by Lily Hammond
But Clemency didn’t appear from the dim interior of the house, and nor did Riley, or even Dot. Eliza shivered on the doorstep, wrapping her arms around her middle and hugging herself. Her teeth chattered.
‘Well?’ Libby said. ‘Can I help you?’ She frowned at the girl on the step, dripping water from her frowsy coat. ‘Although I rather think you’ve the wrong house.’
Eliza shook her head. This was the right house. She was in the right place. The only thing out of place was this woman answering the door. She dipped her head and tried to step inside, out of the cold. She’d find Clemency herself.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Libby cried, alarmed, pushing the wet woman back onto the porch. ‘Who on earth do you think you are?’
But Eliza, of course, couldn’t answer. She just stood there, shivering, miserable, and confused. She shook her head. Where was Clemency? Again, she tried to peer past this sleek and pinch-faced stranger to find Clemency. She stepped forward again.
Libby reached out, grimacing, and shoved the deluded thing back. The way she was dressed – she quite obviously didn’t belong here – and so far, she’d not said a word. Obviously, thought Libby with distaste twisting her features, there was something seriously wrong with the young woman.
This time, however, Eliza wasn’t going to take this strange person’s nonsense. She pushed on past until she stood on the soft rug in the wide hallway, looking down dispiritedly at the wet puddle she was making.
She needed Clemency. That was all she could think, as she paid not the slightest bit of attention to Libby, who squawked at her, and plucked at her with her hands, trying to herd her back outside, and trying too, not to touch her. Libby had already got wet when Eliza brushed past her, and the soft crepe of her blouse stuck unpleasantly and coldly to her skin.
Eliza lifted her head and looked up at the landing. She made for the stairs. Clemency must be up there in her bedroom, or her studio. Eliza thought of the warmth of Clemency’s arms, and the deep nest of her bed with a longing that overtook everything, that gave her a last burst of strength. She ran up the stairs.
At the bottom of the staircase, Libby put one hand on the newel post and gaped up after the woman. Who was she? Where did she think she was going? There was no possible way, to her mind, that this bedraggled and destitute woman belonged anywhere in this house. After a moment of shock, she screamed out to her, chasing her up the stairs.
‘Stop!’ she yelled. ‘Just where do you think you’re going?’
But Eliza didn’t even hear her. Between her ears, the blood rushed and pounded, and despite being soaked through to the skin, she felt feverish, and as though she were almost floating along the hallway where the mermaid looked down on her, warm sympathy in her blue glass eyes. Eliza pushed open the door to Clemency’s studio and almost fell into the room.
It was empty. She stumbled through to Clemency’s bedroom, then came up short. The bed was neatly made, everything in its place, nothing like the wild tangle of sheets and blankets it had been last time she’d seen it.
And Clemency was nowhere to be found. Not in the studio, not in the bedroom. Where was she?
Turning, Eliza lifted hurt and confused eyes to the woman who had chased her upstairs. She lifted her hands, spreading them wide in the question. Where is Clemency?
Libby saw the lift of hands and ignored it. She leapt forward – finally the nasty girl had stopped running through the house – and grabbed her by the arm, giving her a good shake. The coat was wet and unpleasant under her hands, but she didn’t let go. Simply dragged the woman toward the door.
‘You’ve no business in here,’ she said, panting. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong house.’
‘What’s all the noise?’ Dot asked, coming into the room after hearing the ruckus from the kitchen and deciding to find out what the new lady was up to. She stopped dead in Clemency’s studio and gaped.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ Libby snapped. ‘Give me a hand to get this person back downstairs. She’s at the wrong house – I keep telling her, but she just isn’t listening.’
But Dot shook her head. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘That’s Eliza. Take your hands off her.’ A sudden solidarity with Eliza came over Dot, and she reached forward to put her own hands on Libby, giving her a sharp tug so that Libby fell back with a surprised cry.
