Goosey Farm Read online

  Map

  For Widget, of course.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Map

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Rain

  Chapter Two: The Map

  Chapter Three: The First Attempt

  Chapter Four: The Second Attempt

  Chapter Five: Third Time Lucky!

  Chapter Six: At Last

  Chapter Seven: Down to Earth With a Bump

  Chapter Eight: The Measle Bug

  Chapter Nine: Nature Walk

  Chapter Ten: Not Much Fun

  Chapter Eleven: There May be Trouble Ahead

  Chapter Twelve: To the Tower

  Chapter Thirteen: Magic is Real

  Epilogue

  Also by the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  It was dark in the wood. Tall trees towered over us shutting out the sky. Brambles snatched and scratched at our jeans, wrapping themselves around our legs as if they wanted us to stay there and be part of the wood and them. Frizzy, the little poodle, whimpered. Her woolly body was caught in a long snaking branch and she couldn’t move. She squeaked at me desperately. Ahead of me Red Hanna, the whippety mongrel, forged up the path, her long nose pointing the way. At the sound of Frizzy’s cries, she looked round, then ran back to her and pushed her with that nose, as if to say: Come on. Come on, then. Why are you hanging about? Let’s get on. There might be rabbits!

  “I thought you said this was a path, Widget,” grumbled my brother Tim, as we pulled at the branches to free Frizzy. She squeaked a lot until Red Hanna licked her nose and then she quietened. At last we set her free, but at that moment a jagged flash of lightning shot down through the trees painting them purple, black, grey, outlining them in gold.

  “We’ll be struck!” yelled Tim. “I’m off home.” And he belted back over the nettles, the brambles, the fallen branches and the dead leaves. The dogs, Hanna and Frizzy, shot after him. Any rabbits or other wild things there might be didn’t matter any more. And if there was a mysterious Tower in the woods, who cared? Not me.

  As lightning lit up the trees with its unearthly glow and thunder banged like a big bass drum we ran faster than we’d ever run before – Hanna way ahead – back along the not-much-of-a-path, through the gap to the track leading around the wood, over the gate to the fields, racing for the lane and home. Almost there and Sam Cat comes out, quite dry, from under a hedge, as the storm rolled away over the moor and all was quiet again except for us. Flinging ourselves into the kitchen – crash, bang, splash – home and safe, but not dry.

  “Just drip by the door, will you?” cried Mum. “I’ll get the towels. Don’t shake water everywhere, Hanna. Glory, glory. You couldn’t be wetter! What a storm! I’m glad you’re back. I was just coming to meet you.”

  We stood there as she talked and little puddles formed all around us on the stone kitchen floor.

  Chapter One

  RAIN

  I stood staring out of the window at the rain pouring down. It looked as if it was never, never, never going to stop. It had rained yesterday and the day before and the day before that and it would rain again tomorrow.

  “I wish, I wish, I wish something magic would happen!” I’m always looking for magic, the surprise just around the corner (sending you round the bend, Dad said when I told him once), the view from the top of the hill, the wonderful thing that will happen next week.

  I concentrated really hard, deep inside, squinting my eyes and clenching my fists. Then I opened my eyes slowly. Perhaps Dad had come home on leave from the Navy early and was coming in NOW just like that.

  I waited. Nothing.

  Perhaps Mum would call out, “Guess what I’ve found in the cupboard. It must be left over from Christmas.”

  I waited. Nothing.

  Perhaps she’d walk in waving an envelope and say, “I’ve just found this on the mat and it says we’ve won millions of pounds and we’re going to sail around the world with Dad.”

  I waited. Nothing.

  I looked around the room. Tim was playing with a football game and shouting, “Goal!” “Now!” “Brilliant!” Hanna, our red mongrel, lay stretched out watching, eyes half-closed. She knew better than to disturb him – Tim goes ballistic if his game gets messed up. Dizzy Frizzy, the white miniature poodle, lay in her basket curled around two white wuzzy balls; her puppies, Jazz and Pop.

