won’t let her. But leave her be, eh? Let her do what she has to do.’
Jessie stood up – and that took some time. She had to turn herself on to her stomach and push herself up, first on to her knees and then on to unsteady legs. Jack did not help her. He knew by now that she only liked to be helped in private. As Jessie looked at the expectant crowd in front of her, she felt sick to her stomach and all her courage seemed suddenly to drain from her. Jack smiled his encouragement, but he could see from her eyes that she just could not do it. He knew then he would have to do the talking. There was no other way.
He took a deep breath. ‘I guess you’re all wondering what Jess and me are doing,’ he began. ‘Well, we’re going to the top of the Big Hill, and we’re going to stay up there for just as long as it takes, until the diggers go away. Jess and me, we’ve both been up there before.’ He looked long and hard at Mrs Burke and smiled. ‘I stood on top of that hill and I looked around me. Up there it’s like you belong, like you’re part of something that’s been going on for thousands of years. It’s special, real special, a living, breathing thing. You cut the top off the Big Hill and you’d be killing it for sure. You dig out the gold, you’d be tearing out its heart. But I guess you know that already.’
The sea sighed and the wind whispered, and the crowd stood stunned and silent. Jack went on. ‘I’ve been thinking a whole lot just lately. My dad’s sick, real sick. I’ve been thinking that maybe he won’t make it, and he won’t be around any more. And then I started thinking that that’s what’s going to happen to me too, to Jess, to all of us. It’s like we’re just passing through, but this hill is here for ever. And we’ve got to leave it just like we found it. We’ve got to leave good air to breathe, we’ve got to leave the fish in the sea, or else there’ll soon be nothing left. I’m not making much sense, I guess, but you know what I mean.’
Jack took Jessie’s hand in his. ‘So Jess, she decided we’re going right up to the top of the Big Hill, and once we’re up there, we’re not moving, no way. If they want that gold, then they’ll have to go right over us to get it.’ He caught Marion’s eye, and smiled at her. ‘You can come with us too if you want. You all can. We’d sure like that.’ He turned to Jessie. ‘Coming?’ And they walked away together up the track.
The crowd looked on. No one moved. No one said a word. A few paces up the track and Jessie felt weak all over. ‘Jack,’ she whispered. ‘I’m trembling.’
‘Me too,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve thought about this, haven’t you? It’s a long way to the top, you know.’
‘I remember,’ said Jessie. Suddenly she gripped his arm. ‘Can you feel them, Jack?’
What?
‘The ghosts, the pirates. They’re here, they’re all around us. And she’s here too, Grania O’Malley. I can feel her. She’s watching, I know she is!’ Jack looked around him and then over his shoulder. He stopped. Jessie turned and saw what Jack had already seen. Old Mister Barney was following them up the hill, his white head bent between his sticks. He moved like a tortoise, every ponderous step a massive effort. He paused for a moment and lifted his head to look up at them.
‘You mind if I come along?’ he said.
Then Jessie’s mother was breaking away from the crowd and running up to him. ‘I’m coming too,’ she said.
Mister Barney smiled at her. ‘Just so long as you can keep up with me, Cath,’ he said. He waved a stick at Jessie and Jack. ‘Don’t just stand there. We’ll meet you at the top.’
Jessie was looking for her father and could not see him. ‘Is Dad coming?’ she called out.
‘Later,’ said her mother. ‘He’s gone back to fetch some food and drink.’
‘Plenty of water up there,’ said Jessie, and she turned, balanced herself against Jack and started to climb again.
They were only about halfway up the hill, just past the waterfall, when Jessie felt her legs giving out on her.
She was leaning more and more on Jack now, and stopping every few steps. ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it,’ she breathed.
‘You’ve got to,’ said Jack, his arm tightening round her. ‘She’s watching, remember? Everyone’s watching.’ That was when she turned to look. Jack was wrong. True, some of them were still standing by the diggers and watching, but most of those wore the orange of the drivers or the blue of the security guards. Michael Murphy was with them, and a few other islanders – but only a few. Jessie was wondering where the rest had gone, when she saw them, dozens of them, coming around the bend in the track. Liam was running on ahead, waving to them. Father Gerald was alongside old Mister Barney now, with Jessie’s mother. And Mrs Burke was just behind them, her skirt hitched up, Miss Jefferson striding past her. ‘Will you look at that?’ Jessie breathed. ‘They’re coming, they’re coming with us.’
‘So?’ said Jack. ‘What are you waiting for? Do you want Marion Murphy to beat you to the top?’
‘She’s not there, is she?’
‘I don’t know, but she could be.’ That was enough of a spur for Jessie. She lurched on, calling out the rhythm as she went: ‘One and two. One and two. One and two.’ She scrambled on hands and knees over the rocky places, and then dragged herself to her feet, hauling on anything Jack offered her – an arm, a leg, trousers, anything. On she staggered with never a look behind her now. She could hear them coming. She didn’t need to look.
In the end she wasn’t first to the top. She had the first sight of it, and felt that warm tingle of exhilaration, of triumph, when Panda came bounding past her, knocking into her and sending her crumpling to the ground. She bellowed at him, but he never even stopped to look at her. Mole was trotting up the track towards them, his great ears pricked. When he saw Panda ahead of him, he raced on past them, head lowered, ears back, chasing him round and round the top of the Big Hill, Panda dancing away from him and barking wildly.