by
First published in 1977.
Scanned by BW-SciFi. Proofed by Ted.
Silver glinted.
Stopping to look in the art shop window, Holly saw the glitter down among the cigarette ends, sweet wrappers and dust. Automatically she covered it with her foot, glanced round, then picked it up.
Silver, cold to the touch.
In her dirty palm in the June morning sun lay a disc the size of a ten penny piece. It was bright and untarnished with a hole drilled near the edge as if it should hang on a chain. On it gleamed the image of a hawk stooping in mid-air to take its prey. Foreign coin? Special issue? She flipped it over. On the obverse was a woman's head in profile, feral-faced, with long sea-waving hair. Holly thought of the canvas and oil-paints and racks of brushes in the shop. Damn! she thought. Just when I could've done with some cash. Wonder if it's valuable...?
She slipped the medallion in her pocket, her attention returning to the shop window.
She froze. The street was clearly reflected. On the opposite pavement, a man was staring fixedly at her. Tall, dressed in an old shabby coat a size too large for him and with a woollen hat pulled down almost to his eyes. She took him for one of the tramps and derelicts who slept out in the East Hill caves during the summer. Except there was something wrong about him...
She swung round to face him but he was quicker and vanished into the crowd of Saturday morning shoppers. Holly glared up the road, at the parked cars and the bright street. He was gone. She paused, shrugged, then carried on walking, fists deep in denim pockets. The coin made a hard edge against her knuckles.
I guess he wanted money. Probably needs it more than me. Too bad... Then she frowned. So far as she could tell, seeing only his reflection in a dark window, he had been exceptionally fair-skinned. And that's what's wrong—he was too clean.
The heat fried her, making her clothing sticky. Lethargically she sauntered past the little shops of the Old Town: jeweller, junkman's, bookshop, toyshop, cafe and opticians', puzzling over the coin. It did not grow warm to the touch.
Jesus, today's hot! Coming to the end of South Street, she looked undecidedly down the main road to the overcrowded beach. Not a hope. I gotta get out of here for a bit.
She threaded her way quickly through the crowds to the Fishmarket. A few minutes later she was at the top of Tackle-way Steps, at the foot of the East Hill.
Where it faces the sea this is a sandstone cliff pocked with caves. On the town side a steep gorse and bramble-covered slope has one twisting stairway leading up it. At the summit a grey rock juts out like a ship's prow. Beyond that lies high, wide and grassy downland, the gorse-yellow Fire Hills and Starshell Cove.
Holly flopped full-length on Highrock, her cheek against the warm grey stone, exhausted by the climb. Seagulls and a sudden wind cried overhead. Having caught her breath she lifted her head, resting it on her arms, and stared down from the rock's edge.
Surcombe Old Town lay below, a maze of narrow streets. Houses with ancient red-tiled roofs, white-plastered walls and black beams, were interspersed with shops, pubs and churches. There were miniature cars, doll-people, and sudden inky shadows that resolved themselves into black cats sleeping on dusty pavements. The main road, scaled with cars, glittered and fumed like a summer dragon. She saw grey stone spires and—raising her eyes—the West Hill and the Castle bulking opposite.
Down on the beach were fishing-boats, drawn up on the shingle in the shadow of the tarry-black net-drying sheds. Her eyes were drawn by the line of the coast past the West Hill, behind which modern Surcombe and her own home lay hidden, along to the Marina where the town ended. From Hallows Hill to Gallows Hill a heat-haze hid the marshes; beyond that lay the small town of Combe Marish and a long sweep of land that finished a score of miles away at Deepdean, where Chalkspit jutted out into the Channel. And all the time, on her left, the sea lay flat and innocent and unbearably bright. With seagulls flying above and below her, she seemed suspended in the middle air, out of the sweltering town forever. The silence came down like a wave.
"Hello."
