The Hiding Places

by Catherine Robertson

  They passed a tangle of rusted wire netting and rotten planks of wood.

  ‘Someone’s old rubbish?’ said April.

  ‘Used to be a pheasant hatchery,’ said Jack. ‘Back in the day when they were bred to be shot.’

  Back in James’s day, thought April. She wondered if Rowan had tended the birds, and how he’d felt about sending them off to be blasted by shotguns.

  ‘Here,’ said Jack.

  At first, April could not see anything but greenery, and then she realised she was looking at a dilapidated wooden wall, covered in moss and lichen. At its base was a tall crop of nettles that Jack walked right through. April was not wearing boots or long trousers, so she stepped carefully. Closer, she saw the wall formed the back of a shed. An ancient shed that the woods had almost fully reclaimed.

  ‘Whose was this?’ she said.

  ‘The gamekeeper’s,’ said Jack. ‘Not Kit’s. Those before him.’

  ‘Why is it all the way in here? Did they use it as a hide?’

  ‘It wasn’t always deep in the woods.’ Jack ran his hand over the mossy surface. ‘And no, not a hide. Quite the opposite. Here. Look.’

  There was a nail by his fingertip, bent and rusty. He showed her another one, and then another. Nails had been hammered in lines all over the back wall, starting close together at the bottom, and then increasingly further apart as the lines ascended. Most were still present in the wood, a testament to how firmly they’d been hammered in the first place.

  ‘Can you guess what this wall was for?’ he said.

  April shook her head. ‘No idea.’

  Jack pointed to the bottom line of nails. ‘Weasels and stoats went there. And above them crows, and then the magpies and jays.’

  ‘You don’t mean — they weren’t hammered up there?’ April was appalled.

  ‘I mean exactly that. This is a gibbet. A gamekeeper’s warning to other criminals of the natural world who might mean harm to his precious pheasants.’

  ‘Please tell me they were dead before they were hammered up.’

  Her dismay caused him some amusement.

  ‘Pretty hard to hammer a nail through the body of a squirming stoat.’

  ‘I’m not sure that makes me feel better.’ April pointed to the top of the shed. ‘It sounds to me like the criminals, as you call them, were ordered by status. So what was hung up there? Hawks?’

  ‘Good guess,’ he said. ‘Kestrels, sparrowhawks, merlins. And right at the top, the grand tier—’

  ‘Oh, don’t.’ April put her hands over her ears. ‘You’re going to say owls, I know it.’

  ‘Nailed with their backs to the wall, so they could not hide their treacherous faces.’

  ‘Do owls really kill pheasants?’

  ‘They might take a young one, yes. But that wasn’t really the point. The more bodies on the traitors gibbet, the bigger a display of the gamekeeper’s loyalty.’

  April shivered. ‘It’s barbaric,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad they don’t do it these days.’

  ‘No more stockades in the village, no more severed heads on the battlements,’ said Jack. ‘No more hanged men swinging in the trees, their eyes being picked out by crows.’

  ‘I swear to God, you’re enjoying this!’

  ‘I don’t enjoy watching any living thing suffer. But death doesn’t faze me.’

  ‘Ah.’ April folded her arms across her chest. ‘The lecture.’

  ‘It’s not my place to lecture you about anything.’

  ‘But you brought me here for a reason. To make a point.’

  ‘I find this place interesting. I thought you might, too.’

  ‘I find it cruel. Causing death unnecessarily is cruel.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Jack shrugged. ‘They would have died some time. Most not from old age, either.’

  ‘See!’ said April. ‘You do have a point to make. You’re just sidling around it, like a weasel. I should hammer you to a board.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re the one obsessed with hidden meaning. Why don’t you tell me what it all signifies?’

  April stared up into the eaves of the old shed, where spiderwebs were densely clustered. Rotting bodies would have attracted plenty of flies, she thought. Perhaps the spiders came for those and made the shed their home, and it was the strength of that tribal memory that still held them there, though the last corpse had long since shrivelled away.

