‘Has Mr Hadleigh told you how the village got its name?’ she asked, as Irene walked gingerly down the steepest section of lane from the farm. She wasn’t used to the feel of dust and pebbles beneath her shoes; wasn’t used to slopes that hadn’t been fashioned into steps. The day was warm but overcast, the air humid and thick with smells – Irene couldn’t remember London ever smelling so much, even when the tide was out. It smelled … alive, and not necessarily in a good way. It was like being breathed on by some huge animal.
‘Something about Vikings, wasn’t it?’ she said, distractedly.
‘That’s right. Shall I tell you?’ said Pudding, proceeding to do so without waiting for Irene to answer, and obviously enjoying the gorier bits of the battle story. Irene stopped listening. She was trying to think about Fin, trying to remember exact words he had said and the exact way he had said them, trying to see his face without Serena’s appearing to obliterate him – her eyes with their slight slant, her teeth glittering, and hidden things flickering inside her like flames.
‘And then the river ran red with the blood from so many horrendous wounds and dead men,’ said Pudding, and Irene failed to think of an appropriate response. ‘Of course,’ the girl went on, ‘some people also say that sleight means water meadow in some ancient language, and that’s the origin of Slaughterford. But I like the river-of-blood story better, don’t you? I do admire your hair, you know, Mrs Hadleigh. I tried mine cropped like that last year but it looked frightful. Everybody said so. But yours looks simply perfect.’
‘Thank you,’ said Irene.
‘You know – it might be an idea to pop into Mrs Glover’s here and get something to give the Tanners,’ said Pudding, halting beside some steep steps that led up the bank to a crooked stone cottage.
‘Get them something?’ Irene echoed, confused. She looked at the cottage and saw the downstairs window thrown wide open, and a hand-painted sign propped outside, reading Groceries. This was what passed for shopping in Slaughterford. Pudding thumped up the steps and stuck her head through the window.
‘Shop!’ she called, loudly, then turned back to Irene again. ‘Yes – doesn’t matter what, really. They have little enough of most things. Some soap, perhaps?’
‘Wouldn’t that be a little tactless?’
‘Would it? Oh, yes – I see what you mean. Not soap then. Some tea, and barley sugars for the littlest ones. Or biscuits? Mind you, Trish Tanner makes the best lardy cake you’ve ever tasted. She sells it at Biddestone fête sometimes; we might get a slice if we’re lucky. Mrs Glover had some lovely boxes of Huntley and Palmer’s last week, though, with Jackie Coogan on the tin. Dad took us all to the cinema in Chippenham last month, to see The Kid. Have you seen it? I expect so – I expect you went to the pictures all the time in London, didn’t you, Mrs Hadleigh? You must miss it terribly.’
‘I do,’ said Irene. It was finally something she could say with feeling.
‘But you gave it all up for Mr Hadleigh,’ said Pudding, with a kind of wistfulness. ‘It’s all terribly romantic. That he swept you off your feet like that.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Irene, sensing Pudding’s disappointment when she didn’t elaborate.
In fact, her courtship with Alistair had been far more a case of him picking her up and setting her back on her feet, rather than sweeping her off them. It had begun the first and only horrible time her parents had induced her to go out with them after it had all happened, after everybody knew. They decided to put on a front, to feign unconcern until unconcern could be achieved. Irene remembered the looks and the laughs, the muttered remarks, the invisible circle around their table that nobody was willing to cross. She remembered mottled colour on her mother’s rigid cheeks, and the flush of alcohol across her father’s; not enough air and time grinding to a halt, and then Alistair appearing, crossing the line and asking Irene to dance. The horror of it all had been so loud inside her head that she was up and in his arms before she knew what had happened, or whether she had spoken. His hold around her offered some protection but she’d still felt naked. Her steps had been stiff and clumsy.
‘Just keep dancing, dear girl,’ Alistair had said, as a ripple of laughter chased them across the floor. ‘Forget them. People are quick to enjoy the misfortunes of others; it doesn’t make them right.’
‘Please,’ she’d whispered back, wretchedly. ‘Please, can’t I just leave?’
‘Yes. Perhaps you shouldn’t have come out so soon, but you must finish this dance first. Don’t let them beat you.’ If it hadn’t been for his hands, his arms, holding her, she’d have fled and caused another scene.
