Roots of Evil(27)

But the train came in, and once on it, once it started away from the station, it was possible to feel safer. I’m going away from Pedlar’s Yard, and the farther I go, the safer I am. I am nothing to do with Pedlar’s Yard any longer and I am nothing to do with North London any longer. I am a person travelling to Lincolnshire, going to visit my grandmother. The words brought a deep satisfaction. Just as the names of the villages and towns learned from mother had been a litany to blot out the brutality, so now was the phrase ‘going to visit my grandmother’ a charm that could be recited to inquisitive grown-ups. I am going to visit my grandmother who lives in Mowbray Fen. The wheels of the train sang the names of the stories. Thorney and Witchford and Whissendine. Rockingham Forest and going-to-see-grandmother.

Peterborough was finally reached after lunch, and from there on, buses had to be taken, but this also turned out to be easy. People at bus stations could be politely asked for directions, although once a stout, bossy-looking woman said sharply, ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ and there was a breath-snatching moment of panic. But it was easy to point to a well-dressed female on the other side of the square and say there was Mother, and that there had been a dentist’s appointment that afternoon.

Seeing the sign that said ‘You are entering the County of Lincolnshire’ brought a lurch of delighted expectation. Lincoln. Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest. And Pedlar’s Yard was a long way behind now, and clearly the money was going to last, which was one huge worry out of the way. It was even possible to be interested in things like newspaper headlines on placards. The Space Race – America and Russia sending up Apollos and Pioneers and probe-ships to Mars. And there were stories about the fairly shocking musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar, and about the really shocking films like Last Tango in Paris, and Deep Throat. People had sniggered about Deep Throat at school, but films and musicals had not played any part in the life of Pedlar’s Yard. Because there had been no money for them, or because there had been no understanding of how marvellous things like that could be? Yes, but one day I’m going to be grown up and then I’m going to know about films and music and books.

And then at last there was a bus that left Grantham, which rumbled along through all the places with the fairytale names. Thorney and Witchford and Whissendine. Parson Drove and Kings Cliffe and Collyweston…There was the feeling of being pulled deeper and deeper into Mother’s stories.

And now Mowbray Fen, just the tiniest of tiny villages on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, was only a few miles away, which meant the house in the marshes was only a few miles away as well. And when I get there I’ll really have escaped, and I’ll have stepped into a different world.

Shall I change my name for that different world? Tear up the birth certificate and be called something entirely new? Would it be safer to do that, so that nobody could ever know about Pedlar’s Yard? What could I be called?



The appalling possibility that Mother’s whispered stories might not be true could not be considered, not even for a moment. The marsh house must exist and that was all there was to it. It had been dreamed about and yearned for so strongly and for so long, that it could not be simply a fairytale.

But once off the bouncing country bus came the search for signposts that pointed to Mowbray Fen, and a different panic swept in, because supposing there weren’t any signposts? Supposing this whole thing was going to turn out to be as elusive as looking for the rainbow’s end so that you could claim the pot of gold? Supposing that letter Mother showed me was an old one and the house isn’t here any longer? Or supposing I got the journey wrong, and I’ve ended up miles away from where I should be?

But the panic did not last long, because this was the land of the jack o’ lanterns and the will o’ the wisps, and there was a strong pure light everywhere – a light that bore no resemblance to London’s thick cloggy skies – and if ever will o’ the wisps danced in England they would surely dance here, to their own strange wild music, moving across the flat rolling marshlands, in and out of the thick fringings of reeds and rushes. Keep looking. The road will be here somewhere.

The road was there, of course. As if the creatures of the myths were pointing the way, there was the signpost: ‘Mowbray Fen, 4 miles.’

Mowbray Fen. Heart’s desire and journey’s end. I’m nearly there.



Mowbray Fen, when it was finally reached, turned out to be a village with a little straggling street and a big square area of grass at one end, with a stone cross. There were shops – some of them with little roundy windows – and there were houses built out of stone, which was something you hardly ever saw in Pedlar’s Yard.

But Pedlar’s Yard need never appear again, and it need not be talked about or even remembered. Out here, it was possible to believe this.

Just beyond the main street was a church with a little spire; music came from its half-open door – lovely music, not like anything you had ever heard before, but music that was somehow part of the strangeness of this place and that was all mixed up with the feeling of having escaped.

And there, beyond the church, and behind the green, was a small sign, so weathered it was almost impossible to read. But to the prepared mind it was very clear indeed. ‘The Priest’s House’ it said, and at the sight of it memory stirred all over again.

‘It’s called the Priest’s House,’ Mother had said. ‘It was built when people could be put to death for believing in the wrong religion, and there are legends that priests hid there before being smuggled out of the country and across to Holland.’