She's Leaving Home

by William Shaw

  This was a house of women. He savored the unfamiliar feeling for a few seconds before he fell into a rich, enveloping void.

  Sixteen

  A long time later there was music. It had been in his head for some time. Plush and colorful, strange and new, it took on unexpected shapes and shades, twisting into new moods, and he rose through it slowly to consciousness.

  There were words too, that made sense at first only in a dreamlike way. He lay not so much listening as absorbing, soaking in the curiosity of it, until finally he rose to a delicious lucidity in which the notes and the songs became clearer. It was about days being few and filled with tears but sung in a strangely upbeat kind of way.

  A girl’s voice sang along to the music, something about it being so long since a girl had been gone.

  The sun was shining through thin curtains. Helen Tozer was singing along to records in the room next door; her bedroom must have been the other side of the wooden partition.

  He rose, still in his pajamas, looking for the bathroom. She was sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, LP and single covers scattered around her. In front of her was a small pink plastic record player.

  “Sleepyhead,” she said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Gone eight.”

  She was already dressed in a pair of jeans and a cotton blouse. The song ended. She carefully lifted the needle off the LP before the next track started, took the record off the player and replaced it in its sleeve, then picked up another, reading down the names of the tracks.

  “I don’t remember. Do you like the Stones?” she asked, not looking up.

  Breen shrugged. He yawned. Sleep was hard to shake.

  She lowered the needle onto the start of another song, ignoring him, listening intently to the music, nodding her head gently in rhythm. He watched her with distant fascination, as a child might watch a bird digging for worms, then returned to his room, took his wash bag and walked to the bathroom down the hallway.

  Mrs. Tozer was below in the kitchen, doing something with empty jam jars. She greeted him with a beaming face, like he was a prodigal returning. “It’s the Devon air, I expect.”

  “What?”

  “You sleeping so long. The air’s thicker here. It tires you out if you ain’t used to it.”

  “Does it?”

  “Definitely. And makes you hungry too, I expect. You eat bacon and eggs?”

  “Definitely.”

  She smiled at him and rubbed her hands on a towel, then pulled open the fridge door and lifted out a plate piled with bacon and set to work.

  “Thank you for putting me up at such short notice.”

  “It’s a pleasure. You bring our Helen back to us. She’s been away so long.”

  “She brought me, really. I can’t drive at the moment.”

  “Yes. I see. I heard you been in the wars.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Helen says your father died recently.”

  “Did she?”

  “Maybe she shouldn’t have said.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s terrible losing someone close.” A sheepdog poked its head into the open back door. She shooed it away. “She’s a chatterbox. She can’t help it. Always has been.”

  “I know.”

  She laughed. “Course you do. When she was a child she kept the milk-tanker driver waiting twenty minutes while she told him the story of Dracula and the Three Bears.”

  The pan started to sizzle on the range. She laid three slices of bacon in it, one after the other. The kitchen was plain but Breen had the sense that behind the built-in cupboards, doors covered in layers of glossy cream paint, lurked provisions that could see an army through a long winter.

  “Would you like two eggs, dearie?”

  “One is plenty.”

  “Mushrooms? Picked them this morning.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Was he old?”

  “What?”

  “Your father?”

  “Sixty-seven.”

  “And were you close?”

  “He brought me up.”

  “Was there no one to help?”

  He was startled by a large shape moving past the small back window of the kitchen until he realized it was just a cow.

  “No. No family here. He was a loner.”

  “He must have been a great man, then, raising a fine man like you on his own.”

  He nodded. “I suppose he was.”

  “Would you like beans?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You must miss him.”

  “I do. Very much.”

  “The space left by the ones we love is bigger than we ever think it will be.” Her face was unsmiling.

  Tozer came downstairs when Breen was finishing the plate. She took it and washed it up, and dried it. He sat watching her bending over the sink, rinsing crockery under the taps. “What are you talking about?”

  “This and that,” said her mother.

  “What size are your feet?” she turned and asked Breen, as she picked up a tea towel.

  “Eight, why?”

  “Do you want to go for a walk round the farm? We’ve got a while before we have to go.”

  “That would be nice.”

  There was a pile of Wellingtons in a shed at the back of the farmhouse, some single, some in pairs, some so ancient the rubber barely held together. She managed to find a pair that were only one size bigger than Breen’s feet; he sat on a bench in the backyard of the farm, watched by a beady-eyed cockerel, and put them on.

  Arriving at night, he had had no idea where they were. Now he could see the land around them. The Tozers’ farm filled a small valley that ran down towards a muddy estuary below the house.

  The roundness of the hills made them look like they’d been drawn by a child. Fringing the far side of the water, a long forbidding wood, leaves turning yellow and red.

  “This was my kingdom,” said Tozer. She had donned an old duffel coat and wore a red scarf around her neck. “I know every inch.”

  The cows had been through the yard a few hours earlier; the ground under their feet had become a thin colloidal ooze, sucking their boots until they reached untrampled grass. There stood a field full of black-and-white cows that gazed at them dumbly. Breen’s London had never touched the senses in such a way as this place did; a thick, autumnal smell of decay filled the air.

