The Woman in the Wood

by Lesley Pearse

  That was one of the things Maisy really liked about her employer. She had made Maisy far more confident, encouraging her to be bolder in her clothes, enthusing about how pretty she was, and even taking her to the hairdresser’s. Maisy had never had a haircut; her blond hair had just been left to grow and the ends were wispy, dry and flyaway. The hairdresser cut it to her shoulders, and now it was sleek and shiny and trouble-free, yet long enough to put up when she wanted to look more sophisticated.

  ‘OK, you’ve talked me into it,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll write tonight after typing classes.’

  She had started going to night school to learn shorthand and typing back in September and she was doing very well. She knew that when Annabel started school next autumn Mrs Ripley wouldn’t need her any more, and her long-term plan was to go to London then and get an office job.

  ‘Won’t you be popping into that coffee bar to see that young man of yours?’ Mrs Ripley said teasingly.

  Maisy had met Rupert, an art student, last summer. He worked in the Cadena Coffee Bar three evenings a week.

  ‘He wasn’t for me and it’s been over for weeks,’ Maisy informed her. ‘He’s a beatnik. I thought he was fascinating at first because he was so revolutionary, what with Ban the Bomb and all that, but it got pretty tiresome after a bit. When he suggested going to the pictures it was always something foreign with subtitles and mostly I had to pay as he never had any money. Do you remember when he took me dancing? I never told you, but it was in a horrible smoky cellar club and the jazz band played so loudly you couldn’t hear anyone speak. I knew then I wanted to go to a proper dance on the pier with a normal man in a smart suit.’

  ‘You’ve got the right idea, Maisy,’ Mrs Ripley said, then glanced at her watch. ‘Oh gosh, is that the time? Mr Pettigrew will be here any moment for his treatment. I must go.’ She stood up, bent to kiss her little daughter, then hurried out.

  ‘As for us, little one,’ Maisy said, picking Annabel up in her arms, ‘we’ll go out for a walk along the promenade, then go and pick your brother up from school.’

  As Maisy pushed Annabel in her pushchair along Marine Parade, towards the pier, a squally cold wind off the sea threatened to sweep her off her feet. But she liked the wind and the rough sea; it was invigorating and made her feel alive.

  Her life had changed so much since she came to work for the Ripleys. They treated her more like an older daughter than a paid help, and Maisy knew she stood taller now, comfortable in her own skin because she was appreciated. She’d made a few friends with other au pairs at Paul’s school gates, who she could have a coffee or go to the pictures with. Jacky was one of these, and they often went dancing on the pier on Saturday nights. She was really good fun, but inclined to run off with blokes she’d met without even telling Maisy she was going.

  Some of the mothers she talked to at the school, ones who like Mrs Ripley lived in big houses and had a busy social life, asked her to help serve dinner or drinks for them, and paid her well. Through these evenings she’d made two male friends as well. The first one was Ralph, who sometimes worked as a waiter at private functions, but by day he worked as a hairdresser and now always trimmed Maisy’s hair. He was just a pal, not a proper boyfriend; he was fun, loved going shopping and to see weepy films, as she did.

  Martin, however, had been a guest at one of the more recent parties Maisy had helped at, and he had become a real boyfriend. He wasn’t as much fun as Ralph, he didn’t do roaring with laughter or encouraging her to try on totally unsuitable dresses. He worked in a bank, dressed very smartly, and he was very good-looking with dark hair and smouldering eyes to match. She really fancied him. He was a wonderful kisser, and was always trying to have his way with her.

  But Maisy was far too scared of having a baby, and anyway they had nowhere to go, as he still lived with his parents. She felt he was getting tired of trying to persuade her and that before long he’d call it a day. She knew it wouldn’t upset her that much – she hadn’t fallen for him, and besides, he could be very boring, going on and on about his work at the bank.

