by Ann Cleeves
Peter and Amelia turned up eventually. There was a frostiness between them which made Rachael think they’d had a row in the car. Amelia made a show of ignoring the food, then disappeared into the ladies’.
‘You see,’ Peter said. ‘I came. You know I always take your advice.’
Christ, Rachael thought, was I really taken in by that sort of thing?
His eyes wandered over her shoulder and she realized he was checking that they could not be overheard. ‘What made you think I was at Bella’s the afternoon she died?’
‘Nothing. It was a silly mistake.’
He pressed her but she wouldn’t say any more. At last he seemed satisfied.
Of the ugly woman with the bags there was no sign. Rachael stayed longer than she otherwise would have done, expecting the stranger to make a dramatic late entrance as she had at the crematorium. She asked around, but no one seemed to know who the woman was. Then she realized that Dougie too was missing and thought perhaps the woman was a relative of his, that they were spending some time together.
She was just about to gather up Edie to go when she was startled by a touch on the shoulder. She turned sharply to find Neville so close to her that she could see a stray white hair in his beard, smell the soap he had used.
‘I’m glad you were able to come,’ he said. ‘You are Rachael? I wasn’t sure you’d be able to face it. Not after . . .’
She interrupted him quickly, not because he seemed in the slightest embarrassed but because there was a real point to be made. ‘I couldn’t have missed it. We were real friends, Bella and I.’
‘She used to talk about you.’
‘Did she?’ Rachael was surprised. She hadn’t realized there’d been that much contact between Neville and Bella.
‘Oh yes.’ Because he was short for a man she looked almost straight into his eyes. ‘Had you been in touch lately?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, I thought you might have some idea why . . .’
‘No.’
‘I was fond of her, you know. I was very young when Mum died. I was glad when Dad found someone else. I was pleased for them.’
‘Of course.’ Bella had never mentioned him much at all, but that hardly seemed an appropriate thing to say. ‘How is your father?’
For the first time he seemed embarrassed. ‘How can anyone know?’
‘Bella always seemed to.’
‘Did she? I thought that was self-delusion. Her way of facing it. I can’t, you know. Face it. Not really. That’s why I’ve been so bad about visiting lately.’
‘Is someone from the nursing home giving him a lift?’
She hoped he might put a name to the woman with the bags but Neville said sharply: ‘He’s not coming here. He’s gone straight back to Rosemount. They say he’s better keeping to a routine.’
‘I see.’ Rachael hoped that Neville had at least asked Dougie if he wanted to be ferried straight back to the home. Dougie always enjoyed a party, even after his illness. They’d had a do at Baikie’s at the end of her project. Peter had been there, and all the other students. One of the boys had brought a violin. Bella had wrapped Dougie up and wheeled him down the track to the cottage. Rachael could picture him, watching the dancing, his eyes gleaming, beating time with his good hand to the fiddle music.
Chapter Eight
Rachael and Edie stood outside the White Hart Hotel. Rachael’s attention was distracted for a moment by a black car which drove past them up the street. She thought she recognized Anne Preece sitting in the passenger seat but didn’t see the driver.
‘Come home for something proper to eat,’ Edie said. ‘I’ve made soup. I thought it would be comforting.’
‘Very mumsy.’
‘I can do it,’ Edie said grandly, ‘if I want to.’
They ate the soup in the kitchen at Riverside Terrace.
‘Well?’ Edie said. ‘What did you make of that?’ Rachael imagined her asking the same question of her Theatre Studies group after a trip to the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. They would regard her with the same awkward silence which was Rachael’s response now, unwilling to commit themselves, preferring something more specific.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Think!’ Edie could never, Rachael thought, have been anything other than a teacher. ‘I mean what does it tell us?’
‘Nothing,’ Rachael said in frustration. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Of course it does. Doesn’t it seem odd that there was no one there from her past? No old school friend, no cousin.’
‘There was the woman with the bags.’
‘I’m not sure about her. If she was a genuine mourner why didn’t she make herself known?’
‘Perhaps Bella wasn’t local then. The Gazette only goes to Kimmerston and the surrounding villages.’
‘That tells us something then, doesn’t it?’
‘Not much.’
‘In all those conversations she must have told you something about what she’d done before she turned up at the farm to look after Dougie’s mum.’
‘I’m not sure.’ On reflection all their conversations had been one-sided. Rachael had talked about her childhood, what it had been like to be brought up by such a right-on mother as Edie, her resentment at not knowing anything about her father. Bella had listened, commented, but seldom brought her own experience into the conversation.
‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’ Edie said. ‘I mean, doesn’t it suggest that she might have something to hide?’
‘Of course not,’ Rachael retorted. ‘We don’t all feel the need to discuss our childhood traumas with the woman behind us in the supermarket queue.’
Edie ignored the insult. ‘But most of us give away some information about our family, where we went to school, work . . .’
‘I think she might have gone to agricultural college,’ Rachael said, ‘to study horticulture. Or perhaps her parents had a market garden. She knew about gardening but she didn’t enjoy it. She said she’d been put off when she was young. That’s why she never bothered with a vegetable garden at Black Law. I thought it was the wind or the frost, but she said it was a luxury to buy her veg from the supermarket.’
