Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…

Hi de hi, and happy days.

Your teacher, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, famed for the immortal ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’, is here with a bag of sweeties for good children, a rap on the knuckles with a ruler for bad children, and a smile of beatific contentment. One is ready to be kindly teacher aujourd’hui.

But. As I sit at my desk and pen this lesson the siren call of other ways and other enticements draws mine eye from the pristine page. Oh to be free of the shackles of teacherly duty! Oh to merely wander barefoot the grassy tracks of…

No, wait. Compose thyself pedagogue… Duty demands. Of us all. Pay attention mes enfants.

Adverbs

Let us for a moment consider the adverb, close cousin to the adjective, for the less well educated among my pumpkins this is the descriptor of action as opposed to the descriptor of object.

One can, of course enrich one’s literary efforts with adverbs in much the same fashion as one should with the humbler adjective.

Consider if you will the verb to walk. One can have one’s protagonist simply walking, but how dull, how lifeless, how detrimentally uninteresting! Why not express sorrow by having him walk listlessly, painfully, unheedingly? Equally, a happy camper may walk springily, cheerfully, expeditiously. A sick person walks stumblingly, haltingly, agonisingly. A poor man shamblingly. A rich man arrogantly. A lover voluptuously and with the sun dappling golden skin with flecks of purest amber, or sensuously with high arched feet bruising the sward to release the fragrance of grasses and crushed herbs, or silently unheard until a beloved hand brushes one’s cheek or cups the globes of one’s… No. Desist ye from this primrose path lector. We have no room here for reminiscence. There is work to be done, lessons to be learned, students to be brought to a higher place of understanding.

Back to our muttons. Consider if you will the difference between two sentences essentially providing the reader with the same set of informations.

Firstly: Ariadne walked into the temple clearing.

Secondly: Ariadne walked tremulously, with her tiny feet barely bruising the grass, she breathed shyly in shallow gasps as fear and enrapturement in equal measure brought her creeping silently into the dappled shade of the goddess’ own glade.

Add your add-jectives and add-verbs. Add them or there will be no sweeties for you and no ice cream. Decorate your prose, so that it becomes as luscious as the fur on some great golden cat that rests throughout the day draped in the branches of a banyan tree.

Learn well, and if I feel your understanding I may yet decide to divulge unto you the dearest secrets of my own heart and soul. Do I hear you beg of me one tiny clue? Very well. Just one…

Before. Mumsie entered the room where one was attempting to work at her usual shambling and graceless half-canter accompanied by those other drunken minions of misfortune whose methods of perambulation were as varied as they were unpleasing to the eye. Some limped, some ambled, some were upheld by others as their liberal potations had rendered their lower limbs unreliable and somewhat of the texture of rubber bands…. One watched in increasing dismay as they filled the family abode with hawking, spitting, sweating, malodorous flesh. And then… And then. One came – into that turbid pile of human excrescence. One came. Gold and graceful as a great jungle cat. One came….

Pauses to rearrange one’s mind.

Great feline
Walking softly
Eyes meet eyes
Dampness of palms
Heat in the depths
Great feline
Notice one, please
Lest one fade
To nothing
Under the unregard
Of your amber gaze

So, my children, you have your clue.  Study with assiduity the adverb in all its forms.

Next time. The denouement…

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Season of mists and mellow
The return of the school master’s bellow
And the post-summer holidays ‘Hello!’
As now life resumes again.

Time to start wearing a sweater
Time to feel cooler and wetter
September’s climate is better
Than summer’s hard blazing heat.

Apples on trees ripen brightly
Brambles grow blackberries rightly
Beech nuts and cobnuts fall nightly
September’s own proffered feast.

The sense of well-being is assuring
With this month the year is maturing
And winter we’re not yet enduring
Indian summer may come.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends.

