‘Good morning, Pudding. Looks like you’ve your work cut out for you there,’ he said.
‘Rather. It’s not very different to beating out a carpet, if truth be told,’ she said.
‘Indeed. Poor Dundee. A rather ignominious comparison.’ Alistair rubbed the cob’s neck for a while longer, and Pudding recognised his slight hesitation. Whenever he had something to say about Donny, he showed this gentle reluctance to do so.
‘Donny was most upset, and very sorry about the roses, Mr Hadleigh. Really, he was,’ Pudding rushed in, to help him.
‘Of course he was. And, really, it’s not important.’ Alistair looked at her frankly. ‘My wife doesn’t seem to care for the gardens overly much. Chances are the bushes will have quite recovered by the time she goes out to see them. And Nancy only cuts them for my father’s grave each week. She doesn’t really like them for themselves, if that makes sense.’ He sounded so sad that Pudding searched desperately for something cheering to say.
‘Well, perhaps it’s only roses Mrs Hadleigh doesn’t care for? My aunt can’t stand the things – they make her eyes stream. They were so bloody and swollen when I saw her last year, she looked diseased.’ Pudding stopped, sensing she’d gone too far with this description.
‘Yes? Poor woman,’ Alistair murmured. ‘Well, perhaps that’s it. In any case, they’ll all have gone over in another week to two, so Donny really needn’t worry about … what happened, and neither should you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Hadleigh. It’s … jolly good of you to be so understanding.’
‘As I’ve said, your brother will have work here as long as he wants it,’ said Alistair, gently. ‘I know something of what he went through, over there. In the war. I went through some of it myself … That he returned to you at all is miracle enough. One cannot expect … wholeness. One cannot expect there to be no changes in a man who has witnessed such things.’
‘Thank goodness you came back whole, at least, Mr Hadleigh,’ said Pudding, and then regretted it at once. Alistair’s expression turned pained, and he didn’t reply. ‘I mean, where would Slaughterford have been if you hadn’t? With the farm and the mill, and everything,’ she carried on. ‘That is to say—’ But she couldn’t think what to add, so she lapsed into a silence she wished she’d found sooner.
Dundee sighed the exaggerated sigh of a bored horse warming its rump in the morning sun. Sparrows hopped along the gutter of the cob house, chattering and scavenging for barley; the mills rumbled in the valley and something set the geese in the rickyard off into outraged honking.
‘That’ll be Keith with the letters,’ said Pudding, pointlessly.
‘I wondered if I might ask you a favour, Pudding,’ said Alistair, at almost the same time. He looked sheepish, and Pudding blushed on his behalf, busying herself with the exact fold of her strop cloth to cover it.
‘Of course, Mr Hadleigh. I’d be happy to help.’
‘Irene – that is, Mrs Hadleigh – has found something rather odd in the chimney of the old schoolroom. A doll, it appears to be. Which is odd, because there wasn’t a little girl here for a hundred years until Aunt Nancy, and she’s quite adamant that it isn’t hers. Anyway. Verney Blunt and the Tanner lad think it might be some kind of votive.’
‘A votive, I see,’ said Pudding. ‘What’s a votive?’
‘Well, something placed in the chimney as a kind of … offering, I suppose. A charm, or a spell.’
‘Like the children’s shoes you find in old thatch?’
‘Exactly like that. Only the Tanner boy is saying she should take it to show his grandmother – apparently, she’s some kind of expert on these things, and will be able to tell if it was left for good or evil, and can take steps against any … ill effects that may come from removing it.’
The glance Alistair gave her was steeped in embarrassment, and Pudding couldn’t decide whether to pretend credence of such things when she had none, or to scoff when perhaps it would insult Mrs Hadleigh if she did.
‘Well. I have heard that Ma Tanner’s the person to see, about all kinds of things. You know that when people are ill and can’t afford to call my father, they go to her instead – she mixes up all kind of things from herbs.’ Pudding was careful not to betray her opinion of this in her tone, but her father had described the state of Teresa Hancock after she’d taken one of Ma Tanner’s white bryony draughts to get rid of an unexpected baby. No more than fourteen, writhing like a snake on her sheets with her insides doing their very best to be on the outside. Her little boy, Micky, was now a sturdy toddler, spoiled rotten by everyone despite being born of shame and all that.