The voice came from behind her. She started awake, disorientated for a second. Then, rubbing drowsiness out of sun-heavy eyes, she sat up and swung round, brushing rock-dust from her T-shirt.
"My name's Fletcher."
He stood easy and unembarrassed, a tall and long-boned youth. He looked maybe a year older than her, and a hand's breadth taller. He was suntanned an even dark gold, and wore denim jeans hacked off to shorts, no shirt, and bare feet. Thick semi-curly dark hair framed a square face, blunt nose, wide smiling mouth with uneven white teeth, and deepset dark blue eyes. She thought, Student? On holiday?
"What d'you want?"
"I saw you down there—" he jerked a thumb in the town's direction "—you found a coin. About this big; silver. Yes?"
She hedged. "Maybe. I found a coin, but is it the one you lost?"
"Mine has a hawk on one side, and a woman's head on the other."
"Yeah, that's it. Hang about." She pulled out a handful of loose change and began sorting through it. "I thought it was maybe foreign. Where'd it come from?"
"Junkshop. Before that—" he shrugged.
Far below, a church clock struck once. Holly absently checked her watch, stared in dismay, then scrambled up.
"Jesus, that's torn it; half-one. I was meant to be home for dinner at one. Hey, catch!"
She flicked the silver disc in his direction, slid feet-first off the side of the rock and landed heavily on the path below. She regretted leaving. Even if he wasn't good-looking, the boy had an interesting face—and it's not so often, she thought, that I get a fella to myself.
"What's your name?" He stood on Highrock's brink. She squinted up, shadowing her eyes with her hand.
"Holly." Then, in case he misheard: "Holly Anderson. Bye!"
She ran down the steps, yellow dust skidding up under her feet, hair flying into her eyes. There was a one thirty-five bus from the Fishmarket, she thought...
Fletcher stood and watched until the town swallowed her. He stretched like an idle cat in the sun. Then he picked up the coin from the rock. And frowned. Alarmed, he sought the girl again, but she was gone.
"Hello, Mum?"
The phone box was like a small oven. Holly gazed unseeingly at the centre of Surcombe, tapping her free hand on the glass.
"Mum—it's Holly. Look, I'm gonna be a bit late for dinner; I missed one bus already—"
"Holly, thank goodness! I've been wondering where you were. Dear, your father and I have got to go over to Combe Marish this afternoon."
"What's up?"
"We've had a phone call from Aunt Elizabeth. Grandad's ill; she wants us to go over there."
Holly thought, The old bastard, not again! "Can I come?"
"I think it's better if you don't, dear, really. I don't like to leave you but we have to start at once—I've made sandwiches for you, and you can manage your own tea, can't you?"
"Mum, I'm fifteen." Holly sighed, "Yes, OK, I'll manage. Look, don't worry about me. You just stick close to Dad; it's his father. I'll see you tonight."
"All right, then. Be good, dear. Bye."
Holly replaced the receiver thoughtfully. Outside, the heat engulfed her, beating back from the pavements and high buildings. She wiped a thin film of sweat from her upper lip, sighed and pulled at the neck of her T-shirt. With no reason now to hurry home, she leaned on the railings outside W. H. Smith and watched the traffic. Here the main coast road met the main London road in a swirl of petrol fumes and dust.
If I had tuppence for every time that son of a bitch has been 'sick' I should be a millionaire, she thought bitterly. Why should we run round after him anyway? He's got Aunt Liz. Ah, hell. If I'd known this was going to happen, I'd've stayed for a talk with that lad...
"Hey, dopey: wake up!"
"Hull—oh, hi, Chris, how're you doing?" She made room for the girl at the rail, surprised to see her on a Saturday. They did not see much of each other out of school. Chris was an active member of many athletic and social clubs, hardly seeing the inside of her home except to sleep; while Holly spent hours alone in her room with paints and canvas. At school, however, they were inseparable. The arrangement suited Holly—she sometimes found Chris overpoweringly energetic. "How's the cinema business?"
