‘All right, then. I’ll come to the mill with you after lunch.’
Irene hadn’t known what to expect of the mill, but a place of such size and complexity certainly hadn’t been it. With the rest of the village so sedate and bucolic, she’d half pictured most industry being done by hand. Instead, the place was powered by steam and electricity, and the din and smother of it all was shocking. She drew curious glances from the workers as Alistair led her from building to building, but when she met their eyes they jumped and went back to work with extra vigour, as though she were some sort of visiting dignitary. Which, perhaps, she was. She was introduced to the foreman, George Turner, and to his second in command, the paper-maker. Alistair talked her through the process as they went into the vast machine room – how scrap paper and old rags were cooked down, pounded into pulp and then pumped onto the Fourdrinier machine. This behemoth was near enough a hundred feet long, and six feet wide. The stuff – as the pulp was called – went onto an endless mesh that drew out the water before it rolled onto felts and proceeded, at a steady walking pace, through a succession of huge, steam-heated cylinders to dry it out. It ended up on a vast reel at the end, as finished paper. Irene nodded a lot, and tried not to sweat too visibly in the clinging heat.
Light poured into the machine room through tall metal-framed windows; the floor was awash, the air was a ruckus and the walls and every surface were spattered with paper pulp. Irene was happy to leave it for the smaller rooms where the paper was cut and stacked, and the bag room where women, whose scrutiny was more calculating, were sewing and gluing. Plain metal lanterns hung down from the ceilings, and there were large time clocks on all the walls, where the workers punched their cards in and out at the change in shift. These reminded Irene of the station clock at King’s Cross, and one of the worst days of her life, just a few months before. She struggled to keep listening, and keep smiling. Alistair took her hand and squeezed it.
‘Come along outside, darling,’ he said. ‘A breath of fresh air is what’s needed.’
‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘But thank you very much for explaining it all to me.’
‘What do you make of it all?’ he asked, as they returned to the sunny yard and walked slowly towards the old farmhouse that served for office space.
‘It’s very impressive. Far … bigger than I’d imagined.’ Alistair looked dissatisfied with this answer, so Irene sought about for more to say. ‘So much machinery and noise and … and steam. It looks like hard work for the men. And it must be dangerous – I mean, it must all take careful management.’
‘In fact, Mr Turner keeps it running almost as smoothly as the Fourdrinier itself, as a rule. He’s jolly good; been here for years, like a lot of the more senior men. As for dangerous – not as much as you might think. There’s only been one serious accident, but that was years ago, before I was born.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was just along at Rag Mill. The villagers used to roast apples and potatoes in the coals beneath the boiler. By pure ill-luck, some of them were fetching theirs out when the boiler exploded. It’s a very rare occurrence, and the man in charge was fired at once for not having replaced a faulty valve.’
‘And people were hurt?’
‘Three were killed, in fact, including a young boy, only ten years old. He was blown clean across the river, by all accounts. A terrible tragedy. I can assure you that I take the safety of my workers very seriously.’
‘How awful,’ said Irene.
‘Yes, but other than that – and one robbery, also years ago, when an office boy was hit over the head – we’ve never had any trouble. Now, what shall I show you next?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Irene, struggling to muster the enthusiasm Alistair seemed to need. ‘You choose.’ He looked down at her for a moment – he was a good head taller – then smiled.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘My office, and a cup of tea.’
Irene looked in on Verney and the Tanner boy when she got back to the farm, but there wasn’t much to see in the old schoolroom except mess, and she felt awkward, as if checking up on them, so she left them to their work. The walls would be bright white; there’d be a translucent marble surround for the fire; curtains sent down from Liberty; a red lacquered table by Eileen Gray; a gold chair by Jean Dunand; the turquoise and grey silk Persian rug she’d inherited from her grandmother; her black Underwood typewriter and a stack of immaculate bond paper. Things the likes of which Manor Farm had never seen before. She would make herself a corner of her old life to retreat to, when the reality of the new one became unbearable. Maybe then she would be able to start writing again, and have that solace as well. Her newspaper column – just society gossip, really, even if she’d tried to make it more than that – had ceased, of course, with her departure from London, and the manner of it. The novel she’d begun – a romance – had stalled at four chapters. Whenever she tried to write now, she was faced with a blank page, a blank mind, and feelings of profound futility. She drifted through the rooms of the farmhouse, making Florence the maid and Clara Gosling, the housekeeper, dodge about her as they tried to work, always polite but radiating impatience. The main body of the house was long and narrow, with low ceilings and bulging plaster. The rooms followed each other along a corridor in steady succession. Sunlight flooded through the windows, onto the comfortable carpets and furniture, all of which were from some previous century. Elm floorboards creaked beneath her feet; the turgid air parted for her then swirled to stillness again.
