He took her hand in both of his. April could not stop him.
‘But death has not come for you yet. Lift your face. Feel the sun. Be warm again.’
April shook off his hands and fled. She heard the dog bark once, and was pierced with regret, quick and painful as a thorn prick, about running away in such a childish manner, and about the fact that she would never see dog or man again, that they must now be shunned, her door slammed on them forever.
The branches scratched and clutched at her, rotten logs gave way beneath her feet, the ground jarred her legs, wrenched her ankles. In the clearing by the hollow tree, she paused to gasp and retch, and then she kept on, not stopping until Kit’s cottage door was closed and locked behind her.
That evening, an owl hooted, close by, perhaps even on the roof. Something scrabbled its nails briefly on her door and went away. April sat in the chair until the fire went out and did not move from it until the ash was grey and cold.
CHAPTER 16
late April
Oran watched her tear down the tattered drawing room curtains, rip them loose, sending the rings swivelling wildly around the rail.
‘Could you bottle that for when we come to take up the carpet?’ he said. ‘It’ll be free of the boards before you can say Jumping Jack Flash, tacks flying round the room like maddened bees.’
April dumped the curtain on the rubbish pile near the door. Oran’s bonfire would be large. With luck, he might light it too close to the house. If the place burned down, she’d be free. Free from everyone who insisted on intruding in the most private areas of her life, finding those soft spots and digging in, whispering wicked tempting words.
‘Has someone said something to cause offence? Such as myself?’ said Oran. ‘Or is it — you know. Are Arsenal playing at home?’
‘What?’
Oran held up two hands in the surrender pose. ‘I ask only in the spirit of offering consolation. Or ginger tea and aspirin. Whatever will suit.’
‘Arsenal playing at home?’ said April.
‘Their uniforms are red, you see.’
‘Thank you, yes. I was just agog that you thought it appropriate.’
‘Ginger tea?’ said Oran.
‘No!’
‘Then someone has offended you?’
Smoke in a clearing. The dog digging up bones. Her hand in another’s. The tightness closed in again on April’s chest, and both energy and breath left her in a rush. She sat down on the low sill of the tall casement window. The glass was cool but the sun coming through warmed her back.
‘Was it me?’
He was edging closer. April did not want him near her. She summoned enough energy to rise from the windowsill, and walk past him. Took up the lever he’d brought to remove the carpet. Hooked it under a threadbare piece and began to haul.
‘It’s just that I’m not easily offended myself.’ Oran was undeterred. ‘And sometimes I forget that others are, often right up to the moment their fist attempts contact with my face.’
April reached down to yank on the loosened carpet, and met a rising cloud of fibrous dust. She coughed and coughed, mouth full of what felt like beard shavings.
‘You all right?’ said Oran. ‘To be clear, I’m referring to this specific choking situation, not the previous episode of curtain-channelled rage.’
April’s eyes were streaming, and to her shame and annoyance, it was not all due to the dust.
‘Hankie?’
Oran was holding one out to her. Lord knows where it had come from.
‘Is it clean?’
‘In the same sense as good clean fun,’ said Oran. ‘When it’s said in an ironic manner, that is.’
April used it anyway. ‘Thanks.’
She handed it back, and he crammed it into the tiny front pocket of the waistcoat he had on. It was worn unbuttoned over a Smiths Strangeways Here We Come T-shirt, dating, April guessed, from the time of the album’s release. The waistcoat was grey silk, greasy with age, and looked as if it had once been part of a wedding suit.
‘I have an idea,’ said Oran.
April was wary. ‘Do you?’
‘Let’s have a cup of tea — the builder’s variety,’ he added. ‘And then let’s away upwards into the attic.’
‘I thought Edward said there was nothing there?’
‘And how long do you imagine our elegant Mr Gill would be keen to linger in a dark, dank roof-hole that reeks of owl’s piss?’
‘You’re not doing a very good job of selling it as a destination,’ said April.
‘Oh, come on now. Why let a dab of owl’s wee stifle your natural curiosity? There are nooks and almost certainly crannies up there that have lain untroubled by attention since Rudolf Hess got banged up in Spandau. Are you not gagging to poke around in them?’