  ‘I can’t look at things as objectively as you do,’ she said. ‘I can’t see beyond life as good and death as bad. I can’t see beyond a need for good and bad to balance out.’

  ‘Why do they have to?’

  ‘Because they must,’ said April. ‘Or at least we have to believe they must. If we believed bad and good were truly random, then we’d live in fear all the time. Or we’d descend into chaos. We have to believe there’s a pattern to it all.’

  ‘Patterns take time to reveal themselves. Should we always wait?’

  ‘Live for the moment, you mean? Is that your philosophy?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t live in the past or the future, can I? Now is all I have.’

  April regarded him. ‘You don’t live without intention, though, do you? You choose to live a good life and not a bad one.’

  ‘I make that choice because I want to,’ he said. ‘Not for appearances’ sake or because I want something in return. I make it for myself.’

  ‘I made my choice for myself,’ said April.

  ‘And you could make another at any time,’ he said. ‘No one would judge you.’

  April unfolded her arms, hugged them around her chest.

  ‘I would,’ she said. ‘I’d brand me a traitor.’

  Jack was silent. Gabe the dog was snuffling around in the leaf mulch near the roots of a big oak tree.

  ‘Don’t read anything more into things than what they are,’ said Jack. ‘Don’t make meaning where there is none. That’s it — that’s the closest I’ll get to a lecture. I promise.’

  Behind them, a sudden snap of jaws. Gabe bounded back from the tree root and shook his head violently from side to side. Something flailed out of either side of his mouth like olive green rope. Something that twisted and hissed.

  ‘Snake,’ said Jack.

  He sounds remarkably unperturbed, thought April. Gabe must kill snakes regularly. April had never seen a snake in the woods, and would prefer that it had stayed that way.

  Abruptly, the hissing stopped. The green rope ends disappeared into the dog’s mouth in two swift gulps. Gabe, tail up and waving, loped up to them. His jaw was covered in white saliva foam and what looked like strips of peeled sunburned skin. April took a step back.

  Jack clicked his fingers to keep Gabe away.

  ‘The dog has no manners,’ he said, with a sigh.

  ‘Can we leave now?’ said April.

  Her arms, as she unwrapped them from her body, were stiff. There was a crick in her neck, and she reached around to rub it.

  Jack moved up close, and placed his hands lightly on her waist.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I could have offered you a better way to spend a summer’s afternoon.’

  April let him draw her forward into a loose embrace.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘History, philosophy and herpetology? I learned a lot.’

  ‘Good to hear.’

  Smiling, he bent his head and kissed her once, briefly, on the mouth. April felt her lips tingle for some seconds afterwards, and her traitorous mind could not help but wonder what it would be like to be kissed harder and for much, much longer.

  ‘Come on, you beast.’

  It took a second to realise Jack was talking to the dog. But then he took her hand, and they walked together, arms connected but swinging lightly as they went, in a manner April found unexpectedly joyful. As they left the old shed behind, the leaf canopy thinned and the sun shone down on them again, warm, from a bright blue sky. Flowers she hadn’t noticed on the way in came now into view. Thanks to Jack, April could iden
tify most of them. Violets, richly purple, and pale yellow cowslips. White and pink dog roses. The tiny blue and mauve blooms of speedwell. The woods would become damp and grey again in winter, she knew, but right now, they were beautiful. Hard to believe they’d ever held anything as brutal as that traitors gibbet.

  ‘They say that in the old days,’ April told him, ‘an escaped criminal lived here.’

  He gave her a quick, crooked smile. ‘They always say that.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Outlaws in the forest. The stuff of legends.’

  ‘True,’ said April, nodding.

  ‘Not always true.’ Jack squeezed her hand. ‘But perhaps more true than most might think. Of course, a criminal could be anyone from actual murderers to starving peasants who resorted to poaching to feed their children. It all depends on who decides what a crime should be — and on who’s doing the judging.’

  CHAPTER 27

  mid-July

  Crowded on the cottage kitchen bench were one rough-edged tart, three jars of jam, twelve muffins and a crumble.

  ‘Is this some kind of trick?’ said Oran. ‘An optical and olfactory illusion?’

