She lowers her eyes and I realise she is right. Almost every day Will questions me, asks me about Abe, and how we met and our life together. I never asked Ma about how she met Dad, or why she married him. I’ve never asked her who she is, not really. It comes as something of a shock to realise that I don’t know my mother at all.
‘I’m sorry, Ma,’ I say quietly. ‘For everything.’
‘I’m sorry too.’ She doesn’t look at me, only raises her shoulders a little in a half shrug. It’s only a beginning, but it’s something.
‘Tell me what you know about Henry Casson,’ I ask her, and this time I sense a tightening in the air, the peace she spoke of disrupted by ripples of tension. Ma does too; she folds her hands in her lap and straightens her back.
‘It was the end of the Civil War; William Heaton, like many others around here, had been fined for refusing to pay the king for a knighthood at a time when all men who owned land worth forty pounds a year were required to, and he had fought for Cromwell. He should have come home, victorious, but in the final weeks of the war he was lost.’
‘Killed in the war?’ I ask her, thinking of Agnes’s last pages. ‘Or murdered?’
‘No one knew for sure,’ Ma says. ‘No one saw him go down in battle and there was never a body recovered or a report of him being captured; even in them chaotic times that was rare. He simply disappeared, leaving his young wife and their son, Robert, to fend for themselves. And his will had gone missing too, so it was quite a to-do. Those were dangerous times, the years after the war. Soldiers still went from village to village, taking anything they wanted, and there was very little justice for ordinary folk. Anne Heaton must have decided she and her son Robert needed a protector, and so she married Casson and he soon had his feet under the table, his own baby in the crib, and the role of Constable that had always been taken by a Heaton. He cut Robert off from education and did his best to cut him off from his inheritance, too.’
Ma and I watch each other as the afternoon light that had been flooding the room is pushed into oblivion by the gathering dark. We only look at each other, keep our voices steady and light.
‘But he didn’t?’
‘He didn’t. There are varying stories. Some say Robert made his own fortune and then bought Ponden back from Casson, or Casson’s son. Some say that one day Casson just vanished, like William Heaton had, and was never seen again.’
There is a rumble that I first feel through the soles of my feet, and it builds. I see the long table begin to vibrate, and then the great dresser that has been standing against the wall almost since the house was built, trembles and shakes and, one by one, Ma’s collection of cheese dishes and ornamental plates begin to teeter to the edge and topple off. Then all at once the house is still again.
‘What happened?’ Will asks.
‘Big lorry outside,’ Ma tells him, and utterly unperturbed, he returns to his book.
‘Well, that cuts down on the dusting at least,’ Ma says, and a giggle bubbles up from my gut and explodes into laughter.
‘This house doesn’t like that name,’ I say.
‘If there’s anything to be found, it will be in your dad’s office. But I haven’t been in there … not since you left. Be watchful.’
‘Because it’s where they used to lay out the dead?’ I ask her, with a wry smile.
‘Because your father didn’t talk to me much about the old Ponden stories, but he did tell me once that it was the only room in this whole house that he had ever been frightened in.’
1658
Dear God, please forgive me my sins, which are many. I deserve the series of calamities that have befallen me, O Lord, but please, please not this. To have my heart so cruelly ripped from my body, to have all hope crushed. It cannot be, Dear God my Saviour. It cannot be, I refuse to believe it.
I waited and waited at Timothy’s house, helping where I could, with spinning yarn and keeping house, but the longer I waited for word from Betty or my Robert, the more that Timothy’s wife, Mary, gave me long dark looks, and counted out her food as if she and he might starve with my extra mouth to feed. This, even though Betty sent baskets of produce that she had collected at Ponden. Baskets would come on the cart with the linen, but no news.
Then one night Mary turns to me and says, ‘You may not stay here any longer, child. You’d do well to travel to Leeds and see what fortune you may make there.’
‘I will go soon enough,’ I assured her. ‘But I must wait for news from Ponden.’
