The Wayward Girls

by Amanda Mason

  Cathy didn’t believe in hitting the kids, but that wasn’t to say they hadn’t all had a passing slap from her now and again.

  No answer; just something that might have been a sneeze, or a giggle, or a sigh.

  Silence.

  The interruption dealt with, Joe picked up his brushes and went back to his painting. But the mood had been broken: the strokes didn’t look right now, the colours lay flat against the canvas, clumsy and uncertain.

  Eventually, hunger won out and Bee and Loo returned to the farmhouse, a little after one o’clock.

  ‘Cathy?’

  The front room was empty, although someone had left the stereo playing, one of Dan’s records, doomy stuff that Loo didn’t really like.

  Bee led the way into the kitchen, which was also empty, but at least there was evidence of domestic activity: the kitchen table was covered with a fine layer of flour and something had been left in the oven. Bee opened the door and peered in.

  ‘It’s a pie, I think.’

  ‘Is it done?’

  ‘No.’ She slammed the door shut and inspected the two mixing bowls, both cracked, that Cathy had left on the kitchen dresser, covered with grubby tea towels. Loo’s stomach growled. She wished she’d stayed and finished her porridge.

  ‘She’s making bread,’ said Bee, sticking her fingers, not much cleaner than the tea towels, into one of the bowls and pulling out a large clump of pale speckled dough.

  ‘You can’t eat that,’ said Loo.

  ‘Why not?’ Bee shoved the dough into her mouth and began to chew.

  ‘You’ll get stomach ache, or something.’

  Maybe the dough will rise inside her sister, fill her gut, bubbling and stretching and distending her belly. Maybe Bee will die in agony. Or maybe not; Bee never got ill, apart from her asthma, and Dan reckoned she made that up half the time. She hardly bothered to carry her inhaler these days, now there was no school to get out of, and anyway their mother’s bread never rose that much.

  ‘Bianca! Lucia!’ Cathy’s voice drifted in from the back garden. ‘Are you back? It’s time for your lessons.’

  Anto was fast asleep in her pushchair and Flor was sitting on the eiderdown Cathy had spread on the ground. It was something they’d found when they moved in, abandoned among a pile of junk in the attic, a satiny smooth fabric, pale gold, torn and stained. Next to Cathy was a broken wicker basket, the handle no use to anyone now, crammed with a selection of books of varying quality and age. As the girls came out of the house Flor wriggled free of his mother, who had been looking at a picture book with him, and picked up a plastic bucket and spade lying in the overgrown grass.

  ‘Can I go now?’ he asked and without waiting for an answer he took himself off to the vegetable patch Dan claimed to be in the middle of digging over.

  ‘Where have you two been?’

  ‘For a walk,’ said Bee.

  ‘Up on the rigg,’ said Loo. ‘Is that a pie in the oven?’

  ‘Can we take Joe some?’

  ‘Can I get a drink?’

  It was hot in the garden, sheltered as it was by three dry stone walls and lying in the lee of the hill. The air was still and the tree, an apple tree, was small and sparse and provided little shade.

  ‘Use the beakers,’ Cathy said, ‘and bring your drinks out here.’

  It was Maths first and Loo hated Maths. Lessons consisted of her mother drilling her in her times tables and Bee jumping in with the right answer. Clever Bee, who had never stumbled with numbers back in Leeds and who took delight in mocking her younger sister and never mind that this was primary school stuff and she should be thinking of ‘O’ level options and maybe shutting up once in a while.

  By the time her mother moved on to Maths for Bee herself – referring to a tattered algebra book Dan had failed to return to his last school and leaving her younger daughter to struggle on alone through a page of long division sums – Loo could have wept with frustration. She felt hot and confused and stupid. All she really wanted was to have lessons with her mother on her own, the way Flor did. The hour passed slowly, the heat building up as Flor sat in the vegetable patch hunting for worms.

