The Mark of Cain

by Lindsey Barraclough

  “All right,” I shout back. “But don’t worry. I’ll do it.”

  On the right, just where the passage turns into the hall, is the old warped door that used to open into Auntie Ida’s kitchen, now locked. The key pokes out of its hole, the room no more than a turn away. Dad says he’s going to get the doorway bricked over next year.

  I don’t want to be here next year.

  I turn into the hall, still slightly shocked by the bright-green wallpaper with big yellow flowers pasted over boards covering the old wooden panelling.

  I go into the new kitchen opposite the staircase — two rooms Auntie Ida never used, now knocked into one. I switch on the fluorescent light and, while it flickers and settles into its harsh glare, draw the vivid orange curtains to shut out the garden.

  Sliding open one of the frosted-glass doors above the counter of the glossy dresser, I take out a cup, fill it with water, drink it down, and leave it on the gleaming Formica worktop.

  Two slices of bread under the eye-level grill of our New World gas stove, the other half of the tin of baked beans into a stainless-steel pan. Strike a match. Spread the butter. Pour out the hot beans. Take it into the sitting room in time for Double or Drop.

  “That Mr. Blezzard came for his money,” says Auntie Kath. “Said he wasn’t clearing out the barn till he’s been paid. I said he’ll have to come back when your dad’s here.”

  “School all right?” I ask Mimi. “You finished with the tray?”

  “Everyone’s calling me Lizzie,” she says, staring at the screen. “Don’t like it.”

  “I suppose you had to expect that, with your name being Elizabeth on the register. Didn’t you tell them you prefer Mimi?”

  “No.”

  “Made any friends?”

  I know what the answer will be.

  “Don’t like no one. This girl Denise asked me to go over and play. She’s in Ottery Lane.”

  “You going, then?”

  “No. Don’t like her.”

  I think it’s my fault. When we got back to London after all that had happened at Guerdon Hall before, I found myself haunted by the fear of her being snatched away again. Before Auntie Kath came, there was only her and me when Dad was out. I always had to know where Mimi was, wouldn’t let her out on her own. I know I should have done, but I was scared when it was just the two of us in the house alone. In the end her friends stopped knocking for her, and she gave up asking to go out to play.

  I cut a mouthful of toast and squash some beans onto it with my fork.

  “Is that a new dress, Auntie Kath?”

  “I went to Lokswood on the bus. What do you think? Maybe it’s a bit low in the front.” She pulls the bodice up a bit, smoothes it over her full bust.

  “You can always wear a scarf if it gets too nippy.”

  “Do you think your dad will like it?”

  “He’ll love it. Shows off your curvy bits.”

  “Nice pattern, innit?”

  “Nice colours.”

  “You got any aspirins, Cora?”

  “Ain’t there any in the bathroom? You got a headache?”

  “Feeling a bit funny. Must’ve been the coffee I had at this place — Wren’s Coffee House, they call it. I was looking for a tearooms, but this Wren’s smelled lovely from the pavement so I thought I’d give it a go. Never been in one before. We never had nothing that posh in Limehouse.”

  “You should go again.”

  “No, I don’t think so. This waitress come up and asked me what blend I’d like, and I said a cup of Nescaff with a nice slosh of milk and three sugars. Soon as I opened me mouth, she raised one of her painted eyebrows right up to her lace cap and said they didn’t do no Nescaff. In the end I asked for a cream slice, and she brought it on a little plate with a doily and a silver fork and it was real cream; then I had a coffee after all to be polite, and it was that strong and bitter I could hardly drink it till I noticed this china bowl with fancy brown sugar lumps I had to put in meself with these tong things. When she brought the bill, me mouth dropped down halfway to Australia — cost a blimmin’ fortune.”

  When we go up to bed at nine, Auntie Kath won’t stay downstairs on her own, even with the light on.

  Dad’s only had one half of the house done; the rest is shut off. Still, he doesn’t have a clue what to do with all the rooms he’s had opened up. After a while they’ll be just too bothersome to heat and clean, and it won’t be long before they’re locked up again, like they were in Auntie Ida’s time.

