All that glitters, p.1
All that Glitters, page 1
K.M. Peyton
Published by Forelock Books Ltd.
Beaglejack Barn, Blackgate Lane, Pulborough, West Sussex. RH20 1DD
www.forelock-books.co.uk
First published in 2014
Text Copyright © K.M. Payton Illustration Copyright © Maggie Raynor
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form, without the prior permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.
Printed in the EU on behalf of Latitude Press Ltd.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-9928-7080-5
To my good friend Sue Howard, an expert in DressARGE.
Chapter 1
‘Tummy Creambun lost her gold bracelet when she was mucking out and asked me to ask you if you could find it with your metal detector.’
Millie Hodge appealed to the better nature of her brother Jake without much hope.
‘What, in all that horse poo?’
‘In the straw.’
‘Yuck.’
‘Why on earth can’t you call that girl by her proper name? Tummy indeed! How would you like it?’ Millie’s mother demanded.
‘Her real name is Autumn Greenbaum and her sister is called Bumble Bee Greenbaum, so we call them Tummy and Bummy Creambun. They don’t mind. They laugh.’
‘God in heaven, what were their parents thinking of?’
Their mother, Susan, found it hard to come to terms with current names – Zak, India, Brooklyn, Jade and suchlike – and had thought herself daring to call her daughter Millie thirteen years ago. Whatever next?
‘Their parents are professors.’
‘Professors of what? Flora and fauna presumably?’
‘No. Psychiatry.’
‘That explains it.’
Millie wasn’t sure what it explained. Certainly the Greenbaum parents were pretty loopy but whose weren’t? Hers were dinosaurs, dug up from times past. They wore waxed jackets for best and their only outings were to the cattle market and occasionally --- big deal! --- to an agricultural show. Their living was breeding beef cattle, so perhaps it was understandable, but Millie thought there was a life beyond cows. Her best friend Imogen’s parents were in advertising and were forever going to New York and Paris and Singapore which was so glamorous, but when Imogen came to stay she said she wished her parents were farmers and stayed at home a bit more often. No pleasing anybody really.
‘It’s only pizza and chips. I’ve only just got in from the calves.’
They sat down at the table, not waiting for their father. No good feeding him pizza in any case. He reared beef and ate beef, and having pizza set before him would send him off into one of his frequent rages. To Millie and Jake, pizza was a treat.
‘Will you look for it?’ Millie persisted to Jake. ‘She says if her mother finds out she was wearing it in the stables she’ll go potty. She said she’d give you a fiver if you find it.’
‘I could go down after tea.’ Grudgingly.
It wasn’t very far, after all. The stables were only a field away, downhill towards the river. They belonged to Miss Brocklebank, a rather weird lady who lived in what was once a farm labourer’s cottage adjoining the stable yard. Millie spent a good deal of her spare time there with her friend Imogen who kept her pony at livery with Miss Brocklebank, along with the Creambuns. Calling the old dump a livery yard was somewhat ambitious: there were only the three ponies in the decrepit yard and no facilities. No arena, no floodlights for evening riding, no smart horseboxes in the non-existent parking space … nothing like the elegant Equestrian Centre on the other side of town. The ‘town’ was really a village, but everyone around talked of going into town, not to the village. If only! … Millie and Imogen always thought, marooned deep in the country with only one bus an hour to the bright lights, and the last one back at twenty-one thirty.
‘Don’t waste time down there. You’ve your homework to do.’
The same old mantra ringing in their ears, they snatched their jackets and set off over the stile out of their backyard and down the field. Their house stood on a knoll and looked down to the river at the back and down to the very busy road at the front. Beyond Miss Brocklebank’s stable yard the road and the river converged at the bridge into the village. The village sign stood up proudly: ‘You are now entering Under Standing’, to which some joker had sprayed in black letters ‘Mis’ to join up with Under. Their path down the hill was well worn, for they both used Miss Brocklebank’s stables as a sort of den, a private place to hang out with their friends, Millie with Imogen and Jake with his mate Harry. It was a refuge from their father’s bad temper, and there was a small tack room with a sofa in it and an electric kettle and nobody came, save the Creambuns, who didn’t matter. Miss Brocklebank never came. She was always working in her garden.
