The Tintagel Secret

by Sarah Till

  I look at it now. Without all the threads that stretch down the centuries, the stories that surround it and cushion it, it would appear to be a scrap of shiny iron, probably not even gold. I'm tempted to bite it and see, but my teeth are not up to it. Without its legacy that has wound people's beliefs like coiled springs until they would die - or kill- for it, it's just tat. Precious to me because of my family story. But precious to someone else because they think it's part of history. An ancient hoard, the bottom line being that they can make a lot of money by convincing others that it is what my father said it was long ago on a windy hillside. So now I have to face the person who wants this more than anything.

  I snigger to myself and a passer-by frowns at me. I have no choice, really, I have to go back there. I'll be glad to be back with Macy, and my flip-flops, and to get this bra off. I walk to the bus stop and get on the bus. No one bats an eyelid so I must still look fairly normal. I can feel the frizz in my hair, and the dryness of my skin; it's as if someone has stuck a pin into me and I've shrivelled up. On the outside. One the inside, however, I feel much more inflated. With relief, but mostly with fear.

  It's as if a huge blockage had been removed, a blockage that has stopped me seeing anything except the headland and the castle. All those years ago, someone put a bookmark in the pages of my story, something I would have to return to every day. Now it is gone. My daughter’s gone. I wouldn't have to worry about her any more, about someone finding her, or no one visiting her. I would have a place for her, a proper resting place. Now I would be able to put those memories, all the horror and pain, into a separate part of my mind, a box that I could open only when I needed to. What happened yesterday, the digging and the finality of it all, it was the closing of the final chapter of that particular story, even if another story was gathering pace. I stare at my fingernails, black with dirt still from grasping at the loose soil around my baby's bones. I only held her for a short time, and I never knew her. She was never really here, in the world. I search through my mind for a suitable label for the box, something that I can easily find her with, should I want to search for her again. Emma. That's a good name. I'll call her Emma.

  I change buses at Padstow, keeping my face turned away from Andrew's office. I gaze through the windows, at the pigeons in the skylight, and my eyes rest on the newsstand as the bus waits in the station. I spot the headline 'Teenage mum buries baby in murder village'. There's a picture of me pushing Macy up Tintagel Main Street, no doubt supplied by Julia from her extensive collection. I wonder if Andrew has seen it and if he has, would he have realised how I had struggled with this all my life? How, when he was a newborn, I had taken pictures of him and pretended they were Emma? How I had wished for another baby, a girl, to replace her? He couldn't have known back then, but now perhaps her would find it in his heart to try to understand.

  I'm confident that no one will recognise me from the photograph. Not yet, in any case. My hair looks long and matted and I'm dressed in rags, stooped and old. I don't look like that today. The bus moves and the picture flicks out of my vision. I start to hum quietly and by the time we get to Tintagel it's a golden dusk, a kind of light I had almost forgotten. I hurry up the hill and unlock the door, pulling away the skewered bird and the note and taking them with me, and go inside, then go into the garden through the back door. I'm finally home. I take off my clothes and tight underwear and pull on a loose dress. I'm already cooler, and I watch as the birds flock onto the telegraph wire when they see I am home, and I throw them some crumbs from the hard bread that's left over from the shopping.

  The sunflowers are developing green balls where the head will be, and I suddenly wonder if I will be here to see them bloom. Mia Connelly had told me I would be charged. I'd already been arrested for murder and concealing a body. I think about prison, about leaving this garden and the shed, about leaving Tintagel. Even though my baby, my Emma, no longer lives here, I still feel like I have to stay. I can't put my finger on the reason, it's a kind of yearning, as if my heart belongs here. Then I remember that I may have to fight to stay alive, let alone stay in Tintagel. I take the Grail from my sleeve and go into the garden. I look around to make sure no one is here and I bury it at the foot of the sunflowers, stamping down the dirt.

