‘Well, that’s a charming welcome,’ said Nancy, stepping forwards. She wore her usual shirt and slacks, tidy but just slightly faded; her old, creased boots; a silk scarf over her hair, knotted under her chin.
‘It’s all the summer grass after the rain, Miss H,’ Pudding blurted out.
‘I’m well aware of that, Pudding.’ Nancy slapped Robin hard on his neck, and ran practised eyes over him. ‘Nice enough creature. Not too big. Nothing to alarm – a bit fat, mind you.’ With this she gave Pudding a stern look. ‘What do you say, Irene?’
‘Well,’ said Irene, starting slightly. Her voice was subdued. She clenched her hands together. ‘He seems fine.’ There was a pause while Nancy skewered Irene with one of her smiles, which Pudding knew well, so she stepped forward and held out her own hand.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Hadleigh. Mr H mentioned that you haven’t done very much riding before, but I’ve been out on Robin a few times now, and he really is as gentle as a lamb. He didn’t even spook when the charabanc passed us in the lane on Monday, and heaven knows it makes enough smoke and racket. You’ll be as safe as houses on him, I promise you.’ She shook Irene’s hand perhaps too vigorously, and faced down her nerves, even though Irene’s eyes were as glassy and blank as ink spots. For a moment Pudding baulked, and felt a pang of puzzled sorrow that lovely, sunny Mr Hadleigh should have wed such a cold creature. But then it dawned on her that Irene simply looked fagged. Utterly exhausted.
‘Well,’ said Irene, pausing to clear her throat. ‘In fact, I’ve never even sat on a horse. I’ve never quite seen the point, when I’ve two good legs of my own.’
‘Yes, and a car to drive you everywhere,’ said Nancy. ‘Come the winter, not many things with wheels are any use around here.’
‘Oh, and riding is so much fun! And such a wonderful way to see the world,’ said Pudding.
‘The world?’ Irene echoed, with a trace of something bitter in her tone.
‘Yes. Well … that is, this corner of it, anyway,’ Pudding amended. ‘Shall I saddle him up for you? I could walk you out on the lead rein, if you like, just to get a feel for it? Or even just around the paddock.’
‘Now?’ said Irene, alarmed.
‘Yes, why not hop up? Only way to find out if you like it. Alistair would be thrilled to hear you’d given it a go,’ said Nancy, brightly, and Irene looked horrified.
‘I just thought … since you’d dressed for riding …’ Pudding trailed off. Two spots of colour had appeared on Irene Hadleigh’s cheeks. She looked as though she’d like nothing better than to turn tail and flee. ‘But you needn’t, of course,’ Pudding added.
‘Nonsense. No time like the present. How are you ever going to hunt at Alistair’s side if you won’t even get on?’
‘I just … hadn’t thought to …’ Irene floundered, and Nancy stared at her meanly, and didn’t help at all, so Pudding came to her rescue again.
‘Well, why don’t I ride him in the paddock for a bit, so you can see his paces?’ She saw Irene’s shoulders drop in relief, and with a small noise of derision Nancy went over to feed Bally Girl a carrot from her pocket.
So Pudding rode Robin in some large circles, loops and figure-eights; in walk, trot and canter. She even popped over a few small jumps, and was enjoying herself so much and concentrating so hard on showing him off that she didn’t notice at which point Nancy and Irene stopped watching and left – Nancy across the field to the churchyard, and her brother’s grave, and Irene presumably back to the house. Puffed out and sweaty, Pudding let Robin walk on a loose rein back to the yard. The horse was puffing too, and Pudding worried that if she got any bigger, she’d be too heavy to ride him. She spent the next hour scouring off the last of Tufty’s winter coat with a curry comb – clouds and clouds of greasy, greyish hair; something for the swallows to line their nests with – and tried not to be disappointed by this first meeting with Irene Hadleigh. She’d been tentatively looking forward to having someone a bit closer to her own age to ride out with, even if she was a Londoner and very upper. Or at least to hearing a bit about London life – the constant parties and balls and bohemian salons and jazz dancing of which she imagined London life to consist. But Irene Hadleigh, though she’d married one of the nicest and best men for fifty miles in any direction, had looked as though she’d rather have been anywhere else than at Manor Farm. A china doll who longed to be back in her box.
