‘No, that’s not why I’ve come,’ I said. ‘Actually I’m glad we’re alone.’
She sighed, then started coughing. The attack lasted several minutes and each time she managed to draw breath the force of each wheezy inhalation triggered another fit. She was doubled over, her chest heaving as if the strain would break her in two. I opened my mouth but then shut it, knowing that I would have to put off what I wanted to say a little longer.
When the fit had calmed I took a bottle of chlorodyne from my bag and pressed it into her hand. ‘My mother always said that it was the best thing for TB,’ I said. ‘It’s not a cure, but it might help with…’
She took the bottle from me and, without looking, put it on the windowsill without a word.
I looked at the table with my hands on my hips, shaking my head but she did not look up, so I took an odd-looking pair of gloves from the top of the pile. ‘Why are you still taking these in?’ I said, waving the gloves in front of her face. ‘You can’t possibly keep on working, not with a fever.’ I tutted disapprovingly and ran my finger over the stitching. ‘You won’t be able to keep up the quality in your condition, just look at this one, it would fit a giant, and this one is no better and this—’ The third glove was perfect, the stitches just tiny humps in the cotton, straight and even. I took another pair from the middle of the pile, then one from the bottom – they were all complete, all perfect. I put the gloves down quickly but Maud’s eyes were now on me and her mouth twitched into a little smile.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘You won’t always be able to keep up this standard of work, will you? Not this many and not the quality.’
But now her smile was puckered with smugness and I sighed, knowing that she could not be argued with.
I sank into my chair and glanced round the room. Maud may have been able to keep up the work on the gloves but George had been right about the rest of the house – the room was strewn with mess: Buckets of fabric dried hard with carmine; split packets of indigo bleeding onto the draining board; a ragged red stain on the floor where a bucket must have fallen over. There was a trail of mud from the back door, stamped with the soles of muddied boots, plates were piled high in the basin and the kitchen nets were yellowed with fat. There was a mark on the plaster where a naked lamp had burnt the outline of a flame and one of the windowpanes was cracked. There were cobwebs round the door frame, clothes on the floor and soot between the flagstones and all of this steeped in the stale fug of mouse droppings and nebulae of dust and fur. I realized that I had walked in on the backstreet workshop George had described. I could never let Ruby come home to this, so I decided that Maud would have to accept my charity whether she wanted it or not. I recovered the first pairs of gloves I had found and started to unpick the stitches.
‘Is Clarence away?’ I said.
‘No, he’s around,’ she wheezed. ‘He just works long hours during the day.’
I nodded. ‘No way he can lend a hand then?’
‘No. He’s exhausted when he gets in, just wants to relax at the pub away from the kids.’
I looked at the empty rocking chair, I had never seen any of the family go near it, let alone dare to sit in it.
Over by the draining board, the grey cat coughed hoarsely, his body long and flat against the floor, his head snaking back and forth with each wheeze. The poor creature was looking thin and had mange. I put the gloves down, worrying about Ruby again.
‘Is there anyone else who can help?’ I said. ‘There must be someone.’
‘Ruby, she’s nine now.’
‘I meant an adult.’
Maud shook her head.
‘Some relative or friend maybe, what about that woman I just saw leaving – an old plump woman pushing a bicycle? I’m sure that I’ve seen her before somewhere, so she must live locally, couldn’t she help?’
‘That’s the kids’ Aunt Sadie, my sister. She can never stay long, she needs all the hours she can work at the hospital, just brings the odd bits of grocery that will fit in the pannier and helps me to get fresh air when I need it.’
‘Yes, but you’d think she would want to do more for her sister, especially considering what might—’
‘Sadie does enough for us anyway, she always has. It’s her son we get the work from, he works at the garment factory, drives the work to me all the way from Oxworth – he don’t need to do that, the both of them do us enough favours.’
‘It’s no favour,’ I said. ‘It’s not right if this nephew of yours still expects you to do all that work in your condition.’
‘Sadie will do no more for me,’ said Maud curtly, puckering her lips.
I remembered the tight lips of the woman I had seen in the lane, the little grimace she had given in return of my smile – it was the same expression I had seen so often on Maud’s face and the one I saw again now. It was obvious to me now that the women were sisters, and they were probably both as stubborn as each other.
I sighed. ‘Well at least let me do the washing up while I am here.’
I stood at the sink, whirling the little brush round plates and bowls encrusted with porridge, or at least something that looked like it. The bottoms of the cups were covered with blooms of bacterial growth, like the clinical experiments George talked about so enthusiastically when he read his scientific journals.
I tightened the handkerchief around my face and opened the window, raindrops shuddering down the glass. The cottage walls had not sheltered the yard from the rain, water pooled in muddy tyre tracks and the door to the log store hung open. Sodden gloves hung limply from the clothes line, red dripping from the fingers, and four rusty buckets had been slung into the hedge. Then I felt a chill in the pit of my stomach: Something was different – a silence.
‘The chickens!’ I cried. The henhouse was shut, the wooden slats wisped with cobwebs.
‘Oh Lord!’ Maud started to wail into her handkerchief.
