by Dana Cameron
I had to overcome a tremendous sense that I was intruding before I could step over the jamb, but Mads stirred and opened her eyes and called, “Jane? Is that you?”
I sat down in a chair set next to the bed; the linoleum beneath the rag rug creaked in protest. “No, it’s Emma. Her friend. Can I get you something?”
“No, ta very much.” She reached for my hand and I gave it to her, because you don’t not give someone your hand in a room like that, at a time like that. I could feel the slight bones of her hand beneath the fading envelope of flesh, her skin, dry and warm and papery, slid loosely as she grasped my hand tightly.
“Greg’s here, too,” I said, hoping that familiar and loved name would stir a little more recognition from her. “He’s in the kitchen—”
“No, dearie, I don’t want my boy now. Leave him be, for a moment. I want to talk to you, Jane.”
I tried once again, reluctantly, as gently as I could.
“I’m Emma…Aunty Mads.”
“I know you are, dear. But I want to talk to you. It’s about my boy and what’s going to happen to him.”
My stomach contracted.
“I want you to look after him the way I’ve always looked after him. You can be hard, Jane, but I know you love him. He worships the ground you walk on, which ought to be enough for me, but he’s always been so precious to us. So precious. When his parents died, back in 1974 now, it killed his grandfather just a year later. They can call it a heart attack, if you like, but what’s the difference between that and a broken heart, I ask you?”
She sighed. “When that happened, I thought that his gran Caroline was sure to follow and I couldn’t let that happen, now, could I? After all we been through. So I told her, ‘Caroline, you take hold of yourself! You have to, for Greg’s sake, poor lad, and I’ll help you.’ And she let me and we raised our boy.”
Time was compressing for Mads, expanding and contracting between the immediate and more distant pasts. But she never let go of my hand. I could hear Greg in the kitchen, closing cabinets and fussing with the tea things now.
“That’s how it was between us, you see,” she insisted, as if I had gainsaid her. “We was always there for each other. She was there for me, when my young man died in France and Greg’s granddad Scotty was off in Africa. I thought it would kill me when I got the news, but she kept me going. And now I was able to do the same for her. Return the favor, you see, but neither of us would ever say that. We didn’t talk about it, not like you people today talk about everything. It was just what you did for a friend as good as that and we both knew it. We would have done anything for each other. And oh, Jane, we did.”
I tried to imagine for a moment that nothing worse would follow, that this was just the way she had of saying good-bye, but I couldn’t maintain the illusion. Little weak tears began to run down her cheeks, getting lost in the wrinkles and making her face damp.
“Shh, shh,” I said.
“Jane, give us the little tin there on the nightstand.” She gestured to it, my hand still in hers. “The toffee tin.”
I picked up and handed it to her. Something heavy and loose rattled in it. She took it in both hands and tried to pry the lid off. She handed it back to me without a word and I opened it for her. She took it and reached inside; then handed what was in the box to me.
I looked down in my hand. It was a large gold ring, a man’s ring with a big blue stone, square cut, in the middle. It was real, there was no doubt of that, but it was showy, a thing made to grab the eye and hold it. Its vulgarity was its only purpose.
“You take it now, Jane. I wore it on a chain, hidden like, a long time, until it started to bruise me when I got old—never get old, Jane, it’s horrible thing to get old when you don’t feel old yet. But you take it now, because I don’t need to worry about where it come from anymore.”
I started to go cold, afraid I knew exactly where it had come from.
“I never felt guilty about it, not when I done it and not since then. Not until you started to dig last month and I began to worry that you’d find him. Sebastian Hall, I mean. It was only then, years after anyone should care, that I began to feel scared, like. Like we’d done something wrong. Like I was a murderer. And I couldn’t think why, except that me and Caroline were always very careful never to mention it, even in passing, like. You’d think I was beyond caring what happened to me, but I worried what Greg would think if he found out. Not that he’d ever think any harm of anyone, dear boy, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of him not understanding about me and his gran killing someone.”
