The Mark of Cain

by Lindsey Barraclough

  I look from the pub to Cora. Her face is bleak with disappointment, as grey as the snow-heavy sky.

  I try to think of something, anything.

  And all I can think of is going back to see old Mr. Thorston. Four years ago he told us so many things — about Long Lankin, and even about witches. He had a chest in his cottage full of family papers and ancient documents. Surely he would know, if anyone did, about the twigs on the door, and the stones, and the broken bottles. He might even have some idea who the two women could be.

  I suggest it to Cora. She flicks me a watery smile.

  “His wife died a while ago,” I say as we cross the road. “I was in the post office when Mrs. Wickerby was telling someone about the funeral at Saint Mary’s in North Fairing — hardly anybody there, she said, just Mr. Thorston and a couple of old biddies… . Oh, and a daughter — a widow … Margaret or Marjorie or something.”

  “So he didn’t just have the three sons killed in the Great War, then. Must have had four children.”

  We tramp down Ottery Lane, and thankfully the snow stops falling. Passing the end of Fieldpath Road, I wonder fleetingly if I might just nip up and borrow Pete’s dry boots and some warm socks, maybe even snatch a roast potato, but I know if I go back now Mum won’t let me out again. My stomach grumbles noisily. I hope Cora didn’t hear it. Perhaps Mr. Thorston will have some more of that nice seed cake he gave us last time.

  I soldier on with Cora through the fresh, quiet snow, gallantry personified.

  Before us, a seamless river of white stretches onwards under the arching trees.

  Formless. Black in the hollows, grey in the shadows. The only sound in the stillness is the muffled crumping of our feet through the powdery crust.

  No birds sing, no dogs bark.

  The road is just the vaguest dip between the rounded banks.

  On our right, the snow has drifted against the garden wall of North End, Dr. Meldrum’s house, the house that was once home to the Eastfields — Auntie Ida’s husband, Will; his sister, Rosalie; and also his brother, James, killed in the Great War like Mr. Thorston’s sons. There is no driveway visible, no gravel path skirting the lawn, just a glistening milky sea stretching away to the cream-coloured house. Rising up in front of it are the domes of the three huge willows, the snow clinging gracefully to the long, drooping branches.

  The track to the Patches goes off to the left. The light wind blows fine, dusty clouds into our faces off the tops of the high hedges to either side; behind each hedge is a plot of land bought or rented by people from the East End of London between the wars — people desperate to escape to the countryside.

  We make our way slowly, lifting our knees as we plough on, too cold to talk. The landscape is difficult to read, each wooden house just like the next. The markers are buried, distances hard to judge.

  But still we manage to find our way. Round a bend is Mr. Thorston’s cottage, its deep thatch rounded and smoothed by the snow.

  As we stand there at the open gate, an unexpected shaft of sun breaks through the thick grey clouds and moves slowly down the roof. In the new light, the glassy icicles hanging under the eaves begin to gleam and glister, and in the front garden, each little bead of ice on twig and stem and winter leaf flashes a sparkle.

  We follow a trail of fresh footprints leading up the path from the gate. When Roger knocks on the front door, it moves slightly inwards.

  We wait.

  “Mr. Thorston!” Roger calls, then knocks again, and the door moves a few inches more.

  “He must be there,” I say. “He wouldn’t leave his door open, and look — there’s smoke coming out the chimney.”

  Roger puts his head inside and calls again. When no answer comes, he turns back to me. “Maybe he’s hurt himself.”

  “I suppose we’d better go in, then, just in case,” I say, pushing Roger through. The door opens directly into the sitting room.

  Stamping the snow off onto the mat, I gaze around at the familiar low, blackened beams, the small windows set back in the thick whitewashed walls, the two large chintz-covered armchairs, rather worn and faded, on either side of the wide fireplace, where a log fire is burning. Mr. Thorston’s frail wife, Grace, used to sit in the chair on the right, but it’s empty now, save for a hollow in the seat cushion, as if she has just got up to make a cup of tea. Against the side wall is the old chest full of Mr. Thorston’s family papers. Black with age, it is carved with a row of little wooden people. All these things remain the same, but in the middle of the room are a number of wooden tea crates filled with books, some of which have slipped off onto the sloping floor.

