The House of Women

by Alison Taylor

  Standing at her side, he said: ‘There’s a tide of sheep out there, isn’t there? As far as the eye can see.’

  ‘And most of them belong to Gladys.’ She moved on, brushing her hand through the plumes of grass. ‘I expect you saw thousands more on the way here, but there isn’t a cow or calf for miles around. They’ve all been slaughtered.’ She fell quiet, walking slowly along the path, then added: ‘I’m not the only one who thinks Gertrude caught mad cow disease, you know. Most of the village believe she did. They watch each other all the time, looking for what they saw in Gertrude so long ago, and hoping desperately not to find it.’

  The sun drifted further to the west, dragging long shadows over the earth, and walking close behind her, McKenna thought of death in its many guises, creeping across this beautiful landscape. One of the horses whinnied, and he turned, to see the three of them streaming across the field, bucking and kicking. ‘D’you think animals have any conception of death?’ he asked. ‘Or do they simply accept it as the natural end to life? It would save a lot of grief if we could do the same.’

  ‘But we never can, can we?’ She watched the horses, pensively, then walked on. ‘We always find regrets, for what we’ve lost, or not done, or not said, or just for the way death comes, even though it’s always a thief. It stole from Ned, and Phoebe, and George, and the rest of us, and we’ll never know how big or small each theft was.’ Opening a rotted wooden gate under another arch in the wall, she added: ‘But then, we rely on sex and death to keep the world turning, don’t we?’

  Through the gate, an unbroken length of a barn wall reached into the courtyard, where Bethan now stood on an upturned crate at the side of the little mare, reaching high to unbuckle the girth straps. Here and there in the ancient masonry, McKenna saw signs of clumsy repairs, and, at intervals under the eaves, galvanized iron hooks held lichen-stained roof tiles in place.

  ‘When she’s groomed and fed Megan, she’ll have tea in Meirion’s mansion.’ Annie smiled, and, instead of entering the courtyard, turned westwards along the path towards a tiny stone structure built into the wall. A little stone staircase ran up its gable end to a minute arched doorway, under a round window with wooden shutters. ‘It’s the oldest building on the land, and we’ve no idea what it was for.’ Going around to its other gable end, she opened the door, stooping below the lintel. ‘It was our playhouse when we were younger, and it’s always been a den for the farmhands. In the winter, they sit in here with a roaring fire, playing cards and setting the world to rights.’ She pointed out a row of old wooden pegs rammed higgledy-piggledy into the twisted beam above the iron grate. ‘Their caps hang there in a row, every one with finger marks in the same place where they tweak them off.’

  Four old upright chairs stood on a floor of dried earth, around a table askew on its legs, and through the one small window, he saw a new view of the woods above the village, so distorted by the old glass it wrenched the eyes. On the worn stone window-ledge, casting a blurry shadow, the doppelganger of Phoebe’s cat surveyed him with glassy eyes.

  Annie giggled. ‘Tom’s one of her kittens. Phoebe calls her “Ur-cat”, as in the “mother of all cats”, and don’t try to stroke her, because she’s likely to have your arm off. She only lets Gladys, Phoebe and Bethan touch her.’

  ‘Not you?’

  She shook her head, smiling. ‘Not since I conned her into a carrying box for a trip to the vet.’

  ‘And not Mina?’

  ‘Mina doesn’t like animals, and they don’t like her. I suppose they sense something they need to fear.’ The smile died, like a cloud over the sun. ‘She hated coming here when she was younger, and she got so bored we’d find her chasing the sheep, worrying them like a rogue dog.’ She leaned against the wall, hands in pockets. ‘She’s so lacking in imagination I feel sorry for her, and with the best will in the world, I can’t understand why she’s so different from Phoebe and me.’

  ‘Even as your sister,’ McKenna said, ‘she’s entitled to her differences and individuality.’

  ‘You’re an only child, aren’t you? It shows, somehow. You must feel isolated from the moment you’re born.’

  ‘And even more so when all the memories that created you die with your parents, so I can’t even imagine the sort of continuity which exists between you and Phoebe and Mina.’ He smiled. ‘All I can do is feel envious.’

