The Tallow Image

by J. T. Brindle

  Matt and Edna came into the hallway from different directions, she from the kitchen, he from the front room. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind coming over each day, Edna?’ he asked. ‘Just until Cathy’s fully recovered?’ Edna’s presence always made him feel more comfortable inside. In spite of her rough and ready appearance – the tousled greying hair and the bulky misshapen figure that looked untidy in whatever she wore – Edna was worth her weight in gold. Through the good times and the bad, she was always there. Nothing was ever too much trouble for her.

  ‘Shame on you!’ she retorted, with an impatient toss of her head. ‘You shouldn’t even ask such a thing.’ Leaning towards him, she asked in a more intimate voice, ‘Did she eat the breakfast I cooked?’ When he frowned and shook his head, she flashed an angry look up the stairs. ‘I knew I should have stayed and watched her finish off every mouthful.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference even if you had stayed,’ Matt told her with disappointment. ‘She can be painfully stubborn when she sets her mind to it.’

  ‘Aw, look now, don’t go driving yourself crazy.’ Edna had seen the pain in his dark eyes, and her old heart went out to him. ‘She’ll be right as rain in no time, you mark my words.’ The conviction in her statement belied her true fears. At one time or another in her life she had seen many things, but Cathy’s ailment was beyond her. Joseph had described what happened down there at the stables. It had shaken him badly. It had shaken her also, but while Joseph had got over the shock, hers had only been strengthened by Cathy’s perplexing behaviour ever since.

  Edna had convinced herself that Cathy’s malaise was not of the kind to be cured by pills and medicine; there was something about that young woman’s suffering that came from the soul. If only Edna dared speak the truth, it would be to warn Matt that it was not a doctor Cathy required. Not a doctor, but a priest. But then she was just a foolish old woman who could be wrong, and who was loath to confess her thoughts. What did she know of these things anyway? Not enough to risk losing two valued friends and the respect of her old man, that was for sure. All the same, there was something. She felt it in her bones.

  ‘I’ll make a start on the housework,’ she told Matt now, ‘but first I’ll brew a fresh pot of tea, and perhaps persuade Cathy to have a piece of toast and marmalade. And don’t look so worried. Like I said, we’ll get her well if it’s the last thing we do.’ God willing, she thought. We’ll get her well – if God’s willing.

  ‘What would we do without you?’ Already, Matt’s spirits were lifted. Edna had a way of doing that. It was the same when he was a boy. And ever since his parents died.

  ‘Oh, you’d manage well enough, I dare say, Matt Slater.’ He would have gone up the stairs then, but she laid a large coarse hand on his arm, saying, ‘Joseph tells me you’ve hardly set foot in the yard this past week?’

  Matt looked away, flooded with guilt. ‘I haven’t had the stomach for work,’ he murmured. ‘Cathy’s all that matters to me. Nothing else… only my Cathy.’ His voice tailed away, the heartbreak already betrayed.

  ‘That’s how it should be,’ Edna told him quietly. ‘You love her, and it’s a joy to see. But don’t turn your back on everything else, Matt.’ After all these years, she looked on him like a son. It hurt her to see him so desperately worried. ‘I can stay with Cathy most of the day. She’ll come to no harm with me, and you can see for yourself how much better she is. What happened was a bad thing, but it’s over, and she’s mending well. If you don’t work, you’ll only brood. It’s not good for either of you. Trust me, won’t you? You get back to your work in the morning and let me keep a discreet eye on Cathy. Will you do that?’

  Matt did not reply. Instead, he half-smiled at her and went slowly up the stairs. Some way up, he turned to look down on her. As he had suspected, Edna was watching him, her anxiety so obvious. ‘You’re a good woman,’ he told her. ‘I’ll bear in mind what you’ve said.’

  ‘That’s all I’m asking, son,’ she replied. ‘Just think on it, and happen it won’t be too long before Cathy herself comes back to the yard. Sometimes work can be the best medicine of all.’ Satisfied, she swung away and went smartly into the kitchen. With Matt never far away this past week, she had not been able to have a proper talk with Cathy. And somebody had to! In spite of his deep concern, Matt had been like a tower of strength to Cathy… talking to her and waiting patiently for her to confide in him, but – for some reason known only to herself – Cathy seemed more nervous and restless whenever Matt was near. Edna had seen with her own eyes how Cathy had looked at her husband when he was not aware of it. And it wasn’t just resentment that Edna had seen in Cathy’s eyes – it was a deeper, darker emotion, a murderous thing.

