Stig of the Dump Read online

  ‘No, he’s really true!’ Barney protested.

  ‘Of course he’s true,’ his Grandmother smiled. ‘Now, Lou. Don’t tease Barney!’

  ‘Let’s pretend Stig’s a wicked wizard who lives in a cave and turns people into stone,’ Lou began eagerly. She was always inventing stories and games like that.

  ‘No,’ said Barney quietly, feeling the sharp flint in his pocket. ‘Stig’s nice. He’s my friend.’

  That night he kept the flint under his pillow, and thought of Stig out there in the pit sleeping on his bed of bracken and old newspapers. He wished he lived all the time at Granny’s house so that he could get to know Stig. He had to go back the day after tomorrow. Never mind, he’d visit Stig in the morning.

  Chapter Two

  Digging With Stig

  It was a fine autumn morning and the grass was very wet with dew outside. Barney pushed his breakfast down as fast as he could manage.

  ‘What do you want to do today?’ his Grandmother asked as she drank her coffee. ‘I have to go in to Sevenoaks this morning. Do you want to come?’

  Barney’s heart sank. Go in to Sevenoaks? Well it was all right if you had nothing else to do. But he had to go and see Stig.

  ‘No thank you, Granny,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I want to go in to Sevenoaks.’

  ‘You’ll be quite happy just messing about here?’ asked his Grandmother.

  ‘Yes thank you. I just want to mess about. With – with Stig.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Granny smiled. ‘With your friend Stig. Well, Mrs Pratt will be here all the morning, so if you like you can stay with her. And with Stig, of course.’

  Lou said she would like to go in to the town as she wasn’t particularly interested in playing with Stig. Barney knew from the way she said it that she still thought Stig was only a pretend-friend. But that was all right. If she didn’t want to meet Stig, she needn’t.

  ‘Can I go out now?’ he asked.

  ‘All right,’ said Granny. ‘Put your boots on!’ she called after him as he shot through the door.

  Barney’s feet made dark prints in the dew as he headed across the lawn towards the chalk pit. Then he stopped, and stood still in the middle of the lawn. Suppose he didn’t find Stig after all?

  The sun was bright. Yellow leaves fluttered down from the elm tree on to the grass. A robin puffed its breast on a rose tree and squeaked at him. Barney suddenly wasn’t sure that he believed in Stig himself. It wasn’t a Stiggish day, like yesterday when he had fallen down the pit.

  He had fallen, hadn’t he? He felt the bump on the back of his head. Yes, that was real enough. He’d fallen and bumped his head. And then what? Funny things did happen when you bumped your head. Perhaps you only saw Stigs when you fell and bumped your head. He didn’t think he wanted to fall over the cliff again on purpose and bump his head again.

  Was Stig a person you could just go and play with like the children at the end of the road at home? He had to find out, but he didn’t want to go to the chalk pit and find – nothing! He stood with his hands in his pockets in the middle of the lawn, his fingers playing with something hard in the left-hand pocket of his jeans.

  He remembered something, and pulled out the thing he had in his hand. Of course – the flint! He looked at it glinting in the sunlight, like a black diamond with its chipped pattern. He’d seen Stig make it! There was no mistake about that. Of course Stig was real!

  He set off again at a run, climbed the fence into the paddock, and waded through the long wet grass the other side. The copse round the edge of the chalk pit looked dark beyond the sunlit grass.

  In the middle of the paddock he found himself slowing down and stopping again.

  Something at the back of his mind was telling him that he’d seen pictures of chipped flints in books, and real ones in museums, and that they were made thousands of years ago by rough people who weren’t alive any longer. People found them and put them in cases with notices on them. Perhaps he’d just found this one. And imagined everything else.

  And supposing he hadn’t imagined Stig, was he the sort of person who liked people coming to play?

  Well, he told himself, all he really wanted to do was to look at the place where he had fallen over yesterday. Have another look down the dump. There was that bicycle, anyway.

  He walked to the edge of the paddock. A clump of brown grass jumped up from under his feet and bounced away towards a bramble patch, showing a white tail and two long ears. Barney’s heart bumped, but it was only a rabbit. He ran after it, but it had disappeared in the thick of the undergrowth.

