I piped up and asked why we had to move there.
‘Dost know nowt, Betsy Allgood?’ asked Elsie Coe, who was nearly eleven and liked the boys. ‘What do you think they’re building down the dale? A shopping centre?’
‘Nay, fair do’s,’ said one of her kinder friends. ‘She’s nobbut a babbie still. They’re going to flood all of Dendale, Betsy, so as the smelly townies can have a bath!’
Then Miss Lavery called us in from play. But I went to the drinking fountain first and watched the spurt of water turn rainbow in the sun.
After that I started having nightmares. I’d dream I were woken by Bonnie sitting on my pillow and howling, and all the blankets would be wet, and the bed would be almost floating on the water which were pouring through the window. I’d know it were just a dream, but it didn’t stop me being frightened. Dad told me not to be so mardy and Mam said if I knew a dream were just a dream I should try and wake myself up, and sometimes I would, only I wouldn’t really have woken up at all and the water would still be there, lapping over my face now, and then I really would wake up screaming.
When Mam realized what were troubling me, she tried to explain it all. She were good at explaining things when she wasn’t having one of her bad turns. Nerves, I heard Mrs Telford call it one day when I was playing under the window of the joiner’s shop at Stang with Madge. It was Mrs Telford I heard say too that it were a pity Jack Allgood (that’s my dad) hadn’t got a son, but it didn’t help anyone Lizzie (that’s my mam) cutting the girl’s hair short like a boy’s and dressing her in trousers. That was me. I looked in the mirror after that and wondered if mebbe I couldn’t grow up to be a boy.
I was saying about my mam explaining things. She told me about the reservoir and how we were all going to be moved over to Danby, and it wouldn’t make all that much difference ’cos Dad were such a good tenant, Mr Pontifex had promised him the first farm to come vacant on the rest of his estate over there.
Now the nightmares faded a bit. The idea of moving were more exciting than frightening, except for the thought of that one-eyed teacher with the split cane. Also the weather had turned out far too good for young kids to worry about something in the future. Especially about too much water!
That summer were long and hot, I mean really long and hot, not just a few kids remembering a few sunny days like they lasted forever.
Winter were dry, and spring too, apart from a few showers. After that, nothing. Each day hotter than last. Even up on Beulah Height you couldn’t catch a draught, and down in the dale we kept all the windows in the house and school wide open, but nought came in save for the distant durdum of the contractors’ machines at Dale End.
Fridays at school was the vicar’s morning when Rev Disjohn would come and tell us about the Bible and things. One Friday he read us the story about Noah’s Flood and told us that, bad as it seemed for the folks at the time, it all turned out for the best. ‘Even for them as got drowned?’ cried out Joss Puddle whose dad were landlord at the Holly Bush. Miss Lavery told him not to be cheeky, but Rev Disjohn said it was a good question and we had to remember that God sent the Flood to punish people for being bad. What he wanted to say was that God had a reason for everything, and mebbe all this fuss about the reservoir was God’s way of reminding us how important water really was and that we shouldn’t take any of his gifts for granted.
When you’re seven you don’t know that vicars can talk crap. When you get to be fourteen, you know, but.
Slowly day by day the mere’s level went down. Even White Mare’s Tail shrank till it were more like a white mouse’s. White Mare’s Tail, in case you don’t know, is the force that comes out of the fell near top of Lang Neb. That’s the steep fell between us and Danby. It’s marked Long Denderside on maps, but no one local ever calls it owt but Lang Neb, that’s because if you look at it with your head on one side, it looks like a nose, gradually rising till it drops down sudden to Black Moss col on the edge of Highcross Moor. On the other side it rises up again but more gradual to Beulah Height above our farm. There’s two little tops up there and because they look a bit like a mouth, some folk call it the Gob, to match the Neb opposite. But Mrs Winter said we shouldn’t call it owt so common when its real name was so lovely, and she read us a bit from this book that Beulah comes into. Joss Puddle said it were dead boring and he thought the Gob were a much better name. But I liked Beulah ’cos it were the same as our farm and besides it sort of belonged to us, seeing as my dad had the fell rights for his sheep up there and he kept the fold between the tops in good repair, which Miss Lavery said was probably older than our farmhouse even.
Any road, no one could deny our side of the valley were much nicer than Lang Neb side, which was really steep with rocks and boulders everywhere. And in the rainy season, while there’d be becks and falls streaking all of the hillsides, on the Neb they just came bursting straight out of fell, like rain from a blocked gutter. Old Tory Simkin used to say there were so many caves running through the Neb, there was more water than rock in it. And he used to tell stories about children falling asleep in the sunshine on the Neb, and being taken into the hill by nixes and such, and never seen again.
But he stopped telling the stories when it really started happening. Children disappearing, I mean.
Jenny Hardcastle were the first. Holidays had just started and we were all splashing around in Wintle Pool where White Mare’s Tail hits fell bottom. Usually little ones got told off about playing up there, but now the big pool were so shallow even the smallest could play there safe.
They asked us later what time Jenny left, but kids playing on a summer’s day take no heed of time. And they asked if we’d seen anyone around, watching us or owt like that. No one had. I’d seen Benny Lightfoot up the fell a way, but I didn’t mention him any more than I’d have mentioned a sheep. Benny were like a sheep, he belonged on the fell, and if you went near him he’d likely run off. So I didn’t mention him, not till later, when they asked about him particular.
My friend Madge Telford said that Jenny had told her she was fed up of splashing around in the water all day like a lot of babbies and she were going to Wintle Wood to pick some flowers for her mam. But Madge thought she were really in a huff because she liked to be centre of attention and when Mary Wulfstan turned up we all made a fuss of her.
You couldn’t help but like Mary. It weren’t just that she were pretty, which she was, with her long blonde hair and lovely smile. But she were no prettier than Jenny, or even Madge, whose hair was the fairest of them all, like the water in the mere when the sun’s flat on it. But Mary were just so nice you couldn’t help liking her, even though we only saw her in the holidays and at weekends sometimes.
She were my cousin, sort of, and that helped, her mam belonging to the dale and not an offcomer, though they did only use Heck as a holiday house now. Mary’s granddad had been my granddad’s cousin, Arthur Allgood, who farmed Heck Farm which stood, the house I mean, right at mere’s edge just out of bottom end of the village. Mary’s mam was Arthur’s only child and I daresay were reckoned ‘only a girl’ like me. But at least she could make herself useful to the farm by getting wed. Next best thing after a farmer son is a farmer son-in-law, if you own the farm, that is. Arthur Allgood owned Heck, but our side of the family were just tenants at Low Beulah, and while a son could inherit a tenancy, a daughter’s got no rights.
Not that Mary’s mam, Aunt Chloe (she weren’t really my aunt, but that’s what I called her) married a farmer. She married Mr Wulfstan, who’s got his own business, and they sold off most of the Heck land and buildings to Mr Pontifex, but they kept the house for holidays.
Mr Wulfstan were looked up to rather than liked in the dale. He weren’t stand-offish, my mam said, just hard to get to know. But when he had Heck done up to make it more comfortable, and got the cellar properly damp-proofed and had racks set up there to keep his fine wines, he gave as much work locally as he could, and people like Madge’s dad, who ran the dale joinery business at Stang with his brother, said he were grand chap.
But I’m forgetting Jenny.