"Are you kidding? What business? I just finished being cashier for the kids' cartoon-show—might just as well not have bothered. With this heatwave they're all on the beach. Goddamn part-time jobs!" She was a tall skinny girl, snub-nosed, with blonde hair bleached white-gold by the sun. Darker tendrils clung to her damp forehead. Pale eyebrows gave her face a deceptive wide-eyed-innocent look. Unlike Holly, she was neatly dressed; white blouse and blue denim skirt. "Whatta life this is... You staying down here for dinner, aren't you?"
Holly shrugged, used to following Chris's lead, "I guess so."
"OK, let's head for Toni's. Got any money?"
"Yeah, I think." She produced a fistful of coins. "Chuck this lot in with what you got; see what we can afford."
The cafe was a mass of people. Holly sat on one chair and put her feet across another while Chris joined the queue. Their voices wove into the cross-mesh of conversation, across the seated people and the gleaming table-tops.
"How much've we got?"
"Seventy-seven pence. I got news for you—somebody's passed you a dud ten-pence bit." Chris tossed a coin. It fell in a glittering arc and rang on the table. Holly picked it up.
A hawk. A woman's face.
"Hell, I thought I'd got rid of that. I suppose I gave him a ten-pence... oh, damn!"
"What?"
"Never mind, never mind... I'll tell you about it when we've eaten."
The coin lay on the table between them. Holly leaned back, having finished her story, and swept the dark hair out of her face. She envied Chris her cropped hairstyle, and sought in her pocket for an elastic band to fasten her own back in a ponytail.
Chris frowned. "Sounds fishy to me. You should've found out where it came from. And him, too. What'd he look like?"
Holly considered. "That photo of Davy Starren on his last LP. Like that, only dark-haired."
"Very nice."
"That's irrelevant. This hawk thing, coin or whatever, it might be valuable. Real silver, even. Reckon I ought to get it back to him."
"How?"
"I don't know how!"
Chris ticked off points on her fingers. "One: you don't properly know his name. Two: you don't know where he lives. Three: you don't really know it's his. Fishy, like I said. If it was me, I'd say 'finders-keepers'."
Holly covered it with her hands as a group of youths pushed past. "Like to. But I give it one last chance, I think. He might still be up on East Hill. Coming?"
"Was going down to the pool, get a bit of practice in for that competition. Still..." Chris grinned. "Davy Starren, you said? That'd be worth seeing!"
"Is it necessary to trail your filthy shoes all over the house?"
"No, Dad. Sorry, Dad." Holly shut the front door and slipped her shoes off, deciding she'd better go carefully. Visits to Combe Marish never improved her father's temper.
"Go and give your mother a hand with the tea while I lay the table."
"Yes, Dad."
Holly threw her shoes into the hall cupboard and limped to the kitchen. Her feet were hot and aching. She and Chris had walked across most of the cliff but they had not found the boy.
Seeing Holly, her mother smiled. "Did you have a good time in town, dear? Oh—you haven't eaten your sandwiches."
"Had dinner down the town. Went over the East Hill with Chris. Don' worry, I'll eat 'em now. How was Combe Marish?"
Mrs Anderson turned away and began filling the kettle. "Grandad's gone into hospital. Apparently Elizabeth phoned the doctor; said her father wasn't eating and wouldn't get out of bed; what should she do? The doctor came round and took one look; said get him into hospital. Of course, Elizabeth and your father are very upset."
"So I noticed." She thought, I'm not upset—except: does that mean we'll have to visit him in hospital? Christ! She fetched the cups. "In a right temper, is Dad. What's wrong with the old buzzard, then: why hospital?"
"The doctor said—could I have the milk? Thanks—he said it was just old age; but he'd be too much for Elizabeth to nurse on her own. I feel I ought to offer to have him down here, but with you at school and both of us at work, there'd be no one to look after him."
