The Beasts of Clawstone Castle by Eva Ibbotson
‘Sir George, I know what this must mean to you. You must prize it above everything in your collection. But if you would sell it to me – I can’t tell you what it would mean.’
Sir George was about to open his mouth and say that Mr Hoggart was welcome to the thing, it had no value for him But before he could do so, Madlyn had stepped heavily on his foot.
‘How much would you give for it?’ she asked.
‘Would you take two?’ asked the American. ‘Two million, of course.’
‘Pounds or dollars?’ said Madlyn.
‘Dollars. But, say, if that’s not enough, how about two and a half ? The money doesn’t matter to me – I manufacture non-stick pans and you’d be amazed how many people need those. I could go up to three but I might have to call Clara—’
Sir George swallowed.
‘Two and a half is enough,’ he said, and found his hand pumped up and down by the blissful Mr Hoggart.
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you. You’ve made me a very happy man. Oh, wait till I call Clara. We’ll keep it under glass in the hall where everyone can see it.’
Sir George did not say so, but he too was a very happy man. The money, carefully invested, would see to the upkeep of the cattle for years and years and years.
Knowing that the ghosts could rest now and that Aunt Emily did not need to make lavender bags or bake scones was a great relief. Even so, it was difficult not to be sad when the time came to go home.
For Rollo the thought of returning to London was made easier because of something his parents had told him on the telephone.
His skink had become a father. There were five baby skinks; not eggs but proper skinks the size of little fingernails. There’d been a letter from the zoo.
‘So I suppose I’m a sort of skink grandfather,’ said Rollo.
‘We’ll be back at Christmas,’ said Madlyn, standing close to Ned as they waited for the taxi to take them to the station.
‘And at Easter,’ said Rollo.
But they were back even sooner than that because they were invited to a funeral.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Funerals are often sad, but this one was not sad at all. It’s true everybody cried, but the tears were happy ones and the loud sniffs that echoed through the little church at Blackscar sounded musical and right.
After all, it was not a funeral so much as a reunion.
Three months had passed since the Clawstone Cattle had walked to safety over the water and Dr Manners and Dr Fangster had been taken away by the police. But the banshees had been right when they said they had remembered something important about The Feet. Many years ago they had gone up to wail at the funeral of a wealthy grocer from Edinburgh who wanted to be buried near his mother’s old home by the sea, and after the ceremony the verger had shown them the tomb of Hamish MacAllister, the Chieftain of the Blackscar MacAllisters.
Even then there was nothing left of the brave chief’s name carved in the stone except the ISH part of Hamish, but the verger was interested in history and he had told them that when MacAllister had been taken for burial, no one could find his feet.
‘It was after one of those messy border battles where they fought with cutlasses and broadswords and axes. One can’t blame anyone,’ said the verger. ‘It must have been so difficult sorting everything out.’
And when the banshees had met The Feet in the gravel pit something had tugged at their memories.
Even so, it took a long time to organize a proper funeral. The little church was seldom used now; they had to get special permission and the ceremony they planned was an unusual one – but nothing, in the end, could have been more moving and more beautiful.
The ghosts and the children sat in the front pew with The Feet resting between Madlyn and Sunita. No one had been silly and tried to decorate them with ribbons or polish their toenails. The Feet were what they had always been: strong and manly – and themselves.
Behind them sat Aunt Emily and Uncle George with Mr and Mrs Hamilton, the children’s parents, who had come up from London, and next to them sat Mrs Grove with her brother, the warden, who was quite well again. It had taken the hospital a while to find that his stomach cramps were not due to appendicitis but to something he had eaten, and when Manners’s crooks were exposed it was found that the lunch box he took to work had been tampered with. Major Hardbottock, the man who had made the ghosts famous, was there too – and one person they scarcely knew and had not at all expected to see: Lady Trembellow.
The rest of the church was given up to visitors and most of these were ghosts. The ghosts from the Thursday Gatherings had made their way to Blackscar: Fifi Fenwick, and the Admiral, and kind Mrs Lee-Perry, who had passed on now and become a phantom too, so that travelling was much easier ... and Hal, Mr Smith’s friend from the motorway who had first noticed the cattle going north.
And then the first sonorous peal on the organ resounded through the church – and Cousin Howard began to play. Because he was a scholar and a librarian he knew exactly what was right, and when the congregation rose to sing the first verse of the hymn he had chosen, they found themselves quite choked with tears, for he had found a hymn about The Feet. It was called ‘Jerusalem’ and it began:
‘And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?’
The service went without a hitch. The banshees wailed, Cousin Howard played a last resounding chord on the organ – and everybody gathered in the church porch to watch as The Feet, like a bride going to the altar, walked slowly towards the tomb of Chief MacAllister.
When they reached the gravestone, The Feet turned shyly, so that their toes faced back towards the church, and the heels lifted once and came down again in a last gesture of farewell.
But only the ghosts were with The Feet in that final moment of reunion. The human beings had gone back, knowing that what goes on when the veil of reality is torn aside is not something that ordinary mortals should try to understand.
So they waited quietly, sitting in the pews. And then, breaking the silence, they heard a deep, ecstatic and very Scottish roar of welcome from beneath the ground, and knew that the MacAllister was complete at last ... and that The Feet whom they had loved so much were truly home.