Irene went into the study, a deeply masculine room of dark oak and leather books, and stood for a while in front of the portrait of Alistair’s parents. Alistair looked a lot like his father – after whom he’d been named – and very little like his mother. Tabitha Hadleigh had been short and serious; her eyes fractionally too close together, her mouth fractionally too small. In their wedding portrait she was swathed in a very Victorian dress involving mounds of ruffles, lace and ribbons, yet still managed to look sombre. Irene wondered how she would have felt if she’d lived to see her son grow up, and seen how little of her there was in him. Alistair was no memorial to her whatsoever. In a photograph of him as a boy of about seven, his arms wrapped around a wire-haired terrier, the features he would have as a man were visible, if unformed, and the warm light in his eyes was already there. Alistair senior must have been chipper, she thought – or young Alistair must have had a kindly nanny; surely no child raised solely by Nancy could look so happy.
From a south-facing window she watched the wind ripple the long grass between the apple and pear trees in the orchard. Down the hill to the south-west sat the church of St Nicholas, its graveyard aglow with buttercups. Beyond that rose the smoke and steam of the mill, seething on the riverbank like some vast creature. She saw the girl groom, Pudding Cartwright, sweeping the yard with vigour. None of the girl’s clothes seemed to fit her – she always looked as though she might be about to burst out of them. But then, that had been the overall impression she’d given Irene – of being about to burst out. With words or enthusiasm, or energy; or perhaps something else. There’d been something eager about her that was almost desperate. Now she was sweeping the yard as though, if she swept it well enough, good things would happen. Pausing to catch her breath, Pudding turned her face to the sky, to the sun and the breeze, and closed her eyes, and Irene wished she herself knew how to be outdoors. Here, in the countryside, surrounded by endless fields and grass and trees and water and mud and animals. It was all alien to her, but unless she could find a way to love it, Manor Farm would close its walls around her, forever, and she didn’t think she would survive that. There was a knock at the front door, and the sound of Nancy greeting a female caller and taking her into the back sitting room, which was unofficially Nancy’s, for tea. Irene was not asked to join them. She dithered a while in the corridor outside, wondering if she should knock and introduce herself, but then she heard Nancy say:
‘The girl’s quite useless. Honestly, I do
n’t know what my nephew was thinking, in marrying her. He’s always had a soft spot for birds with broken wings, but as far as I can tell, this one hasn’t even got any wings.’ So she left them to it.
Sometime later Florence came to find Irene, leaning on the door handle in the way that Nancy always berated her for, as though, at sixteen, her body was exhausted.
‘Beg pardon, ma’am, only that Verney Blunt asks for ’ee, down in the schoolroom,’ she said. ‘Reckons he’s found something.’ Her accent made the last word sound like zome-urr, and down had two syllables: dow-wun.
‘Thank you, Florence.’ She felt the girl watching her as she left the room ahead of her. They all watched her, Irene realised. Perhaps they, too, were wondering how on earth she’d got there, and why. She tried not to be nervous of talking to the workmen by herself, and when that failed she tried not to let it show. ‘What is it, Mr Blunt?’ she said, as she came into the room, surprised by how frigid she sounded. The old furniture had been removed; the floor was covered in dust sheets; the ceiling gleamed whitely, wetly, and the frieze that had covered the fireplace was off. On the hearth, on another sheet, was a slew of soot, fragments of mortar, and the broken remains of birds’ nests. Verney Blunt and the Tanner boy stood to either side of this pile, their faces tense and their bodies braced. They looked up as though startled.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Hadleigh, but it’s that,’ said Verney. He pointed at the mess from the chimney as though a live snake lay there. Irene’s pulse picked up.