‘Well, I’m quite sure it’s all bunk. The witchery, I mean,’ said Alistair.
‘Oh, yes. Probably.’
‘Only … my wife has rather taken to the idea. Not of it being witchcraft, per se, but of going to see Mrs Tanner and asking her. The boy – Joseph – has her quite convinced. Of course, she doesn’t know …’ He gave Pudding another careful glance. ‘She doesn’t really know about the Tanners. Their troublesome reputation. And I have rather been carping on at her to get out and meet some of the neighbours, you see. Nancy refuses point-blank to be involved in any way, which only seems to make Irene more determined … Well, I was wondering, Pudding, whether you’d mind awfully going down with her? To the Tanners, I mean? I’m sure it won’t be a lengthy visit. Safety in numbers, you understand; and they do know your face, at least.’
‘Of course I will! I’d be happy to,’ said Pudding. Alistair looked relieved, and she swelled inside.
She would, of course, have agreed to whatever he’d asked, even if it had been to roll in a muddy puddle, or spend the rest of the day hopping on one foot, or change her name to … Well, in fact she couldn’t really think of a worse name than Pudding, so changing it would have been a blessing. Her loyalty and obedience towards her employer were partly down to the way he was with Donny, and partly to do with the fact that he was constant – he’d been at Manor Farm since before she was born, like some benevolent overlord – which, of course, he was; at least to the men who worked in the mill. He was a steadying presence, and a reliable smile, and he was fairness and moderation when a lot of other people seemed to be shifting, and unsteady, and unpredictable. Even the people she loved best in the world.
‘Thank you, Pudding. I’m most grateful,’ he said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘I’ll be going into Chippenham this afternoon, to talk to the bank, so if you could have Dundee hitched up by two, I’d be much obliged.’
‘Of course, Mr Hadleigh.’
‘Then perhaps you and Mrs Hadleigh could go visiting, after lunch?’ He turned to go. ‘Ah, yes, Pudding, I meant to ask after your parents … Are they well?’
‘Oh,’ said Pudding. The words perfectly well died on her lips. She found it impossible to lie to Alistair Hadleigh, and most especially impossible when he would know the lie at once. At Easter, he’d greeted Louise Cartwright outside church, as he greeted everyone – holding out his hand, saying her name. Pudding’s mother had backed away abruptly, shaking her head in panic, not recognising him, or the situation, or what was expected of her. She’d worn an expression of complete perplexity throughout the service, as though the vicar had delivered it in Latin, and hadn’t sung any of the hymns. Everyone had seen; everyone knew. Things amiss. ‘Muddling through,’ she said instead, trying to sound easy. She couldn’t bear the pity in Alistair’s eyes – it seemed to melt all her strength away, and as though he realised it, he backed away at once.
‘Splendid,’ he said, nodding. ‘Jolly good. Well, Pudding, back to work for both of us. And … should you need anything …’
‘Thank you, Mr Hadleigh. In fact, I could rather do with a new head for the yard broom,’ she said, knowing that this was not at all what he’d meant.
When Pudding was about five years old, back before the war, the Hadleighs had invited Biddestone Sunday School, which most of the Slaughterford children attended, to have its summer picnic in th
e great barn at Manor Farm. It had become clear that a spell of wet, dreary weather that had been slouching over Wiltshire for a fortnight wasn’t going to shift. The children, young and old, had been generally downhearted to begin with, since the picnic usually involved a long ride in a horse-drawn bus, with wooden benches down the sides and a canvas roof, either to the station for a trip to the seaside, or to some high hill miles away, with a view they didn’t know, to have their games and sandwiches in the waving grass of a meadow. Blind Man’s Buff and Thread the Needle; I Sent a Letter to my Love and Twos and Threes. Now they just had a short walk up the road to a muddy farmyard they all knew anyway, where the geese hissed and ran at them, and the collie dogs nipped at their calves, trying to herd them. And it wasn’t even lambing season.