  ‘Right,’ Cathy said eventually, getting to her feet and shaking out her skirt, ‘reading time while I go and make lunch. And after lunch, chores.’ She bent over and rummaged in the basket. ‘Here.’ Wuthering Heights for Bee and Jane Eyre for Loo. ‘Two chapters each or there’s no lunch for either of you, and remember I’m only in the kitchen, I can hear what you’re up to.’

  Bee waited until her mother had gone inside, before she threw her book to one side and lay back on the eiderdown.

  ‘You first, Loo. Slowly.’

  As Loo began to read aloud, Bee closed her eyes.

  4

  Now

  Lucy has tried to talk her out of it. First when she and Cathy went through all the emails, and later through a stilted and difficult dinner. She has done her best to mask her irritation with her mother and with these strangers poking around the farm, and Cathy has refused to be persuaded out of meeting them.

  It’s all arranged, Lucia.

  As if plans couldn’t be cancelled.

  After dinner they spend the rest of the evening in Cathy’s bedroom. They listen to the radio and play a game of Scrabble. It’s dark outside, but neither of them has bothered to draw the curtains. When they finish their game they sit for a while in silence, following the news headlines, with Lucy gazing idly at their reflections. She catches her mother yawning.

  ‘Tired?’ she says.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’ve had a difficult day, you know, you’re allowed to be—’

  ‘I’m fine.’ The news ends and a low voice announces the start of an arts programme. ‘You can go up, if you want.’

  Jean has already offered the use of one of the home’s spare rooms, nothing more than an attic really, too small and inaccessible to be occupied by the frail or unsteady. Cathy stifles another yawn.

  ‘Mum, this is ridiculous. You should be in bed.’

  ‘I don’t want …’

  ‘Do you need some help getting undressed?’ Lucy asks, before she’s had the chance to consider what this offer might mean.

  ‘Now you’re being silly,’ says her mother. ‘Don’t fuss. You know I can’t stand fussing.’

  ‘I could read to you, if you like, if you don’t want to go to sleep just yet.’

  Her mother doesn’t bother to answer. She stands and, not without some effort, she begins to tidy her belongings away, switching off the radio, gathering up a pile of books and placing them on her desk.

  Lucy makes an excuse about needing the bathroom. She takes her time washing her hands and tidying her hair, undoing it, running her fingers through it, and plaiting it again. She’ll have to ring Dan again – God knows what she’ll say to him this time.

  When she goes back into the bedroom Cathy has changed and is sitting on the bed, her old-fashioned men’s paisley pyjamas buttoned up to her neck. She takes her turn in the bathroom without comment. After a few minutes she returns and clambers into bed; propped against the pillows Cathy looks smaller than ever, frail and childlike. She has dabbed some ointment, arnica, probably, on the damage to her face.

  ‘Right,’ Lucy says, turning to the bookcase, as if they’ve actually come to an agreement about something, ‘what would you like me to read?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t want anything gloomy.’

  The shelves are in disarray, with books and papers pushed in lengthways on top of the vertical volumes – there are New Age magazines, stuff on stone circles and spiritual development, as well as more respectable art periodicals. Lifting some of these, old editions of Tate Etc. and RA Magazine, Lucy dislodges the whole pile and they slide lazily onto the floor.

  Gathering the magazines together, Lucy tries to put them back in place, and that’s when she sees a sketchpad, wedged at the back of the shelf. She pulls it out and starts flicking through the pages
. It’s full of drawings: light, views of the house, the garden. The work is vigorous and confident. There are swift pencil portraits of the staff, a girl – half-finished, familiar, somehow, Sarah perhaps, her long hair tumbling loose – standing by the fountain.

  ‘That’s private,’ says her mother.

  Lucy closes the pad, but keeps hold of it. There are more, she notices, stacked between the bookcase and her mother’s desk. ‘I’m sorry. I just – sorry. I didn’t realise – you’ve been busy,’ she says.

  ‘Well, what else is there to do?’ Cathy’s tone is mild.