‘What?’ She followed his pointing finger with her eyes.
‘That, missus! The votive!’ said the boy.
Puzzled, Irene stared down at the pile. Then she saw it. Blackened, dishevelled, incongruous amidst the dreck, was a doll. However it had once looked, it now looked hideous – whatever had been used to give it a face had shrivelled beyond recognition; its wired limbs were all twisted and broken. But it was still recognisably a doll; it had a bonnet and a rough dress of blue fabric, held together with big, neat stitches, and someone had also stitched a simple daisy motif on its front. Irene crouched down and reached for it.
‘Don’t touch it, yer daft cow!’ said the Tanner boy, urgently, and Irene’s cheeks blazed.
‘Joseph, watch your lip!’ said Verney. ‘Sorry, Mrs Hadleigh, but he might be right about not touching it.’
‘Why on earth not? It’s just somebody’s old doll,’ said Irene.
‘It may be, but when dolls is put up chimneys … well, round here, that can be witchery, ma’am,’ said Verney.
‘Witchery? You’re not serious?’
‘I’m proper serious, ma’am.’ Man and boy went back to staring at the doll, as though daring it to move or hex them in some way. Irene decided that they were pulling her leg. Mocking her. That this would become a funny story, told in the pub at her expense. She swallowed.
‘Well, I don’t believe in witchcraft, so I suppose I’m safe.’ She reached for the doll and picked it up, ignoring a frustrated hiss from the boy.
‘That’s gone and done it,’ he muttered, darkly.
‘It’s filthy, Mrs Hadleigh. You’ll spoil yer nice things,’ Verney grumbled.
Irene turned the doll over gently in her hands, feeling bits of twig and soot come away onto her fingers. It was only about eight inches tall, and its little head, which once might have been canvas wrapped around some kind of fruit, had been painted with a rudimentary face – blobs for eyes and nose; a rough, uneven smile. Beneath its dress, its body felt like lumpy rags. It looked like a doll home-made for a child out of whatever could be found, and though Irene wanted to find it charming there was something about it that was not. Perhaps it was only the men, still watching her intently, waiting for whatever would happen next, but Irene began to feel uneasy. She stared into the doll’s smudged face and noticed a slip in time – the moment stretching out too long, and the silence in the room ringing in her ears with a high bell tone. She felt something shift, though she couldn’t tell if it was within her or without; she felt that she had passed a mark of some kind, and that things must change thereafter. Troubled, she curled her hands carefully, protectively, around the grotesque little doll.
3
Nature’s Child
Sometimes, Clemmie’s sisters turned on her. She had three: Mary and Josie, who were older, and Liz, who was younger by a year. They’d had a brother too: Walter. But he was five years dead and they rarely spoke of him – the gap at the table where he should have been was enough of a reminder of the hole he’d left in all of them. None of them needed reminding of the way he’d died. Blown to pieces; barely enough left to bury. His room stayed empty, when the girls could have spread out into it. Instead, they remained in their loft room, like pigeons, sharing two vast old beds with their monthly cycles perfectly synchronised and their moods like a single tide of ebb and flow. But sometimes the others reached a point of saturation with Clemmie being the most beautiful, the most strange and often forgiven, the most talked about. Even Josie, with whom Clemmie had always had a special connection. Past that point they couldn’t stand it any longer – they lost their individuality, like water droplets merging, and became a single entity of sibling rivalry that turned hard eyes on its mute sister. How long this would take to pass varied a great deal.
When it happened on Friday morning Clemmie was wise to it at once: Liz’s glower, putting a crease between her dark brows; the way Mary snatched the hairbrush away when Clemmie reached for it; the way Josie rolled her eyes and ignored her when she signed good morning. It hurt, every time, but Clemmie knew she had no choice but to weather it; no choice but to wait for it to break. At breakfast, Mary put salt in Clemmie’s tea instead of sugar, and handed her the cup with a smirk. Liz and Josie refused to ‘hear’ any of her requests for things to be passed – the gestures she used that the whole family knew. Then Liz grabbed Clemmie’s favourite black kitten from her lap and dropped it out of the kitchen window, leaving it squeaking in fright on the yard. At this, Clemmie slapped her palm on the table top in distress, which made their father look up sharply.
