Blood From Stone

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Do what?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Stand up and tell everyone. Tell the police, go to court and talk about it, for Godsakes. Angel wouldn’t have wanted to do that. And not tell us. Tells us when the trial’s happening, and a copper comes round and tells us to stay away, because we might be witnesses, so we can’t go to court and God knows what. But we went, didn’t we, Mother? In the end. We had to, you know. And it was us she wanted then. Only we couldn’t help her, it was too late. If only she’d come home first. Oh God, I miss her. Sorry, excuse me.’

  He was fumbling for his handkerchief as he stumbled from the room to pound up the stairs, blowing his nose. His footsteps sounded away into silence and Peter could hear the echo of a man who found it impossible to sob in public, whoever he needed to blame. Six months since that death, not long, no real time at all. A burning log fell from the overbuilt fire into the slate hearth. Mrs Joyce moved nimbly, seized a pair of tongs and put it back on the flames with the rest. Peter was feeling the heat. A long moment of silence. Then she turned towards him and pulled a face. He thought he could see a touch of her daughter in her then, even more than in the colours in the walls, the pictures, the tapestries and the vivid green of her skirt that looked as if it had been made from something else. She was either wearing it back to front or the seams were odd. Her hands were still, now, and she gazed back towards the fire.

  ‘Well, Peter, you’re good for him, I’ll say that. He doesn’t do tears or temper very often, more’s the pity. He’ll be back down soon, so if I were you, I’d pretend it didn’t happen. Would you like another biscuit?’

  ‘Please.’

  Another silence. The fire popped. He waited.

  ‘I know why Angel went off with that Rick Boyd, and I know why she didn’t come back, and I’ve got some idea of what happened to her,’ Mother said finally, flatly. ‘At least, I don’t know, but I can guess. I know that we got it wrong, every single one of us; Hen, too, I think, if you don’t mind my saying so, you being a friend of hers. A special friend, I hope, she deserves it. You had to love Angel, you really did. She was put on God’s earth to be loved, she really was. Hen was put on earth to find her own way, heaven help her and I hope I had something to do with that.’

  A lot, he wanted to say.

  ‘But we did treat Angel differently, and we did love her best, heaven help us. You love the one who needs most, can’t help it. And to have Angel die in her own room, when she might not have died otherwise, was hell on wheels, Peter. It was never going to be all right, or it was never going to be all right for a long, long time, and Dad’s right, in his own way, too, that it might have been better to say nothing and let the bastard loose. I sank like a stone, Peter, for I loved that girl, you can’t help that, love’s where the devil takes you, you love one better than the other, and the trick’s not to show it. But, I tell you now, they were both of them wrong, I mean Hen and Angel’s dad, were wrong, you know. She wasn’t corrupted by that young man, however bad he was himself. She was way before him, and I’ll always wonder if Hen knew that. I’d rather she didn’t, if you know what I mean, just as I’d rather Dad didn’t know either. He’ll be down in a minute.’

  She rearranged her skirt. She had dressed for the occasion. A sweet waft of her own scent drifted towards him. Soap and lavender, a definite taste of fresh from the bath.

  ‘I don’t know where or how she’d learned this knowingness, but she always had it. I don’t know why, some girls just do. They go on heat early. Always experimenting with herself. Painting her nipples with my lipstick when she was a kid, shaving her pubes as soon as they grew, fascinated with her own anatomy. She must have discovered masturbation sooner than most, anyway discovered something other kids didn’t know. She had a need for sex, such a craving need the boys could smell it; it worried me sick, but it had the effect of frightening them off. That kind of over-maturity, it does repel, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could go both ways.’

  She nodded. ‘Well, it would attract if you happened to be pretty with it. And had the faintest idea of what you were doing. Instead of not being popular, being rude to people, being on the outside. Drawing attention in all the wrong ways, and getting the wrong result. I’d’ve rather she’d gone with dozens of boys than stayed in her own room, wanking. Her Dad never knew, of course, but I heard. It calmed down of course, it always does, I suppose. Angel never got what she wanted, really. It broke my heart.’

  Peter was wondering quite what all this was about. Mrs Joyce looked at him shrewdly.

