by Susan Sallis
Ellie was shocked. Lucy said, ‘Apparently Mr Membury got a job at Roach’s farm, Ellie. Ezekiel Roach is my father.’
‘I thought – I thought – Ma, why didn’t you tell us?’
‘You thought he was dead. He was to me. And to your father.’ She glanced at Ellie. ‘He is not a good man, Ellie. Daddy was afraid he might harm Egg.’
Ellie put her hands to her face. Over them her eyes were enormous.
Lucy sipped her tea, trying to make the situation unusual rather than horrific. Why had it not occurred to her that her own children did not know about their grandfather? Did she imagine that they had just picked up the information at school and never asked questions about it?
She said, ‘Most of the time he is just a dour man, unhappy, I suppose. But on Saturdays he gets drunk.’ She drew a breath and said woodenly, ‘That’s when he hurts people.’
Ellie made a sound. Matthew put a hand on her arm. ‘He won’t have hurt Harry. Harry has grown strong since Christmas when he came looking for you. Before he got this job he walked miles every day. Josh took him out in the boat now and then and he’d come back with mackerel and crabs . . . He worked in the rectory garden and we had cabbage. And then, four weeks ago, he found this job and part of the pay was in kind. Vegetables mostly. Milk and eggs.’ He grinned. ‘And of course the famous mushrooms!’ He laughed and at last so did Ellie.
She said, still anxious, ‘But he wouldn’t have just gone off without telling you, would he?’
‘If he’d had enough of those damned mushrooms he might have done anything! But he would not have let Farmer Roach hurt him.’
Lucy said nothing and Matthew turned to her. ‘I must be getting over to the church for eleven o’clock. If you really want to look around the area I suppose there’s no harm in it. It was, after all, Saturday yesterday, so I suppose your father will be sleeping it off somewhere.’
Lucy knew where he would be; there was a house on the road between Camborne and Redruth, just north of Lytton village. Ezekiel Roach had been thrown out of it times without number but he was always taken back in, eventually.
Matthew said, ‘Josh will come with you, Lucy. Then Carthew has invited all of us to lunch there. He says his housekeeper needs the practice. He eats at four. And I will take you home at seven. Is that all right?’
In the face of Ellie’s sheer bewilderment Lucy did not want to object, but she had never eaten at Dr Carthew’s table. ‘Is Josh coming too?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then . . .’ She smiled at Ellie. ‘We will be delighted to accept the doctor’s kind invitation.’
‘But Mom.’ Ellie occasionally used Gus’s word for her mother. ‘I ought to come with you . . . perhaps?’
Lucy smiled and nodded slightly. ‘One day. Of course. But let me try to find out what is happening at the farm first. Stay with the reverend. Enjoy the service like you used to. I’ll try to get some news of Mr Membury.’
Ellie, biddable as always, nodded. Lucy hated the lost expression in those brown eyes. Daniel’s eyes had been blue but there had been times when they looked just like Ellie’s looked now. She should have made some kind of statement – years ago – about the farm and the man who lived in it. Simply ‘Your grandfather lives four miles up the coast. He is a farmer, but he would rather live on his own.’ That would have done it. Except that there would have been questions. She never wanted to have to say, ‘He killed my mother and he tried to kill Egg and me.’ Because if that was true why wasn’t he in prison at this very moment?
Josh arrived and tucked her into his familiar old car. She tried to thank him; it would have taken her most of the day to walk there and back. Josh, never quite easy in her company, said that it gave them chance for a chat, then after asking about the family he could think of nothing else to say and neither could she. They became silent until they turned down the lane on the edge of the Godolphin Estate, when they both commented on the wealth of cow parsley which was brushing the car on both sides. Lucy, who was becoming more and more nervous as they got closer to the old farm, started to ask what they would do if they met something coming towards them and Josh said at exactly that moment, ‘Let’s ’ope we dun’t meet nothing down ’ere.’ They laughed.
The gate on which Lucy’s mother had swung her so long ago hung from one hinge and was roped closed. Josh pulled the car in tight and switched off.
‘Looks like we got to climb over,’ he said.
‘Stay ’ere, Josh. Please. I know where ’e is and it’s not in these parts.’
‘Aye.’ Josh spoke heavily. He knew about Lytton too and looked at her as she gathered up her bag. ‘Why you coming zackly? We’ve looked for that Harry Membury. ’E en’t ’ere, my girl. ’Tis all locked up and deserted.’