‘That’s Eliza, that is,’ Dot repeated, glaring at Libby, to whom she’d taken an almost instant dislike upon their first meeting, when Clemency had brought her guest to meet her and Riley, and Libby’s gaze had wandered right past her without the slightest regard and the smile her lips had given had been automatic, falling far short of her eyes. Clemency might be the boss lady, but at least she didn’t treat her and Riley like they were nobodies. This was New Zealand, was Dot’s idea, and this Libby woman wasn’t the ruddy queen. She could spot a social climber when she saw one.
She nudged Libby aside again, just for good measure, and stood beside Eliza, putting her arm around the poor kid’s shoulders.
‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘You’re all wet. Absolutely sodden. You’ll catch your death, you will.’
Eliza stared at her, blinking her bruised and shadowed eyes.
Dot shook her head. ‘Clemency’s not here, love. She went with Maxine over to the coast.’ She started leading Eliza from the room, still ignoring the hoity-toity Libby Armstrong. ‘Let’s get you in front of the fire, and I’ll tell Riley you’re here and we’ll get you a good hot cup of tea.’
Dot had put her arm around the kid mostly to annoy Libby, but leading her down the stairs, she got concerned for Eliza’s own sake. Eliza was shivering and Dot could see that her colour was high, bright red spots on her cheeks. When Eliza looked at Dot, her eyes glittered with fever.
‘I think you’ve copped yourself a good one,’ Dot said. ‘You’re coming down with a fever, you poor thing.’ She steered Eliza toward the sitting room, where she herself had earlier laid the fire for Miss Armstrong. ‘What did you think you were doing, eh?’ she scolded as she manoeuvred Eliza as close as she dared to the fire. She looked back at Libby, who had followed them downstairs in a daze. ‘Close that front door, will you?’ she ordered with some satisfaction. ‘That wind is making itself at home with it wide open like that.’
Libby scowled, but went to close the door. She had to push it shut against the wind. Then she walked back to the sitting room, wanting to demand to know what was going on.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Who is this person?’
‘It’s Eliza,’ Dot said, standing in front of Eliza and reaching for the buttons to undo Eliza’s coat. ‘Go and tell Riley she’s here, will you, and that we need some towels and a hot pot of tea.’
‘I will do no such thing until you tell me who she is and why she’s here.’ Libby stuck her hands on her hips and glared at Dot. The woman from the kitchen hadn’t liked her from the moment Clemency had introduced them.
Dot straightened then and turned to look at Libby. She looked her up and down, taking in the well-cut lounging trousers, the blouse that went so well with them, the narrow belt, and the shoes, that didn’t quite match the rest of the carefully thought-out outfit. They were scuffed just slightly more than the polish could hide. So, Libby Armstrong’s budget had stretched to some new items for the wardrobe, but not quite far enough for shoes. Clemency had been right, Dot thought, when she’d said the hotel had likely been a bit much for this woman’s purse.
‘Eliza is Clemency’s friend,’ she said, pausing only slightly over friend. ‘Her particular friend,’ she added, emphasising the term with something close to glee. ‘And now, if you don’t go and get Riley, there will be hell to pay.’
Of her own making, perhaps, but Libby stared at her for a long moment, then spun on her heel and stalked from the room. Dot turned back to Eliza with some satisfaction. She didn’t like or dislike Eliza – but she had Eliza to thank, really, for her position right here in Clem
ency’s house, and she’d been there at the beach when little Martin had discovered the poor thing, and everybody had taken to her just fine. Better too, Dot thought, that if there had to be a Cinderella, that it was Eliza rather than the snobby Libby. Eliza, she reckoned, showing a rare insight, might just love Clemency like a woman would want, whereas Libby was the sort you’d never be sure would stick around if for some reason the fancy house and motor went by the way.
‘You poor love,’ she murmured, getting the buttons undone. ‘Let’s get this wet old thing off you so you can warm up a bit.’ She slid the coat from Eliza’s shoulders, and threw it away onto the floor, sure Clemency wouldn’t mind if it was there for a minute until she could pick it up. She rubbed Eliza’s hands between her own. ‘You’re frozen, you poor lamb. Here, move a bit closer to the fire. I don’t want you to sit down just yet, until we can get you wrapped in a towel, but let’s get a bit closer, shall we?’
