The wind suddenly switched direction. It came howling at them from the right. With a shriek, Lizzie was thrown from the shelter of his body. Davy grabbed her hand just in time. Instinctively, he sheltered her in his arms. ‘Put your arms around me,’ he yelled.
As they stood there, the wind abruptly changed again. No longer howling, it seemed to prowl around them in a shivering, hissing circle. Shadows within it seemed to shift and stretch. The thought came to him that the wind had some kind of intent. No doubt Lizzie would call him ridiculous.
But George was growling. His hackles were up. His teeth were bared.
Davy’s scalp prickled. ‘What is it? I can’t see anything.’
‘Dogs have senses we don’t. But I feel something.’
Davy nodded. So did he.
‘Mother could be fanciful. She said something once. She said that The Grass holds dreams of ancient rituals and old beliefs. Land, sky and spirit. All connected.’
Davy said, ‘It’s you, halfway between – I think you’ve wakened it.’
He stared at her.
The wind began to circle faster, wailing higher. They could feel it closing in. George was snarling, lunging out. As if he were keeping something at bay.
‘You can’t leave from here,’ Davy shouted. ‘It’s the wrong place.’
‘Hold on to me,’ cried Lizzie. ‘Don’t let me go.’
Davy felt his weakness. He was no warrior. No hero. He was just a boy. Yet here was George, a small dog, protecting them. Dashing boldly at the dark heart of the wind.
If you act confident, others believe you are and you’ll believe it too.
Davy had had to be courageous, in his way. His life in Brownvale had demanded it. He had the steady-eyed warrior folded in his pocket. He had George. They would get Lizzie home, as he’d promised. Davy stood tall. ‘Are you wearing a belt?’ he shouted.
She nodded.
‘Keep your arms around me.’ He took his belt off, slipped it through his side belt-loop and fastened it around Lizzie’s belt. Would it work? Could it? Lizzie’s belt joined with his? He didn’t know the rules governing her passage. He tugged at them. ‘Can you feel that?’
Again she nodded.
He grabbed his stick that he’d dropped. Taking firm hold, raising it high, Davy walked forward, slashing at the wind. ‘Out of the way! Clear the way,’ he yelled fiercely.
He felt it give, just slightly, as he slashed. He felt himself clearing a narrow pathway for them to move through, as if the wind could bend like a wall of reeds. Lizzie clutched at his sleeve.
Then, without warning, a mist sucked up from the ground, and the wind became a whirling haze of white fog. They were enveloped, enclosed, moving blind. If he’d had the slightest doubt there was intent, that doubt was gone.
‘Move aside!’ he yelled, slashing.
The wind rushed at them. Davy lost his footing and the stick flew from his hand. George raced off barking, in pursuit to retrieve it.
‘It’s trying to take me!’ Lizzie yelled.
He wrapped his arms around her. The wind turned them in circles, pushing as it staggered them in relentless progress to where it would. Davy was helpless to do anything but cling to Lizzie.
Then, suddenly, they were almost on top of George. He was muddy to the chest and had Davy’s stick in his mouth. He was dragging it, running across their path to and fro, seemingly frantic.
‘Give me that!’ Davy yelled. He lunged, grabbing for the stick and George dodged off to the side. Davy’s right boot went into wet sucking ground and stuck there.
‘Bog!’ shouted Lizzie. ‘He was warning us!’
Davy bent, hauling on his boot with all his might. As it flew free, he fell over. Lizzie, joined by their belts, fell on top of him. George dropped the stick at his hand and Davy grabbed it.
Barking, running back and forth, George was urging them to follow him. Davy realized he’d keep them away from the boggy ground. On their feet again, they kept low, almost crouching, as Davy slashed a path through the howling, whirling fog.
He felt the ground beneath his feet begin to rise. George was leading them up to higher ground. Then a pile of slabbed stones loomed in front of them. They scrambled to press themselves against the rock.
And the wind quit. Abruptly. Just like that. And just like that, too, the fog was gone.
The only noise was Davy gasping for breath. The Grass rolled out serenely in the moonlight. He stared. Where had it gone? He looked at Lizzie, huddled next to him. Her eyes were wide.