After a funeral there is always something to eat. The banshees had arranged a splendid buffet lunch in a hotel further up the coast, and it was now that the children found out why Lady Trembellow was at Blackscar.
She had taken on Manners’s Research Centre on the island and turned it into the Blackscar Animal Sanctuary.
‘You see, I read about Dr Manners and I wanted to do something. He was the doctor who did all those operations on me and caused me so much misery, and I wanted to undo some of the harm he has done. I’ve always loved animals and I needed to do something useful with my life.’
She told them that they had managed to save the gorilla and were sending him back to Africa, and already people were sending a stream of tired donkeys and unwanted horses who would live out their days in peace along with the poor beasts that Manners had tried to tamper with.
‘Of course, money is always short but people have been kind,’ she said, and she looked meaningfully at the collecting box on the reception desk.
But for Lord Trembellow things had not gone well at all.
For when the police started investigating the theft of the cattle, Trembellow had come under suspicion at once. It was his gravel pit that had been used for the scam, his wife had known Manners, he was known to have wanted to get rid of the cattle. Worst of all, money had been paid into his bank account by the thieves who had pretended to be vets from the ministry.
So they took Trembellow away for questioning and charged him. As a matter of fact, though he was a greedy and ruthless man he knew nothing of Manners’s plans. He had really believed that the vets came from the ministry and that the cattle were buried in his pit. Nor did he realize that Klappert’s Disease did not exist and that the stolen cattle
‘But Olive is so clever,’ said Lady Trembellow. ‘She has a row of jam jars and she puts all their spare coins in them and counts them every day. I’m sure they’ll pull round.’
There was one other conversation which Madlyn and Rollo overheard. It was between their parents and Uncle George and Aunt Emily.
‘The children looked so well when they came back,’ said Mrs Hamilton, ‘and they seem to be so fond of Clawstone. I wonder if we thanked you enough for having them.’
‘Oh no! No!’ cried Emily. ‘It was lovely! They were such a help!’
Sir George in his gruff way said, ‘I can’t think why you bring them up in town. There’s so much to do at Clawstone; you could both find work and there’s a house in the village if you wanted to be independent.’
Ned had stopped eating. All three children were eavesdropping unashamedly.
‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose it might be possible. Perhaps,’ said Mr Hamilton.
And his wife too said, ‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps’ is a word that opens doors. Sitting in the back of the Bentley as they drove away from Blackscar, the children were utterly content.
They were spending the night at Clawstone before going back to London. Ned was going with them for a long weekend and as always the ghosts and the children spent their last hour in their favourite place on the wall, looking down at the graceful white beasts that they had saved.
‘Poor king,’ said Rollo. ‘He never got his unicorns.’
But actually, even if he had got them, the King of Barama would not have been able to pay for them, because the prospectors who had drilled for oil in his country had been so greedy that all the oil had been used up.
So the King had no money and when he became poor he found that all the people who had fawned on him and grovelled turned their backs – and he decided to abdicate and go and live in the mountains with his old nurse, the one who had told him the stories.
And as a matter of fact he was much happier than he had been before because he became stronger and healthier and had all the wild animals to watch – and after a while he forgot about getting hold of unicorns because he realized that unicorns belonged in people’s minds, and in stories, where they can run wild and free forever.
‘I suppose we ought to be getting back,’ said Madlyn.
But before they could get down from the wall something absolutely extraordinary happened.
It was the sound they heard first; a faint scrabbling, a kind of rustle ... The noise stopped and then came again, closer and louder.
They looked down at the ivy which covered the wall but they could see nothing. And then they glimpsed a faint wavering shape ... a small thing, which appeared for a moment and then vanished into the tangle of leaves.
Everyone’s heart now was beating faster. It couldn’t be, of course. It was impossible.
But the thing was climbing now, slowly, stopping to get its breath. It appeared, came closer, then disappeared again.
And then, with a sudden bound, it had reached the top of the wall. It had become almost transparent, and so thin that it was a miracle that it could move at all; the bones showed through its matted fur, the yellow eyes were filmed over with fatigue.
But it had made the journey. Somehow, unbelievably, the spectral creature had crossed the causeway from Blackscar and survived alone in the chapel for weeks on end, waiting, waiting ... And then came the funeral and the rat, utterly spent, had crawled into the boot of Sir George’s Bentley and fainted.
‘For heaven’s sake, man, make a run for it,’ said Mr Smith. ‘The creature’s done for. You can get away.’
Ranulf de Torqueville threw him a look of contempt. Then, slowly and carefully, he worked loose the buttons on his front – and, with a flourish, he threw open his shirt.
And the rat forced his exhausted limbs into a last leap and landed on his chest.
For a moment, nobody spoke – what had happened was too solemn for words. Then the children said goodbye and slipped off the wall but the ghosts stayed where they were, inhaling the warm and healing breath of the cattle they had helped to save.
They were no longer afraid of being left or being lonely. For they understood that when something belongs to you it belongs, and that is all there is to it. And as surely as the rat belonged to Ranulf, and The Feet belonged to the MacAllister, so the children belonged to Clawstone – and would return.
Eva Ibbotson, The Beasts of Clawstone Castle