‘I hope he isn’t here.’ She looked at her husband’s friend. She almost told him; some scrap of loyalty stopped her. ‘I don’t know why I’m here. Perhaps just to look at the place again. I don’t know. Will you wait here for me? I might be half an hour. Not much longer.’
‘I’ll be ’ere. Give us a shout if you need me.’
She clambered over the gate and felt in her pocket for the key. The track, heavily rutted, took a right angle not far from the gate and the car was out of sight. She held the key in her right hand and felt with her left for the reassurance of the carving knife. She knew she was being ridiculous; if Ezekiel Roach had killed Harry Membury he would be on the run. And if he hadn’t then he was at the Lytton house. Her father was predictable; she had known when she begged him to call Dr Carthew that he would not. He must have thought she was already dead when he went for him that last terrible night before Egg finally arrived.
Another bend in the thick hedge and there was the house. It was low-ceilinged and squat; the windows squinted at her in the pallid light. She knocked and called before using the key. If he was home he would rip open the door and ask her what she bloody well wanted after all this time. The house offered no response. She put the key in the door and turned it with difficulty. She went inside, already feeling sick with the blind terror she knew so well. Her sixth sense told her he was not there but she could not control her breathing or the body-shaking thump of her heart. She muttered, ‘Dan . . . stay with me now.’
She moved cautiously down the narrow passageway towards the kitchen. The smell was heavier, more familiar the further she went. All the doors were open; on the left, next to the kitchen, was the dairy. It was clean. She peered in; a trug of fast-withering cauliflower stood on one of the churns. She stared at it. Harry Membury was the only one who could have left it there.
It didn’t mean anything. But the nausea deepened with dread.
There were other signs of his presence in the old parlour on the other side of the hall: a khaki linen milking smock was over a chair. She picked it up and then put it down quickly. It could have been mud but she knew the dark stains were blood. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She almost ran back outside and shouted for Josh but then had to sit down quickly and stay very still. When she thought she was in control of herself again, she put a hand on the smock. She said quietly, ‘If you have killed him in the same way as you killed my mother, I swear I will do the same to you.’
And then she got up, went into the kitchen, put her bag on the cluttered draining board and looked carefully around. If she was looking for signs of a struggle she did not see it and did not look for long. In her mind she could hear that dreaded voice again and again: ‘Get down into the cellar, miss! Wait for me there. Don’t show your face up here again!’ She could hear the bolts shot across, she could taste the darkness, feel the sponginess of the wooden steps which would surely give beneath her one day, feel too the weight of guilt. He told her constantly that she was the cause of all his troubles. She could not cook, sew, milk the animals, do anything like her mother did. Everything was her fault and one day she would pay for that.
Sometimes she was five minutes on her own in the cellar. Other times, much much lon
ger. Her release depended on how urgently he needed to punish her. If he decided to go to the Lytton house immediately, it might be days before he came home and remembered that she was due for a beating. Once, not long after it started, she managed to articulate sufficiently to beg him to beat her immediately. He told her to stop whining. ‘Your mother always kept her trap shut!’ he said before he pushed her through the door. That was how she had learned that her mother had taken – absorbed – his treatment to shield her daughter.
Outside the wind had got up and suddenly, shockingly, the door banged. Lucy leaped up and went to the window; the door banged again. She crossed the kitchen and looked down the passage. No one was there, the door swung open and shut like a pendulum. She ran down, took out the key, closed it and locked it.
Then she checked the rooms properly: the parlour, the dairy again, the kitchen. She went upstairs and looked into the two bedrooms. Nothing. The beds were made. Perhaps he no longer slept upstairs.
She went back down and stood in front of the cellar door. At last she reached up and shot the top bolt, then the bottom. Then pushed the door open. The smell was appalling. She choked, closed the door and wrapped her silk scarf around her nose and mouth. Then she fetched the torch and opened the door again. The cellar was the size of the house but she did not have to look very far. The spongy treads had at last given way. Harry lay in a crumpled heap on the floor beneath them.
He was not dead though Lucy had been certain that he was. He had fallen on his right side; the arm and leg that side were both broken. He was dehydrated and there wasn’t much of a pulse but the nurse who talked to Lucy and Josh at the hospital in Penzance assured them that they had done all the right things and he stood a good chance of a full recovery.