  At the end of the landing upstairs a new wall blocks off the other wing of the house. It makes the landing feel all closed in, even gloomier than it was before. The window that used to be at the end of the passage is behind the wall now, spreading its milky light over floorboards, timber beams, and plaster that no one will ever see again.

  Mimi and I are in the same bedroom, but with twin beds instead of the huge grown-up bed we shared last time. I can’t stand the wallpaper. It’s all zigzags with red splashes — makes your eyes go funny.

  The rafters have been covered with plasterboard so the ceiling’s much lower. There’s another panel of it, painted white, pinned over the opening of the old fireplace. The boarding’s everywhere in the house now. Mr. Blezzard must have got a job lot of the stuff from the factory.

  But I only have to shut my eyes and draw a veil aside to see the room as it was before — taste the dust, watch the spiders in the shadows, hear things … like the ghosts of ghosts.

  It’s all there still, behind the veil.

  I look over at Mimi’s bed, at the soft curve of her under the eiderdown. The unspoken memories of the past hang forever in the air between us, and because the words remain unsaid, I fool myself into thinking that Mimi has forgotten. Perhaps she has. She was so little then.

  But for me, in some small moment of every day, that horrifying summer of four years ago forces itself into my mind to be remembered.

  “It’s getting so blimmin’ dark in the evenings now,” says Auntie Kath, carefully slipping the crumpets off the grill pan onto a plate. I put the butter and strawberry jam on the tray and we go down the hall to the sitting room, where Mimi is drawing, her new red exercise book propped up on her knees as she lies back on the settee. She’s never been much of a one for drawing before, but she asked Auntie Kath to get her a book when she went shopping.

  “Went to the pictures in Daneflete today,” says Auntie Kath, spreading the crumpets with thick butter.

  “Go on your own?”

  “Not much choice, have I?”

  “You could’ve waited for Dad.”

  “Never know when he’s going to be around. Can’t just hang about on the off chance, can I? Anyway, I like a bit of romance, meself. James Bond is more your dad’s cup of tea. I can never work out what’s going on in them films — you know, spies and things.”

  She puts the tray down on the little table, takes the lid off the jam —“Want a crumpet, Mimi?”— and plunges in the buttery knife.

  Mimi shuts her drawing book, stuffs it behind a cushion, and comes over.

  The sitting-room curtains ripple a little as the cold wind outside finds a chink to blow through.

  Auntie Kath shivers and goes to the window. She stands there awhile, I think in hope, listening for the car, but there is no rumble of an engine coming down the Chase; just the murmur of the telly in the corner and the moaning of the wind in the chimney.

  “This bloke in the film,” she says, still with her back to us, “he wasn’t keen on this girl, not really, not like she was on him.”

  Auntie Kath is wondering what Dad might be getting up to these few days in London. He was very cagey about why he had to go back, and he’s always had an eye for the ladies. She’s worried he’s got some fancy woman somewhere, because she was his fancy woman herself once.

  I look up. “Come and have the last crumpet,” I call.

  She half turns, stiffens, then looks back out.

  “Auntie Kath?”
r />   I can see her reflection in the glass, face motionless, eyes fixed on something outside.

  “What is it?”

  She shudders. “Nothing …” she says.

  She comes back to the table and with shaking fingers reaches for her cigarettes, then changes her mind, picks up the knife, and spreads jam quickly over the crumpet.

  “You all right?” I ask, licking melted butter off my chin.

  “Yeah, fine,” she says, biting in, then taking another chunk before she’s swallowed the first. She looks back at the window.

  “What’s the matter?”

  A few seconds go by.

  “Nothing — it’s nothing,” she says.

  Mimi gets up, goes to the window, and peers out.

  Much later, in the night, I am woken by knocking on the door. In the thick fog of a half-dream I think I am in my bed in Limehouse.

  The knocking comes again, still quiet but more insistent.

  “Cora!”