  “Looks as if he’s decided to move out,” Roger says.

  The deep windowsills are empty. I remember the faces under the army caps in the grainy photographs that used to stand on them, the faces of his three dead sons.

  “Maybe he’s lonely,” I say.

  Although the fire is burning, there is a vacancy about the place.

  “Mr. Thorston?” I call, but nobody answers.

  “Maybe he’s upstairs.”

  “Where are they, the stairs?”

  I look around. In the corner of the sitting room is a full-length cupboard door, standing a little open. I peep in, and behind it there’s a small winding staircase.

  “Mr. Thorston?” I shout up.

  No answer comes.

  I climb the stairs to a tiny landing and push open the door on the left. A chest of drawers stands beside a stripped iron bedstead covered with shirts, jackets, and trousers. In the room to the right there are more clothes spread out on a wooden bed — old-fashioned dresses smelling of mothballs, cardigans, coats, hats — but no sign of Mr. Thorston. A door leads to a further room with a steeply sloping ceiling: two more beds with bare mattresses covered in faded ticking, a broken chair, another tea crate, and books in stacks on the old worn rug.

  “He isn’t up here!” I call, making my way back down the stairs.

  At the bottom I see Roger isn’t where I left him. “Roger? Where are you now?”

  If he replies, I don’t hear him. My eyes are drawn to the chest by the wall. The little carved people seem to watch me intently as I glance cagily at the front door, half open to the snowy garden, then at the small windows, making sure nobody is about. I take a few steps forward, and though I know I shouldn’t be doing it, I grab the edge of the heavy lid and wrench it up with both hands.

  Empty.

  No notebooks or rolls of documents — nothing but dust and a musty smell.

  Irritated, I stare at the bare wood for a few moments before dropping the lid back as quietly as I can. I take a hasty look into each tea crate, move a few books aside, but see nothing that resembles a pile of old papers.

  From somewhere at the back of the cottage Roger cries, “Look here, Cora!”

  Feeling a flush of guilt at having opened the chest, and now fearing the worst for Mr. Thorston, I turn and hurry through the door into the next room, where Roger, Pete, and I sat around the table eating honeycomb off little plates from the crowded dresser. Now the dresser is just empty shelves, the little dark circles in the dust showing where the cups and jugs once stood. I squeeze past two large cardboard boxes filled with crockery wrapped in crumpled newspaper and go through the far doorway into the little kitchen.

  “What — what is it?” I ask nervously.

  “Biscuits,” Roger says, all excited, holding up a packet of digestives.

  “What?”

  “Chocolate ones,” he says. “I’m so blimmin’ hungry, do you think Mr. Thorston would mind if we had one? It’s already open.”

  “I can’t believe it!” I say. “Flippin’ biscuits? I thought you’d found him dead or something.”

  “I don’t think he’s here.”

  “I’ve just opened that old chest,” I say, “and there’s nothing in it — no papers, nothing at all. Perhaps he’s put the stuff somewhere else, packed it all away or something. We’ll have to ask him. He can’t have gon
e far with the fire going.”

  I stand on the red quarry tiles and look around the cosy little kitchen. There’s something of our old kitchen in Limehouse about it.

  Mr. Thorston still cooks on a small black range, keeps his fresh food cool on slate shelves in the little pantry behind the small door, hangs his meat from metal hooks in the ceiling, and lights a fire under the copper to heat the water for washing.

  At Guerdon Hall we have a stainless-steel sink, a new gas cooker with eye-level grill, easy-wipe Formica work surfaces, smart linoleum sheeting on the floor, and a fridge with an icebox you can keep a block of raspberry ripple ice cream in. But I would swap it all for this — so small, so simple.

  “Or maybe he’s in the garden,” Roger says.

  “In this weather?” I go to the sink and look through the window.

  I glance over the vegetable plot with the mounds of frosty cabbages standing proud of the snow, then across to the orchard with the bare knotted branches of the fruit trees reaching down almost to the roofs of the beehives, which are all wrapped in tar paper. To one side, in front of the hedge, is a clapboard outhouse with a water butt attached to its guttering by a drainpipe, and next to that a greenhouse, the glass roof covered with snowy potato sacks, frozen rigid, weighted down with flat stones.

