by Gayle Curtis
The door to the kitchen slammed downstairs, vibrating the wooden structure Cecelia was perched on. Her father was home. Listening to the drone of his voice she gathered he was asking Sebastian where she was. Quickly, she slid back along the purlin, practice having made her nimble and, once she’d reached the door, she carefully turned herself round and climbed through the hole. Shutting the door tight behind her, she sat on the bed waiting for him to come up the stairs and into her room, her sore heart pounding in her chest. There was no way she was going downstairs to listen to the rehearsed words about how their mother didn’t want to be a part of the family anymore and had left them for a new life. Cecelia knew they weren’t true.
After quite some time waiting for Roger to appear, she took her shoes off, got under the blankets and cried herself to sleep.
Disorientated, she awoke to her bedside lamp being switched on and at first, through the haze of sleep, she expected to see Yvonne standing there, forgetting the events of earlier. To her great disappointment it was Roger. Her eyes were slightly sticky from crying and it took her a while to focus.
‘I’m prepared to ignore the fact you disobeyed me. What with Yvonne leaving us. Again.’ He paused for emphasis as he always did, looking at her, prompting her to go along with his lies. ‘Look at me, Cece. Are you listening? There’ll be no dinner tonight, understand?’
Cecelia nodded in agreement, knowing this was mainly because her mother wasn’t around to cook anything so it suited him to starve them. She wasn’t hungry anyway and she was tired. Too tired to correct him and too tired to care about food – it was the least of her worries. There was a tiny spark in her mind telling her to shout at him, tell him she hated him, but she had become mute, something which often happened to Cecelia when she was upset. But she did hate him. She hated him for insisting they call their mother Yvonne – because in his mind, ‘children who had reached double figures were too old to address their parents with infantile names’. Cecelia had no problem calling her father Roger but never referred to her mother as anything other than mother. She hated Roger as much as she loved Yvonne.
She stared at him now, more hatred pricking at her skin as he lectured her about what a disappointment she was and how he didn’t want ‘his girl’ going down the wrong path.
He leaned towards her face and touched her cheek but she flinched and turned away. ‘We both know what happened. If you hadn’t interfered, your mother would be here now. I don’t have a licence for that gun, so keep your bloody mouth shut,’ he hissed. ‘Just do what I tell you and no one will get into any trouble.’
She couldn’t bear to look at his large, bald shiny forehead decorated with sweaty wisps of blond hair, the colour of which she’d inherited from him. His long nose and elongated face were his and his alone. She and Sebastian had inherited his dark blue eyes and hair colour but their soft, small features belonged to their mother.
Leaning further forward he attempted to kiss her goodnight, something he didn’t normally do, and she recoiled, wondering why he always smelt ever so slightly greasy. It made her feel sick and she tried to push the suffocating sensation away. As so often happened when Cecelia’s voice failed her, she lashed out physically and caught her father in the face with her tightly screwed up hands. He restrained her immediately, pinning both her skinny wrists above her head with one of his giant hands. With his other hand he covered her mouth, making it hard for her to breathe. He pressed her head into the pillow, hurting her lips and teeth and then released her as if nothing had happened.
‘Don’t forget to read that letter . . . it’s important you move on from this as quickly as possible. Accept what I’ve told you; it’ll be easier for you to come to terms with, easier than pining for someone you can’t have. She’s not coming back this time. My mother was the same. I can still remember her walking out of this very house and not even turning back when she got to the gate.’
Trying to get away from you, Cecelia thought, but didn’t, couldn’t say. She concentrated on her chipped nail varnish, pretending she didn’t care, desperate for him to leave. She couldn’t believe he was trying to force feed her these lies, convincing himself it was the truth, when they both knew exactly what had happened that day.
‘I’ve put it on your bedside table. Your brother has read his.’
Puzzled, she sat up and looked around.
Once Roger had gone she peered at the letter he’d left propped up against her night light. She’d ignored much of what he’d said and only vaguely remembered him mentioning it was from their mother.
She picked up the small brown envelope and read the typing on the front. It said simply Cecelia. She turned it over to see what was on the other side but there was nothing there other than an over-licked seal which was obviously Roger’s handiwork.
Opening the tiny drawer to her bedside table she placed the unopened letter inside. She wasn’t going to read something she knew to be a lie. She knew her mother couldn’t have written this letter. She reached underneath postcards, beads and hair bands until she found the small soapstone hippo her mother had bought her for winning a medal at gymnastics club. In one of her many tempers, Cecelia had picked it up and thrown it at the wall, breaking its elongated snout. She could still see the crack where Yvonne had glued it back together. There were minute chips of it missing but she still loved it even though it was damaged.
Bizarrely, Roger had punished her that day for contradicting him and not Sebastian for putting his fist through a pane of glass on the utility door when Cecelia had shut him out. In a temper she’d broken one of her favourite things, regretting it later. There were a lot of moments she regretted.
She’d been made to stand with no shoes or socks on in one of the old World War Two hangars that were situated in the farmyard. However much Yvonne protested, Roger would always have his own way. He’d repeat over and over about what his father had done to him and how it had made him the man he was today. On better days, Cecelia and Sebastian would mimic him behind his back, desperately gulping down laughter in case they were caught.