  Maisy often stopped to think how much better life was for everyone in England now. Businesses were booming, most of the old bomb sites from the war were being built on at last, new houses were going up everywhere and there was plenty of work for everyone. When she was small, her father was one of the few people she knew with a car; now loads of people had them. As for television, that too was a normal thing in anyone’s house, just as refrigerators and washing machines were. She had gone to London a couple of times last year with Jacky and she’d been astounded how much rebuilding had taken place, how smart the shops were, and by the luxury hotels and restaurants springing up everywhere.

  Yet for all the good things in her life, Duncan was still a sore place inside her. It was a wound that she could ignore most of the time, but she knew would never completely heal. Mrs Ripley had been right: when two more boys’ bodies had been found it had brought it all back. Maisy just wished the police could find the monster who was doing it and get him to confess to the other boys’ deaths so she would finally know what had happened to her brother. It was seventeen months now since he had disappeared and every single day of every month she’d offered up a prayer for him, even though the likelihood of his still being alive was only about one in a million.

  But painful as it was, Maisy had learned to deal with it. She didn’t look for reminders, she rarely told people about him any more. As long as she just held his memory close to her heart, she could live, outwardly at least, like any other carefree seventeen-year-old.

  Paul’s school was at the top of Regency Square, off King’s Road. Because the wind was so strong, she bent over the pushchair to tuck Annabel’s blanket in more securely.

  She just happened to glance up ahead, and to her surprise she saw her father paying off a taxi in front of the Royal Hotel. Her first thought was that he’d come to Brighton to see her, and she was just opening her mouth to call out when she saw he wasn’t alone. A woman had got out of the taxi too. They had just one suitcase, which the hotel doorman came forward to carry in.

  Maisy remained bent over the pushchair so she could watch them, her heart pounding with a mixture of shock and anger. She thought of her father as callous, cold and mean-spirited, but she’d never, ever thought of him as a ladies’ man.

  The woman was smartly dressed in a camel coat with a fur collar, a fur hat and very high-heeled shoes. She was slender, possibly about forty, with the kind of poise Maisy associated only with models or film stars. Maisy was too far away to be able to see her features clearly, but she somehow knew this was a strikingly attractive woman.

  The taxi paid off, the woman put her hand through Alastair’s arm. She was two or three inches shorter than he, and as they moved off to go into the hotel, she inclined her head towards his shoulder, the way a secretary or business colleague would never do.

  Maisy straightened up from the pushchair as they disappeared into the hotel. She was so dumbstruck for a moment or two that her mind went completely blank.

  As her father hadn’t contacted her since his scathing letter about how she was destroying her chances in life by not going to university, she had no idea what was happening in his world. Any news she’d had of her mother had come via Janice, picked up from Grandmother. It seemed there was little improvement, but Mother was calm and comfortable.

  So her father had another woman while his wife was incarcerated in an institution.

  Maisy checked the time and found she had ten minutes before she had to meet Paul. Without stopping to think, she marched up to the hotel, pushing the pushchair. The door was opened for her by the liveried doorman and she went straight over to the reception desk.

  ‘May I help you?’ an older woman in a navy blue suit asked.

  ‘Yes, I was wondering if you could tell me if Mr and Mrs Mitcham have checked in yet?’

  The woman looked at a register. ‘Yes, they have, just a short while ago. Would you like me
to ring their room for you?’

  Maisy forced a smile. ‘No, I’ll surprise them later. Don’t tell them I was asking, will you?’

  She turned and left, anger bubbling up inside her. No wonder he wanted her mother in that place. Was this woman the reason he’d had her committed?

  As Maisy sat on the bus from Southampton to Burley, she was feeling very emotional. It was two years and two weeks ago that she and Duncan first arrived in the village to stay with their grandmother. That year Easter Sunday was the first Sunday in the month, and she remembered then, as now, daffodils being in full flower, very new acid-green leaves sprouting out on trees and shrubs, pretty blossom too. There had been that clean country smell, with just a tinge of horse droppings, so different to London. She and Duncan had been scared at first, yet in a day or two they’d decided they never wanted to leave. She remembered the day Janice took them out to show them the old bicycles the gardener had oiled and cleaned up for them.