‘You better had not wait much longer,’ Mary said in return. ‘You thicken at your waist and soon will thicken more, until your babe is born.’
O Lord, as certain as my heart is true, I did not guess that I might be with child. Though I was sick and thin, weary and tearful, I am so sick of heart I believed it symptoms of pining. But as she spoke, I knew she spoke the truth. And, O Lord, I have never been so afraid. I had to see Robert. I had to see him and know that he was still true to his word, that we will be married at once, and that, above all, the babe would be born within the love and Grace of God.
I had no choice but to return to Ponden, waiting until dark fell. I walked across the moors and there was no moon; it was black as all ink around me, but I felt no fear, knowing each pathway as if it were a friend. At last I saw the house, black against black, silent and asleep. At once my heart was full of hope and fear. Hope, yes, because it was comfort to see the only place that had been my home, and fear for what truths awaited me inside. What if Robert was dead? What if I was made widow before I was ever made wife?
The kitchen door was locked firm, the fire dead in the grate. I dared not knock for fear of waking the wrong person. Soon I came upon the open pantry window, small, but I was smaller, even though my belly is swollen with child.
I found Betty sleeping in her cubby by the kitchen and shook her awake, covering her mouth with my hand so that her screams might not wake the house.
At first Betty’s face was full of fear, and then dread when she saw who had woken her, and then great sadness.
‘Betty, is he dead? Is that what you would not tell me?’ I asked her and she replied, ‘Oh God, Oh God, not dead, dear girl, but gone. Master Robert has gone this week hence, sent to Ireland.’
All I could do was shake my head, no. No, no and still no.
‘He rode out on his horse, with Casson at his side, and his trunk on a cart, and I thought sure he’d find a way to come for you,’ she said. ‘I see that he did not.’
I wept then, most bitterly, and thought that I might die there, for my heart raced and fluttered and I could not breathe. Somehow I told Betty my predicament and she gathered me into her arms, and rocked me against her bosom as if I were the babe, and for a moment at least my fear was quieted and I was at peace.
‘Maid,’ Betty said, ‘it is not the first time that a young man has broken a girl’s heart with pretty talk. I’ll help you as much as I can. But you can’t go back across the moor tonight. In the dawning, go back to Timothy and I will bring more news to you as soon as I am able.’
Dawn broke as I walked back across the moor, and I stopped on the cusp of the hill and saw how God painted the sky with such colours as I have never seen, and how the beauty of it made my heart and gut ache for the love that I cannot and will not believe that I have lost.
Dear Robert, it is I, your wife Agnes, mother to your babe. Dear Robert, come to me, come to me, come to me. Answer my prayer, for you are my Lord and I am your disciple. I cannot be saved without your grace.
Please, Dear God, help me!
Agnes Heaton, still
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Dad’s office is a large, square room, right under Cathy’s room, as old and as integral to the original house as the room above. Two stone-framed windows flank the corner; there is a fireplace, stone flags on the floor. My hand hesitates on the age-pocked iron latch of the door. When I was little, I remember this room flooded with sunlight, the trees dancing outside the window, Dad�
��s stuff everywhere, his desk covered in paperwork and books and all the random things he loved for a little while before moving on to the next thing. He let me sit at his desk while he worked and I drew, or played in the corner. Here we’d read together, laugh together. Here was a place that Ma hardly ever came. There’s a very good reason I haven’t visited this room since I came home, and it’s not because of Ma’s ominous warnings. It’s because I half expect him to be waiting for me behind this ancient door.