He walked them out after that, and came to call on her the next day. This had been back in March, and there’d been sunshine on the window with a promise of spring at last. It had made him seem bright as he’d crossed the room to her, like he’d brought the light with him, and Irene had turned her face to the glass because it was too much. She wanted Fin. She wanted to be somewhere else – anywhere else – with him. She wanted to understand. Those were the only things she wanted. Alistair had sat down across from her, with his trousers riding up over his ankles and his gloves in his hand, and she’d felt his optimism, his care and his regard, as he glowed there, in the corner of her eye. She wanted none of it – rejected it outright, and ignored him when he asked how she was. Surely he would see, when he looked again, how worthless she was. How lost. And then his pointless visit would come to a merciful end.
‘I learnt a lot of things during the war, Irene,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Most of them of no use whatsoever. But there’s one thing I can’t unlearn, even if I wanted to, and it’s that life is very short, and very precious, and if we can’t find a way to be happy in the one brief span we’re allowed, then there really isn’t a lot of point to any of it.’ He paused again and Irene finally turned to look at him. He smiled slightly, kindly, and she knew he lived in a different world to the one she did. ‘So I’ve a proposition for you, and I don’t want you to think about it too much. We get so tangled up in knots, we humans, trying to think everything through, trying to guess at outcomes we can’t possibly know. So please just listen. I adore you. Marry me.’
Irene thought she’d heard him wrong, but then an odd noise burst out of her mouth, which might have been the mangled beginnings of a laugh – at him, at herself, at the mad words he’d just spoken. She stared at him for a while, from what felt like many miles away, and decided there and then not to inflict herself on this absurd, kindly lunatic, who clearly had no idea what he was saying. When she shook her head he smiled again, sadly, and looked down at his hands.
‘No,’ she said. It was all she could find to say. Alistair stood to leave.
‘You need to get away from here. You need to start again. You need rest, and someone to care for you.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Only until you’re feeling better. Only until … the shock has passed. Because none of it matters, Irene. None of it really matters – don’t you see? What people say, and what they think. I’ve seen it so many times … The absurdity of it all. Most people don’t have the first idea how fragile it all is. How fragile they are. The only thing is to be kind, and to love, before it’s all over. Marry me, and I’ll show you.’
‘No,’ Irene murmured, exhausted by him, deadened to it all. ‘I did love. I do love. But I don’t love you.’ She saw him wince a little, and swallow.
‘I know you don’t. But perhaps – for now at least – it might suffice that I love you. That I want to help you.’
‘If you want to help me,’ she said, turning her face away again, ‘then leave me be.’
The Tanners lived in the only thatched cottage remaining in Slaughterford; the others had been stone-tiled as the straw had rotted off, or in some cases covered with tin. It was entirely unadorned; a rectangular box of a place, none too large. As close as it was to the mill, the rumble of machinery was constant. The thatch looked dark and mouldy, even now in summer; t
he cobbled path that ran around the base of the walls was furred with moss, and the yard was an obstacle course of junk – boxes and crates, broken wheels and tools, rolls of wire, piles of stone and tiles. Three small children were playing on a simple rope swing hanging from an elm tree behind the house, and as she and Pudding walked up to the front door Irene felt eyes following them. She looked around and saw a boy of about six, peering out at them from the makeshift den of a tea crate, his eyes glossy in the shadows. Irene repositioned the basket in which she carried the doll, and felt uneasy. She had no idea what she was going to say, and hoped that Pudding would fill in the gaps. It seemed entirely likely that she would.
‘I’ve never been inside this house before. I think it might be the only one in the village I haven’t been into, in fact, at one time or another,’ said Pudding, excitedly, as though this was what passed for an adventure in Slaughterford.
‘But I thought you knew them? And they knew you?’ said Irene.
‘Well, sort of.’ Pudding led the way to the door and knocked without the least hesitation. Irene thought back over what Nancy had told her, and felt her unease grow. Pudding lowered her voice. ‘Mostly from all the many stories one hears. Everyone knows everyone here, but the Tanners aren’t the overly sociable sort. Most people steer well clear of them. They ought to know who I am, at least. Oh, hello,’ she greeted the thin, grubby girl who opened the door. ‘I’m Pudding Cartwright, the doctor’s daughter, and I’ve brought Mrs Hadleigh here to see Ma. Joseph invited us, so hopefully she’s expecting us. And we’ve brought you some biscuits.’ Without a word, the thin girl, who was perhaps only thirteen or so, stepped back to admit them. Irene’s heart began to pound.
