The Crow Folk Read online

  ‘It’s simply none of our business,’ Mrs Teach said. ‘If they’ve had a contretemps with Mr Craddock then let them have it out. We should, like the Swiss, remain neutral.’

  ‘Like that Mr Hitler had a contretemps with Poland? And France? Like that?’ Faye could sense her father’s disapproving glare – never disagree with a customer – but she couldn’t let this stand. ‘And what if they decide to have a little disagreement with you, Mrs Teach, hmm? Should I turn a blind eye then, too? We’ve never taken kindly to threats round here and I don’t see why we should start now. Especially with these scarecrows.’

  ‘Gypsies,’ Terrence corrected.

  ‘Scarecrows, Dad. One of them had a bloomin’ great pumpkin for an ’ead. I saw it, like you all did. I don’t care if it’s real or what, but if they dress up like scarecrows and act like scarecrows, I’m callin’ ’em scarecrows. So what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t see what we can do,’ Terrence said with a forced chuckle. Faye couldn’t fathom why he was laughing at first, then she recalled seeing him do this with unhappy customers in the past. He had always told her that if anyone got a bit tasty then first try distracting them by changing the subject and having a laugh. Just pretend you hadn’t heard the insult or threat and no one would feel they had to deliver on any angry promises of fisticuffs. It was an old trick, but he had never tried it on his own daughter. He was attempting to shut her up like she was some common saloon bar brawler. ‘But I can see young Bertie needs another half o’ cider.’ Terrence slid Bertie’s empty glass towards Faye.

  ‘Ooh, thank you very much.’ Bertie grinned.

  ‘Good health.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Faye scowled at her father, but he gave her a jolly wink and raised his head to address the whole pub.

  ‘Mrs Teach is right. There ain’t a person in this room who’s not had a run-in with Archibald Craddock,’ Terrence said. ‘And who’s to say they don’t have him already? Anyone here seen him today? No, me neither. And if he’s got some sort of beef with these gypsy folk…’

  Faye sighed, surrendered and poured Bertie’s half.

  ‘… then knowing Craddock, he’s prob’ly having a scrap with ’em now in a barn somewhere. That’s how he settles things. Queensberry Rules. Let them have it out fair and square and not stick our noses in.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Mrs Teach said. ‘One shouldn’t go poking one’s nose into other people’s business, Faye. It’s not ladylike.’

  Faye spluttered at the hypocrisy of the nosiest woman in the village. ‘Well, I wonder why you of all people, Mrs Teach, wouldn’t want anyone digging deeper?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I saw that fella with the pumpkin for a head tip his hat at you as he wandered off,’ Faye said. ‘Looked like he knows you well enough.’

  ‘I cannot account for the behaviour of others.’

  ‘There must be some reason why he singled you out.’

  ‘Perhaps he knows a lady when he sees one.’

  ‘P’raps he—’

  ‘All right, that’s enough, Faye.’ Terrence’s voice boomed as he took his daughter by the shoulders and steered her away from Mrs Teach. ‘Collect the empties and wash them up, please. I think we all need to—’

  A heavy thud came from the roof of the pub.

  Everyone froze and glanced at each other to make sure they had all heard it, too.

  Thud!

  Everyone looked up.

  Thud-thud-thud!

  It became an avalanche of impacts, all piling on top of one another, each one making Faye’s heart jolt. People murmured and clustered together, and then from outside came a scream. Faye hurried around the bar, wriggled through the crowd, pulled the doors open and dashed outside.

  She found the elderly Mrs Pritchett out walking her two Yorkshire Terriers. The dogs whined and the old lady was trembling, her eyes wide in terror.

  All around her, and littering the whole cobbled street, were starlings. Dozens of them, lying still with their little legs stiff. Some twitched in their death throes, their wings broken.

  Mrs Pritchett found her voice. ‘They just… fell out of the sky.’

  * * *

  Chilled to the bone and encrusted with dried mud, the fugitive Craddock crawled along the edge of the marsh stream. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of those scarecrows for hours and he would be home soon. His shack stood at the edge of the wood on the other side of Therfield Abbey. When he got there, the first thing he would do was feed the stove, change into dry clothes and finish off the bottle of rum he had stashed away in a box under the bed. He would try and forget whatever the blazes he had witnessed this last night and if that meant more rum, then so be it. He would forget and never speak of it again.