As I was wondering what to say next a big black cloud sailed across the moon and I heard Mark shout.
“Somebody douse that fucking light.”
Ben kicked it over and stamped on it just as the situation turned ugly. Whoever was left in the beat-up minibus by the garden gateway decided it was about time they weren’t here. The engine roared into life and the exhaust belched out black smoke as the Merc shot forwards. I don’t think it hit anybody because I didn’t hear any screaming – except for the screams of tortured metal as the van ploughed into the dry stone wall at the end of the lane. The desperate sound of crashing gears bore witness to a desperate attempt to escape the clutches of the blocks of flinty stone.
“In a minute they’re either going to get out or figure out they can’t,” Mark spoke quietly. “Either way you need to be not standing where they think you are.”
Ben just picked me up and ran. We joined Danilo, Finoula, Jed and the dogs just inside the Memorial Garden. A couple of seconds later Neil arrived.
The sound of running feet, sporadic swearing, and the occasional flat bark of a hand gun, bore witness to a running battle around us.
Neil leaned close and murmured.“Much as it pains me to admit it. Out there’s not a place for amateurs.”
Ben nodded. “It isn’t. But I’d not recommend relaxing our vigilance. At some time this is going to occur to someone as a way out, so baseball bats at the ready boys.”
Neil swung his arm suggestively and I got the strong suspicion he’d quite like to belt somebody. He must have caught the edges of my thought because he grinned tautly.
“Yes I am feeling a tad belligerent. The fate of that girl and her baby have awoken the caveman in me.”
Clancy growled softly and pointed his nose at a patch of deep shadow between the wall and a stand of evergreen shrubs. Jed patted his rough head.
“Fetch,” he said softly.
Stan and Ollie pressed themselves against my legs while watching their friend intently. Clancy skirted the patch of thick darkness and disappeared from human view under the hedge. Ollie wagged his tail as the sound of a slight scuffle alerted the watching family that whoever had been hiding was found. A figure I recognised as being the original driver of the minibus stood up and put his hands in the air.
“Walk this way and keep your hands where I can see them.” Danilo barked.
The man did as he was told, probably because Clancy was about a centimetre behind him growling like an enraged bear.
It was difficult not to laugh, because, although he sounded dangerous, Clancy was obviously delighted with himself. His head was held high and his tail was lashing with pleasure.
Once our visitor reached a patch of shadowless grass Danilo made him sit down with his hands on his head, and Jed tied his shoelaces together. Clancy sat beside him, giving him the death glare if he breathed too deeply.
I hid my face in Ben’s chest so I could laugh without spoiling Clancy’s enjoyment.
Finoula returned from wherever she had been and groped for my hand.
“Thank you,” she said gravely.
“For what?”
“You saved me from a nasty injury at the least. Please let me thank you.”
I made a very rude noise. “Finoula, you and Jed are family. And nobody touches my family.”
“If you put it like that. Who am I to argue.”
“Now that’s straightened up you can tell me where Hector is.”
“He’s guarding the cottage. Jed asked him to. He won’t bite but he has a formidable bark.”
“He does. And the guys on the gate won’t be gentle with anyone making him bark.”
As if on cue we heard Hector’s deep-chested voice followed by a voice I recognised as being Simeon.
“Stand still you stupid bugger, or will I let the dog have you?”
Finoula giggled. “I wonder how he’d feel about being licked to death.”
“Terrified I imagine.”
It seemed that the person caught at Jed and Finoula’s cottage was the last miscreant as the night became quiet and the moon sailed out of the scudding clouds into a clear, cold sky.
The remaining Mercedes switched on his headlights and we could see a dozen figures sitting in a line on the dirt road. They were being watched by two of Mark’s lads who were negligently swinging baseball bats.
Neil ambled over to the gate. “We’ve got one in here.”
“Bring him out then.”
Jed picked him up like he weighed no more than a child and tucked him under one arm.
Ben moved to congratulate Clancy and I felt an inimical presence at my back. I instantly knew it was the guy who I had shot in the wrist and right then I wished I’d shot him in the head instead.
“Keep still, bitch, or your dog gets it.”
I looked to my left to see the gleam of a knife at Stan’s ear.
The hand that held the knife was shaking and I realised there was a real danger of my dog getting badly hurt.
“Keep back folks.” I said. “If you come near this bastard is going to stab Stan.”
“Sensible woman,” his voice dripped with something ugly, something I didn’t want to understand. “Me and bitch face and the doggies are going to walk away now. And if you want to see any of them alive you’re gonna let us pass. Move bitch.”
He grasped my shoulder with the hand not holding the knife and I could smell blood on him. He shoved me to right.
My hand was in my pocket and I took a good grip of the pistol that was probably going to be our only chance. As I tried to work out how I could deal with the situation, I took a small step to my right. My captor laughed harshly and urged me to keep moving.
Three steps were all the dogs needed. Stan dropped flat and out of reach of the knife while Ollie launched himself at the man’s legs. The real surprise, though, was Clancy who had managed to creep up behind us and landed on the man’s shoulders like a ninety pound all-in wrestler. They bore Blondie to the ground, and the sound of Ben’s foot landing on his knife hand spoke of broken bones.