  “Come on, Widget,” said Mum, who was painting at the table, as she always does. “Don’t just stand there looking miserable. Find something to do.”

  “What?”

  “Play with one of your games.”

  “No!”

  “Have a go on the computer.”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t finished your jigsaw puzzle.”

  “It’s too hard.”

  “Paint a picture.”

  “What? Of rain? No.”

  “Make something. Read a book. Write a letter. Write a story. Just don’t stand there looking bored. The rain will stop.”

  “Suppose… suppose it rained for ever!”

  “Then we’d build an ark. Like Noah. And all the animals could go in two by two…”

  “But I want to do something now…”

  “Well, I know what I’m going to do,” Mum said. “I’m going to clear out that old chest in the attic. You can help me.”

  “Oh, I thought it would be something exciting…”

  “Well, maybe it will. That old chest hasn’t been touched since we moved here. Who knows what we’ll find? Come on, stop moping about. Come and help.”

  “It’ll be cold up there.”

  “Put another sweater on and stop being so feeble. When I was your age—”

  “Oh, don’t start that again. I’ll come with you. And Hanna and Frizzy, you can come as well since you’re not going for a walk in this downpour.”

  At the word ‘walk’ Red Hanna pricked up her ears, stuck out her long front paws and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d slowly, yawning, just as Russet, her mother, used to do. Russet – the bestest of all the dogs we’d had – was run over last September and we missed her something rotten! Frizzy fretted so much that we sent her away to friends on the far side of the moor. But Frizzy missed us and in the worst Dartmoor blizzard for years she’d found her way back home across the snowbound moor. Of course she stayed here after that and settled in with Red Hanna, until her own puppies were born – those white balls of wool tucked up in the basket, snoozing. Very valuable, my mother told me, for Dizzy Frizzy, Jazz and Pop all had pedigrees as long as a High Street and their real names were very grand. Red Hanna wasn’t very grand at all. No one could work out her pedigree.

  “Oh, come on,” my mother said. “Don’t stand there daydreaming. Come and do something. Hanna’s ready – she’s wagging her tail. Come on!”

  I followed her up the stairs and into the attic. It’s always fairly dark up there, but it was really gloomy on this miserable day. Mum switched on the light. But the bulb didn’t light up. “Dead as a doornail,” she sighed. “Why ‘dead as a doornail’?” I asked her. “Why isn’t it dead as something else, like as dead as that horrible old spider I’m looking at?”

  “Just stay there.” She sounded snappy. “I’ll go and get a new bulb and some candles. Don’t mess about. Wait for me.” Off she trotted downstairs, quite slowly because of the baby she was having.

  The attic was full of beams and old furniture and dust. But Hanna pushed her nose into my hand and it was warm and wet and friendly. She licked me and then, wriggle, squiggle, push, shove, Frizzy joined us, trying to push her nose in and get Hanna out of the way. But Hanna was bigger and stronger and she couldn’t.


  The old chest stood under the little window. It was dusty, but even in the gloom you could see the carvings on it. I brushed it over with Hanna’s wagging tail.

  “It might as well come in useful,” I whispered in her ear, which twitched with pleasure. When she’s miserable her ears droop and hang down.

  Mum was back with Tim in tow. Typical, he can’t bear to miss a thing. Muttering and swearing a bit, Mum changed the bulb which was old and stiff. The new one didn’t work either.

  “Must be the socket,” she said, stopping Tim having a go – he wouldn’t have been any good. “It’s no use, I shall have to have a proper sort out up here. It’s just that I never seem to find the time.”

  “That’s ’cos you’re always painting.”

  “Well, it earns money.”

  “I’d rather have your paintings than a clean attic. Anyway, I like it like this.”

  “It’s mysterious,” Tim said.

  “It doesn’t matter that the light’s not working,” said Mum, “we’ve got lots of candles for times when the power goes off.”

