Black Harvest Read online

  With the baby crying loudly and twisting about in her arms she walked slowly along the beach, her insides heaving, looking for something dead. A sheep could have fallen down on to the rocks and rotted there, or it might be a dog, lying in the blistering sun with its back broken, empty eye-sockets staring up at the sky, alive with maggots.

  She shuddered, feeling for a handkerchief to put over her nose, but she couldn’t find one. So she thrust her face close to the baby and breathed in her smell, trying to blot out whatever it was that made her stomach lurch about and brought vomit into her mouth.

  For a minute she thought the smell might be coming off the sea. It could be seaweed, piled up by the water along the tideline, steaming in the sun. But the pale sand was quite bare, and when she turned and looked back at the cliffs it met her again, sweeping over her in great waves, making her insides heave.

  What on earth was it? Bad meat? Just a farmyard smell? Or was it rotting vegetation, something like leaf mould? But no garden had ever smelt like this and anyway, how could it be any of these things on a lonely beach, miles from anywhere?

  Alison was now screaming hysterically. Hanging on to her with one arm, and with the other across her face to stop the smell, Prill stumbled, choking, back along the beach, towards the cliff path. The baby must have some bug that was making her peevish, she was usually so good-tempered. And Prill must have caught it too. That would be why she felt so sick and hot and kept imagining this awful smell.

  She clambered up the track towards the bungalow, trying to tell herself firmly that everything was all right. But fear gnawed at her. She had a feeling of panic festering inside that was nothing to do with the screaming baby, or the horrible sick feeling. She didn’t want to be left alone here, in this sumptuous house, with its sweeping views of sky and sea, not even with Colin and her mother. She didn’t want Dad to take the car and drive back to Dublin without them, to start his painting. She was frightened, but she didn’t know why.

  Two people lay awake in Ballimagliesh that night. Father Hagan, looking out into the darkness over his tiny garden, said aloud, “Lord, Grant me a quiet night and a perfect end.” Then he went to bed. But he didn’t sleep. The faces of the new people at the Moynihan bungalow kept drifting into his mind and troubling him, the cousin’s face particularly, with its flat white cheeks, its curious hard stare.

  Mr Blakeman had set off for Dublin at seven that evening, when the baby had finally dropped off to sleep. But Prill didn’t walk down the track with the others, to wave him goodbye as he turned the car out on to the metalled road. She shut herself in her room, flung herself down on the bed, and cried.

  Chapter Three

  COLIN WENT OUT before breakfast to have a look at the building site, and Oliver trailed after him. On the land side of the bungalow, where the earth sloped up and turned into a field, the builders had started digging a huge hole. There were piles of sand everywhere, and bricks stacked neatly. A yellow skip full of soil stood blocking the path to the back door.

  “Do you think we could dig here?” Oliver said. “Are we allowed?”

  It was the third time he’d asked Colin about what was “allowed”. They had woken up early and decided to go out while the others slept on. “But are we allowed?” he’d asked anxiously, as Colin slid back the door bolts. “And are you allowed to go outside without your shoes on?” Aunt Phyllis must be very strict with him.

  Colin looked at the piles of sand. “I shouldn’t think it would matter if you poked round here with a spade. When they come back in September they’re going to dig down about three metres with an excavator. Well, so Dad said. The roof of the new garage will be level with the house, and it’s going to be a patio with plants on, or something. It sounds very elaborate. What do you want to dig for, anyway?”

  “I want to dig a hole,” Oliver said, eyeing the shovels and spades propped against the concrete mixer.

  “What on earth for?”

  “I’d like to build a den.”

  “How babyish,” Colin thought, and nearly said so. Then he thought better of it. After all, the best summer he could remember had been spent in a den, in a field behind their house, before they’d built the new estate. They had made it out of an enormous hole that used to be an air-raid shelter, roofed it over with bits of corrugated iron, and made a lookout with old tea-chests. It was the worst moment of his life when the contractors arrived, filling the hole in and flattening everything. He was just about Oliver’s age then.

  He said, “Well, I suppose it’d be all right. We’d better ask Dad though, when he rings up. You could always dig in the sand, Oliver. It looks a fabulous beach.”

