The Mark of Cain

by Lindsey Barraclough

  “Mrs. Jotman, is he going to die?”

  I move up the hill through the snow until I come to the part of the fence that is broken. I push my way through and walk in among the skeleton trees, still and silent under the ash-dark sky. There are places which the snow couldn’t touch, deep in the spidery thickets. I bend and prod and pry, lift brown, crackling leaves and leaves like lace, dig and poke and jab the earth.

  It has waited to be found, a bloodstone like a crimson almond, and quickly after, in the same scooped hollow, another — a chip of jasper red as a berry.

  I push the clogged earth through the little holes with a glass-headed pin and lick the stones clean with my tongue.

  The back door opens. Dad comes in, stamping his feet on the cardboard, clattering the ash pan down onto the floor, clapping his hands together.

  “Ruddy perishing out there!” he says. “Could murder a cup of tea.”

  Mum glares at him.

  “Kettle’s just on,” I say quietly.

  “Oh, dear,” he says, taking off his boots. “Can I help at all?”

  “You can help by putting more coal on the fire,” Mum says, rolling her eyes at him.

  He looks at Cora, gives Mum a little nod, and goes off in his socks. Mum gets up and closes the door, peeping around first to make sure nobody is lurking behind it.

  “Is Dad going to die?” Cora says again.

  “Cora, we — we always have to look on the bright side. When … when the weather’s better, you’ll be able to visit him.”

  “All the way up there? How will I get there on my own? And they won’t let Mimi in, will they? She’s too young.”

  “But haven’t you got someone looking after you?” says Mum. “This … sorry, what was her name?”

  I stir the stew and glance over at Cora through the rising steam. Fleetingly she meets my eyes, then looks down and says, almost under her breath, “Ange.”

  “That’s right, Ange. Look, Cora, if there’s a problem” — Mum strokes her hand — “I — I’ll take you when the weather’s better and your dad’s up to seeing you. We could get the train from Daneflete — leave early. Mr. Jotman will give us a lift to the station, or we could get the bus when they’re running again.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Jotman.”

  “Look at those dark rings under your eyes,” Mum says. “You must have some dinner with us, you and Mimi.”

  It isn’t lost on anyone around the table how Mimi hungrily gulps down her food without any pause between mouthfuls, scraping up the last little bits before Mum has even had a chance to fill her own plate and Dad’s.

  “Mimi, not so fast,” Cora hisses.

  “Cor, she must be starving,” Terry says, wide-eyed behind his glasses.

  “Ssh, Terry,” Mum says dismissively. “It’s the cold weather. Guaranteed to build up a hearty appetite.”

  As the girls are putting on their coats to leave before it gets dark, Mum tucks a brown paper bag into Mimi’s hand. “I can’t think how I ended up with a load of extra biscuits,” she mutters. “Here, squash these in your pocket, Mimi — ooh, not too hard — and mind you be a good girl and share them with your sister. No sneaky nibbling on your own.”

  “I — I’ll see you up the lane,” I say to Cora, “if — if you fancy a bit of company.”

  She gives me a thin smile.

  We trek down Fieldpath Road, following the tracks Cora and Mimi made on their way up. The low grey sky has remained the same all day long, with the snow blotting out sound so it seems as if the whole world has gone mute.

  Like us, really.

  Only, when we reach the main road, Mimi looks up at Cora and says, “When do you think Dad will come back? Tomorrow?”

  Cora breathes out with a trembling breath. “We’ll have to wait and see,” she says.

  At the top of Old Glebe Lane she turns to me. “Don’t come any further,” she says. “If you’ve got to do the hill on your own on the way back and you come a cropper, there’ll be nobody with you to get help. At least we’re together.”

  “Phone, won’t you?” I ask, then glance at Mimi, who has already ploughed a bit farther on, before lowering my voice. “And remember, even if you can’t talk, let it ring a couple of times. I’ll know something’s wrong.”

  Just a small thing — Cora reaches out and touches my arm — but I feel it warm through my sleeve.

  “Cheerio, and thanks,” she says.

