A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  She coughed lightly but painfully. Her brows creased, and when she went on again, it was at a more determined pace. ‘I walk. I come to the sluice. I cannot believe the water is coming so fast. So much water! So fast! I start to guess. I start to understand something is very wrong. Very wrong. I walk faster. I see Charlie at the second sluice. Winding, winding. It’s open. He has opened the sluice. I shout, “Charlie, what are you doing?” He throws the handle on the ground. He walks towards me, so angry. So angry. So wild in the eyes. Wild! I have never seen him like this. I walk with him. He will not speak. I am crying, I am weeping, I am begging him to speak. Nothing! Nothing!’

  She was reliving each moment now, the helplessness and the bewilderment. ‘We get back to the cottage. I take the other handle, but I know I am too weak, I cannot lower the gates. I am desperate for help. I am desperate to talk to Charlie. Charlie, he is in his room. He is on the bed, staring at the wall. I am going crazy. So I call Grace. I say, “What have you done to him? Why is he like this?” I tell her he’s gone mad and opened the sluices. I tell her!’

  The memory was still so raw that she grimaced, she groaned again at her own folly. ‘His heart was broken, Alex. Broken. He had done everything to please her, to make her love him. This is the terrible thing about a cruel person, Alex. A cruel person makes a child desperate to win their love. A cruel person salves a good heart and breaks it, crushes it, and what does this good heart do? It cries out for this person’s love! It is desperate for it. Why is this, tell me? Why should this be?’ She lifted a despairing hand.

  I said, ‘Children are apt to blame themselves if their parents don’t love them. It’s a well-known thing. They tend to think it’s their fault.’

  ‘But Alex, always she was so cruel to him, from the time he was a baby! Nothing he did was good enough. Nothing! A painting, a model—she would say, “What is that?”’ She mimicked a caustic tone. ‘“What do you call that?” Always she would make him feel he was no good. Always she would make him feel he had failed. She would say, “You’re no good at anything, you’re stupid, you’ll never make anything of your life, you must go to this special school!” Oh, he was so desperate to please her! But he could not go to this school. This was the one thing he could not do. All he wanted was to stay at home, to be on the farm with Will. No, in this one thing he could not give in to her. And she never forgave him—no! She was angry, and she wasn’t going to let him escape. She was going to get her revenge!’ She raised bent fingers, as if to forestall my protest. ‘You think revenge is too big a word? You think I say this because I hated her? No, I tell you, Alex, revenge is not too big a word. She was planning it all, to get Charlie to this school, because she could not bear to be opposed. She could not bear for Charlie to have his own mind. No, he must bend to her. She was determined that he should be what she wanted him to be. No, I tell you, Grace had no heart—none at all. Grace was a bad person—there is no other way to say it, Alex. Grace was cruel, cruel and wicked.’

  In the pause that followed, she shifted her head, she pulled a pillow behind her neck and lay back again. ‘So…Grace comes over. Oh, she is angry! Such fury! Such rage! Vicious. Horrible. She is very nasty to me! Rude and nasty! She says ,’ have let this happen! Says it’s all my fault! But then, Alex, she calls Charlie names, she says terrible, terrible things to Charlie! She says he is the worst thing ever to happen to her, that she hates him, that she is never going to see or speak to him again. She grabs him by the neck, she pulls him downstairs, she yells at him—oh, she yells! She says he must go and close

  the sluices. She pulls him by the arm, he falls over, and still she pulls. She is like someone who is gone mad! Completely mad! She is in such a rage! I try to stop her, but she goes on pulling him, she does not stop! She gets him outside, and all the time Charlie is crying and screaming, he is trying to get free. And when he struggles, she hits him, Alex! She hits him!’ Maggie grimaced with barely forgotten fury, her eyes filled with violent tears. She glared at me as if to demand an explanation for such a monstrous and inexplicable act.