Josh had run to meet Lucy and they had driven to Godolphin Home Farm and telephoned for an ambulance. The estate manager had promised that the Roach animals would be properly looked after. ‘Roach is a funny chap,’ he said, ‘but he’s a good farmer. Cares for the animals. Gets on better with them than he does with people. And that chap he took on was the same. Born to it, I suppose. Any idea where Roach might have gone?’ Lucy said nothing. She was so thankful that Josh had said Harry was breathing, she did not care whether her father was alive or dead.
Josh went back with the ambulance and the men cut the padlock and bumped over the rutty track without comment. Harry became conscious as they lifted him on to a stretcher and moaned; Josh was thankful that Lucy had waited at Home Farm. They followed the ambulance and then the stretcher and while Lucy drank tea from a cardboard cup, Josh made another telephone call to the rectory.
Matthew said, ‘What am I to say to Ellie?’
Josh frowned at the receiver. ‘Tell her the truth. The steps to the cellar broke and Harry Membury fell on to the stone floor and broke his arm and his leg.’
‘What about her grandfather?’
‘He’s disappeared. The police are going to be talking to Mrs Pardoe before long. But I don’t think we shall see him again. He might have got away with beating his wife to death. Probably din’t have anything to do with Harry’s fall. But he’ll be made to pay for it at last, thank God.’
Matthew was shocked by Josh’s grim tone. But all he said was ‘What about our meal down at the surgery?’
‘For goodness’ sake, reverend.’ Josh was reminded of his days as an air-raid warden. ‘Use your initiative!’ He put the phone down with a definite click.
When they saw Harry next, he was connected to a saline drip, his leg was in a sling higher than his body and his arm was splinted at an angle to his shoulder. He looked like a cartoon of a man who had fallen downstairs.
The most important thing was that he was conscious.
‘Sister says I am a non-walking miracle.’ He spoke in a strange grating whisper.
‘She also says you must not talk.’ Sister appeared and smiled at everyone at once. ‘Mr Membury has had a bad experience. He will need time and careful nursing.’
Harry gritted, ‘Matthew won’t be able to manage. He’s not very domesticated.’
‘You will be nursed here, Mr Membury. Now, no more talking.’ She addressed herself to Josh. ‘I rather think it might be difficult for my patient not to talk. Perhaps you could visit him tomorrow when he will have had a good night’s sleep and plenty of liquids.’
They were ushered outside and told that Harry might be worse before he was better. ‘He has probably gone over eight hours without fluid. And his body is in shock from the fall and consequent fractures. I have the Reverend Hobson’s telephone number and will keep in touch.’
They were dismissed.
Lucy huddled into the passenger seat of the car, her head down.
Josh said, ‘I think it’s over now, my girl. For good.’
Lucy was silent, shivering slightly. She saw from the dashboard clock that it was just gone five but the sky was darkening for a storm and so much had happened it seemed like night time.
They turned on to the A30 and Josh said in a low voice, ‘Thank the good Lord that Daniel got you out of that place afore anything could ’appen to Egg.’
She wanted to say that it had happened to Egg anyway and the good Lord hadn’t done much about it then. She bunched herself against the shivering and said nothing. They were driving through Hayle before Josh spoke again.
‘We’ll go straight to the doc’s house. Is that all right? I think your Ellie and the reverend will be there and if not I can fetch them. We need some food, my girl, and we know there’s plenty there.’
She moved one of her arms, pulling it from around her body and on to the seat. She pushed herself upright. ‘I have to get home. My friend is looking after the girls. I have to get back.’
‘We can telephone her perhaps?’
‘Yes. She has got a telephone. And she has got the rectory phone number.’
‘Good.’ He turned off towards the sea and the towans. ‘You were right to come. You saved ’is life. It were as if you knew . . .’ He glanced sideways. ‘Did you know?’
She met his eyes for a moment, then stared through the windscreen as they came to the first of the houses. ‘Harry Membury is a fool. But he didn’t deserve what he got. I din’t save ’is life. Those steps breaking . . . that’s what saved ’im. My father pushed ’im, saw ’im go, thought ’e’d killed ’im. An’ ’e ran. ’E couldn’t a got away with it this time. Like you said back there, ’e’s paying for my mother’s death.’
