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 center 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 blond 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 off-comer, 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 standoffish, 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. Maybe she did go off in a huff because of Mary or maybe that was just Madge making it up, and she really did go off to pick some flowers for her mam. That's where they found the only trace of her, in Wintle Wood. Her blue sun top. She could have been carrying it and just dropped it. We took everything but our pants off when we played in the water in them hot days, and we were in no hurry to get dressed again till we got scolded. We ran around the village like little pagans, my mam said.
But that all stopped once police were called in. It was questions, questions, then and we all got frightened and excited, but mebbe more excited to start with. When sun's shining and everything looks the same as it always did, it's hard for kids to stay frightened for long. Also, Jenny were known for a headstrong girl and she'd run off before to her gran's at Danby after falling out with her mam. So mebbe it would turn out she'd run off again. And even when days passed and there were no word of her, most folk thought she could have gone up the Neb and fallen down one of the holes or something. The police had dogs out, sniffing at the sun top, but they never found a trail that led anywhere. That didn't stop Mr. Hardcastle going out every day with his collies, yelling and calling. They had two other kids, Jed and June, both older, but the way he went on, you'd have thought he'd lost everything in the world. My dad said he never were much of a farmer, but now he just didn't bother with Hobholme-that's their farm, but as he were one of Mr. Pontifex's tenants, like Dad, and the place would soon be drowned, I don't suppose it mattered.
As for Mrs. Hardcastle, you'd meet her wandering around Wintle Wood, picking great armfuls of flopdocken, which was said to be a good plant for bringing lost children back. She had them all over Hobholme and when it were her turn to take care of flowers in the church, she filled that with flopdocken, too, which didn't please the vicar, who said it was pagan, but he left them there till it were someone else's turn the following week.
The rest of the dale folk soon settled back to where they were before. Not that folk didn't care, but for us kids with the weather so fine, it were hard for grief to stretch beyond a few days, and the grown-ups were all much busier than we ever knew with making arrangements for the big move out.
It were only a matter of weeks away, but that seemed a lifetime to me. I'd picked things up, more than I realized, and a lot more than I really understood. And the older girls like Elsie Coe were always happy to show off how much they knew. She it was who told me that there were big arguments going on about compensation, but it didn't affect me 'cos my dad were only a tenant, and Mr. Pontifex had sold Low Beulah and Hobholme along with all the rest of his land in Dendale and up on High Cross Moor long since. Some of the others who owned their own places were fighting hard against the Water Board. Bloody fools, my dad called them. He said once Mr. Pontifex sold, there were no hope for the rest and they might as well go along with the miserable old sod. Mam told him not to talk like that about Mr. Pontifex, especially as he'd been promised the first vacant farm on the Danby side of the Pontifex estate, and she'd heard that Stirps End were likely to be available soon. And Dad said he'd believe it when it happened, the old bugger had sold us out once, what was to stop him doing it again?
He talked really wild sometimes, my dad, especially when he'd been down at the Holly Bush. And Mam would either cry or go really quiet, I mean quiet so you could have burst a balloon against her ear and she'd not have heard. But at least when she were like this I could run around all day in my pants or in nothing at all and she'd not have bothered. Or Dad either.
Then Madge, my best friend, got taken. And suddenly things looked very different.
I'd gone round to play with her. Mam took me. She were having one of her good days and even though most folk reckoned that Jenny had just fallen into one of the holes in the Neb, our mams were still a bit careful about letting us wander too far on our own.
The Stang, where Mr. Telford had his joiner's shop, were right at the edge of the village. Even though it were a red-hot day, smoke was pouring from the workshop chimney as usual, though I didn't see anyone in there working. We went up the house and Mrs. Telford said to my mam, 'You'll come in and have a cup of tea, Lizzie? Betsy, Madge is down the garden, looking for strawberries, but I reckon the slugs have finished them off.'
I went out through the dairy into the long, narrow garden running up to the fellside. I thought I saw someone up there but only for a moment, and it probably weren't anyone but Benny Lightfoot. I couldn't see Madge in the garden but there were some big currant bushes halfway down, and I reckoned she must be behind them. I called her name, then walked down past the bushes.
She wasn't there. On the grass by the beds was one strawberry with a bite out of it. Nothing else.
I felt to blame somehow, as if she would have been there if I hadn't gone out to look for her. I didn't go straight back in and tell Mam and Mrs. Telford. I sat down on the grass and pretended I was waiting for her coming back, even though I knew she never was. I don't know how I knew it, but I did. And she didn't.
Mebbe if I'd run straight back in, they'd have rushed out and caught up with him. Probably not, and no use
