The Hiding Places

by Katherine Webb

  ‘Oh, no, they’ll use it against him, won’t they?’

  ‘I fear they might, Pudding. I fear they might.’

  ‘But it’s so unfair! He hasn’t even done anything wrong!’

  ‘Pudding.’ The doctor put one hand over his eyes and shook his head slightly, as if he couldn’t stand to hear her. Pudding took a few breaths to calm down. She was shocked by her father’s visible distress; it was crushing him, making him smaller.

  ‘You mustn’t give up on it all, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’m going to think of a way to bring him home. Really, I am. I promise.’

  ‘My dear,’ he said, smiling sadly, ‘you mustn’t make promises you won’t be able to keep. Especially not to yourself.’

  ‘But I will keep it.’ She felt something rising up inside, something quite like anger. The doctor shook his head again.

  ‘I’m deeply sorry any of this has happened, Pudding, and that your young life will always carry the mark of this … dark time. It warms my heart to realise just how loyal you are to Donald – it warms it, and it breaks it.’ Then he drifted away in silence, to help his wife get ready for bed.

  Pudding lay caught in the shallows of an uneasy sleep all night, plagued by thoughts of Donny injuring himself, and the idea that, at any moment, he might be goaded into doing something that would keep him locked away forever. In the morning her head felt thick, and itchy. It was difficult to think clearly, but she decided on her next course of action – Ma Tanner. A wise woman of sorts, someone who knew Slaughterford and its people like the back of her hand, and had given Pudding and Irene a warning of change. Nobody was closer to Tanner himself, or more likely to know where he had been, and what he had done.

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ said Irene, when Pudding told her. ‘I mean … given that our prime suspect is her son, and all that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Pudding, frowning, ‘is he still our prime suspect? Anyway, we don’t need to let on to her about that, do we? We’ll just pretend we haven’t a clue, and perhaps she’ll let something slip.’

  ‘We?’ Irene shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t go with you now, Pudding – I’ve to go into Corsham. My mother is coming to visit. Finally.’ Irene’s voice had a peculiar tone that Pudding couldn’t decode. ‘But she’s never been an early riser – if you hang on until tomorrow, perhaps—’

  ‘No!’ Pudding took a breath, thinking of Donny hitting his head against the walls of his prison cell. She thought of telling Irene about it, but didn’t want to make her think Donny was deranged. That he was violent. She could hardly bear to think of his pain and confusion. ‘I mean, no, it’s all right; I can go alone, and strike whilst the iron is hot.’

  ‘Well. Do remember to be tactful, won’t you?’ said Irene, sounding uncertain. Pudding nodded but couldn’t bring herself to speak. Tact was no use to Donny. She checked the horses over quickly, fed them and topped off the water trough, impatient to set off down the hill. When she was doing something – anything – towards bringing her brother home, Pudding could carry on; she felt she could breathe, in spite of all the fear and awfulness, and the yawning gap in the world where Alistair had once been. When she wasn’t doing something, it felt like drowning.

  There were hasty sounds inside Thatch Cottage when she knocked at the door – the creak of the wooden floor, footsteps on the stairs, muffled whispers – and when the door was opened by Trish Tanner, Tanner’s wife, her face went through a rapid succession of expressions – from fearful, to crashing relief, to a shifting uncertainty that looked almost guilty.

  ‘Pudding Cartwright,’ she said, neutrally, not opening the door much wider.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Tanner. I’m sorry to disturb you.’ Pudding paused for Mrs Tanner to say it was fine, but she didn’t. ‘Er. I wonder if I might come in and have a quick word with your mother about something?’

  ‘Mother-in-law. Now’s not a good time.’

  ‘Oh. Ah. Well, I suppose it is quite important,’ said Pudding. ‘May I? I won’t take up much of her time.’

  ‘That the doctor’s girl?’ came Ma Tanner’s voice from within. ‘Let her in, if she’s something to say.’ Pudding smiled hopefully, but again that fear flashed in Mrs Tanner’s eyes, and there was a thump from upstairs that made her flinch. But she opened the door wider and stepped back.

