by Ruth Skrine
Mrs Hendry fiddles with a pen. Louise is flushed. Jim looks round before speaking. ‘It’s not our job to prove it one way or another. But if we’re in any way suspicious we must tell social services.’
Tracy can’t contain her anguish. ‘Don’t you see how awful it was? The police went to the houses without any warning, sometimes in the middle of the night. They took the children away. It must have been just like the Gestapo during the war.’ She crosses her arms across her chest and rocks back and forth as if an unborn child is being threatened.
I have to make them understand. ‘Jane tried to tell me about her “other father” but her mother pulled her away.’
Jim looks at me sharply. ‘When was that?’
‘I was passing her house.’
‘But it isn’t on your way home. You had no right to visit them.’
My route home is none of his business. ‘I didn’t go inside. Jane was at the gate. Her mother dragged her inside as soon as she saw me. We can’t stand by and do nothing when one of our children is suffering such a nightmare.’
Jim asks the others for comments but they shake their heads. ‘We’ll give it a few days, but I must know at once if you have any suspicions. Please be extra vigilant. We’ll put it at the top of the agenda for the next meeting.’
I watch aghast as he rises to his feet. Surely he won’t leave it like that? He has done nothing to remind them of what to look out for, or made any mention of her sexualised behaviour. If he doesn’t act soon I will tell the welfare officer myself. She has the power to visit the home; she would see behind the mother’s facade.
I wander away, impotent and useless. It is not until I reach home that I remember Quentin is taking me out for a meal. I don’t want to go but I can’t change my mind now.
***
Quentin has booked a table and I feel a stab of pleasure as he pulls the chair out for me. People laugh at old-fashioned manners but they make me feel good. I am wearing an olive sheath dress that clings to my body and shows off my figure. A mirror at the end of the room reflects Quentin’s admiring gaze. I turn to him with a toss of my head that sets my shell earrings swinging. Maybe after all I am not so different; at least I can attract a man – and a handsome one at that.
He insists that the thing to drink with Thai food is Thai beer. I take several gulps as he consults the menu.
‘Why don’t we have one of the set menus for two?’ he suggests.
They look expensive. ‘Only if you let me pay my share.’
‘All right, if it makes you feel better. You’re an independent woman.’
For starters he chooses deep fried prawns, while I go for spiced fishcakes with cucumber sauce.
‘Tell me about your job. Do you enjoy it?’ he asks.
‘I suppose so, most of the time. I might not do it for the rest of my life.’ Until this moment I have not realised how fed up I am with the staff room small talk, the endless round of repeated lessons. ‘The deputy head, Drusilla Hendry, is leaving next year. I may be offered her job but I’m not sure that I want it.’
He raises his eyes and smirks. ‘Drusilla! what a name to be saddled with.’ He waits, as if trying to decide whether to say more. ‘She was Caligula’s sister, you know, and his mistress.’
‘Who?’
‘Drusilla.’
I can’t think of anything clever to say about Roman incest so I take another swig of beer. Quentin picks up one of his prawns and holds it out towards me. ‘Open,’ he says, and pops it into my mouth.
‘Umm. Thanks.’ I colour as the heat spreads from my lips to my cheeks. ‘How do you know about Drusilla?’
‘I did classics at school. Then I changed to sciences for my degree. I wanted to be a doctor.’
‘The flat was my father’s surgery, you know.’
‘Yes, your mother told me.’ He shrugs. ‘I didn’t get the grades.’
‘Did you mind?’
‘I got used to it. I went to Africa for a couple of years and helped in a school. Then I came back and decided to do physiotherapy. It seemed the next best thing.’ He raises his glass to touch mine, holding my eyes with a steady look that is only broken by the arrival of our second course. I smother a spasm of guilt as Quentin piles chicken curry, made with coconut milk and crushed peanuts, onto my plate. The rice is in a traditional blue and white pot with a lid.
