The Travelling Bag

by Susan Hill

  When Don came in and saw me he looked distraught. And something else. Just for a moment, he looked annoyed, impatient, as if he were blaming me, infuriated that it had all started up again, just as he believed things had returned to normal. I suppose I didn’t blame him. It must be very wearying, living with someone in this state. He made a pot of tea and brought it in.

  ‘Anything tempting in the jobs line?’

  I think he wanted me to make a bit of an effort by now.

  ‘One or two,’ I said. He gave me a look, knowing what I actually meant. That I hadn’t even turned to the adverts page. He picked up the paper and started to look at the photograph. I drank my tea. I had my eyes closed.

  ‘Here, have you seen this?’

  He was jabbing the page with his forefinger.

  I shook my head. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Yes you have. Of course you have.’

  ‘I glanced at the picture … some sort of earthworks going on.’

  ‘No. It’s a dig, an archaeological dig. It says it has been going on for three weeks and that …’ he mumbled as he went back to the report. I didn’t want to know anything. I was steadier. Calmer. I wanted to stay like that.

  ‘Read it,’ Don said, holding out the paper.

  ‘No, I’m really not interested.’

  ‘All right, I’m going to read it to you.’

  “No …” I stood up, and shouted it. ‘NO!’

  But he took no notice. He just started to read.

  The building works had stopped suddenly that day because the workmen had dug up a large piece of curved stone which, when they looked closely, had some lettering still visible on it. And then, looking into the scoop of the excavator, the operator had seen what he was sure was a human skull. At that point, after a telephone call, they were ordered to stop digging.

  Local historians and archivists from the County Records Office have released an initial statement, confirming that it is likely to be the town’s unconsecrated burial ground for those who died by their own hand or in other circumstances where a church burial was denied them. This ground has been known about for many years but several locations were suggested and investigated without success. Paul Thessaly, heading the team, confirms that several things point to this as the correct site: ‘We have already found a number of graves, and although many cannot be identified, several do have still-visible lettering which we have photographed and are trying to decipher and match with any records. This is not easy as the names of those who were buried in unconsecrated ground – and this graveyard was open until the middle of the nineteenth century – were often not recorded.’

  Don looked at me. I could not think why this news had put me into such a state of trepidation. I was not troubled by graves and cemeteries, I had no fear of the dead. If I had sat at my desk year after year, on top of a place where the unfortunates who had been cast out of the church had been buried, it was not of any consequence. Sad but not frightening.

  ‘Shall I go on?’

  ‘If you want to but…’

  Don poured us more tea.

  ‘I think you’ll find it interesting,’ he said, ‘to say the least.’

  And he read that the most recent grave to be excavated contained not one but two skeletons, each one intact. They had been placed side by side with the arm of the larger one laid round that of the smaller, ‘… a woman, and a child, the latter a girl, aged four to five years old. Marks on the neck bones of the woman indicated that she had died by hanging, probably with some sort of heavy buckled belt. No marks were detected on the skeleton of the child.’

  The flat covering stone had nothing engraved on it except the worn initials A.B. with a + sign, beside it, indicating the child, whose name had not been recorded.

  THE FRONT ROOM

  One

  They blamed one another for what happened but in fact it all began with Pastor Lewis’s address.

  The Irwins were quite regular chapelgoers, though would never have called themselves devout. It had taken them some time to settle, having moved from the Anglo-Catholic parish church to its Evangelical neighbour to non-comformist Baptist then Methodist, before settling on Pastor Lewis’s small building with the corrugated roof, and finding that its particular brand of simple informality suited them best. One Saturday evening a month, there was an ‘in touch’ service, which they had never quite got round to attending, the word in the neighbourhood being that it was reminiscent of spiritualism. ‘Perhaps a step too far?’ Norman said. But there was nothing untoward about Pastor Lewis’s regular Sunday worship.

