The River Within

by Karen Powell

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, after a moment.

  It was the first time in his life that Danny Masters told an outright lie.

  CHAPTER 24,

  Venetia, 1949

  It was over so soon—the bite of land taken from the woods, red brick houses starting to fill the space, Marina back in London. The marriage to the on-off fiancé took place; there was news of a child on the way. Venetia wondered about that child and then berated herself for doing so. She did not truly believe the baby had anything to do with Angus, yet that kind of thinking had become a habit. Yet she and Angus went on in the usual way, neither of them bringing up the tensions of the previous year. Angus was happier; Venetia began to feel she’d been mistaken in her suspicions.

  ‘That was Caro Levisham,’ said Angus, after taking a phone call one morning. ‘I’ve invited her to lunch tomorrow.’ Seeing her blank look, he added. ‘Caro. Ben’s sister.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had a sister.’

  ‘Surely I’ve mentioned her before? She was one of the Newnham set when we were at college.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, she’s passing through on her way to a wedding in St. Andrew’s. I’ve not seen her in years.’

  Caro Levisham was a barrister, divorced, sharp of tongue and very beautiful. She treated Angus like a mischievous but charming brother, made sure to include Venetia in their recollections of college mishaps. ‘But you know what he’s like.’

  She was full of admiration for the restoration work in the salon.

  ‘How wonderful,’ she said, taking Venetia by the arm after lunch. ‘You’ve put such love into it. Makes my little flat look an absolute hovel. I’ve not had the energy to do anything about it since I moved in. It was just after the divorce, you see.’

  ‘How did you find her?’ asked Angus later, as Caro’s car sped off at a frightening pace down the driveway, gravel flying in its wake.

  ‘Great fun,’ said Venetia, and meant it.

  ‘I knew you’d love her. Everyone does.’

  Venetia could not sleep. It was nothing to do with Caro and everything to do with her. Why had Angus never spoken of this friendship before? A girl that beautiful and funny was surely worth a mention? Had they been lovers when they were young? Why get in touch now, after all these years? The divorce. In her fingertips, Venetia knew the answer to each of these questions. There was nothing in Caro or Angus’s behaviour to suggest anything more than a sibling-like fondness for one another. She would have known otherwise. She would have known. What was the matter with her, lying here staring into the darkness? In the early hours of the morning, long before the promise of dawn, something anchored deep tore free, headed straight for the surface.

  The rage that came felt catastrophic in its violence, as if it might destroy her. She lay awake until sunrise, eaten up by thoughts of revenge. She would seek out Marina, crash into that carefully constructed life, just as Marina had crashed through hers. No-one could stop her once she started. What might a nebulous fiancé think of fishnet stockings and shared cigarettes; of eyes that watched, gave nothing away; of a silent dinner at Richmond Hall on her last night, which Marina had agreed to under duress, then made no attempt to hide the fact that she felt constrained by Venetia’s presence? Of a child that might, if Venetia chose, be called into question?

  I am not stupid, she would tell Marina.

  You did not win.

  Or she would inflict physical damage. That would surprise everyone the most, but Venetia knew she was capable of it. She was a farm girl, after all, strong and resilient, brought up to help with the lambing. All those hours spent reining in wayward horses too. She had been considered an honorary boy by her brothers, fighting alongside them against the village lads. Oh, she could still throw a punch if the occasion demanded it, she was sure she could, and the idea that she, Lady Richmond, might do such a thing made the laughter rise hysterically inside her, so that she had to cover her mouth for fear of waking Angus. She would call the girl a whore, or, racking her brains for the old insults, a cunt.

  Cunt

  Her mouth silently formed the word over and over again as Angus slept on, oblivious. The incantation restored the balance of power somehow, carrying her through the dark hours before dawn. She had hated the girl; she could finally admit it to herself. She had hated Angus too for his coldness, for choosing not to spare his own wife. She pictured a scene where she would tell both of them how she wished them all the bad things in the world, so that when misfortunes inevitably came their way, they would remember her words and wonder if they were, indeed, cursed.