We eat in silence and I am surprised to find myself feeling so easy with a strange man.
‘Tell me about Africa. It must have been a wonderful experience.’
‘I went to Tanzania, to a school on the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro.’ He talks about the crowded classrooms, the three children to a desk with shared notebooks, the poverty of families whose staple food was bananas and whose most important possession was the cow that lived in a shed at the back of each shack. He relaxes as he gets into his stride. ‘The cows were miserable beasts, fed on bunches of greenery collected by the women from the sides of the tracks. They did most of the work. The men spent their time drinking the local hooch and watching the world go by.’ He stops eating for a moment and looks across the room as if seeing more than the embossed picture of an elephant hanging in front of him. ‘I was so sorry for them.’ His voice, softened by the beer, has a ring of genuine sympathy.
‘We western women have a lot to be thankful for.’
‘You could go yourself. As a teacher you would be invaluable; I was just an extra pair of hands.’
The idea of working abroad has never occurred to me. He is right, with no ties now, the whole world is out there waiting to be explored. I feel a new excitement, as if he has twisted the cap on a fizzy drink and the bubbles, trapped inside, are rising to the surface. I could ride an elephant, look for tigers in India or study those tropical insects I have only seen in books. I have read that some of the Amazonian people put stick insects on their children’s heads to eat the lice. I might find a toad bug, that minute hopping insect with bulging eyes that looks like a miniature toad. And the spiders, perhaps a tarantula…
‘A penny for them?’ Quentin’s words drag me back. A gold mask with hollow eyes is staring down from the wall. Am I in some foreign land already? I shake my head to clear the visions. ‘I was just imagining…’ I have things to do before I can escape. ‘When I’ve got rid of the house, who knows?’
His fingers creep across the tablecloth and his thumb strokes the back of my hand. ‘Did you always want to be a teacher?’
My hand tingles. ‘Not really. Although I loved school my results were very average. I worked in an estate agent’s office for a year but then I realised I liked children and thought I might as well do the training.’
‘You’ve always lived at home?’
‘I was married, but it didn’t work out.’
He squeezes my hand and goes back to his curry.
‘My mother was glad when I moved back home. She needed help nursing my grandmother.’
‘Three women in one house; that can’t have been easy.’
‘It wasn’t.’ I think again of Briony’s remarks about my grandmother. Perhaps she had constricted my mother in some way, making it difficult for me to get close. ‘We rubbed along all right. It’s a big house, you know. Too big now they’re both dead.’
‘You’re going to sell it straight away?’
‘The formalities may take a few months. I’m sorry you’ll have to move out.’
His look of sympathy deepens and I long to trust those dark eyes, to let myself sink into the safety of their depths. ‘The truth is, I’ll be glad to be rid of it. I miss my mother, but that’s not all. A lot of history lingers in the walls. The murder, you know about. But the ancestors look at me…’ I can’t explain.
‘You must tell me if there is anything I can do to help.’
‘Thanks.’ At least he doesn’t laugh.
‘I could help you tidy up the garden if you like; I need the exercise.’
‘Would you really? The chap who used to do it hasn’t come for ages.’ H
e is so easy to talk to and it would be good to have some help. I will get a new key cut for the connecting door so he can come through and fetch the mower whenever he likes.
Before we leave the restaurant he takes up one of the paper table napkins and scribbles the name of the agency that arranged his visit to Africa. I stuff it into my bag. On the way home his arm circles my waist. At the door he turns me towards him. ‘May I come in?’
‘Better not. You are a married man, you know.’
He sighs. ‘I suppose so.’
I hold out my hand, but he ignores it, putting his arms round me to kiss my cheek. He moves his lips towards my mouth, but I turn my head. His hands feel their way down my arms and grasp my fingers. ‘Sleep well. Don’t forget I’m quite near if you get the jitters.’
‘It’s been a lovely evening. Thank you.’ I slip inside before losing my resolve. Helped by the beer and the knowledge that I am no longer alone, I fall asleep at once. But again I have a restless night.