  ‘There’s little but blood between us and Mina.’ She moved away from the wall, stepping into a beam of light, dust motes drifting about her hair and clothes. ‘Even at my age, I find this place enchanting, but where Phoebe and I see magic, Mina sees a dirty hovel.’ She grinned again. ‘Bethan thinks it was built for the fairies, although in this neck of the woods, it was more likely a hide out for witches and hobgoblins, or even part of the Ingrams’s estate.’ Wiping dust from her hands, she laughed. ‘Their fame won’t have spread to Bangor, but they’re supposed to be very wealthy. Martha’r Mynydd, who lives in a farm beyond Bala, says Mr Ingram and his pretty young daughter often come to her evening gatherings.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They don’t exist, and as far as we know, they never did. Martha’s another crazy woman.’ She nodded to the cat, and made for the door. ‘Gladys will have fed Gertrude by now, so we can go back. Unappealing sights like that are best kept private, aren’t they?’ She sighed. ‘I can’t help thinking Gertrude’s death would make better sense than Ned’s.’

  ‘Death isn’t meant to make sense,’ McKenna said. He glanced at his watch. ‘I told the solicitor in Bala I might call.’

  ‘Why? Gladys can show you her father’s will, if it matters, and she’ll know if Ned lodged any papers there. She’s had power of attorney for years, because with Ned and Gertrude both so prone to being non compos mentis, there was no option.’

  The front door was still open, but instead of returning to the parlour, she took him up the stairs. The upper floor was divided by partitions of blackened, coarsely-grained oak, and at the head of the staircase, the reek of dry rot was overpowering. Hefting her shoulder against a door to the right, she pointed to webs of fungus garlanding the ceiling beams. ‘That’s what you can smell,’ she said, then closed the door with a thud.

  Ned’s old room was on the other side of the stairwell, along a short corridor lit only by sunlight seeping through from the landing. That door, too, fitted ill in its frame, and jammed itself into the floor with a dreadful screech as Annie eased it open.

  Tall cupboards and heavy chests, crudely carpentered from old dark wood, and dull with age and neglect, lined one wall, and against another stood a beautiful mahogany desk and a battered captain’s chair. The brass bedstead, tarnished now, and lacking one of its finials, was covered with a handmade quilt, a history of the family’s life stitched together, and now so worn in places that only a few fine threads of silk halted total disintegration. More black fabric was draped over the oil paintings which hung about the walls, dressing the house in mourning, and as McKenna moved around the room, trying to decipher the landscapes and faces behind years of dirt on the canvases, the floorboards creaked under him and he felt a disconcerting bounce in the joists below, as if they too were ravaged by the fungus. Treading gingerly, he skirted a washstand with a fine oval mirror on its chipped marble top, and stood by the window, looking into the heart of the village.

  So close he could hear her breathe, and smell the scent of fresh air and sunshine about her, Annie said: ‘When he was a boy, Uncle Ned used to stand where you are now, like a prisoner in a high tower. If you look to the right, you can see the chapel roof beyond the trees by the church, although there’s only one cemetery, which Phoebe, of course, calls the “flesh-farm”.’ Elbows on the washstand, she added: ‘Church folk are buried this side of the trees, chapel folk the other, and little Amos is there with the rest of the family. He died from polio when he was four, so I suppose he’ll always be “little Amos”, and we’ll never know if his death was a bad thing or not.’

  ‘Who was he?’<
br />
  ‘The youngest child. Their mother went into a virtual collapse when he died, which is why Gladys reared Ned, and not long afterwards, Gertrude’s little daughter died. She was four, as well.’

  ‘And Gertrude’s husband?’

  ‘She never had one. Madness isn’t all we inherit.’ She turned away. ‘When I had Bethan, everyone but Ned and Gladys treated me like an outcast. Mina said I’d ruined her reputation, and Mama was so bitterly hurt and disappointed she had a relapse. She’s still convinced I’ve wrecked any chance of a decent marriage.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘He pretends she doesn’t exist. He hasn’t been back since she was born in any case, but he never sends birthday or Christmas gifts, or even cards.’

