Late, Late in the Evening

ashamed of himself! Their grandfather went upstairs an hour or more ago, and what he'll say to them in the morning I don't know!'

The fair comes only once a year and the bus before the last one didn't run, and the last was late,' said Aunt Kirstie, who never objected to telling any lies which seemed likely to improve a difficult situation. 'Besides, I kept 'em to give 'em a cup of cocoa and a biscuit to save you the trouble, so they can go straight up to bed.'

We made no objection to this, for, what with the unprecedentedly late hour and the unusual amount of excitement, we were tired out. Kenneth, in fact, had slept on Uncle Arthur's shoulder all the way home in the bus and both of us had found the long walk home from the bus stop infinitely tedious and fatiguing.

In the morning Kenneth said, 'Did you notice his ear was bleeding?'

'Whose?'

'The gypsy man, the Tiger-Cat. He's her man, you know. Her husband, or whatever it is. They don't get married properly, only over the tongs, but it's the same thing. I mean, they are allowed to have children, and all that.'

I changed the subject back again, as being more interesting.

'How do you know his ear was bleeding?'

'Saw it as they passed the pub lights. He mopped it and the bit of rag was all dark. Somebody in that fight must have pulled his earring out.'

'Did he have an earring?'

'Yes, of course. All gypsies have them. Besides, I saw how the light caught it when that first chap chucked him off the stage. I say, it was a pretty good show, wasn't it? Wonder whether Uncle Arthur has left us anything on their bedroom table?'

'We didn't ought to expect anything,' I said, 'not after him paying for all he did at the fair.'

But the Sunday morning treat was there as usual, this time in the form of chocolate cream rabbits.

'You didn't have your Saturday bath,' said Aunt Kirstie, 'and I can't give it you now with Sunday dinner to cook, and your uncle's taken the dogs out looking for Mr Ward. He never came home last night or the night before.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

MARGARET, KENNETH AND LIONEL

To our disgust, on the day after the fair we were pressurised into going to Sunday school again, but when we got there we found there were great compensations. The air was full of rumour and surmise, so much so that other children, including Our Sarah and her brother Ern, who, like ourselves, were not Sunday school minded, had turned up in force to share in the gossip and speculate upon the happenings of the previous night.

Owing to our late bedtime following our outing to the fair, it had been supposed that we would have what the aunts called 'a long lie-in' on Sunday morning, but we had been too anxious to find out what little treat, if any, was waiting for us on Aunt Kirstie's bedside table to waste time in bed. It was as we were rejoicing over the chocolate cream rabbits and digesting the information that Uncle Arthur and the whippets were out looking for Mr Ward, that the blow (as we thought it at the time) had fallen. It was Aunt Lally's doing, of course. She came over to Aunt Kirstie's to tell us to change our clothes.

'So you'll be going to Sunday school,' said Aunt Kirstie. 'Better you'd have stayed in bed until it was too late to send you, but, one way and another, Lally's right. Today you'd best be kept out of mischief and Sunday school's one way of doing it, seems to me.'

'But, Aunt Kirstie, we never get into mischief,' said Kenneth, who could usually wheedle her into letting him have his own way.

'Oh, no?' said Aunt Lally. 'Let me tell you your grandpa has seen the way them bars is prised apart in that there fence at the bottom of that old garden, so best you keep clear of him for a bit unless you wants to tell him a lot of wicked lies.' She took us back with her, and off to Sunday school we were sent. In front of the building, the old drill hall, there was a broad space of gravel and on this were assembled all the children of the village and even one or two loutish youths. Few wanted to attend Sunday school. Most wanted to listen to, augment and further spread the news of what came to be known as 'the sheepwash murder'.

We joined Our Sarah's faithful group and listened, horrified and ghoulishly excited, to her narrative. As we had come in halfway through it, Kenneth plucked up courage to say, at the first opportunity,

'Please, Our Sarah, do begin again. We've only just come, and we've got some news, too.'

'You 'ave, you young Oi say? Out weth et, then, else Oi ent agoen' to tell ee no then.'

'Well, if there's been a murder, like you say, perhaps our Mr Ward did it.'

'Mester Ward? What, that old codger what leve weth your auntie? How jer know?'

'We don't know, but he's disappeared, so, if there's been a murder, he may be running away from the police.'

'Well, Oi never!'

'So please begin at the beginning and don't leave anything out.'

'Well,' began Our Sarah, nothing loth, it seemed, to repeat her effects in front of an audience still further augmented by a couple of our cousins, Uncle George's boy and girl, 'Oi goes down to the sheepwash thes mornen a-chasen after two lettle uns as was warnted to be cleaned up for Sunday, our young Bert 'aven shet hes bretches and dodgen off not to get an 'oiden from our dad what had an 'ead on hem after the bandsmen's booze-up yesterday folleren the percession and that, when what does Oi foind?'

'You foinds a p'liceman down the sheepwash,' replied a respectful voice from among her audience.

'Roight ee are. Oi foinds a p'liceman. And what else does Oi foind?'

'You foinds as the sheepwash and all about and around es railed off weth stakes and a lot of theck rope