The brambles catch at my clothes as I push through the undergrowth. I am searching the muddy ground, but can’t see the little pipe cleaner boy anywhere. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I peer along the side paths but they are dark and overgrown and it would be too dangerous to venture down any of them.
I shiver and almost wake. The scene changes to a shallow pool surrounded by high fences. Two small people, the size of children about six or seven but with grown up faces, totter to the broad steps. Words of warning stick in my throat. The girl stops at the edge but the boy walks steadily into the water. I struggle to go forward, my arms outstretched. My legs don’t work. I must reach him but my feet are stuck in concrete and I fall forward onto my knees. He ploughs on till the water covers his head. A seal swishes by. As the ripples subside the man’s body appears, floating face downwards, suspended between the surface and the bottom of the pool.
I wake to find my heart beating wildly, a pain behind my breastbone. Rubbing my chest I search the darkness for the consoling branches of my tree. Only the lights of the town beyond serve as points of contact with the real world. I wait for my pulse to calm down and try to understand my nightmare.
On my honeymoon we had visited the seal sanctuary in Cornwall to watch the feeding. The animals caught the fish with such neat and accurate twists that not a single one was missed. They are such graceful creatures I can’t imagine why I am so frightened. Then the pain returns as I see the glossy surface and the black depths of the seal’s eyes, said to hold the souls of dead sailors. I should have been able to save the midget man. His death is my fault.
I search again beyond my window. The dark nothingness of the sky is drinking in the light and the blackness takes on a tinge of blue. My tree is different;it has lost at least half its leaves in the last week, making the whole head lighter. As the sky behind it turns from indigo to pale grey, what was a solid head is pierced by spaces, small irregular lakes on a map of a green land.
Reaching for the memoir I snuggle as deep as possible under the duvet and read about the murder again. I can see Duncan as a small boy standing in the pantry when the white-faced messenger arrived. But the description is sparse, as if the grown man finds it too chilling to dwell on the details. I read on to discover the butler got on his cob and galloped for the doctor.
All the men turned out to hunt for the murderer, who was at last found with wounds in his throat and stomach in the arbour in his own garden. He had inflicted wounds on himself in the hope of making it believed that someone else had committed the murders.
Murders? I look back and find he killed the groom’s wife as well as the groom.
The author is getting into his stride now. I never liked Jake Farley. He lived in one of the cottages with his parents. Jake was known as a violent man. He took me into the slaughter-house to listen to him play the flageolet. During the performance I felt a dread of him and a disgust of the place that smelt of fresh blood. I didn’t know why my father kept Jake’s family on the estate, and it was only much later that I realised we had a special duty towards them. Jake was tried, but found insane and sent to Broadmoor.
The folder drops from my hands. The murder didn’t take place in this house after all. What does he mean by: We had a special duty towards the family? For some hidden reason my forebears harboured a family that had spawned a murderer.
The clock strikes eight and I startle so violently that the volume falls to the floor. There is no way I can get to school on time. My head aches and my throat feels sore. I never stay away– but today is different. I phone to say the Flu has caught up with me. I run a bath in the hope that hot water will remove the terrors of the night.
But the story gives me no rest. They were servants, not really anything to do with my family. Perhaps one of them did us a favour, took some dramatic action that saved a life. Images of runaway horses flit across my mind. Or it could be the other way round; some Smedley unwittingly killed one of their children, and we have been making restitution ever since. Perhaps there was even some tie of blood. I laugh nervously. This is silly, but what poetic justice if I am cursed in this sexual way because sex was the original sin that led to a double murder?
The plastic curtains with pictures of blue seals flap at the bathroom window. I turn over so I am no longer looking at the material. Maybe it is these seals that are responsible for the dream, not the sanctuary at Gweek. I thought I was safe up here, away from all those bits of the house with hidden memories, but now the very curtains are giving me bad dreams. Or perhaps all my dreams, both waking and sleeping, are amalgams, bits of broken past that I am trying to wrestle into a picture, a mosaic that makes some sense.