  I watch them, two forlorn, dark figures getting smaller and smaller, trudging through the lines of their old footprints down the otherwise smooth white road.

  At one point I think Cora turns her head and looks back. I can’t be sure in the fading light, but I raise my hand, just in case.

  When I get back to Fieldpath Road, I can still feel that little tender place on my arm.

  For yet another night I lie between sleeping and waking, unable to tell whether what my sluggish ears pick up is real or conjured on the edge of a dream.

  Do I hear the creak of a door, the scrape of metal legs across the lino? Sounds come to me in waves, near, then distant — a muted clunk, the dull swish of an opening drawer, the sigh of moving fabric, a muffled snap, snap, snap.

  Do my drowsy eyes flicker open for a moment — see a shaft of dim light cutting diagonally across the lino, a shadow passing over it and along so the light shifts then goes out altogether? Do I hear the slow, gentle closing of a door?

  It’s more a feeling than a memory when I waken properly, still tired, fretful, and anxious, to a faded pallor spreading a little way over the wall from behind the curtains.

  I look over to the door. The chair is a yard across the floor into the room.

  It wasn’t a dream. Someone came in.

  The hands on the alarm are both at twelve. Did it stop at midnight? I reach across, pick it up, give it a shake, listen. It ticks steadily on. Surely Mimi and I haven’t slept until midday? I check my watch. The morning has gone.

  Quickly I get out of bed and draw the curtains aside, then blink twice, thinking a film of sleep must still be on my eyes, because everything I see is colourless.

  I wipe the freezing glass with my fingertips. Behind the panes, each diamond rimmed with ice, a grey mist hangs over the snow so the garden seems to vanish into a dense, white, featureless haze of nothing, as if the house is suspended in a cloud, as if all the rest of the world has dissolved away, and Guerdon Hall is floating in the emptiness left behind.

  I pull on my clothes and look at my washed-out face in the mirror. The watery light from the window highlights every shadow, every deep hollow. My hair hangs down in tangled strings.

  I reach for the hairbrush on top of the chest of drawers but find an empty space. I glance around the room. Mimi is stirring.

  “Wake up, Mimi — we’ve overslept,” I say. “And what have you done with the hairbrush?”

  “On the drawers …” she mumbles, still half asleep.

  I look again. “It isn’t here,” I say. “Come on, Mimi, where is it?”

  She opens her eyes. “It was there last night,” she says. “I left it like normal. Promise.”

  “Well, it isn’t there now,” I say. “Please find it, Mimi. I can’t go around like this.”

  “That’s where I put it. Honest.” She turns over. “You’ll have to borrow Ange’s.”

  I open the top drawer, rummage around, can’t find any brush, then pull out the drawer below.

  “Flippin’ heck, Mimi.” I pick up my blue blouse with the black polka dots, squashed and creased. “What were you doing with this? If you take something out, fold it up again. I can’t wear this now till it’s been ironed again.”

  “I didn’t take it out.”

  “Mimi!”

  “Cora, I’m telling you — what would I want your stupid old blouse for?”

  I begin to fold it but stop, baffled. “Mimi! What the hell have you done?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at this — you’ve cut a piece out of
it!”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Yes, you have. Right here at the bottom — with scissors!”

  Mimi is properly awake now, and gets out of her bed to take a look. “Cora, I didn’t do that. I didn’t.”

  “Don’t fib, Mimi. What did you do it for? You’ve ruined it.”

  “Cora, I promise you — promise, cross my heart — I didn’t cut your flippin’ blouse.”

  I sigh, push the blouse back in the drawer, too cold and weary to think. I notice when I leave our bedroom that there is light under Ange’s door. I hope it means she’s up. She seems to do nothing but sleep at the moment.

  The poor radiators are on all the time, on the top setting. They are sending out as much heat as they can, but the house is freezing. I shiver all the way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  I try to fill the kettle from the tap. Nothing. Hissing with irritation through my chattering teeth, I swish the kettle around. There’s only enough water left in it to make a pot of tea.