  I crawl out of bed, go to the door, and open it slightly. The landing light is on. It makes my eyes hurt. Auntie Kath stands there in her curlers and pink nylon baby-doll pyjamas, the ones with the short frilly knickers that don’t do her any favours.

  “Cora, was it you?”

  “What?”

  “Was it you?”

  “Ssh.” I look back at Mimi, the light from the landing ceiling lying diagonally across her bed. I step out of the room and close the door behind me. “What’s the matter?”

  “Have you been up?”

  “Don’t be daft. Of course not.”

  “You weren’t whispering … outside?”

  “What would I be whispering about? What do you mean — outside?”

  She glances sideways down the landing towards her bedroom, her eyes wide. “Outside — outside my window …”

  “How could I have been outside your window, Auntie Kath? We’re upstairs. You must have been dreaming.”

  “It — it wasn’t dreaming.”

  “The wind’s getting up. When it’s blowing through the trees over the creek, it sounds just like whispering.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Leave the light on.”

  She hesitates. “I did — the bedside lamp, I mean,” she says. “I’ll — I’ll put the main light on an’ all.”

  “Night-night, then.”

  “Night-night.”

  When the front door opens, the afternoon air smells of autumn, of Bonfire Night just round the corner.

  “Two drop goals!” Dad shouts as he and Pete come in from the rugby. “Two! In his first tournament for the County! The last one won the ruddy championship! Put the kettle on, Rosie!”

  Pete preens in, smelling of mud and sporting a spectacular graze down his face and a half-closed black eye. Mum, cooing and clucking, tries to press his cheek with a cold wet flannel as he sits in the middle of the kitchen holding court, letting excited Pam and round-eyed Terry take turns at wearing his medal while Dad stands proudly by. Pete flaps the flannel away with a sigh, pretending to be all plucky and long-suffering, but I know it’s because he wants to flaunt his impressive injuries at school on Monday — wouldn’t do to have it all heal too soon.

  I go out to the shed with Dennis, who isn’t impressed either.

  “Blimmin’ Saint Peter,” he mutters. “Dad never came to watch me when I got third in the swimming gala.”

  We find a pile of old newspapers to stuff our guy for Bonfire Night. Dad has laid out the fireworks on his workbench and covered them with sacking, all ready for Monday. We can’t resist lifting a corner and taking a look.

  “What are you doing?”

  A rocket almost jumps out of Dennis’s hand.

  Pam is standing at the door.

  “We’re getting things for the guy,” I say. “Come with us and choose a mask at Mrs. Wickerby’s.”

  Pam whoops with glee, then skips great hopping skips around the house and down Fieldpath Road so the bobbles on the ends of her scarf bounce up and down. In the post office she picks out a warty mask with a hooked nose that Mrs. Wickerby, the shopkeeper, most probably made herself, looking in the mirror for inspiration.

  When we get outside, Dennis puts it on and chases Pam back up the road. “Ha ha! I’m Guy Fawkes! I’m coming to get you!”

  Pam shrieks and shrieks, even though she knows it’s only Dennis.

  “I always feel sorry for poor old Guy Fawkes,” he says, taking off the mask and looking at it as we near the house, “getting the most absolutely horriblest death there ever can possibly be.”

  “I think the worst thing must be having to watch your own guts being pulled out,” I say, “and thrown in the fire.”

  “You’d think after the hanging you’d be too dead to look.”

  “Well, if you were still alive after they burned your innards, you’d definitely have had it after they chopped you up.”

  Unfortunately we use the wrong trousers for the guy’s legs. Turns out they’re Dad’s best ones. By the time he notices, we’ve already cut off the bottoms and stuffed them with balls of newspaper. He shouts till his cheeks go red like apples, and disappears off to the shed until dinnertime.

  It’s a great guy, though, the best ever, maybe because the trousers are so smart. Pete humbles himself to join us, and we pad out an old jumper for the body, and Mum sews the top of the trousers to it with her darning needle and some strong thread. She even finds a pair of old holey gloves to stitch on for his hands.