  Feeling bolder, he climbed over the fence and went carefully towards the edge of the pit, making sure this time that he kept near a big tree that seemed to be well anchored to the side, and peeped over.

  He could see the patch of raw earth and white chalk where the ground had given way under him, the dangling creepers lower down, and a scatter of broken chalk at the bottom. He craned over to see the hole he had made in the roof of the den. There was a pile of branches and rubbish against the foot of the cliff, but no gaping hole. Not a sign of a hole, of a roof, of a den – of a Stig. He listened. A blackbird turning over dry leaves in search of worms was making a noise much too big for itself. But apart from that the pit was silent and empty.

  Barney walked away from the edge of the pit and climbed over the fence into the sunshine of the paddock, thinking hard. He looked at the stone in his hand, he felt the bump on his head. He had seen the raw patch where the ground had given way. He remembered crashing through a sort of roof and leaving a big gaping hole. And yet there wasn’t a hole.

  So he couldn’t have made one.

  But he must have landed somewhere. And he had that clear picture in his head of looking up through a hole at the side of the cliff and the clouds passing over the sky.

  And suddenly, as he stood in the middle of the paddock, he gave a big jump as the answer came to him like getting a sum right.

  If there wasn’t a hole it was because somebody had mended it! Stig wasn’t the sort of person to leave a large hole in his roof for long. Not his friend Stig!

  All at once everything fitted together – yesterday’s adventure on that Stiggish sort of afternoon, the bump on his head, the flint, and this bright autumn morning when he was going to visit his friend Stig. And he was quite clear in his head now what he was going to do and how he was going to do it.

  He set off running, back to the garden. Presents for Stig! When you visited people this time of year you always brought something from the garden: tomatoes you couldn’t bottle or apples you hadn’t room to store. He looked round the big old apple tree for windfalls. There were some big ones, difficult to manage without a basket, but he stuffed them into his shirt, making sure there weren’t any wasps in them first. What else? He saw a line of carrots – his favourite fruit! He was allowed to pull up carrots, they were good for his teeth, so he heaved up a few good-sized ones and rubbed the earth off with his fingers. Then he had an idea and ran to the tool-shed where he found a ball of garden string. It was all right just to borrow it. Back he ran again, across the garden, over the fence, across the paddock, over into the copse, and through the brambles and dead leaves to the edge of the pit.

  He sat himself comfortably on the trunk of the tree that curved out over the pit like the neck of a camel, and looked carefully again at what he could see. There was the broken edge of the cliff, there were the trailing creepers, there at the bottom were the scattered lumps of chalk that had come down with him. And now that he was really looking at it he could see a piece of new linoleum – well, not exactly new, nothing in the dump was new, but it looked as if it had been put there not long ago because it wasn’t covered with moss like things that had been there for a long time. And he could see, at one side of this pile of branches and things that was Stig’s leanto roof, a faint path in the bottom of the pit that led to the front of the den.

  He found the end of the ball of string and tied the bunch of
carrots to it. Then he began to pay out the string, with the carrots dangling on the end, towards the bottom of the pit. He hoped it was long enough. There always seems to be miles of string in a ball, but it dwindled and dwindled as he lowered the carrots down, until he was afraid that it wouldn’t reach the bottom. Bother! A cobble, a regular spider’s-nest of tangled string, appeared and he had to stop to uncobble it. At last, with a few feet in hand, the carrots were swinging on a level with Stig’s front door. Barney’s seat was not quite above it, so he had to get the carrots swinging to and fro, all that way beneath him, until they were actually knocking at the door like five pink fingers. Barney was bubbling so much with laughter inside him at the trick he was playing on Stig that he forgot to be dizzy.

  ‘Stig!’ he called down the pit. ‘Morning, Stig! I’m knocking at your front door!’ And suddenly, out from the stack of branches appeared the tousled head of Stig, and stayed there wagging to and fro, following the swinging carrots like a cat watching a pendulum. Barney nearly fell off the tree with laughing.

  ‘Hallo Stig!’ he called. ‘Good morning! I’m Barney, you remember? How are you?’