  ‘Too much information, eh? I’m sorry about that, but I’ve never been able to talk to anyone else about it and you’re here. Nothing stopped Angel being a sweetheart, she’d have given you the shirt off her back, but she did need protecting. And I could see the look on your face when Father was downplaying what that man did. He’s wrong, I know, but he only does it because he can’t bear the thought of her really hurting. And, as I said, I’m not sure if it’s fair to say that Rick Boyd corrupted Angel. She had corruption in her. There was nothing she wouldn’t have tried. After all, she died with her legs spread, lips and tits smeared with lipstick, oh, never mind, that’s how I found her in the morning. I had to wash her before I called Dad, like I did when she was a kid. Poor baby. I don’t know if that was her own pose, or one she’d learned from him. More coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Peter said, quietly absorbing his own shock.

  Footsteps sounded down the stairs. Mrs Joyce got up and loaded the tray, as if her part was finished. How well do parents really know their children? Peter thought. How well do the children know one another and to what lengths would all of them go to protect each other?

  Mr Joyce had recovered himself. He took the tray from his wife, put it to one side and ushered her back to her seat.

  ‘C’mon, pet,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to those. I like to see you just sitting.’

  ‘I’m not good at that,’ she said, smiling at him fondly as if there was no one else in the room. ‘I shall have to learn, shan’t I?’

  A grandfather clock ticked in the corner of the room. Peter waited, curious to see where they would go from here, deciding it was up to them. The silence was not uncomfortable as if the warmth of the place took away any feeling of urgency.

  ‘Well, well,’ Mr Joyce said. ‘I don’t know if that’s cleared the air, or what. We’d better be honest, with you, Mr. Friel. We were angry with Hen over this, and it looked like sending down all this stuff was her trying to tell us something, shock us out of our misery. Being a bit vindictive, I thought. She can be like that. Well, I thought, anyway. We went back into a bit of a state of shock, you see, when that woman committed suicide. Brought it all back, as if it had ever gone away. Kids, eh? Who’d have ’em? They’re all you want, and then you don’t know them at all. Never know what you’re going to get, not even when they’re your own. I suppose we took even more of a risk, didn’t we, Mother?’

  ‘No, we didn’t. No more than anyone else.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Peter asked.

  ‘They were adopted,’ Mrs Joyce said. ‘Didn’t you know? Angel and Hen, both of them were. We got them when they were only ten days old.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Both of them?’ Peter said, keeping his voice on an even keel. ‘That was very brave of you. Who came first?’

  ‘Henrietta, of course,’ Mrs Joyce said, proudly. ‘Mind, we’d had to wait long enough for her. It was like being vetted for being a spy. I think they even looked to see if you had anything hidden under the carpets. Very secret and private it was then, not like now. It was a church adoption society. You didn’t even know the name of the mother and the mother was never to know who we were. Anyway, we got her at ten days old, and it didn’t take us long after that to decide, in all fairness, there’d better be two. Didn’t seem right to raise one on her own, when we’d got so much to give. So Angel arrived. We were so lucky.’

  ‘So were they, Mother, they were luck
y to have you.’ Mr Joyce leaned forward and patted her hand, the gesture covering Peter’s loud fit of coughing, which took him by surprise and brought them back into the present. They both looked towards him with genuine concern. He could imagine that every babyish cough or whimper from one of their daughters would be examined instantly.

  ‘Did they know?’ he asked, when the coughing stopped. ‘About being adopted, I mean? Only it’s never been mentioned, not in the court case, not anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, they both knew early on. That’s what we were advised to do. Didn’t bother Hen either way, she wasn’t curious or didn’t seem to be. We were her mum and dad, and that was that. But we probably set about it a bit wrong with Angel. She had bad dreams over it, she thought someone was going to come and take her away again. We made up for it by telling her she was very special, in a very special way. We told her she was ours because we loved her and chose her right from the start. I said most mums and dads didn’t get to choose their kids, they just happened; they could just be accidents and what made her special was that she was there, just because she was loved and we really, really wanted her so much, we’d had to fight to get her and we were never going to let her go. I suppose that set in the rot at school, because she got up one day and told the rest of them they were all accidents and their parents couldn’t possibly want them the way hers did. Bless her. She took everything literally, Angel did.’