  The address that sparked everything off was given on a dank morning in late October, just before All Souls’ Day. The chapel heaters had been switched on so that the air smelled of burning dust, but any warmth only rayed out in a semi-circle a few feet from the radiators and the fifty-odd worshippers huddled together at the edges of the benches, so as to be closest to them.

  The address – Pastor Lewis did not believe in the word ‘sermon’ – was lukewarm to begin with, but within a few minutes had blazed up, so that everyone was touched by its fire and passion. But no one, it transpired later, had been quite so moved that they were spurred into action, like the Irwins.

  The text was from Isaiah: ‘… to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house.’

  Pastor Lewis had stuttered a little, and his small eyes had gleamed, as he became more and more aroused by his own exhortations. He was a bald, rather porcine man who hid behind rimless spectacles, but oratory was his strength. People had come, dazed, out of the service and had hurried home, suddenly uncomfortable inside their own skins, heads ringing with the ferocious words.

  Nothing was said until Norman Irwin had begun to carve the joint of lamb, with its gleaming, oozing juices. Belinda set down the dishes of vegetables and then looked hard at the table.

  ‘Plenty,’ she said. ‘We have “Plenty”.’

  Their children, Wallace and Fern, caught the solemnity as it brushed past them, and were still. Laurie banged the spoon down on the table of his high chair, with a crack that startled them. They laughed at themselves.

  ‘Fern, cut up Laurie’s meat for him please and get him started, before he does that again.’ Belinda sat down.

  ‘Bless, Oh Lord, this food for our use and us for Thy Service. Amen.’

  The address had stressed that it was not necessarily a question of going out and actively looking for destitute street sleepers. ‘Those in most need may be close to us, close beside us – closer than we know. Is it a next-door neighbour? Is it the old man picking through his small change in the doorway of the store, before he dares to go in? Is it an old, long-forgotten friend? We must give to those charities which support the oppressed and the homeless of this world but then look closer to ourselves, look in our own streets, our own neighbourhood. In what way can we help? What can we give? What can we share? The food on our table? A place at our fireside? Do not think small, think big, my friends, think …’ He spread his arms wide, ‘think VAST! May God bless you.’ He held up his hands, the fingers stained yellow after forty years of cigarette smoking. (Prayer was said to have caused him to give up, snap, overnight. It was known as the Pastor’s miracle.)

  ‘Well, of course we give to charity,’ Belinda said. ‘Which is easy.’

  ‘Is the point of it that it has to be hard? I’m not disagreeing with you, by the way, just wondering aloud.’

  ‘I think he implied as much.’

  Wallace and Fern cleared their plates of what they intended to eat. Wallace stuck his legs out from under the tablecloth and stared at his shoes. They were docile children.

  ‘We are very fortunate, Norman.’

  ‘Privileged.’

  Belinda, never sure precisely what that meant, speared a slice of carrot. ‘We should definitely give this some thought.’

  ‘As a substitute for actually doing anything?’

  ‘Not at all. No, I definitely think we should do somet
hing about it.’

  ‘What about?’ Fern said. Sly little Fern, always listening.

  ‘Pass your plate please.’

  They looked at the front room that same evening. The house was very typical, very straightforward, 1920s. Low front gate. Hedge. Small front garden, small lawn. Birdbath in the centre, which made mowing awkward. Long narrow back garden. Fence. Anyone could have gone round the interior blindfold. Hall. Large front room. Bow window. Back room, knocked out to the terrace with a flat-roof extension, done before the Irwins arrived. Kitchen. Downstairs cloakroom. Three bedrooms. Bathroom. Landing, which caught the afternoon sun. Attic. A neat house. Perfect for them.

  ‘This is a very nice room, actually.’ Norman said.

  ‘And underused. Face it, when do we sit in here?’

  ‘Christmas Day.’

  The blue three-piece suite, inherited from Belinda’s parents’ front room, was still like new. They stood, each picturing a slightly different arrangement. A bed here? A modern electric fire? Or a larger radiator? Where would clothes go? Was there room for a desk? Or perhaps just a small table in the window.