  ‘My bowlful of gooseberries was starting to go off,’ said April. ‘And there were piles of fruit still on the bushes. I thought it would be wrong to let them go to waste.’

  Oran reached out for a muffin, but pulled back his hand, hastily, as if an invisible someone was poised to rap his knuckles with a wooden spoon.

  ‘Have one!’ April waved him on. ‘Have them all!’

  Oran took a muffin, ate it in about four seconds. April began to suspect that his thinness might not be a result of a naturally high-burning metabolism, and felt bad that she’d never given the matter previous thought. Oran had even less money than she did and, though he occasionally had a blowout at the pub, April guessed that what little extra he had usually went to one other person — willingly, she knew Oran would say, though it wasn’t the whole truth.

  ‘You’re welcome to take the lot home with you,’ said April. ‘There’s a jelly in the fridge, too.’

  ‘I’d be worried about my cholesterol,’ said Oran. ‘Except I imagine that with this amount of fruit, any fat would be flushed right on out again.’

  He took another muffin, but instead of eating, turned it over in his hands. April sensed he was working up to something.

  ‘Spit it out,’ she said. ‘And I don’t mean that last crumb.’

  ‘I started off,’ Oran said, ‘with the idea that this was out of character for you, this baking of sweetmeats lark. But then I thought — no, it isn’t, is it? This is the true you. The real April Turner.’

  Compassion for Oran’s poverty was overridden by an urge to shove his face in the bowl of jelly and hold him down. No, this was not the ‘real’ her. This was a practical solution to a problem of excess gooseberries. It was true that she could also have tipped the gooseberries on Kit’s compost heap, but the thought of what Jack might say had eliminated that as a course of action. You can’t pick and choose when nature provides food, April could hear Jack say. When it’s abundant, eat your fill. It’ll be soon enough that you have none.

  ‘Do you want this food or not?’ she said.

  ‘God, yes. But I’ll leave you some of that jam to take to Sunny’s for tea on Sunday. And what about your old codger? I’m sure he’s a man who’d appreciate a rough tart.’

  To her utter dismay, April blushed. Oran’s eyebrows rose so high they disappeared under his curly fringe.

  ‘Good grief, what’s that about? It can’t be my charmingly earthy turn of phrase. You’ll be well used to that by now.’

  He tried to catch her eye, but April had made herself busy covering the baking with tin foil.

  He grinned. ‘Begob, I’ve been mistaken, haven’t I? Instead of a grizzled mien and silvered hair, yonder grower of titanic tubers is a young buck, is he not?’

  The grin vanished. ‘Is that not a bit of a risk? You might be able to take the legs out from under an old bloke with a swing of the shovel, but if a sturdy young stud leapt on you now …’

  ‘You’re young,’ said April. ‘You haven’t leapt on me.’

  Oran drew himself up, touched his hand to his chest. ‘I’m spoken for,’ he said. ‘I’m not at liberty to leap.’

  April filled the apple box she’d brought back from the village fair. Handed it to Oran.

  ‘I’m in no danger. But thank you for your concern.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ said Oran. ‘Do I know him?’

  ‘Jack,’ said April, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘And no, you don’t.’

  ‘You’re sweet on him, though? There’s billing and cooing in the air?’

  April walked to her front door, held it open.

  ‘I’m not at liberty to bill and coo.’

  The comfortingly homey aroma of baked fruit rose out of the apple box, as Oran lingered in the doorway. Something else was on his mind.

  ‘Spit it out,’ April said again, wearily, leaning her head against the edge of the door.

  ‘Just that — if I were not spoken for—’ Oran’s gaze flitted up and down ‘—I’d, well, I’d not leap exactly, as that would be un-gentlemanlike, but, hmm …’

  There were bright pink spots on his cheeks. They clashed, April noted, with his hair, but almost certainly matched the blush that had once more lit up her own face. Even if she’d been able to think of something to say, the power of speech had deserted her.

  Oran cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be away then.’ He lifted the box in a quick salute. ‘Thank you for—’

  And he was off. April watched him go until she regained enough presence of mind to shut the door.

