by Jenny Holmes
‘You don’t say,’ he murmured, his brain racing.
‘I don’t know anything for certain, Stan. But I thought it was only fair to tell you.’
‘That there’s a chance … they had a kid?’
‘It looks like it – yes.’
‘We could be brother and sister?’
‘Half-brother and half-sister,’ she corrected, fixing him with a hopeful gaze.
Stan scarcely paused to consider Violet’s startling news. ‘By Jove,’ he said, a grin lighting up his puzzled face. ‘You and me could end up related. Blimey, Violet, that really would be a turn-up for the books!’
‘Seriously, you’re pleased?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘You bet! You’re the nicest kid sister anyone could wish to have.’
‘Don’t say anything about it – not yet,’ Violet pleaded. ‘Wait until we’re sure.’
‘When will that be?’ Stan asked. He spotted his boss stepping off the bus at the stop outside the baths and making his way into work.
‘When we’re sure of everything. It happened a long time ago, but I still don’t want people calling my mother names she might not deserve, not until we have all of the facts.’
‘Will you tell Eddie?’
‘Yes, but only him. He’ll help us sort it all out and with a bit of luck we’ll be able to prove that the situation wasn’t as bad as it seems at first glance.’
‘All right, cross my heart and hope to die – I won’t breathe a word,’ Stan promised before hurrying away to receive the expected telling-off from his boss.
CHAPTER TWENTY
After leaving Stan, Violet had no choice but to go back to work and deliver the package Ida had given her. She pedalled hard to the Kingsleys’ house, forcing herself to concentrate on the task in hand and forget about her conversation with Stan. She arrived out of breath, and looked up at the Kingsleys’ imposing, stone-built mansion set back behind privet hedges and overlooking a small tarn at the edge of the moor. I only hope Mrs Kingsley is in, she thought as she freewheeled down the drive. Otherwise I’ve had a wasted journey.
The front door was firmly closed, but Violet followed an arrow indicating the tradesmen’s entrance round the side. She dismounted then wheeled her bike into a cobbled yard with an old-fashioned coach house that had recently been converted into a garage for the Kingsleys’ car. She could see through the open door that the car was missing, however, and once more prepared herself to return to Jubilee with Mrs Kingsley’s new dress undelivered.
Then she caught sight of a figure looking out from a downstairs window in the main house and soon after that the side door opened and out stepped Colin Barlow. He was dressed for pheasant shooting in plus-fours and a checked, tweed jacket and he wore a look of eager expectation as he bore down on Violet.
‘If it isn’t my favourite dressmaker!’ he exclaimed, striding towards her. ‘Don’t look so surprised, my dear. Monday is Kingsley’s and my day for taking pot shots at a few innocent birds up on Brimstone Moor, followed by a couple of fine whiskies before supper.’
‘Good afternoon.’ Violet hoped that her politeness, though stiff, would mask her increasing dislike for Barlow and her shock at finding him here. ‘I have a parcel for Mrs Kingsley.’
‘Not in, I’m afraid. And Thomas is busy with a telephone call at present.’
Boxing Violet into a corner of the yard, the mill owner’s guest breathed whisky fumes into her face and she noticed that his speech was slurred. ‘Of course, I could do you a favour and take the parcel for you.’
‘Thank you.’ Violet made an attempt to slip sideways out of the man’s reach, intending to take the dress from the wicker basket attached to her front handlebars and hand it to him.
He blocked her way. ‘But then you would have to do me a favour in return.’
‘Please let me by, Mr Barlow.’ Dislike slid into disgust, but still Violet had no clear sense of what he meant. What did he want from her?
‘Don’t play the innocent,’ he mocked, pressing in on her. Then, before she had a chance to realize what was happening, he pushed her back into the darkness of the garage, up against a brace of dead birds hanging from a hook to the left of the door. There were two guns propped against the wall and three more pairs of pheasants hanging from similar hooks.
Recoiling from a splash of cold blood that dripped from the head of one of the pheasants onto her raised hand, Violet retreated further into the garage with its smell of dirty engine oil and petrol from cans lined up against the back wall. Disgust swiftly became fear.