She hated this particular punishment the most: pitch dark, bitterly cold and filled with eerie whisperings from people past. These were Roger’s winter recriminations, the cold being the core of the pain. The summer ones, Cecelia found easier, although they had become more traumatic, but she knew he wouldn’t do anything that he could possibly be caught for. His latest reprisal had been making her sit on an old stool in the field while he fired his .22 rifle at rabbits behind her, laughing each time she flinched. Skinning and gutting the rabbits would follow but she’d grown used to this, hardened to farm life.
But the winter punishments involved physical pain. Sebastian would meet Cecelia in her bedroom afterwards and hold her tightly to warm her up while she cried, knowing himself how bad the punishments were. Occasionally they would be punished at the same time – it never felt as bad when Sebastian was by her side – but in the main Cecelia was alone. Her mother would then stand her in the bath tub, pretending everything was normal, as she ran tepid water to try and gradually warm Cecelia’s feet and legs which would be covered in purple and orange blotches. Then slowly, so she didn’t get chilblains, Yvonne would add more and more hot water. The relief was both painful and comforting. She never got used to these kinds of punishments and always cried, which upset her mother even more.
Closing the drawer, determined not to open the letter from Roger, Cecelia got a small amount of comfort from secretly defying him, even in this small way. She’d just let him think she’d accepted his version of events but she knew he’d written two letters, one to her and the other to Sebastian, pretending to be their mother. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d written one to himself to make it look even more convincing. Yvonne had never had much need to address anything to them in a letter unless they went to stay with family or friends during the summer holidays. But Cecelia remembered very well that her and Sebastian’s birthday cards were always addressed to my darling o
r my sweetheart. Whereas the front of this envelope just read, Cecelia. And Yvonne never used a typewriter – everything was always hand written. Anyone who knew her and saw the letters would know they hadn’t been written by her.
Opening the drawer and picking up the letter again, Cecelia hesitated, considering whether or not to read it. The sinking feeling of knowing the truth poured into her stomach and defiance prevailing, she put the letter back into the drawer. Her previous determination strengthened like drying concrete and she picked up the soapstone hippo, rubbing its smooth side for comfort. It was the only tiny bit of control she had over her father, as minute as it was, and she didn’t want to open the letter and ruin that. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing her eyes had read over his pretend words.
Standing the hippo on her table, she turned out the lamp and lay there in the stark silence. Her mind quickly drifted to the previous night when she’d been lying there with her head on her mother’s chest, listening to a story from when she had been a teenager. Yvonne had just had a bath and sweat from the hot water still ran down her chest and the agate pendant she never took off was covered in steam. It was the necklace that Cecelia had always held as a child when her mother was telling her a story, a comfort, a stamp that was so familiar it represented Yvonne in all her completeness. It had fascinated Cecelia for as long as she could remember; one half of the stone was mottled dark green with a small portion of it striped pale sea-blue.
It had also been the previous night when Yvonne had told Cecelia she’d been saving some money and almost had enough for them all to leave White Horse Farm and to get away from Roger. Cecelia had told Sebastian later that night, when he’d sat on her bed before lights out, but he told her, as he always did, that Yvonne was just trying to appease her, to cover the guilt she felt for staying. But the words contained conviction, something she hadn’t heard from her mother before and she held on to them. Those empty words had made her angry the following day, nasty spiteful letters that had snapped and bitten at her ankles.
CHAPTER TWO
Sebastian read the letter his father had given him – a minimal amount of words on some notepaper. He folded it once, twice, turned it in his fingers and repeated the process until he couldn’t continue anymore. Then he squeezed the tiny lump of compressed paper in-between his thumb and middle finger, the events from earlier that day stuffed between every crease. Passing it to his left hand he repeated the ritual, squeezing it with what he deemed to be the same level of strength. Enough to ease the anxiety within him that always rose when he felt something wasn’t equal and balanced out in the way he wanted.
Pictures from earlier that day flickered across his vision like a projector film, each time becoming increasingly jumbled. He couldn’t remember who he’d seen with the gun first, his mother or his father. Roger’s words penetrated his head, fading any memories he had about what he’d seen. It was irrelevant now. Somehow he’d managed to tell Cecelia what Roger had told him to repeat over and over again: Yvonne has left, she’s not coming back.
Sebastian couldn’t tell her the truth; she wouldn’t be able to hide it and they would most definitely be put into foster care and separated if anyone found out. If he’d gone to school as normal that day instead of staying behind to help Roger on the farm, he wouldn’t have known anything about it. Sounds that he could still hear clearly now echoed in his ears. Noises that had brought him running into the house and into the kitchen. Roger had come up behind him and gently placed his large hands over his eyes and mouth, carefully removing him from the room. The last thing he’d seen was his mother’s legs and feet from under the kitchen table. For a split second he’d had a comical moment where it had reminded him of the scene from The Wizard of Oz, and as Roger tried to erase the memories from his mind with his soothing words it was as if his mother’s feet began to wilt and shrivel away. You didn’t see anything, you didn’t see anything, you didn’t see anything, his father whispered into his ear over and over again. All he found himself thinking about as he shook with fear in his father’s arms was the ridiculous observation that his mother’s legs weren’t lying at a level angle to the table. He wanted desperately to go in there and move her – his anxiety, the draught he called it, had risen in his gut, swirling like the wind coming across the fields. He’d experienced this strange sensation the first time his father had punished him for something he hadn’t done. He was so indignant about the entire episode, so overwhelmed with angry tears that he thought his temper would rise out of his mouth and swallow him whole.