  CHAPTER 25

  Lennie, September 1955

  The butter was off. She dreaded having to return it to the shop, Mrs. Cuthbert always behaved as if Lennie had airs and graces that needed putting right, especially when there were other customers present. Lennie would find herself saying too many pleases and thank yous, escaping as soon as possible. She could hear father’s footsteps on the stairs. She slid the entire pat of butter into the bin, pushing it down into the damp warmth of last night’s scrapings, which already had the smell of rot upon them. It was a terrible waste but she’d rather spend some of her small savings on more, make up some story of a great batch of baking if Mrs. Cuthbert asked, than cast doubt on the shopkeeper’s storage skills.

  ‘What will you do today?’ The brass buttons on her father’s jacket shone like chips of sunlight. Even in the height of summer Peter Fairweather dressed formally, whether on duty or at leisure.

  ‘Nothing special,’ she said.

  In the short space of time that her father had reconciled himself to his daughter’s new attachment, just as rapidly he’d transformed it into a new source of anxiety. For the last few days he had wanted to know what arrangements she and Alexander had for the day, for next week, or for his return to university. Had they spoken to Lady Richmond about their situation? Others might have thought that this was social ambition at work, but Lennie knew better. Her father liked continuity, tradition. If people must move out of their allocated roles, he could not rest until they had settled into new ones. He would not be happy, Lennie suspected, until some kind of formal announcement had been made.

  Her father dealt in certainties but Alexander could not be pinned down in that way. He had made no attempt to engage her father in discussions about the future, and Lennie was fairly certain that there had been no conversation with Lady Richmond. Surely he would have told her if that were the case?

  Some days he was desperate to spend more hours with her than she could spare, yet gave her no notice so that she could plan for these sudden impulses. Then days at a time might pass without him calling by at all, when she could almost convince herself that she’d imagined a relationship between them. Only yesterday, she’d come across him on the river path as she returned from the village. She was carrying heavy bags home, having lost her nerve at the grocers; failing to ask Mrs. Cuthbert for her shopping to be delivered.

  ‘I’ll take those for you,’ he said.

  He kissed her; she could think of nothing else but his beautiful mouth, his hands deep in her hair. Afterwards, he seemed to forget about his offer, walking her back to Gatekeeper’s Cottage with his arms swinging light and free by his sides.

  They lingered at the gate, talking of a new film they both wanted to see, but then he seemed to grow impatient, said he had no time to spare, that he had a paper to research and write. He said he’d been putting it off all summer, what a bore it was, having to give up so many days to it now.

  Lennie washed and dried the breakfast things, tied up her hair, then stepped out into the garden. The vegetable patch needed weeding. It was early yet but the sun was already a hard circle in the sky, flat as a tin tray. The heat of high summer had held steady for weeks. Now the earth was cracked and brown, like the surface of a fruitcake, the weeds holding their position with a show of tenacity
before flying up in a sudden shower of dust. Lennie worked with her hands to begin with, the sun falling in a hot bar across her shoulders, onto the pale skin at the back of her neck. The heat did not trouble her. Though slender, Lennie was strong, the blood thumping in her body a hot, red pulse of life.

  Her work took her towards the far edge of the garden, where the compost heap shifted and fermented in the heat like a small, dampish volcano. The smell of it, filling her nostrils, was familiar, but there was something else today, more potent than the usual base note. The smell of death, sweet and rich with decay, which even as a child she had recognised, passing a hedgerow or a ditch with hastily covered mouth and nose. Just inside the privet hedge boundary, hunched in upon itself, lay the corpse of a young rabbit, its body deflated and grey, like a sock without a foot to give it form and function. Lennie moved closer and flies erupted from the corpse. She could see the rabbit’s silvery ears drooping to the earth, almost translucent in death, while the skin between its shoulders had begun to collapse in on itself, forming a dark, liquid furrow.