  Until today, the first thing I've thought about when I wake is Andrew. The second is Emma. Both of these are always in that hazy period before you really know what's going on, a narrow channel between sleep and waking, when there are no bad things in the world, no feelings of doom, and no badness and misunderstanding. Just the things you treasure most. After these two thoughts, and as my mind begins to focus, I have a vague feeling come over me I have done something terrible, that I am to blame, and that I will be punished. It's that fear that has always kept me in a limbo, since I was fifteen, a dark place with no ambition because, what's the point, if you are going to prison.

  I sit here now, in the place I call home, and I know that this is coming to an end. I know because this morning, after Andrew and Emma, I thought about what would happen to me after the court case, if there was one. It was like a cog had clicked over, pushing the second hand of my life on towards whatever is next. The certainty was there, I had buried my baby, I had been abused by John. I couldn't blame the stories any more. All of a sudden, this had become a story of its own. Hadn't I seen it on the newsstand, the words struck onto the page, all about me and my life? Apart from Mallory and Geoffrey, grabbed by the scruff of the neck out of the fiction that had wrapped itself around my teenage years, and thrust out into the world. A story by itself, struggling into the world, as if to tell everyone what really happened. Until now, all the tragedy I had struggled with in my memories, belching up into a closed mouth, the bile of the past, had been retched over alone. Now, for better or for worse, it was born.

  For better or for worse. I'm glad Stan isn't here to see this. It would have blown his ordered life to pieces, made him paler than he already was with anger. One blessing of being alone here is that I don't have to explain this to anyone. Not that it isn't explaining itself. It doesn't need a genius to put together a case of incest, and drunken father and a buried baby. No doubt people would have their opinions about this new story, about John, Dad, even Mum. Where was she when all this happened? No doubt it will spread its accusing fingers up to Manchester and drag John out into the spotlight, where he will vomit his own story, slightly different to mine. The point is, that story now has a life of its own. It's out there to be pointed at and examined, read and poked at, flowed and drawn out to make papers sell. It's about me, but it isn't me.

  It's almost as if those half-awake terrors have been captured in the words and taken off somewhere. I don't have to think about them now, just about what happens next. If my memory inadvertently misfiles all this, I will always have a point of reference: my very own public story.

  I undress and get into bed, knowing that the person who sent the bloody notes to me is out there and probably has put two and two together and knows I have the Grail now. There's nothing I can do but wait. Nowhere else to go, I just have to lie here waiting to see what happens. To see if someone comes in the night, to see if I am arrested for murdering my dead baby. The waiting will be hard, but at least poor little Emma will be acknowledged; the world will know about her, she will exist somewhere in a public record. She was a baby, definitely my baby, I held her, but she was as good as gone already. I lie awake wondering what this means about life, watching the stars move past the shed window, the now familiar patterns of the universe rolling in from to me. The moon, casting its bright shadows across the garden, making almost daylight. Maybe that's why I can't sleep. Then eventually the dawn, that first real light when the earth rolls over are enough to face the sun again, and we all have to face another day.

  I lie in bed, afraid of getting up because now, I realise, I can't wander over to the headland. Well, I can, but what would be the point? It would all look the same, but my reason would be gone. I think I'll go and see the
kestrels, take their dead friend back to them, and maybe walk down to the beach when I hear a car pull up outside. I pull on my overdress and go outside. I can hear knocking on the front door, and I go to open the gate slightly. Alice is outside, smiling and holding what looks like a box of groceries.

  'Lizzie. Hi.'

  She pushes the gate open with her foot and marches in. I pick up the hose pipe.

  'I'm just watering the garden.'

  She beams at me.

  'So I see! Wow. You've got the garden lovely. Isn't it great?'

  She puts the box down on the back doorstep and sits on one of the old chairs near the sunflowers. I lean against the wall and stare at her.

  'Thank you for what you did yesterday. It was very kind.'

  She shrugs.