Before Sebastian could do anything, Roger ordered him upstairs to get changed for school and fetch his school bag, before sending him on his way, telling him all the time to act normally and that things weren’t what they looked like. Upon his return, earlier than Cecelia because she had detention, Roger had told him the story he was to tell her later, pretending that Sebastian hadn’t seen anything.
There was one thing Roger couldn’t erase and that was the foreboding atmosphere that had settled over the farmhouse during the course of the day; a cold and empty, almost tangible air had descended and Sebastian felt more unsteady than he ever had in all his years. Unsure. Unsafe. Yvonne had more of a presence on the farm than Sebastian had realised.
Checking the gun cabinet again on his way to the kitchen, Sebastian looked behind him, Roger’s words so clear in his mind. If anyone asks about the gunshot noises, we were shooting rabbits, the stern words Roger had spat at him upon his return from school still marked on his face.
Placing the kettle on the stove, he tentatively sat on one of the kitchen chairs and stared at the space where his mother had been lying. So easily he could let go, the sickness in his chest threatening to bubble over into his throat, spewing the truth onto the floor. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t do this, whatever it was they were going to do. Carry on as normal he supposed. That wasn’t going to work but he also knew that if Roger sensed any defiance, neither he nor Cecelia would get away from the farm alive.
He picked up an old cloth hanging on the back of the chair and began to wipe at a dark spot that was bothering him on the Aga. He pushed harder, wondering if it had been there before; whatever it was had been baked on by the heat from earlier that day. The stain became the focus of his concentration as he ferociously rubbed it, equally with his left hand as well as his right, keeping the balance, maintaining the nature of his symmetry. He was trying to erase the pictures in his head but it made little difference to the way he felt.
The whistling of the kettle brought Sebastian back into the room, to the place he didn’t want to be.
CHAPTER THREE
The following night, Cecelia scoffed down the slices of buttered malt loaf Sebastian had brought her. She’d been sleepwalking since she was small but it was the first time in almost a year. If Sebastian heard her moving about in the night, he would get up and quietly follow, keeping her safe until she eventually woke up. She would shake afterwards, desperately needing food to raise her sugar levels, the exertion of energy making her hungry. A doctor had once told her parents that the involuntary muteness could possibly originate from her sleepwalking episodes; dreams so vivid they rendered her speechless. She always knew she was having nightmares but could never recall the details. Roger thought it was a load of old rubbish and continually voiced the opinion that she was able to talk when she felt like it and was just attention seeking.
‘I thought you were heading across the fields when you stepped outside the back door,’ Sebastian said, rubbing Cecelia’s legs as he tried to warm her. ‘I never thought you’d go into the old grain store.’
Cecelia shrugged, her silence still blanketing her voice. She didn’t even try to speak – she knew when her voice was there and when it wasn’t, although she could never explain why.
They were perched on some old bales of straw, a large torch propped on top of some old machinery to give them light. There were very few punishments endured in the grain store and they both quite liked
it there as it seemed to have a different atmosphere to the rest of the farm. Cecelia was fascinated by the huge grain mountain in the middle and always had an urge to dive into the centre of it, which made Sebastian laugh. Of course, they never touched the grain; the punishment for doing so wouldn’t be worth it.
‘I wondered if your nightmare might have jolted your voice into action, like it would have the opposite effect for a change, seeing as you were already mute?’
Cecelia shook her head and listened to him talking gently, as he always did when she’d been sleepwalking – it soothed the panic she often felt afterwards.
Looking at his face in the half-light she noticed how much he’d changed in the last few weeks – there was a maturity appearing and she’d only just become aware of it. She thought she’d die without him, even more so now in their current circumstances. Being close to Yvonne was one thing but her relationship with her twin brother was something else altogether. They shared so much, a lot more than other siblings, and had done since they were born. Yvonne would often tell them how they could never be apart, not for a moment, and if they were one or the other would start screaming. Their bond had grown even more over the years and she knew it was forever, no matter what happened.
‘You must have been dreaming about this place to walk all the way across the yard, past the hangar. Why don’t you try going to sleep thinking about somewhere really nice, far away, and I’ll follow you there?’ It was supposed to be a joke but the childish tone made it sound so sad Cecelia reached across and clasped Sebastian’s hand, reassuring him with her eyes.
‘I know it will be OK, we’ve got each other, right?’ Sebastian said, squeezing her hand in return. Cecelia felt the usual warm tendrils curl up from her stomach, reaching to her heart. They were feelings she was aware might not be normal for a brother and sister to have.