Eliza nodded dumbly and shuffled closer to the flames. She wanted to lie down, just curl up on the carpet in front of the flames, resting her head on a soft pillow perhaps – it hurt terribly – and then just close her eyes, sleep for a while. Perhaps when she woke up, Clemency would be back.
Dot, meanwhile, had a hand pressed to her mouth, eyes wide as she looked Eliza over.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked on a gasp.
Eliza looked down at herself. Her dress was torn along the side seam, her pale thigh showing bare through it. She tried to pull the wet material together, so that Dot wouldn’t see that she wasn’t wearing her bloomers. Tears leaked from her eyes and dribbled down her cheeks.
Chapter Forty-Two
‘What is going on here?’ Riley bustled into the room, and Dot saw with relief that she had two big soft towels in her arms.
‘I don’t know,’ Dot said. ‘She just turned up.
Riley stopped her forward movement and looked at Eliza in dismay. ‘What happened to her?’
Dot just shook her head. Eliza lifted her eyes and met Riley’s own, her gaze miserable, ashamed. She’d not meant things to go like this. It had sounded so simple when she’d told herself her plan. Slip out of the house, walk to Clemency’s. She’d known it would be a long way.
But she hadn’t anticipated any of this. She looked down at her dress, that stuck to her chilled flesh, making it quite obvious that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Libby asked. She was still reeling from the help telling her this bedraggled…creature…was Clemency’s lover. Her voice was hard, disgusted. She hadn’t meant it to be, she was just too shocked to disguise it.
‘Never you mind,’ Riley told her. ‘Go and make the tea. Make yourself useful. This is nothing to do with you.’
Libby wanted to object to that. It was surely something to do with her – she was, after all, staying in the house at Clemency’s invitation. She worked with Clemency. She was the nearest thing to authority in the house, with Clemency away. She and Clemency had kissed, for heaven’s sakes!
But Riley gave her another look, then came toward her, shooing her out the door like she was a child better unseen as well as unheard, and – the nerve of the woman – closed the sitting room door in her face. Libby stood there for a moment, stunned, then dragged in a ragged, offended breath, and turned for the kitchen. She could do with a cup of tea herself, she decided. So, maybe she would put the kettle on.
‘She looked like she’d just sucked on something sour,’ Dot said, tipping her head toward the door.
‘She doesn’t matter,’ Riley answered and looked back toward Eliza. ‘We have to get your wet clothes off you,’ she said, and her voice was kind, sympathetic. ‘See too, where you’re hurt. All right?’
Eliza looked at her with her miserable eyes, then finally nodded slightly, letting her hands fall to her sides. Riley patted her and wrapped a thick towel around her shoulders.
‘Good girl. We’ll get you warm and dry, and Dot will run upstairs and get you some dry clothes, and we’ll have you right as rain in no time.’ Her hands were busy as she spoke, undoing the hooks on the dress, peeling it from the shaking girl to fall on the floor under Eliza’s feet. Eliza stepped out of it, head down, hair hanging across her face. Riley shook her head. Eliza was bare from the girdle down, her pale thighs covered in goosebumps. ‘Wrap the other towel around her, Dot,’ she said.
Dot didn’t need to be told twice. She stepped Eliza out of her heavy shoes, unsnapped the stockings from her, which promptly pooled around her ankles. She patted down Eliza’s wet legs like she was a baby, then wrapped the towel around her hips like a skirt and got the girdle off. Eliza’s hand sneaked down to hold the towel fastened in a fist.
‘All right, then,’ Riley said. ‘Let’s get the rest of your wet things off you.’ She unbuttoned Eliza’s chemise top and the brasserie under it. They were both sodden. She had been walking for a long time.
The wet clothes joined the pile on the floor and both Riley and Dot were silent for a moment, looking at the bruise over Eliza’s back and side, a purple starburst over her kidney.
‘That must be painful,’ Riley said, her voice soft. ‘You poor girl.’ She swallowed and draped the towel around Eliza. ‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’ She didn’t know what had happened, but there was an odd cast to the bruise that could have come from only one thing, to her mind – someone’s boot. A man’s boot, from the tread pattern impressed on Eliza’s skin. That combined with the missing bloomers, and the torn skirt, added up to nothing good. She exchanged a glance with Dot, and saw her own concerns reflected there.