  When she looked towards the light again, her expression grew cold and unyielding, her voice also. ‘I grab her then, I pull her hair. Hard. She cries out. She yells. I don’t care. I go on pulling until she lets go of Charlie. Then she hits me, oh so hard, Alex. My ear—I think it is broken, it bleeds. My head…She hits me three, four times.’ She closed her eyes, she drew an anguished breath. ‘I shouts I tell her we are going to close the sluices. Just her and me, the two of us—no one else. She starts to say things again. I tell her to shut up, that I am up to here with her.’ She drew a clawed hand in a line across her eyes. ‘She grabs the handle—angry, angry—she walks off towards the sluice. I want to go to Charlie, I want to see that he is all right, but I know that first we must close the sluices.’

  Something beyond the window seemed to catch her eye, she stared for a moment before turning back. ‘So I follow, and still she will not

  stop talking, saying bad things against Charlie. So I say to her, “You tell me why he is so upsets you tell me!” And she says there is no reason, none, but she is lying. I know she is lying! I tell her I am going to tell Will about this, that he will hear everything. And she says, “I don’t care.” She says, “I’m leaving anyway. I’m finished with him. I’m going tomorrow!” She laughs at the thought. She has an ugly face when she laughs. Then I understand. I remember the way she was when she arrived. Hair in a mess—and her hair was never in a mess. Never. And I say, “You were with someone. Charlie saw you with someone.” And she does not deny it, she says, “Charlie shouldn’t have come back when he did.” She is cold, like ice. Then I say things, I speak my mind, I tell her what I think of her. I say many things—too many things—but I am so angry with her, Alex! Angry for what she has done to Charlie.’ Her eyes blazed briefly, she clenched her lips together until the worst of her wrath had passed.

  ‘Then she tells me, “Well, think what you like, but I’ve had enough, and I’m taking what I’m owed.” “Owed!” I say. “What can you be owed?” “Money,” she says. I cannot believe what I’m hearing. I cannot believe she can say such a thing! I just stare at her, Alex! I just stare,’ And then we come to the sluice. She says it’s too hard for her to wind. We have to do it together. And then we can’t finish it, it won’t shut all the way.’ She was racing on now, trying to get the

  story over as quickly as possible. ‘There’s something wrong, we cannot close it all the way, so we must leave it. So we go on to the next sluice. And Grace, she is angry again, saying bad things. She was like this, Alex, a very angry person. Deep down, underneath all this beauty, she was angry and heartless and cruel. You understand this? You—’

  The telephone rang. We fell silent until it had stopped some time after the fifth ring. When Maggie resumed, it was in a quieter tone. ‘I am thinking to myself, who is it that Grace is with? She is leaving tomorrow—who is she with? And why is she so angry about the sluice? She has never cared about the farm, she has never cared about the marsh. And then, of course, I see it, Alex! I see it! Edward. It must be Edward. And I think of what this will do to Will, to his pride.’

  She chose her words with concentration, drawing deep on her memory. ‘I said to her, “You don’t get money if you cheat on your husband.” And she laughed. She laughed, Alex. She said, “It’s all different now. I get half the house, half the cash. I checked it out. I went to a lawyer.” “But it will ruin Will,” I said. But she didn’t care, Alex. She didn’t care. For her, this was a fine punishment to him for not giving her what she wanted. She was glad. I saw it in her face—she was glad. And then it comes to me—oh, it was like a knife in my heart, Alex—it comes to me: Charlie. “But not Charlie,” I said. “After this, you will not take Charlie.” She

  turned to me, and she said, very cool, “I will take Charlie. Of course I will take Charlie. He’s mine.”’

  A car crawled along the quay, coming closer. Fearing the Range Rover, I craned forward to look
out of the window but it was a small black saloon, heading across the hard towards the edge of the creek.