  ‘Not sure Mr Friel wants to know about this,’ Mr Joyce muttered, but his wife was in full flight in front of an objective, deeply interested audience who was, in his stillness and irrelevance, a sounding board.

  ‘Maybe not,’ she said firmly. ‘But I do, and so should you, ’cos I think that’s where everything started, you know? Kids don’t discriminate, they really don’t, until one of them stands up and yells out about being different, especially if they’re saying they’re better. I only wanted to remind you, dear, that it was Hen broke up the fight. Hen always looked after her. There, that’s me done, but I need to know, love, what you want me to do. Talk too much, or not talk at all. It’s one or the other, I’m afraid, no in-betweens.’

  ‘Talk,’ he said, tersely. ‘Please talk. Talk me to death.’

  She had risen to take up the tray again, carried it aloft over his head, brushing his arm as she moved.

  ‘I’ll not do that, love. I prefer you alive, for a good long while. And I’d like Hen to come home for a bit, whenever she’s ready. And I’d like that room back. I’ll agree with you there, she shouldn’t have sent that stuff down. It was, oh I don’t know, rude of her.’

  ‘She didn’t send it, Mrs Joyce. Somebody else did. She has no idea who. That’s why I’m here.’

  She put down the tray again and then picked it up, like a shield, a person who always carried something or other about with the same ease she wore her clothes. She did not believe him, but she was willing to forgive mistakes.

  ‘Oh, really? Tell her I’ve given up the bus shelter, will you?’

  She nodded towards the door to the stairs.

  ‘That’s man’s work.’

  Angel’s room, beyond the stuff that stood in the entrance, was a pleasant room, apart from the frills. If not the best room in the house, it would have to rival it, larger than Peter imagined, but then he had been thinking of a child. He wanted to see the other two storeys of this house, Hen’s room, the parental room, and he could not ask, thought instead of how he himself could root himself here and never want to grow up and out of it. He could also see why the arrival of so much luggage would anger anyone. The baggage was not quite as he imagined it: he had been thinking ahead of untidy, rubbishy bags, because those were the sorts of items that had always accompanied him whenever he moved. Instead there was a neat old trunk of big proportions, and a couple of garment bags. Difficult to see what all the fuss was about, except for the sheer bulk, the intrusion into the room, the fact that they did not look as if they belonged, and the covering of purple and orange FedEx logos. FOR A JOYCE, FOR H JOYCE, other labels, too, H and A JOYCE, package prepaid, deliver on X. There was a set of far older, worn-out luggage labels on the trunk, overwritten by the purple and orange.

  ‘I didn’t even look,’ Mr Joyce was saying. ‘I’d only just been able to persuade Mother to take a look at Angel’s kiddy stuff, you see, and I knew it would be too much for us to look at whatever Hen was sending of hers. So I phoned, like I did. Spoke to you. I’m sorry again for being so angry.’

  ‘Hen didn’t send these things,’ Peter said again, louder this time. Peering over the trunk and around the garment bags, he could see it was a pretty room, without a sniff of death in it. There were toys on the white bedspread, pale pink walls and a smell of pot pourri. It felt as if the door to the room had never been opened in the whole six months since Angel had died there. Aged approximately thirty years and still a precocious child. Mr Joyce had stopped at the door.

  ‘What do you mean, Hen didn’t send this stuff? She must have done, it says so. Probably didn’t want it messing up her place.’

  ‘The labels aren’t entirely clear, are they?’ Peter said pleasantly. ‘Perhaps we should take a look.’

  Mr Joyce choked and shook his head.

  ‘Or perhaps I should take a look, while you and Mrs Joyce make us another cup of coffee? And then we can decide what to do with it all.’

  Mr Joyce nodded gratefully and went back towards the stairs. His dread of the mysterious delivery had already imparted itself to Peter, who could feel his fingers tingling, and felt his own reluctance making him cautious, as if he were a bomb disposal expert without the necessary training. Or as if opening the old trunk would release a cloud of germs. He was back in Thomas Noble’s office, unpacking that skirt. It was as if unpacking stuff was his new role in life and becoming an uncomfortable habit.