  ‘This is your handiwork?’

  Sunny took the jam, kissed April hello.

  ‘I was forced into it,’ said April, ‘by a gooseberry glut.’

  ‘Well, I’m very pleased to have it,’ said Sunny, as they walked down to the kitchen. ‘I’d intended to make some with my elderflowers during the week, but the WI insisted on holding a bake sale yesterday to raise money for research into the decline of honeybees. I made three hundred bee-shaped iced biscuits for it and, quite frankly, if I never see another piping bag as long as I live, it will be too soon.’

  April repressed an urge to ask Sunny whether anyone in her past had ever likened her to a bee. It was hard to anticipate which questions Sunny would answer readily and which would provoke her.

  Edward was lounging in the courtyard, feet up on a spare chair, straw hat over his face. Fatso was not under the maple tree skinning rabbits but curled up inside the empty stone birdbath, filling the whole thing, which made him look like an over-size version of the kind of puff ladies with boudoirs once used to apply face powder.

  The little brick-paved courtyard was a suntrap. The afternoon air circled in slow fragrant layers — the sweetness of rose and scented viburnum above the musk of new potting mix. Bees hummed. April hoped they were grateful for Sunny’s efforts.

  ‘April has brought us her own home-made jam,’ Sunny announced.

  Edward roused himself, tipped his hat back onto his head. The look he gave April mixed polite interest with a hint of interrogation.

  ‘Has she now?’

  Sunny laid out the tea things on her cast-iron table. Chicken vol-au-vents, to be followed by scones and bite-size pikelets. Perfect with the gooseberry jam, thought April. She wondered if Oran had eaten all the food yet, and decided he probably had. She hoped he wouldn’t regret his gluttony. Hoped also that he did not intend to restate his declaration, such as it was. Chances were high he never would but, on the off-chance that Sunny did murder Cee-Cee Feares, April did not want to be the second woman in Oran’s life to reject him.

  ‘One of my abiding memories from the war was making jam,’ said Sunny, pouring the tea. ‘I remember helping the WI women stir great vats of it down at the village hall. My mother, and James’s too, became very active members. They joined the make-and-mend cor
ps, and sewed and knitted away like demons.’

  ‘Knitted for the soldiers?’ said April.

  ‘Socks, gloves, balaclavas, you name it. And, of course, most of the London children arrived inadequately clothed and then grew like weeds with the country food and air.’

  ‘You had evacuees living with you?’

  ‘War was declared on the third of September,’ said Sunny, ‘and a day later we were invaded by an undernourished, lice-infested army.’

  ‘Did yours also come ignorant of the use of lavatories?’ said Edward.

  ‘Really?’ said April. ‘In the late 1930s, some children did not know how to use a lavatory?’

  ‘Parts of London, and other cities besides, had no indoor WCs, even then,’ said Edward. ‘Poor streets shared communal toilets, often no more than a hole in the ground. Literally.’

  ‘I had to show Virgie how a flush worked,’ said Sunny. ‘It was not until the room flooded that we realised she’d become obsessed with dropping objects in and watching them circle away with the water.’

  ‘How old was she?’ said April.

  ‘Nine when she first arrived. Though she looked about a hundred. The skin on her face was all yellowish and puckered — like a baked apple, I remember thinking.’

  ‘She must have missed her family.’

  ‘Not greatly,’ said Sunny. ‘Virgie was one of seven, and from what I gathered — she was a child of few words — her mother had had umpteen miscarriages and was saved from any more pregnancies by bleeding to death during the last. Her father drank, and they preferred him drunk because when he was unconscious he couldn’t beat them. Her siblings who had not already made a life on the street had to fight each other for any available food. Virgie refused every invitation to be sent back home. When she was fourteen, she left school and took a job at a country inn, not far from here, that had been hit by a stray doodlebug. Amongst the fatalities was the publican’s wife, who’d been renowned for her steak and kidney pudding. Virgie worked there as a cook for forty years.’

  ‘Did she become the second Mrs Publican?’ said Edward.