  ‘I mean – I thought you were …’ Dabbling. A hobbyist passing the long hours of her retirement. She can’t remember her mother sketching or painting when they were kids, for all her talk of the joys of creativity, although she knows her parents met at art school. She’s ashamed, suddenly, of her easy acceptance of her mother’s dismissal of her abilities that afternoon. Not for the first time, she has underestimated her. ‘I’d really like to take a look, a proper look,’ she says.

  Cathy fiddles with the top button of her pyjama jacket. ‘I’m surprised you can be bothered, what with having a whole art gallery to play with.’ She still doesn’t look up. ‘They’re nothing special.’

  ‘But they are. This is your work. If nothing else, it’s special to me.’

  ‘What would you do with it, Lucia? Pick one out to take home? Stick it on the fridge?’

  ‘Mother.’

  ‘Oh, put it away, for goodness’ sake. I didn’t draw them for you or for anyone else. I told you – they’re scribbles to keep me occupied and the vultures at bay, and they certainly wouldn’t fit in with your – your – “Women of the Landscape”, or whatever it is.’

  She knows the title perfectly well, of course. Lucy can see the invitation to the exhibition, the exhibition she is currently curating, tucked among the letters on her mother’s desk: ‘Women in the Landscape – A Retrospective’ – not that Cathy has bothered to reply.

  ‘Just put it away, please.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Lucy, dropping the pad on top of the magazines and turning back to the bookcase. She makes an effort to concentrate on the titles in front of her. Tomorrow, she decides, when her mother’s in a better mood, she will choose a sketch to take home. She’ll hang it next to her father’s painting, the only piece of his she’s been able to find, unfinished and far from his best; but it’s his, all the same, and someone even got him to sign it, a single word in jagged black paint: Corvino. It’s all she has left. There are no photos, no letters, and Cathy rarely speaks of him. She likes the idea of their work hanging side by side.

  She glances at Cathy, who is still fussing over her jacket collar. Her mother has never visited the flat. She probably never will.

  Lucy settles at last on Frenchman’s Creek, one of Cathy’s favourites, and after switching the radio off and dimming the lights, she begins to read.

  She wakes with a start.

  She sits up and the book slides off her lap, hitting the floor with a muffled thump. She swears softly, but Cathy doesn’t stir and Lucy picks up the book, placing it gently on the table before switching off the bedside lamp. She walks slowly to the door, taking one last look around the darkened room, her mother now little more than a tumble of bedding, still and silent. Lucy’s not afraid of the dark, she never has been. They used to play a game, she and her sister, lying in bed at night.

  What can you hear?

  She stands still and listens.

  The traffic passing by outside, the ticking of the alarm clock, the gentle rasp of her mother’s breathing, which is almost, but not quite, a snore.

  She tries again.

  The traffic, the ticking …

  The faintest sigh of the floorboards under the thick carpet as someone crosses the room.

  ‘Mum?’

  Cathy hasn’t moved.

  Lucy waits.

  The traffic, the ticking …

  Silence.

  There.

  The skin on the back of her neck prickles; there’s someone there in the shadows, just out of reach, pacing softly across the carpet, back and forth, back and forth. She’s sure of it.

  She can feel it.

  She places one hand on the light switch by the door, her heart thudding. She doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see, and yet she can’t help herself. She presses the switch.

  When she sees her standing in front of the window her heart leaps. It’s the girl, she thinks, she’s there, before she realises it’s her own reflection, pale, wide-eyed and still; it’s not a girl at all.

  Idiot.

  Cathy sighs and stirs and Lucy switches off the light, then crosses the room and closes the curtains. She waits for five minutes, maybe more, alone in the dark, listening, before she can finally bring herself to leave.

  Next time she wakes in the guest room. The bed is narrow and sometime in the night she’s kicked away the duvet. Her back and knees are stiff, the mattress is so hard she’s surprised she slept at all. She checks her watch. It’s almost seven o’clock, still too early to bother her mother, but there’s the kitchen downstairs and all she really wants is a cup of tea and a cigarette.

  She hasn’t smoked for years.

  Tea, then. She dresses quickly, brushes her teeth and washes her face at the little sink in the corner. On her way out, she grabs her phone; she’ll need to let Dan know about this business at the farm.