  Mum had bought old saucers to stand the candles in and we lit about eight or nine so it looked really storybookish in the candlelight.

  And who should be there but Sam Cat, stalking round us silently, tail aloft, looking like part of the story. He can’t bear being left out any more than Tim can. Sometimes he follows us on walks, even though he’s growing old now. He was once very fierce, a real Top Cat, Boss Cat, but then he had a fearful fight with a weasel in one of the barns. He killed it, but was very ill from the wounds and afterwards he was quieter and more gentle, but still our own Sam Cat.

  “The chest’s not dusty like everything else,” Mum said as she lifted up the lid. Hanna wagged her tail but I didn’t say anything. It was our secret.

  As the lid went up and we looked inside by the shining light of the candles, I cried out, “There must be some magic here!”

  “Well, let’s see what treasure the chest holds then!” Mum laughed.

  It was empty. Except for a bit of paper in the corner.

  We all looked at one another. Sam Cat sat down and licked himself. Frizzy ran downstairs, deciding it was time she got back to her puppies. Hanna leapt into the chest, very pleased with herself, quite sure we’d really opened it up just for her.

  Downstairs the telephone rang.

  “It might be Dad,” Mum said. “Look, it’s almost dark. Blow out the candles, Widget. I don’t think it’s magic time today after all. Careful.”

  And away she went.

  Tim and I got Hanna out of the chest and blew out the candles, taking it in turn. Then Sam Cat jumped in, so we fished him out too. I picked up the scrap of paper.

  “I’ll just look at it…”

  “Is it interesting?” asked Tim. “A treasure map?”

  “No, it’s a bill. For timber, I think.”

  “Come and speak to Dad on the phone. Quickly!” Mum called.

  We shot down the stairs, me still clutching the scrap of paper. I put it by the phone as I talked to Dad.

  It definitely wasn’t a day for magic. He said he was sorry but his leave had been put back a month. He’d write a long letter to make up for it. Not that it could. But it was nearly teatime now. And it was smashing grub.

  “Know something,” Mum said later. ‘It’s stopped raining.”

  Chapter Two

  THE MAP

  A week later Mum finished her paintings, packed them up and sent them off. They were the illustrations for a book of funny poems. We’d read them all and thought they were very good, though Tim said there weren’t enough football ones.

  “Well, you write some, then,” Mum grinned. Then she said we’d got to help her clear up as everywhere was untidy.

  “Bits of paper and old games all over the place,” she grumbled. “And I’m getting too fat with this baby I’m having, to bend down properly.”

  Tim tried to slip away upstairs. Hanna hid under the old chair in the kitchen and Frizzy curled around her puppies, the perfect picture of a good mother who mustn’t be disturbed, whatever happened.

  “I don’t want to clear up,” I said.

  “Right, that’s fine. But there’s no pocket money for you at the weekend then.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “It’s perfectly fair. I didn’t make all this mess. We all did. So we’ll all help tidy up.”

  “Tim’s gone upstairs.”

  “Well, fetch him down again.”

  “Mum says you’ll have no pocket money if you don’t come and help,” I shouted at the top of my voice from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Thank you,” Mum said. “I’m now deaf for life. Go and fetch him or—”

  She meant it. So I ran and fetched Tim and we started to clear up. Boring, boring boring.

  “Most of it’s yours, Tim.”

  “No it’s not. This piece of paper here’s yours. Look, the one you found in the old chest. You left it by the phone.” He peered at it. “That’s funny. You said it was a bill, but it’s not. It’s a sort of drawing.”

  “Here, let me see.”

  “Don’t snatch. You nearly tore it.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Don’t take it away. I want to see it as well.”

  “Come on, then.”

  We sat down on the floor and looked at the crumpled piece of paper – only it wasn’t paper, but some funny stuff. Mum would know what it is.

  “It’s parchment,” she told us. “Why, this is an old map! Somebody’s written out a bill on the back of it, but that’s not important. It’s this map that matters.”