I could hear the doorbell and prayed Greg wouldn’t come in. That the nurse wouldn’t come in. Not yet.
“It sounds horrible to say it, ‘kill someone,’ but we knew we was right to do what we done. I never thought twice about it and I don’t think Caroline did neither. She never told her husband, Scotty, I don’t think. Men don’t always understand about women who are attacked, do they? I mean to say, Scotty was a lovely boy, but if you heard that another bloke—a rich one, a powerful one—tried to force your girl, well, with you being so far away and him being there and rich and all, you might wonder if she’d started something herself, know what I mean?”
I nodded, though she wasn’t really paying attention to me.
“They get ideas in their heads about things, so it’s best not to say sometimes, no matter what the truth is. I was staying with Caroline then, I couldn’t bear to be on my own after the news, and since I didn’t want to lose my job, I stayed with her instead of going back to my people after the news about my own poor young man.
“It was during a raid. I heard her scream, bloodcurdling it was. I run downstairs and there he was with her on the front room floor, her skirt all up around her waist.”
She paused, and I needed the break almost as much as Mads did. She kept shaking her head, like she couldn’t quite believe the memory was as terrible as it was. She took a deep breath and continued.
“I could barely think, the noise outside was that bad. Sebastian Hall’d been a nuisance before, he was always after Caroline to take things from him, sugar, eggs, tins of fruit—filthy stuff, off the black market—but she never did. We were good girls and we never dared guess where he might have stolen the things. He always had enough petrol to drive, and that game foot of his, what kept him from serving, never seemed to slow him down, did it? It did not! But he never came round the house before that night.
“Caroline was a big girl, made me look like a little bird, and she couldn’t shift him, no matter what she did: He was too strong. I didn’t stop to think. I ran into the kitchen, picked up the big carving knife, and stuck it in his back. He turned around—it didn’t stop him—and Caroline bit him, scrabbled away as best she could. I stuck him again, in the front this time, and then he started to go wobbly in the knees, staggering about. The last time, I stuck him hard, and that’s when the knife stayed in him. I could feel how hard it hit the bone, how it felt like it does when you stick a chicken the wrong way and get caught up on the backbone.”
I smothered a gasp; it was exactly the analogy Andrew had so callously made.
“There was an awful lot of blood and he just went over. We took his wallet off him and hid his papers in a jar of preserves down in the cellar. We decided we couldn’t dump him in the river—too many bodies washed up from further upstream, and we didn’t want to run the risk—and so we decided to bury him down by the old abbey walls. Everyone gave out it was haunted and we figured it was wasteland now, anywise. What with all the rubble from the bombings, we hoped he might be taken by someone caught in the bombing if he was found.
“The only problem was his ring. Everyone knew it, he was always flashing it around. Only it was stuck on his hand, we couldn’t get it off. Imagine the shame of it: getting that fat during rationing! And it was Caroline came up with the answer. ‘We cut it off him, joint him like a beef.’ That was easier than we thought, in spite of all the blood that was already all over t
he place, slippery like, but what to do with the ring?”
She breathed laboriously. “It was too valuable to throw away, too well known to sell. So we decided to keep it, in case the need should ever come, we’d have it and take it into London. And I kept it, because I hadn’t a man going to come home and ask about it. I never did marry. It just wasn’t in me, after my young man died. I’d had enough of worry and loss.
“I suppose that’s why Greg’s always been that precious to us. He brought me and Caroline together again, poor little lad, after his parents died in that dreadful car accident. I suppose I haven’t been too fair to you, on his account, but I don’t never say I’m sorry about that. You’ll have him the rest of your life, if you’re lucky, and I only wanted him for the little time I had left. You look after him now, and you be very good to my boy.”
She groped for my hand. “Just don’t tell him, don’t you. He’s a sweet boy, but he might not understand. Men don’t always understand…”
She was starting to fade a bit now, rambling a little. I swallowed.