  Edna was not a woman given to imagination. She knew what she had seen; she sensed the underlying confusion and terror in Cathy. Thankfully, Cathy looked on Edna as a friend. With luck she would confide in her, if there were only the two of them in the house, alone.

  The following week, Matt persuaded Cathy to spend the day by the river. Her father was joining them. He, too, had been desperately concerned for Cathy’s health.

  Now, when he came into the bedroom, Matt was taken aback. Cathy was still in her dressing gown, her fair hair uncombed and a faraway look in her grey eyes as she sat by the window, her arms on the small chest of drawers, and her gaze intent on the sheet of paper she was holding. ‘Cathy.’ Matt called her name softly, as he came across the room towards her. She never stirred, nor did she look up. Stiff and unmoving, she seemed to him like a china doll. In the golden sunlight that streamed in at the window, bathing her in its glow, she had never looked more beautiful. Yet the picture tore at his heart, for nor had she ever looked more sad and lost.

  ‘Cathy… why aren’t you ready? Your father will be here any minute.’

  She appeared not to have heard him. Tenderly, he stroked her hair, his gaze drawn to the paper in her hands. He froze with shock. ‘Did you do this?’ he asked. Reluctantly he reached down and slid the paper from her hands. She did not resist. ‘Cathy, I asked… did you do this?’ His voice was trembling as he deliberately suppressed his anger. Yet when she still did not answer, he thrust the paper in front of her face. ‘It’s hideous!’ he told her, trembling.

  In a cunning move that took him by surprise, she snatched the sheet of paper from him and sprang out of the chair. ‘Go away!’ she yelled, backing from him, her body arched forward and her eyes spitting fire. ‘Why don’t you leave me be? Why won’t you ever leave me be!’ She clutched the paper to her breast, cradling it like a mother might cradle a child. Suddenly she was sobbing, deep racking sobs that destroyed him.

  Shocked, he moved cautiously towards her. ‘All right… all right, sweetheart.’ Holding his arms out, he sent her all the love he could. He was out of his depth. She looked like his Cathy, and, beneath the hostility, her voice was the same. But he was more afraid than ever that he was losing her.

  Suddenly she jerked her head up. The sobbing stopped as abruptly as it had begun. She was laughing – a cruel grating sound that stopped him in his tracks. When she spoke, it was in a low, broken voice from deep, deep inside. ‘Are you hurting… Matt Ryan?… Tormented?’ The awful voice fell to a harsh whisper. ‘Oh yes, but not ready… to die.’

  If Matt had suspected his own sanity, if he had half-believed that something evil had come between them, he now believed it more than ever. Even as he stared at her, fighting the chaos within him and mortally afraid for both their souls, he saw Cathy’s face soften and blossom. He saw the torture fall away from her lovely features and now, when she spoke again, there was no malice in her voice, nothing sinister – only the bright smiling tones that he knew and loved.

  ‘Matt!’ Surprise emanating from her face, she rushed towards him, planting a hurried kiss on his mouth. ‘Leave me be, please, or I’ll never be ready.’ Glancing at the sheet of paper in her hand, she seemed momentarily confused, a frown cutting deep into her forehead. Then she screwed u
p the paper and threw it into the round wicker bin by the bed. ‘Is Dad here yet?’ she asked, turning her back on Matt and going to the wardrobe. Flinging open the wardrobe door, she pushed the clothes back and forth along the rail, searching for a suitable outfit.

  ‘No.’ Matt hardly recognised the small, distant voice as being his own. Surreptitiously he side-stepped to scoop the discarded sheet of paper from the waste bin. ‘Cathy…’ He was hesitant, unsure. She had called him by a strange name… Matt Ryan.

  ‘Yes?’ She withdrew a pair of white culottes from the wardrobe and turned to look at him, waiting for his answer and regarding him with concern. She saw how tired he looked, how anxious. Laying the culottes on the bed, she went to him, threading her arms round the thickness of his waist and putting her head to his chest. ‘Please, Matt, don’t worry about me.’