Ben rolled him onto his back. “If you want to live, don’t move.”
“What the actual fuck?” Neil spoke for us all. “How did those dogs coordinate that?”
Laughter in my head and the scent of California Poppies clued me in.
“I think they had some help from those who watch over us from the other side.”
Danilo had unashamed tears running down his face and I went to stand with him.
“Grandmother wasn’t about to let anyone disrespect an honorary Lovell.”
He laughed shakily and rubbed a hand down his face. “She certainly wouldn’t allow that. But..”
“But what?”
“But I have never heard her voice from the other side. And today she kissed my cheek and blessed me. I loved her, you know.”
“I know. And she knew too. It’s your wife who isn’t sure.”
He looked into my face and I saw a flicker of something cross his face.
“I do love her. I may not have wanted to marry her but she’s my life now. I need to make her sure of that, don’t I?”
I nodded solemnly before turning my attention to the damaged clairvoyant under Ben’s foot.
“What I’d like to know is who dressed the wound on that one’s wrist.”
Mark, who had appeared on quiet feet, looked down. “That’s an interesting question.”
He poked blondie with his foot.
“Care to comment?”
“I have nothing to say and you can’t make me speak.”
I don’t know what Mark or Ben might have done to him if Finoula hadn’t spoken out.
“We don’t need the words of a piece of shit like him. There’s a girl who is part of the baro’s nursing team. This creature has been sleeping with her.”
Mark gestured with his thumb and Simeon slipped away like a wraith, returning quite quickly with a plain, dumpy girl in a white coat. She looked at blondie and burst into tears.
“What did he do now?”
“Nothing much. Just threatened to kill me and my dogs.”
She crumpled and I decided I’d had enough. I put my hand on Mark’s arm.
“Do you need us any more?”
He smiled his nice smile. “No. I’m sure you can leave the mopping up to us.”
I was just congratulating my dogs and getting my family together when the bulky figure of the male nurse came quietly to my side.
“Would you be kind enough to speak a few words with my boss? He is so tired but he won’t rest unless he apologises to you.”
Ben looked as if he was about to object but I put my finger to my lips.
“I don’t think we can grudge a few moments to a dying man.”
He lifted his shoulders. “We?”
“Yes. We should see him together.”
We entered the van, and I was shocked to see how frail and worn the man on the bed was. Going purely on instinct I knelt at his side and took his hand in mine. He opened his eyes and I smiled at him.
“Don’t try to talk.”
He squeezed my hand and I was given a message from the other side. I looked at his bulky male nurse.
“Can you easily carry your boss?”
“I can, but why?”
“Because I am being told that if he goes to the place where Cherry and her child were hidden, it will bring him peace.”
The nurse nodded. “It might at that. How far?”
“Theres a gate at the bottom of the lane. In the orchard it’s about fifty metres to the tree where she was found.”
“It’s doable then.”
Ben spoke up. “If you carry your man, I’ll bring the oxygen cylinder and the pump.”
I looked down at the man who still held my hand. “Shall we?”
He nodded and the nurse issued a couple of orders to the driver who started the engine. Before he could engage reverse Simeon jumped into the passenger seat beside him.
“I’ll just pop along with you in case we didn’t get all the naughty boys.”
Even in reverse, the ‘ambulance’ was as smooth as silk. We stopped at the gate and the bulky nurse wrapped his boss in a soft blanket. He handed me a lantern and gave Ben the oxygen tank and pump, before lifting the blanket-wrapped man with the tenderness of a mother. I lit the way, with three men close on my heels. At the foot of the old apple tree I stood aside. The nurse simply knelt down and laid his burden in the damp grass where Roz and Allie had planted sweet-smelling flowers.
We all heard the music, although only one of us recognised the tune, but when a voice took up the melody we knew it was Cherry. She sung the simple song and spoke soft words of love that needed no translation. I knew the moment her lips touched his cheek and I understood her promise to be waiting for him. A hand brushed my face and a voice whispered ‘thank you’ before her presence receded. The nurse picked up his boss and turned a face filled with wonder to me.
“His blanket is dry.”
I didn’t know what to say, but luckily Grandmother did and for a moment her voice was as clear as if she was standing at my side.
“We protected him while Cherry made her peace with the one she loves so dearly.”
The nurse was a strong, phlegmatic sort of a man so his stride didn’t falter, but I know he was affected deeply.
Back in the ambulance I bent to kiss the cheek of the dying man who lay at peace in his frail body.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
As we turned to leave the nurse shook Ben’s hand and bowed over mine with an old-fashioned courtliness.
“Thank you bhean mhór (great lady). My old friend can now go in peace.”
“Whenever the sand leaves his hourglass, Cherry will be there waiting to take his hand.”
We stepped out into the bright moonlight and Simeon joined us to watch the van slip quietly away into the night. Neil, Stan, Ollie and the boys from the pub walked quietly down the lane towards us.
“Shall we go home?” Ben suggested.
I was so emotionally drained all I could do was nod.