The water has cooled and my fingers and toes are all wrinkled. I drag myself out of the bath and into my clothes.
At lunchtime Jim phones to ask how I am feeling. He wants to know if I have anything else to add about Jane Coombs. I stammer that I am feeling a bit better now and will go in.
‘You must look after yourself, Meena.’
My illness is self-induced; I must snap out of it. ‘I’ll come. I’m still worried about her.’
‘I know you are and you may be right. I have decided to report your worries even though the others don’t back you up. The nurse was in today and she also noticed that Jane is smelly and unhappy.’
He did listen to me after all. Relief lifts my headache. It is not all in my imagination. I should have remembered the school nurse. She comes in once or twice a term to check the children’s heads for nits and to do sight and hearing tests. She also takes them for introductory sex education classes. She will surely be an ally. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow. I’ll be fine by then.’
‘Take whatever time you need. We can’t have you ill this term, what with the Christmas play and everything.’
After putting the phone down I go to look at Briony’s dolls. I can’t really give one to Jane. The staff would laugh at me, and her mother would never allow it. Of course, if the innkeeper’s wife had a baby of her own, we could use one of them and let her keep it afterwards. That won’t work; the baby Jesus can’t have a rival. I will just have to try and make her a really nice costume.
In my mother’s room I look at the dresses that have survived Briony’s blitz. Maybe I can cut one down for Jane and put a wrap round her shoulders. If something is done with her hair she could look quite pretty. I close my eyes as I remember the feel of my grandmother brushing my own hair and the sound of her singing under her breath. My head used to go woozy. Standing surrounded by the remnants of my mother’s things I blink away the tears.
***
Arriving in the staff room next day I discover that in my absence they have nominated me Jane’s “carer”. I will be the one who has to go out and buy extra pants, and make a discreet appraisal of her each morning. If she needs a wash Jim says I can use the staff toilets.
Louise puts her oar in. ‘It is much the best thing as she has already attached herself to you. She recognises a kindred spirit …’ She stops, as if r
ealising what she has just said. ‘I mean…’ She searches wildly, ‘You’re unhappy too, what with losing your mother and everything.’
Do I smell too? Anger chokes me as I clench a pile of exercise books to my chest and turn away before I throw them at her head.
Chapter 6
The end of the week comes at last and I wake on Saturday to the sound of the lawn mower. Standing on the balcony, wrapped in my dressing gown, I see Quentin striding up and down behind the old machine. He looks up, turns off the engine and waves.
‘Come and join me for breakfast,’ he calls.
‘I’ll have a quick shower and throw on some clothes.’
The air is warming up after an overnight frost. Droplets of water sparkle in the sun as they cling to the untidy stems in the borders. I go down and knock on the connecting door. A smell of real coffee wafts out to greet me.
‘I’m starving,’ he says, as he ushers me into his kitchen. The room had been my father’s dispensary where he had brought me after we walked the weir. Here he washed and dried my foot and smoothed a plaster over the cut with great gentleness. An archway leads into the consulting room, now Quentin’s living room. He has laid two places on the table by the window. He stops by the stove and waves a hand for me to go through and take a seat. ‘Do you like scrambled eggs? I’m fussy about them. I like a lot of butter and salt, but no pepper. I always make them at home; Janice isn’t a very good cook.’
‘There’s the double saucepan,’ I say. ‘I missed it.’
‘Your mother gave it to me. D’you want it back?’
‘You keep it. I just wondered where it had gone, that’s all.’
I sit at the table and watch him through the door. He is wearing jeans and a green sweater with the ends of a t-shirt hanging out at the bottom. Suitable clothes for gardening. A pair of trainers stands by the door and I notice his big toe poking out of a hole in the end of one of his socks. He wiggles it in response to my look.