No, thought April. Though the house seemed willing to let her freely travel around its other rooms, the attic felt different — closed up, out of sight, private. It would be like sneaking into a gentlewoman’s bedroom, and poking around in her knicker drawer.
And, then again — yes. The idea of seeing the attic had prompted a quick shivery thrill of excitement, the same feeling she’d had on the day her mother let her open her jewellery box. April had been — what, six or seven? Before then, the box had been out of bounds, and because of that April had craved it like nothing else. In her mind, the box became a miniature Ali Baba’s cave. She imagined that when she lifted the lid she would be blinded by sparkling light that radiated from the gems. It did not turn out to be quite like that, but it had been a treat all the same. The pearls glowed and the bright costume brooches did indeed sparkle. April’s favourite had been a brooch with a crystal bee that sat poised on a thin stalk above a rose and quivered when you walked.
‘I suppose you have a torch?’ said April.
‘Of course,’ said Oran. ‘A behemoth of one. Previously owned by a policeman. In a pinch, it doubles as a truncheon.’
‘Did you steal it?’
‘I did not. I found it to be in my hand after I had liberated myself from an affray. Finders keepers, losers weepers.’
He gestured towards the corner, where his tool bag and ancient tartan-patterned Thermos lay. Oran had apologised, but said it was too much trouble to light the Aga purely to boil water. To make up for it, he brought along tea he’d brewed that morning. Or possibly the night before, given its colour.
‘Tea first,’ he said. ‘It’s good and strong. Just the way you like it.’
April let Oran go first. The stairs to the attic were dark and narrow and they creaked under his weight.
The attic door was closed. Oran tested it with a push, and then gave it a hard shove. It opened less than a foot, blocked by something behind it. They squeezed through sideways, ducking under the low lintel.
Oran walked a few steps, held the torch up and turned in a slow circle, shining it into the corners and up into the pitched roof, bare timber like the walls.
It looked more like a fly-tip site than an attic. Broken furniture lay against the back wall, severed barley-twist bedposts propped against a mirror frame with no glass, an upturned table with only three legs, a bureau with black gaps for drawers, a bed base with rusting springs. None of the remains spoke of style or quality, which suggested to April that all the decent pieces, all Mr Potts’s acquisitions and special orders, had been sold. A chandelier, stripped of glass drops, was curled on the floor like a dead spider, near an old leather suitcase, empty, furred with mould. Bundles of newspapers, hardened into papier maché and tied up with rotting twine, were stacked under a casement window, one pane broken, the rest black with dirt. The obstacle behind the door was a large linen chest, very plain, with metal casters that looked too spindly to hold its weight. Everything was grimed with damp-streaked dust, dead leaves and bird dirt. No rodent droppings, April noted. There must be owls here after all, though the broken pane seemed too small for a bird that size to squeeze through, and the room did not smell of anything but must.
‘Well,’ said Oran. ‘Bleak House’s even bleaker attic.’
‘Disappointed?’ said April. She was, a little, and it irked her.
‘Never,’ he replied. ‘It’s a gift. Besides, we have not yet begun to poke.’
Oran’s torch beam was back on the linen chest, the only intact item in the whole room. If it contained the gentlewoman’s knickers, April decided, she should not pry. But it was a box, and it was shut, and closed boxes in April’s experience whispered to you like magic.
‘I’ll poke in that.’ April felt a twinge of guilt as she said it. ‘You’re welcome to tackle the rest.’
As Oran provided light, she crouched and with one finger gingerly lifted the lid, keeping her head well back in case something jumped out.
On top was a blanket. Cream with narrow blue stripes. It was slightly damp but, being wool, only on the top. April slipped her hand underneath, and found it dry.
‘The linen chest contains old linen,’ said Oran. ‘I suppose there may still be a market for crocheted piano leg covers and antimacassars.’
April lifted the blanket out and laid it on her bent knees, unwilling to put it on the dirty floor.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not linen.’
She held up a cardigan, moss green, fine wool. Then a tweed skirt, and next a cream silk pearl-buttoned blouse.
‘Begob,’ said Oran. ‘It’s Miss Marple’s glory box.’
‘It’s some woman’s clothes,’ said April, digging down. ‘Shoes, too. All of the same vintage, by the look. Nineteen-forties, I’d say.’
