by Shelley Day
Gareth shrugs.
‘And that’s about as much as we can do,’ Frank says. ‘After that, you’ll be free to go.’
Gareth’s in a corner. He’s made a mistake – a big one – and he’s going to have to do something to repair it. Harry Callahan might have thrown his badge away, but Gareth’s not going down that road. With the material he’s got, and the thinking he’s done, Gareth knows he could write a brilliant Case Study, but he’s not going down that road either. It’s time to stand up and be counted. It’s time to apologise. It’s Gareth’s turn to confess. He should go back to the office and tell Geoff everything and face the music, take whatever’s coming to him. But Gareth can’t even do that, not without making trouble for Stella, and for Frank. They’ve no idea of the turmoil he’s in. All they think about is saving their own skins.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It was the fifth of November when the snow cleared enough to allow them to leave the Beach Hut. Deal was, Gareth would take Stella and Frank as far as Alnton and Hedy Keating’s last known address. After that, it was up to them. They were on their own. No more mention of anything on all sides, and Gareth would go back to work, minus any case study material, and take things from there.
Stella stuffed everything she wanted into the little blue suitcase, pulled the curtains to, jammed the front door shut, locked up and put the keys in her jeans pocket. They trudged off over the dunes in single file, Stella wearing Gareth’s Barbour, head down against the wind, leading the column, snowdrifts still up to her thighs in places.
When they reached the car park, they had to borrow a shovel from the landlord at the pub to dig Gareth’s car out. The landlord said he’d had no customers at all for the last three days and thank God a thaw was forecast. Snow was totally unheard of this early, let alone this amount: it would be death to his business, certain death, if this carried on. Stella sat in the back seat of the Zodiac, hiding behind her hair while Frank dug. She’d decided to have it all cut off and cropped short, Mia Farrow style, half an inch long all over. Gareth turned the engine over a few times and looked shocked when it actually started. He kept pulling on the choke and revving his foot on the accelerator, expecting the engine to cut out any moment. Frank finished digging round the wheels, scraped a path to the track and returned the shovel.
‘No idea what the roads’ll be like,’ the landlord said, waving them off. ‘Best of luck, pal.’
It took a good half-hour to drive the coast road to Alnton, a trip that normally took five minutes. The snow had turned to sleet. It splatted against the windscreen, sad grey dollops shunted back and forth by the wipers.
At Alnton, Gareth dropped them just before the bridge. It didn’t look like cars could get any closer anyway: some were parked – abandoned – at all angles, marooned behind great piles of dirty snow that had been shoved to the sides by snow ploughs. Gareth stopped the car but left the engine running.
‘So long, mate,’ Frank said, slamming the door behind him.
‘Let me know how it goes.’
Frank nodded. ‘Will do.’
Stella got out the back and stood awkwardly, suitcase in hand. Gareth made a bit of a thing of turning the car in the tight space. Frank walked on ahead. Stella pulled Gareth’s coat around her, tugged down the cuffs of her jumper, pulled her fists up inside the sleeves and buried her nose in the cuffs. The car now facing the other way, Gareth stopped where Stella was standing and wound the window down.
‘Well, I’m off, then,’ he said. ‘Be seeing you, Stella. Take care of yourself, mind. Keep in touch. We’ll get you sorted one way or another.’
‘Gareth, you know what you were saying, about coming clean at work?’
Gareth nods. He’d hoped she wasn’t going to bring up this particular subject.
‘Well, I just want to say I don’t think you should. If you do, I for one won’t back you up. I won’t testify against you. I’ll refuse point blank. What happened, happened. I don’t want it to ruin your career.’
‘But you know better than anyone, Stella, when you’ve done something you know is wrong, it’s best to come clean and face the consequences. Otherwise you’re carrying a burden of guilt and shame around with you for the rest of your life. It was you who made all that very clear to me, and I thank you for it.’
‘I know, Gareth. But only if the thing you’ve done is wrong. Don’t you see? I genuinely believed I’d killed Mrs Keating’s baby. I was determined to come clean, take what was due to me, and get it off my conscience. But look what’s happened. You can’t necessarily trust your perceptions, based on what other people think, or what they tell you. You have to make up your mind for yourself, Gareth. OK, technically what happened, technically, is a cardinal sin in your profession, I know all that. But what I’m saying is that there are wrongs and wrongs. Circumstances matter, and learning from your mistakes matters.’