  The nearness of her was heaven, the warm, pleasant smell like roses after rain. Like before, so long ago, she subdued the pain in him. He wrapped himself around her, drawing her into him. ‘Oh, Cathy.’ His soft murmur was a cry from the heart. Reaching down, he cupped her chin in his hand, tilting her face, all the furore alive in his eyes as he met her quiet grey gaze. ‘How can I help but worry about you?’ he said, simply. ‘I love you.’

  She smiled, but it was a sad, unconvincing expression. He knew the struggle beneath. It was too much like his own. ‘I know you do,’ she told him, ‘and I love you.’

  ‘We don’t have to go to Bedford,’ he said, a small hope kindled in him. ‘We can make our excuses… stay here and talk.’ When she gave no reply, but glanced towards the window, that faraway look returning to her eyes, he urged, ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Cathy? You’d rather we stayed here.’ Hesitantly now, careful not to alarm her, ‘We do need to talk about what happened last week… about the way you are, Cathy – the way we were.’ In her silence he grew bolder. ‘I’m afraid, sweetheart. There are so many things I need to understand.’

  ‘No.’ She pulled away. ‘I don’t want to talk. We’ve talked enough, I think, and I promised my father we would go to the river with him today. It’s the first time I’ve been out in a week.’ She put her small hands flat on his chest and plucked absent-mindedly at the buttons on his shirt. ‘It’s difficult for me, Matt. Please don’t make it any harder.’

  Matt felt himself falling apart inside. With every word she was putting a wider wedge between them. All his hopes were dashed, all his fears unresolved. ‘Just now, sweetheart…’ he began, not sure how to say it, ‘just now, you called me by another name.’

  Anticipating what he was about to ask her, Cathy interrupted. ‘Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it.’ And she didn’t. Because she was too afraid. If only Matt knew the vivid nightmares that would not let her be… haunting, persistent nightmares that stayed even in the brilliance of a summer’s day… terrifying images that had no recognisable form, no substance, creeping things that swam into every dark corner of her being. Sometimes the nightmares were too awful to bear; sometimes they brought terror, often they brought immense joy. Always they were with her. But she must not tell! The voices had warned her. They were warning her now. She must never tell. Matt did not know. He did not understand, how could he? A spiral of hatred wormed up inside her; his touch was repugnant to her. The desire to hurt him was overpowering… the need to see him suffer, to see him dead. Like before, she felt a lingering regret. Half-heartedly she fought against the sucking darkness that swept over her, burying her every normal instinct. Then, like a drowning soul, she stopped resisting. It was bitterly sweet.

  ‘Don’t want to talk.’ Her voice was barely audible, her fingernails penetrating the thinness of his shirt pricking his skin like razor-sharp knives.

  ‘We will talk!’ Incensed by the terror she wrought in him, he clasped his large fists over her hands, flattening them, pinning them to his chest. ‘I want you to see a doctor, Cathy. For God’s sake listen to me.’

  ‘I’ve seen the doctor!’

  ‘No, you haven’t. Not the kind I have in mind.’ He lowered his voice, desperate, pleading. ‘Let me arrange it, sweetheart.’

  ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’

  Her remark took him by surprise. Guilt was written on his face. ‘I don’t think that.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Reaching up she kissed him full on the mouth, awakening his passion, then cruelly suppressing it as she broke away. ‘Give me five minutes,’ she asked, going to the drawer and taking out a towel. Pausing on her way into the shower room, she turned her full, lovely smile on him. ‘You know, Matt… I’m really looking forward to going out.’

  ‘That’s good, sweetheart,’ he said warmly. And it was. When he saw Cathy like this, free of the shadows that haunted her face, and more like her old self, his fears and suspicions seemed unfounded. In fact, he was made to wonder whether it wasn’t himself who was exacerbating the situation. More than that, and far more disturbing, he wondered again whether it wasn’t him who was going mad. From now on, he would view Cathy’s recent illness with proper sympathy. The doctor had attributed Cathy’s panic attack to quite normal pressures, the excitement and hard work leading up to the wedding and the sad fact that Cathy had no mother to help her through it, the honeymoon itself which, though it had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, was also arduous and uniquely demanding in terms of time and travel. And, more recently, there had been the sheer back-breaking work of preparing for the biggest equestrian event. On top of which, while he had quickly settled back into a much-loved and familiar routine, Cathy was still getting accustomed to a whole new way of life.