"The house is too small," Holly said resentfully, knowing whose bedroom would be taken over. "He's got Liz. We don't want him living here!"
"Holly-"
"All right, all right. I won't say any more. Just, don't you worry any more, see?" Because the bad-tempered old bugger ain't worth it!
"It's a long business... and it's your father I worry about. Still, we're home now. I'll take the tea in."
Holly put the television on, depending on the Saturday evening programmes to keep her mind off her problems. She sat restless, conscious of the hawk-coin in her pocket, as the evening wore away.
Silver liquid moonlight flooded her room. Holly lay taut, listening for the slightest sound. Something had woken her; she didn't know what. No shadow shifted. Into the silence came a rattle and a metallic click. On the floor...
Her hand sneaked out from under the sheet to flick on the light-switch. When her eyes refocused she saw a small dark shape on the floor. It was alive. A mouse.
Holly stared.
Between its front paws lay the hawk-coin, bigger than the animal's head. As she watched, it tugged the coin with sharp incisor teeth, jerking it towards the door. A fat beady-eyed grey mouse.
Soundlessly she sat up in bed and slung a pillow at it. Quick as she was, it was quicker, vanishing out of the door with a scrabble of claws. The hawk-coin lay in the middle of the linoleum.
She noted the time: half past three. Sleep fogged her head. Quietly she got up, retrieved coin and pillow and crawled back into bed.
I don't really believe I saw... I left it on the bedside table... so how..?. She shivered. Then she tied the coin in a handkerchief, tied that round her wrist and huddled under the thin sheet. Dropping asleep, she thought she heard a faint eerie music. It wound in and out of her dreams; but in the morning she made a discovery that drove it completely from her memory.
Holly stirred and slept again several times before waking, burrowing face-down into the pillow's warmth. Eventually she reached out and switched on the radio for a time-check.
Eight-ten, she realised. Sunday. No one moving... Mum and Dad having a lie-in. Good. Lazy day for me. Forget school and homework until tomorrow.
Morning light picked out sheaves of paper heaped on the dressing-table, squashed and bent-backed tubes of paint, a shrouded corner of the easel, and crumpled clothes thrown down on the dusty lino. Irregular splashes of colour leaped out from posters pinned on the walls: gold, viridian and crimson.
She rolled off the bed, heavy-limbed, and climbed slowly into blue denim jeans, the rough material dragging at calves and hips and thighs. Her eyes were gritty. She rubbed sleep away and began brushing her hair back, tying it away from her face in one heavy plait.
You look grotty. Holly watched her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Mousy hair. And grey eyes—what sort of eyeshadow is supposed to match that? And ears that stick out. And you're too fat. God save us, no wonder you ain't got no boyfriends...
That thought brought back all of Saturday. She threw down the brush and scrabbled at the sheet, frantically shaking it. She found a crumpled handkerchief and, in one fold, the hawk-coin.
Thank the Lord for that! I do have the craziest dreams. For a minute I thought... she stared at the coin, suddenly intent; then picked it up and gingerly rubbed her thumb over it. The pattern of the hawk in mid-flight was gone.
This I don't believe. Hell, no. Somebody'd better see this an' prove I'm not cracking up... I'll go over to Chris.
Quickly she finished dressing, scribbled a note and propped it up on her pillow, then pussy-footed down into the living-room. Bumble, a hairy mongrel, stirred as she passed but thought better of it.
She padded across the room, alert for any sound, eased up the catch and pulled the back door open. Shutting it carefully behind her, she let out a long relieved breath and ran down the steps into the garden.
Although it was early, the sun was high. Already it was hot; the dew was long off the grass. The scent of roses struck her with cloying sweetness. She pushed past the overgrown garden gate, grass and bindweed dragging damp and sticky at her hands. The path ran along the bottom of the garden, between it and the field below. She ran in cool shadow down the tarmac path that skirted the field and sloped down into Fern Park.