‘Are you OK?’ he whispered.
She nodded.
Davy grabbed George into his arms. ‘What was that?’
‘Something old. Something wild. But we made it. You did it, Davy.’
As he unclipped their belts, his heart was pounding hard against his ribs.
‘That saved us,’ Lizzie said. ‘What made you think of it?’
‘I don’t know. I must have seen it in some movie.’
With a roar, the wind came blasting back and snatched her. Davy grabbed for her hand, but she was gone.
‘Lizzie!’ he yelled. ‘Lizzie! Come back!’
On the ground, lying on his belly, he felt something hard press his leg. And he remembered. Mr Bunting. The lawyer at the inn.
Some places only take the old money.
Mr Bunting’s coin was still in his pocket.
Davy leaped to his feet, pulling out the coin. Throwing it high into the wind, he yelled, ‘Here! Take this! Give her back!’
The wind died instantly.
‘Lizzie!’ She was lying out on The Grass, slumped on the ground. George raced to her, barking. As Davy ran up, he was nosing at her anxiously. ‘Lizzie, are you hurt?’ She seemed dazed, she was shaking. Davy helped her to her feet and up the slope to the shelter of the rocks.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ she kept saying.
They crawled into a nook in the slabs of rock, where it was dry and silent and so dark they couldn’t see each other.
‘What happened? Where did you go? Where did it take you?’ Davy said.
‘I don’t know. Please don’t ask me. Get me out of here,’ she said.
‘Just as soon as it’s light,’ Davy said. He spread his jacket on the ground. ‘Lie down and close your eyes. Think about the sea.’
‘Please don’t leave me. Not for a moment.’
‘We won’t leave you,’ Davy said.
And he and George kept watch through the night.
Davy woke with a start. He was sitting up. He’d fallen asleep when he hadn’t meant to. George’s warmth was curled against him. His jacket lay empty on the ground. Lizzie was gone.
Heart racing, he scrambled out into the open, disturbing George. It was sunrise. The sky was clear. The morning was fresh against his face. The grassy mound where he stood gave him a wide view over all. ‘Lizzie!’ he called. To the west was a band of gleaming silver that might be the sea. To the east, he looked back on the stretch of Grass they’d crossed, last night’s battleground. It rippled and waved in the gentle wind.
But Lizzie was nowhere to be seen. With panic catching in his throat, he called again, ‘Lizzie! Where are you? Lizzie!’ There was no reply.
A dull glint caught Davy’s eye, on the ground by his boot. He crouched. It was Mr Bunting’s coin. He picked it up, not able to think why it was there, what it meant. Then he realized.
He’d paid but too late. He had left everything too late. Lizzie had been too weak to fight against this place. She must have slipped away into the air while he dozed. He’d slept. He’d failed her. They’d come so far. They’d been so close.
Davy sat with his head in his hands.
Numbly, he became aware that George was urgently barking. Davy ran, clambering along the slabs of rock they’d sheltered within. It was a great long heap of stones, much larger than he’d realized. Where the rocks petered out to a shallow sprawl, he found George. And Lizzie was with him.
He threw himself beside her, bre
athless. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
‘I’m watching the sunrise,’ she said.
She turned to smile at him and Davy’s heart turned in his chest. She was no more than sixteen, the soft uncurling of a hedge-rose in spring. The breeze haloed her hair around her head. In the night, she’d been like air, he’d almost lost her to the wind. Now, in the morning, she was blossoming with light. Golden freckles lay in a scatter across her nose.
‘Lizzie Flint,’ he said.
‘Davy David.’
‘I’m glad to see you.’
‘I’m glad to be here,’ she said.
They were silent for a time. The morning rose freshly all around them. Somewhere deep inside him, Davy felt the cleanness of the days to come. It was as if last night had blown Brownvale from his soul. ‘I don’t want to forget them,’ he said. ‘I mean, Miss Shasta and Mr Timm.’
‘You won’t,’ Lizzie said. ‘I promise. You’ll carry them with you all your life.’
‘We’d better get going,’ he said at last.