  Stig looked up, and for a moment Barney felt quite frightened at the ferocious scowl on his face, and was glad to be high up out of his reach. Should he have played a trick on Stig? Perhaps he didn’t have what the grown-ups called a Sense of Humour. Did Stigs have sense of humours?

  But when Stig made out who it was sitting above him his face suddenly changed, his big white teeth showed in a broad grin, he waved both his arms over his head, and he jumped about in the bottom of the pit to show how pleased he was.

  ‘Have a carrot, Stig!’ called Barney. ‘For you,’ he said, pointing to Stig. ‘To eat,’ he added. ‘Good for your teeth!’ he said, making biting movements. Stig leapt at the carrots as they swung past, caught them, looked at them closely, smelt them, then put one in his mouth

  and crunched it. He looked up at Barney, smiling with his mouth full, to show that he liked his present, then made signs which clearly meant that Barney was to come down.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to jump this time,’ said Barney. ‘And this string’s too thin to climb down. Going round!’ he said, making circling movements with his arms. He got off his perch and walked the long way round the top of the pit to the shallow end where he had got out the night before.

  It was more difficult finding his way to Stig’s den along the floor of the pit than it had been finding his way out the night before. The dump looked quite different – more cheerful, with the sunlight pouring down through the golden autumn leaves, and the ash and sycamore seeds twiddling down from the trees on top. But the tail of the aeroplane was only part of a farm machine, and the ship’s helm was a broken cartwheel. There was the bicycle too, just a rusty frame with bits of brake hanging on to it. Never mind, he’d found something much more interesting, and he’d seen it and spoken to it in broad daylight. A real live Stig, and he was going to visit him.

  That’s if he could find his way among the giant nettles.

  Suddenly, there was Stig, coming to meet him straight through a nettle patch as if stings meant nothing to him. Barney stopped. What now? Shake hands? Rub noses? – no, perhaps not! He remembered the apples he had stowed inside his shirt, took one out, and held it towards Stig on the palm of his hand as if he was trying to make friends with a horse.

  ‘I hope you liked the carrots, Stig,’ said Barney. ‘Have an apple!’ Stig took the apple quite politely between finger and thumb – not between his teeth, as Barney somehow expected him to – and sniffed it. Barney took out another apple for himself and bit into it.

  ‘Good!’ he said. ‘Delicious!’

  Stig took a bite, seemed to like it, smiled, and they both started walking towards the den, munching their apples. Stig just blundered through the nettles, and as far as Barney could see they stung him and raised bumps as they did on other people, but he just didn’t care. Barney himself avoided the nettles as much as he could. He got stung once or twice but decided not to make a fuss about it. Stigs don’t mind stings, he thought, so he’d better not.

  Stig led the way to the den. Barney noticed several dumps of new white chalk near the path, and remembered the new tunnelling he had seen yesterday, and the baby’s bath full of chalk.

  ‘Been digging, Stig?’ he asked, pointing to the dumps. Stig grinned and nodded.

  It was gloomy and overhung at Stig’s end of the pit even on this bright day, and the den itself, now that the hole in the roof was mended, was even darker. The teapot lamp was flickering and throwing a dim light on the den and the place where Stig had been digging, but it was not very cheerful.

  Come to think of it, thought Barney, rabbits and things that live in holes don’t have any light at all. Not much fun for them, with no windows. Couldn’t he find some windows for Stig?

  What made it worse was that Stig had started a small fire in the den part. He must have just done it, because Barney had not noticed any smoke when he was sitting on the tree-trunk. The smoke was filling the den, and there was no way out for it except to trickle through the gaps in the roof. It made Barney’s eyes water, but he supposed it was one of the things you just had to put up with, like nettles. All the same, the place could do with a chimney, as well as windows.

  He began to get used to the darkness, and he could see that the tunnel at the back of the cave went further back into the chalk than he had noticed. The digging tools were lying about: the bedstead leg, a broken cast-iron shoe-scraper, and an iron bar like the one he’d seen his father use on the jack to lift the car up.

  Stig was reaching up to offer Barney another turnip, but Barney didn’t feel like turnip so soon after breakfast.