‘All the same,’ Gareth said, ‘I’ve decided to give up probation work anyway. I’m not cut out for it, never was. My heart’s never really been in it.’
‘What will you do instead, then?’
‘Get my MSc finished, and maybe after that I’ll try for a research post. Or I might do some lecturing. I’ll have to see how it goes.’
‘Bye, then, Gareth. I’ll give you your coat back another time, if that’s OK? And thanks for everything. Good luck with it all.’
Gareth smiled, looking suddenly shy. ‘Thanks. It’ll be OK. I’ll say bye, then. Look after yourself.’
‘Bye, Gareth.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Stella hurried on down the road to catch up with Frank, her feet sliding in the snow. She turned and waved one last time to Gareth as the Zodiac skidded then pulled away.
Stella and Frank walked into the village up the middle of the road, big piles of dirty, melting snow along either side, and only room for one vehicle.
‘Where’s the house, Frank?’
‘Along here on the right, I think,’ he said. ‘Your grandmother said it was one of the bungalows, pebbledash. Yes, 21, that’ll be it there, where the boat’s outside.’
‘She’s got a boat?’ said Stella.
‘It could be anyone’s. It’s just there because there’s room on the grass.’
‘Can’t imagine Hedy Keating sailing about in a boat, can you? Doesn’t fit the picture, somehow. I wonder if she’s still the same?’
Frank shrugs.
‘Who’s going to knock? Do we need to be worried about nets tweaking?’ Stella nods towards the houses opposite, where there is already movement in the curtains.
‘Probably best if we get a move on,’ says Frank, ‘just in case. But it’s the fireworks, that’ll be why people are looking out. There’s a load of people heading over there towards the beach.’
‘Bonfire night,’ says Stella, ‘I forgot. I lost track of time.’
‘Probably best if I knock,’ says Frank. ‘She could get one hell of a shock if she sees you. Though, whether she’ll remember me after this long...’
‘Of course she’ll remember you. What are you talking about?’
A small group of children, eight or nine years old, come round the corner jostling and giggling with excitement. Two are squeezed together, bumping shoulders, each holding onto one handle of a rusty old wheelbarrow with a wobbly wheel. Stella nudges Frank as they watch the little procession making its way up the street. A small horde of over-excited children is running to catch up with the barrow. ‘Penny for the Guy!’ the children shout, ‘Penny for the Guy!’
Hedy Keating’s door opens, and she comes out and chats to the children. She goes back in. The kids outside are hopping foot to foot till she comes back. This time she is carrying the Guy, dressed in old workmen’s dungarees with a load of knotted yellow wool for hair sticking out from underneath a flat cap. She hands the Guy over and helps the kids get him propped upright in the wheelba
rrow. The kids giggle and jump about in the cold, their breath visible in the night air. Frank and Stella watch.
The kids make their way towards the bonfire, the barrow wobbling along. The Guy keeps tilting and the children giggle some more and do their best to hold him up straight. Stella drops some coins into the tin can one child has round his neck on a string. Other people are doing the same. ‘Penny for the Guy!’ the kids shout.
‘Yep. That’s Hedy Keating alright. See, I was right about the house,’ Frank says.
‘Don’t make it so obvious. She’s gone fat, though, hasn’t she?’
‘It’s her alright. I’d know her anywhere. Ten years, Stella – middle-age spread catches up with the best of us.’ Frank pats his own belly and laughs. ‘You’ll get your turn.’
‘Keep on walking,’ says Stella. ‘Don’t make it obvious, until we’ve decided what to say.’ Stella looks round as Hedy Keating goes back in and closes her front door. ‘Shit, we might have missed our chance,’ she says. ‘She’s gone back in. Go and knock now, Frank, strike while the iron’s hot.’
‘What’ll we say?’