  ‘It is rather dark,’ Belinda said, ‘on this side of the house.’

  It was dark now. Norman switched on the overhead light, which threw shadows and somehow made things worse. The room smelled of cold and a lifeless emptiness.

  That night they lay side by side, each thinking about the Pastor’s address and the obligation they felt it had placed upon them. The front room. Their thoughts merged into dream states, in which different images swirled, of men sleeping in doorways beside patient dogs, women on park benches, prone bundles of grey clothing, people queuing for night shelters, with years of dirt beneath their fingernails and in the creases of their necks. Wild eyes. Muttering. Shuffling. The smell of stale drink.

  The subject was not mentioned again for some days. Once or twice, Belinda stood in the doorway of the front room. Who could actually occupy a space into which the sun never shone? She went to the window. She had never realised how depressing the view was, of a grass rectangle, a stained concrete birdbath and a privet hedge. Who would be happy looking out on those all day?

  Besides, there were the children. And she saw them in her mind’s eye, curled up together on the sofa in the family room. They had to think of the children.

  *

  ‘Dear Norman and Belinda,’ Norman read out. They had an agreement that he opened letters addressed to them both.

  Well, it is not very warm for the time of year. I had the chiropodist call yesterday. I could manage to get to her office in a taxi but aren’t taxis expensive? Anyway, it’s nice to be done in the privacy of home. I expect the Christmas windows will be filling up before long, it seems to start earlier every year so I will send off my postal orders for the children in good time. I hope we have a mild winter. You don’t want snow at my age. I don’t see many people.

  Well, look after yourselves,

  from

  Solange

  The children had supper. Baths. Milk. Bed. Belinda had made a large casserole, a portion each and four for freezing. The last of their own potatoes. They didn’t grow very much but always potatoes. So easy. It was Solange, years ago, who had said there was nothing like them, fresh from the ground, straight into the boiling water. But if they were both put in mind of her again now, nothing was said.

  The ten o’clock news. Belinda sorted out the children’s socks. Keep. Throw. Keep. Match. Throw. Keep.

  Telepathy sparked between them. ‘How long since we went to see her?’

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘It’s rather a poisonous letter, actually.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Reading between the lines.’

  Solange sidled into the room then, Solange who could never be ignored, though they had done their best for six years.

  ‘I do feel a bit responsible,’ Norman said. ‘She’s well over eighty.’

  Norman’s mother had died when he was fifteen and then it had just been Norman and Ralph, his depressed and grieving father. They had both been domestically incompetent, emotionally crippled, and with barely a trace of mutual understanding. The question of affection had never arisen, though if they had been asked, each would have claimed to love the other. They never were asked.

  Norman had gone to London, to study law. When he returned at the end of his first term, Solange was already installed, like a replacement cooker, fully connected. She was already quite familiar with the ways of the house. The fact that his father had acquired a mistress who, a few months later, became a wife, did not trouble Norman. Indeed, it was a relief to his own sense of guilt, at having left Ralph alone. So, when he went home he welcomed Solange (who was English, but had had a French grandmother) who in turn welcomed him, though rather more coldly.

  After university he went into the law firm with which he had remained, through several takeovers and amalgamations, and his stepmother played little part in his life. It was only after he and Belinda were engaged and he took her to meet them that he began to see the true nature of things. Solange made his father’s life a misery. She treated him like a child or an idiot and always as her inferior. She was rude and overbearing, she took offence at anything, and could turn an innocent remark into a slight, usually provoking a bitter quarrel from which she apparently gained pleasure. She argued, contradicted, blamed and had sudden fits of rage, during which, lacking all grasp of reason or proportion, she lashed out at whoever was nearest, sometimes physically.