At one o’clock, Pudding went to fetch Donny to go home for lunch. Her brother worked at Manor Farm as well, helping the head gardener Jeremiah Welch, whom everyone knew as Jem. He’d been the gardener at Manor Farm for forty years; his body was a strip of bone and sinew, stronger than tree roots and just as brown, and he kept ferrets – there was usually one about his person somewhere, and if there wasn’t then their particular smell remained.
‘Hello, Jem, are you well?’ Pudding called to him, waving.
‘Lass,’ Jem replied, his Wiltshire drawl stretching out the word. ‘Your Don’s hoeing the rose beds.’
‘Right you are.’ The rose garden was behind high brick walls, sheltered and hot. The perfume of the flowers was as rich as their mad profusion of colour. Donny was in the far corner, with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a brown apron over the top. Pudding was always surprised by the breadth of his shoulders, the solidity of him through the hips and waist that told of his strength. A man’s strength. She still half expected to see the lanky boy he’d been when he’d gone off to enlist. He’d been tall enough, and his brows heavy enough, for his lie of being eighteen to pass, but he’d been only sixteen. Pudding remembered being on fire with admiration for him that day, and could hardly bear to think of it now. She hadn’t had a clue what going to war meant. Donny was sweating, and though he held the hoe ready to work, he was standing stock-still. It happened sometimes – if something made him pause, he might remain paused until somebody came along to restart him. Pudding made sure she’d stepped into his line of sight before she touched his arm to rouse him, but he still flinched. ‘It’s just me, Donny,’ she said, and he smiled, reaching out to pinch her chin between his thumb and forefinger. The sun threw the scar on his head into relief – Pudding could hardly look at it. A flat depression the size of her palm, on the right side of his head, mostly under his hair but coming onto his forehead too, surrounded by knotty scar tissue. ‘Time for lunch,’ she said. Donny straightened up, bringing the hoe to his side.
‘Right you are,’ he agreed.
‘Looks like you’ve been working hard this morning.’ Pudding looked around at the neat beds and the fresh, weed-free soil Donny had worked between the rose bushes. Then she looked down at the bushes nearest to them, and said ‘Oh!’ before she could stop herself.
The two rose bushes at Donny’s feet were in shreds. Mature bushes, two and a half feet high, one white, one pale yellow – the colours Nancy Hadleigh liked for her brother’s grave. Their petals, leaves and green stems had been chopped to pieces by the hoe. Pudding stirred the sad confetti with her toe. ‘Oh, Donny, what happened here?’ she said quietly, immediately trying to think of a way to conceal the damage. It would be impossible, of course. She felt a tremor go through her brother and looked up at him, fearfully. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, but it wasn’t. Donny’s face had clouded with rage – that anger with himself that was so terribly destructive for having nowhere to go; no object other than his own intangible frailty. His mouth worked, his skin flushed carmine, and he shook. His hands on the shaft of the hoe were white with the strain of gripping it, and Pudding had to ignore the urge to step back, out of its range. Donny would never hurt her. She knew that so deep down it was written on her bones. But sometimes, since Donny had come home, he stopped being Donny, exactly, and got lost inside himself. Pudding stepped closer, so that he had to see her, and rubbed her hand on his forearm. ‘Well, Donny, they’ll grow back, won’t they?’ she said. She could feel the tension in him, like the vibrations in the ground near the beating house of the mill; li
ke the way she could feel when a horse was about to bolt – that shuddering of pent-up energy that had to go somewhere. She could almost smell it. ‘What do you fancy for lunch?’ she said, refusing to show the least concern.
She kept on talking to him, and after a while his breathing slowed and the tension left him, and he shut his eyes, covering them with one muddy hand, squeezing tears into the lashes. ‘Come on, then, or we’ll miss out,’ she said, and he let himself be led away. She would see Jem and Alistair Hadleigh about it after lunch, when she was sure that Donny was calm again. Jem would chew his lip and set about tidying the plants in silence; Mr Hadleigh would smile that sad, sympathetic smile he used when these things happened, and say something like, Well now, there’s no point crying over spilt milk, and Pudding would struggle to keep herself together. Even Nancy Hadleigh was kind when it came to Donny – although Pudding had long suspected that Alistair’s aunt was kinder underneath all the bristle than she liked to let on. Pudding had once seen her wring the neck of a duck the fox had got hold of – it had been left with big, bloody holes in its breast, one eye gone and a wing twisted, hanging limply behind it. Nancy had despatched it quickly and flung it onto the bonfire heap, wiping her hands on a rag, saying, No point trying to nurse it, but Pudding had seen the way her eyes gleamed, and the sad set of her mouth.