They stood and she pointed out their direction. He’d been right. The strip of silver was the sea.
The sun rose brightly, yellow brilliant in the sky as the three of them walked into the day.
Going down a narrow farm track, they passed the open yard gate of the farmhouse. Davy could see the front wheel of a bicycle spoking out from a shed. Its butcher’s boy front basket was a perfect size for George. The faint whine of a grinder came from inside the sagging barn, the only sign of life besides two ducks preening at the open kitchen door.
Davy swooped on the bike. It was a rattletrap, but the tyres were pumped. He took a moment, dodging the ducks, to leave some money on the kitchen table, then ran the bike out of the yard.
George went in the basket. Lizzie hopped up on the crossbar. As Davy swiftly cycled them away, he added taking a bike on Christmas Day to their list of crimes.
The House by the Sea
The house stood alone at the edge of the water, at the end of a narrow-track lane. It was grassy, too overgrown for the bike, so they got off and Davy pushed. George raced away. He’d been quivering with excitement since he first smelt the sea, long before either of them did.
The house, a single storey of white painted stone, was recognizably the same as in Lizzie’s painting. But it was mournfully unlived in, with its shutters closed against the world. Behind it, at the end of a slope of rough grass, was a strip of white beach and the sea. The water was alive, curling to the shore, hissing up the sand and retreating. George boldly charged at the waves, in and out.
Davy had seen oceans in the movies, but in black and white, flat on the screen. He’d not expected the shock of this prowling beast. Its sun-shattered expanse dazzled him, stretching to the horizon and beyond. It was a world of sounds he didn’t know. A world of unfamiliar smells. Yet his blood seemed to quicken in recognition. The endless break of waves against the land. The salty breath of the sea. The screams of wheeling white birds.
‘Seagulls.’ Lizzie sounded glad to see them.
She instructed him to lift the third flagstone to the left of the door. ‘We always hid the spare key there.’ It was rusty, as might be expected. He needed both hands to turn the lock, but at last he managed it.
‘Wait.’ Lizzie hung back, her arms hugging herself. ‘Here’s another one for your book,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid.’ After a moment, she said, ‘All right, I’m ready.’
Davy had to throw his weight against the door several times before it shuddered open. They stepped through and found themselves looking straight out to sea. A section of the back wall had collapsed. The house was open to the sky.
They stared in silence. Then, ‘The roof must have fallen in,’ said Lizzie. ‘Of course. What did I expect? It’s been years. Houses don’t stand forever.’
George came running to greet them and sniffed around with huge interest as Davy began picking through the mess. Stooping and turning and lifting, buried among the plaster and rafters and roof tiles, he found the remains of a family’s life. Furniture and rugs. Books and paintings. Mirrors and lamps and toys. Smashed. Broken. Faded and rotting.
‘All this stuff,’ he said. ‘Is it yours?’
‘This was our sitting room,’ Lizzie said.
There was an easy chair, a lone survivor, somehow still intact. The stuffing bloomed from the rotted upholstery. ‘Mother’s favourite chair,’ said Lizzie. ‘She used to sit here and do the crossword.’
He dug a torn and faded newspaper from the mess beside it. Dated from seventy years before, it was folded to the crossword, which had been partly filled in. Davy could barely make out the pencilled letters. He showed it to Lizzie.
‘She never finished this one. Two down, eight letters, Lead a dull, inactive life.’ Lizzie thought for a moment. ‘Vegetate,’ she said. ‘Do you hear that, Mother?’
‘You just left it all.’ With sudden understanding, Davy looked around him. ‘You just locked the door and walked away.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t think it’s completely wrecked. This door. Where does it go?’
‘Be careful,’ Lizzie said, as Davy shouldered it open. ‘The kitchen’s that way. And the bedrooms.’
He was right. The rest of the house was still standing, just badly in need of repair.
And here, instantly, he could feel the heaviness of the past. He felt it close around him the moment he walked through the door. It was as if time itself were holding its breath.
In the kitchen, Davy got a shock. An empty coffin stood there on the floor. ‘Lizzie!’ he called.