‘You must admit,’ Millie said, as they came down the hill, ‘her garden is stunning.’
The best view of it was from where they were now, on the footpath going down the hill. The garden lay at the bottom, bounded on the far side by the end wall of the stable yard.
‘I don’t suppose she ever gets this view of it. She never comes up to the farm.’
‘Thank goodness.’
‘Oh, she’s all right. Just crazy, that’s all.’
The garden was a riot of dahlias, exotic daisies and spiky oriental things, cabbages and leeks and tomatoes all mixed up with delphiniums and lupins and roses and plants unknown, even to Miss Brocklebank. She visited stately homes and came back with pocketsful of cuttings and seedlings.
‘It’s all for the cause. They don’t miss these little things.’
Her cottage at the bottom beside the river was obviously lacking the care lavished on the garden. It was old and decrepit and showed no signs of being loved. One of the upstairs windows was broken and patched with cardboard, and all the paintwork was peeling. She lived there alone, a source of worry to the children’s mother who considered her ‘strong, but not really capable’. She meant in the top storey. The children liked her because she never interfered with what they were doing, allowing them the run of her stable yard.
Jake and Millie’s path led to the boundary of her garden, round the top end of it, and to the door in the high wall of the old stable yard. Jake pushed it open and revealed the familiar cosy square of old buildings. Imogen’s bike was flung down in the middle of the yard.
Jake, grumpy, said, ‘Where then?’
‘You know where the Creambun ponies are: in the end box, the big one.’
They lived together, a pair, like their owners. They were hairy and brown, said to be Dartmoors, and were called Dodo and Duffer.
Only one wing of the old yard was given over to stables, the other three sides, apart from a section used as a hay and straw store, were filled with the junk of ages past, mainly old machinery and carts. In the wing opposite the stables was a large archway which gave on to the drive which led out to the main road. But they none of them rode out this way any more: the traffic was too bad. They had to go round the back by the river.
Luckily the Creambun box was empty. The ponies were out in the field and as there was no sign of Imogen, Millie supposed she had gone for a ride, a quick one round the fields before it got dark. Jake humped his machine down to the empty box and Millie sat on the feed-bin, drumming her heels, waiting for Imogen.
Millie longed to have a pony but her father said yes, okay, if it lived across the road with the cattle: he wasn’t paying the Bonkers Brocklebank for livery. But what good was that, separated from her friend by the ghastly uncrossable road so that they were unable to ride together? He seemed prepared to let her face its horrors, when the main cause of his bad temper was the road. He had to cross it with the tractor several times a day to get to his cattle sheds and had to wait ages for a gap to go across. The road was awful. The village was full of notices shouting ‘Bypass Now!’ ‘Peace for Under Standing!’ Although the Creambuns and Imogen came from the village by bike, they always cycled across the field from the bridge. Even now, in the stable, Millie could hear the constant hum of the rush-hour traffic from away down the drive.
When the stables were built a couple of centuries back the road must have been a sleepy lane. Millie loved the feel of them, their ‘oldness’, as if they had grown out of the water meadows that surrounded them. The walls still bore the ancient mangers and wooden hayracks where generations of gentle cart horses had come home to feed every night, and the brick floors had been worn by their great hooves into a pattern of grooves. But the end box where Jake was starting up his metal detector had only an earth floor; it must once have been a feed shed or harness room. Jake was already complaining about the pong. Millie took no notice. She loved the smell of the ponies and sat picturing her own, stabled happily next to Imogen’s Barney. Why was her father so mean? You could get one for almost nothing these days. It wasn’t as if they were poor, as far as she knew: his beautiful Aberdeen Anguses were bought by Waitrose, only the best. She supposed she and Jake were something of a disappointment to him, Jake showing no signs at all of wanting to be a farmer, and herself a bit of a dream, not the sort of sturdy girl in a white overall helping him at shows. Even the calves got away from her and knocked the judge flying. Her father didn’t ask her to help any more. Children who were her own age or younger g ot rosettes for handling. Her father would have been proud of her, might even have bought her a pony, if she had been more inclined to cows. Or so she thought.