They walked down into the village, across the bridge at Rag Mill and up the steep footpath through the field that led home. The field was still called Bloody Meadow by the villagers, after the legend that King Alfred had defeated the Danes in battle there, centuries before, making the river run red with the blood of fallen warriors. They said that was how Slaughterford got its name. Donny had told Pudding the story over and over when she was little, before the war – re-enacting long, fictional accounts of the battle, blow by hideous blow, complete with sound effects and swoops of his hazel sword. She’d loved the excitement of it, the imagined glory and wonder of such an ancient time. Magic and thanes and treasure. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Donny for the story again, or to tell it to him; to bring back that time. But battles weren’t as alluring any more, and heroic death meant something now – it meant fear and pain and broken lives. Too many other boys had left Slaughterford for the war, from its precious population of eighty-one, including two Tanners, a Matlock, two Smiths and three Hancocks. Only Donny had come back. Alistair Hadleigh too, of course – but he hadn’t been a boy, or a Tommy. Instead, as they climbed and started to puff, Pudding told her brother about Irene Hadleigh, and how she hadn’t wanted to ride. She wasn’t sure Donny was listening until he stopped walking, frowning, and said:
‘You never could understand a person not wanting to ride, could you, Pud?’ He spoke slowly, concentrating hard, and Pudding grinned.
‘No, Donny. I never could.’
Spring Cottage was named after the rill of freshwater that bubbled up from the ground in front of it, trickling through a swathe of luminously green duck weed into a stone trough, and then down pipes to give Slaughterford its supply of drinking water. The house was Georgian, not particularly large but handsomely square and symmetrical, with sash windows and a big brass knocker on the front door. Inside, everything was wonderfully normal – Louise had made pea soup from the garden, and gave them a half-proud, half-annoyed list of the chores she and Ruth, their daily, had got through that morning: new paper and pink disinfectant powder in the privy, all the beds changed, the blackcurrants picked and jellied – and Dr Cartwright came bustling in late, as he always did, apologising profusely. Their house was up too steep a hill for his consultations to be held there, so he rented a room in the schoolmaster’s house in Biddestone, and cycled to and fro. Pudding surreptitiously checked her mother for signs of mishap. That was how she and her father termed what was happening to Louise. Mishaps. It was a terrible misnomer neither one of them could bring themselves to drop. But her mother looked fine, if a little tired. Her blond hair was fading as grey invaded it; there were deeper lines around her eyes and mouth than a woman of forty-eight should have, but most of those had appeared the morning Donny went off, seven years previously. It wasn’t a beautiful face, but it was wide and appealing. She was soft and rounded and perfect for hugging. The first sign of mishap was when she began to look around the room with the beginnings of a frown, as though she couldn’t remember why she’d come in, or – worse – which room she was in. Pudding was always watching for it. She never again wanted to be as unprepared, as frightened, as the time she’d come down for breakfast and found her mother standing at the stove with an egg, still in its shell, smoking in a dry pan. Louise had turned to her and smiled politely, and said, Oh, excuse me, young miss – perhaps you might help me? I’m rather worried I’ve come to the wrong address.
Pudding remembered their kitchen table from her earliest memories – gouging ancient crumbs from its seams with her thumbnail when she was bored of practising the alphabet; the cutlery drawer that jammed; the slight stickiness to the wood that no amount of scrubbing could get rid of. There was a dining room as well, with a far nicer, polished, table, but they used it less and less. The kitchen table was like the enamel pans on their hooks above the stove, and her mother’s yellow apron, and the brown teapot with the glued-together lid – anchors; things Pudding could rely upon. Ruth, who refused to give her age as anything but somewhere in the middle, sat down to lunch with them and gave the doctor the usual report of her large family’s ailments. Pudding’s father did his best to advise.
‘And my Teresa’s acne never gets any better,’ said Ruth, as they dipped their spoons into the pea soup. ‘Poor thing’s got a face like wormy meat. How’s she supposed to find a husband, looking like that?’ She appealed to the doctor as if there was something he could have been doing to help her daughter, yet wasn’t. Louise put down her spoon in protest; Donny slurped away, unconcerned. The doctor nodded kindly.