  Oliver didn’t reply. He’d never had a proper seaside holiday. He couldn’t even swim. Those two had been going on in the car about swimming awards and different kinds of diving. He’d be happier up here on his own, digging his hole.

  “That dog needs a long walk,” Mum said after breakfast. Prill knew that voice, it was ragged at the edges. It meant she’d had enough of Alison bawling and of the others hanging around. She wanted some peace and quiet.

  Jessie had spent a well-behaved night under the kitchen table but now she was tied up outside, barking madly at Kevin O’Malley, the boy from the farm who’d just brought them some milk.

  “Come on,” Prill said to Colin. “Let’s take Jess down to the beach. Coming, Oliver?”

  Colin waited for him to say no. He hoped his cousin would want to stay behind and make a start on his den. It would be a good chance for them to talk privately, and work out how they were going to survive for a month with him around. Colin wasn’t very patient and Oliver was getting on his nerves. He hated the way he stared at people, and never spoke unless you spoke to him. Mum said that he was an only child, with rather elderly, fussy parents, and that they must “make allowances”. But she didn’t have to share a room with him.

  “OK,” Oliver said, quite eagerly. He put his anorak on and zipped it up.

  “You don’t need that, it’s boiling!”

  “I’m not hot.”

  He was already walking ahead of them, keeping well away from the dog as she leapt about wildly on the end of her lead. It was another perfect day and already very warm, but Prill felt better. A fresh smell of fields blew across as she followed Colin along the path, and the sick feeling had gone completely. Dad had phoned after breakfast to tell them he was making a start on his first sketches for the portrait. Yesterday’s panic, down on the beach, seemed slightly ridiculous now.

  “Not that way, Oliver,” Colin was shouting. “We’ve got to drop down here, on to the shore. Come on.” But Oliver carried on making for the green thicket that hid Donal Morrissey’s caravan. “There’s a footpath here,” he shouted back. “I found it on a map.”

  “Oh, come on, can’t you? We’ve been told that the old man… Oh, damn!” With an almighty tug, Jessie had wrenched the lead out of his hand and was tearing after Oliver, barking madly. The small boy started to run and soon disappeared into the trees. Colin and Prill pelted after him. Seconds later all three were standing at the open door of a decrepit wooden caravan. Colin had grabbed Jessie’s collar and was trying to calm her down. Inches away, a mangy black collie, stretched out across the ramshackle steps, was growling at them.

  “Be quiet, girl. Sit!” Colin shouted, but Jessie was almost throttling herself in her efforts to break free. The collie stood up, cringing and whining, then it took a step forward and showed its teeth. Bedlam followed. The two dogs made for each other in a tangle of hair, tongues, and frenzied barking. Oliver backed away and clutched nervously at Prill’s arm. “Sit, can’t you, sit! Gedoff, will you!” Colin was bellowing, and in the racket someone appeared in the doorway.

  Donal Morrissey was thin and extremely tall, and stood glowering at them, his knotted hands shaking. The wispy remains of his hair blew about in the wind, silver-white but still reddish at the edges, and his bald, domed head was splodged with big freckles. He must once have had auburn hair, lik
e Colin and me, thought Prill.

  His face was so wrinkled it looked like a piece of paper someone had screwed up very tight then smoothed out again, leaving hundreds of tiny lines. There was so little flesh on it the skin was stretched over the bones like thin rubber, and every single one poked out. It was the kind of face you see in religious paintings.

  But the voice that came from it was shrill and harsh. They couldn’t tell whether he was speaking Irish or just making horrible noises at them to scare them off. They backed away as he came down the steps, waving his arms about and yelling.

  Prill’s stomach heaved. The old man stank. It was the smell of someone who never washed his hair, or his clothes, or had a bath. How could that Father Hagan come visiting him here, week after week? She’d be sick.

  His dog had slunk off and was lying under the van, peering out at them. “Go on! Go on!” he was shouting. “There’s been enough of it, I’m telling you. Leave a soul in peace will you, coming round here. God help me.”