The cowslip posies in their best straw hats got damp and bedraggled on the way. Admittedly, few of them had ever been inside the great barn, but the general consensus was that a barn was more or less a barn. But the Hadleighs, particularly Alistair, had done their best to make it magical. Bunting and paper lanterns, and the trestle tables used for the church fête covered with checked cloths, and cream from that morning’s milking for the scones, and – a thrill beyond everyone’s ken – ice cream from the farm’s own kitchen, rich and flecked with strawberries. Disconsolate foot scuffing had turned to excited fidgeting. The great barn was ancient, from some earlier time when Slaughterford and its mills were granted to the monastery at Farleigh Hungerford by a king with the deeply un-kingly name of Stephen, and a tithe was collected there from every farm and mill. The roof soared, its hammer beams twisted with age; it had wood-mullioned windows eaten away by beetles, and crumbling stone walls that nevertheless gave the impression of being immortal, indestructible. There was at least a century’s worth of farm junk built up at one end, which had been pushed back as far as possible and strewn with more bunting. Doves roosted in its dusty entanglements, cooing and flapping at the intrusion of twenty-three children, in various states of cleanliness, driven wild by more sugar than they usually had to eat in a month.
In spite of being the doctor’s daughter, and therefore higher up than the farm and mill children, Pudding was always the butt of jokes because she was so round and so plain. She’d felt the disappointment of not getting out of Slaughterford particularly keenly, and consoled herself by touring the tables, licking every last smear of ice cream from the bowls and picking the last crumbs from the plates. She was well-liked, since she was cheerful and eager to please, and had no trouble making friends – even with the little Tanner girl, Zillah, who was so skinny that her arms at the shoulder weren’t as thick as Pudding’s wrists, and who had been known to kick and bite with very little provocation. One of the farm boys from Ford, Pete Dempsey, was chubby too, but instead of being Pudding’s ally he was usually the first to start the teasing – perhaps to be sure none of it came his way.
When Miss Wharton announced Pig-in-the-Middle, and asked who would be the first pig, everyone laughed and pointed at Pudding. When Nancy Hadleigh called them to attention and demanded to know who had been into the back kitchen and taken half a loaf of bread from the crock, everyone laughed and pointed at Pudding, even though it was far more likely to be Zillah Tanner (and it was – the loaf dropped out from under her skirt as they trooped from the barn at the end of the afternoon). And when they began the treasure hunt and Pudding got stuck between the broken slats of an old manger, nobody helped her, but stood laughing instead as she struggled and bruised herself, and tears drenched her scarlet face. They stood and they laughed until Alistair Hadleigh appeared, forced the slats wider so Pudding could wriggle free, then picked her up and set her on her feet – not without effort – and brushed the dirt and chaff from her dress.
‘There, now. All pretty again,’ he said, even though there was snot running down her chin, and her hair had come out of its ribbons. ‘Shame on you, children,’ he said to the others, who shuffled crossly. ‘You must learn to be kinder to one another – especially today, when you’ve all been having such a lovely time.’
Her classmates’ eyes went wide as they absorbed this reprimand. Alistair Hadleigh was the most important man in the village. Alistair Hadleigh was clean and handsome and rich. Alistair Hadleigh employed, one way or another, near enough every one of their fathers. Alistair Hadleigh had picked Pudding up and tidied her dress and called her pretty, and she loved him without question from then on. The other children spent the rest of the day being as conspicuously nice to Pudding as they could, even though by then Mr Hadleigh was nowhere around. The spell didn’t last, and they soon went back to laughing at her, but it didn’t matter. Pudding’s heart was his.
She was brought out of this reverie by going into the tack room and finding Hilarius inside, sitting on a stool by the stove in spite of the heat, with an open book in his hands. He never normally came to the tack room, since the work harnesses were all kept in the great barn, and she wondered if he’d run out of leather soap or clean cloths, or needed to borrow the hole punch. Then she saw that the book he’d been reading was her copy of Murder Most Foul, which she’d brought with her to read on her tea break. Pudding was ashamed to admit to herself, just then, that she hadn’t supposed Hilarius knew how to read.