She slipped off the feed-bin and went out to see what Imogen was doing. There was an old barn door at the end of the stable row where they could go in and out on the river into Miss Brocklebank’s fields. They were water meadows that stretched all the way to the village – ‘full of weeds, disgraceful,’ according to Mr Hodge, but rather nice to Millie’s mind, the river’s edge lined with bulrushes and meadowsweet, the top end full of buttercups. The river flooded quite often in the winter and sometimes the water came right up to the stable yard and into Miss Brocklebank’s kitchen, but so far it had done little damage. It had never come up her stairs. The image of Miss Brocklebank sitting on her roof in her flannel pyjamas awaiting rescue was rather delicious but so far only a figment of the imagination.
Imogen was coming up the field carrying her saddle and bridle. The ponies were still living out and she had turned Barney away with the two Dartmoors. In spite of her parents being lovely and rich and indulging their only daughter largely with whatever she wanted, Imogen had chosen a very manky pony from the horse rescue to call her own. Barney, even now he was well fed and groomed, still looked what he was: a poorly bred cross of dubious parents probably from traveller origins. At least he was all one colour, a rather washy bay. But he had a very sweet and affectionate nature and big faithful eyes and tried his best to please. As Imogen said,‘I just want a friend. Not a winner.’ Millie reckoned Barney was a winner, getting Imogen.
‘Hi.’
They stood and watched the pony moving away in the dusk to join the other two. There was a beautiful purplish-red sunset happening beyond the water meadows and both girls were quite happy looking at it at that moment, forgetting everything else. For a minute or two.
Then: ‘I’ve got masses of homework,’ Imogen said. ‘I must go home.’
They started back to the stable yard. Imogen was very clever and would no doubt knock off her masses of homework in no time, Millie thought. Unlike herself, a plodder. She got there in the end but it took her twice as long as it took Imogen. Ah well. They went to the same local school but Imogen was one year higher.
‘What on earth’s Jake doing in the Creambuns’ box?’
‘The bracelet Tummy lost – remember? He gets a five-pound reward if he finds it.’
The machine was still whirring. They went to the end and looked in.
‘Have you got it?’
‘Yes. It didn’t take a minute.’
‘Why are you still at it then?’
‘Well, listen. It’s going crazy down in this corner. There must be something else.’
‘Old bucket,’ said Imogen.
‘Old horseshoe,’ said Millie.
‘Is there a spade around? I’d like to dig and see.’
‘You can’t dig a hole in the ponies’ box!’
‘I’ll put it back. Why don’t you go and lose yourselves?’
They laughed. What an idiot!
‘All he ever gets is horseshoes and the odd spanner or dogchain or nails and things. Just rubbish.’
‘Yes, but one day – who knows? I can see the attraction,’ Imogen said.
‘He saved up for ages for it. But after the first novelty wore off and he never found anything he got fed up with it.’
They went out into the dusk and Imogen picked up her bike.
‘Perhaps it’s one of these down there. A Roman bicycle.’ Imogen laughed.
‘See you tomorrow.’
Millie didn’t wait for Jake but plodded back up the hill.
At least Jake had earned himself a fiver.
Millie was going to bed by the time Jake came up. Surprisingly, he came into her room after a loud knock and a shout: ‘You decent?’
‘What is it?’