  ‘You’d best come in then.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was a hush inside, and Pudding felt even more watched than she had the time she’d come with Irene, even though there were fewer children around now, and the grandpa in the truckle bed was fast asleep, his jaw hanging open and his eyeballs flicking back and forth behind his lids. The windows were covered with thick felts and the unnatural darkness was stifling, worse than before. Pudding blinked, struggling to see as her eyes adjusted from the bright light outside; she breathed more deeply, feeling as though there wasn’t quite enough air. Ma Tanner was out of her chair by the stove, adding various chopped roots to a stockpot, reaching to the high shelf for herbs. Her movements were quick and sure, and Pudding stared, realising that it was the first time she’d seen her on her feet, and that she’d always assumed Ma couldn’t walk. Ma shot Pudding a mischievous smile.

  ‘Life in these old bones yet,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pudding.

  ‘Sit. I didn’t think it’d be too long till you came knocking again. I fear you’ll get no joy here, mind you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But ask away.’ She put down her big chopping knife and wiped her wizened hands on her skirt as she sat down herself. ‘Something to help you sleep, perhaps? Something to help the doctor relax?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. Thank you.’ Pudding tried to place Ma Tanner’s odd tone. It seemed mocking, but only on the surface, not all the way through. As though she were hiding something else. ‘I wanted to ask …’ She paused, thinking hard. Saying anything without giving away her suspicions was going to be tricky. Somehow, she felt she only had this one chance to ask the right thing. From the table, Trish Tanner watched, listening unashamedly. Her face was empty of expression now, apart from its usual tension. ‘When we came here before, with that doll Mrs Hadleigh found, and you said change was coming … was it Alistair’s death you saw?’

  In the pause, in the stuffy dark, Pudding knew she’d asked the right question. Ma Tanner eyed her for a long time. Her eyes gleamed in the low light.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said, at last.

  ‘But something to do with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why? How?’

  ‘Can’t tell you that, girl.’ The old woman drew back but never broke off her stare.

  ‘Did it tell you … did you find out anything about Donny from it? Did you know he would … he would be accused of something, and taken away?’

  ‘No.’ For a second there came a creeping disquiet into Ma Tanner’s eyes, and then her face hardened off, quashing it. ‘Not quite your brother since the war, is he? Not quite the full billing,’ she said, crisply.

  ‘Well, of course he’s still my brother! He’s a little … changed, perhaps. A little less able. But still Donny, through and through.’

  ‘Easier to do without him now, perhaps.’

  ‘No, not at all! How can you say that?’ Pudding’s eyes swam. She realised then that if life were a net in which to catch happiness, losing Donny would put too big a hole in hers. She had no hope of dealing with the rest of it – her mother, and Alistair – without him. ‘We’re desperate to have him home. And he’s the gentlest soul really, whatever the war did to him. That he should have survived all of that only to hang for this … only to be known forever as a murderer, when he’s nothing of the sort … It’s unbearable.’ She blew her nose on her shrivelled, overused handkerchief, and Ma Tanner held the silence. She locked eyes with her daughter-in-law, both of them stock-still, as though waiting for a sign, as though listening. ‘Please,’ said Pudding. ‘If you know anything that might help him, plea
se do tell me it now. Even if it’s only a hunch … an idea. Anything. Hilarius told me to look for the roots of the thing, but I don’t really know what he meant.’

  ‘That old tinker is brighter than he looks,’ said Ma Tanner.

  ‘Is he? Why?’

  ‘What he meant was that all the lives in this place – here in the valley, in Slaughterford – all the lives are tangled up. Have been for years. Years and years.’

  ‘So … there is somebody with a … a grudge against Alistair? Some grievance against him, for something that happened long before?’

  ‘Could be. Or something them before him done, maybe. You’re too young to see it yet, girl, but the roots of things go deep. I do suppose you think winter was a long time ago, don’t you?’ She smiled. ‘I do suppose you think a lot’s happened of late. Well, it’s a drop in the ocean. There’s plenty that’s well out of your reach. Things you can’t ever understand. But every last thing in life happens for a reason, especially those most foul.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Trish muttered, tersely. Pudding looked across at her, and saw fear in her eyes that was at odds with her angry tone of voice. Ma Tanner grunted.

  ‘I daresay it is, yes.’ She got up.

  ‘But hold on – you haven’t told me anything!’ Pudding protested.

  ‘I’ve told you all I can. If you can’t let the lad go, then look further afield for the cause of all this. Now, on your way. You’ve a job of work to go to, and I’ve this stew to finish. Barley cutting’s started, the boys’ll be back with hollow guts come noon time.’