June heat had burned the grass yellow. She came under the pines and paused on the causeway between the two ponds. The ducks were out, and coots and moorhens; and a long line of pompous Chinese geese. They squarked and hissed angrily; but the swans glided mute. Seagulls rocked in the glittering water and ignored her.
She slowed to a walk to appreciate it all but remembered the coin, and ran on up the opposite slope towards Park Road and St Kevins.
Park Road was deserted. Holly stopped again to catch her breath, looking back over the tops of tall pines and flickering green horse-chestnut trees, picking out her own window in Stonegate Street. Westward, the park ended at Birchdale Junction; eastward, it ran on down towards the town centre and the West Hill.
Yesterday was fun, she thought. A little bit mysterious, but fun. This is... different.
The houses were old, terraced; built of warm red brick. Blue-grey slates caught the light and shone silver. Chris's house was the last in the road.
Chris herself was just coming out of the gate. She greeted Holly: "Just going up to get a paper. What's got you up so early? I don't generally see you before midday, Sundays."
Holly glanced round the empty street. She was nervous, but impatient. "Chris, that coin I had yesterday; you remember what it looked like?"
"Sure. Some long-haired female, an' a bird—"
"You could see it clearly?"
"Do I look as if I was blind? Of course I could. Look, let's talk on the way up to the newsagent's—"
"No, hang on. Take a look." Holly unrolled the handkerchief. Chris picked the coin up carefully by its edge.
"The pattern's gone—no, not quite. Look, you can just see it faintly, like a Victorian penny." She shook her head in slow amazement. "Hey, but this is crazy; yesterday it looked brand new. You're sure it's the same one?"
"Sure I m sure."
The noise of traffic filtered down from St Kevins main road; the morning beginning to stir. Chris leaned back, kicking her feet against the gate. "Bloody odd," she said. "Question is, what do we do? Tell you what, tomorrow's Monday; and first lesson Monday morning is Chemistry, right? So we go and sec old Hawthorne, get him to check it out, right? Maybe it's not silver. Maybe it's some metal that wears away quick. He could tell us."
There's too many people coming in on this. Holly was doubtful. "Dunno. If he asks a lot of questions—"
"He won't—or if he does, doesn't mean we have to tell him what's happening to it; just ask him what it's made of. You know what he's like—lose his head if it wasn't screwed on. Holly, c'mon; you telling me we can't put one over on him?"
She looked again at the coin resting in Chris's palm. "Yeah, OK. Hawthorne's thick as two short planks. We can't lose anything by trying—"
A squeal of anger rang out in the empty street. A tawny streak shot past Holly—she jerked back and saw Chris stagger and fall, screaming with pain. Raking her legs with bloody claws was a ginger cat. Holly stood rooted by shock.
Chris kicked; the cat was thrown twisting away. It landed foursquare and leaped again. This time Holly could move; she caught it by a hind leg and flung it down as it ripped her arm to the elbow.
"Help me!" She kicked out again but was thrown off-balance. Something buffeted her violently round the head. She could see nothing, but when she covered her head with her arms something struck at them again and again. Panic flowered in her. She ran.
The coin fell with a clear ringing sound, and she bent down in mid-flight to scoop it up. A heavy blow struck between her shoulders. She tripped, fell and rolled.
An oily undercarriage dug into her back and she came up hard against an exhaust pipe. She had rolled under a parked van but she felt more trapped than protected. She heard Chris's shouting mix with an inhuman screech, close to her.
She dared look out and, in the narrow frame between tarmac and metal, saw a large gull stalking up and down in the road, its snake-head cocked sideways. The yellow beak was red and wet and the glistening black eye was fixed expressionlessly on her. The evil cawing chuckle sounded again.
At that same moment Holly saw the cat, belly down, preparing to leap at her. She scrabbled uselessly backwards. I'll run, she thought. I'll never make it. I'll throw this damn coin so far—
...
widez2