  “Can’t see him,” I say. When I turn around again, Roger has peeled back the top of the biscuit packet.

  “Honestly,” he says, “if I don’t have something soon, I’m going to go funny.”

  “You can’t just take people’s stuff without asking, Roger.”

  “It’s only biscuits. Tell you what — if he doesn’t come back soon, we could write a little note to Mr. Thorston saying we hope he doesn’t mind us taking one because we haven’t had dinner yet.”

  My stomach rolls. “Well … all right, then, just one each, but only if we do the letter, really polite, and say thank you.”

  I am hungrier than I realize, and gulp my biscuit down so fast it gives me hiccups.

  “Hold your breath,” Roger says. He counts to twenty-five.

  “Hic!”

  “Drink some water from the other side of the cup.”

  I reach for an old tin mug on the wooden draining board and turn the tap. Nothing comes out of the spout.

  “Flip, the pipe must have frozen. What shall I — hic — do?”

  Roger, crunching his third biscuit, looks along a row of corked, dusty glass bottles on a shelf. He takes one down and looks closely at the yellow liquid inside.

  “Remember we had some of Mr. Thorston’s homemade lemonade last time?” he says. “Do you think this is some more of it?”

  “Looks darker to me.”

  “Might be a bit old, but it should still be all right, with the sugar in. Shall I pull the cork out?”

  “Only — hic — if we mention it as well, in the note to Mr. Thorston.”

  Roger wiggles out the cork and puts the bottle to his nose. “It’s not lemonade,” he says. “Smells a bit like honey, and wine or something.”

  “Won’t do us any harm, then,” I say. “Honey’s good for you.”

  “Shall I try a bit?” he says, pouring some into the tin mug.

  “Go on, then.”

  He takes a sip. “Ooh, it’s not what I expected,” he says. “It really warms up your throat as it goes down.”

  He gulps a bit more — quite a swig, actually — and splutters into his sleeve. “Ooh, sorry, it — um — I think there’s alcohol in it.”

  He passes the cup to me and I take a sniff. Under the strong honey scent is a tang that takes me back to last Christmas — Auntie Kath opening the bottle of Emva Cream she’d nicked from her mother’s, then mixing it with orange squash, saying, “Time you tried a sherry cobbler.” I had two glassfuls, then was sick in the kitchen sink and couldn’t eat my pudding.

  “You sure it’s all right, Roger?” I say, sipping. A bit of heat spreads over my tongue. I swallow quite a lot. “See what you mean — really warming. You’re probably right about the alcohol, but there won’t be much, will there, if Mr. Thorston’s made it at home? I’ll just have a bit more to make sure my hiccups go.”

  “Pass me the mug,” says Roger, and fills it from the bottle, drinks some more, and helps himself to another biscuit. “Do you know,” he mumbles, “my head’s gone a bit swimmy.”

  “That’s because you’re hungry,” I say, taking the mug back, thinking I’m feeling swimmy too. “Give us another biscuit.”

  After a while I notice the hiccups have gone. For some reason I want to laugh, and have to sit down on the little wooden chair by the table, but the seat seems to move position all by itself and I nearly end up on the floor. I close my eyes for a minute, open them again. Roger is tipping the bottle upside down and shaking it over the empty mug. When only one little drop comes out, he thinks it’s really funny. He tries to stand the empty bottle on the draining board, but it won’t stay up and tips into the sink.

  “Wibble wobble, wibble wobble.” He chuckles.

  I reach for a biscuit, but there’s only the wrapper left. “Oh, crumbs,” I say, and start to giggle.

  I scrunch the paper into a ball and toss it over my shoulder towards the back door behind us.

  “Oi!” comes a yell.

  I almost fall off the chair.

  The door has opened. Someone has walked in. I think I might have hit them.

  “What are you ruddy well doing!” a man cries. “Turn round! If you try anything funny, I’ll cut your thieving fingers off!”

  I manage to stand, though my knees buckle slightly, and turn, expecting to see Mr. Thorston, but to my amazement it’s Mr. Wragge, snapping at the air with a huge pair of garden shears.

