The Phantom Farm Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Decks and necks

  Chapter 2 Shoes and steaks

  Chapter 3 Chicken and cheats

  Chapter 4 Steaks and sludge

  Chapter 5 Turnips and truncheons

  Chapter 6 Winds and Wells

  Chapter 7 Torches and traps

  Chapter 8 Cows and carves

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Decks and necks

  A village near Portsmouth, 1941

  Do you believe in ghosts? I did once. When I was a schoolgirl during the Second World War.

  My dad ran the White Horse Inn, serving beer and sandwiches to sailors and farmers as well as the local people. Mum went out every day to work in the dockyards of Portsmouth.

  ‘What do you do there, Mum?’ I asked.

  Her eyes went as wide as beer mugs. ‘It’s secret, Rose. It’s so secret I’d be thrown in jail if I told you. Hitler’s spies are everywhere. You know what the posters say?’

  ‘Careless talk costs lives,’ I whispered. She wrapped her flowery pinafore round herself and headed for the door. ‘Is it dangerous, Mum?’

  ‘Deadly,’ she said and hurried off to catch the bus that would take her to the dockyard.

  Dad spat in a glass and polished it with a dusty cloth. He sighed. ‘She’s a cleaner. When the warships come into port she cleans them—washes the bedclothes, dusts the cabins and scrubs the floors and decks.’

  ‘Is that top secret?’

  ‘No, lass, it’s just your mum’s little joke. See?’

  I thought about it. ‘Not really.’ I had a lot to learn.

  I remember the evening I first saw Slick Sam. It was dark outside and we’d drawn the blackout curtains. Dad turned up the gas lamps and lit the log fire. It was cosy in the tap room and the lounge bar. All we needed was a few customers.

  The first to step through the door was Jack Latham. Mr Latham was usually the first every night. He wore a grey overcoat and was so tall his head brushed the top of the door. Dad said he was so tall because his neck was twice as long as any normal neck.

  ‘He has a neck like Nat Jackley, the Rubber Man,’ Dad used to laugh… but he never called Mr Latham that to his face. Nat Jackley was a comic who went on stage in the Portsmouth theatres. Nat Jackley in the pantomime was so funny I almost wet my pants laughing at him.

  And the words of his song at the end were just right.

  I picture the scene on a cold winter’s night

  With the blackout, the bombs and the Blitz.

  The world might be tragic, but inside there was magic

  With the audience rolling in fits.

  Nat Jackley made me laugh. But I never dared to laugh at Mr Latham. That night he took his seat at the corner of the bar and ordered, ‘The usual.’

  I ran to grab a bottle of Golden Ale, took the top off and poured it carefully into a glass. ‘There you are Mr Latham.’

  ‘Thank you, Rose… though the law says a girl of your age should not be serving drinks.’

  I felt his pale eyes drill into me. ‘No, Mr Latham,’ I muttered. ‘Where’s your uniform, Mr Latham?’ I asked as he took his first sip.

  ‘I only work as a special constable six days a week. Today’s my day off.’

  I was a bit shocked. I was going to ask him if all the burglars and spies and shoplifters could get away with it that day. But before I could open my mouth to speak my mouth fell open in wonder.

  Slick Sam had walked through the door.

  Chapter 2

  Shoes and steaks

  I’d seen soldiers and sailors on parade in their best uniforms of red, blue and green, silver and gold. But Slick Sam was more dazzling than any of them.

  His shoes were yellow. Yellow! He wore a suit of an orangey-red colour with yellow checks. The lapels on his jacket almost touched his arms and the trousers were so tight they must have stopped the blood getting to his toes.

  Slick Sam’s shoulders were padded to make them wide as a No. 24 bus. He could have poked someone’s eye out with them in a crowded room.

  His tie was green silk and had a picture of a dancing lady painted on it. On his head was a trilby hat, a couple of sizes too small, tilted to the side like a soldier’s cap.