  ‘She was winding the sluice,’ Maggie continued. ‘All the time she was angry and full of hate. I watched her wind the sluice and I said, “But Will—he will fight you all the way. Each inch. He cannot be without Charlie.” And she said’—Maggie bent her head towards me on the pillow, she reached out a hand as if to touch mine—‘she said, “But he is not Will’s child in the first place!” I stared at her, I did not believe what I have heard. I thought she was just trying to say things, anything, to punish us all. But then she said, “Any test will prove it. He’s not Will’s, he is the child of my lover before Will.” She said his name—some actor called Dan Elliott. She said the name proudly, she said he had loved her, that she could have married him, should have married him if she hadn’t been crazy enough to marry Will. I stayed calm, I tried not to be angry. I said, “But Will—he loves Charlie so much, he cannot live without Charlie, you cannot take him away.” “Why not?” she said. “Charlie’s not his, I will tell him Charlie’s not his.” ’

  She was tiring now, her voice was raw, she

  ran her tongue over drying lips. ‘Everything,’ she breathed. ‘Grace wanted to take everything from Will. For no good reason except that her soul was cold and unkind. She did not love Charlie, she had never loved Charlie. All she wanted was to own him, to destroy his soul, his—’ She lost the word.

  ‘Spirit?’

  ‘Spirit,’ she affirmed with passion. ‘His spirit! If Charlie had gone with her, it would have broken Will’s heart. And mine too—oh, Alex, it would have broken my heart too.’ She had slowed up now, she spoke haltingly. ‘I took hold of her arm. I said you will not do this thing. She tried to pull away, but I held on to her jacket. We pulled back and forth, her jacket tore. And still she tried to walk away. She tried to walk away! To go and do these terrible things she planned, but I kept hold of the jacket as though I was holding on to my life! My life, Alex! Then she pulled her arms from the jacket, she pulled free, suddenly, with a—a jerk! She stumbled, she fell against the post. She was half over the gate. And then, Alex…’

  Part of me wanted to stop her there; the other part waited silently to hear the end.

  ‘I pushed her. I did not mean to push her…Well, I’m not sure what I meant to do. I was thinking of Will and Charlie, I was thinking that I loved them more than all the world. Perhaps I wanted her to have a shock—the water, the fall. I don’t know, Alex! But I pushed her and

  she fell into the pool and she was still, no movement. She floated, face down. She must have hit her head—I don’t know. I watched, I waited. I could not move. I did not want to move. I was a little mad, Alex! Crying, crying all the time. A little crazy! I kept thinking: This is God’s will! This is God’s justice! This is meant to be! And then, when the madness had gone from me, when I looked again, it was too late, Alex. Too late. She was dead, I knew she must be dead.’

  Her voice had all but disappeared, she closed her eyes, her mouth fell open; except for the frown, she might have been asleep. When she began to whisper again, I had to strain to make out her words. ‘The jacket…I knew I must hide it, it was so torn. The handbag, I thought if it was not found then they would think she had gone away.’ She turned her head towards me and made a face of disgust at her own stupidity.

  In the silence that followed, a faint breeze wafted in through the open window and stirred the dull still air.

  When I looked back at Maggie her eyes were sharp again, almost sparkling. She laid her cool dry hand on my arm and rasped in her failing voice, ‘But, Alex, I tell you something. I do not regret this. In the end I cannot.’

  The heat of the midsummer Sunday had brought out dozens of walkers and holiday-makers. The marsh paths were sprinkled with

  families and dogs, and away on the shimmering dunes bright dots of colour moved ant-fashion along the ridges. Three strange cars were parked on the grass to one side of Reed Cottage while, on the path beyond, a family group stood idly watching while their children repeatedly climbed the bank and rolled down again.

  Beside the outhouse, the clematis grew thickly up the wall, virtually overwhelming the rose, whose spindly stems and rust-spotted leaves were almost lost in its dense foliage. The earth around the foot of the rose looked dry and lumpy, and when I pushed at it with my foot, it felt hard as rock.

  The spade was in its place inside the door of the outhouse. I noticed a pick as well, should I need to break up the crusty soil.

  There were no clouds in the sky and no sign of a change: the marsh would be busy until nightfall. I spent the morning helping to clear up at Wickham Lodge, then slept for an hour or so on the swing seat under the mulberry tree. I ate an early supper from the leftovers, and drank a glass of last night’s wine. Finally at nine thirty I set out for Reed Cottage again, dressed for the nighty in dark T-shirt and jeans.

