The Hiding Places

by Katherine Webb

  ‘Hilarius won’t testify against me. It’d be cruel of you to ask him,’ said Nancy, and her voice sounded different, not like her at all. Pudding had never heard her sound uncertain before – not once. ‘And nobody would believe anything a Tanner had to say.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that. Superintendent Blackman isn’t as ready as everybody else to denounce the Tanners.’

  ‘You can’t be serious, Irene?’ said Nancy. She’d tried to sound scathing, Pudding guessed, but merely sounded panicked. ‘After fifty years? Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘You don’t think you ought to be punished, Nancy? For killing an innocent girl?’ said Irene. Nancy seamed her lips tight together and turned away, back to her silent study of Alistair’s grave. ‘But then …’ Irene went on. ‘What you did back then has led directly to your nephew being killed now. I hope you realise that. Blood is blood, as Rose Matlock said to me. I think perhaps she guessed the truth; and Ma Tanner as well. So perhaps Eli Tanner has got his vengeance for Clemmie after all – in making you responsible for the death of the one person you loved most in all the world.’ Before they turned to go, Pudding saw the realisation of this truth hit Nancy Hadleigh. She slumped bonelessly, her rigid posture failing her; her chin dropped onto her chest and her hands came up to cover her face. She looked so unlike herself that with little effort, Pudding could imagine her to be a different person altogether to the one she’d known.

  11

  Beginnings

  In the cool of early morning, Pudding put the kettle on to boil. It was cool – the night air had dropped several degrees in the past few days. It was nearly September, and the long summer was finally running out of steam. The kitchen tiles beneath her bare feet were on the verge of being chilly. Pudding went to the back door of Spring Cottage and looked out across the valley, to where Manor Farm was visible through a slight mist on the opposite hill. The fields were golden now – even the pasture. Thistles had turned brown and frizzled; the dandelions were all clocks; the lambs were almost the same size as their parents, and too busy eating to gambol any more. There were crisp brown edges on the horse chestnut leaves. The kettle hissed; Dr Cartwright came out of the privy at the bottom of the garden and looked at his watch; upstairs, Pudding could hear her mother moving about, getting dressed. And Donny was weeding the vegetable patch, where the last of the beans were turning thick and stringy and the lettuces had bolted. He’d been helping Louise with it more, since coming back from the New Bridewell. He didn’t like going to the mill any more, and spent more time at home.

  ‘Pudding – how did you sleep?’ said her father, putting a kiss on her cheek.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ she said. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘No time, I fear. I said I’d call on Mr Long first thing, and he’s a very early riser.’ Since Donny had been cleared and sent home, the doctor had more patients again. As though some taint had been removed from him, and people felt sheepish for having believed in Donny’s guilt. He picked up his bag from its spot by the door, patted a pocket for his spectacles and gave her a smile. ‘Cheerio; I’ll be back for lunch.’

  By the time Louise came downstairs, anxiously fingering the buttons of her cardigan, Pudding had got breakfast on the table, and she and Donny were tucking in.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry I’m late,’ said Louise.

  ‘It doesn’t matter at all, Mum,’ said Pudding. Donny had muddy fingernails, and was licking marmalade off them; the dent in his head was as hideous as ever and he was having nightmares again, but he was home. Louise had more days when she was confused, to some degree, than days when she was not. The horrible notion that she was slipping further and further inside herself, out of their reach, was ever-present. But the four of them were together again, and were going to remain together. Knowing that, Pudding found, made the rest of it seem surmountable. As she set off down the hill to work, with Donny walking calmly at her side, Pudding wondered how many more times she would make the journey. Irene Hadleigh had put Nancy and Alistair’s horses, Bally Girl and Baron, up for sale, and ancient Tufty was unlikely to last out another winter, which only left Dundee and Robin – hardly enough work for a full-time girl groom.

  ‘What’ll you be doing today, Donny?’ she asked. Her brother frowned, trying to remember.

  ‘Cutting the grass in the orchard,’ he said at last, and Pudding smiled.

  ‘Your favourite,’ she said. Donny nodded. He liked the visible results, the neat lines he created, pushing the mower up and down in stripes. Donny had a job for life at the farm, Irene had said, but if she didn’t stay on there herself, what then? And if Pudding didn’t stay on either, where would she go instead? Things were very different to before. The mill looked the same; Manor Farm looked the same, as did the village and the yard and Spring Cottage. But they weren’t the same. Everything had changed, and Pudding didn’t know if she could carry on there, confronted at every turn by memories, and the echoes of her previous, more innocent life. She put her shoulders back and her chin up. She certainly wouldn’t be going off to any secretarial college, or leaving her family, so whatever came next, she would just have to get on with it.