  *

  Gertrude slept again in her chair, smelling of soap instead of bitter old age, a rug woven from the strange colours and ancient symbols of Welsh tapestry wrapped around her knees to ward off a chill seeping through the threadbare carpet. McKenna noticed an oval chamber pot poking out from under her chair, its inside stained, its outside scattered with posies.

  While Annie washed dishes in the kitchen, Gladys sat beside him on the settle, an album of faded photographs in her hands, turning pages spotted with mildew, and pointing out the few quick and the many dead among the pensive, proud, troubled and self-conscious faces in this tribal record. Such Welsh faces, he thought, watching her spindly fingers, and in profile, some were almost concave, like the wicked witches in fairy stories. As she chattered on, he realized there was not a black face to be seen, and wondered if that collision of memory and history were more painful than the rest.

  ‘Have you pictures of the slaves?’ he asked. ‘Or rather, their descendants? George said some of them stayed as free men and women.’

  ‘Only because they had nowhere else to go at the time.’ Annie quietly came back from the kitchen, and took up her seat beside Gertrude. ‘They couldn’t get away fast enough when the heavy industries developed in South Wales, even though it was only an exchange of one slavery for another.’

  ‘You’ve always had socialist leanings,’ Gladys said to her. ‘But do they do you any good?’ Then to McKenna, she added: ‘We had quite a few photos at one time, and some other very old pictures. Ned had them for his essay, but I don’t recall him sending them back.’

  ‘They seem to have disappeared,’ McKenna told her. ‘Like most of his letters.’

  ‘How strange! Why should anyone steal them? They’re no use, are they?’ Turning to the back of the album, she showed him a double page of small black and white snapshots. ‘Apart from the baby photos you’ve already seen, I’ve no other pictures of Ned. He had the rest.’

  Ned Jones in youth smiled warily at the camera, the shadows of melancholy already about his eyes, and even then, he was thin and frail. In most of the snapshots, he wore a high-collared shirt, a broad tie, waistcoat and breeches, thick wool knee-socks and hobnail boots, and stood mostly alone, before the farmhouse door, in the courtyard, or beneath the wonderful ancient trees where the golden horses now grazed. Only in two photographs was he in company, beside another young man with a shock of thick unruly hair on his head who was much taller and very plump, and who wore shirt and trousers and shoes wholly lacking in style or distinction.

  ‘Who’s this?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘His friend from Aberystwyth University. He came visiting once or twice, but I haven’t seen or heard of him for over thirty years. We called him Eddie because he was another Edward.’ She closed the album with a little snap. ‘I think they lost touch. Ned never wrote about him.’

  ‘May I see the letters Ned sent you? They might provide some insights.’

  ‘I haven’t kept them,’ Gladys confessed. She gestured about the room, where lighter patches on the walls told of pictures once hung there, and indentations in the floor planks and squares of deeper colour on the faded carpet betrayed the shapes of the furniture which had rested there. ‘I’ve given up collecting things. People do when they get old, you know. You tend to keep just what you need, and find the rest a burden.’

  ‘That’s not quite true, is it?’ Annie said. ‘You’ve sold an awful lot. I remember the dressers and settles and tables and chairs, and that wonderful Elizabethan buffet which ran the length of the kitchen wall, not to mention tin toys and teddy bears and old china so fine the sun shone through it. All you’ve got left is the junk and broken bits, like that double-handled cup and deep saucer you use for Auntie Gertrude.’

  ‘I got a decent price from the sale-rooms in Bala,’ Gladys said. ‘I might be old, but I’m not stupid.’ She turned to McKenna, touching his arm. ‘Before the money ran out from my father’s stocks and shares, we lived well enough, but sheep eat people round here, and the house gobbles up whatever’s left. There’s no point feasting your eyes on pretty pictures while hunger-rats gnaw your empty belly.’

  ‘Or chopping up antique chairs to feed the fire,’ Annie added.

  ‘You’re a silly child at times, you know. Contrary for the sake of it,’ Gladys told her. ‘Most of the money goes in wages to Meirion and his family, because we’d be in a sorry state without them.’ She smiled at McKenna. ‘You never really escape poverty once it’s come to your door, do you? I can’t tell you how often I’ve longed for one of those little cottages in the village, with central heating and just enough space for Gertrude and me, and not a single sheep to worry about.’

