The Hiding Places

by Katherine Webb

  She and Nancy led the mourners up to Manor Farm, where there was to be a sedate wake for the higher-ups. The villagers and mill workers drifted away to their homes, or to the pubs – the White Hart in Ford and the White Horse in Biddestone – to raise a glass or several to their late master; a man they had loved, in a distant way, and respected. At the back of the crowd, their faces downturned, were Dr and Mrs Cartwright, and Pudding. No Donald, of course. The doctor looked pale and exhausted; his wife looked blank, but calm. Pudding’s face was wet and ravaged, her normally bright eyes so puffy from crying that they looked piggish and ugly. Besides Irene, they were the most scrutinised of the gathered crowd. She glanced around and saw a variety of expressions directed at them, from bland curiosity to pity, anger and hatred. Pudding and her mother seemed oblivious to it all, which Irene supposed was a good thing. Only the doctor flinched from every face, every unspoken word. He looked like someone struggling to stay standing in a hurricane, and the three of them huddled together, subtly but completely cut off from their neighbours, as though such bad times might be contagious. Irene spotted Constable Dempsey, who, like most young people in Ford and Slaughterford, had known the Hadleighs all his life, and the sight of him set her heart thumping. But if he was there to watch her and report to his superiors, he was doing a poor job of it. He was watching the Cartwrights far more intently, and Pudding in particular.

  They had the wake in the dining room, where the long table was laden with cold food, but people spilled into the sitting room and morning room, seeking the space to sit. Clara Gosling and Florence had extra help, on loan from the McKinleys at Biddestone Hall – two stony-faced girls who looked too smart for the farm in their crisp uniforms. They ferried out dirty glasses, ferried in clean ones, refreshed the trays of savoury pastries and petits fours and proffered them to the mourners, whose respectful silence grew less and less so as the first glasses of sherry went down. Irene stood where she was put and was commiserated with by many people, most of whom she didn’t know. She neither ate nor drank, and hadn’t all day, and soon began to feel the familiar lightness of being in need of nourishment. She let it carry her away from the crowd, into a vague place where she could do nothing about anything, and so expected little of herself. But then Cora McKinley appeared before her, and jarred her out of it. Cora’s normally lively face was drawn, and set into hard lines that made her look older than her years.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she said, but Irene had no answer. ‘I suppose you’ll sell up – realise your assets, I should say. And move on to your next adventure.’ Her voice cracked a little as she spoke, and she moved her glass of sherry from her left hand to her right, and back again.

  ‘I don’t know what I’ll do,’ said Irene, but the sound of her voice seemed to anger Cora.

  ‘Well, you’ve all the time in the world to decide, I suppose.’ She looked down at her feet for a moment. ‘Father says it is just one of those terrible things that happen. But I can’t help seeing everything that happens as part of a progression, from one thing to the next – the latter either caused by, or following on from, the former,’ she said, her eyes beginning to gleam as her brother Charles appeared behind her. ‘Alistair survives the war, marries you, and brings you here, and then is killed. I mean, it’s one hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? So I can’t help wondering whether the latter might not have happened if the former hadn’t either. If he would still be alive if you’d never come here. If he’d never met you.’

  ‘Cora, that’s enough!’ said Charles, taking her arm. Cora wrenched herself free and stormed away, her face in her hands.

  ‘Nobody thinks that, Irene,’ said Charles, not quite able to meet her eye. ‘Cora is just upset. We’re all of us at the Hall so terribly sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Everybody thinks it,’ said Irene, quietly. Charles looked at her at last, his face sorrowful. ‘She’s only saying what everybody thinks. Isn’t she? Everybody thinks I’m somehow to blame.’

  ‘Irene … people just don’t understand, that’s all. They don’t understand why it’s happened, and grief makes people irrational.’