  As Craddock clambered up the slippy bank, there came a heavy splash from the stream. Craddock looked back, only to see rings of water spreading out from the impact. A kingfisher, perhaps, or a carp coming up for air. He resumed his climbing when he heard another splash. Then something bounced off his head and he cursed.

  It fell to the ground before him. A crow. Its blue-black feathers spread out in flight, frozen in death.

  Birds began to fall all around him, tumbling from the sky, bouncing off branches and rolling dead to the ground. There was only so much strangeness a man like Craddock could cope with and so he ran, fuelled by fear. Scrabbling from the stream, he dodged through the wood, dead birds still falling all round him, thumping down on his head, crunching under his boots. He came to the winding path, then up uneven stone steps to the arches of Therfield Abbey, a Norman ruin with broken stone walls that rose around him.

  The birds no longer fell, though the ground was littered with their bodies. Hands on his thighs, he leaned forwards to catch his breath, then dropped to his knees. His fingers trembled, his head pounded and his breath scratched at his throat. A moment here would do.

  Through the cloisters came the scarecrows.

  * * *

  Charlotte was chopping wood and her bonfire was burning nicely when it happened. Birds bounced off branches before spiralling lifelessly to the woodland floor around her.

  She swung the axe and buried its head in the chopping block before striding to her cottage and digging out a book she had hoped she might never need to open again. A book of signs and warnings, handed down from one generation to another. She flicked through it, her eyes darting as she scanned the pages.

  And there it was.

  She stood back from the book as if it were infectious.

  Charlotte found her pipe on the dining table, stuffed it with tobacco and puffed as she lit it. Her nerves were soothed, but what she saw still troubled her. She glanced sidelong at the book, as if she didn’t want it to notice her curiosity.

  Flames from the bonfire outside threw shapes and shadows around the room. On the pages of the book, the shifting light gave the illusion of movement to an old woodcut illustration of birds falling from the sky in droves. Below them danced a grinning scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head.

  15 SWEEPING UP THE BIRDS

  The pub closed early. No one much fancied a lunchtime pint after that strange rain. Faye and Bertie swept the cobblestones outside the Green Man. Not leaves or dust, but dozens of dead birds. Up and down the village, their neighbours were doing the same. All kinds had fallen: starlings, sparrows, robins, pigeons, blackbirds and jackdaws. In a grim shower that had lasted just a few minutes, they had tumbled lifeless to the ground throughout Woodville. Now there was only a silence in the air that made Faye uneasy.

  ‘Tea’s up.’ Terrence broke the hush with a clatter as he backed out of the pub carrying a tray of old mugs, tin cups and a steaming pot. He placed it on Bertie’s cart and started to pour, whistling ‘Polly Put the Kettle On’.

  Bertie began to sing along, ‘Suky take it off again, Suky take it off again…’

  ‘That name again,’ Faye said as she cradled her cuppa and blew the steam off.
r />   ‘Suky?’ Bertie dropped two sugar cubes into his cup and gave them a vigorous stir. ‘Weren’t one of those circus folk called Suky?’

  Faye let the circus comment slide. ‘It’s such an odd name, but I’m certain I’ve heard it before. You ever known a Suky?’

  ‘I once met a Suzy,’ Terrence said. ‘Lovely girl. Dancer at a revue bar in Soho. She did a trick with ping-pong balls—’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Can’t say I’ve ever known a Suky,’ Bertie said, with the sophisticated air of someone who had travelled the world and ‘known’ many women. Faye knew full well he never left the village without a name and address tag tied to his coat. After his one trip to London with the bell-ringers, he had vowed never to return. He spent the whole day in a state of agitation, asking his companions if they, too, thought the sky was smaller there. He insisted the moving stairs on the Underground had tried to steal his shoes, and he swore he’d seen a rat as big as a Labrador down an alley off Fleet Street. ‘It’s not one of them names you hear at a christening, is it? I name thee Suky. What’s it short for?’

  ‘Suky, Suky, Sooky.’ Terrence stretched the word out. ‘Sookee… Maybe she’s a – yes! – a zookeeper?’