‘Oh! Hello, Hilarius. You made me jump,’ she said. The old man nodded and stood up. He frowned, but he didn’t look annoyed – more puzzled by something, or troubled. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Ar,’ said Hilarius, distractedly. His accent was unique to him; an odd mixture of Wiltshire and something else – something foreign, left over from the land of his birth. Pudding had asked, once, where he was from, but he’d let his eyes rebuke her, and had changed the subject in a way that had made her feel very rude, so she hadn’t asked again. He closed the book and turned it over in his hands, frowning down at it, his face as cracked as oak bark.
‘What is it, Hilarius?’
‘’Ee shouldn’t read such things,’ he said, putting the book down on the stool behind him. It was an odd thing to do; Pudding had expected him to hand it back to her. He stood there, between her and the book, and folded his arms as if guarding her from it. ‘Bad things’ll come to bide in ’ee.’
‘Oh, you mean it’ll give me nightmares? Yes, my mum says the same thing whenever I read the dreadfuls. But don’t worry, it doesn’t seem to happen to me,’ said Pudding, brightly, to reassure him. She smiled but old Hilarius kept his frown. He looked past her, down at the floor, and there was a long pause that Pudding wasn’t sure she should break.
‘’Ee shouldn’t read the likes o’ it, girl,’ said Hilarius, then nodded as though he’d said his piece, and went out. Feeling a bit guilty about it, even though there was no reason at all for him to be upset, Pudding tucked the book away out of sight, and tried to remember why she’d gone into the tack room in the first place.
* * *
Irene had wrapped the fragile, dirty doll in an old scarf, and was being as careful as she could not to break it. Truthfully, her interest in it might well have waned as soon as it had sparked in spite of the vehemence with which Nancy had scoffed, and the look of genuine consternation on Joseph Tanner’s face, if it hadn’t been for her own odd intuition about it. The feeling wouldn’t let her drop it – it nagged at the back of her mind like the tiny glimpse of a memory from earliest childhood; amorphous and tantalising. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, and didn’t know what she wanted to know about the doll, only that she wanted to know something. ‘Our Ma’ll see it right,’ Joseph Tanner told her, quietly, when Nancy was out of earshot. As if determined to offer her help he was sure she was going to need, despite the impropriety of it. It had felt like the kind of offer that would only be made once, and then never again. There was something compelling about that, and about Joseph Tanner, with his nervous energy and his dark, dirty hair.
Nancy gave one last opinion on the mission as Irene came downstairs after lunch, dressed for her outing in her least city-like clothes – a beige
skirt and a long ecru jacket, and her sturdiest leather shoes. Nancy was wearing breeches and a linen shirt; buttoned in, creaseless. She swept her gaze over Irene’s outfit before she spoke.
‘I feel I ought to warn you, since my nephew is too soft to speak ill of anybody,’ she said, ‘the Tanners are a bad lot. Thieves and murderers, for the most part – including the women. You’ve managed to select the one set of people it most ill-behoves you to become acquainted with.’ She raised her eyebrows in that way she had, and Irene tried to see the least bit of good humour in her face. Nancy with her straight jaw and her diamond-hard eyes.
‘Well, I’m sure they won’t murder me just for knocking at their door. And I do have an invitation,’ she said, trying to sound unconcerned. Nancy replied with a quiet scoff.
‘They just might, you know,’ she said. Still no humour. Irene’s resentment flared.
‘Well, Pudding Cartwright will protect me. Or, if needs be, I can use her as a barricade,’ she said, and regretted it at once. Nancy’s gaze hardened even further.
‘That girl works hard, tells the truth, and carries her entire family. You’d do well to emulate her, Irene, rather than mock her.’ She turned on her heel and left the room before Irene could retract the remark. It was not the kind of thing she would ever say, normally. Heat bloomed across her face and neck, and as she stared at Nancy’s retreating back she realised that she had no idea who she was any more. It was the loneliest feeling.
Pudding Cartwright talked a lot, as she stomped alongside Irene. Stomped was the best word Irene could find for the way the girl moved – it was a kind of economical, ground-covering, wide-set stride; entirely unfeminine, and not unlike the horses she so doted on. She wore long rubber boots caked in mud, and didn’t bother to step around puddles or piles of manure in the lane, so that she frequently drew ahead and had to turn and wait as Irene caught up.
The Hiding Places Page 7