  She must not be squeamish. She would move the creature before its rotting flesh liquefied, seeping into the row of lettuces growing in the nearby bed. She didn’t quite like the idea of picking up the corpse with her bare hands, looked around for some kind of tool, thinking she might push what remained of the little rabbit through a gap in the hedge and onto open ground. If Alexander came to see her later, she could ask him to bury it for her, though even as the thought entered her mind she couldn’t picture him doing such a thing. Never mind; the creature would rot quickly enough in the open.

  Lennie fetched the hoe, inserting its sharp edge between the rabbit and the earth to lift the little corpse from its spot. It stuck to the soil. She exerted more pressure, pushing the hoe deeper into the soil, levering it up more forcefully. The rabbit clung on for another moment, as though its little paws had burrowed down into the earth, then gave up quite suddenly, flipping onto its back with an acrobatic flourish.

  Whatever had attacked the creature must have had it by the neck, ripping out its throat, which was now a crusted mess of maggots and iron-dark blood. A fox probably. She must make sure the henhouse was secure, though they’d been no squawking in the night. The rabbit’s muzzle was angled towards her. As she tried to roll the animal towards a gap in the hedge, its head suddenly shifted. She saw an empty eye socket, like a gaping extra mouth, the rabbit’s eye dangling down its cheek in a viscous red drip.

  The hoe landed with a thud on the dry earth. Lennie ran towards the cottage, trying to reach the path, the door. Anywhere. But it was too late: she fell to her knees in the dirt, vomited gobs of barely digested toast into her father’s strawberry patch.

  CHAPTER 26

  Danny, July 1955

  Hattie Merriot coming along the river path on her way home from the Hall; no way to avoid her.

  ‘What are you doing out here, Danny Masters? Come to walk me home?’

  ‘If you like,’ he said. It wasn’t far and there was no point being rude. Danny turned back in the direction of the village while Hattie took his arm and chattered on about everything and nothing in her usual way as they walked.

  ‘Don’t you look different with your hair all shorn! You almost scared me. My brother reckoned Basic was the worst bit. You’ll be glad to get that over and done with. You look so grown up, all of a sudden.’

  ‘I’ve two more weeks to go yet,’ said Danny.’ Just home for the weekend.’

  He’d saved money by hitching, was lucky to be picked up by a couple of US servicemen who were heading back to base in Cambridgeshire after a trip to Scotland. They were from Kansas and South Carolina, might easily have been brothers though, tanned and healthful, with their mouths full of strong, white teeth and easy laughter. They took pity on the young English soldier in his ill-fitting uniform and a hungry look about him, plying him with cigarettes and chocolate and going out of their way to drop him at York, from where he said he could catch a train the rest of the way home. He’d dropped his bag at the cottage, given the chocolate to his mam, and then slipped out while she prepared a celebratory tea.

  ‘You’ll be finished in time for the ball then,’ Hattie said, when they reached the High Street.

  He nodded. The optimistically-titled Summer Ball was an annual event held in the village hall, organised by Miss Price, the schoolmistress, for the benefit of the young people of the parish. ‘I don’t know if I’ll go.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hattie looked up at him and then away. He felt bad. At one time she might have been just the kind of girl he’d go for, with her freckled face and that lively way about her. He’d known her all his life, she was easy to be around, Hattie. Always a great one for laughing.

  ‘You must see a bit of Lennie up at the Hall,’ he said.

  ‘Lennie Fairweather?’ She’d heard him perfectly well, Danny knew. Was just startled by his question. Well, it was too late to take back his words. ‘Not really. Anyway, I don’t suppose she’ll be coming.’ Hattie was on the verge of saying something spiteful, he could feel it, and she wasn’t like that, not really. If he wasn’t careful, she’d be thinking he’d got above himself since he’d been away, fancying himself too good for the village.