There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in an alternative modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.

They were greeted by a whey-faced curator who seemed to be expecting them.
“That was fast, but I’m glad you are here so quickly – I’ve tried to stop anyone going near the area, of course, but I didn’t want to start a panic by letting people know what had happened.”
Dai opened his mouth but Julia beat him too it.
“Of course. I understand. Perhaps you could take us to see. No need to cause any alarm.”
The curator led the way and Dai shot Julia a puzzled look. She shook her head and winked then took a few quick paces so she was walking beside the curator.
“What can you tell me?”
“Well, the under-keeper found him, said the lions have been very unsettled recently and he had been trying to see what the problem was.”
“The under-keeper was trying to see what the problem was?”
“No. The head keeper. Drust. Ninian Drust. He was a marvel with the lions, he knew them all from cubs. It is terrible, terrible.”
“Terrible,” Julia agreed. “So what happened?”
“He must have been checking the enclosure, looking for anything that might have been upsetting the lions. Would have to have been early morning, before opening. The under-keeper found him when he came on duty just after lunch. Well, found what was left of him.”
They had reached the lions’ enclosure and the curator was wringing his hands over and over.
“Terrible. It’s just terrible.”
Dai caught the slight nod Julia gave him and left her saying soothing words to the curator and hopefully getting more details of events from him. Dai went into the keeper’s room and the stench of exposed entrails hit him full in the face. The keeper’s face was still strangely preserved, eyes wide with a last image of horror, and jaw locked into a teeth-exposing grimace of agony. Most of the damage was to his torso and limbs, the trailing remains of his guts hung down from the table and his body looked oddly deflated with the internal organs and soft flesh mostly gone.
It was obvious he had been attacked and killed by the lions he had loved. Didn’t need a detective to tell that. Dai was anything but a superstitious man and right that moment he was not going to buy into this being any kind of coincidence. His test kit was about as basic as it came but the blood sample told him one important thing: there had been high concentrations of alcohol in Ninian Drust’s bloodstream when he died.
One of the advantages of having a Roman investigator with him was that Dai needed only to ask for his requests to be fulfilled. Instead of being told nothing was going to happen unless and until he provided officially confirmed documentation, a single glimpse of Julia’s ID and the curator was almost offering to shoot the lions himself. The praetorian marksmen who undertook the task after being equipped with appropriated tranquilliser weaponry, were probably more efficient.
The subsequent search of the large enclosure seemed fruitless at first and Dai was on the point of admitting his idea might have been wrong and that Drust had in fact just been drinking and wandered into the lions’ enclosure after all, when he saw it. He had seen it when he first walked into the enclosure, they all had. You couldn’t miss it, but no one had really seen it.
“Hiding in plain sight,” he told Julia, pointing to the decorative carousel-shaped centrepiece in the middle of the enclosure. It’s top, a strange confection of oriental shapes, would just be visible to visitors to the menagerie from the edge of the enclosure. The only people who would ever know it was there would be the lion-keepers themselves – and someone who had access to the complete plans for the entire Augusta Arena complex, of course. It looked for all the world, close to, like some intricate cage-effect sculpture, set around a large rough-hewn rock.
The bars were not even locked and lifted easily when Dai applied his strength to do so. So easily that it was clear they were well maintained despite the appearance of age. Even Julia could have opened them without too much trouble.
“The under-keeper told me that Drust was convinced something was going on with the lions at night,” she told him as the bars slid up, revealing a steep tunnel dropping away into darkness. “Apparently, they would come in the morning sometimes to find the lions all lethargic and grumpy. But the beasts passed every health check he ran them through. It had become a bit of an obsession for the man,; he had put in more security surveillance around the perimeter, but that had shown him nothing. So, according to the under-keeper, he had been camping out in the menagerie for the last two nights, determined to see what was happening.”