But Stella’s already pushing Frank through the gate and following him down the path. Frank raps the knocker on the front door of Hedy Keating’s bungalow. Stella bites the tip of her tongue so hard it hurts. She watches without blinking for the door to open. Hedy is taking a long time. Stella buries her nose in her cuffs. In the air, the smell of hot dogs and onions frying, and the crackling noise of someone trying to tune the ghetto blaster, the excited shrieks of children, a dog yap, yap, yapping.
Still Hedy does not come to the door. Frank raps the knocker again, then taps his knuckles on the window. Over by the bonfire, not yet lit, children are jumping up and down and waving sparklers, making swirly patterns, some of them trying to write their names in the air. Stella smells the smoky sizzle of the barbeque and hears the low hum of conversation, the slow rhythmic crash of waves on the shore, the Bee Gees now, ‘Staying Alive’.
Then the door opens, and Hedy is standing there, a blank expression on her face. A group of teenagers go past, dragging a tarpaulin load of rubbish for the bonfire: chairs, a table, boxes, a sofa, a mattress, twigs and bushes. Hedy is still standing there looking at Frank and Stella as though she expected them, but now they are there, she can’t quite take it in.
‘You’d better come in,’ she says, standing back to let them in. ‘You’ve come at a good time,’ she says, almost smiling, ‘yes, a very good time.’
Half an hour later, they are back outside.
‘I had a suspicion,’ Frank says to Stella afterwards. They are walking down towards the bonfire. ‘Yes, old Ruby thought as much as well. And we were right. So it was Hedy after all who took the baby, all those years ago. Took him on the very day Muriel died.’
‘I feel bad she blames herself so much for Muriel’s death,’ Stella says. ‘She shouldn’t. That was down to me and nobody else.’
‘Hedy didn’t know any of the background, none of it. And neither did we,’ Frank says.
‘Family secrets, eh? But it’s sad, though, isn’t it? She had to dig up her own baby’s body so she could give him a proper burial.’
‘She never said how they did that,’ says Frank.
‘How could they give him a proper burial? When you come to think of it, they couldn’t have done. It doesn’t make sense. They would have needed a death certificate.’
‘She’s been terrified all this time that one of us would blurt out the truth…’
‘The irony, don’t you see, is nobody knows the truth. Nobody knows how or why the baby died. She thinks it was just one of those things. Could it just have been one of those things, Frank? Could it be that Muriel was innocent after all?’
‘What the final truth is, we will never know. Ruby blamed Muriel. Muriel blamed you, Hedy didn’t know what to think, and me neither. Once the whole thing started, and the story was told to the polis about the abduction and they started looking into that, we were all bound into that story, so to speak, and everyone was intent on covering up their own and everyone else’s tracks. The truth gets lost, Stella, when there’s too many people chasing it. It hides itself away.
Stella sighs. ‘I need a drink,’ she says. ‘It’s been a long few days.’
‘You and me both.’ Frank buys two bottles of Newcastle Brown at the stall by the barbeque. They have the caps taken off and they drink from the bottle.
‘Let’s go down to the bonfire,’ Stella says. ‘I’m so cold, Frank. And do you know what? We’re none the wiser. We still don’t know where the baby is, where Hedy buried him.’
‘She says we need have no worries on that score, Stella. Hedy swears she’s not going to talk. And in her position, you wouldn’t either.’
‘Well, no. So that’s that, then.’
Just then, a posse of excited children comes careering by, waving sparklers. A couple of dads are helping the kids hoist the Guy out of the wheelbarrow and heave him onto the top of the bonfire. He sits there all lopsided, cap askew, looking quite ridiculous, but only for a moment before the flames all around him catch and he topples forward. The bonfire blazes. A loud cheer as a bright plume of fire shoots into the air. The Guy is going up in flames.
Hedy Keating is standing by herself, hands in her coat pockets, staring into the bonfire. They hadn’t seen her coming over.
They walk round the outside of the crowd to where Hedy is standing. For a minute or two, Stella and Hedy stand together, looking into the fire. As the Guy finally keels over and disintegrates, Hedy turns to Stella and looks into her eyes and takes both of her hands in her own. Stella sees Hedy’s eyes are welling up, but perhaps it’s just the smoke from the bonfire.