“You know,” I said, close to her ear, as gently as I could, “if anyone was going to understand, it would be Greg.” I could hear the nurse and Greg still talking out in the kitchen.
Mads tried to shake her head; she clutched at my hand, with her last bit of strength. “Never tell him! You understand? Do that for me. Only—Jane? It’s a relief now to have it off my mind, these past weeks have been awful hard for me. Ever since he told me where you was going to be digging up. It’s a wonderful relief, when I’m so tired.”
She patted at my hand again, missing the first time, then catching hold of it again. “You do whatever you like with the ring, Jane. It doesn’t matter now. Just look after him. He’s my good boy.”
She fell asleep then, still clutching my hand. The ring burned heavy and sweaty in my other hand. Greg and the nurse came into the doorway then, pausing.
Very, very gently, I slid my hand from Mads’s.
“She’s asleep,” I said. I got up and met them; the nurse went in and fussed about Mads, smoothing out the blanket, checking her pulse, looking around the room.
“What were you two talking about?” Greg said.
“She told me to look after you,” I said. I tried to smile, my eyes brimming.
Greg looked startled.
“She thought I was Jane.” I wiped my eyes with my sleeve.
The nurse looked up and nodded. Greg said, “Mrs. Haywood said she’s been in and out like that for a day or so now.”
“Well, that happens, at the end, doesn’t it,” the nurse said matter-of-factly. “She’ll sleep a bit now, so why don’t you show me around and I’ll settle in.”
“I’ll wait in the front room,” I said. I hurried down the hall, wondering whether I would make it before the ring, which seemed to be growing larger and larger every minute, slipped out of my hand. I stuck it into my pocket and wiped the sweat from my palm, sitting, staring, and letting my mind go blank until Greg was finished.
He came down the hall with the nurse. “And here’s my number at home, should you need it,” he said to the nurse. “Any little change, please call me.”
“I will. Don’t worry, Mr. Ashford, I’ll make your aunty as comfortable as possible.”
He nodded and we left at long last. I was left wondering who to tell—and what I should tell. Worse, I was now more than ever in a position to ruin my friends’ lives in so many ways.
Dinner that evening was a nightmare. Every time I instinctively went to bring up some of what was on my mind, I found myself confounded by the knowledge that I couldn’t say anything of what I’d learned to either Jane or Greg. Every bite half-choked me. I was acutely and miserably aware of just how much information I had that I shouldn’t have, and how secrets are a burden. Problem was, sometimes secrets need to be revealed to do good, sometimes they have to stay secret, and a burden, in order to do some good. I wasn’t at all certain which sort of time this was. So between me, snared in indecision, Greg, quite down about Aunty, and Jane, just tired of trying, the meal was largely spent in silence, the three of us pushing our food around on our plates in an approximation of dining.
That was the best case estimate, though. It might well have been that I was seated at dinner with a friend who was also a murderer.
We just gave up trying in the end. As Jane put away the leftovers and Greg was absorbed in arranging the heat lamps over Hildegard, I decided to give my one idea voice.
“Jane, can you get ahold of your reporter friend?”
She gritted her teeth and closed the small refrigerator with a slam. “He’s no friend of mine.”
“But you could reach him, right?”
She nodded.
“Maybe you can use his little overeagerness in publishing the story about the discovery of the skeleton to some good end.”
Jane turned, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. “You’ll have to tell me what good can come of it.”
“Well, I was just wondering. On the off chance that it was someone interested specifically in Mother Beatrice’s remains—”
“And not just in foxing me?”
“Right. On that chance, what if we put a bit in the paper that said that the bones that were taken were not Mother Beatrice’s? We could say that you’d got the location wrong—”
Jane crossed her arms over her chest, cocked her head, squinted at me in disbelief. This was not going to be an option for her.