Inside, the cottage seemed bigger than it looked from outside. It was split into two rooms, the first leading to the second; from the first, steep stairs led to the upper floor, and in the second a large iron range was running at full chat, so that the heat was suffocating. The girl led them through to this second room, where a smell unlike anything Irene had met before was rising with the steam from a huge crock pot on the stove. In one corner, an ancient man watched from a truckle bed, with a thin blanket pulled up around him. Irene risked only the briefest glance at him – a fleeting impression of sunken cheeks and eyes, wisps of grimy white beard, hands of a size and strength that even age couldn’t wither, and the emanation of a powerful hostility, incongruous given his obvious frailty. At least eight other people were arranged around the room – three barefooted children sat on the floor in watchful silence; two older teenaged girls were at a butcher’s block, skinning rabbits and adding the iron smell of blood to the air. An older woman was sitting near the bedridden grandfather, mending a shirt, and the person Irene took to be Ma Tanner was seated in regal solitude in a carver chair nearest to the stove, her skin waxy and flushed. Pudding and Irene approached uncertainly, and under the scrutiny of so many eyes, Pudding turned pink.
Little light penetrated, since the windows were hung with thick felt that was obviously awkward to tie back; and what light there was was greenish from the algae on the glass. It could have been any hour of the day in there, any season, and Irene wished more than anything to go back in time and undo the stupid decision to come. Even Pudding had gone quiet, and was looking around the room with a slightly frantic smile, her hands continually fussing and smoothing her clothes. Irene took a deep breath and stepped in front of her chaperone. She hated her own fear of people, and where it had led her; it was running though her every fibre just then, but she rejected it.
‘I’m Irene Dal— Hadleigh,’ she said, stumbling slightly over her maiden name, Dalby. She carried on quickly, but the old woman in her carver chair noticed the mistake. ‘How do you do?’
‘Well enough,’ said Ma Tanner, in a voice far more melodious than Irene had been expecting, and not in the least bit eldritch.
‘I’ve come to show you a thing that was found in one of the chimneys at the farm. Your boy Joseph thought it might be significant.’
‘Yes, he said you’d be along. New bride, aren’t you? Not yet truly wed, are you? Not wed with your heart,’ said Ma, peering up at Irene in a relentless way that wasn’t unkind. Irene stared back at her, at a loss. Behind her, she felt Pudding shift her weight, and could practically feel the girl’s curiosity burning through the back of her jacket. The old woman grunted, and smiled. ‘Not like the doctor’s lass, there.’
‘Who, me?’ said Pudding, in an overeager way. Ma Tanner’s smile got wider.
‘Perhaps you’d like to see what was found?’ said Irene, hearing how cold she sounded.
‘Yes, your ladyship,’ said Ma Tanner, with a chuckle. One of the teenaged girls with the bloody hands scowled at Irene, but the old woman shifted up straighter in her chair, her hands gripping the arms in obvious interest. Her outfit was an amalgamation of garments from several prior generations, patched in and repaired; layers of rough cotton, lace and linen beneath a green woollen shawl. How she hadn’t expired from the heat, Irene couldn’t guess; a trickle of sweat was twisting down her own spine, and she longed to take her jacket off. But she stepped closer to the glowing range and took out the doll, unwrapping it carefully.
More bits of dirt and thread dropped off the doll as the old woman turned it over in her hands. She brushed them off her lap and peered at it, screwing up her eyes so that her face followed, crumpling like paper in a fire. For a while, the only sound in the room was the scrape and slither of the rabbit carcasses, and the rattle of air behind the old man’s ribs. The attention of everybody in the room was fixed upon the old woman and the doll in the ratty blue dress. The fire in the range seethed; the pot bubbled; one of the children had a perpetual sniff. Pudding, who looked mesmerised, stepped forwards next to Irene to see better. Nobody spoke, and the moment dragged on. The old woman sucked her lower lip. The smell in the room made it hard to breathe; Irene took shallow sips of the air until she began to feel dizzy.