  Feeling cross and useless, Pudding got up and followed Trish Tanner back to the door. There, the woman gripped her arm for a moment.

  ‘Let it lie, girl,’ she whispered. ‘Please. Ma can’t help you, and you’ll only stir up more trouble.’

  ‘But … my family couldn’t be in any more trouble!’

  ‘Believe me, you could.’

  ‘They’ll hang him – they’ll hang Donny. I can’t let that happen.’

  ‘Try,’ said Mrs Tanner, then tried to shut the door. Pudding put her boot in the way.

  ‘Do you know who it was? Do you know who killed Mr Hadleigh?’ she whispered.

  ‘Course I bloody don’t! What are you accusing us of? Same old story, is it – there’s been a crime, so it must be a Tanner? Don’t come around here asking that again, if you know what’s good for you.’ She kicked Pudding’s foot away and slammed the door.

  Feeling certain that the cottage had eyes, Pudding hurried across the barren yard, where the mud had dried and cracked, and the smell of the privy was stronger than ever, and the only things growing were dusty nettles and ivy. Thatch Cottage had always been a place to be wary of, a place of slightly menacing fascination. Now, for the first time, Pudding had the notion that it was the saddest place in the valley – apart from her own home, of course. She stood a while in the parched lane, with a fat, persistent bluebottle for company, looking across at the mill. She saw the towering brick wall of the new generator house, built on top of the original mill house; the old farmhouse, its barns now used to keep machine spares rather than animals, its pigsties converted into privies for the workers. She saw the By Brook carved in two, the water split between its natural course and the mill race, and even into a third conduit on the downstream side – the open pipe of the waste water, siphoned off into dye beds to keep the river pure further south. Layers of life and work and industry; roots going back years and years. Pudding wished Irene had come with her after all. She missed her opinion and the careful way she listened, and thought; but it was good, she supposed, that Irene’s mother was coming to visit. Nobody else had been to visit her. Pudding went through what she’d been told, and what it boiled down to was that both Hilarius and Ma Tanner thought that the why of Alistair’s death lay further back in the past. What it was, and how far back, she still had no idea.

  She was halfway back to Manor Farm when something Ma had said replayed itself in her ears, and rang a sudden bell. Especially those most foul. Most foul. The realisation hit Pudding like a cosh. She stopped in the middle of the street, by the bridge, and two lads driving the little wagon of half-stuff across from Rag Mill had to swerve around her when she ignored their shouts. Her next breath was full of oily smoke from the wagon’s engine. Her heart had accelerated so radically, and was beating so hard, that she could feel it knocking against her ribs. For a moment Pudding was stuck there, on weak knees, as a shiver brushed over her skin. But when the moment of paralysis passed she turned on her heel, and ran for home as fast as she could.

  * * *

  All five women at Weavern Farm were waiting for the storm to break. As a precaution, Rose had made sure none of the girls were in sight before telling their father that Clemmie was expecting. None of them had any idea what his reaction would be, or who would be the main focus of his ire. For an entire day the farm work was done in near silence; all communication between the sisters and their mother was made by significant glance and covert gesture, as though William were omnipresent and might descend upon them at any second. As though, for that time only, they were as mute as Clemmie herself. The day was scorching. The cows stood limply in the shade, chewing the cud with their eyes closed; the hens lay stupefied beneath the coop; the river’s rush had steadied, the water smoother and more sedate. Sweat beaded on their skin, and at least part of it was due to the unbearable tension. When, late in the afternoon, William came out of the house and banged the door behind him, they all froze. But he merely strode off along the steep path towards Weavern Lane, his hands in fists and his shoulders high, leaving his wife and daughters to glance at each other yet again, at a loss.

  ‘Well, Mum, what’s he said?’ asked Mary, as they clustered in the relative cool of the dairy. Rose shrugged, beleaguered. She hadn’t quite forgiven the girls for not telling her that Clemmie had a sweetheart, and, by extension, for letting her fall pregnant.

  ‘He barely said owt at all. He just went quiet,’ she said, curtly.