  “How’s your arm?”

  “Not too bad.”

  One of the cows started ambling towards them with a slow step that looked menacing to Breen. Another joined in. Tozer seemed not to notice.

  “My father, he’s like a sore tooth. Even more than last time I was here. He doesn’t say a word. He said anything to you?”

  “No. Just a hello last night. I haven’t seen him this morning.”

  The cows came nearer. They seemed much bigger close to, thick with meat and muscle, nostrils emitting drool and steam.

  “He’s getting worse, I reckon. He used to laugh all the time. One time I was in this nativity play at school and I had the part of one of the three shepherds. I was so proud because I was playing the part of a farmer. Follow the star, you know? Only with my big police girl’s feet, I tripped up on one of the cows that were lowing and fell right on top of Mary. I knocked Jesus’s head right off. It was this doll, see? And the head rolled right across the stage and ended up under the piano. One of the shepherds had to fish it out with his crook. And you could have heard a pin drop.”

  The cows were too close for Breen now. He had fallen back, walking slower, letting Tozer go on ahead alone.

  “And then my dad started laughing. Not just tittering. Real loud laughing. Everybody shushing him, and he just couldn’t stop. Half of me was dead embarrassed. Half of me was pleased I’d made him laugh so much.”

  She turned and looked at Breen, standing there hesitant, and then back at the two cows that now blocked their way forward.

  “Are those animals
OK?”

  “You’m a bit scared, in’t you?” Extra Devon accent for comic effect.

  “Yes.”

  She laughed. “They’re only heifers.” She turned back to the cows. “Ga’an,” she shouted, waving her arms. “Get gone.” Instantly, the cows bowed their heads, jerked around and skedaddled back over the field. Breen followed her, avoiding the cowpats.

  Halfway across the field she paused and stared at a distant clump of trees tucked in the fold of a hill, where three fields came together.

  “Is that it?” he asked her. “The place where they found your sister?”

  She nodded, turning away from him so he could only see her back. A large wide-winged bird circled over the clump of trees.

  “How did they reckon he took her there? Or was she there already?”

  She felt in her coat pocket for her packet of cigarettes, pulled one out. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I’ve tried thinking it through a million times and I don’t know.”

  The field dipped down towards the estuary. The tide was out and flocks of birds were picking at the dark brown mud that stretched out far into the distance. Thousands of them, small clumps of gray and brown against the dark mud.

  Tozer began making her way along the edge, keeping away from the mud by ducking under the scrawny oak limbs.

  “Me and Alex used to swim there. We taught ourselves. Neither of our parents could swim. Each summer it was like a competition. First one in.”

  “Isn’t it muddy?”

  “Bit.”

  “Didn’t you mind?”

  “No. She went in one hot day in May when the water was still freezing. I beat her next year by going in in April. God it was cold, though. Made your bones hurt.”

  “So you won?”

  “No. She beat me in the end.”

  He stopped. There was a piece of china under his foot. Picking it up he examined it; a cracked triangle of blue willow pattern, fringed by a little weed on each edge. A piece of a small angular bridge. He looked around him. There were dozens of small worn pieces of pottery among the stones, and frosty bits of glass too, green and brown and blue.

  “The New Year before she was killed, Mum and Dad were out at a party, so we had a party of our own. Just me and her. Fireworks and everything. Well, some sparklers,” she said. “We’d sneaked a couple of bottles of Bulmers into the barn and built a fire out back. Happy New Year. I drank too much and fell asleep by the fire and missed it all. She woke me up some time after midnight, stark naked in the moonlight, teeth chattering. She said, ‘Pinch, punch, first of the month…and oh, by the way, I beat you.’ She had gone in at five minutes past. She was soaking. Her skin was blue. I remember her, standing there, skinny as a ghost, goose bumps, shaking with the cold. But she’d beat me.”

  “That could have been dangerous.”

  “Says the man who is scared of cows…”

  “I wasn’t scared.”

  “You mean she could have killed herself or something?” she said.

  “No.”

  “She could have saved someone else the bother?”

  She walked on ahead, down the narrow causeway of rocks and shells. Breen tottered along behind her, trying to avoid falling. His socks had fallen down into his wellingtons and his feet were cold.

  “I thought if I got in at the stroke of midnight next year I’d beat her and she’d never be able to beat me again. Never got the chance. She caught bronchitis, though. Served her bloody right.”

  Birds hung in the air above the farm, like the one he’d seen over the spinney where they’d found her sister’s body. She saw him looking at them and said, “Butcher birds.”

  They rounded a corner, startling a group of ducks who took off, squawking angrily. They flew off across the mudflats, out towards the sea.

  “It’s beautiful here,” he said, because it was true and because he thought she’d like to hear him say it.

  “Isn’t it?” she said. She picked up a stick and beat a path through brambles, back into a field. “I can’t stay here anymore, though. It’s all ruined for me.”