  We all gathered round it kneeling on the floor, the clearing up and Mum being too fat to bend over all forgotten.

  “I can’t make sense of it,” Tim muttered.

  “That’s ’cos you’re stupid…”

  “So are you stupid!”

  “Be quiet,” cried Mum. “Let’s try and read it properly.”

  “Perhaps it’s Treasure Island.”

  “No – it’s not an island. I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “It’s a… a map of round here. Here. Where we live!”

  “Is our farm on it?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes,” Mum almost shouted. “Look at these lovely little drawings. And here’s Goosey Farm.”

  “Yes, and lots more. Look, there’s our lane leading to the road where—”

  “Where Russet was killed,” Tim finished.

  Worried, I looked at Mum. She’d cried for days about Russet, Hanna’s mother, getting run over. She blamed it on herself because she’d let her off the lead in the road when she shouldn’t have. I didn’t want her to start crying again, but she said cheerily enough:

  “Yes, but we won’t think about that now. And we’ve got Hanna. She’s just like Russet.”

  “And she’s even more red-coloured.”

  “Let’s find some more places. Look – there’s the village and the church”

  “Here’s the river and the clapper bridge.”

  “What about the stone circle by the river?”

  “Yes, it’s here too.”

  “I’ve found Stoney Farm!” Peter and Christopher, our friends, live there.

  “The old burial chamber’s here. It’s labelled ‘Ancient Monument’.”

  Three granite slabs in a field with one laid on the top, looking rather like a mushroom, built 3,000 years ago by Neolithic ancestors. (And spooky. Very.)

  “I like seeing Goosey Farm,” Tim said, patting the place. “I’m glad we came here.”

  We’d left our little house in the city to come and live at Goosey Farm, with its two staircases and rooms that go on forever, and the fields and moors of Devon all around us. And now it felt as if we’d never lived anywhere else and the people round here didn’t call us ‘Grockles’ (tourists) any more.

  “Look, look!” I cried. “In this old wood – Rushford, I think it’s called – not far from here if you go across the fields.
Look!”

  “Oh, yes – there’s a little tower in the wood!” cried Mum.

  And then I knew. Magic had arrived that rainy day when I’d wished for it. The Tower would be magic. I just knew.

  “Mum, Tim, we’ve got to find that Tower!”

  Chapter Three

  THE FIRST ATTEMPT

  We found the Tower in the wood, but not the first time we searched for it.

  We set off armed with the old map, Tim and me, Hanna and Frizzy. Mum couldn’t come as some people were coming to see her. She wasn’t very keen on us going by ourselves.

  “Be careful,” she warned. “I don’t know if you should really go on your own…”

  “We’ll be OK. It’s not far away.”

  “All the same – take care.”

  We went down our lane, then followed a path going through several fields. The wood loomed ahead of us, set on a hill, so all the trees growing on it rose into a big mound against the sky. Even further away was a faint purple smudge in the distance – the moor. Everything was still and quiet in the early morning; no noise anywhere as yet. Even the dogs walked along quietly.

  We climbed over the gate from the fields onto a rough track that ran beside a hedge circling the wood. Below us in the sloping fields lay a farm so old it looked as if it had grown there – Goosey Farm.

  “Somewhere in these woods is the Tower,” I whispered as we walked along the path, the moss silencing our footsteps.

  “Yeah, but where do we get in?” Tim whispered back.

  It was a whispery sort of place. Not a sound. Not a murmur. Overhead a buzzard hawk hovered in the sky, blue when we started out, but now getting covered with grey and purple storm clouds.

  The trees loomed above us, branches bare for it was early spring. Inside would be the Tower and magic, but between us was a thick hedge of hawthorn and holly and brambles. Plus a few nettles to make it really cosy.

  “Let’s try further on.”

  We ran on, making our way along the track outside the wood, but still the hedge was high and thick between us and the wood.