“—Or that the bones that were taken were from a later burial and Mother Beatrice was right beneath. Or something like that.”
She looked skeptical still. “And what exactly would that do?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I just had the thought that maybe if they weren’t Mother Beatrice’s, maybe whoever stole the bones might dump them, or return them, or something. It’s a faint hope, but it might stir up a response. The reporter could ostensibly be reporting on the theft itself, and isn’t it good that nothing important was taken, that sort of thing.”
Jane didn’t look like she was buying it. Greg was a little more optimistic, on the other hand.
“Well, it’s better than nothing,” he said. “I can’t think of anything else worth trying. Can you?”
“No.” Jane thought a bit more. “I’ll give it a shot. God knows the little scoundrel owes me that much. I’ll try to get it in for the afternoon paper tomorrow.” She went over to the phone and dialed the number. After some vigorous to-ing and fro-ing, along with the thinly veiled threat that the reporter’s premature article might have been responsible for the vandalism and theft, Jane got what she wanted.
“Well, that’s sorted. It’ll run tomorrow afternoon. Who knows what might come of it, but we’ll give it a shot, what?”
The phone rang, and Jane, probably expecting some further argument from the reporter, answered brusquely. “Yes?”
Her face changed almost immediately. “Yes, yes of course. Just a moment, please.” She covered the receiver. “It’s for you, Emma. Says it’s Kam?” She handed me the receiver and mouthed “very posh sounding” with a suggestive roll of her shoulders. It was the first time I’d seen her smile and mean it all evening. She and Greg went upstairs to the parlor.
I grabbed the phone like it was the last life preserver on the Titanic. “Hey Kam!”
“How are you, Emma?” His voice was strained.
My shoulders slumped. “Oh, you know.”
“Yes, Brian told me. Probably not a good time to talk about that?”
“It’s not.” It wasn’t really private in the kitchen, with people in the living room, and I was glad that I wasn’t going to have to give voice to all my grim thoughts. It was also very nice to talk to someone whose life or reputation I didn’t hold in my hand. A loud background noise came over the phone, like a treeful of excited birds. “What was that?”
There was silence on the other end of the line, followed by a sigh. “Mariam. And my mother.”
Since Kam almost never ca
lled my friend Marty by her proper name, I could only assume that he was annoyed with his fiancée. Little alarms went off in my head: Theirs had been an unhurried engagement, which looked to many like nerves on Marty’s part. I knew better, but while they were due to be married next spring, this sounded like real trouble. “First visit not what you’d hoped?”
“Oh, Emma.” Kam sounded absolutely defeated and my heart broke for them both. “They get on like a house afire.”
I hesitated. “Um. You’d think that would be a good thing, wouldn’t you?”
“It is, it is. I suppose. But, well, frankly, Emma, and I tell you this in the confidence of our long friendship, for years I have been my own man and I liked it that way. My mother, it is true, was the one person who could make real demands upon me and I, glad to be able to oblige her, would do so, most frequently. The fact that there was 3,000 miles of ocean and a lengthy flight between us made this easy. Everyone was happy.”
“Ah.”
He continued on confidentially. “Mother encourages me to be rather more experimental in dress than I would ordinarily care to be. I could, however, in the past, wear the neckties she chose for me quite happily when I visited, and she was happy never knowing that they languished in my closet at home. I could take her to the ‘hot’ places whenever I visited, and then quite simply retreat to my quieter haunts when I returned to Boston. A small price to pay, to please her, and so filial duty was easily discharged. I could always go home.”
I tried to offer some consolation. “But you had been afraid that they wouldn’t get along…”
“It’s true. I was worried that Mother would find Marty’s flamboyance de trop; I was worried that Marty would be put off by Mother’s quiet, sometimes daunting, rectitude. I was prepared for uncomfortable silences, though doubted it would ever come to anything so unhappy as outright hostility. It’s so much worse than that.”
He had to say it out loud, I thought. He has to own it. It’s the only way.