Part X will be here next week. If you can’t wait to find what happens next you can snag the full novella here.

Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…

Knobsie was in the cabbage patch sobbing. He had lost his tiny pink winkle and he was inconsolable.
“Where did you lose it?”
“Me doesn’t know. It just gone.”
Which, in an acre and a half of garden, wasn’t much help.
The gnomes tried, but it was close to impossible, a one centimetre piece of pink plaster wasn’t going to be found unless they got very lucky indeed.
A week later, a sparrow overflew Bertha and dropped something at her feet.
As she superglued Knobsie back together she chuckled. “It’s a good job your winkle looks like a worm’s nose.”

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

atate (adjective) – looking as if it has been chewed by a rodent

arpmit (noun) – fireproof glove used in World War Two

bugnee (noun) – leg joint of a beetle

doungut (noun) – hefty stomach often the result of eating too many doughnuts

eflephant (noun) – profane pachyderm 

garvity (noun) – body weight in a swimming pool that has a high concentration of p*** in the water

juist (noun) – fight club for dyslexic knights

kagewl (noun) – Australian raincoat

laibel (noun) – itchy scratchy thing in the neckline of overpriced middle-management shirt

macntosh (noun) – badly assembled macaroni cheese

maitain (noun) – cocktail made from white rum and suntan lotion

nuppel (adjective) – bendy, but prone to rashes

oange (noun) – fruit with something missing

preogress (noun) – ancestor of Shrek (female)

qieen (noun) – yet another middle class rice substitute (this one tastes like rugby changing rooms smell)

restrong (noun) – middle class eating house

stgate (noun) – church entrance

tset (verb) – to examine straitly 

ubra (noun) – something to give your chest a lift

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

Every morning for thirty years, Geoff walked past number forty and saw the stone elephant. It stood three foot high with flowers cascading, changing according to the season, from the howdah on its back. It had been part of his morning commute.
As the years went by he found himself making up stories about it on the train.
The day he retired, he saw the elephant for the last time and made a decision. Taking a picture of it on his phone. He got home and started writing a children’s book – about a garden ornament elephant that came to life…

E.M. Swift-Hook

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…

Howdy again,

It is I, your inspirational instructor in the arcane literary arts, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV. Again it falls to me to remind you of my impeccable credentials as the author of ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’, once described as ‘amazingly….written….incredible….story’. One comes to you this week, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. If a little physically worn. One comes to you in the full flood of joy. One comes to you in the full knowledge that one is becoming a better and more sensitive writer day on day. One comes to you replete, but still hungering. One comes to you with reluctance but determination. A teacher must teach, I tell myself. A teacher must teach. So teach one shall.

Today’s lesson concerns a literary device about which one has mixed feelings, but one it is unwise to ignore as its usefulness cannot be overstated, although it can be overused. Of what does your beloved pedagogue speak?

Cliffhangers

Ah yes. The cliffhanger. Those little hooks of anticipation one sets in the flesh of one’s besotted readership leaving them like the cocaine addict without his fix, like the lover deprived of an adored one’s skin, like half of a loving pair left suddenly alone. Craving. Craving….

Properly used, the cliffhanger can ensure that one’s readership awaits with baited breath the next instalment. That they turn the page with shaking hands barely able to contain the excitement that one’s literary efforts stir in their innocent breasts.

Improperly used, the cliffhanger becomes as the drumbeat of the music that ends each episode of some trashy soap opera or another. It becomes as the dying fall at the end of a popular melody. As the cawing and rook-like scratching of the comic-book hero who will live to fight another day be it limbless or headless.