  ‘Bloody hell, Loo,’ he says. ‘After all this time? What do they want?’

  ‘I don’t know. As far as I can tell, they have some idea of carrying on where Michael left off. You know, finishing the investigation.’

  ‘There’s got to be more to it than that – some sort of … financial angle.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not now, surely.’

  ‘And Cathy’s OK with this?’

  ‘Apparently. More than OK. She’s agreed to meet them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘God, I don’t know. Curiosity?’ The kitchen is empty, spotless and ruthlessly organised. Lucy fills the kettle, then switches it on.

  ‘Well, it’s out of the question. You’ll have to stop her.’ Dan, the oldest, the boss.

  ‘Well, obviously.’

  ‘Tell her you’ll take legal action. We all will.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘This Nina person.’

  ‘I don’t think that will work.’

  ‘I should definitely come over.’

  Lucy can hear a voice in the background. Julie, telling her husband to calm down.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘By the time you get here they’ll be long gone.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There’s a silence as Dan takes this in. ‘Ah, Loo,’ he says, ‘you’re stuck with this all on your own, aren’t you? I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  It’s not fair.

  ‘I’ll talk to her again,’ says Lucy. ‘Try to stop things getting out of hand. I can stay over another night, make sure that she puts them off.’

  It will mean cutting things fine with work, but it’s probably doable if there’s an early train.

  ‘OK,’ says Dan. ‘Ring me later, though. Let me know what she says.’

  They say their goodbyes and Lucy slips her phone back into her pocket. She’s not really sure there is anything she can do in the long run, but the sound of her brother’s voice has been a comfort, for a few minutes, at least. The older he gets, the more like their father he sounds, or so she likes to think.

  Behind her the door opens and a young woman walks in, shedding her hat and scarf. It’s the girl from yesterday, Sarah.

  Lucy has the distinct feeling she’s been caught out of bounds. ‘I was just hoping I could get a cup of tea,’ she says, standing up. ‘Sorry, I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way.’

  Sarah takes off her coat. ‘That’s all right,’ she says. ‘I can do you a bit of toast too, if you like. I don’t really need to get s
tarted until quarter to.’

  ‘I don’t want to trouble you.’

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ says Sarah. ‘I usually make myself some anyway.’ She opens one of the cupboards. ‘You won’t tell, will you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Wyn Jones doesn’t really like us making ourselves breakfast; she thinks it’s unprofessional. Only I have to get an early bus and, you know …’

  ‘No,’ says Lucy, ‘I won’t tell.’

  The tea comes in what is clearly a staff mug and they sit at the table, a plate piled high with buttered toast between them.

  ‘How’s Mrs Corvino this morning?’ asks Sarah.

  ‘I haven’t checked yet. I thought I’d let her lie in for a bit.’

  ‘Oh, right. She’d got herself into a bit of a state, hadn’t she?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But looking back, she’d been off-colour for a couple of days.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, nothing serious,’ says Sarah, looking stricken. ‘It’s not like she was ill, or anything. We’d let you know if there was something really wrong.’

  She’s very young, a student perhaps, working long hours to get herself through university.

  ‘Yes, I know that. She’s very happy here, we’re all very …’

  Happy.

  Cathy’s children all contribute to the cost of her care, but they rarely visit. Lucy wipes buttery crumbs from her fingers. ‘Off-colour how, though?’

  ‘She just seemed a bit teary, I suppose. A bit low. I put it down to, I dunno, nostalgia. She’d been talking about your sister a bit.’

  ‘She said she’d had a card.’

  ‘Yes. She showed me,’ says Sarah. ‘Maybe that sort of started her off, she was talking a lot about the farm you used to have, it sounds amazing.’

  ‘That’s one way to describe it.’

  ‘And she showed me some photos.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t think she had any.’ Lucy can remember the great purge when they finally left, the huge bonfire of books and papers and paintings; she’s pretty sure this had included the photos they’d collected over that summer.