  He took the trunk first, because it looked more dangerous than the garment bags lying harmlessly on the floor. The trunk had three hasps securing the lid; it was like an old seagoing trunk, reinforced canvas banded with wood, heavy in its own right and not padlocked. The hasps moved easily, although the metal was pitted with rust. There was no ominous creak from the hinges of the lid as he opened it to the sweet smell of lavender far stronger than the bowl of pot pourri by the bed. It was almost overpowering, so that Peter edged round it and went to open the window. A draught of wonderful damp air and the smell of sea cleared his head; if he had his way, he would throw open every window in this house, however cold it was, and let the draught at least begin to clear the shadows. He could see Mrs Joyce doing that, soon. He went back to the trunk, plunged his hands into tissue paper.

  Clothes, exquisite clothes, carefully, recently packed in a state of pristine cleanliness. How would he describe this if he was compiling a list of contents for a jury to consider, and this was exhibit A? Female apparel, of an old kind, in unusual fabrics. Some items requiring repair. A consignment of ladies’ garments of a kind not currently worn. Vintage unknown. Value not easily determined. Label stuck inside lid of trunk says, ‘My mother’s clothes.’ That was as accurate as he could make it on examination of the first three layers, and that was as far as he cared to go. His hand closed round an object that he pulled to the surface and found he was holding a bar of soap. Female apparel interlayered with wrapped tablets of soap, then, with something heavier at the bottom. Shoes? Documents? That was the general idea. Peter knelt by the garment bags and unzipped the first. Coats, made of velvet, cotton, silk, trimmed with fur and beaded collars, not everyday coats. In the second bag, he found what he could only describe as costumes, suits, but frivolous suits, all made to fit a slim body. He zipped up the bags and closed the lid of the trunk. Then he examined the outside surface of it, wishing he had the detective’s magnifying glass. He was perfectly sure that it was not his place or his task to examine everything in detail. To do so felt entirely wrong; it was not his and he might do damage. Someone else had to be present when all this was unpacked, whatever there was inside the pockets and down at
the bottom of the trunk. Peter sat on a dead woman’s bed and regarded the clothes of another woman, who was also, undoubtedly, dead, and briefly mourned them both.

  The first priority was to get this stuff out of here. He went down the stairs, rehearsing his lines. The Joyces were waiting for him.

  ‘I think it’s all been a bit of a mistake,’ he said. ‘Looks like a misdelivery of a whole lot of theatrical costumes, nothing to do with you at all. No personal effects, nothing dangerous.’ He knew he was lying. ‘I wonder how that could have happened?’

  They looked puzzled and relieved. They needed someone else to take charge; they would do whatever he suggested as if it were an order and he was the merciful official for whom they had been waiting.

  ‘Best thing to do is get it all out of here and into a storage place until I can get FedEx to sort out the problem,’ Peter went on. ‘And you’ll know how we should do that, Mr Joyce. You have a company, don’t you? It’ll be my expense.’

  Mr Joyce clapped a hand to his forehead.

  ‘That’s what I should have done in the first place.’

  ‘You’re always saying that,’ his wife said, shaking her head.

  ‘And, perhaps while we wait, you won’t mind my picking your brains about storage . . . Hen says you know all about it.’

  It was midday before the white van arrived at the command of the master of the house. In the meantime, Peter had eaten sandwiches, admired the tapestries on the walls and learned plenty about the benefits of living where they did and running a business like theirs. Peter wanted to go, but he knew he could not until he had seen the trunk and the garment bags safely stowed anywhere else but here. Part of him also wanted to hang around the parents and listen to whatever else they might tell him about their adopted daughters, but the moment for that had somehow passed and the talk was easily neutral. They chatted like starlings about storage, the place where they lived and the price of eggs, albeit without the same spontaneity, until a man with the WJ logo on his sweater turned up with the van and Peter helped him load. Then Mr Joyce drove Peter, himself and all the misdirected baggage away. This time, Peter knew they were carrying the equivalent of high explosives. The mushroom cloud of a fanciful explanation that had tickled his fancy in the train was forming itself into newer, outrageous shapes, like the clouds in the multicoloured sky long after the threat of snow had gone away. What a beautiful day it was. Mr Joyce was listless and thoughtful in the face of it, dabbing at a smeared windscreen, until encouraged to talk about business.