  ‘Can I help you dig, Stig?’ he asked. ‘I expect you’re busy anyhow.’ He went to the end of the tunnel and picked up the bit of bedstead, and began to attack the wall of chalk. It was not as easy as he had expected. The chalk in the inside of the hill here was firm, not crumbly as it was on the outside where the rain got at it. Barney’s bashes with the awkward piece of metal only broke off smallish chips of chalk, and he was soon puffed.

  Stig, who had been standing watching him, took the digger from his hands and showed him how to dig out a hollow at the bottom of the chalk wall, then knock down large chunks which came away easily because they were not held up underneath. There was soon a pile of loose chalk, and Barney picked it up with his hands and put it in the small tin bath. When it was full it was about as much as he could do to drag it along the floor of the cave towards the entrance. Stig helped him, and between them they lugged the load out of the den and dumped it. But Barney noticed that Stig took care to put it some way from his door. He supposed that piles of new white chalk would let people know that something was going on.

  Stig let him dig next time, and he soon got the hang of cutting under and letting it tumble down from the top. Now and then they would come to a great flint embedded in the chalk, like a fossil monster with knobs and bulges, and they would have to chip round it, worry it, and loosen it like a tooth until at last it came free, usually bringing down a lot of chalk with it. They worked on happily for quite a time, taking it in turns to dig and load, and now and then they would stop for a break and take a drink of water from the tin or eat a refreshing apple.

  Barney’s jeans were white with chalk dust, and his hair and nails were full of it. He suddenly wondered what his Grandmother would say – then he suddenly wondered what time it was! In spite of the apples his tummy was telling him that it might be lunch time.

  ‘You haven’t got a clothes-brush, have you Stig?’ he asked. Stig looked blank and Barney decided that he probably hadn’t. His eye fell on Stig’s water-pipe. Somebody had thrown away a vacuum cleaner, so there must be one of the brush things somewhere. Sure enough he spied one, fixed as a sort of T-piece on the end of a long thin pole that was helping to hold the roof up. He thought the roof might hold itself up for a bit while he got the worst of the chalk dust off w
ith the vacuum-cleaner end, and it did. Stig was watching with a puzzled look, wondering why Barney should be pulling down part of his roof to brush at his clothes with.

  ‘You’re lucky, Stig,’ said Barney. ‘Nobody asks you how you got in such a mess. I’ve got to go now. Must be nearly lunch time. Pity I can’t ask you to lunch, but…’ But really, he thought, nobody else even believes in him yet.

  ‘I’ll be back this afternoon,’ Barney said from the door. ‘Thanks for letting me help you. Goodbye!’

  Grandmother and Lou were late getting back from the town, so he had time to get the chalk out of his nails and hair and to look fairly respectable for lunch. They were too full of talk about how they had spent their morning to question him much about what he had been doing.

  Over the stewed apples he was able to say quietly: ‘Granny, have you got any things you don’t want?’

  ‘Things I don’t want, dear?’ Grandmother repeated. ‘What sort of things? Chilblains? Grandchildren?’

  ‘No, Granny. I mean – things like windows and chimneys.’

  Grandmother thought about this for a moment, and then said that really she couldn’t think of anything like windows and chimneys except windows and chimneys, and she thought the house had only just enough of these to go round. And Lou just laughed and said, ‘Really, Barney!’

  Then Grandmother said that it did remind her there were some tins and jam-jars she had meant to put out for the dustbin man, and perhaps Barney would be a dear and carry them to the gate.

  There were more jam-jars than Barney had thought possible, and quite a lot of useful tins, the sort with lids. Barney looked at them. The dustbin man wouldn’t say thank you for them, he thought. Why shouldn’t Stig have them?

  He remembered a big wooden box which Grandfather had helped him fix wheels on to, so that he and Lou could use it as a cart. He searched round and found it among the firewood, but still with its four wheels more or less straight and the piece of rope on the front to pull it with. He loaded it with jam-jars and tins, and found it quite a weight when he set off across the paddock with it. He looked at Flash, the pony, as he struggled through a clump of long grass and called rather crossly: ‘You might come and help pull, instead of standing there!’ But he knew that Flash took a lot of persuading to be caught for Lou to ride him, let alone for pulling carts. The pony just stood and watched, tossing his head now and then at the afternoon flies.