Beware the crass and sensational.

Compare and contrast.

• Artimesius lay bound and gagged across the cruel iron of the railway lines and even as he strained and writhed in his bonds the vibration through the unyielding metal to which he was tethered told him that the seventeen-twenty to Euston was on time.

• Arty: tied to the railway, screaming inside, hearing the scream of an approaching express train. Will our hero survive?

I rest my case as I rest my head as on a lover’s breast.

I leave you to consider the use of the cliffhanger with an example from my own literal life.

Last time one left you in the knowledge that some great and cataclysmic occurrence had brought a newness and brightness to one’s life. Now read on.

It was nine of the clock and the front door of Myrtle Villa was flung open with such force as to throw it back against the fading floral print of the wallpaper with a reverberating crash.
“Moons, I’m home…” Mumsie’s voice was slurred almost beyond recognition and I readied myself for either maudlin sentiment or vicious physical attack. But it was neither of those things. It was much worse. “I’ve brought the gang along. We’re going to have a welcome home Moons party.”
One quickly gathered together one’s papers and secreted them in the depths of a cretonne cushioned ottoman before assembling a welcoming smile and turning to face the doorway. The usual gang of halfwits, deadbeats, alcoholics, out-of-work whores, and accountants began to dribble into the room. And each found it necessary to greet one either with loose-lipped and unpleasant kisses or by slapping one painfully about the back and shoulders.
And then IT happened. Just as suddenly as that. One minute one was cringing in the corner. The next instant…

What?

You will find out next time. Perhaps…

Until then. Hasta la vista muchachos!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

The rain is gone, the morning shines
Where I can rest a while
Sheltered from the teasing wind
And by the warmth beguiled
The humans pass and never pause
To smell the first of spring
But sitting by the kindly wall
I hear the robin sing
Here, as I doze I hear the feet
Of ghostly builders pass
As through the earth old voices sing
And I’m at peace at last

©️jane jago 2024

Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends.