  “I think the pipes have frozen up,” I say as Mimi comes into the kitchen carrying one of her summer skirts — the pink one with the little flower sprigs.

  “Look,” she says, pushing it under my nose. A strip a few inches long has been cut off the bottom, roughly the same size as the missing piece of my blouse. “I found it in the drawer,” she says. “I promise it wasn’t me, Cora. Promise.”

  “All right, leave it,” I say as I look in the bin for the two pieces of stale bread I threw out yesterday. I pick off some specks of green mould and stick them under the grill to toast, then when they’re ready, cut the slices into small squares.

  “Now don’t bolt it down like you did yesterday at the Jotmans’,” I say to Mimi.

  “I was so hungry, Cora,” she says. “Do you think Ange has got any money so we can get some food?”

  “I’ll ask her. I saw some light under her door, so she must have opened the curtains.”

  Mimi sits at the table with her back to the window, chewing her toast slowly. Behind her, the blank, formless world seems to be pressing itself into the glass.

  “Any more toast?” she asks.

  My stomach rumbles. “I’ll find something later,” I say.

  The kettle boils. I slurp a few drops of the tinned milk into a cup, pour out the tea, and take it upstairs.

  I knock gently. No sound comes from behind the door. I knock again and hear a little cough.

  Gently pushing open the door, I go inside. The curtains must have been open all night. The room is bathed in the same cold bleached light as the rest of the house. It’s as if nothing else exists. The walls of Guerdon Hall seem to enclose all there is of the world.

  The bedcovers rise and fall, but unevenly. Ange’s breathing is shallow, with a slight rattle. I tiptoe round the bed, making my way with difficulty over the magazines and clothes strewn across every inch of the lino, anxious not to spill the tea by stumbling over anything. I leave the cup and saucer on the bedside table, and think that while I’m here, I might as well find a hairbrush to borrow and sneak back later.

  I glance at Ange. She appears to be sleeping soundly enough, despite her chestiness. Her face is almost as pale as the mist at the window, the skin of her cheeks stretched over the bones. She looks so thin now. Her left hand is spread out on the pillow by her ear, her fingers like a spray of dried sticks. The pillow must have split along the seam, as little curled feathers are scattered over the bed and in the folds of the clothes on the floor.

  I move across to the chest of drawers. There’s no brush or comb anywhere on top. As quietly as I can, trying to swallow down the feeling that it really isn’t something I should be doing, I pull open the top drawer. The sides scrape a little. Holding my breath, I peep back at Ange, but she hasn’t changed position.

  In the drawer I move some stockings to one side and, to my astonishment, see our hairbrush lying there. The bristles are usually thick with matted hair — my long dark and Mimi’s fair wavy mixed together — but the strands seem to have been teased out. It’s clean.

  I lift it, bewildered; then something else catches my eye in the tangle of nylon and cheap lace — something odd: a little cloth leg poking out, like the leg of a rag doll.

  I push back the jumble of underwear.

  It is a doll, but the strangest I have ever seen.

  Sewn onto the head are some strands of dark hair. I touch the hair lightly, then, shocked, jerk my fingers away: it is real, smells faintly, familiarly, of Brylcreem. Wrapped around the doll, crossed over and stitched together in front, is a little scrap of cotton I recognize: thin black stripes on white, a piece cut out of one of Dad’s shirts, the one that Ange was mending.

  But what makes my heart thump in my chest and my blood flood sickeningly to my head are the two glass-headed pins stuck deep into its body, one in the chest and one in the stomach.

  I feel faint, snatch a look at Ange, who still lies sleeping. My head is in such disorder I can’t work out what I’m thinking.

  The dizzying fear comes back — what if Dad dies?

  The pin in the chest is a little to one side, and there, peeping out of the centre, under a jagged slit in the fabric, is the smooth, curved edge of a little red stone — like a heart. It’s the stone that lay with the small change in Ange’s hand on the evening she didn’t collect Mimi from school.

  I pinch quivering fingers over the glass head of the pin, bracing myself to pull it out. Then the little face looks up at me — the black knotted eyes, the red stitched line of the mouth.