  ‘You’d hate it,’ Annie said. ‘And where would you put the horses?’

  ‘I can still dream, even at my age.’

  ‘Where did the slaves live?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘There’s a gate at each compass point in the boundary wall,’ Gladys replied, ‘and you’ll have passed through three on your tour, but the east gate’s so choked with bushes and brambles I doubt it’s been breached since Ned was writing for the Eisteddfod. It leads to a track up the hillside, and the building where the quarry workers lived, which has gone to rack and ruin like the rest. Every so often, the English come, offering me a near fortune, but I can’t sell.’

  ‘Uncle Ned said he trudged back and forth in all weathers from the quarry,’ Annie added, ‘trying to imagine he was a black man. He said the quarrymen’s lodgings were no better than a cattle shelter.’

  ‘What about the slaves who worked in the house?’ McKenna added. ‘Where did they live?’

  ‘In the barns,’ Annie replied. ‘With the other animals.’

  ‘You’ve got a bitter little streak in you, child!’ Gladys snapped. ‘And if that’s what socialism does for a body, you want to leave it alone, before it eats into your heart.’

  5

  The clatter of paint cans and the thump of the decorators’ boots came from McKenna’s office, along with the vapours of paint and white spirit. Diana Bradshaw coughed. Janet coughed too, as if in sympathy, then rose quickly and disappeared along the corridor.

  ‘What is the matter with that girl?’ Diana demanded.

  ‘A stomach upset, I imagine,’ said Rowlands.

  ‘It’s lasting rather a long time.’

  ‘Can we discuss Polgreen instead, ma’am? We can’t continue to hold him without charge, and as he was in London at the crucial time, I don’t think we can set any store on finding the bracelet in his flat.’

  ‘He says he was in London, and you’ll hold him until the Metropolitan Police show me incontrovertible proof that he didn’t have the time or opportunity to come to Bangor and poison Edward Jones.’

  ‘Edith says he hadn’t been near the house for weeks, and we know the drugs were in food or drink Ned had on Friday.’

  ‘We don’t know. We’re surmising, on circumstantial evidence, which could be sheer coincidence, or a backup plan if the other one went wrong.’

  ‘What other one?’

  ‘The other plan Polgreen devised, when he thought up the scheme to report a non-existent break in at his flat, then wreck the flat and have some gullible policeman with him when it was
discovered!’ She paused for breath. ‘I’m absolutely furious with Prys! Not content with spending most of the day with Polgreen, he goes out with him for the evening afterwards. Doesn’t he realize people like that can’t be trusted? Professor Williams has the measure of him, even if you don’t.’

  Fiddling with one of the many pieces of paper littering his desk, Rowlands said: ‘Ned had boxes of clippings about the professor. We should ask him why.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Diana snapped. ‘You will not pester someone of his standing on account of a half-senile old man. There’s neither rhyme nor reason to Edward Jones’s actions.’

  Mindful of her reputation, he said: ‘Aren’t we in danger of letting the professor dictate the course of our investigations? And as for Polgreen, if he sues for wrongful arrest and detention, I’d say he has every right. We could be looking at compensation running into six figures.’

  ‘Or we could be looking at an immensely devious person who ruthlessly plays the system. He might have got compensation from the Met, but I’m afraid he’ll find out the hard way that I’m not a soft touch for ethnic minorities.’

  ‘And I think we’ll find out the hard way that we’re making all the wrong moves for all the wrong reasons,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Don’t you dare challenge my authority!’ Her face whitened with rage. ‘Get out of here, and find my car! And take that snivelling girl with you!’

  ‘If I do that, ma’am, and neglect a murder inquiry in the process, people might say you’re abusing your power.’

  6

  Rubbing an aching back, Dewi bent to retrieve the paper which had fallen from one of the hundreds of books, and, grimly fascinated, began to read a recent cutting from one of the broadsheets, which discussed in graphic detail the circumstances where guillotine amputation of a human limb might be necessary.