Oran regarded her with interest. ‘A closet fashion buff, are you? So to speak.’
April ignored him. Continued to rummage.
‘Oh, what’s this?’
In her hand was the head of a dog, an inch and a half high, made of ivory or bone, a fat silver collar around its neck. April felt the thrill that had eluded her.
Oran beckoned for it and, reluctantly, April handed it up to him.
‘Walking stick finial,’ he said. ‘See the silver ring is hollow? Ha! Watch out—’
He lunged it with a growl at April, who flinched, startled. The dog’s lower jaw, she saw after she’d recovered, had dropped down, revealing sharp fierce teeth.
‘You press this little button.’ Oran showed her. ‘And good boy becomes bad, bad doggy.’
‘A trick. Like a buttonhole that shoots water.’
Oran bounced the dog’s head in his palm. ‘These are quite valuable, you know.’
‘How valuable?’
‘Hundred quid?’
‘Not much in the scheme of things,’ said April. ‘Wouldn’t buy an electrician, for example.’
Oran shoved the little object in the front pocket of his jeans. April was about to protest, but decided she should trust him.
‘Well, go on.’ He made a hurry-up motion with the torch. ‘What else is in there?’
April sacrificed the blanket so she could place the items on a clean surface. At the end, April counted six skirts, six blouses, six cardigans, eight pairs of shoes, four dresses (three for day, one for evening), silk lingerie that looked as if it had never been worn, two jackets (one tweed, one linen), and one fox fur stole that looked like Oran — pointy-chinned and gingery.
‘Handsome devil,’ said Oran.
Torchlight searched the chest. ‘And that, unless it has a false bottom—’ he knocked it to be sure ‘—is that.’
‘Clothes,’ said April. ‘All, given their age, in surprisingly excellent condition.’
‘The wood is cedar,’ said Oran. ‘It repels the moth, and thus prevents the hole.’
April began to refill the chest, folding and laying each garment down carefully, out of respect to the woman or whoever it had been who had placed them there so neatly in the first place.
‘That would look good on you,’ said Oran. ‘That primrose-y number.’
A dress was in her hands. A summer day dress. Linen. Pale yellow. Not the vivid hue of ripe lemons, which had been so easy for a small boy to see from across the road, but still …
April laid down the dress, covered it with a cardigan.
Oran’s boots gritted on the floor as he crouched beside her.
‘Ah, come on now, you’re in there somewhere, aren’t you?’ His voice was low and melodic as if he were singing a lullaby. ‘The real April Turner.’
The tightness in her chest. Her heart and lungs struggling. She’d not seen Oran as a threat at all, but now, hard on the heels of Jack, he, too, had joined forces with Edward and Sunny. It felt like a conspiracy, as if they had arranged it all between them, had even aligned the events that had forced her to stay. Four against one, five if you counted the possibility of divine intervention. It wasn’t fair. At that moment, April hated Oran so much that if she’d been holding the torch she might have hit him with it.
But her face was in darkness, so he pressed on, oblivious. ‘I know a lot of people are careful about which aspect they show to the world. They hide their inside within a contrary outside, and not always to trick others, but often to deflect them, put them off. The thing is that our true insides always give themselves away. That quick glance, that unguarded moment. If there’s a devil in us, he’ll squeeze through a gap eventually. And if there’s an artist in us, a loving being, a creative and joyful being, they, too, cannot be kept down forever.’
April forgot about being careful with the clothes. She began to cram them into the chest, quick as possible. Oran sped up, too, as if he knew this was his only chance.
‘Your outside says one thing,’ he said, ‘but your mouth, eyes and ears say quite another. Your talk is quick and warm and funny, and your eyes latch onto beautiful things, and you truly hear my music. There’s a joyful being in you, April Turner — I’ve seen it — and you should—’
April slammed the lid. ‘Enough!’
Oran had been swinging the torch around as he spoke, creating swirling circles of light like opening night at the big top. Now, he rested it on his knee, dipped it down so that it illuminated only his dusty boots.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s how I am. I can’t help myself.’
April took the torch from him, got to her feet.
Oran rose, slowly. Stood there, shoulders hunched, hands in his jeans pockets.
‘Look, I know, I know, I should leave it. But please — one more question.’