  ‘I just wondered, that’s all,’ he said lamely. Even the simplest things were difficult when they involved his feelings for Lennie.

  ‘She’ll be too busy waiting for her boyfriend to come home, I should think.’ Hattie looked at him. ‘He’s overseas, they say.’

  ‘Her boyfriend?” He could feel his face getting warm, knowing she had guessed something. Maybe this wasn’t the first time she’d spotted him walking along the river path towards the cottage.

  ‘Alexander Richmond,’ a note of triumph in Hattie’s voice. ‘Everyone says he’s crazy about her, even though she’s only old Fairweather’s daughter.’

  ‘Who says that?’ His voice was wild, he could hear it. His hand reached for the book of poems in his pocket, seeking comfort in its solidity. ‘You shouldn’t listen to gossip, Hattie!’

  ‘It’s not gossip! Why would anyone make up something like that?’ She turned to face him as they reached the gate to her home. ‘Besides it’s been going on for ages. My sister saw him with her in the woods one day.’

  He seized her arm. ‘What was she doing, spying on people?’

  ‘She wasn’t spying! He was kissing her. Back when Sir Angus was not long buried and them all in mourning. And the girls in the kitchen reckoned she went down south to visit him too.’ Hattie stared at him wide-eyed, imploring him to believe her. ‘Anyway, he calls her Helena.’

  Her final piece of evidence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hattie.’ He let go of her arm and patted it awkwardly by way of apology. ‘Go on inside now.’

  ‘You’ll come to the dance still? It’s going to be a Hollywood theme. I might be wrong about everything I said.’

  Poor Hattie. He had been hard on her and here she was, already wanting to forgive him.

  ‘If I can,’ he promised.

  CHAPTER 27

  Lennie, September 1955

  National Service was a waste of time, Thomas was saying, waving a butter knife in the air. He couldn’t see the point of it now that Korea was over, but if one had to do it, the RAF was definitely the way to go.

  ‘You’re forgetting Malaya,’ his father said. ‘And of course Kenya shows no signs of being resolved.’

  ‘That’s the beauty of a young institution. With the army, you’re either officer material or cannon fodder,’ said Thomas. ‘The RAF’s about brains and competence. No-one gives a hoot where you came from. Jamie Markham says they’re less silly about discipline too.’

  This idea so outraged Peter Fairweather that he quite forgot to avoid conflict with his son. Discipline won wars and saved lives so could not be regarded as silly. He did not see why Thomas would be attracted to any institution that did
not value it. Besides that, there was a family tradition of army service.

  ‘Hardly a tradition,’ said Tom. ‘You managed to duck out, so we’re only talking about your father and his brother.’

  Lennie’s limbs felt heavy. She had slept late. Was she sickening for something? Other than last year’s scarlet fever, she was rarely ill, had to think back to a childhood bout of chicken pox which had driven her half-mad with itching and left a little crater at her temple as a memento. Tom had teased her for days about the spots—great unsightly warts, hardening into crusts over her skin—and then fallen sick himself. She had recovered from the worst by then and had busied herself fetching cooling drinks for him and daubing calamine lotion onto his limbs and face, rendering him a chalky pink warrior.

  ‘Want to come to York?’ Thomas’s voice cut across her thoughts, as she filled the kettle. ‘I’ve some books to collect,’ he said. ‘I could do with a hand carrying them.’

  ‘Oh. But I’ve things to do.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ Thomas gave a flick of his wrist: there was nothing in her day that could not be dismissed.

  Lennie carried on spooning tea into the pot, thought how small her world must seem to her brother: this cottage with its little square of a garden, a doll’s house. Suddenly she saw herself as if from above, busying herself like an ant in its nest, constantly in motion but to no purpose that an observer could discern.

  ‘I would, Tom, but I really do have lots to do and Alexander has asked me to come with him to York tomorrow.’

  ‘Suit yourself then.’ Tom pushed back his chair and took up his jacket.