But Eliza shook her head, her fingers going to touch the bruise at her side lightly, then pulling back to cover her bare breasts. She shook her head again, then frowned and put her hand to the graze and lump at the back of her head. The rain had washed the blood away, but not the pain.
‘You’re hurt there too?’ Riley asked, and checked out the nasty bump, shaking her head at the graze. She looked Eliza in the face, making sure the girl lifted her eyes and looked back at her. ‘Have you been hurt anywhere else? It looks lot like you’ve been attacked.’
Eliza swayed slightly where she stood and shook her head, then nodded. No, she wasn’t hurt anywhere else. Yes, she’d been attacked.
‘Some bastard attacked you?’ Dot asked, her blood boiling at the thought.
Eliza nodded again. She felt sick. Her head pounded, and everything was slightly grey around the edges.
‘She’s going to faint, look,’ Dot said, and leapt forward to catch her, and together with Riley, they got Eliza to the sofa, throwing Libby’s magazine away and laying Eliza down, where she looked up at them with glazed, unfocused eyes.
‘Well,’ Riley said, looking at her. ‘I don’t know if she’s hurt anywhere else or not, but right now she needs rest anyhow. And some fluids.’
‘I’ll go get her some clothes. She’s got a fever coming on, look.’ Dot started for the door, then pulled up. ‘What clothes do I get her, Riley?’ she asked. ‘She’s got none of her own. Or at least, I don’t think she has. I’ll see if she brought anything with her.’
Riley shook her head. ‘All her clothes are rags anyway. Go into Clemency’s bedroom,’ she instructed. ‘Get one of her nightgowns. Top drawer on the left. The big set in the corner. And grab a dressing gown too. There should be a spare one in the wardrobe.’
‘I’ll be quick,’ Dot said, making for the door again. ‘What about a blanket?’
Hands on her hips, Riley sighed, then got down on her knees in front of Eliza. ‘A blanket too,’ she said. ‘And we’ll start some soup, see if we can get her to eat.’
Dot disappeared and Riley looked down at Eliza and reached out to stroke a strand of wet hair from her fine, wide forehead. Eliza’s blue eyes looked up at her like a child’s, then blinked and closed.
‘What are we to do with you?’ Riley murmured. ‘You’re supposed to be on a train to Greymouth right now.’
Eliza’s eyelids fluttered b
ut didn’t open.
Riley sighed again and thought about the bruise. She wasn’t entirely convinced the girl wasn’t hurt further. She pressed her hand against Eliza’s forehead. Dot was right, she thought. Eliza was coming down with a fever.
And no wonder, if she’d walked all the way here in the pouring rain.
Well. They’d get her into some dry things, and comfortable. Then Riley would telephone Ruth and tell her what had happened. She wouldn’t be able to contact Clemency for hours yet. It was a long way to Christchurch.
Meanwhile, Riley had to decide whether to let Eliza stay here – or take her back to Ruth. She got to her feet and smoothed her hands over her grey hair.
She had no idea which was the right choice.
Chapter Forty-Three
‘Ruth! Telephone for you!’
Ruth heard the clunk of the receiver onto the table in the hallway and sighed, wiping her hands on a dishcloth.
‘Everything all right, Ruth?’ Patty asked her, picking up the tea towel to finish the lunch dishes. ‘You look a bit peaky.’ She had for days, really, although Pat wasn’t entirely sure peaky was the right word for how Ruth was. Patty’s grandmother would have said Ruth had a touch of the blues, more like it. Patty tried to remember the last time she’d seen Ruth smile, and it occurred to her that she couldn’t, not recently – not a proper one that crinkled the eyes.
Ruth gave her one of her automatic smiles now, one that lifted her lips but didn’t go anywhere near the eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just a bit tired. I think I might go and have a lie down, if you’re all right here.’
Patty nodded, watching Ruth leave the kitchen. She didn’t turn back around to the dishes until she heard Ruth pick up the telephone receiver and say a muffled hello.
‘Ruth? It’s Riley.’