  I empty out the old go-cart of wet brown leaves and other rubbish and drag it down the garden to put the guy in.

  Auntie Kath comes into the kitchen in her coat and takes the big shopping bag off its hook behind the door. Her lips are bright with lipstick and she’s put a thick layer of Pan Stik under her eyes to try to hide the dark shadows.

  “I’d better go up for some shopping,” she says, “before they shut. Do you want to come?”

  “I was going to do some homework.”

  “All right, I’ll take Mimi. She can help with the carrying. Will you be here when we get back?”

  “Yeah. I said I’ve got homework.”

  “You will be here, won’t you?”

  “Where on earth would I go to, Auntie Kath? I said I’ve got maths to do.”

  “Ta-ta, then.”

  “Ta-ta.”

  I hear their footsteps going down the stone passage and the thud of the back door closing behind them.

  Through the kitchen window a huge, jagged bloodred streak stretches across the darkening sky like a wound.

  I switch on the light, sit at the table, and reach down to my schoolbag for my maths exercise book, new logbook, pencil case, and textbook.

  We have been here a week, and it’s the first time I’ve been alone in the house.

  The clock in the hall chimes like Big Ben at the wrong speed, too high and too fast. The last four strokes, marking the hour, echo off the wooden stairs and ring around the landing.

  Then everything goes still.

  I stare at the blue cloth cover of my logbook, open it, sigh, think maybe I’ll make a cup of tea.

  Outside, the darkness is deepening.

  I think something passes the window.

  My heart stops for a moment. I tell myself Auntie Kath and Mimi must have come back for a torch, wait for the back door to open.

  “Mimi?” I call, and wait, slide my eyes, and turn my head slightly, hold my breath — no sound but a hiss under the silence.

  I try and get on with the maths.

  Auntie Kath’s affecting everything with her hearing things and seeing things — a bag of nerves, and she’s making me the same.

  But the memories slink in.

  The film rewinds.

  This place is not like other places.

  My eyes flicker up to the window, to the louring sky and the reflection in the glass of the cold, yellow strip light on the kitchen ceiling.

  I get up and yank the orange curtains across, so quickly that the rig
ht one sticks halfway.

  I look up slowly and peep through the gap.

  The shadowy garden stretches away to the dark curved gash of the creek. A low mist rolls in towards the house from the marshes.

  I tug the curtain closed, reach over to the radio, and fumble for the switch.

  The Light Programme — a football match. I leave it on, increase the volume.

  Is the back door locked?

  Where is Auntie Kath? Why aren’t they home?

  I fill the kettle noisily at the sink, light the gas ring, put the water on to boil, sit back down, and take out a pencil. The columns of numbers swim before my eyes and under my running finger — tangents, sines, cosines. I write furiously — anything, hardly bothering to work out the questions.

  Steaming water starts to bubble out from under the kettle lid. The whistle starts, rising and rising in pitch till I turn off the gas.

  Westminster Chimes tinkle out the quarter while I make myself some tea.

  Holding the cup against my bottom lip, I find myself staring at the curtains, as if they are transparent.

  There is a lull in the football game.

  I can hear something, hold my breath, listen.

  The iron ring of the front door knocker is clacking, ever so slightly; lifting then lowering, lifting again.

  It must be the wind.

  A cheer from the radio. Bert Murray has scored a third goal for Chelsea.

  There is no wind.

  As the cheering dies down, I hear a scuffle against the door.

  Someone is in the porch.

  It must be Auntie Kath and Mimi. No — they will come round the back. Nobody uses the front door. We don’t even have our own keys for it. There’s only the one, hanging on a hook on the wall.

  My knees feel hollow. I should get up, but I can’t move. I can never shake it off, the fear of opening the doors and windows in Guerdon Hall, the sound of long hard nails scratching on the wood in the night.

  I hear the dull clatter of metal — the flap of the letter slot rising and falling again.

  Someone is there. No doubt.

  I think to myself it must be the postman.

  At half past four on a Saturday afternoon?