  They had whooped and shrieked as they took their first ride into the forest. She remembered too the sun had been warm that day and they came home with pink faces from it.

  Now she was going back. Her grandmother had replied – the first letter in a whole year – and not only had she agreed to let Maisy come and stay for a few days, she even sounded a tiny bit pleased at the prospect.

  So much had changed for Maisy in these last two years. Duncan disappearing was of course the biggest, worst and most difficult event to live with. But she’d grown up, sprouted breasts, had first love go wrong, learned to dance and started work, taking responsibility for two children. She’d also conquered shorthand and typing, could cook many different dishes and she’d sampled alcohol. She didn’t think it was as great as other people claimed, but maybe she needed to try more. She also believed she thought like an adult now, not as a child.

  Yet right now she was quaking in her smart patent leather shoes at the thought of meeting her grandmother.

  Janice opened the door to her with a broad smile and arms flung wide to hug her. ‘It’s been far too long,’ she exclaimed. After the longest hug she took Maisy’s arms and pushed her back slightly, reaching out for her hair and running her fingers through it. ‘Let me feast my eyes on you. So grown up and beautiful. It does my old heart good.’

  ‘Your heart isn’t old and it never will be,’ Maisy said and they went inside and closed the door behind them.

  ‘Mrs Mitcham is having a little nap now,’ Janice said. ‘She said she’d ring for tea later and you can take it in.’

  Maisy pulled a face. They both knew the old lady was wide awake but wanted this visit entirely on her terms. ‘So much the better, we can have a catch-up first,’ she said. ‘Now I want all the village gossip!’

  Over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, Janice launched into who had done what, and who had upset someone else. Maisy liked to hear it, even if they were people she had never got to know well.

  ‘What about Mr Dove?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, he has another couple of private pupils, and he seems well. He always asks after you when I see him.’

  ‘I’ll pop down there tomorrow,’ Maisy said. ‘I miss him, and you of course, but not much else. But tell me, is there any news of Grace?’

  Janice’s face stiffened. ‘She was taken in for questioning again after another boy went missing. There’s plenty round here are convinced she’s a killer. They’d form a lynch party if they could.’

  ‘Surely you aren’t starting to believe that too?’ Maisy asked, shaking her head in disbelief that Janice of all people would get sucked into such madness. ‘They use her as a scapegoat. Just because she’s a bit odd doesn’t make her a murderer. I don’t hear anyone claiming Sybil Leek kills people and she’s a self-confessed witch.’

  She and Duncan had often crept after this odd woman in her long black clothes with her jackdaw on her shoulder, hoping to catch her casting some dastardly spell.

  ‘Well, no, I’m not jumping on the band wagon, but I understand why she worries other people. Anyway, Sybil has left the village now, she became too famous for her own good,’ Janice said. ‘She was on radio and television, and she’s written books on witchcraft. So many reporters came to the village to interview her, it all got quite out of hand. They say she’s gone to America.’

  Maisy’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘Yet people don’t blame her for anything! I always thought she was a lot weirder than Grace.’

  ‘The thing is, Sybil always talked to people, so folk felt they knew all about her. I find when people don’t know about someone, that’s when they start to make things up. You’re about the only person who has ever talked to Grace – to everyone else she’s a mystery, and they hate that. Anyway, enough of witches and strange women. Tell me about you, your job and those little children.’

  ‘Annabel and Paul are lovely,’ Maisy said. ‘How lucky am I to get paid just for playing with a couple of children?’

  ‘You do more than play with them. You make most of their meals and do their washing, and besides, looking after little children is tiring.’

  Maisy grinned. ‘I don’t find it tiring. And I’m so lucky that Mrs Ripley gives me free rein to do what I want with them. In the summer we went on the beach practically every day. The hardest thing will be leaving them when they don’t need me any more. But my shorthand and typing are good now, so I’ll be able to find a decent job.’

  They chatted for some ten minutes about Brighton until the tinkling of Grandmother’s bell rang out.