‘It’s not much to go on.’
‘I’m sorry. She valued her privacy. Perhaps that’s not something you’d understand.’
‘It’s something I understand very well.’ Again, unspoken, Rachael’s father came between them. ‘Was she married before?’
‘No.’
‘Why are you so certain?’
‘She called Dougie her one and only true love.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything. People don’t always marry for love.’
‘Bella would.’
‘Yuck! What was her maiden name? I suppose you do know that.’
‘Davison.’
‘And Bella? Is that short for Isabella? Any second name? So I can look in the records.’
‘She signed herself I. R. Furness. I don’t know what the R’s for.’
‘But we don’t think she was local.’
‘She had a local accent,’ Rachael said uncertainly. ‘But I had the impression that she’d lived away for a time. Perhaps she’d lost touch with people then.’
‘How did she get the job at Black Law? Through the Job Centre?’
‘No. Dougie put an advert in the Gazette. She told me about that. About seeing it and ringing him up on impulse. She did say she was desperate for work or she’d never have had the nerve. He met her at the bus stop at Langholme and brought her to the farm. It was supposed to be an interview but they ended up chatting like friends. I asked her if she didn’t feel she was putting herself at risk, driving with a total stranger into the middle of nowhere. She said not once she’d seen him.’ Rachael looked at her mother. ‘I know. Yuck. Very romantic. But that’s why I thought she’d not had any serious relationships before. She’d not had the chance to get cynical.’
‘Wouldn’t Dougie have taken up references?’
&n
bsp; ‘I shouldn’t have thought so for a minute. If he’d liked her it wouldn’t have crossed his mind.’
‘When was that?’
‘Seven years ago. The old lady died two years later. They were married soon after. Quickly. Register Office. No fuss. That was Bella’s decision. I think Dougie would have liked more of a show.’
‘Why wait for Dougie’s mother to die?’
‘How should I know?’ It came out as an ill-tempered shout. She’d had enough of talking. ‘Look, I should get back.’ She thought she might fit in an evening count before dusk, imagined the hill in the last of the light, the skylarks calling.
‘Do you have to?’
‘Why?’
‘You’re right. You’re not the person to answer. We should speak to Dougie.’
‘Grace has a friend staying. I suppose I could leave it until morning.’ She could hear the reluctance in her voice. She would rather be on the hill.
‘If you don’t want me there I can fix up for you to go to Rosemount on your own.’
‘Mother!’ Rachael slapped the table with the flat of her hand. ‘Stop being so bloody understanding.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course I want you there.’
Dougie had been prepared for bed. He wore pyjamas, striped like an old-fashioned prison uniform, with Rosemount Private Nursing Home stamped in red on the collar, a thin towelling dressing gown, brown tartan slippers. The slippers had been put on the wrong feet. He had his own room, pleasant enough, looking over the garden, though it was nothing compared with the view at Black Law. It was very hot. Dougie was perspiring. Rachael had pulled off her sweater as soon as she came into the building.
Outside in the corridor there was constant noise – the clatter of a wheelchair, staff voices shouting about baths and commodes and what had happened to Mrs Price’s tablets, patients, confused and distressed.
When they arrived Dougie was staring at a portable television which stood on a mock pine formica chest of drawers. The sound was so low that Rachael could hardly hear it. Dougie seemed mesmerized by the fuzzy flashing pictures.
They think he’s daft, Rachael thought, and wondered angrily what Neville had told them. Yet when they went in it was clear that Dougie recognized her. The sister, who showed them into the room, was taken aback by the quick, lop-sided smile, the good hand patting the arm of the chair to indicate that Rachael should come closer.
‘You’ve got some visitors, Mr Furness,’ she said shouting, as if he had deliberately misheard her, and Rachael thought it was the first time she had spoken directly to him. The visit had been worth it just for that.
Rachael squatted beside him, put her hand on his. ‘Oh, Dougie,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The sister looked at her watch, muttered something to Edie about being in her office if she was needed, and went out.
It was a strange conversation, as intensely focused as one of Edie’s therapy sessions. Dougie communicated by nods, grunts, squeezes of the hand, yet they understood each other. Occasionally they were distracted by the skittering sound in the corridor of soft shoes on polished lino, a high-pitched squeal, the noise, Rachael thought, of rats in a barn, but soon they retuned to the business in hand. It came down to this: Bella had killed herself and they couldn’t understand why.
‘I want to find out,’ Rachael said. ‘Do you mind? Perhaps you would prefer she was left in peace.’
Dougie made it clear he would prefer nothing of the sort.
‘I’d like to look in the house.’
He turned his head away from her and stared back at the television. At first Rachael thought she had offended him, but he clasped her fingers even tighter. It was Edie who followed his gaze, went to the chest of drawers and returned with a bunch of keys.
‘Are these the Black Law keys, Dougie?’