  'Yes. Well, I've got a bit of a soft spot for you, haven't I? It was awful what you had to do. Terrible. And, while I'm on that subject, Dr Davison has asked me if you'd like to have some counselling? You know, just someone to talk to?'

  I nod.

  'I'll think about it. But I've got me birds to talk to.'

  She pulls her face into a tight smirk.

  'That's all very well and good, Lizzie, but they can't talk back, can they?'

  I snigger.

  'No. They can't and they can't judge me, either, or measure me by what they think I should do. Anyway, a counsellor wouldn't talk back, except to tell me I'm depressed and I already know that. And I think we all know why. So what's the point?'

  She nods.

  'Mmm. I can see what you're saying, but we all need people around us, don't we? We all need someone to talk to, confide in. You can't go on like this, Lizzie, living on your own up here, you're not coping. Why don't you go in for a flat?'

  She's standing in front of the kitchen window, and I look over her shoulder as I see a movement. A large rat runs across the inside windowsill, stops, and sniffs the corner. I know that although the curtains look fine from here, they are coasted with a thick layer of white mould that shimmers away when you touch them. I'm almost tempted. I think about constant warmth, a flushing toilet and somewhere to have a bath or even a shower. It seems a distant dream has been pushed slightly nearer and I'm reaching out for it. Alice moves slightly to the left to get my attention back.

  'Of course, it won't be in Tintagel. Maybe you could be nearer to your son. Or wouldn't you like to go back to Manchester?'

  I can feel my eyes narrow and I step forward.

  'Some tower block, will it be? Somewhere you can hide me away? This is my house, you know. I don't know why you're so hell bent on getting me out of it. I'm fine. I might be a bit pissed off, but wouldn't you be if you'd been carrying that around with you all your life?'

  She nods.

  'OK. Just a thought. But at least there aren't any more secrets, are they?'

  I look at the house behind her.

  'What, like another couple of bodies buried in my garden? Or someone dead in the attic? No. Sorry to disappoint you. Nothing as tragic as that. Maybe you should concentrate on trying to find out who's killing the villagers off one by one.'

  I can see her wanting to laugh but maybe she thinks it's not appropriate, or that I'm not really a friend she can laugh with, more a lunatic old woman who she's made her personal project. She turns around now and looks at the box.

  'I brought you some shopping. Shall I take it inside for you.'

  'No.' I know I've shouted this a little too quickly, and she jumps. 'It's all right. I'll, take it in. And thank you. I appreciate it. But I'm not moving, Alice.'

  She moves to go but then she looks back.

  'Oh, and about Julia. She's started a group to get you removed from Tintagel. Saying you're a danger to children now. If you ask me she's gone a little bit strange. She looks bewildered all the time. And missing days off work. Just thought you should know in case you run into her.'

  She's moving towards the back door again, and I panic a little. If she gets any nearer she will be able to see through the glass reflecting the sun into the murkiness of the house.

  'It's good of you to let me know. But I can't do anything about it, can I? I'm just trying to get used to things as they are now. After yesterday. I'd really appreciate some time alone.'

  She stares at me for a moment and then at the floor.

  'Of course. I'm sorry, how selfish of me. It's just that I get lonely sometimes and I thought...'

  'You, lonely, in the shop? You're young, you can make a life for yourself.'

  She smiles.

  'You'd think so, wouldn't you? But I'm all alone here. I don't have any parents. My father died when I was very young, and my mother died while I was at university. People think I'm so lucky because I was left a house and the business, here, near the sea. And I am lucky. But Lonely.'

  'But don't you get to see lots of people all day, who you speak to?'

  'Yes, but they're strangers. They're not family. I used to sit and talk to my Mum, before she died. She didn't have me until she was forty-two, and I'm thirty-two now.'

  Thirty-two. I'd have but her much younger.

  'Aren't you going out with that nice doctor?'

  She blushes and I smile.