April waited. She had not said she would answer.
‘Why?’ Oran said. ‘Why are you hiding yourself away?’
Oh, what did it matter if he knew? He had no power over her.
‘Because I believe that the scales need to be balanced,’ she said, ‘and that what you’ve taken from others can never be yours.’
‘What did you take?’
‘My son’s life. And so I have made mine forfeit in return.’
CHAPTER 17
May, 1937
James looked to his left at Rowan, who answered James’s unspoken question in the affirmative with a quick sheepish grin.
Yes, Rowan felt as ridiculous as he did. But Lily had chosen them, so there they were, dressed in top hats and frock coats, riding up on the seat of the wagon that bore Lily the May Queen across the village green towards her throne.
The only consolation, James thought, was that everyone would be looking at her and not at them. No one had been surprised when Lily was chosen. She was the perfect May Queen, pretty, demure, and so very English with her rose-fair looks. In her white dress, holding her posy of blooms, she was more than Spring personified. She was a higher being, the goddess of Spring herself, Persephone. And the other name she was known by — Kore, the maiden. Just like his mother.
It was James’s mother who had told him that story. How Persephone’s absence from the world had made it a barren desert until her own mother, Demeter, rescued her from the underworld and the clutches of her abductor and jailer, Hades. James thought that without Lily his life would be a barren desert, and was instantly cross w
ith himself because that was exactly the sort of drivel that you’d expect from a nearly fourteen-year-old boy. James did not want to be a cliché. He did not want to be a pining, lovelorn adolescent. Yet, damn it all, that was precisely what he was. Good thing no one had the foggiest. He’d be laughed at from here to Christendom.
It was his father’s fault, James decided. If Lewis Potts had not had his way, if the Blythes had stood firm in their opposition, then Lily would never have appeared in Potts’s advertising, and she would never have become such a star. In only a few months, she’d become as recognisable as Shirley Temple, or Marian Marsh, whom she greatly resembled, which was probably why Sunny’s mother had taken to calling his father Svengali. James and Sunny had been too young to see that film, but they had seen The Black Room with Miss Marsh and Boris Karloff. Which had quite terrified James, though he’d kept that to himself, mainly because Sunny had been entirely un-terrified and had, in fact, cackled her way through the whole thing.
Oh, yes, James thought bitterly, if Lily had been a prize for her looks before, she was more than ever one now, and there was no escaping it. James’s friends at school could hardly believe he knew her. Some of them had even asked him to get them signed photographs. James wasn’t sure Lily’s penmanship would be up to the job, but he could always sign them himself, he supposed. Who would know?
James’s best friend, Peregrine, was angling for an invitation to Empyrean over the summer so he could meet Lily. James was demurring for reasons that were not all entirely clear to him. Not wanting Lily to fall for the handsome Peregrine (the future Sir Peregrine) Day was an obvious enough motivation, but there were others besides, lying low beneath the murky surface of his consciousness. James’s father wasn’t as strapped for cash as Day’s; his friend had confessed it readily, unabashed. But Empyrean, James knew, was not a patch on Ebury Hall, which had housed Days since the 1500s. Day had said it would probably be sold before he had a chance to inherit it but, as of the moment, it was still his home. Ebury had ninety-six rooms to Empyrean’s thirty-four, and over twenty acres more land. Peregrine’s ancestors had fought alongside kings, one of whom had bestowed a grander title on the family before another stripped them of it again a century later, either for treason or for tupping the wrong royal, according to Day, or possibly both. James’s ancestors on the Potts side had worked in textile mills and coalmines, and scraped livings tending sheep. His mother’s great-great-grandfather had distinguished himself at sea during the Napoleonic wars, but his plundered fortune had been looted to nothing well before his mother was born. James knew that set his mother’s family above his father’s on the social spectrum, but still a long way below Day’s. Below Sunny’s too. Dimity Northcote never talked down to James’s mother, her best friend, but she shot barbs constantly at James’s father, calling him Melmotte and Heep as well as Svengali. James’s father offered Rasputin as another option, but Sunny’s mother refused because the Russian had survived multiple assassination attempts before they finally got him, and James’s father was convinced enough of his own immortality.
The Hiding Places Page 16
