The Key to Hiding

by Wendy Reakes

  The day came and went. Celia had been busy throughout and when evening came she was ‘dead on her feet’, so she’d said the next day. She’d brought with her a linen napkin, where inside, a feast of meat and vegetables made Marley’s stomach ache for something other than pigeon.

  “That’s turkey,” Celia said pointing to the succulent meat. “It’s a Christmas tradition at Wilbury House, even for the servants.” Her eyes were aglow with the joy of offering Marley such a gastronomic delight. Sprouts, potatoes and golden parsnips sat aside it and a strange looking mixture which was chestnut stuffing.

  “I’ve never eaten so well…but Celia how did you manage to acquire such a feast?”

  “Well, it’s a special occasion, so I took it from my plate.”

  Marley gasped at the realisation of what she had done. “Celia, you can’t…”

  “No one saw me.” She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a handful of pudding. “I wish I could set this aflame with warming brandy as the family had it, but I’m sure you will enjoy it anyway.”

  “You’ve made me very happy, dearest Celia.”

  She hugged her. “I have to go now.”

  “Wait, I have a gift for you. I wanted you to have it last night…”

  “No time now,” she called back as she followed the path through the forest of furniture. “I’ll come back later. I promise.” As she left, Marley heard her coughing before she closed the attic door behind her.

  Marley was left alone with her meal resting in her hands, feeling sad she was gone and knowing that she wouldn’t see her again for many hours.

  Contrary to her optimistic attitude, existing within her secret abode, there had been times when she’d yearned to be free of her confines, to run outside, to stretch the bones and muscles in her legs over fields and plains and to feel the wind lashing her cheeks. Her position was frustrating, since standing still was unnatural to her as darkness in daylight.

  For now, Marley forced all self-pity from her mind as she concentrated on being thankful for what she had. And one of those things was the food resting in the napkin in her hand.

  When Celia didn’t return that night, she surmised she’d been busy like the day before and that she was unable to sneak away from the festivities. When she didn’t come the next day or the next, Marley became desperate to know why.

  When Celia didn’t come to the attic for ten more days, Marley decided she must surely be dead.

  Now her heart was broken.

  Chapter 12

  Marley was in such a state, she could barely think straight. She hadn’t seen Celia for ten days. She was lost to her, probably dead, but despite her detrimental imagination, she had to know for sure. Her distress was making her ill. She’d kept to her bed and she’d barely eaten. At times, she considered it to be a good thing; that maybe the baby growing inside her would starve and die. That would solve one problem.

  She couldn’t imagine loving anyone as much as she loved her beautiful and brave friend, Celia, so the thought of the black-haired lout’s baby dying, didn’t faze her one bit. She just wanted Celia back, before she died too, of a broken heart and extreme loneliness.

  Many a time she’d considered forcing her way out of the attic and shouting at the top of her lungs for Celia, but the consequences were too great. They would tell her she was dead and then she would be carted off to gaol where her baby would surely die or be taken away from her.

  After ten days, weak from her confinement and lack of food, when Marley got off the bed and placed her foot on the floor, she felt an acute pain shooting up her leg like a sharp knife. She’d turned her ankle weeks ago and as the pain came and went, she knew she had to do everything possible to exercise and keep it moving.

  As she walked about the attic, she was in the second section, when she heard distant voices and footsteps coming up the stairs outside the attic door. Without hesitation, she rushed to her bolthole under the floorboards, where trembling, she lowered herself into the hole.

  As the people entered the attic, Marley had no time to pull the trap door shut, so she edged along, under the floorboards to conceal herself until they had gone. She stayed in the dark, worried that the moving dust would cause her to sneeze and give the game away.

  Beyond the small space, she’d once cleared of mouse droppings and cobwebs, an expanse of wooden beams stretched below the attic floor with lengths of copper pipes criss-crossing themselves like a Chinese puzzle.

  She felt a draught hit her face from the wall on the side of the building. Along it, covered in dust and webs, hundreds of years in the making, she could see four ornate metal air vents. Just as she was about to make her way over by crawling on her knees, she heard footsteps. The sound was coming from above. There was someone in her attic, just above her.

  She didn’t know how long she had stopped breathing. She felt like her whole world had turned upside down…literally. Now, it was she who skulked below, like the vermin roaming under the floorboards, reversing her top-of-the-house position in the house.

  “Can you remember where they put it?” a man’s voice said.

  Marley felt her hands shaking and her heart beating so fast, that, surely, the pounding of it against the floor would alert them to her presence.

  A woman’s voice. “Somewhere around here, I’m sure of it,” she said. “My goodness. It’s only been sixteen years. It couldn’t have gotten far.”

  Footsteps.

  The sound of breathing. Surely Marley’s.

  The people walked right above She didn’t know whether she should crawl further under the boards or stay still. Would they find the space she’d crawled into? She hadn’t covered the opening. She didn’t think she needed to.

  “How do you even find anything up here, Porter?”

  The groundsman!

  “The lady don’t want it touched,” his voice replied. “All this furniture belonged to her father-in-law and she wants it kept that way. That’s what she told me.”