‘A girl of Teresa’s sunny disposition should have no trouble there, Ruth. These things are often simply grown out of. But she mustn’t pick at them, and damage the skin.’
‘Hilarius put a tincture of witch hazel and ash on Tufty’s infected bot bite last month,’ said Pudding. ‘It was miraculous. The boil was as big as a walnut, and really smelly, but it dried out in three days flat.’
‘Oh, good grief, Pudding, not at the table,’ said Louise.
‘Sorry, Mum.’
‘Witch hazel, you say?’ said Ruth.
Pudding wondered whether to mention the rose bushes. The last time something like that had happened, Donny had got into trouble soon afterwards. His frustration seemed to build gradually, as though the daily fight to get back to himself wore him out, and weighed him down, until it grew too much to bear. The incident at the White Hart in Ford the year before had been the worst. Patches of sticky blood on the dark stone flags, and a broken tooth; the police sergeant fetched out from Chippenham when Pete Dempsey, the local constable, couldn’t hold Donny by himself. But it hadn’t been Donny’s fault – none of it was Donny’s fault. He’d seen Aoife Moore earlier that afternoon. Aoife with her black hair and green eyes, and the dimple in her chin, who he was supposed to marry. They’d been sweethearts since they were twelve, and got engaged before he went away, but when he got back she managed ten minutes with him, and the crater in his skull, and the way he struggled to speak and eat, and ran away crying. She got engaged to a carrier’s brawny son the following month. Then Donny saw her buying black and white bull’s eyes for her little sister – five for a farthing – from the widow who sold sweets through her front window in Ford. Aoife had struggled to reach through the window, what with her pregnant belly so huge. And then the man she’d married was in the pub, with some others, and had goaded Donny. Pudding hadn’t been there, of course, but she was sure Donny must have been goaded. But the rose bushes were just a slip-up. Just a loss of concentration – his arms still working the hoe though his mind and gaze had drifted off. Pudding decided not to say anything about it.
Her fathe
r stopped her as she went upstairs to bed that night.
‘A good day today, Pudding?’ he asked, softly. Upstairs, Louise was putting Donny to bed. In some ways he’d become an oversized child, needing prompting through the bedtime rituals. Brush your teeth, Donny. Into your pyjamas, now. Their footsteps made the floorboards squeak. Pudding didn’t like to think what might happen if her mother ever didn’t recognise Donny, or forgot what had happened to him. The idea of their confusion clashing, and frightening them both, was sickening. Dr Cartwright was a gentle, smallish man – shorter than both of his offspring – with a neat face and grey whiskers. Behind round spectacles, his eyes were sad. When Donny had absconded to join up he’d gone into his consulting room in Biddestone and hadn’t come out, or admitted anyone, for the rest of the day. When he’d finally returned home he’d hugged his daughter tightly, and his eyes had been pink, and he’d said, in a tight voice, The boy’d never forgive me if I sent a telegram with his real age, would he? And Pudding, still star-struck by her brother, had said, He’s going to be a hero, Daddy. The exchange still haunted her. She was sure it haunted the doctor too. The hope in his voice, when he asked Pudding about their day, was painful to hear.
‘Yes, Dad,’ she said. ‘A good day.’
At night, Pudding read. She still had books of pony stories she was far too old for, as comforting as slipping under the blankets and finding the warm spot where the hot water bottle had been. Or she read the tuppenny story papers – love stories and lurid accounts of true crimes. Ruth sometimes passed on well-thumbed copies of Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal and Woman’s Weekly for her to read as well.
‘Since your own mother’s in no state to teach you,’ she’d said the first time she’d brought one over, pursing her lips afterwards and colouring up. Pudding did like to read about clothes and hosiery and lipstick, and what she should be knitting, or doing to her skin to make it bloom (in fact, her skin was perfect), but at the same time she felt that none of it was really relevant to her. It was interesting, but like reading the romances or the murder stories – not something that would ever happen in real life. She had bobbed her hair the year before, though, in imitation of the cover star of one of the magazines, and much to her mother’s upset. But it hadn’t hung in a straight, glossy line like Irene Hadleigh’s, with razor edges and a halo of reflected light. Pudding’s hair was thick and bushy, so it’d stuck out from the sides of her head in a triangle, and made her look even wider. Appalled, she’d let it grow back, and in any case it spent most of its life in a hairnet, held back with clips or crushed into the shape of a riding hat and sweaty at the edges.
The Hiding Places Page 3