  Jessie, always slow on the uptake, leapt at the old man and tried to lick his face. He lost his balance, swayed about, then fell heavily, crashing back against the side of the caravan. Prill gasped, he was so old, and Colin let go of Jessie and went to help him. But he was back on his feet almost at once, towering over them and letting out a stream of foul Irish as he pushed them back down the path, spitting the words out and slavering, his parchment cheeks turning a slow, bright red with pure rage.

  As they reached the trees he picked up a handful of stones and flung them hard. Half a brick followed. There was nothing wrong with his eyesight. It caught Jessie in the middle of the back and she yelped with pain.

  “Serves you right,” Colin told the dog angrily when they were safely out of sight. Prill had found a handkerchief, licked it, and was dabbing gingerly at the gash on Jessie’s back. The dog whined and twisted away, flattening its ears and flopping down in the grass. It knew quite well it was in disgrace.

  “Poor old thing. She was only being friendly. That old man’s mad. It wasn’t just gravel you know, it was a brick.” She went on stroking Jessie.

  “Well, we were warned,” Colin pointed out. “He’s obviously got a thing about strangers. The builders must have really upset him, then a great red setter comes out of the blue and knocks him flying. Dad’s right about Jessie, she has got a screw loose.”

  “A dog like that should have been painfully destroyed at birth,” Oliver said suddenly. There was a dreadful silence. Colin looked at him in disbelief and Prill’s mouth dropped open.

  “That’s a cruel thing to say… a really terrible thing.” She wanted to cry, and Colin felt like hitting him. The two children loved Jessie; she was their best friend.

  “It’s a joke… only a joke…” Oliver stammered. “It’s what my father says sometimes, about really awful pupils, you know.”

  They could imagine. Uncle Stanley was a teacher too. According to Dad he had a dry, sarcastic sense of humour, and sometimes reduced the boys in his school to tears. Colin stood up and said firmly, “Come here, Jessie.” The dog came, like a lamb, and he fastened the lead on.

  “If it hadn’t been for you it would never have happened,” Prill said. “You knew perfectly well that wasn’t the way down to the beach. You just wanted to spy on him. I’d have thought you’d have had enough of old people, living with them all the time.”

  “Oh, let’s get moving,” Colin snapped. “I want a swim.”

  They set off down the track, but Oliver stayed where he was, staring after them.

  “Hurry up, can’t you?”

  “I’m not coming. I’m going back to the bungalow.”

  “Mum did say we had to keep an eye on him,” Prill whispered, then she shouted back, “Oh, come on, Oll, don’t sulk.”

  “I’m not sulking.”

  “Leave him,” Colin said impatiently. “Even he can’t get lost between here and the house. We’ll have a better morning without him, anyway.”

  Oliver had no intention of going home. As soon as the other two had dropped out of sight he walked quickly back along the path, into the trees. His watch said twelve noon, the time the old man went for his daily think at Danny’s Bar in Ballimagliesh. He’d heard that priest telling Uncle David. “Never misses a day, regular as clockwork,” he’d said.

  From his hiding place he watched Donal Morrissey leave the van and walk off up the field with his dog at his heels. He moved quite quickly for such an old man, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of a ragged overcoat, a squashed green hat on his head. Oliver could hear him muttering as he walked past the neat little pyramids of peat blocks, stacked up to dry all along the track.

  When he was out of sight the boy crept out and went up to the van. He pushed at the door and it swung inwards slowly. Oliver went in.

  It was dark and hot inside the caravan, and very smelly. He detected a dog, and dirty clothes, and food that should have been thrown away. Something else too, a sharp scent, slightly sweet, the peat the old man was burning on his stove. Mother had said you never forgot the smell of it. She’d lived in Ireland once.

  In the middle of the floor was a table, a chair, and a filthy dog blanket. All round him cardboard cartons were stacked up to the roof, and he could see junk heaped in corners, broken furniture and bags of rubbish, old biscuit tins, rusty tools. It looked like a rag-and-bone man’s yard.