The electric light isn’t working, which is hardly a surprise. I could go back upstairs and fetch my phone or a torch, but I feel like if I do, the moment will pass, and I‘ll lose what resolve I have. So I strike a match to the candle Ma gave me. Candlelight is surprisingly effective, but it gutters and flickers and makes the shadows dance. What I see is a time capsule, muted with layers of dust, garlanded with spiders’ webs, but it is just as I remember it: piles of books, photos in frames, and, on the walls, as many old drawings, paintings, and photographs of Ponden through the ages that Dad could find. There’s a selection of mismatched flat-pack bookshelves crammed full with books, boxes, files, objects. I have no idea what I’m looking for, or where it might be. Stepping into the room I leave the door open, reassured by the sound of Ma’s radio, and process my candle around the room, hoping for a box marked ‘Ponden Records’.
But that’s far too organised for Dad, of course.
This is not a job that can be done by candlelight; I’ll have to put it aside until daylight. Turning on my heel, a pain shoots through my toe and shin. Wincing, I see I’ve made contact with a wooden box sitting in the middle of the floor. How I didn’t fall over it before I don’t know, but crouching down, I run my hands over it, and there’s no dust. Pushing it slightly to test its weight, I see dust underneath it, as if it has only just been placed there. I hear myself swallow as I try to lift the lid, but there’s a small brass lock set into the wood and it’s locked. It’s impossible to know what’s inside, so, placing the candle on a shelf, I pick the box up, all of its weight, I think, in the solid hardwood, rather than the contents. Just as I reach for the candle, it snuffs out.
Yes, I think, it’s time to leave this room now – but I take the box with me.
Will is sleeping with his head on Ma’s lap when I return next door, his book splayed open on the floor. One of her hands is resting lightly on the top of his, and the look on her face as she watches him, the tenderness and care … It’s hard to know how to feel about that, when I don’t remember her looking at me that way.
She smiles when she sees me in the doorway.
‘He asked me to read to him,’ she says softly. ‘Drifted right off after only a couple of pages. Not sure what that says about the book, but I thought he must need it. Look at his lashes, long enough to sweep the gravel path.’
‘I need a week in that room, but I picked this up for starters.’ I set the box down on the floor and sink into the armchair.
‘Ma, I know a lot about the history of this house, but hardly anything about my own family. Tell me what, you remember about my grandparents.’
Ma checks Will, making sure he really is sound asleep.
‘Bobby, your dad, were always the life and soul of every party; everyone loved him, even those that didn’t want to. But his dad, Bill, he was a troubled man,’ she says softly. ‘He died years before I met your dad, but Bobby told me that when Bill were in the grip of the “black dog”, he sucked the life and colour out of everyone. He said it were like his mood were heavy, somehow, like it had a weight that bore down on everyone, but most of all on him – like he was being crushed to death by sadness, that’s how your dad put it. And then, one day they found him down by the reservoir. Shotgun wound to the head. Shooting accident, it said in the paper, and that’s what the family told everyone, but—’ Ma stops dead, biting her lip, her hand unconsciously covering Will’s ear.
‘What?’ I ask her.
‘Your dad told me he read it in his mum’s diaries, years later. She wrote her thoughts down every day, and she wrote about what happened to Bill, and one thing stuck out.’
‘Yes?’ I prompt her.
‘She wrote that days before the accident he told her he were going to die.’
‘Because it was suicide?’ I whisper the last word.
‘Because – because she wrote in her diary that Bill’d seen him. Greybeard. That after Bill thought he saw him, he was frantic. Said he couldn’t stand waiting for whatever it was that was going to end him, that he’d rather do it himself. And then, a few days later …’
Ma and I fall silent for a moment or two.
‘This is a self-fulfilling prophecy,’ I say. ‘The problem of growing up with the legend of a family curse. You see some old bloke with a beard and suddenly you’re doomed.’
‘Maybe,’ Ma says tactfully.
‘What about Dad’s mum?’ I ask her. ‘Did you know her?’
‘I never met her. She had cancer, ovaries. She must have had it a long time but they didn’t know about it, and then suddenly it happened so quickly. Bobby was nineteen – it was right before I met him. I was sixteen.’
‘You were so young,’ I breathe, aware of the hypocrisy.