‘You understand me well enough – you know exactly what I mean,’ Barlow sneered. His usually handsome face was shadowy and distorted by a crude eagerness to lay hands on his prize.
‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she warned, her back to the wall as she slowly edged sideways away from him towards the daylight. Her foot caught one of the cans and it tipped onto its side with a loud metallic clatter.
Startled, Barlow lunged swiftly at the door and banged it shut. As he did so, he caught his cheek on one of the hooks, giving it a small nick. He yelped and swore, but was quickly calm again. ‘Don’t make a fuss, Violet. We both know what has to happen here.’
She was trapped. They were in total darkness. ‘I’ve told you – leave me alone,’ she insisted.
Recognizing that Violet was not going to willingly give in to him, Barlow dropped his attempts at persuasion and turned to brute force. He lurched at her and seized her by the shoulders, pressing her backwards with his forearm against her throat until they collided with the hanging birds that swung violently against her face, their feathers sticky with blood. His mouth made contact with her cheek then her mouth, lips on lips, his hands mauling her.
Violet recoiled and managed to place her palms on his chest, gaining leverage to push him off. Then she twisted and felt for the shotguns, took hold of one and instantly aimed it towards him.
‘You wouldn’t …’ he challenged, swaying unsteadily in the murk and hesitating to wrest the gun away.
‘I will!’ she swore, though her hands trembled and her voice was faint. I could shoot him through the heart, she thought, and the world would be rid of him. Good riddance.
‘No, you couldn’t.’ Sure of himself again, he laughed as he moved in towards her again.
He was right – Violet would never pull the trigger. Instead, she slid her hands down the long barrel and swung the gun at him like a club, catching him heavily in the ribs as he lurched towards her.
Barlow made a winded, groaning noise then bent double while Violet dropped the gun and fumbled at the door, searching for a handle. Finding none, she shoved against the door with all her might. It swung open and daylight flooded in. She fled from the garage, running for her bike and setting off across the yard with blood streaking her face and hands. Barlow stumbled from the garage behind her then he watched her gather speed up the drive. He stooped forward with one arm holding his side.
Inside the house, Thomas Kingsley came to the window of his study to watch Violet’s hurried departure. Wondering what had caused the commotion, he quickly went in search of his shooting companion and, to his surprise, found him carrying the day’s spoils out of the garage.
‘Where can I put these out of harm’s way?’ Barlow overcame the pain in his ribs to smile and hold the birds aloft. ‘We don’t want them to scare the living daylights out of any more visitors, do we?’
So that was it, Kingsley thought. Or at least that’s what Colin wanted him to think and he was prepared to leave it at that. ‘Hang them in the keeping cellar, then clean yourself up and find me in my study,’ he told his guest. ‘I have a very nice single malt that I’d like you to try – aged in an oak barrel on the Isle of Skye for fifteen years.’
Violet suspected there were some women who would have rushed straight to the police after what had happened at Ash Tree House, but she wasn’t one of them. It would feel too much like a scene from one of Ida’s murder mysteries and she couldn
’t stand having to answer questions or see the look of cynical disbelief on the policeman’s face when she brought up Colin Barlow’s name. And perhaps she was building it up in her own mind to more than it was. A man finds himself attracted to a young woman and naturally tries to follow it through. It happens all the time in pictures made in Hollywood – Clark Gable holds Claudette Colbert in his arms, she swoons, they kiss …
Even when she says no, as Violet had, it turns out she might not mean it. Sick to the stomach and confused by each turn of thought, she made slow progress through the streets. The incident in the garage dislodged everything else from her thoughts – the failed delivery of Mrs Kingsley’s dress, even the family secret that Stan had sworn to keep earlier that afternoon. No – what she couldn’t shift from her mind was the sense of Barlow’s rough hands pawing at her and the feel of his lips pressed hard against hers.
‘A penny for them,’ Marjorie called from her bakery-shop door.
Violet raised her hand and waved feebly without offering a riposte. Almost back at Jubilee, she steeled herself to act normally – to explain why she still had Ella Kingsley’s dress in her basket and why it had taken her so long to fail to deliver it.
