‘Take care, Nix,’ squeaked bat. ‘They’re sly as spiders, these lasses.’
But nix wasn’t listening. His eyes and his thoughts were fixed entirely on Nina.
She took his hand in hers and made him stand alongside her on a big rock at the edge of the pool.
And she said, ‘I’ll count up to three and then we’ll jump together. All right?’
‘All right,’ said nix.
‘One,’ said Nina.
‘And two,’ said Nina.
‘And three,’ said Nina.
And they jumped.
Only, as nix jumped forward into the pool, Nina let go his hand and jumped backwards on to the ground.
Then she turned and ran as fast as she’d ever run in her life up the tunnel.
It only took nix a second to realize her trick.
Then, screaming with rage and dripping foul-smelling mud and water, he dragged himself from the pool and set out after her.
Oh, she were fast, but he were faster.
She didn’t dare waste time looking back, but she could hear him behind her, his sharp nails screeling against the rock like hard chalk on a shiny slate, his stinking breath panting like Bert the blacksmith’s bellows.
Her long hair streamed behind her and she felt it touched by his outstretched hand. Faster then she ran, and faster, till she felt it no more. But still he was close and her strength was failing. Now she felt the hand again, this time close enough to get a hold of a tress.
She felt the grip tighten, she felt her hair being twisted to make the grip firmer, above her she could see the ring of bright light that marked the end of the tunnel.
But it was too late. He had her hair fast now. He was pulling her to a stop. It was too late.
She stretched out her arms to the light and screamed, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
And just as she gave up hope and knew she were about to be dragged back down to the depths, she felt her hands seized.
For a moment she was stretched taut as a rope in the tug-o’-war at the village sports. Then, just as in the tug-o’-war when it seems the two teams are so evenly matched they must hold each other there for ever, suddenly one side will find the strength for one last pull and the other will go sprawling helpless on the ground, so Nina felt the pull above increase, the pull behind slacken.
And next moment she was out on the hillside in the bright golden sunlight, lying on the grass at her father’s feet.
Oh, how they hugged and kissed, and nothing was said to scold her or remind her she’d disobeyed.
When they were done hugging and kissing, her dad rolled a huge boulder across the entrance to the cave.
‘There,’ he said. ‘That’ll keep yon nix where he belongs. Now, let’s be getting you home to your mam. Let’s take her some flowers to brighten the house.’
So they set to, and picked moon daisies and stepmothers, Aaron’s rod and bedstraw, and on their way home they found a bank covered with flopdocken, which the nixes hate, and them they picked also.
And very soon after, when Nina’s Mam went to the back of her cottage and looked anxiously up the hillside, her heart jumped with joy as she saw her man and her little lass coming downhill towards her with their eyes bright as star-shine, their voices raised in a merry catch, and their arms full of flowers.
Monday dawned, the sun rising into the inevitable blue sky with the radiant serenity of Alexander entering a conquered province.
Its soundless reveille against the leaded light of Corpse Cottage in Enscombe did not disturb the deep slumber of Edwin Digweed, antiquarian bookseller and founder of the Eendale Press, but not for nothing had Edgar Wield been nicknamed by a previous lover, Macumazahn, He Who Sleeps With His Eyes Open.
He answered the summons immediately, taking care to make as little noise as possible. Edwin was not at his best if woken too early, one of the many adjustment-necessitating discoveries made during their first year together.
Downstairs, Wield brewed his morning coffee (two spoons of instant and three of white sugar in boiling milk, not the cafetière of freshly ground Colombian Edwin insisted on at all times of day) then went on his morning visit.
This took him via the churchyard into the grounds of Old Hall, home of the Guillemard family, by permission squires of Enscombe for nearly a thousand years. Falling on hard times, the family had been preserved by the acumen of its present commercial head, Gertrude (known, misleadingly, as Girlie), who had lured visitors to the estate by all manner of attractions, including a Children’s Animal Park. Here, in pens or roaming free as their nature required, could be found calves, lambs, kids, piglets, fowl (domestic and game), dormice, harvest mice, field mice, and a rat called Guy. But it was not on any of these that Wield was making his morning call.
He made for a lofty oak which held the remains of a tree house in its fork and whistled gently.
Instantly a small figure appeared and dropped with scarcely more than a token touch to trunk or branch the thirty feet into his arms.
‘Morning Monte,’ said Wield. ‘What fettle?’
Monte was a monkey; a marmoset, the local vet had informed him when he’d taken the animal for a comprehensive check – a necessary precaution in view of its origins. For Monte was an escapee from a pharmaceutical research lab who’d taken refuge in Wield’s car. The sergeant had smuggled it out, assuring himself this was a decision postponed, not a decision made.
It had been the first real test of his new relationship. Edwin Digweed, though fond enough of animals, made it clear that he had no intention of sharing his home with a free-roaming primate. ‘A ménage à trois may have its attractions,’ he said. ‘A ménagerie à trois has none.’
There had been a moment, as Wield’s unblinking eyes in that unreadable face regarded him calculatingly, that Digweed had recalled an anecdote told of John Huston. Required by his current mistress to choose between herself and a pet monkey of peculiarly disgusting habits, the film director had thought for thirty seconds, then said, ‘The chimp stays.’
Digweed held his breath, suddenly fearful that his world might be about to dissolve beneath his feet.
But what Wield had said was, ‘He’s not going back there. He escaped.’
Hiding his relief, Digweed exclaimed, ‘He … it … is a monkey, not the Count of bloody Monte Cristo. All right, we can’t send him … it … back to that place, but the proper place for him … it … is a zoo.’
‘Monte. That’s what we’ll call him,’ said Wield. ‘As for the zoo, I know just the spot.’
He’d taken Monte to see Girlie Guillemard. Much impressed by the little animal, and having established he was marginally less inclined to bite, scratch or otherwise assault ill-behaved children than herself, she’d offered him refuge in the Animal Park.
The move had worked surprisingly well. Wield visited every morning he could, bearing gifts of peanuts and fruit. There’d been an early crisis when duty had prevented his visit for nearly a week. Finally, Monte had gone looking for him at Corpse Cottage. Finding only Edwin there, asleep in bed, Monte had awoken him, presumably to make enquiries, by pushing up his eyelids.
‘Naturally, my first thought was, I’m being raped by an ape,’ said the bookseller. ‘So I lay back and thought of Africa.’
Now