  When the horses were done and the stables clean, Pudding hitched Dundee to the Stanhope and Irene came across from the house, pulling on leather gloves, still looking too smart in a diaphanous shirt and block-heeled shoes.

  ‘Ready?’ she said, looking decidedly uneasy.

  ‘Yes, if you are.’ Pudding nodded. They climbed aboard and Irene took up the reins, clucking her tongue at Dundee. ‘That’s it,’ said Pudding. ‘And if he’s feeling lazy and doesn’t budge, just say “up”, in a sharper tone.’ Painstakingly, Irene steered the cob – who knew exactly where he should go anyway – out of the yard, and down the hill. They went sedately through Slaughterford; past the tiny shop, the bridge and the mill; past Thatch Cottage, at which neither of them looked too closely. They didn’t know quite how to feel about the Tanners, after all that had happened. There was no rancour, but there could be no forgiveness either, and certainly no forgetting. The leather collar creaked as Dundee leant into it up the steep hill of Germain’s Lane. Where the track curved towards Biddestone they turned right, onto Weavern Lane. They were going to see Rose Matlock and Mary Black, Clemmie’s mother and sister. It had been Irene’s idea, and she’d asked Pudding to go with her, as much for courage and support as she drove, Pudding suspected, as for the visit itself. But Pudding had been happy to go. She’d been to Honeybrook Farm once before, when her whole family had been invited to supper after Dr Cartwright had nursed their littlest, Daniel, through whooping cough, but she’d never been to Weavern. To Pudding, Clemmie Matlock was one more paper bird who’d taken flight; the thought of seeing her home, and meeting her mother, had the compulsive allure of a pilgrimage.

  The track wove down into the wooded valley, steep and stony.

  ‘How on earth do they manage in winter, when it’s muddy?’ said Irene, as the little gig squeaked and rocked along the ruts, and Dundee’s hooves rattled with a hollow sound against chunks of limestone.

  ‘On foot, I think,’ said Pudding. ‘Or out the other way, perhaps – I think there’s a better lane southwards, up to the Bath Road.’ On the far side of a small stream the track rose steeply again, through woods, and then finally crested a rise to reveal Weavern Farm, huddled at the feet of the fat green hills. The By Brook curled past it in a series of wide loops, golden in the sun, and a small dairy herd was grazing the paddock between the yard and the water; mellow farm buildings sat neatly around three sides of a square yard.

  ‘Gosh, isn’t it pretty?’ said Pudding.

  ‘It looks like a Victorian painting of the English countryside,’ said Irene, and Pudding wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a good thing or not. As they approached they saw that there were tiles missing from the roof; the window frames were peeling, and some had lost their glass. The yard was cracked earth, dotted with nettles, dock and poultry mess; a butterfly bush was growing in the
gutter, and another up by the chimney; dry grass whispered along the farmhouse’s foundations; toadflax and pennywort had invaded the wall around the well. A solitary pig gazed at them from behind the bars of its door, but the rest of a long run of open skillings sat empty. Weavern Farm was in its declining years. The yard gate hung skewed from its hinges, and was tied shut with string. Pudding jumped down to open it, and Irene manoeuvred the Stanhope through with the frowning concentration of someone walking a tightrope.

  ‘Where shall I park?’ she called down to Pudding, who tried not to smile.

  ‘Park? Oh, er … over by the barn there. Look – there’s a post we can hitch Dundee to.’

  A tall woman opened the door to them. Her face was ruddy and hard, drawn tight over her cheekbones and jaw; her hair was iron grey, and she stood with the stoop of a body tired out by decades of work. Pudding was slightly taken aback. She knew, of course, that Clemmie’s sister would be more or less the same age as Eli Tanner – seventy or so – but somehow, since Clemmie was frozen in time, she’d pictured her sister Mary the same way. Still young, still a girl. A fresh-faced milkmaid. Mary led them into a large kitchen and sat them at the table, sweeping a chicken aside with one arm as she did so. The hen clucked in outraged tones as it made its way outside, and then Rose Matlock came through from a room at the back of the house, her thistledown hair tucked away beneath an old-fashioned cotton sun bonnet, her figure swamped by a shapeless pinafore. She sat down at the table with them and a strange silence prevailed, neither awkward nor comfortable, whilst Mary made tea and came to join them.