  Will I make it worse if I pull the pins out? Could I kill him?

  I don’t even know if I should replace the figure in the drawer or take it.

  Stifling a sob, confused, reeling, I pull Ange’s clothes back over it, then push them aside again and pick it up. I stand, perplexed and terrified, biting my lip, with our hairbrush in one hand and the figure in the other.

  I look back at Ange, still lying in the same position. Her workbox is on the floor beside the bed, the contents spilled out and messy among all the other rubbish; then I notice something lying there, between the blades of the swan-necked scissors — a tiny snip of fabric — from Mimi’s pink skirt.

  Has Ange made a doll of Mimi, like she has of Dad? The thought alone makes me so giddy I have to steady myself with my elbow against the chest. If there is a doll, I must find it.

  I creep round the bed, look on every surface, not daring to lift anything for fear of making a noise, peep round the open curtains to see if there is anything on the windowsill, move things aside with my foot, trying to contain my rising panic.

  Holding the little man out, terrified I might damage him in some way, I bend to lift a corner of the candlewick bedspread. There on the lino is a small frayed square of material from my blue polka-dot blouse.

  For a few seconds I can’t move, rigid with the enormity of what I have found, the horrific consequence of what Ange seems to have done to Dad — and what she might still do to Mimi and to me.

  Maybe the other dolls are in the drawer as well?

  I tiptoe back to the chest, go to open the drawer; as I pull it with one hand, it sticks on the side and makes a dreadful scraping squeak.

  There is a rustle behind me. I look over to the bed.

  Ange’s eyes flick open. They stare at the ceiling.

  Barely able to breathe, heart thudding, I toss the hairbrush back in the drawer, rush out of the room, and close the door behind me.

  I dash along the landing and down the stairs, my mind a jumble of fearful thoughts. How can Dad be saved — if he isn’t already dead? Who can help us?

  By the front door, my duffel coat hangs on its hook. A small triangle of white is sticking out of the pocket, a corner of the paper from the Saint Lazarus Hospital. With my free hand I reach in and pull it out, look at the scrawled names — Mrs Lailah Ketch and Miss Iris Jewel.

  Can we get to Hilsea?

  Trying desperately not to disturb the glass-headed pins, I
place the doll carefully in one of the deep front pockets, replace the sheet of paper, then snatch down the coat. I thrust my arms into the sleeves, fling my scarf around my neck, and pull on my hat.

  Mimi comes out of the kitchen.

  “Get your coat on! Quick!” I whisper, pulling it off its hook and throwing it into her arms.

  “What?”

  “Don’t ask — just do it! Quick! Quick!”

  “Cora —”

  “Please — now!”

  She begins to push her arms down the sleeves, then pulls her hat out of the pocket.

  I think of Roger, don’t want to go to Hilsea without him.

  Grabbing the telephone receiver, I dial with a shaking finger.

  “Who are you phoning?” Mimi breathes.

  4–1 (almost a 2 by mistake)–0.

  “Ssh,” I hiss. “I’m trying to get Roger. See if he can come and meet us at the main road.”

  It rings once, twice.

  There is a noise from upstairs — the door of Ange’s room opening.

  Clumsily I fumble the receiver back into its cradle. It misses and falls noisily by its cord to the floor.

  No time to pick it up. I can hear Ange’s footsteps on the stairs beyond the turning.

  I head for the stone passage, pushing Mimi in front of me.

  “Cora?” Ange is calling.

  Our boots won’t stay upright. We sway and lurch as we struggle to tug them on.

  “Cora, where are we going?” Mimi breathes.

  “Ssh. We’ve got to be quick.”

  Our feet in our boots at last, I swing back the door as quietly as I can, and we are out in the freezing mist hanging shroud-like over the snow.

  Before I even close the door behind us, my head swarms with sudden fears. What if Ange picks up the dangling telephone and hears Roger at the other end? She was able to hurt Dad even though he was miles away in London. Could she do something awful to Roger too?

  I put my finger to my lips. “Wait here, Mimi. I’ll be straight back.”