Stay calm. Pretend nothing happened. That’s the ticket.
The shop bell rang. Clutching the parcel, Violet stepped into her warm cocoon of buttons and silks.
‘You took your time,’ Ida said from behind the counter with hardly a glance at Violet.
‘Sorry – I was held up.’ Violet’s plan was to offer a bland explanation then retreat into the kitchen until her heartbeat returned to normal and she could tidy herself up. ‘Mrs Kingsley wasn’t at home so I rode over to the mill to try to find her. She wasn’t there either—’
‘Good heavens above, Violet!’ Ida interrupted as she finished counting buttons and looked up at last. ‘You’re covered in blood.’
Violet looked down at her hands. The pheasants’ blood had dried darkest crimson, almost black on her fair skin. ‘I had an accident.’
‘Your face, too.’ Ida came out from behind the counter and took the parcel from her.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Go into the kitchen and sit down. Let me make you a cup of tea.’
‘Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks. I’m not even hurt.’
‘And I’m not listening,’ Ida insisted. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, she called up to Muriel. ‘Violet’s back. She’s had an accident. She says it’s nothing but the poor thing looks as if she’s seen a ghost.’
Within seconds Muriel had flown down from the workroom and both she and Ida began fussing over Violet, telling her not to mind about the undelivered parcel, making her sit down, giving her tea and fetching a warm cloth to wipe away the blood.
‘There are no scratches or cuts but you’re shaking from head to foot,’ Muriel murmured. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ She crouched beside Violet and gazed up at her as she sponged stains from her skirt.
‘I’ve had a shock,’ Violet confessed, but what fell from her lips was not the name of Colin Barlow but that of Stan Tankard, even though she’d planned to keep their secret and intended only to tell Eddie when the time was right. ‘It turns out that Stan and I could be related.’
‘How? In what way?’ Ida demanded.
‘Hush. Don’t upset yourself,’ Muriel said softly.
It all came out in a rush – about the bracelet and the note, Uncle Donald’s warnings against taking up with Stan, the reasons behind him walking out on her after Winnie died. With the words came tears. They coursed down Violet’s face, welled up and choked her until her confession was reduced to sobs and it was Muriel who put her arms around her and held her until she stopped.
‘There must be a birth certificate somewhere with the father’s name on it,’ was Eddie’s first thought after Ida had found him working with his father on Ghyll Road and fetched him back to Jubilee to listen to Violet’s news. He was calm and practical in the face of this latest crisis, though inwardly he was rattled by how close Violet had come to pairing up with Stan.
‘Not that I know of,’ Violet said. ‘If it existed, it would’ve been in the wooden box in Aunty Winnie’s wardrobe.’
‘And it wasn’t?’ Muriel checked. She’d left Ida to serve in the shop and sat with Eddie and Violet in the kitchen.
Violet shook her head.
‘It must be somewhere,’ Eddie insisted. ‘You don’t think there’s any chance that someone gave it to Douglas Tankard for safe keeping, do you?’
‘It couldn’t have been my mother, because my birth couldn’t have been registered until after …’ Violet’s voice faded into a sigh.
‘Perhaps Tankard himself?’ Muriel suggested.
‘But then again, no.’ Violet ignored Muriel and took her time to think things through. ‘Stan’s father never came back from the war.’
The new mystery defeated them and they lapsed into silence. ‘There’s nothing we can do at the present so I’ll leave you two to it,’ Muriel decided, going upstairs and back to her sewing machine.
Eddie too knew that he couldn’t stay long. ‘I left Dad wallpapering a ceiling,’ he told Violet apologetically. ‘It’s a two-man job.’
‘Yes – you go. We can talk about this later.’
He hovered by the door. ‘Ida mentioned something about you falling off your bike. How did that happen?’
‘It was nothing – I didn’t hurt myself. I wasn’t concentrating on what I was doing, that’s all.’
‘That’s not like you.’ There was something in the air – an awkward barrier between them that made Eddie uneasy.