  The more he thought on all these things, the more Matt convinced himself that he was not being fair to Cathy. No wonder she had grown cold towards him. It was no more than he deserved!

  As he left the bedroom, Matt could hear her singing in the shower. His heart felt lighter. Only for one brief moment was his newfound hope depleted, and that was when he reached the kitchen and straightened the sheet of paper out, wanting to satisfy his curiosity about the drawing he had seen there. The first side was blank; he turned it over. Both sides were blank. There was no sketch, no mark at all. His curiosity heightened, he ran back up the stairs, convinced he had retrieved the wrong piece of paper from the waste bin. As he bent his head to look into the bin, he could hear Cathy preparing to emerge from the shower. Puzzled, he quickly left the room. The waste bin had been empty. So he had got the same sheet of paper that Cathy had drawn on. More than ever he was convinced it was not Cathy who needed to see a psychiatrist, but himself.

  The sketch he imagined he had seen on that paper was still vivid in his mind. It was the picture of an old woman, burning on a pyre, her toothless mouth open, her eyes wide and terrified. In the background was a man, not unlike himself… a tall, dark-haired man. He was striding into the ocean, a strange and haunting look on his face as the waves reached out in the shape of many hands, caressing him, engulfing him. That was what Matt had seen. But then, he could not have seen such things, for the paper was blank. Like so many other things of late, he must have imagined it.

  The old lady was determined. ‘It won’t be long before I’m buried six feet beneath the earth,’ she said impatiently. ‘I won’t be going anywhere then, that’s for certain. So, while I’ve got the use of my legs, I don’t intend to be strapped in a push-chair like a helpless baby!’ Having said her piece, she clasped her two gnarled hands together and pressed herself firmly into the armchair.

  Emily remained silent for a moment, feeling utterly exasperated as she stared down on Maria. Lately, Maria had been unusually short tempered. Emily wondered whether she felt ill or in pain, but each time she broached the subject, Maria would emphatically deny any such thing. Yet there was something playing on Maria’s mind. Emily was sure of it, and it was a source of great concern to her. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ she asked, shaking her head. ‘You know how easily you tire, Maria, and it’s such a hot day.’

  ‘When I
get tired, we’ll walk back again,’ Maria retorted.

  ‘Would you rather not go?’ Emily recalled the last time she let Maria talk her into going out without the wheelchair. Maria had insisted on walking too far before she admitted how exhausted she was. Then she had stubbornly resisted Emily’s suggestion that they get a taxi home. The long walk back had been excruciatingly slow, and obviously painful for her. Emily was adamant that never again would she allow Maria to talk her into leaving the wheelchair behind. She was adamant now.

  ‘I’ve set my heart on going along the riverbank today,’ declared Maria, ‘it’s been too long since I ventured outside this house.’

  ‘All right, then,’ Emily conceded, with a little smile on her face, ‘but we take the wheelchair.’

  ‘No!’ Maria’s face had lit up on Emily’s first words, but now she was both surprised and resolute. ‘No wheelchair. Either you accompany me without that contraption, or I go on my own.’ She gripped her bony hands round the chair arms and began struggling upright.

  ‘I didn’t say you had to sit in the wheelchair,’ Emily told her, offering a helping hand. ‘I said we’ll take it with us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just as a precaution for when you get tired.’ She smiled into Maria’s bright blue eyes. ‘And you will get tired. Admit it.’

  The old lady was standing now, leaning lightly on the other woman’s arm. Maria looked much younger than her great age, even pretty with her iron-grey hair rolled into a thick halo round her head. In spite of the labyrinth of lines across her face and neck, the hint of past beauty was always evident in the full-shaped mouth and sparkling blue eyes, and in the proud way she held herself. Normally she was content to leave her choice of dress to Emily – although every item in her wardrobe had been of her own choosing – but on this particular morning she had insisted on wearing the prettiest frock.