I smiled at the idea I was hunting and followed Simeon out of the door into what was now a pale moon-washed night. We formed a sort of loose procession with Simeon in front followed by me, Ben, Neil, Stan and Ollie. The rest fell in behind walking quietly and saying nothing. At the market garden, Jed, Finoula and Clancy joined us, while two hard-handed guys with baseball bats peeled off to guard the gate.
Around the next bend in the lane a scruffy looking Mercedes minibus was parked in the middle of the road. It was facing the other way which prevented them from blinding us with their headlights and Simeon casually opened the driver’s door. The guy who fell out was visibly uncomfortable, but game nonetheless.
“What you wanna go and do that for?”
Simeon gave him a hard stare and he wilted a bit.
“What are you lot doing here?”
“None o’ your business. It’s a public road. We can be here if we want.”
I took two paces forwards.
“It’s not a public road.”
The sliding door at the other side of the van opened and I presumed some person or persons intended to join the argument. However, there was a modest reception committee and the sound of fists meeting flesh was loud in the night air.
“You keep still. Unless you’re up for another smack.”
Finoula stepped into a patch of moonlight. “Bring forward your clairvoyant and let me see if it’s a big a charlatan as it smells like.”
The sound of someone hastily climbing over seats made me think my friend had hit a nerve. In a very short time a youngish man, whose cropped hair was so pale that looked peculiarly greenish in the moonlight, climbed out onto the road surface and glared about him.
“Who dares to name me charlatan?” he demanded.
“Finoula Lovell.”
He obviously knew the name because he flinched visibly. Then he bowed from the waist and stepped closer to Finoula and Jed. Clancy growled, a deep sound in his barrel of a chest, and blondie stepped back a pace.
He said something in Rom to which Finoula replied in a voice that crackled with power. I heard footsteps behind me and Danilo stepped out of the shadows to stand beside me.
“Do you seek to contend with my family, outcast?”
I felt the weight of that and wondered at the necessity, until I heard Grandmother’s voice in my head assuring me that it was both necessary and proportionate.
“How do you judge it right to stand for a gadjo woman against one of your own blood?”
Danilo snapped his fingers. “That for your prejudices lulo bull. She is as a sister to me and to every Lovell that draws breath. Now. I repeat. Do you seek to contend with us?”
“I am not that much a fool.”
Danilo put something in my hand before moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with Finoula.
“Do we believe him?”
“No.” Finoula sounded icy cold. “I will have his blood oath before I trust such a one.”
Jed materialised beside me and bent his head to mine.
“Finoula says this one cares for naught but money, and I would say Danilo thinks the same as he just called him a whore.”
“Oh right. And I have to go into the garden with him don’t I?”
“You don’t have to.” That was Ben from my other side. “Also what did Danilo slip you.”
“A pistol. And I do have to. If we want this farce to end I have to take him into the garden and convince him Cherry isn’t there. Which might have been more difficult next week.”
I heard Grandmother laugh inside my head. The ghosts, it seemed, were perfectly willing to take a hand.
Ben put a big hand on my head. “Will I come with you?”
“No love. You and the dogs need to stay out here.”
“If you didn’t have a gun in your pocket, we might have a row about that.”
I leaned into him. “We wouldn’t, because without a pacifier in my pocket I’d not be going in.”
“I take it that thing in your pocket is loaded.”
“Grandmother says it is.”
“Well I guess she’d know.”
He wrapped me in his arms and we stood quietly. I was taking calming breaths and husbanding my mental resources, while Ben was probably worrying but carefully not mentioning his worry.
The three clairvoyants were deep in low-voiced conversation and I had drifted to a place of inner peace when I felt Ben stiffen. As my ears caught the sound of something being driven quietly up the lane, a crunching in the gravel of the lane also alerted me that someone was coming on foot.
“Only us, Joss.” It was Mark’s voice and he stepped into the moonlight with his brothers at his side. “Morgan called me.”
“Fair enough. But who’s driving up the lane?”
“I don’t know. Though I think we need to fade into the background until we find out.”
They blended back into the deep shadow and I smiled at Jed.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.
He chuckled. “You’m not much like my idea of Alice.”
“She isn’t indeed,” Neil agreed quietly. “More like the Red Queen.”
“Off with his head.” Ben quipped gently.
Mark grinned and for a couple of seconds his teeth showed strong and white in the shadow of the hedge.
“Cheshire Cat?” I looked at Jed.
“It do so appear.”
Whatever was coming up from the village was being driven quite slowly and with only minimal lights.
“I don’t think whoever this is is necessarily on the side of the angels,” I spoke quietly.
“Me neither,” that was Ben.
The vehicle that rounded the bend was another Mercedes van, though it bore as much relationship to the grubby, dented workhorse at the gateway to the memorial garden as I do to Marilyn Monroe. Blondie hissed through his teeth while the guy Simeon held in one negligent hand looked as if he was about to piss himself.
“What have we here, my friends?” I whispered.
The Merc sighed to a halt and the back of the thing opened up silently and smoothly. A chunky figure in a sort of modified nurse uniform jumped out with something in his hand. I took a careful grip of the pistol in my pocket, but it was unnecessary as the ‘nurse’ pointed what I could now see was a remote control and the van extruded a ramp down which came an electric wheelchair.
The cold moonlight revealed the man in the chair to be worn and beyond thin. He was possessed of a face that looked to have been carved from flint so sharply were the angles cut. He turned his chair to face us.
“I would have speech with Mrs Beckett.”
Ben responded . “Who demands to speak to my wife?”