  “That’s silly. There’s no point on hanging onto old memories of the dead. Let them go, I say.”

  Footsteps.

  Furniture scraping the floor. Thuds and unfamiliar noises. Marley was going to die. She just knew it. Or worse…They would discover the intruder in the attic.

  “There it is. I’ll have to move some of this furniture.”

  The woman’s voice. “Don’t bother. I can see it from here. The mane is chipped and there’s an ear missing.”

  They were referring to the old rocking horse. It was just a stone’s throw from her bolthole.

  “Don’t you want it then?”

  “No, I’ll tell them it’s destroyed beyond repair. They can get a new one for this baby.”

  “What’s this?” He had found something!

  Footsteps.

  “There’s a hole in the floor here.”

  Oh my God! She had surely held her breath for a whole ten minutes.

  Scraping, moving, shifting.

  Footsteps.

  A hollow thud.

  Then blackness.

  A muffled voice. “No wonder it’s draughty up here. That’ll fix it.”

  Moving, dragging, footsteps.

  A door banged.

  Quiet.

  Marley let out a sigh of relief. She was alone now and she could breathe again.

  She shifted her body along the dusty floor until she came to the opening where the cover had been placed over it. Somehow her eyes had adjusted to the darkness down there and she could just make out some daylight, from somewhere, coming through the vents below the floorboards and the cracks in the boards above. Under the entrance to her bolthole she pushed up with her hands, but the cover wouldn’t move. She shifted along and tried again, but once more the cover remained solid. She tried the strength in her back against the planks of wood she’d fashioned, by pushing against the floor with her knees and hands. The cover trembled, but that was all.

  Now she knew. The groundsman had put someth
ing above the door and once again she was trapped. Permanently.

  Marley’s mind somersaulted. She willed herself not to panic, telling herself that somehow, she would find a way to escape. She turned her body, still prostrate on the floor, and looked towards the air vents. She needed air, like never before.

  She dragged her body across the floor and up over a horizontal beam and when she finally reached the side wall and scraped off the spider webs and dust, she put her nose to the vent and inhaled a hearty gulp of fresh air.

  She couldn’t see through the slats. They were facing downwards on the external wall, but the air stimulated her mind enough to use logic to get her out of the situation she was in. She knew what she should do.

  She took one more intake of air and turned about. She was about to travel the expanse of the attic on her belly and the journey might take a long, long time.

  Chapter 13

  She had lost track of time. The air -or lack thereof- began to suffocate her and her body heat had warmed up the space around her like she was a furnace in transit. Her underarms were wet, and drips of sweat fell from behind her ears to run down her neck to her chest and into the crease of her bosom. Along with the sweat, the dust and the filth stuck to her as if she was being tarred and feathered. As she spluttered her way across the attic floor, her mouth was so dry she was unable to manufacture new saliva. It was eternally dark, and since she could only use her wits, along with her sense of direction, progress was painfully slow and laborious.

  She lost all confidence in her ability to find her way in the dark, until finally, more by accident than any artful manoeuvre, she hit the wall on the other side. She was hoping to find some more air vents but there were none. Then she realised it wasn’t another external wall of the house but an interior one. She worked her body along the wall to the left, feeling her way against the cold bricks and the brittle rendering. The worst part was negotiating the pipes since she feared breaking one and doing untold damage to something she didn’t understand.

  When she thought her mind was going to spin out of control, she finally arrived at the place she’d been searching for.

  Her appreciation of the timing was not unfounded. The relief was overwhelming, since she was beginning to think she would die below that floor, and when her body had rotted, it would stink out the house. How would they explain it? she wondered, as she turned her body over and rested on her back. She pulled up her knees to her chest and just as she was considering the welfare of the baby inside her belly, wondering if it was still alive, she gave an almighty kick with both feet.

  As anticipated, the wood of the steps near the attic entrance came away with the mighty force, gained by the strength in her back and a helping of sheer gusto. She turned about once more and crawled out of the space until she found herself on the lower landing of the steps next to the attic entrance. She hoisted up her body with the only ounce of strength she had left, and as she slumped against the side wall, she heard a key turn in the lock.

  When the door slowly opened, she fainted outright.

  “Marley? Marley?” Her voice was so sweet on her ears.

  Marley opened her eyes and there she was. Her darling Celia! When she took her hands, Marley began to cry. Celia must surely be wondering why she was there at the entrance, so filthy and unkempt and looking half-dead.

  Despite her ears being clogged by debris from under the floor, she could hear the rain splattering against the tiles on the roof. She couldn’t speak. The sound simply made her thirsty. She leaned on Celia as she helped her to her feet. She wanted to support her weight, unsure if Marley was hurt, but she broke free of her and stumbled up the steps to the attic.

  With desperation, she travelled at the only speed she could muster, knowing Celia was following her, and when she came out of the end of the forest of furniture to her parlour, she leaned down, gathered the hem of her dress, and pulled it up over her head.