  When Wallace was born, Belinda refused to allow Solange near him. After Fern came, there was a vicious letter, for no reasons they could fathom, and the rift was complete. They did not visit again. Twice, Ralph managed to come to visit them surreptitiously overnight, though fearful that somehow Solange would learn about it. The second time, Fern had been slightly sick on his shoulder and he had suffered paroxysms of anxiety, until Belinda had sprayed his jacket clean, dried and pressed it. There had been no trace left of any smear or smell but Ralph had left the house turning his neck every few minutes to check on the shoulder.

  A month later he was dead. Wallace and Fern were left a hundred pounds each and Norman his father’s car – Solange did not drive. The rest went to her – the rest being eleven thousand pounds and the house, in which she had lived, bitterly and alone ever since. Arthritis clamped down on her joints, isolating her even more, and her own nature did the rest.

  ‘I can go for days without speaking to a living soul,’ the letters read, ‘I talk to the four walls,’ and ‘my neighbours are not nice people.’

  Laurie was born. Belinda returned to teaching art, part time. Fern had intestinal problems and needed a special diet. Solange went to the back of their minds and letters became infrequent.

  They stood in the doorway of the front room, in silence. Belinda drew the curtains. Switched on a lamp.

  ‘Better,’ Norman said. ‘It just needs a brighter bulb.’

  ‘Get rid of the sofa, the whole room would open out.’

  ‘And the bureau. I can’t think why we wanted to keep it.’

  They inspected the downstairs toilet. ‘Actually,’ Norman said, after tapping walls, going outside and coming back in, ‘it might be simpler than you’d suppose.’ He waved his arms about. Knock down. Partition. Extend. Move that pipe. New floor. Plumbing. ‘A shower would fit in quite neatly.’

  ‘Shower?’

  ‘No room for a bath. Absolutely not.’

  It took three months and rather more money than they had budgeted, but the result was pleasing. The children bounced on the new bed-settee and switched the radiant fire on and off, before being banned from the front room. Magnolia walls, dusky-pink curtains, darker pink carpet, grey cushions and covers. A new TV. Tea-maker on its own stand. Telephone point. Shower room just across the hall. At the last minute Belinda added a microwave on a special shelf, with a curtained cupboard below for crockery. They looked round and felt pleased.

  Solange had not yet bee
n invited.

  ‘You have to go up there,’ Belinda said. ‘This isn’t something for just a phone call or even a letter.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Well, she isn’t my stepmother.’

  The journey took three and a half hours. The motorways appeared to carry twice the traffic since his last visit. Perhaps it was longer ago than he remembered, after all. But he had time to think about the plan and about how Solange might fit into … where, exactly? Not their household, and certainly not their family. She was to be offered the chance to live her own life, independent of, but sheltered by, them. That sounded right. All the same, the nearer he got to his old home, the more incidents he remembered – the terrible things that had been said, her knack of twisting a happy situation into a miserable one, good intentions into bad. There were reasons why he had not been here since the new estates had been built. Much of the town he knew had gone and a ring road divided the remainder, like a tarmac river. But the house had not changed. The window frames needed replacing, the front door repairing, the gate re-painting. The porch smelled faintly of unemptied dustbins.

  Solange had changed. Aged. Pink scalp showed through her now-white hair, like a joint of uncooked pork. She walked with two sticks.

  ‘Oh, Norman, I’m so pleased to see you, I’m so glad you came. I think about you, all of you, every day. I miss you all every day. I wish I could see the children.’

  Where was the old Solange? Age, isolation, illness – perhaps these had worn down the sharp corners, smoothed the rough edges. He slept in his old room, making up the bed himself because she could no longer struggle with it. He dared not ask how she changed her own.

  He had brought lamb chops with him, and a lemon tart, vegetables too, in a cold bag, and he cooked them. The hobs were black with grease thick as old tar. When he lit them, acrid smoke poured out so that he had to open the door and both windows. He had brought a bottle of red wine but she said her stomach was ‘beyond drink’. He washed hardened stale food off the cutlery and laid the table.