‘It’s been a hard day,’ Violet told him. She felt it too – a need to keep up her defences and hold Eddie at a distance even though he’d left his work and rushed across to help her. ‘I need a rest.’
‘Shall I tell Ida that you’re taking a nap on my way out?’
‘Yes – could you?’ Go now. Please don’t come near me until I’ve scrubbed my body from head to toe. Don’t smell Barlow’s whisky-soured breath on my clothes and skin.
‘Rightio,’ Eddie said with deep uncertainty. ‘I’m working tonight and tomorrow. Will I see you at rehearsal on Wednesday?’
‘Wednesday – yes.’
‘I’ll give you a lift over,’ he promised as he left and Violet crept upstairs to hide under her bedclothes, pretending to be asleep until Muriel and Ida had shut up shop and gone home.
She knew that soap wouldn’t be enough to wash away the stains of the day. Still, she tried, feeling her way downstairs in the dark to the kitchen and rubbing until her skin was red, examining one by one the bruises on her shoulders where Barlow had seized her and pushed her against the garage wall. At last she went back to bed, not to sleep but to lie awake and relive the attack, trying to contain it and give it a shape that she could bear and move forward from.
I stood up to him, she told herself time and again. It was soon over. It could have been much worse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Violet managed to get through the routine of the next day and the one after that without telling a soul what had happened at Ash Tree House. On Wednesday morning she even delivered Ella Kingsley’s dress, parking her bike in the same cobbled yard and knocking on the side door before handing over the delivery to a handyman working there for the day without betraying her discomfort. He was about thirty-five years old – small and stocky, dressed in crisp blue overalls, with a hinged metal ruler and a screwdriver protruding from a top pocket.
‘You mean to say you rode all the way up here without breaking sweat?’ The handyman’s friendly question threw Violet off balance and she fumbled for a reply. ‘There’s no need to look at me like that – I won’t bite. I’m only saying you still look fresh as a daisy after your bike ride.’
‘I’m in a rush,’ she explained. ‘Could you tell Mrs Kingsley that she can drop in at Jubilee and pay us what she owes whenever she’s passing.’
‘That’
s trusting of you,’ the man said with a wry smile. ‘My name’s Kenneth, by the way. Kenneth Leach. What’s yours?’
‘Violet Wheeler.’
‘Well, Violet Wheeler, I bet you’re new to the business of supplying goods. In future, I’d always demand payment on the spot if I was you. I learned that lesson early on in my trade – never let customers owe you money because they’ll always find an excuse not to pay. The longer they leave it, the harder it gets to squeeze it out of them.’
‘I really am in a hurry,’ Violet repeated, all too aware of the garage door yawning open behind her and of the memories that came flooding back.
‘Yes and Mr Kingsley doesn’t pay me for standing here chatting,’ Kenneth acknowledged. ‘I’ve got a sink to unblock and a couple of door hinges to mend.’
Violet said a hasty goodbye then got back on her bike and was gone before anyone could stop her, out onto the road and past the splendid houses built at the turn of the century by mill owners and colliery bosses when it looked as if the good times would last for ever. Carved stone lions stood guard on gate posts, curving driveways were swept clear of falling leaves and decorative gables were newly painted. All stood to attention, present and correct.
That night, soon after Eddie and Violet had arrived at Hadley Village Institute for rehearsal, Ida made a beeline towards her. ‘Good, Violet – you’re early. We’ve just got time to carry out my secret plan.’
‘Why? Where are we going?’ Violet asked as Ida frogmarched her out of the hall and across the yard onto the main street. They passed Stan chatting with Kathy, Peggy and Evie in the pleasant evening air, crossed the road and hurried on towards the row of houses where Donald Wheeler had briefly lodged.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ Violet protested when she saw what was afoot. ‘Anyway, it’s no use. Uncle Donald doesn’t live here any more, and even if he did I wouldn’t have anything to say to him.’
‘That’s my point – you might not want to talk to him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plenty he could tell us about Douglas Tankard and your mother if he wanted to.’ By this time Ida was knocking on the door and peering through the downstairs window. ‘It seems you were right – the place is empty. Look.’