  When he spoke he sounded like he came from London, but he spoke faster than a machine gun so it was hard to follow. He stuck his head around the door and saw me, Dad and Mr Latham. He winked at me then shuffled across to Dad with a blur of yellow shoes.

  ‘Good evening boss, and how are you this fine but chilly evening? Now you look like a man who knows a bargain when he sees one. Am I right? I say, am I right? And since you’re a man who likes a bargain, you’ve come to the right man.’

  He stretched out a skinny hand to shake my dad’s, and Dad began to ask, ‘What can I get you, sir?’

  ‘It’s more a question of what I can get for you, my old china plate—that means “mate” where I come from. Slick Sam’s my name—but you can call me Slick Sam—and selling goods is me game. Now you tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you.’

  The man looked over his shoulder, sly as our dog about to pinch a cake off the table. He tapped the side of his nose with a skeleton-thin finger. ‘No ration coupons needed, of course. No names, no pack-drill, Bob’s your uncle and Charlie’s your aunt. Know what I mean?’

  Dad turned pale and his eye twitched. He turned his back on Special Constable Latham so the policeman couldn’t see him. Dad jerked his thumb at the constable and mouthed the words, ‘He’s a copper.’

  Slick Sam didn’t seem to notice. ‘Tell you what, squire, as a special opening offer I can sell you the most delicious piece of beef you ever tasted in your life. I could cut a slice off this young lady here and it wouldn’t be as tender as the two rump steaks I have for sale.’

  Slick Sam reached inside his long jacket and pulled out a packet wrapped in newspaper. He opened it and showed two slices of raw meat.

  My dad gave a tiny shake of the head. And suddenly the man with the yellow shoes understood. ‘This is my tea,’ he said smoothly. ‘What I’m saying is I could get you a piece of steak just like this, if you have the right coupons of course, and if you paid the correct price. All above board and shipshape, know what I mean?’

  He began to slide the yellow shoes towards the door and hid the meat parcel away again. ‘I don’t blame you for refusing,’ he said in a soft whine. ‘There’s a lot of crooks about. People selling food without ration books. Bang out of order that is. Spivs, we call them villains in London. I’ll bid you goodnight, landlord. Take care.’

  And he was gone as quickly as he’d arrived.

  ‘Well I never,’ Dad said.

  Chapter 3

  Chicken and cheats

  After Mr Latham had left the bar Dad explained to me. ‘You can’t buy meat without coupons from your ration book. There’s not enough food to go around. Everybody gets the same rations so we share it out, fair and square.’

  ‘I know that, Dad,’ I said.

  He spat in a glass. ‘Ah, but it’s not that simple, because everybody wants a little bit extra. You’ve seen Farmer Edwards come in here?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’ I remembered the short, heavy man in cow-smelling clothes.

  ‘Let’s say Farmer Edwards has fifty chickens. He tells the ration inspector he has forty—they can’t go around counting every chicken in the country. That means the farmer has ten spare chickens nobody knows about. See?’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  Dad sighed. ‘Farmer Edwards brought one of those spare chickens in here last week. We had it for Sunday dinner, remember? And your mum had enough left over to make chicken pie on Monday. Now your mum and me didn’t give Farmer Edwards any coupons or any money for that chicken
. I gave him four pints of free beer, see?’

  I gasped. ‘But that’s breaking the law, Dad. They’ll lock you up. Miss Weardale our teacher says people that do that are wicked. She says it’s a black market. She said they’re parachutes.’

  ‘I think you mean parasites. Anyway…’ Dad lowered his voice. ‘Most people say it makes sense. You get fed, the farmer gets a nice drink and no one gets hurt.’

  ‘Except the chicken,’ I argued.

  Dad rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. ‘The chicken never felt a thing. Just remember, everybody cheats a little bit.’

  ‘Even Mr Latham?’

  Dad rubbed his bristling chin. It was hard to find new razor blades in the shops. ‘Not Mr Latham. He wants to see every ration cheat locked away.’

  I was worried. ‘Including you, Dad?’

  ‘Including me, and your mum… and you.’