  ‘Oh, good grief, forget I asked,’ Faye muttered.

  ‘Jolly quiet without their singing, isn’t it?’ came a voice from across the street. ‘Quite eerie.’ The Reverend Jacobs ambled over, drawn by the lure of hot tea. This was his first summer in the village. Many said he looked far too fresh-faced and cherubic to have his own parish, but most of the villagers appreciated his chirpy enthusiasm, even if some of the older folk thought he was a little modern for their liking. Mrs Nesbitt had seen him reading a Penguin paperback and drinking black coffee in the vicarage one morning, and the scandal had rocked the local Women’s Institute to the core. Faye had her own doubts about any man who told her what to do any day of the week, let alone twice on Sundays, but she liked the vicar because he was a part-time bell-ringer and, more importantly for today, he had brought his own broom.

  ‘Morning, Vicar,’ Faye said, pouring him a tea, knowing full well the answer to her next question. ‘Cuppa?’

  ‘Oh, how splendid,’ he said, taking a tin cup from the tray with a grateful smile. ‘So sorry to hear that we couldn’t honour your mother’s memory with a quarter peal this Sunday, Faye.’

  ‘Not as sorry as me, Vicar,’ she said as she slurped her brew, then added, ‘I was hoping to ring a method she invented, an’ all.’

  ‘Really? How clever of her. What did she call it? I do love their wonderfully odd names. The Kathryn Bob Doubles? The Wynter Surprise? The Woodville Treble Bob?’

  ‘The Kefapepo method,’ Faye said, then felt obliged to add when she saw the vicar’s face twist in befuddlement, ‘Don’t ask. That’s how it was written in her book.’

  ‘Book? What book?’ Terrence asked, his voice terse.

  Faye choked on her tea as she gulped it down the wrong hole. ‘Her book, y’know, the book, that book she, uhm…’ Faye’s mind raced as she coughed and thumped her chest.

  ‘Oh, she had a book of diagrams?’ the vicar ventured.

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘All the ringers have them,’ Reverend Jacobs explained to Terrence. ‘Pages and pages of funny little zigzags and numbers showing them which bells to ring and when. I can just about get my poor addled brain around them, but anything more complex than a course of Plain Bob and I’m flummoxed.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, she wrote it on a spare page in her book of diagrams, that’s what she did,’ Faye confirmed, getting her breath back. ‘Fancy a biscuit with your tea, Vicar?’

  ‘Oh, that’s very kind, but I merely came over to let Bertie know that we’ve cleared the church grounds and piled our poor birds by the lychgate. Bertie, could you kindly do the honours?’

  ‘Can do, Vicar,’ Bertie said, knocking back the dregs of his own tea. ‘I’ll stick ’em with this lot, take ’em round the back of my barn and burn ’em. I’ll go and fetch Delilah,’ he added, rushing off to get his horse for the cart while reprising his rendition of ‘Polly Put the Kettle On’.

  ‘Jolly good. Thank you, Bertie, you’re a brick.’

  ‘Does the name Suky mean anything to you, Vicar?’ Faye asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not. Should it?’

  ‘No, never mind. It’s one strange thing after another here. Walking, talking scarecrows and now all the birds drop dead out of the sky.’

  ‘These strange phenomena are not unknown, Faye. I have a cousin Dickie who lives in Bude. He claims it rained fish there once.’

  ‘Fish?’ Faye scrunched up her nose in disbelief.

  ‘Little red ones,’ the vicar said, leaning on his broom. ‘All over his roof. He’s a potato farmer, too. I suggested that he open a fish and chip shop and retire on the proceeds. Peculiar things happen, Faye. I find it’s best not to ask too many questions.’

  ‘Ain’t that your job?’

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘To ask questions about strange mysteries and such?’

  The vicar pursed his lips in thought. ‘Mysteries of the divine, certainly. Peculiar meteorological phenomena do not really come under my jurisdiction.’

  ‘Fish and birds fall from the sky and you’re not interested in why that happens?’

  ‘There’s a war on, Faye,’ Terrence said, tidying away the tea things. ‘More important stuff to worry about.’