‘Well, well, well, Stella Moon,’ Hedy says. ‘You’ll be glad that’s the last of it. That’s him away now. God rest his poor wee soul.’ Hedy crosses herself. She inclines her head towards the fire where the Guy is burning and crosses herself a second time.
Stella stares at her, trying to take it in. She looks at the blazing effigy, then back at Hedy. Hedy looks into the fire until the Guy is completely cremated, until there’s nothing left of him at all. Then she crosses herself a third time, turns, and walks away towards the bungalow.
‘I hope now you can do something with your life, Stella. And you too, Frank,’ she says as she leaves.
Stella watches Hedy walking across the grass, knowing how very hard it must have been for her finally to do what she did, knowing that she did it for Stella, for Ruby, for Muriel’s memory, and for Frank, as much as for herself.
Stella clicks open the little blue suitcase she’s still clutching. She pulls out the bag of vomit-covered clothes – Muriel’s silk dress, the sage green cardy, the gold lamé slippers – and tosses them onto the bonfire.
Time to move on.
‘Just a minute Stella, love, there’s one more thing,’ Frank starts to say, ‘before we go our separate ways…’
‘Leave it, Frank,’ Stella interrupts.
She knows what he’s going to say and she doesn’t want to hear it. If he’s about to say Sorry, then Sorry is not enough and it’s more than Stella can bear. Sorry would feel like yet another assault, yet another invasion, yet another onslaught. No more. Never again. Stella cannot forgive and she will not forgive and it is wrong of him even to think about asking: it’s all part of the same vile, abusive thing.
‘Leave it out, Frank,’ Stella says, more emphatically. ‘I mean it. I really don’t want to know.’
Epilogue
The Warden’s Flat
The Youth Hostel
Isle of Skye
Scotland
29 March 1979
Dearest Marcia,
Thank you so much for your letter. And here, in exchange, the blue notebook, filled up, as promised. Lots of crossings out (of which, more later!). Finally, after a lot of
stopping and starting, finally it’s done and, like you said, dearest Marcia, it’s a ton weight lifted.
Only this morning did I clap the blue book shut, put the tired pen down, and straight away I opened your letter. I can’t tell you the relief that came with reading the words you wrote. I see now why you insisted that I wait to open it. The waiting was torture, but worth it! I came so close, many times, to just ripping it open, but always the promise I made to you stopped me, kept me strong. Now, dearest Marcia, my story is there for you in the blue book.
Or is it?
I come back now to all the crossings out, all marginalised scribblings. In the words I wrote and revised and rewrote, you have what amounts to a new confession. I make it to you and only you, dearest Marcia. In the words in the book you will see the Stella you tell me in your letter you always knew was there.
Well, like you say, she’s been in hiding, but she’s come out now, and it’s no small thanks to you. I’ve said it before, I know, and I’ll say it a thousand times – I couldn’t have got through that stint inside without you. And these few months outside, they’ve been worse, but I’ve pulled through. I’ve come out so much stronger. Your belief in me changed something inside me, Marcia. Truly, it has helped me find myself.
So, here you have my story, Marcia, and it comes to you with love and gratitude. It remains unfinished – as every autobiographical tale must remain unfinished, always only true from the vantage point of the present, and the present shifts – oh, how it shifts! Hence the crossings out as I have gone back and back and tried to rework it. But finally, I have had to accept that in any case it’s valid as far as it goes, and so here’s an Epilogue that shifts the whole focus once again.
First, a job that Probation Officer Gareth found for me (you’ll meet him in the blue book – don’t be too hard on him, and he’s not doing that job any longer). ‘Youth Hostel Warden’ in the Isle of Skye! It’s a stunningly beautiful place, scenery-wise and weather-wise, very, very dramatic, and wild as you can get on these islands. Full of soul. You would love it. And for me, I can stop still here, take stock, earn my keep and take my writing forward. It is purely coincidental that Muriel had her honeymoon here, which was the beginning and end of her relationship with my father, whoever he was. Anyway, as I say, that aside, it’s a great place, and ideal for you to take that ‘break’ from the Prison Service you talk about in your letter. Ideal for all your new projects, Marcia. Even for a tiny short time, it would be so good to see you. It’s good to feel that I now have something I can offer to you.