  ‘I don’t understand it either,’ said Irene. ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Dear girl, you must only try to think of getting through these dark days as best you may, and to remember how dearly Alistair loved you. I never saw him happier than when he came down to say you’d accepted him. It stripped years from him – he looked like a boy again, hooking the biggest fish out of my father’s pond.’ Charles looked down, his sadness tangible. ‘It’s a rum do, and no mistake,’ he muttered, and gave her hand a squeeze before moving away. He hadn’t invited her to visit them, or offered to return if she needed company. Without Alistair, Irene doubted she would see them again.

  A tray of full claret glasses went by and Irene reached for one, taking a gulp and feeling the delicious heat as it reached her empty stomach. Then she left the room as discreetly as she could. She couldn’t face going up to the bedroom – the room where Alistair had slept for so many years before she’d even come into his life. She had an oddly guilty feeling, as though she, too, had begun to blame herself for his death. She remembered the feelings of prescience that had beset her more than once since she’d been at Manor Farm. She racked her brains for some connection between them all, some sign or warning she had missed. She remembered Tanner’s odd reaction to the old doll, and Ma’s declaration that change was coming; she remembered the darkness that surrounded Hilarius, and the unflinching hardness of his eyes. Bewildered, she went through to the study, where the Hadleigh family portraits hung, and for a second felt the blessed relief of being alone. She shut the door behind her, letting out a long breath she hadn’t known she was holding, and only then saw Nancy, standing silently in front of the portrait of her twin brother, Alistair’s father. She was looking up at it with a broken-hearted intensity, as though she hoped the picture would come alive and offer her some comfort. At once, the weight of her circumstances settled back onto Irene, and she thought about slipping away again, unseen, just as Nancy turned and saw her.

  ‘Irene,’ she said, obviously unhappy at the interruption.

  ‘Sorry, Nancy. I didn’t know you were in here. I’ll go.’

  ‘Not on my account,’ said the old woman, turning her gaze back to her brother. ‘The atmosphere in there is awful, isn’t it? All those people pretending to grieve as they shovel food into their mouths.’ She shot Irene a wintry smile. ‘Not that they weren’t fond of Alistair. But fondness doesn’t translate into true grief. Does it?’

  ‘No,’ said Irene, knowing that Nancy included her beneath that umbrella.

  Irene stared up at the portrait of the first Alistair, and saw again how like his father her husband had been. Same height and build and demeanour; same light in the eyes, same arrangement of the face that made it seem permanently on the brink of a smile. ‘Was he like his father?’ she asked. Nancy sighed deeply.

  ‘So very much like him, in appearance,’ she said. ‘Especially as he got older. Sometimes, in more recent years, it was so like having my brother back that I almost forgot they were two separate men. Almost.’ She looked haunted. ‘But my brother and I were in the womb together. I feel his absence wherever I go, and whatever I do.’

  ‘How did he die? Alistair’s father, I mean.’

  ‘He had a reckless streak – my nephew had it too, but in a far gentler way, and I did my best to foster it out of him. But my brother had no fear – or rather, he loved fear. He loved the excitement of danger – foolish wagers, foolish business deals, foolish liaisons. When we were children, on one trip to the seaside, he jumped into the water from a high cliff that none of the others would even climb up to – just because they bet he wouldn’t. Broke his ruddy ankle as he hit the water, the stupid boy, but he didn’t care because he’d won the bet. Always racing, always climbing, always gambling with his money and his life – and his reputation … He got better as he got older – his gentler side came more to the fore. But he
simply couldn’t resist a wager. He was racing a friend from Chippenham to Lacock when it happened – racing across country. Robert Houlgate’s new hunter, which was a great black brute of a thing, strong as an ox, against Alistair’s bay mare – she was lighter, built more like a thoroughbred, so not as strong in heavy going.’