‘He had this place, the land, a bit of money. Too young. It all happened too young, to him and to me. You can see, can’t you, why I were so afraid for you?’
‘I can,’ I said. ‘Tell me about your mum and dad, Ma. I don’t know anything about them, a whole half of me that I know nothing about.’
Ma doesn’t answer for a long time, her eyes dropping to Will’s face, impossible to read.
‘I’ll tell you about my mum and dad,’ she says. ‘Dad worked in the mill down the lane when it still was one. Foreman, he was. He used to wear this long coat, like a doctor’s coat, but brown, and he’d always have three yellow pencils in the pocket. And a tiny little brush moustache. I think the war did something to him, broke him a bit. He died of a heart attack just after I were married, no age at all. I have photos of him somewhere …’
‘Was he kind?’ I ask her.
‘Gentle as a lamb,’ Ma says, smiling. ‘As for my ma, she was pretty. So pretty, you never seen anyone like her, not in real life. She was like a film star, to me. Golden hair all down her back, periwinkle eyes. I adored her, trotted around after her everywhere. She were here a lot when your dad and I were first married, helping me get a grip on managing a place as big as this. We had … we had some hard times here, and I wouldn’t have got through them without her. She missed my dad something terrible and she died soon after you were born. I still miss her.’
‘Can I ask you something?’ I test the words carefully, sensing Ma stiffen, seeing the look of contentment fade away.
‘What?’ She is guarded.
‘Do you love Will?’ She smiles, and it is a smile made partly of relief that I have not asked the more difficult question.
‘I do,’ she says, with a small smile. ‘He’s an unexpected pleasure in my life; he gives me joy. Now, how about you put the kettle on?’
It’s enough that she loves him, even if she has never shown me that kind of affection; it’s enough that she loves my son.
No, it’s almost enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In the kitchen I try opening the box again, shoving an old meat skewer into the lock, but it isn’t fine enough. It takes a straightened paperclip I find in the bottom of one of the many drawers of stuff, and several sweary minutes, but at last I’m in. There is a jumble of folded papers, some clearly recent, others thicker, creamier, older-looking.
I take a wodge out, spread them over the table. Birth certificates, a family tree, tax records … Hastily I rifle though the pile and flick through what’s left in the box. Interesting finds for a Heaton archive – the corner of a photograph catches my eye – but there is nothing obvious of Agnes or Emily here.
Where would Robert have hidden the papers that Emily sent him? Where would I find more of Agnes’s story? Looking out int
o the autumn evening I see my reflection in the window, hollowed eyes looking back at me.
‘Don’t you have any ideas?’ I ask myself, catching my breath on the thought as I see – at least, I think I see – another figure reflected in the window, at the very edge of my peripheral vision, as slight as my own reflection, a dappled palette of dark shadow and dim light that makes up something like a face, standing just behind me. I don’t dare look right at the apparition; I’m afraid to. Afraid that if I do I will lose her.
‘I want to help you, Agnes,’ I say very softly, feeling crazy at exactly the same time as I utterly believe that there is something there. ‘Show me how.’
For several long moments there is nothing but silence, deep and close. Staring ahead of me, I track the headlights of the cars on the distant road, flaring and merging, yellow into red. It takes a second for me to realise that one red orb remains static, glowing softly, with a light that is so low it might almost not be there; a little light like closing your eyes after looking too long at a naked bulb. The distant star hovers just for a few seconds by the back wall, and then it is gone and so is the light.
But it doesn’t matter; now I know where to look next.
Tru and Abe
‘But do you have to go?’ I’d asked Abe.
We were sitting in our Finsbury Park flat, where we’d moved when Will had turned four, after I’d landed my job at the Liston James Museum. We had a two-bed place on the second floor of an old Georgian house. When you opened the window the traffic roared past, and sometimes there’d be drunken fights outside at night, but we were opposite the park, and when you were sitting on the sofa all you could see were the tops of the trees.
The Girl at the Window Page 18