  The mess didn’t surprise Oliver. At home his favourite resident, Mr Catchpole, lived in a room just like this, with a kind of nest in the middle for his bed and television set. Everywhere else was stuffed with rubbish, except that Oliver and Mr Catchpole knew it wasn’t rubbish. It was the story of his life. All his eighty-three years were stacked up in boxes in that bedroom on the second floor. Memories mattered to old people, that’s why they kept things.

  The smell in the van was making him feel ill. He was dying to have a look in the biscuit tins but he felt queasy, so he climbed down the van steps again and took a few breaths of fresh air.

  On the sea side of the van there was a tiny patch of garden. The neat rows of vegetables were a strange contrast with the mess inside. Perhaps someone from the farm helped him. According to that priest, the O’Malleys thought a lot of Donal Morrissey. He had worked for the family for years and years.

  Suddenly Oliver noticed something moving on the bright green potato leaves and bent down for a closer look. One of the plants was a mass of small stripy insects. He felt in his pocket for his little magnifying glass then remembered he’d left it in the bedroom. But he did have a matchbox. Very carefully he picked a couple of the beetles off a leaf and shut them inside.

  He walked up and down the rows of vegetables stopping to turn leaves over and inspect the stalks. Something was attacking Donal Morrissey’s potato crop. The striped creatures had eaten great holes in the leaves, and what remained was covered with dark pink grubs. There would be tens of thousands by the end of the summer, unless something was done about it.

  When he stood up again he spotted someone waving at him a couple of fields away. It was Kevin O’Malley, the curly-haired boy from the farm who’d brought the milk that morning. He’d tell him about it. He might know about spraying crops.

  Then he thought better of it. This was something he could tackle on his own. He knew quite a bit about natural history from his father, more than those Blakemans, with their swimming and their athletics. They thought he was weedy anyway. And he didn’t like the way they’d talked about the old man; Prill had said he was mad.

  Oliver suddenly thought of something. He knelt down again, gritted his teeth, and grasped one of the plants hard, shaking off the insects as they ran over his fingers. He pulled it out of the earth. It wasn’t exactly stealing, all that came out of the ground were some shrivelled skins, a bit like large raisins. Poor Donal Morrissey.

  Kevin O’Malley waved again, and shouted something, but Oliver pretended not to hear. He slipped the matchbox into his pocket and, holding the potato plant at arm’s length, st
arted to walk rapidly in the direction of the bungalow.

  Chapter Four

  COLIN WOKE UP and clicked his light on. It was two in the morning. Oliver slept peacefully in the other bed, his warm pyjamas buttoned right up to the neck. But his face looked cool.

  Colin was red hot. He wore nothing but thin cotton trousers and these, like his bedding, were soaked with sweat. He felt unwell, horribly warm and rather dizzy, and there were griping pains in his stomach, like the pangs of hunger, though he’d had a big meal quite late in the evening.

  Prill was right, there was a funny smell about this place. She had told him about it that morning, how she’d gone along the beach looking for a dead animal, the stench was so overpowering.

  Colin had been doubtful. Prill did sometimes get odd ideas into her head. She had a wild imagination. Now and then her English compositions were quite fantastic. He was more down to earth. “Uninspired” was usually scrawled across his essay.

  “What kind of smell?” he’d wanted to know.

  “Rich, but sickly. Rotten, yet sweet somehow. It really turned my stomach.”

  “Was it like pigs?”

  They both laughed at this. Dad had once booked a country holiday for them in a bed and breakfast place that had turned out to be a pig farm. Pigs had a very strong, sweetish smell, a bit like sugar boiling, a bit like hops in a brewery. They’d all smelt of pigs, all holiday.

  The bedroom window had been stuck fast with paint, and Dad had prised it open with a screwdriver. But now Colin shut it again, anything to get rid of that smell. If it was fertiliser they’d used an awful lot of it. Perhaps the O’Malleys were making up for lost time, with Dr Moynihan’s money.

  He sat down again, his head swimming; the foul smell was still there, though fainter. He felt himself falling forwards and put his hands out flat, to steady himself. The bedclothes were sodden. He stood up and felt them; pillows, sheets and stripy cover were all very damp, almost wet. The sweat of one boy couldn’t have caused all that.