  Nancy stared off into the past for a while. ‘It was madness. They didn’t know the route or the fences overly well. The horses were green, the ground was waterlogged, and it was too long a distance – too tiring for the animals. They took a hedge side by side, as Robert described it afterwards, and didn’t see the ditch on the far side until it was too late. Both horses fell. Robert was thrown clear, and only broke his collarbone. Alistair fell underneath his mare as she rolled. And that was that. The horse had to be shot, and Alistair had been crushed to death before anyone could even try to help him.’ Nancy turned away from the portrait as if telling the story had rekindled an old anger towards him.

  ‘Perhaps that was even worse than what has happened to young Alistair now,’ said Irene, with the wine in her blood loosening her tongue. ‘In a way. That he could have chosen not to do it, I mean.’

  ‘He could have chosen not to die? No, no – I know what you mean. Perhaps, in a way, you’re right. I was angry with him for a long time. So angry I didn’t know what to do with myself. And I made poor Robert suffer terribly – he’d suggested the race, you see. Dratted man. He knew my brother wouldn’t refuse.’ She shook her head, and picked up the framed photograph of young Alistair as a boy. ‘Thank goodness I had my nephew to look after. I don’t know what I would have done, otherwise. There’d have been little point to anything.’ She held the photo close to her midriff, and slumped over it, slowly, like she’d been delivered a blow. ‘And now he’s gone too. And there is no point to any of it.’ Her voice was muffled by misery. Irene tried to put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off. ‘No, please. I don’t think I can bear to be touched just now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Nancy,’ said Irene, struggling to think what she could possibly add. ‘I’ll be gone soon. You won’t have to have me around. And I … I won’t be turning you out of Manor Farm, so please don’t worry about that.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’ Nancy’s head came up fast, eyeing Irene intently. Irene swallowed.

  ‘Well … yes. I thought you would be happy.’

  ‘Happy?’ Nancy echoed, as though the very concept were alien to her. ‘But you’re the last Hadleigh, Irene. You belong here, at Manor Farm, where Alistair brought you. We’re the last two. Unless …?’ She kept up her scrutiny until Irene felt like running from it.

  ‘Unless what?’ she asked, uneasily.

  ‘Unless there’s any chance of a … a new beginning for the family?’ Nancy waited, then tutted when Irene obviously didn’t understand. ‘Is there any chance – any chance at all – that you might be pregnant, Irene?’ The hope in her face, and in her voice, was pitiful. Irene knew there wasn’t – as did the servants at Manor Farm, since her period had come on suddenly in the night, three days earlier, and made a mess of her bedsheets. She could hardly bear to dash this last hope of Nancy’s, and fail again, but she shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nancy, but no. There’s no chance.’

  ‘Ah. A pity,’ said Nancy, quietly.

  ‘You might have had children of your own, mightn’t you? Alistair told me you had suitors … you were even engaged.’

  Nancy didn’t reply at once. She gazed off into the dark corners – of the room, of her memory.

  ‘I was,’ she said, tightly.

  ‘What happened?’ Irene asked, made bold by the awful, alien day.

  ‘I chose my brother. And his son.’ Nancy shrugged. ‘I moved away when he got married. I thought I’d give him and Tabitha some space here. And besides – I couldn’t stomach the woman, with her American manners and her popish superstitions. Such blind faith has always seemed half-witted to me. I went off on the grand tour; I met a boy in Rome. A man, I suppose. Frank Launceston. Nice enough; bright enough. Plenty of money.’ She shrugged. ‘But then Tabitha died giving birth to Alistair.’

  ‘Your brother must have been broken-hearted.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nancy, still not looking at Irene, ‘if nothing else, he was completely out of his depth. With a baby son, I mean, and with being here at Manor Farm on his own. It had never happened before, you see. He hired a nanny, of course, but Alistair needed people around him that loved him. He needed women. He needed me.’

  ‘So you came back.’

  ‘I came back.’

  ‘And Frank?’

  ‘Frank married some vapid girl who was willing to trail his coat-tails around the globe, without a care in the world. Happier for all concerned, I’ve always thought.’ In the quiet the clock ticked, and the merry voices of the mourners came as a wordless babble through the wall.