Millie was standing at the window. Her bedroom was at the back and looked down to the river, a much better view than Jake’s room at the front which looked towards the main road. Millie always looked out before she went to bed and when she got up, to see how the day was. She loved the river. She was standing there wishing she had a pony and could go riding with Imogen, the two of them together. If you crossed the river by the ford behind the stables you could ride for miles over the fields and through the woods on the other side. It would be lovely, the two of them. Once she had tried borrowing Dodo but Dodo wouldn’t go anywhere without Duffer and the trip had been a disaster.
She said to Jake, ‘I hope you didn’t dig a big hole in the ponies’ box.’
‘No. Only a bit and I put it back. But look, look what was there.’
He held out his hand.
It wasn’t like Jake to be so confiding, and Millie recognised a tremor of excitement in his voice. She looked at what he was holding. It was quite small, an S-shaped snake in what appeared to be bronze, minutely engraved all down its back with a pattern of what looked like flowers and leaves. But engrained earth made it difficult to see exactly.
‘What is it?’
‘I think it’s a clasp of some sort. It’s very old, I’m sure. Really old.’
Millie took it and tried to rub some of the earth away.
‘Put it under the bathroom tap, get rid of the soil, then we might see. Did you show it to Mum?’
‘No. It’s a secret. I don’t want anyone to know. The machine was going like fury even after I took this out so who knows what else is there?’
‘Perhaps—’
It was everyone’s dream, hoovering away with their detectors, to find hidden treasure. Like winning the lottery. Millie could see the attraction. They cleaned it with a nailbrush and examined it minutely.
‘Look, I think it had a jewelled eye. There’s a little hole there where the jewel has fallen out.’
‘And there is a bit on the back – look – that could have been a pin, but it’s broken. Like it was a clasp for a cloak or something.’
‘It’s lovely,’ Millie said. ‘You ought to show it to—’
‘No! Don’t be stupid! We don’t want anyone else butting in. I only showed you because you and Imogen are always down there and I can’t keep it a secret from you. But there’s more stuff there, I’m sure, the way the machine was juddering away, and it’s mine. I found it. You mustn’t tell anyone! It might be a fortune.’
Millie could see his point.
‘But you can’t go digging away under there, the whole wall might cave in! And what about the Creambuns?’
‘There’s lots of room at the other end. They can move their stupid ponies down past Barney’s box.’
Millie could see all sorts of arguments against Jake’s declaration but decided not to list them. Not yet.
‘If the treasure is under the end wall, most of it’s probably outside under Miss Brocklebank’s prize Brussels sprouts. If it’s mediaeval or Roman or whatever, the stable yard wouldn’t have been there then.’
‘Damn, what if it’s under her garden!’
‘Even if it’s worth a million, she’d never let you dig up her garden.’
‘At night, when she’s in bed—‘
‘Like body-snatchers! It might be a grave!’
They got a bit silly, picturing Miss Brocklebank coming out in her pyjamas with a torch while they hid under the purple sprouting broccoli, but they both felt excited by the find, Millie now as well as Jake. The little serpent she held in her hand was heavy and undoubtedly old and beautifully crafted.
‘It’s the real thing, I’m sure you’re right.’
‘But promise you won’t tell!’
‘No, of course I won’t.’
‘I’ll tell Harry. I can trust him. I suppose Imogen will have to
know. But no one else. No one at all.’
‘No.’
Jake went back to his room with his treasure and Millie went
to bed and lay in the dark imagining her brother becoming a millionaire and the television at the door and her father being all sweetness and light and their pictures in the newspaper.
But she knew those things only happened to other people. Despite the little serpent, it was probably only a dead bucket under there.
Chapter 2
Millie got out of bed the next morning and looked out of the window down to the river. She always slept with the curtains drawn back and always got out of bed on the window side and looked out, a matter of habit, even when still half asleep. It was a nice view, after all, and its contemplation got her brain gently whirring: what day was it? What was happening? Could she remember where she had left her trainers last night? Would Imogen remember to bring her that book she promised? Millie did not spring into action like her brother Jake. She considered it first.