  ‘First time in all the long years we’ve had a visitor from Manor Farm,’ said Rose. ‘Even when the first Alistair Hadleigh asked to try and teach our Clemmie to speak, he did it by a note.’ She cleared her throat, coughed, then grunted. ‘He never did manage to get her to talk, mind you. I wondered … I did wonder for a while, after it happened, if he was the one as had got her into trouble.’ She shook her head. ‘Never thought for a second he would hurt her though. Not till Eli came along last month, and told me you’d found Betsy’s doll. And even then, I had doubts. Doubts I couldn’t put my finger on.’ She gave Irene a steady look.

  ‘You’ve worked it out, haven’t you?’ said Irene. ‘That’s what you meant when you said “blood’s blood” to me. Eli blamed the wrong Hadleigh.’

  ‘Blamed the wrong one, but punished the right one.’ The old woman nodded.

  ‘If it hadn’t been Alistair Hadleigh that took the doll and hid it, it had to be his sister,’ said Mary. ‘And Nancy always was a half-mad bitch.’ Her language made Pudding flinch, and then feel oddly as though she might cry. Nancy had been one of the foundation stones of her whole life. Not as lovable as Alistair, not as easy to like, but constant; Pudding was having a hard time relinquishing the affection she still felt for her.

  ‘I wanted to come and tell you. I wanted to make sure you knew who had really killed Clemmie, because I … thought you ought to. Nancy thought it was Alistair’s baby too, you see,’ said Irene.

  ‘I remembered. Too late for your husband, Mrs Hadleigh … But I remembered that his dad was off at his wedding when it happened. Eli’s pickled his brain in beer and gin over the years – I’m surprised he can fetch up his own name, some days – but I remembered in the end. Alistair was off getting wed, and his sister stayed behind. I’d tried talking to her about the baby, see. That’s how she knew about it, though everyone would have seen it before much longer. That’s what I say to myself, when I get to blaming myself for it.’ Rose shook her head sadly, and Mary gave her a hard glare.

  ‘Ain’t no one to blame but that shrew at Manor Farm, Mum,’ she said.

  ‘She’s not there any more,’ said Irene, firmly. ‘Nancy’s gone, and she won’t be coming back.’

  The silence returned, and Pudding looked around at the cluttered shelves looped with cobwebs; the ancient, grimed stove, black with smuts and baked-on grease; the skin-and-bones cat asleep on the window sill. The wind nudged in through the open door and set the peeling labels on ranks of dusty jars and tins to flapping. There was something spectral and ineffably sad about the place. She knew, from things Rose had told Irene and from things they had found out from Ma Tanner, that Clemmie had had three sisters, and all had still been at home at the time of her death. She knew that their little brother, Walter, had been killed while he was still a child, in the accident at Rag Mill when the boiler had blown up. She knew that the sisters had married and moved away one by one, and that Mary and her husband Bert Black had moved back when her father, William, had died. Josie had died at the age of forty, of the flu; Liz in her late twenties, giving birth to her third child. It was no wonder the farm felt as though its heart had stopped beating.

  ‘Have you a picture of Clemmie?’ Pudding asked. ‘I should love to see it. I first read about her ages ago, in a book of mine, you see. I never dreamed of her being a real person, if you see what I mean. I never dreamed I should ever sit at the table where she grew up … and ate her suppers …’ Pudding stopped, wondering if she was being horribly tactless. But their pain was old, not fresh, and Mary simply shook her head.

  ‘We never had a picture of her, nor of Walter. You didn’t take photographs just like that, back then. It cost money to go into town and have one done, and that money was far better spent elsewhere. I can still see her face like I saw it yesterday, though. She was the prettiest of all of us, and we had our fair share of admirers. Who can describe that, though? She had blue eyes and mad hair the colour of cream, like Mum; cheeks, forehead, chin, same as any of us ’as got, but on her they came together that much better, somehow. And a faraway look in her eyes – like she knew more than everyone else, but nothing at all at the same time.’ Mary shook her head again. ‘Used to drive us potty sometimes, she did. Mooning about, not pulling her weight and getting away with it, even with Dad. None of us knew what she meant to us till she was dead. The world didn’t seem right after that. Blameless as a babe, she were. I saw the world different after what happened to her.’