  ‘Me!’ I squawked. ‘I never stole no chicken.’

  Dad gave a grim smile. ‘You ate it, Rosie lass, you ate it.’

  I suddenly felt sick. It was as if my Sunday dinner was trying to jump back out of my throat.

  ‘That’s why you don’t want to go saying anything to Special Constable Latham, girl. It’s our secret. Careless talk costs lives—and gets our family locked in prison. Right, Rose?’

  ‘Right, Dad.’

  I didn’t sleep much that night. I wondered what it would be like sleeping in a prison cell. That’s when I decided the real villain wasn’t Farmer Edwards or my dad or my mum or me. It was Slick Sam. If he was behind bars we’d all be safe.

  And I was the girl to put him there.

  Chapter 4

  Steaks and sludge

  The next afternoon I was running home after school at dusk, down the winding lane past Edwards’ Farm gates, when something caught my eye. I’d have sworn I saw a yellow shoe disappear behind the barn at the back of the farmyard.

  Only Slick Sam wore shoes like that. Now you might wonder what the spiv was doing in Edwards’ farmyard. For some reason I only wondered what the mud and sludge would do to his shining, sun-bright shoes.

  When I reached the corner of the main street I saw Special Constable Latham standing there, rocking on his heels and watching shoppers hurry home with their bags. It seemed that no one wanted to stop and talk to him. Maybe they had secret shopping in those bags that they’d bought without coupons.

  He looked like a proper policeman, but instead of a helmet he wore a black tin hat with ‘S.C. Police’ in white letters.

  ‘Good evening, young Rose,’ he said.

  ‘Good evening Constable,’ I said and my voice trembled. If he said the word ‘chicken’ then I would run around like a chicken crying, Guilty, I ate it and I didn’t have a coupon. Guilty! Lock me away!

  But he said, ‘Funny bloke. That feller in the yellow shoes. You know, the one in your pub last night.’

  ‘Yeller in the feller shoes? Sick Sam... I mean Slick Sam? I just seen him,’ I babbled as if my lips were not connected to my brain.

  ‘He’s up to something,’ the constable growled. ‘It’s just a matter of catching him at it. I reckon he’s selling meat off the ration. But where’s he getting it from?’

  ‘Edwards’ farm’ I gabbled. ‘But we never ate a chicken from there. Never.’

  ‘It wasn’t a chicken he had in your tap room, it was steak. Beef. But how would he get it from Edwards’ farm? Mr Edwards and young George have never been caught selling illegal meat.’

  ‘I just thought,’ my mouth went on, ‘when I saw him at the Edwards’ barn, he was up to no good.’

  Constable Latham stretched a hand forward and gripped me by the shoulder. I was sure he was going to arrest me. The handcuffs would be next. ‘Good lass,’ he said. ‘There are dozens of people in this village happy to let the spivs get away with their evil crimes. I am so pleased a young citizen like you is on the side of the law. We need more people like you. Ready to risk their lives to catch the villains.’

  ‘Our lives?’ I gibbered.

  ‘Oh, yes. The business is called the black market. They make huge amounts of money by breaking the ration laws. So those cheats will do anything to stay in their filthy game. They would even kill people who inform on them.’

  ‘Inform?’

  He nodded. ‘People like you,’ he said.

  Chapter 5

  Turnips and truncheons

  Constable Latham kept his hand on my shoulder as he marched me down the road to the White Horse Inn.

  ‘We’re not open yet, Mr Latham,’ Dad said. ‘You should know that. If I served you a drink at four o’clock you’d have to arrest yourself. Hah! Hah!’

  The special constable didn’t laugh. ‘I have come to ask if I can borrow your daughter,’ he said. ‘She is a witness to what could be a very serious crime.’

  For a moment there was panic in Dad’s eyes. He was thinking the same as I was. Chicken dinner. Chicken pie. Black Market. Prison.

  ‘Serious crime?’ Dad squeaked.

  ‘I have reason to believe there is a black market operating from a nearby farm. Your daughter has seen a suspicious character in the vicinity and I need her as a witness,’ Constable Latham said slowly.