She came to look at it, bemused. ‘I forgot all about that. Sampson and Sons, they’re a local firm.’ The brass plaque screwed to the lid was engraved with her name and dates, birth and death. She touched the latter one and said, ‘So much for forward planning. I was going to lie down in it and take the pills. No fuss. I made arrangements with them to pick it up. Do you think they’d give my money back?’
‘Very funny,’ Davy said.
As she drifted from room to room, he began opening all the shutters, and every window that wasn’t stuck, and welcomed the day into the house. Everywhere was filthy with the dust of decades. He discovered the kitchen cupboards were fully stocked with dishes and glasses and pots and pans. The drawers were cluttered with cutlery, and much more besides.
He found Lizzie in her old bedroom among sketchbooks nibbled by the mice, coloured pencils and brushes in jars. There were metal trays of dried paint. A blank canvas. Her faded drawings, their corners curling, were pinned to the walls. She turned when Davy came in.
He gazed around. ‘You’re an artist,’ he said.
‘Sometimes I wonder if I might have been but . . .’ She shrugged.
Davy sifted through a pile of crumbling sketches. ‘These are good.’ But she didn’t hear him, she’d left the room. ‘She was good,’ he told George.
She’d made a series of charcoal drawings of a boy playing on the beach. It was the boy from her framed photograph. She’d scrawled at the bottom of one of them, Will on the beach. Will. So that was his name. As Davy put it down, he saw a Christmas tag on top of a stack of unopened materials. There were charcoal pencils, oil paints, a large sketchbook. The tag read To Lizzie, with love from Mother and Will.
She had gone across the hall to the room that had been Will’s. She was standing perfectly still among his musty things. The shelves were crammed with a boy’s collection of natural oddments. Stones, tiny bird skulls, feathers. A bow and arrow that he’d clearly made himself. It reminded Davy of the first time he’d met her. The ancient Miss Flint, passing her days among the bones and other things in glass cases, long forgotten by everyone but her.
He opened the shutters on another fine sea view. And, looking out at a boat sailing past, feeling the heavy silence, Davy suddenly knew. Will had died. He’d died there. The house had stopped with his death. They’d closed it up and locked the door and walked away.
‘What happened to him, Lizzie?’ he asked.<
br />
But she was gone. He saw her leave the house through the sitting room and head down to the beach with George.
Lizzie stood gazing out to sea, her arms hugged across her chest. She didn’t look at him as he came up. ‘I hired you to bring me here and you did. I’d like you to leave now, you and George. Take the money. Take all of it,’ she said.
After all they’d done, everywhere they’d been. Leave now. Take the money. As if the past days hadn’t happened. Davy saw their moments like photographs in his mind. Tipping turkeys from their crates into the orchard. Breakfast at the cafe. Riding the bus. Dancing in the moonlight in the woods. Hearing Robert Craig sing and Lizzie’s tears like a fall of stars. Last night, crossing over The Grass.
Davy couldn’t speak for the tightness in his throat. He scooped George into his arms and went to sit on the sand. George pressed himself against his chest, licking at his face.
Lizzie came and sat beside him, soft as thistledown. ‘I’m sorry. Davy, I’m so sorry.’
‘I thought we were friends,’ he said.
They sat in silence. He let George go to run among the waves. Davy threw stones at the water.
At last she spoke, haltingly, with tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve done nothing to deserve your friendship. I wouldn’t blame you if you left. I don’t know why I said that – no, I do know. I want to protect you from whatever’s to come. This is my ending, Davy. You’ve hardly begun.’
‘I won’t leave you. We’re staying, me and George.’
They were silent again.
Then Davy remembered. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It’s Christmas. And it’s your birthday. You’re eighty. How many people get to celebrate their birthday when they’re dead?’
She laughed, still tearful. ‘There’s another one for the book. I’ve just had an idea,’ she said. ‘We’ll hold a wake.’
According to Lizzie, the best kind of wake was a party in honour of the deceased involving eating and toasting the dead and sometimes music. Davy hunted through the kitchen cupboards. ‘Tomato soup,’ he said. ‘More tomato soup. And sardines, three tins.’