  She left the filthy garment discarded on the floor when she ran to the window and burst out onto the roof. As the pigeons scattered with fright, she stood upon the rooftop terrace, naked as the day she was born, turning in a circle with her arms outstretched and her head thrown back, as the blissful rain fed her thirst and washed away the remnants of her ordeal.

  Celia threw a blanket around her shoulders and pulled her inside. She guided Marley towards the bed and gently forced her to lie down. Her sodden hair was plastered to her face and she was coughing the dust from her lungs after the water had flushed it from the sides of her parched throat. She was gasping and retching and she didn’t know what Celia must have thought.

  She shook her head. She looked thin and pale. Her eyes had dark shadows beneath them. “What happened, Marley? For goodness sake, I must call my mother.”

  She grabbed her hand. “No, please, I’ll be alright in a minute. I just had a fright, that’s all. Just a fright!”

  “It was more than that.”

  Marley nodded and squeezed her hand. “I got trapped under the floor…” She started coughing again.

  “How...?”

  “I heard footsteps and the groundsman came in with a lady.”

  Celia gasped. “Lottie, the nanny.”

  She nodded. “I think so. They were looking for the rocking horse.” She brushed away the wet hair falling across her eyes. “Before they left they put the cover over my hide-away and placed something upon it. I was trapped.”

  “Oh, my goodness, Marley.”

  “The only thing I could do was make my way over to the entrance and get through the steps. I knew they were rickety, so I prayed that with one big kick, I could loosen one of the vertical boards and escape my prison. That’s when you came in.” She took another deep breath as if she had just lived the nightmare all over again. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”

  “As I frightened you.”

  Marley sat up and flicked her hair behind her neck so that it fell dripping down her back. Her lips trembled when she whispered, “I thought you were dead.”

  Celia cried with her. “I nearly did die. I got influenza. My mother sent me to my aunt for a week to recuperate. Obviously, I couldn’t get a message to you.”

  “Poor Celia. How terrible.”

  “I was worried about you up here alone, wondering where I was, and why I wasn’t coming up to see you. I felt so bad about that, my dear friend.”

  “This is all my fault,” Marley said with a trembling voice. “If you didn’t have to come up to this draughty old attic, you wouldn’t have caught influenza in the first place. I’m so sorry, Celia.”

  “Now, let’s have none of that. You are here, and I am with you. There is nothing to be sorry for. None of this is your fault.”

  Marley leaned back on the mattress, thinking about giving herself up so that Celia could carry on her life without her to worry about. She must have known what she was thinking when she said, “Come on. Let’s get you dried off and then you can get into bed. We can’t have you catching the same sickness as I, can we?”

  The next day, the memory of her plight under the floor was still raw in her mind. Whenever she took occasion to think about it, she would scratch her arms and her hair, and then her breath would quicken as if she was re-living the horror of it all over again. Now, she couldn’t imagine ever using the bolt hole again. She’d rather get caught and thrown in gaol.

  Despite her ordeal, the day became brighter when she finally had the chance to give her Christmas gift to Celia.

  Under the pretence she was going to her room to rest, since she had only been put back on duty part-time while she gained her strength, she arrived around mid-morning carrying a basket of vegetables and fruit. Marley gasped when she handed the arrangement over to her, taking in the various items. “Pears, apples, a single orange, carrots, onions, a head of celery, looking like a floral arrangement and beautiful white mushrooms dotted around the display between the fruit along with tiny bunches of parsley placed in the gaps. “I can’t believe my eyes,” Marley s
aid. “How did you get it?”

  “The grocer in Mells donated it to me. He has taken a shine to my mother and when he heard I was sick, I reckon he thought he’d play a love card.” Then she winked.

  Marley shook her head. “But how will you explain…”

  “Worry not. Mother sent me to the larder and told me to put the items with the other fruit and vegetables inside, since they are of no use to either of us in their raw form. So, you see, she has no way of knowing if I’ve carried out her instructions or not. Besides they were given to me, so why should the household servants have them? I did keep a couple of pieces for myself…fruit only though. Goodness knows why the man gave vegetables to a sick girl.” Celia snarled prettily. “Really stuck on my mam he is!”

  “Well, thank you, Mr Gainsborough,” Marley chanted as she put the basket in her fabricated kitchen.

  Absentmindedly, Celia asked. “You know him?!”

  Marley felt quite taken aback by her remark. “Why, Celia! Have you forgotten I once lived in the village and that I know practically everyone who lives in it?”

  Celia looked embarrassed. “I don’t know why I forgot,” she said slowly. “I think my brain must be addled as a result of my sickness.”

  Marley laughed. “Well, Miss Addled,” she joked. “How about we share that juicy looking orange.”

  She laughed. “No, it’s just for you. I have mine still in my room. Mother said I should save it.”

  “Very well, but you can have a segment or two, can’t you?”

  They both sat on the floor as Marley took up the orange and cut the peel into four sections with the gentleman’s penknife. Then she removed the four pieces and broke the orange in half, ripping off a segment for Celia. She smiled and placed it in her mouth, biting it in half. Marley did the same as they both giggled. The juice was like sweet nectar. Nothing else described it.