  The car splashed through mud on the way out of the Tozers’ farm, engine roaring up the steep road out of the valley up towards Dartmoor and then west towards Cornwall.

  In daylight, the countryside looked no less wild. Dead bracken and granite rocks. Stunted trees bent in the wind. Ground that looked thick with water. Sheep huddled against stone walls. It made Breen feel cold just looking at it. The sun disappeared into cloud. They had left the warmth of the lower valleys behind. As they approached Liskeard, a low mist closed in.

  In the daylight, Tozer took the lanes fast, braking for bends at the last minute which did nothing for Breen’s nerves.

  Driving up the lane out of the town towards the Sullivans’ house, they came to another bend. Suddenly, round the hedge-blind corner, a car came roaring out of the mist.

  Breen tried to shout “Brake!” but nothing came out. There was not enough time anyway because the other car was coming so fast. Hemmed by high banks on either side, the lane left little room for escape.

  Tozer yanked the steering wheel to the left. Branches cracked across the windscreen. A dazzle of glass exploded all around. In that millisecond Breen wondered if he had put his seat belt on. Or if the car was even fitted with them.

  Again, at what seemed the same moment, his body was thrown forward towards the glove compartment. Then sideways. He was conscious of a loud bang, and the world distorting as the other vehicle smashed into them. The smell of brake asbestos and rubber.

  And then suddenly it was still. No birdsong, just the sound of another car engine roaring down the hill, away, noise gradually receding. And pain in his arm.

  Someone began swearing quietly. “Oh, fuck.”

  Must be Tozer. He was relieved to hear her voice.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Almost like a song sung to soothe a child. “We were lucky, hey?”

  Cautiously he opened his eyes.

  Seventeen

  You OK?” Tozer was looking at him. She was shiny, light glinting off her skin.

  Breen lifted his good hand to his face. It was peppered with splinters of glass. She too was covered with glittering shards.

  Breen was trembling like a kitten.

  “You OK?” she said again. She had managed to steer the front of the car out of the path of the oncoming vehicle, leaving the rear of the Zephyr still in the middle of the road. The speeding car had smashed into their tail panel, jerking the car’s chassis back round so that it stopped halfway across the lane.

  “I think so,” he said. As he shook, small pieces of glass clattered off his clothes into the footwell of the car.

  “Stay still,” she said. “Don’t move a muscle.” She reached round to the back of the car and picked her handbag off the backseat. Rummaging through it, she pulled out a pair of tweezers and a pack of tissues. Leaning forward, she placed one hand on his shoulder and carefully picked a lump of glass out of his cheek. He felt the blood start to trickle down his face from where she’d pulled it out.

  She dabbed her face with the tissue, then gave it to him.

  He asked, “Did you see the car?”

  “Only just. I mean. Christ.”

  “Was that a Jaguar?”

  “They almost buggering killed us, Paddy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he meant to?”

  Glass was everywhere. Carefully he picked it out from his sling with his good hand and threw the fragments onto the bonnet in front of them.

  “This thing still drive?”

  She put it into reverse and maneuvered the car back around. “Should I follow them?”

  “Drive to their house. That’s the nearest phone,” he said.

  “Your voice is sort of shaky.”

  She crunched the car into first and drove, one hand on the wheel, the other pushing out pieces of the broken windscreen so she could see better. The rear wheel arch, crushed against the tire, made
a grinding noise as they drove. Fortunately they were only a few hundred yards away from the house. As they pulled into the gravel driveway Breen noted that the Sullivans’ car was not there.

  “It was them, wasn’t it?” said Tozer.

  Unable to open his stoved-in door, he clambered out awkwardly over the driver’s seat. Looking back at the car he saw that one headlight had gone completely, the windscreen was shattered and the rear panel fin on the driver’s side had been torn off.

  He went to the front door and twisted the handle. It was locked. “Hello?” he called, thumping on the door.

  No answer.

  “Hello? Anyone there?”

  He left the door and walked around the house. The back door into the kitchen was locked too.

  “Here,” said Tozer. One of the sash windows in the living room was loose. She pulled a penknife out of her handbag and ran it between the frames, dislodging the newspaper that had been stuffed there to stop it rattling. Freed, the latch moved aside easily. Together they heaved the lower frame up.

  In the hallway, he picked up the Sullivans’ telephone, an old, heavy Bakelite job, dialed 999 and gave his warrant number and a description of the major’s Jaguar. Afterwards, he lowered himself into the chair by the grandfather clock, where Mrs. Sullivan had sat sobbing last night.

  “We should find some sticking plasters. Your face is still bleeding.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “He almost killed us. We were almost dead there. I mean…God. He was going bloody fast, wasn’t he?”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No,” she said. “Not really.”

  “How many were in the car?”

  “I didn’t have time to count, precisely. Do you think he did it, then?”

  “If he’s run, it doesn’t look good.”

  “My God. Think of that. A father killing his own daughter. That’s something dark.”