But Rachael had already recognized them. They had hung on a cup hook in the kitchen between Dougie’s Newcastle United mug and the giant yellow and green teacup from which Bella drank her coffee.
‘I should tell Neville, shouldn’t I, that I’ll be going into the house?’
She looked at him, waiting for an answer but his concentration had gone. In the corridor there was another minor disturbance. A woman screamed in a high, thin voice: ‘Go away, don’t touch me. Your hands are wet. Your hands are wet!’ There were running footsteps, soothing voices but Dougie seemed not to hear.
Rachael, still crouched on the floor, turned so she was speaking almost into his ear, a child whispering secrets, forcing him to pay attention.
‘Tell me, Dougie, do you remember the day Bella died?’
He continued to stare at the flickering images on the television but she thought he was remembering. What did he see? Bella in the house at Black Law bending over his bed? Bella dressing up to die?
‘Did anyone come to Black Law that day? I expect you heard me. I drove through the yard just as it was getting dark. All the dogs started barking. But did anyone come before that?’
He seemed lost in thought.
‘Was anyone there before me, Dougie?’
She was aware of an effort of memory. He nodded.
‘Inside the house?’
He nodded again.
‘Did you see them? Do you know who it was? Or hear a voice you could recognize?’
Painfully he shook his head.
Chapter Nine
Overnight the wind had dropped. There was frost in the valley bottoms and beneath the dry stone walls. The smoke from Baikie’s chimney rose straight into the sky.
Grace was in the kitchen making toast. She held the tiny grill pan close to the gas flame. Otherwise you could wait for hours. She was alone.
‘Did your friend come?’ Rachael asked. The smell of the toasting bread made her feel hungry. She’d left home deliberately, before Edie was up.
‘Yesterday afternoon.’
‘Stay the night?’
Grace shook her head, not just an answer to the question but a way of making it clear that no other information would be forthcoming. ‘How was the funeral?’ she asked. She put the toast on a plate, spread it thinly with margarine, cut it in half and offered a piece to Rachael. Rachael took it and added marmalade.
‘Oh, you know.’
‘I can’t remember ever having been to a funeral,’ Grace said. Rachael thought it was an odd way to put it. It wasn’t a thing you’d forget. Then the door opened and Anne came in looking very pink and healthy like a child bursting into the house demanding tea after playing out in the street with friends.
‘I didn’t hear the car,’ Rachael said.
‘No, I got Jem to drop me at the end of the track. I thought it looked a nice morning for a walk.’
‘I’ve not long arrived. I must have just missed you.’
Anne grinned and Rachael thought it wasn’t Jeremy who’d dropped her at the end of the track but whichever lover she’d spent the night with.
‘Have you had breakfast?’ Grace asked. She cut another slice from the loaf and put it under the grill. Rachael had never before seen her prepare food without prompting.
‘No,’ Anne said. ‘I didn’t seem to have time.’
Anyone that smug, Rachael thought, deserved to be gossiped about. She waited until Anne and Grace were on the hill before going into the farmhouse. She didn’t want to explain what she was up to. They might have thought her morbid.
There were two doors into the house. The one Rachael had always used led straight from the yard into the kitchen. It was modern, hardwood and double-glazed with a double lock as standard. Dougie had bought the door when he had the kitchen renovated for Bella. It had been a surprise, a sort of wedding present, a new start anyway. In the old lady’s day the kitchen had been small, dark and draughty, leading into a leaking scullery with a twin tub washing machine and a wringer. Bella had grumbled mildly about the twin tub. It had been before Rachael’s time but she’d heard the story: ‘By then there were sheets to wash most days. Ivy couldn’t help herse
lf. I had muscles like a weightlifter lugging them, soaking, into the spinner. Poor lamb. It’s not the way I’d want to end up.’
After the wedding Bella had gone away for a few days – Rachael wondered now where she could have gone – and came back to find the new kitchen. Apparently she’d pointed out a photo in a magazine to Dougie, said what a picture it was and he’d copied it exactly. His mother had left him some shares and he’d blown the lot on it.
It was the washing machine which pleased Bella most though, as she said wryly to Rachael, it would have been more handy when the old lady was alive and she had bedding to do every day.
The kitchen was tidier than Rachael had ever seen it. Bella had obviously cleaned the floor just before she died. On the window sill there were plants which needed watering but she’d never bothered much about those. In the drawers and cupboards there was nothing to give a clue to her past.
Rachael moved on to the small parlour where Mrs Furness had sat in the evenings before taking to her bed. Nothing much could have changed since then. There was an upright piano, small dark wood tables with crocheted runners, framed embroidered samplers, a standard lamp with a fringed shade. The photos were of Dougie with his first wife, Neville as a small boy. In her day Ivy Furness must have been a fit and active woman. Dougie’s first wife had died, quite suddenly, of a brain haemorrhage when the boy was two and Ivy had taken the family on. It occurred to Rachael that Neville must have regarded her almost as his mother. Perhaps he’d been closer to her than to Dougie. It would be interesting to find out if he’d been more assiduous about visiting her than his father.