  My mouth drops open.

  I glance at Roger. He is leaning against the sink with his eyes glazed over, grinning, no flipping use at all.

  “Oh, Mr. — Mr. Wragge,” I mumble. “We — we came to see Mr. Thorston — hic — oh, blast — sorry. Hiccups again.”

  Mr. Wragge creases up his eyes, stares into my face. “You — you’re that girl from Guerdon Hall.” Then he looks at Roger, who is still smiling. “And you, whoever you are, what are the two of you doing here?” Roger sways a bit. Mr. Wragge leans over the sink, takes out the bottle, and sniffs the neck. “And drinking Mr. Thorston’s mead?”

  “What — hic — what’s mead?” I ask.

  “This is, you idiots. How much have you had? Don’t tell me it’s the entire ruddy bottle —”

  “Smelled like honey… .”

  “And where’s me blimmin’ biscuits?”

  I look over to the scrunched-up paper ball on the floor.

  Mr. Wragge picks it up. “Flamin’ Nora!” he says. “You’ve had the whole flippin’ lot!”

  I should be more ashamed than I am, but actually I feel quite comfy with myself. There’s something about Mr. Wragge’s nose popping in and out of focus that I find quite comical — that and the shears. It’s all I can do to stop myself giggling again.

  “So, where’s Mr. Thorston, then?” I say, trying to get myself together.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but the poor old chap had a fall, if you must know,” says Mr. Wragge. “The postman found him. He spent a couple of days in Lokswood Hospital, and then his daughter, Marjorie — Mrs. Harrow, that is — came to take him to live with her on the other side of Ipswich.”

  I make a huge effort to steady my thoughts. “He — he’s not coming back here, then, ever — Mr. Thorston?”

  “Ooh, no, this cottage is going to be sold, though nobody’ll want it, because they like things all modern these days. Since Mrs. Thorston died” — Mr. Wragge taps his temple with his finger — “old Hal’s gone a bit wandery in the head.” Then he abruptly changes tone. “But that don’t give you cart blonch to just walk in off the street and help yourself to his liquor. Serve you right if you’re bloomin’ well sick. I saw you from the shed, through the window. Thought you was burglars, but you’re just a pa
ir of ruddy nincompoops.” He rolls his eyes towards Roger. “You’d better get him home, stupid idiot.”

  As Mr. Wragge speaks, my heart drops. My head isn’t so cloudy that I don’t feel a pang of disappointment at Mr. Thorston’s absence.

  “All right. Sorry, Mr. Wragge.”

  I steady myself on the table for a moment and pick up Roger’s gloves. Roger slumps forward from the sink. I manage to get hold of his coat front and prop him up against the wall instead. He looks a bit green. “Come on, Roger, put these back on, er … I think that’s the left one, and what’s happened to your thumbs?”

  There’s an awful noise — he’s retching.

  Mr. Wragge, quicker on his feet than me, drops the shears, grabs Roger’s arm, and pulls him out of the back door, just in time.

  I stagger out of the Patches and up Ottery Lane, all the world hazy, and am sick again outside the post office. Cora pushes my head forward to try and stop it going over my shoes, but I’m not sure if it misses hers.

  I am aware of a face peering out at us from a window of one of the new bungalows as I stumble up Fieldpath Road with an arm over Cora’s shoulder. Did I put it there or did Cora do it to hold me up? I’ve no idea.

  She leads me up to the front gate and says, “Are you sure you’ll get in all right if I leave you here?” Then I think she may be watching me as I sway gently from side to side across the front garden and climb carefully up the veranda steps.

  “Where the ruddy hell have you been?” cries Dad as I reel into the kitchen. “And shut the blimmin’ door.”

  I close the door behind me, trip over the old towel they’ve stuffed along the gap at the bottom to keep out the draught, and almost knock myself out on the sink.

  “Your dinner’s gone cold,” snaps Mum without a smidgeon of sympathy as she tosses a bundle of dirty knives and forks into the washing-up. “Everyone’s finished.”

  She glares at my boots. “Just look at the state of you — treading snow all over the floor. For heaven’s sake, don’t just stand there — go and get the mop.”

  I wait for a while as the kitchen moves around me.