  ‘You’ve very dutiful, Nancy,’ said Irene, thinking that if it had been her, and she had loved Frank, she would have married him, and been that vapid girl.

  ‘I’m a Hadleigh, and I have always done what needs to be done at Manor Farm.’

  Once all the mourners had gone, Irene kept drinking. She’d had three glasses of red wine, and was feeling much better – as though it had all happened to someone else and she might go home and forget about it, just like the people who’d been clogging up the house all afternoon. She might go home to Fin, somehow – when he saw her, he would realise how much he loved her, and find the courage to leave Serena. To her scrambled mind this seemed wholly plausible, though it didn’t offer the comfort it once had. His awful letter, and the pain of reading it, had torn something irreparably; it had weakened the part of her that still cleaved to him. She sat on a window sill in the drawing room and watched the twilight gathering in the gnarled apple trees, and the bats come out to wheel and dive, and when she ran out of wine she went, unsteadily, to the back kitchen to look for more. Clara was at the table, listening to the wireless, drinking sherry and tucking into a huge plate of leftovers. She gave Irene a pinch-lipped look, half appraising and half guilty, then fetched her an open bottle of claret from the pantry.

  ‘The master never liked to see women in their cups,’ she said, flatly.

  ‘The master isn’t here to see it,’ said Irene.

  ‘No, he ain’t,’ said Clara, settling back into her plate as though seeking wisdom in it. Irene went out into the near-dark.

  She left through the back gate in the low orchard wall and set off down the hill towards the village. The night was warm and still, the deep blue sky was freckled with stars, and a shining sliver of moon had risen. A pretty summer night, as oblivious to the events of the day as Irene wished to be. The mills were still silent, and the brewery never ran at night. The farm animals were asleep; the wild animals kept themselves to themselves. Without a torch, Irene felt quite invisible to the world. She’d meant to go down to the river. She wasn’t sure why – she’d had a vague idea about bathing; river bathing, as Fin had told her he and his brothers had done as children, in the Tay, but as she passed the church she heard a noise that stopped her. Sounds of movement, and of breathing; sounds of a person, in the very spot they’d just buried Alistair. The hair stood up all over Irene’s arms, and she was suddenly cold. But however strong the impulse, she couldn’t run away. For a moment, the wild possibility that Alistair hadn’t been dead when they buried him flitted into her mind, and the strength with which she wished him back surprised her. But she knew it couldn’t be, and she pictured the Alistair-doll instead – empty of life, stuffed with other things; a grotesque mannequin, a mockery of life – somehow out of the grave and walking. It wasn’t possible, but she had to see.

  Shaking all over, the wine churning sourly in her stomach, Irene went through the churchyard gate and closer to the heap of flowers that marked the spot. There was a figure there, sitting on the sod alongside the grave; a figure that was clearly not Alistair. Irene’s next wild thought was that the murderer had c
ome back to revel in it, before she remembered that Donny Cartwright was in jail, and recognised his sister as the figure at the graveside, snivelling quietly. Again, she wished she could slip away, unnoticed, but at the sound of her footsteps Pudding turned with a gasp.

  ‘Who is it?’ she said, too loudly.

  ‘It’s … Mrs Hadleigh,’ said Irene, not going any closer. She wondered if she should still call herself Hadleigh, since she felt no more of a Hadleigh now than the girl struggling to her feet in front of her.

  ‘Have you come to gloat?’ said Pudding. Her voice had a tremor of distress that belied the bold words.

  ‘What could I possibly have to gloat about?’ said Irene, and that seemed to stump the girl for a moment. In the darkness, the white flowers on Alistair’s grave seemed to glow. Irene could suddenly taste her own mouth, dry and sour from the wine. She felt nauseated. ‘You can’t honestly think I had anything to do with … with this, can you?’

  ‘Yes! Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps not,’ said Pudding, rubbing at her eyes like a child. ‘All I know is it wasn’t Donny, but nobody will listen to me.’