  Rose nodded heavily, but said nothing for a while. Pudding watched Irene sip her tea and stifle a wince. It managed to be weak and stewed at the same time.

  ‘I’d have had Eli Tanner as my son, I would,’ said Rose, eventually. ‘He weren’t like the others. At least, not then. Now,’ she gave a shrug, ‘now he’s a tosspot, and a killer. But what made him a killer? Not being a Tanner. Not something he was born with. Nancy Hadleigh made him a killer.’

  ‘But you didn’t know him before Clemmie died, did you?’ said Irene.

  ‘We got to know him after. We got to hear of his plans for them, and how he loved her. How he despised old Isaac and wanted nothing to do with the villain. All of that died with her. He stayed in the village – trying to find out who’d killed her, at first, but then simply treading in his father’s footsteps. He was eaten up with anger over it, and took to the drink, and turned so black inside people came to fear him just as they feared Isaac. The lad I caught a glimpse of just after she died … the lad with all the plans and the desire to make a better life … that lad was murdered as sure as Clemmie was.’ At this, Irene looked down into her cup, and said nothing. Pudding guessed she was thinking of the Eli Tanner who had killed their Alistair in such a horribly violent way. Trying to imagine him as a lad, madly in love and planning a new life with a young wife and child, was difficult. ‘He’ll not mind being hanged,’ Rose said, flatly. ‘He’ll not mind it at all.’

  ‘No,’ said Pudding. ‘He said as much to me when I went to see him.’

  They didn’t stay long. There was nothing much to say, and Pudding was sure she could see the same claustrophobic sadness creeping over Irene as was creeping over herself. She was relieved when Irene stood and thanked the two elderly women for the tea. They had no words of comfort for one another; the two wrongs that had been done would never add up to a right. Pudding felt sorry for them, and sorry for the farm, in a peculiar way. She was sure it had been a happy
place, once; vibrant with life and the laughter of its youthful inhabitants. Now it felt forgotten; it was neglected, unloved by the handful of inhabitants that were left to it, and dogged by the hopeless air of all abandoned things. Pudding’s grief for Alistair waited for her every morning at Manor Farm, and she knew she would keep missing him, and always think of him, but at least the place was still alive, and had a chance of moving on, thanks to Irene and the servants and the inexorable sense of life going on. Weavern Farm was more like the corpse of a place, steadily decaying. Pudding and Irene didn’t speak as Dundee towed them back up the hill, through the trees and onto Germain’s Lane. Each lost in their own thoughts, they stared straight ahead until, at the shop, Irene pulled the pony to a halt.

  ‘Let’s get some biscuits for tea from Mrs Glover,’ she said, impulsively.

  ‘Bought biscuits? But … Mrs Gosling will be outraged,’ said Pudding.

  ‘I know,’ said Irene, smiling. ‘Isn’t it terrible?’

  Pudding performed a self-conscious twirl in front of the mirror. They were up in Irene’s dressing room, with early evening light gilding the furniture and their faces.

  ‘Well?’ said Irene. ‘What do you think?’ She’d let out a dress she’d found at a frock exchange in Chippenham for Pudding; the girl’s height – and bust – made it hang shorter on her; it was just below the knee, which was becoming the fashion in London but would definitely raise eyebrows in Wiltshire. The dress was made of a teal-coloured fabric that draped nicely, was flattering over Pudding’s more exuberant curves, and brought out the blue of her eyes.

  ‘Are you sure I don’t look like a ship in sail?’ Pudding fretted, smoothing the fabric over her hips.

  ‘I think you look wonderful,’ Irene assured her. ‘Very sophisticated. And I am completely sure that Constable Dempsey will agree with me.’ At the mention of his name, Pudding blushed. She was still having trouble dealing with Pete Dempsey’s blatant regard for her, even though the reflection in the mirror was of a tall, handsome young woman with one hell of a bosom, not a chubby little girl. Her hair was still a bushy thatch, but Irene had trimmed it, and pinned it as close to her head as it could be induced to go. Pete was taking her to see Dick Turpin’s Ride to York at the pictures – their first official excursion together. ‘Really – you look thoroughly dashing. And nobody ought to be calling you Pudding any more,’ said Irene. ‘What’s your real name? I asked Alistair, once, but he never told me.’