I ran outside, mud splattering over my skirt. The door of the henhouse was fused tight with sticky droppings and when I finally managed to heave it open a vile smell wafted from inside. On the floor, lifeless clusters of feathers glowed white in the darkness. The chickens’ necks were twisted away from their bodies, as if straining for a final gasp of air, their bodies nothing but feather and bone.
I threw the carcasses over the fence and watched helplessly as their feathers slowly stained with mud. I prayed that a fox would take them before Ruby returned, or that they would sink slowly into the mud. I thought of the plump chicken nestling in Ruby’s arms – Snowdrop or Snowflake or whatever it was called. That adored creature had no connection to the scrawny scat of feathers that lay lifeless in the field and nor should it. I took a breath of fresh air and stepped back into the cottage.
‘I’m so sorry, Maud,’ I said.
She nodded. The wailing had stopped and her eyes had become glazed. I noticed a red stain on the handkerchief she had held to her mouth.
‘How—’
‘It was the kids’ job,’ she said. ‘They are a forgetful bunch but they’ll be devastated, especially Ruby.’
I sat down next to her, drawing the handkerchief firmly over my nose and mouth. ‘It’s not working is it, Maud? You may be able to keep up your work a little longer but not everything else as well. You say that the children are a help, I understand that, but at the moment they are just more work for you and extra mouths to feed.’
She nodded and wiped her eyes.
‘Let me take one from you, one of the children – to live with me on the estate,’ I said, then added quickly: ‘Just for a month or two, until this is all over.’
Maud stared into the empty grate. She didn’t speak for several minutes. At last she said: ‘Only if you take that hanky from your face, so that I can see that you mean it, and then promise that you will send my child back to me.’
I made the promise, exactly as she said.
She seemed to relax a little as she heard my words and wiped her eyes. ‘At least let me have them a
ll here for a few more days. It would be nice if they were here for me on Sunday. I’d like some time with them all together.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
Then she seemed to hesitate, her brow furrowed. ‘I don’t suppose I could get you to take one of the boys?’ The words came out with a sigh, not so much a question as a statement.
I didn’t answer, just let her stare into the fire.
‘No, no,’ she whispered. ‘We both know that’s not what you want.’
23
Ruby
My name is Ruby Brown and I would be lying if I said any different. You see, I don’t tell lies, not about the important things. But adults lie to me all the time. Emma lied to me about why she came to work for Maudy and Maudy lied to me about why she fired her. Clarence and Maudy both lied to me about how the stove got broken. You see lies are what I have come to expect from adults – but I did not expect him to lie.
His van was parked at the side of the lane, almost hidden by trailing branches, but I could still see the white paintwork and the familiar letters of ‘Walker’s Fine Garments, Oxworth’ winking at me from behind the leaves. It was the day that we were not usually home, the day that Sadie took Maudy out for fresh air, wheeling her along the lanes to Missensham in a Bath chair, and the day that the boys worked with Clarence on the harvests. It was the day that the house was usually empty; but he would have known that.
When I got to the cottage, the front door was open and a rustling noise was coming from inside.
I stood and watched him for some time. He was in the back room, bent over the dresser, his huge shoulders heaving as his hands rummaged through the drawers.
‘Fatkins!’ I said, but he did not hear.
His shirt was damp and clung to his body, showing the hard bulges in his arms. I got a strange feeling in my stomach, and it wasn’t a good one. I felt like I shouldn’t be standing there – his presence had turned my home into somewhere strange, somewhere I was not welcome. I turned to go, but that was when he heard me.
‘Hello Ruby!’ But he did not smile and his words did not seem like a greeting.
Now he stood up straight and looked at me. He was a tall man, I had always known that, but now that his damp shirt clung to the little humps in his chest, I saw that his belly went in and not out. Just like Maudy had said, he was made of muscle, not fat, and then I realized that the funny feeling in my stomach was fear.
‘I’m sorry to disturb…’ I whispered.
But it was not me he was interested in and his eyes were already turning back to the dresser, and then his hands did too, and he rummaged around in the drawers for a few more seconds. But then his movements became slower, as if he was starting to realize that he could not carry on with me standing and watching, so he stood up straight again and spoke to me at last, his mouth widening into his usual smile.
‘Hello Ruby, how is my favourite niece?’
I said that I was very well, but I did not say any more than that because it sounded silly muttering niceties after we’d already been standing together for all that time and the conversation already felt like it was coming out backwards.
‘Sa— my mother was here a while ago, she thinks that she may have left something behind.’
‘What?’ I said, wondering what could be so important that he would drive all the way from Oxworth for to get it instead of waiting until Thursday’s delivery.
‘Um – a case of cigarettes.’
‘Cigarettes!’ Suddenly I realized what my little silver treasure box was and I even fancied that the bitter smell that had wafted out when I opened it had been tobacco, but the word had left my lips too quickly.
‘Yes! do you…?’