  ‘That’s your summons,’ Janice said. ‘Lovely to have you back for a few days, sweetheart. I’ve missed you so much.’ She poured the boiling water into the silver teapot, slipped the red knitted cosy over the top and placed it on the previously laid tray.

  ‘Mmm, chocolate cake,’ Maisy said. ‘I’ve missed that so much. I’ve made a few cakes at the Ripleys’ but they weren’t a patch on yours.’

  Janice smiled. ‘I made that yesterday especially for you. Now go on in and don’t let her scare you.’

  Maisy was scared but she was determined not to show it. Grandmother looked thinner, her eyes watery and her face more lined, yet she was still dressed elegantly in a mauve dress and matching lacy cardigan.

  ‘Thank you for letting me come to see you,’ Maisy said, putting the tray down on a side table. ‘I know I disappointed you and my father, but I needed to get away from all the sad memories here.’

  ‘I couldn’t imagine why you wanted to look after another woman’s brats,’ Grandmother responded with a disdainful sniff.

  ‘I needed to be in a happy place,’ Maisy said. ‘And it turned out to be the perfect job for me. I love Paul and Annabel, they’re delightful children, and Mr and Mrs Ripley are very kind to me. It would have been much better, of course, if I’d had your and Father’s blessing.’

  ‘Your father thinks that you have thrown away the chance of university. He’s still angry with you.’

  ‘I don’t think he thinks about me often enough to be angry. Not now he’s got a mistress,’ Maisy retorted, her temper getting the better of her already.

  She had intended to work her way round to that once she’d sounded out her grandmother, not just drop it in like a big clanger.

  Her grandmother sat up straighter, her face showing complete surprise.

  Maisy got up to pour the tea and put a cup and a slice of cake on the small table beside her grandmother’s armchair.

  ‘You are mistaken,’ Grandmother said, her voice a little shaky. ‘Of course he hasn’t got a mistress – whatever made you say that?’

  ‘I’m not mistaken. I saw them together in Brighton, they had a room in the Royal Hotel. They checked in as Mr and Mrs Mitcham.’

  ‘No, Alastair wouldn’t do that,’ Grandmother insisted.

  ‘I saw him clearly. I was walking along the promenade with the pushchair and saw them getting out of a taxi. Father didn’t see me, he was too wrapped up in the woman. I went into the hotel later and enquir
ed if Mr and Mrs Mitcham had checked in, and the receptionist said they had and even offered to ring their room. Is this why he packed Mother off to that asylum?’

  Maisy had never seen her grandmother look uncertain before. She had her hands clasped together in agitation and she was looking at Maisy as if waiting to be told she’d made it all up.

  ‘That is what I saw, Grandmother. I think it’s time there was more honesty in this family. I want to know the name and address of the place Mother is in. I have a right to this information. I’m afraid if you won’t give it to me then I may have to contact a lawyer about it.’

  ‘What on earth makes you threaten such a thing?’ Grandmother said a little heatedly. ‘Everything your father has done is to protect you.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ Maisy said, feeler braver now. ‘He put Mother in that place to get her out of the way. Maybe she is as mad as a hatter but he still has no right to prevent me from seeing her or knowing exactly what was wrong with her. He wanted me to go to university to make himself look good, but he doesn’t care about me – not one letter in a whole year! I don’t think he even pestered the police about Duncan, either. A good father would have come down here and moved heaven and earth to help find his son.’

  ‘You are right to criticize him about that,’ Grandmother said, somewhat reluctantly. ‘I felt he should have stayed here during the search.’

  ‘I think he was with this woman all along. No wonder he wanted Duncan and me shipped down here,’ Maisy said. ‘What a hypocrite he is.’

  ‘Do not slander your father!’

  ‘Is it slander if it’s true? I could go up to London and check with the neighbours. They’d tell me if they’d seen her at our old house.’

  ‘Maisy, that’s enough!’ The old lady looked hurt. ‘I understand you are annoyed with your father, but men find it difficult to get through life without a woman. Two years alone is a long time.’