  Dad scratched his chin. ‘Have you got any homework to do, Rosie?’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  ‘Then I suppose you’d better go with the constable. If you’re going to be running round farmyards you’d better change into your old skirt and your boots. If you get your school shoes dirty your mum will kill me.’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ I said and ran upstairs to change. When I returned to the tap room the policeman was supping a glass of Golden Ale. Dad passed me a torch. ‘You’ll be needing this,’ he said. There was a shield across the glass that let out a small spot of light. ‘It’s dark out there now. Mind you don’t bump into any pig bins.’

  ‘I know where they are, Dad,’ I told him. Everyone put their waste food in the bins on street corners and the scraps were used to feed pigs. When they were fat enough they killed the pigs and ate them. The truth is you could smell the bins long before you reached them. Rotting turnips and cabbage and mashed potato and carrot and apples and dried egg and bread. I was glad I wasn’t a pig, having to eat that stuff.

  I stepped out into the blacked-out street. There were low clouds in the sky so there wasn’t even starlight to guide us down the empty streets. Blackout curtains were drawn tight but the streets still gave off a sort of glow. The enemy bombers would find us if they wanted to, Mum said.

  I led the way out of the village and onto the road that led to Edwards’ Farm. The policeman’s giraffe neck seemed to peer round corners before we reached them. His voice was piping like the recorders we played in school.

  Suddenly I knew why. Special Police Constable Latham was scared.

  Then something else made sense. He didn’t need me to show him the way to Edwards’ Farm. He wanted me there because he was afraid to go alone. I remembered what he had said the night before about the black market rogues: ‘They will do anything to stay in their filthy game. They would even kill people.’

  ‘Have you got a gun, Constable?’ I asked.

  ‘I have my truncheon,’ he said.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. Maybe he could use his truncheon to bat away the bullets when the black market dealers shot at us.

  There were lots of bombing raids on Portsmouth. The enemy bombers wanted to sink the warships in the harbour. The same warships Mum worked on. Every time the sirens went we hurried to a shelter and waited for a bomb to drop on our heads.

  So I was used to it; I was used to spending hours waiting to die. I wasn’t afraid of bombs. Now I wasn’t afraid of bullets. I took a deep breath and said bravely, ‘We’ll be all right, Constable.’

  But I wasn’t so brave about meeting a ghost.

  Chapter 6

  Winds and Wells

  The wind rustled the ragged bushes at the entrance to the yard of Edwards’ Farm. The gate led to a path with the f
armhouse on the left and a large barn on the right.

  Everything was in darkness, as I expected. If there was anyone in the farmhouse they would be snug behind blackout curtains. They could still hear us if we made too much noise. Farmers have shotguns. I could picture Farmer Edwards rushing to the door and blasting at us.

  The latch on the gate creaked as Constable Latham tugged at it. The hinges creaked a little too as we stepped through the gateway. We stood perfectly still, waiting to see if anyone had heard.

  ‘All clear,’ the special constable whispered. He turned to close the gate behind us but a gust of wind caught it and flung it shut against the gatepost with a crash that would have woken the dead in Portsmouth graveyard.

  I sighed. A dog barked in some distant kennel. The dry branches of the bushes rattled against the gate. No farmer with a shotgun. ‘So far so good,’ the policeman said.

  I pointed towards the barn. He vanished round the far end of that building,’ I said.

  The giraffe neck shot out as if Mr Latham expected to see Slick Sam peeking back. ‘When I say “go” I want you to run to the corner and check that it’s all clear,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t you go?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a big target. And I’d be noisier than you. Better if you go. Wave a handkerchief if it’s safe and I’ll join you.’

  I took a breath and ran on my toes. I trod in soft, squishy stuff that I hoped was mud—though I knew from the smell that it wasn’t. I looked carefully around the corner. The wall of the barn was blank as Miss Wearmouth’s blackboard after I’d cleaned it… and I got to clean it a lot as a punishment for talking in class.