  'No. We're just friends. I've had a few boyfriends but I'm not really bothered. There was someone, an older man, very interesting, he was from the North too. You’ve seen him around, in fact I’ve seen you talking to him on the beach.'

  She sits down on the step now and my chest tightens. I'd see him around, alright.

  'Aren't there plenty of young people around here, lots of folk you can be friends with?'

  She nods slowly.

  'There are, but they're not people I can trust. You know, really talk to. I think that's why I wanted to help you. You remind me a lot of my mum. She had that same wicked twinkle in her eyes, like life had got her down and worn her out, but there was still a spark. I just thought you might like a chat now and again?'

  I'm the queen of misunderstanding and I seem to have misunderstood this big time. I always thought I was the one who needed something, but here was Alice asking me, of all people, for help.

  'I'd be glad to. Very glad to. Just give me some time to get over all this, to get myself sorted out, and we'll have that chat. I'm sorry about your Mum. Mine ran off with the butcher.'

  We both burst out laughing and she stands and touches my shoulder.

  'Watch out for Julia.'

  I nod

  'Thanks. I'll bear that in mind. And you keep yourself safe, love. Don't forget there's a killer about.'

  She leaves and shuts the gate behind her. I hear her car start up and in a minute she's gone and I'm alone again. It's funny how things turn out. Two children of my own and neither of them are with me. Yet someone who's lost a mother decides to adopt me. I hear her car chug down the lane and I feel the tears come as I imagine Alice in the police tent covered in blood. This has to stop. I'm in a terrible situation and I need to get to the bottom of it.

  I take the shopping into the shed and sort it out. She's brought fresh food, useless unless I eat it almost immediately, but there's some bread. As soon as I open the wrapper, a group of starlings swoop into the garden, chattering and fighting over some crusts I throw. I sit out on the bench along the front of the shed and enjoy the warm breeze on my face. I brew a cup of tea and stretch out my bare legs and feet. My mind wanders back to Emma, and what would have happened if she had lived. The most likely scenario would be that she would have been adopted. Even if I had kept quiet about John, he would never have let me keep her; it would remind him that someone knew about his dirty little secrets. Top Secret. I imagine him being arrested and telling the police it was my fault. Or denying it all together. After all, there was no proof.

  It didn't matter now. I had started a torrent that couldn't be stopped, it would roll and roll until the last piece of John's cruelty was exposed. The last part of the jigsaw puzzle pushed into place, and it had been spelt out to the world what had happened to me.
How I had ended up like this. It's not so bad, tough. Not now, not today, and that's all that matters. I'm worried about going to prison, going to court again, about anyone finding out about the house, about Andrew. But right now, with the sea breeze in my face and nowhere to go, I'm fine.

  I doze for a few moments, then I go over to the wall and look down to the beach. And there he is, larger than life, sitting side-saddle on Daisy. Jer's back.

  CHAPTER 24

  I pull on my stockings and my taped-up shoes, several layers of clothes and my mac over the top. I load up Macy with all the papers I've been given, charge sheets, documents about Emma and the reports for the counsellor. I can feel my heart beating fast, and a tightness in my throat. It's been so long, and so much has happened. I can't wait to see him. I push Macy outside the garden and lock the gate and leave through the house. I've made a track of footprints on the carpet, impressions of maroon through the dusty mess. I pull the door shut behind me and lock it tight. People are more interested in me now, and I don't want anyone discovering my new secret. Still Top Secret.

  I know exactly where Jer will be, at our spot on the beach. He'll be sitting on Daisy, side saddle, smoking and looking out at the sea. He told me that the sea is in his blood, that he has to return to the coast after a long journey to breathe it in. He told me that's because our bodies are made up of 60% water and our brains are 70% liquid. He reckons that the moon affects our bodies just like it affects the tides, but because we're all so busy and so focused on other things we don't notice. Jer says we don't listen to our bodies enough. We don't listen to ourselves.