  The unknown cars had gone, most of the people too. I heard a shout of laughter some distance away and saw a small group strolling along the Gun Marsh embankment. I waited a while, but no one came and, though the twilight was clear and the darkness still some way off, I

  fetched the spade and thrust it into the ground. The crust shifted easily, but the soil beneath was made of firmer stuff. I had to drive the spade in hard and step it down with all my weight before I could raise much earth. Six inches down and I had to chop through the roots of the rose. When the hole was a foot deep I paused to wonder just how far down Maggie had gone. Another six inches and I began to wonder if she was suffering some sort of delirium or memory loss.

  The sweat hot on my brow, I shifted my efforts towards the clematis. A few minutes later, with night falling fast, the spade struck something dense but soft. Feeling my way with the edge of the spade, I aimed to one side of the object, and, driving the spade deep, stepping on it hard, I levered the handle down and loosened the object from the soil. Dropping on to my knees, I dug with my hands and felt first cloth, then leather.

  My nerves were so taut, my mind so completely absorbed, that the voice close above me might have been a gunshot. I started with such violence that my body jerked back, my arms flew up, I let out a sharp cry and toppled over sideways before scrabbling desperately to my feet.

  In such a moment of shock and adjustment, realization comes in stages. The first thing I registered was Will’s dark figure looming close above me. A moment later, I took in what he had said: ‘Why don’t you let me do that?’ In a

  final surge of awareness, I heard his tone, I saw in the dim dusk his expression, and both were full of concern, neither in the least hostile.

  Panting hard, my heart still throwing itself against my ribs, I stuttered feebly, ‘I think I can manage,’ and immediately wished I had said something less abrupt.

  ‘But let me, Ali.’ I stood back while Will dropped to one knee and reached forward into the hole to clear away more earth. He pulled out the jacket and examined it solemnly before rolling it into a bundle and laying it carefully on the ground. Leaning forward again, he scooped away more earth and, with a small wrench, pulled the handbag free.

  Getting to his feet, he picked up the handbag and rolled it inside the jacket, and tucked them both under one arm. It was so dark now that I could barely see his face. ‘What’s the safest thing to do?’ he asked.

  I thought of the petty criminals I had defended, of the evidence they had tried to hide or destroy, throwing weapons into canals or dousing clothing in petrol and setting fire to it; I remembered how often these things were found with damning forensic evidence still intact. ‘Ordinary domestic rubbish is the safest,’ I said. ‘Well-wrapped in a plastic sack. But the purse should be emptied firsts the credit cards destroyed, anything with a name on it. And, safer still, it should all be taken to somewhere far away and put in a stranger’s bin. I could take them

  back to London, stop somewhere in a neighbouring borough.’

  ‘I couldn’t ask you to do that.’

&nb
sp; Trying not to recall the stern view the law took of such activities—perverting the course of justice—I said, ‘But I’d be glad to.’

  ‘Thank you, Ali, but it’s something I must do myself. I’ll go to Cromer or King’s Lynn, somewhere like that.’ He dropped his head for a moment. Then, as if aware of the need for haste, he held out the bundle for me to hold while he began to fill in the hole.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh…Maggie. She was rambling a bit—she does nowadays. Talking about you, about being able to rely on you. She wouldn’t say more, but she’d been fretting about getting back here for something. I had a feeling—I walked over, I saw your car, I heard you digging.’

  He trod the earth down a little before returning the spade to the outhouse.

  Taking the bundle again, he led the way into Reed Cottage and switched on some lights. On the way to the kitchen, he paused suddenly and looked back at me. ‘Maggie was right.’

  ‘What about?’

  He smiled faintly. ‘About being able to rely on you.’

  We drew the curtains and spread newspaper on the kitchen table before unwrapping the bundle. The pockets of the jacket were empty, but we cut out the label just to be on the safe side

  and put it on one side for separate disposal. We spread out the contents of the handbag. After some discussion, we decided to crush the mobile phone with a hammer and put it back into the handbag. We cut each credit card into about twenty pieces and, mixing the shards up, put half in the pile with the handbags and half in the pile for separate disposal. The cash went into Will’s pocket, the cheque book was cut up and put in the second pile. The empty purse, cosmetics, pens, pencils and sunglasses went back into the handbag.