‘Pinned up the chimney, or just tucked behind the baffle?’ said the old woman eventually, so suddenly that they all jumped.
‘I don’t know. By the time I saw it, it was on the floor in a mess of soot,’ said Irene.
‘Hm. Probably just hidden up behind the baffle then.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It might.’ Ma Tanner went back to her silent contemplation, and the rest of them went back to waiting, and Irene’s impatience to leave grew and grew. She fought to stifle it.
When the front door banged open again they all jerked – all except Ma Tanner. Three men came into the room, and Irene felt Pudding trying to be smaller. Two were just lads, perhaps not yet twenty, but the other, Irene guessed, was Tanner himself, the master of the house. He was tall, not thickset but broad at the shoulder, with a kind of lean, knotted strength to his frame. His face was a mass of suspicious frown lines, and there was something sour about the set of his mouth. His nose and cheeks were mapped with the broken red veins of a heavy drinker, and his hair had plenty of grey through the dark. The lads flanking him were thin and restless, their eyes watchful and angry; one had a split lip surrounded by livid purple bruising.
‘Who’s this, Trish?’ Tanner demanded, nodding at Irene but addressing the middle-aged woman at her mending.
‘The new Mrs Hadleigh, down from Manor Farm,’ said the woman, in a voice entirely without tone.
‘Is it now?’ he said, his expression turning even uglier – suffusing with something like contempt. Irene felt the weight of it and refused to buckle. She lifted her chin, but couldn’t quite bring herself to say ‘How do you do’ into the face of such open hostility. ‘And what does the new Mrs Hadleigh want with us?’
‘Peace, man, she’s come to see me,’ said Ma Tanner, and the man was stilled, though he didn’t seem to like it. Then he caught sight of the doll the old woman was holding, and his face changed at once.
He crossed to the old woman and reached for it as though he would take it from her, then seemed to change his mind. He beg
an to turn away but only made it halfway before something stopped him. He couldn’t take his eyes from the dirty, broken doll. Ma Tanner squinted up at him, speculatively.
‘Where in hell did that come from?’ Tanner asked. His voice was a growl, but it shook.
‘Up at the farm,’ said Ma, always watching him, never blinking. ‘Hidden away a good long while. In a chimney.’ Pudding and Irene exchanged a glance of bafflement at the scene.
‘Garn!’ a voice said suddenly, and, startled, Irene turned to find the old man glaring at her from under his blanket. She blushed, embarrassed both by his sudden rousing and because she didn’t understand him. He raised a thick, trembling finger and pointed it squarely at her. ‘Garn, and get!’ he said, and this time she understood. She was being told to leave. Pudding pulled at Irene’s sleeve.
‘Should we go?’ said Irene, to Ma Tanner, but the old woman was still staring at her son, and he was still staring at the doll from the chimney. A moment later Tanner broke off his study to glare at them with such ferocity that they both took a step backwards.
‘Peace, man,’ said the old woman again, but she handed the doll back to Irene. ‘You’d best be on your way with this, Mrs Hadleigh. Pudding. Take it and go.’
‘But … what is it? What does it mean?’ said Irene, bewildered.
‘It’s no votive, no spell, so don’t worry about that. As to what it means …’ She looked up at her son again, who was standing stock-still, staring into the shadows in the corner of the room as though stupefied. Ma settled back into her chair and said, without expression: ‘It means change is coming.’
4
Touched
Alistair’s best friend, Charles McKinley, lived with his sister Cora and their elderly father, Gerry, in Biddestone Hall, a sprawling Tudor house of gables and mullions and creaking doors. It sat back from the village green in Biddestone, behind gates and a high stone wall. The front door was lit by a pair of torches as Alistair and Irene climbed down from the Stanhope, and two of the McKinley footmen appeared to take the horse and usher them inside. It felt odd to be in evening dress. Irene’s shoes pinched across her toes in that way she remembered so well. She hadn’t worn her fox stole since London; hadn’t worn her debutante diamonds since London. Since her wedding day, in fact, when she’d presented herself to Alistair with the numb, guilty sense that she’d sold him something broken; something faulty, that wouldn’t work. The trouble was, she knew that Alistair had known it already. And he’d wanted her anyway.
The Hiding Places Page 8