I opened my mouth but I didn’t need to because his pause had merely been to draw breath: ‘You poor girl. It must all be such a shock for you finding me here. You must be wondering why I want the cigarettes so badly.’ He got down on his knees and held my arms tight against my body, looking hard into my face. ‘Well, you see, your Aunt Sadie’s ankles are swollen again and she really needs some tobacco to calm them down. She can’t get hold of any more until payday, so she has to have the cigarettes that are here, the ones that are in a silver case, with flowers on.’ He spoke quickly but I stopped listening, it did not matter what else he said because I knew he was lying – Fatkins and Sadie had fallen out and hadn’t spoken for months, so the cigarettes could not be for Sadie. But he knew about my treasure so that, at least, proved that it didn’t belong at Rose Cottage.
I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t want to give him my treasure back and I felt bad that there had been no cigarettes left inside. I wanted to tell him this, but I didn’t want him to know that I had been nosing inside his treasure either, so I kept quiet.
But he still went on: ‘I’m sorry about sneaking in, I didn’t want to give you a fright, I hope you weren’t scared…’ and suddenly he became friendly old Fatkins again, the big softy who spoke to me like I was a posh lady from Missensham and who let Maudy con him with damp aprons and stories about fixing the stove.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said at last. ‘I think I have seen it. I will go and get it.’ But then I panicked that I would lead him to the rest of my treasure, so I added: ‘Wait here!’
There was a big smile on Fatkins’ face as he saw the cigarette case in my hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Ruby,’ he said. ‘I hope that you didn’t think, well, it’s not that Sadie and I don’t trust your family to—’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I understand.’
He smiled, and then he bent down and kissed me quickly on the forehead, his hand on the side of my face as he did it. As he pulled away, his fingertips ran quickly over the blotches on my cheek, his eyes on my face but not meeting mine.
I don’t like anybody touching my face, so I pulled back and held the cigarettes case out to him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling and taking it quickly.
‘It’s all right,’ I said again, but I didn’t really mean it that time.
Fatkins nodded, then he turned away from me and I heard the click of the clasp opening. When he looked back at me his smile was gone. ‘Ruby, there was something inside, where is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, but my face went hot as I thought of the photograph of the baby still hidden in the straw of the henhouse. ‘Maybe Clarence has smoked all the cigarettes.’
‘Cigarettes?’ he said quickly. ‘Yes, of course; cigarettes. My poor mother’s ankles will have to wait.’ Then he stopped and looked right at me. ‘Ruby, was there anything else inside?’
‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘I mean, I don’t know, I never opened it.’
He was still looking at me, frowning, as if the lies themselves were written on my face. ‘Please, Ruby!’
But by then it was too late, I could not go back on what I had said.
I don’t know why I didn’t want him to have the photograph. Maybe because I thought he was lying to me, but about what I did not know. I wish I had told him. Maybe if I had, things might not have happened the way that they did. What happened was all my fault. And even then I knew it because, as I stood in the doorway and watched Fatkins limp back down the lane, I saw violets shining brightly from the hedgerow, like hundreds of little eyes watching me.
24
Emma
With no more of my ‘emotional outbursts’ or ‘funny turns’ as he called them, the only thing to irritate George was Mr Tuttle. The old man had still not finished the decorating and his behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic. He would turn up late, linger in the hallway, or stare at the same light fitting for several minutes, jabbing at it with his finger and then jumping back as if it would bite him. He would talk to himself, sometimes just mutterings of ‘silly old Tuttle’, but sometimes passionately, as if affronted by his own argument. He seemed to come and go as he pleased, the rattle of his key in the lock at the oddest times of day.
His promises of being joined by Mr Tuttle Junior were
starting to seem fanciful too. The old man would always say how he had dropped in on his son on the way to Little Willow, but nothing it seemed could persuade this reluctant master decorator to put in an honest day’s work with his father on the Sunningdale Estate. And if Mr Tuttle Senior’s behaviour wasn’t enough to infuriate George, there was all the unfinished jobs – the old nursery was still gathering dust, the kitchen door had not been painted and, to add insult to injury, the garden gate still hung off its hinges. I dared not tell George that twice I had come home that week to find that the front door had been left unlocked and I dreaded the day that George would return from the surgery to find the house ransacked. Of course, George persisted with his diagnosis of a neurological condition, although his arguments wavered when the smell of whisky filled the hallway.
One Sunday, when Mr Tuttle had left for the evening, George called me in from the garden. ‘Have you seen what that man has been doing?’ He ushered me into the living room. A stepladder was in front of the fireplace, two feet on the hearth and two feet off, as if it were about to topple over. A pot of paint stood on the bottom step and a brush brittle with blue pigment. The chimney breast was painted a light blue but the other walls were left bare.
‘Well,’ I said, slightly annoyed at George’s fustiness, ‘he’s not finished, but he’s done a good job. I expect he’ll come back and finish it tomorrow. He said as much. There are no spots on the skirting or anything like that.’
George screwed up his mouth. ‘That’s more by luck than by skill,’ he said.
I followed him into the dining room. Here the table and chairs were all covered in white sheets, old newspaper lining the skirting boards.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I would have prepared the living room like this – the room I was actually going to paint. Now, I don’t know if this is a nervous condition or alcohol abuse or senility. But I think nobody in their right mind would prepare one room and then paint a completely different one.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Silly old fool!’
The Liar Page 14