  ‘Neither one of you is curious?’ Faye turned on her heels, gesturing down the Wode Road at all the folk sweeping up dead birds as if this was part of their normal daily routine. ‘Does none of you lot think this is strange?’

  ‘Faye,’ Terrence started, then cleared his throat and put down his mug of tea. Faye knew this meant she was in for one of his father-knows-best speeches. ‘The world is full of strange and curious things, and it’s full of terrors and awful people like that Herr Hitler. If you was to rush around trying to solve all the world’s problems at once, you’d go half barmy before teatime. Pick your fights, girl, and keep your noggin in what’s happening here and now. Don’t worry about things that you can’t control.’

  ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow,’ the Reverend Jacobs quoted, ‘for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Matthew, chapter six, verse thirty-four.’

  ‘Wot?’ said Faye.

  ‘Don’t go poking your nose in where it ain’t wanted,’ Terrence translated.

  ‘Actually, it’s from the Sermon on the Mount,’ the vicar began. ‘It means—’

  ‘Yeah, well, mine is the sermon from the pub,’ Terrence said. ‘Here endeth the lesson.’

  ‘Does it now?’ Faye placed her mug on the cart and leaned into her dad’s face.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ he replied.

  They were nose-to-nose and Faye lowered her voice. ‘You still owe me a conversation.’

  ‘About what?’ Terrence’s voice was a low rumble.

  ‘My mother and why so many folk think she was a w—’

  ‘Not now, girl.’ Terrence shook his head, eyes glancing over at the vicar. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Then when?’ Faye’s voice tightened and she started using words she had read in books but never said out loud. ‘You have this uncanny knack, dear Father, of putting it off in perpetuity.’

  ‘You want to talk now? This minute?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Faye said, hands on hips.

  ‘Right,’ Terrence said, raising his voice, standing upright, puffing out his cheeks and addressing the vicar. ‘Tea break in philosophy corner is over.’ He rested one hand on the vicar’s shoulder and gestured with his other to where two elderly ladies were struggling to clear their doorstep of dead birds with a dustpan and brush. ‘Vicar, would you mind helping Miss Moon and Miss Leach with their birds, please?’

  ‘Oh, I, uhm, yes, I should be delighted.’ The vicar, who hadn’t quite finished his tea, was too polite to object as Terrence took the tin c
up away from him.

  Faye handed him his broom and pointed him towards the two elderly ladies. ‘You push the stick bit and the brush end does the rest,’ she told him, patting him on the back.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, yes. Of course,’ he said and crossed the street, greeting Miss Moon and Miss Leach and offering to sweep up more of the deceased birds.

  Faye turned to find her dad in her face once more.

  ‘Give it up,’ Terrence said. ‘Stop going on about scarecrows and men with pumpkins on their noggins before people think you’re off your rocker.’

  ‘I don’t care what people think.’

  ‘I do. Your mother did. She was smart enough to figure that out eventually.’

  ‘Why eventually? Tell me, Dad, tell me straight. Was she a witch?’

  ‘Your mother…’ The words caught in Terrence’s throat. He took a breath. ‘Was the most wonderful woman I ever met. Like you, she saw the goodness in people. She took notice of stuff others missed in the world around her. And she would tell folk what she had seen, and they would sometimes think less of her for it because it weren’t how they saw the world. They said she was away with the birds. Loopy-Lou. Half-barmy and worse. After a while, she learned to keep that stuff to herself and people liked her again. Learn from that, Faye. Don’t go making the same mistakes again, before you become a pariah.’

  ‘Mum was a pariah? What’s a pariah?’

  ‘An outcast. Someone no one wants anything to do with.’

  ‘You told me everyone loved Mum.’

  ‘In the end. People loved her in the end, but she had to work hard… so hard to…’ Terrence clenched his jaw and fists. People assumed he did this when he was angry, but Faye knew it stopped him getting weepy when he thought of Mum. She thought of her own anger whenever she remembered Mum, and seeing her dad like this made her a little weepy. ‘I know you’re curious about your mother, Faye. I understand that, I really do. But I’m asking you to leave off with the magic and witchery stuff. It was a hobby, a silly fancy that got out of hand, and it was only when your mum put it behind her that she was happy again. Let it go, girl. I’m asking you to do this for your own good. Will you?’