“My name would mean nothing to you.”
“Meaningless or not, we do not speak to those who hide in darkness and anonymity.” I could hear the berserker that lurked just under the surface of Ben’s cool demeanour and I hoped nobody poked a stick in his ear.
It seemed that the man in the wheelchair heard it too because he inclined his head.
“Lantern,” he barked.
His nurse reached into the van, producing a large electric lamp which he placed on the ground beside the wheelchair and switched on. The light was bright, shadowless, and pitiless, revealing our visitor to be a man not far from death if I wasn’t mistaken.
I walked forward into the circle of brightness and said the first thing that came into my head.
“Will you please put your oxygen back on?”
He laughed, though it was a sound without much underlying amusement, and lifted a skinny claw. The nurse charged up the ramp returning with a small cylinder and an arrangement of tubes. Once life-giving oxygen was being gently pumped through his nostrils the man in the wheelchair looked in less immediate danger of death.
“What is so important that you come here in the dead of night?” I kept my voice neutral.
“You know what,” he snapped.
I stood straight and still in the pitiless lantern light. “I do not. I may have a suspicion, but that isn’t knowing. And you are close enough to the veil to know the truth when you hear it.”
His dark fathomless eyes bored into mine before he smiled.
“Cherry had eyes like yours.”
I took a chance. “Who is Cherry?”
“Cherry was my wife. I am given to understand that her bones, and those of our unborn child are buried here. And I would visit her while I can.”
Of course that didn’t come close to explaining a visit in the dark of night, but I thought I’d let that one go.
“If Cherry’s were the bones uncovered in our orchard, then she is not buried here. The police took her away and I have no knowledge of where she is now.”
He sagged in his chair and I felt a stab of pity before he dragged himself back into his habit of command.
“Do you swear this is the truth?”
“I do. And if I knew where her bones were today I’d tell you.”
I felt the spirits of the girls who were buried in the garden as they clustered about him. Esme came into my head. ‘Beware the white-haired one.’ I reassured her that I had my eye on him.
“Perhaps if I could visit the place where her bones were found.”
“You could, but not in the dark and not until the ground dries a bit.”
“Why not? I’m here now.” He waved a hand towards the memorial garden. “It looks like there’s a proper pathway.”
“If the bones were found in the memorial garden there would be no problem. Only they weren’t. When I said uncovered in our orchard that was precisely what I meant. The orchard is down at the bottom of the lane bordering on the pub car park it’s grassy and bumpy and currently boggy.”
He seemed to understand that I spoke the simple truth because he turned his attention to the blond clairvoyant.
“Why have you been telling me that Cherry is here?”
“Because she is. The woman lies.”
“I don’t think so.” The man in the wheelchair carried an aura of real menace. “I think those who told me you were a charlatan were saying nothing more than the truth. Now. What do you think the reward for lying to me might be?”
Finoula’s voice broke into what had become an icy silence.
“He’s not entirely a charlatan, he just magnifies what is truthfully a tiny talent for gain.”
“What should I do with him, then?”
“That’s your decision. I am not permitted to make it for you. But what I can do is call your wife and ask if she has words for you from beyond the veil.”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“I would do it in the name of love, and to ease your passage to the light.”
“Will you then. Please.”
Finoula nodded. “I will.”
She lifted her face and the moonlight sparkled in the pale blue depths of her sightless eyes. Jed went to be as a bulwark at her back, and Danilo walked soft-footed to stand and face her. Finoula’s started to sing a wordless eerie tune.
Danilo joined his voice to hers. “Come forward if you have any words for your grieving husband.”
I felt the other spirits forming a sort of guard of honour and then the scent of orchard fruits filled the air.
The voice that spoke was soft and carried with it a sweetness that even her death and the death of her unborn child hadn’t eroded. But she was angry too, with forty years of anger to get out and she let him have it all. She berated her husband in Irish and he replied humbly in the same language. It felt as if we were eavesdropping, and I was very glad to only understand tone, not words. Everything about this was too naked and too painful so l looked about for something to distract me, which was when I noticed that Blondie was definitely up to something.
Moving very slowly he put one hand inside his leather waistcoat and drew out an object he sought to hide in his left hand. Unfortunately for him I have very good eyesight and the moon glinted on what I determined must be a knife. As Finoula’s song reached its crescendo he slithered towards her. He looked truly reptilian in the moonlight and something hardened inside me. There was no way he was going to hurt my friend while I had it in my power to protect her. I took the pistol out of my pocket and, as he punched an awkwardly curled fist towards her face, I shot him through the wrist.
He made a noise the like of which I had never heard before, and I’d rather not hear it again. But even as he screamed he dropped the knife and Jed put a big foot on it. Simeon grabbed Blondie, with one huge hand around his skinny neck, and stopped the noise by the simple expedient of holding the other huge hand over his mouth. Ben was at my side in two enormous strides, gathering me into the security of his embrace. I leaned against his strength, but I was surprisingly unmoved by having shot a human.
In a matter of seconds it was all over and Finoula closed the door between the worlds.
The man in the wheelchair sat bolt upright.
“He is a naughty little albino isn’t he? Will I take him off your hands?”
“I’m not sure he was ever on my hands,” I was proud of how steady was my voice.

There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.