‘Was there a beetle, Clem?’ Mary asked, innocently.
‘You wenches pack it in,’ said William Matlock. He was grizzled, weatherworn, his skin like creased bronze leather around a salt and pepper thatch of beard. His wife, the girls’ mother, Rose, drifted from stove to table, bringing fried eggs and bread soaked in dripping, and slices of ham and cheese. There was grease in the whiskers on William’s chin. Once, he’d been hard on the outside and soft on the inside – Clemmie remembered his rough hands under her arms, lifting her onto his shoulders when she was very small. But since Walter’s death he seemed to have gone hard all the way through, and his teenaged daughters seemed to plague him like gnats around his head.
The kitchen table was scrubbed, bleached by years of sun and wear; every wall and low beam of the room was hung with tools and pots and utensils, some related to cooking, some to farming – sieves, drenching funnels, coils of wire, scythe blades, shears, rasps and branding irons. Some things were so rusted and ancient they’d been forgotten about, and colonised by spiders. The door was so often left open in the warm weather that a robin had nested in the top of an old jar of nails, and the hens wandered in and out, hopeful of scraps. The room faced south-west – the whole farm faced south-west – and was still shaded. By noon, sunlight would burnish every surface. Clemmie’s hands smelled of milk, muck and coal tar soap – all of the girls’ hands did, after morning milking.
They cornered her as she hunted for eggs in the small barn, where the hens nested in the hay and fouled it up with feathers and droppings. Mary and Josie wrestled her down and held her, and she fought them pointlessly for a while, her face pounding with blood and injustice. She knew nothing truly bad would happen, but still felt traces of unease and remembered fear – the man at the edge of the woods on the way to Ford, a year ago, holding her wrists in one hand as he groped her with the other, saying, You want it, don’t you, girl? Tell me I’m w
rong. She wondered if her sisters realised that they reminded her of this, as they gritted their teeth with the effort, and let their fingers bruise her arms. She kicked for a while but they stayed out of range, and when she fell still, Liz, with her cute pug nose and bow lips, knelt beside her with an egg in her hand.
‘If you don’t want this in your hair, you’ve only to say,’ she said. She’d have to wash it out in a bucket of water; go through the painful process of teasing the knots out of her wet hair all over again, fall far behind with her chores, risk the back of William’s hand.
‘I think she wants it,’ said Mary.
‘You’ve only to say, Clem, if you don’t,’ Josie urged her.
‘Perhaps she’s tired of being so pretty,’ said Mary.
‘Perhaps she’s tired of being so strange.’
‘Or perhaps she loves it. Perhaps she loves being nature’s child.’ This was a term their teacher had used, during the few brief years they’d gone to school in Biddestone, as she’d petted Clemmie’s pale frizz of hair and not scolded her silence or lack of attention.
‘If she’s nature’s child then she can’t be our sister, can she?’ said Liz.
The egg slapped into her scalp with a wet crunch. Clemmie screwed her eyes tight shut as the gluey liquid rolled down towards them. She was aware of making a sound in her throat, a strangled sound which, in anyone else’s mouth, would have come out as words; as get off me.
‘Oh dear, what a mess,’ said Liz, finding a glob of chicken shit on a wisp of hay and adding it to the egg. This done, the three girls went still, and silent. For a while the only sound in the barn was of their rapid breathing, and, from high in the haystack, the fussing of a worried hen. Then they let her go and stood back as she struggled to her feet. The four of them glared at one another and Clemmie felt the shift, as they watched her shake and the mess drip down her forehead – the subtle shift from triumph and spite to sheepish defiance, and the inevitable onset of contrition. Josie broke first, as she always did. She held out her hand to Clemmie, rolling her eyes and blowing a lock of mouse-brown hair off her forehead.
The Hiding Places Page 5