  ‘Angry quiet? Or sad? Or what?’ Josie pressed. Clemmie stood behind her, feeling odd at being the cause of so much consternation, and at it all going on with virtually no reference to herself. As though her pregnancy were a separate entity, to be dealt with by them and not by her. It didn’t feel that way to Clemmie. It felt as though they were talking about her heart. Wondering what to do about her heart.

  Down the years, plenty of babies had been baseborn in Ford and Slaughterford, and plenty of couples had been forced to get married in a hurry – it was usually seen as more of a misfortune than a disgrace. But it seemed to be different for Clemmie, because Clemmie was different. As though her getting into trouble could only have happened as the result of a misdemeanour. As though Clemmie herself were still a gormless child. Her mother and sisters tried every tone of voice they possessed to make her lead them to the baby’s father, and Clemmie simply sat down in the dust when they tried to drag her. By the end of the second day, when it became clear that the explosion they were all expecting from William wasn’t going to come, twin lines appeared between Rose’s eyebrows. She ushered the girls out of the kitchen after supper, as the sky was turning from gold to grey outside, and they lingered on the stairs, trying to overhear the tense, hushed words that followed.

  ‘Someone’s had advantage of her – are you not going to do a damn thing about it, Will?’ they heard her say, in the end, quite clearly. William’s reply was too low to make out. Josie took Clemmie’s hand and squeezed it, and even Liz looked troubled – disappointed, almost. Clemmie wished she could tell them that it was fine, that she wasn’t worried or scared. Eli would make a plan – was already making a plan – and he meant to marry her, as soon as he could, and it would all be well. She already loved the baby almost as much as she loved Eli, and knew in her bones that nothing so loved could bring trouble.

  ‘Mum’ll set it right, Clem,’ Mary told her, not sounding at all convinced. But there’s no wrong to right, Clemmie didn’t say.
Later, when Clemmie set off to wander, Liz scowled.

  ‘Shouldn’t she be staying home?’ she said, to anyone who’d listen.

  ‘Let her be, if she’s happy. She won’t be for long. And not much worse can happen than already has, can it?’ said Rose. Then she shook her head, dropped her chin to her chest, and clamped one hand tight over her mouth.

  They tried to follow her, of course. They tried it more than once, but they had no practice at being quiet as they went, and no skill at it. Clemmie led them up the steepest slope to the quarry, on one occasion, and slipped into a hidden crevice to hide until they gave up. She smiled as she heard them fighting to get their breath back, Mary and Liz.

  ‘She can’t just bloody vanish,’ said Liz, looking all around. ‘Clemmie Matlock! You’re a thorn in all our sides!’ she shouted, crossly. Another time Rose tried to follow her, but her mother was even louder and more obvious than her sisters, and it was just as easy to give her the slip. Clemmie always made sure they were safely far away before she went on to meet Eli, and when she finally got him to understand about the baby, he was dumbstruck. His jaw dropped comically and his eyes emptied of thought so completely he looked confounded, and Clemmie laughed delightedly. She had no doubt that he’d be happy, once the idea had settled inside him and taken root. She was right: he held her fiercely, breathing like he’d been running, and a kind of wild triumph lit his eyes. Then he let her go abruptly.

  ‘I shall have to handle you softly now, shan’t I, my Clem?’ he said. ‘Though I don’t know how I’ll manage it.’ He put his hands around her waist, which seemed, if anything, smaller now that her hips and chest had spread. Clemmie shook her head, smiling. She felt the opposite of fragile. She felt strong, alive, powerful. She felt like nothing could happen that she wouldn’t be able to protect the baby from. It was still so tiny – she hadn’t felt it move, and her belly was no rounder than before – but she knew it was the source of this feeling of life, this feeling of strength. It had appropriated her whole body, and was gearing her towards growing and shielding it, and she was perfectly content with that. Eli kissed her all over her face, and then cupped his hands around it and stared hard into her eyes. ‘I won’t be like my dad, Clemmie. I swear it, on my life. This child of ours won’t ever feel the back of my hand; and I’ll do right by the both of you. I’ll find us a room, and I’ll get work. It’s going to be a good life for us – for us three. I swear it.’ Clemmie wished she could say that she believed him, that she knew. Instead she nodded. ‘Say nothing for now, for they’ll all raise hell if they know it’s us. If they know it’s me,’ he said, and Clemmie beamed, delighted that, such was the ease of things between them, he sometimes forgot that she couldn’t say anything to anyone.