‘But if you ’adn’t ’ve followed it up, Harry woulda died.’
She shrugged. ‘I thought ’e might be dead already. When I went back from Devon Faither said ’e’d get rid of the baby for me, beat me right ’ard and put me down there and bolted the door. Left me for a week.’
‘Oh Christ . . .’ Josh gripped the wheel. Even so, the car veered into the hedge surrounding the doctor’s house and surgery.
Lucy appeared not to notice their abrupt arrival. ‘That’s ’ow ’e did it. People wondered why I stayed. I were too weak to do anything else. Dr Carthew saved Egg, saved me. ’Im and Daniel between ’em. Got me into the maternity hospital.’
The car ticked as the engine cooled; Josh breathed hard as if he had been running. At last he said, ‘You made up for it, girl. You ’ad the best marriage I’ve seen.’
‘Short.’
He looked at her. There were tears in her eyes. He said, ‘But sweet.’
She nodded. ‘Every day were sweet, Josh. We made it so. Harry Membury dun’t understand that.’
‘No. Well . . . ’e’s a foreigner, remember.’
‘Aye.’
The front door opened and John Carthew, Matthew Hobson and Ellie came down the drive. Josh reversed the car out of the hedge and they went inside. Ellie hung on to her mother on one side, and on the other the doctor put an arm around her shoulders. ‘It really has ended now, Lucy,’ he said into her ear. ‘His body was found by one of those flower folk. Put ’em off their swim, I reckon.’
She looked u
p at him and started to laugh. She knew it was hysteria but it came from relief. She reached into her bag and withdrew the carving knife and put it on the table. They all stared at it and stopped laughing.
She said, ‘Saves me a job, dun’t it?’ She looked at Ellie and Ellie looked back. It was as if in a few seconds they had complete communion.
Ellie hugged her and said, ‘Come and have something to eat, Ma.’
They went through into the dining room where the long table was laid beautifully. The housekeeper poked her head through a very modern hatch and said, ‘Are you ready for me to dish up now, doctor? It’s all shrivelled, of course, but I’ve done my best.’
‘Bring it on, Mrs Kervis. Your best is better than most!’
They sat down. Beneath the tablecloth Ellie and Lucy held hands. They both had a sense of Egg standing behind them and looked round at the same time. No one was there. But they smiled at each other, understanding.
Fourteen
AT FIRST GRETA was enamoured of Connie’s idea. She believed in the dream, especially as one of the few things she knew about her husband was that he came from Brighton. But if it hadn’t been for that creased black and white snap of her wedding day, she would not have remembered what he looked like. And if she hadn’t got that job at the Windmill she would not have even been in London. He had told her one of the things he loved about her was her Brummie accent. She had been offended – what about the elocution lessons she’d paid for? Anyway, she was an actress and could do any accent. Her favourite was Greta Garbo, of course.
He had laughed and tried to kiss her and she had said, ‘Get off!’ and he had said triumphantly, ‘There! See what I mean? Say it again – go on!’ And she had said it again. And again. And ended up laughing as usual. She had realized later that he might not even have singled her out from the other chorus girls if she had had a London accent. It was all . . . everything up to that point . . . was all about being in the right place at the right time. They were meant for each other.
But then he had gone. Without a word. It had taken her years to believe in his death. She realized now that she had been waiting for him still. It was to rid herself of that particular albatross that she was now engaged to Archie Fielding. It had sounded so darned sensible when Archie said, ‘For God’s sake, Greet. Marry me and let’s be done with all this flirty-Gertie stuff. We’re too old for it now.’ She had felt tired – so tired – of waiting and hardly ever getting work and consoling herself with Archie and others and being comforted by Arnie when they let her down. There was a sense of surrendering to fate. Why not marry Archie? She knew him through and through. She could manage his gambling and his drinking. And darling William had tied everything up so tightly that if she had to throw him out she would keep her flat and the nest egg her mother had left her. And there was this new job too. They were a small company, old-fashioned, struggling, her sort of people. The playwright was trying to put over a satire on the kitchen-sink era. The costumes were all dressing gowns in various stages of disrepair. She saw the point instantly and produced sketches; ‘Different but the same,’ she told the stage manager. ‘And we should have slippers likewise. Some tatty but sort of Turkish type for Miranda.’
