by Sarah Rayne
By Ella’s bedtime she was gasping with pain and her eyes were bloodshot. She asked Ella to switch on the light and Ella, feeling a bit scared, said, ‘It’s already on.’
‘The bulb must be going. Or I might have a touch of that eye infection – conjunctivitis. I’ll get some ointment from the chemist’s.’
But by Ella’s bedtime her mother was shivering and moaning, rocking back and forth in the chair. When the light from the standard lamp fell on her face, her eyelids were swollen, and large blisters had formed on her neck and on the side of her face. Once she rubbed at them and to Ella’s horror the blister burst and thick yellow fluid ran out of it.
She said, ‘Mum, you’re ill, really ill. Should I get someone?’ She had no clear idea who she should get, but her mother said, in a hoarse crackly voice, ‘I think you’d better just go along next door and ask them to phone the doctor’s surgery from the call box. Can you do that? Tell them to ask the doctor to come out.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Ella was off like a shot, trying not to shiver with fear, trying not to remember the coppery dust that had been everywhere in Priors Bramley.
‘Chemical burns, by the look of it,’ said the doctor when he arrived an hour later. ‘Very unpleasant. I can’t think how you’d get such a thing in an ordinary domestic environment, though, unless . . . Have you been near to Priors Bramley in the past twenty-four hours? Ah, that might explain it, then. They’re starting to say that Geranos stuff might be harmful, although nobody’s admitting it outright, not yet at any rate. Still, I’ll report it to the Medical Officer for the county. He might be able to get some details about what it actually contains. That way we’d know what we were treating. I’m afraid we’ll have to take you to hospital, Mrs Ford. But don’t worry, you’ll be all right.’
Ella’s mother was in hospital for three weeks, which everyone said was a long time, but Ella was not to worry, the doctors were marvellous these days and her mother would be fine.
Ella stayed with Veronica for the three weeks. She did not visit her mother; the hospital was twelve miles away anyway, which would have meant two bus journeys. Veronica’s father offered to drive her there, but Ella did not want anyone talking to the doctors or nurses in case it came out about actually being in Priors Bramley and the reason for it. So she said visitors were not allowed, and made up a story about a pan of hot oil, meant for frying fish, tipping over and burning her mother’s neck.
When her mother was finally allowed out of hospital, everyone said how wonderful, and how pleased Ella would be to go back home. Ella did not say she was not particularly pleased. She had liked living in Veronica’s house because it was big and there was a beautiful garden where they had tea on the lawn on Sunday afternoons. Several times, looking around her, Ella thought how much she would like to have a house like this.
Her mother was allowed home on a Monday morning, and Ella was given the day off school to meet her. Veronica’s mother took her shopping first so they could get some nice food as a welcome home. She paid for all the food, buying things Ella’s mother would have said were expensive and extravagant, and rounding it all off with grapes and peaches and a bunch of flowers. Ella could put them in a vase and it would be lovely for her mother to see them when she came in.
The cottage smelled sour and a bit damp, and there were newspapers and letters on the doormat. Ella threw these away and opened the windows to let in some fresh air. Veronica’s mother helped put the food away, and hunted out polish and dusters so they could make the cottage spick and span. Ella began to think it would be nice, after all, to be in her own bedroom again, and she looked forward to seeing her mother’s pleasure at the nice fresh cottage and the food.
But her mother did not seem particularly pleased at anything. She was wearing a thick sweater with a scarf wound round her neck, and her hair was combed forward over her face, which was a new thing. She did not say anything about the flowers or the nicely polished furniture, and she said the food was messy foreign stuff and she was surprised at Ella buying such expensive rubbish. When Ella explained that Veronica’s mother had got the food, her mother said, very sharply, ‘I hope she kept a note of everything so I can pay her back.’
‘I don’t think she meant you to. I think it was a sort of present.’
‘I’m not having charity,’ said Mum, even more sharply. ‘I shall post the money to her, or you must give it to Veronica.’
She ate the food Veronica’s mother had left, picking at it suspiciously and turning it over on her fork. Ella had been looking forward to having this meal with Mum after a whole three weeks, but it was all going wrong.
After they had finished eating, her mother’s hair fell back into its usual place, tucked behind her ears. Ella stared at her in horror. Down the whole of one side of her face were dark lumpy scars, ugly and puckered. When she took off the sweater and scarf, there were more of the same scars down her neck.
Ella tried to look away, but could not, and her mother said, very angrily, ‘Yes, Ella, that’s what the Geranos did to me. It burned my skin and the scars won’t ever fade. You killed that man in Cadence Manor – I know you did – and because of what you did I’m scarred and deformed for ever.’
They never talked about it again. Ella did not dare and her mother did not give her chance.
After she came home from hospital she was different. The doctor told Ella that her mother would have to take things easy for several weeks. He offered to organize visits by people who would help with cooking and shopping, but Ella’s mother said they did not want that, and they would manage. After he had gone, she told Ella she did not want people poking and prying.
Even after the doctor said she was better, she did not bother about keeping the cottage clean or tidy. Dust and grime collected on surfaces and mould grew around the windowpanes in the scullery. Ella, hating the sour, wet smell of the mould, tried to clean things herself while her mother sat bonelessly in the chair, taking surreptitious swigs from the brandy bottle, telling Ella there was no point, everything would get dirty again, and anyway, nobody ever came to the house.
Nobody came to the house because Ella never asked anyone. She had never been ashamed of her home or of her mother, but she began to be now. Several times at school she heard whispers about her mother, and once one of the older girls asked her outright if it was true that her mother had caught a disease from going to bed with men.
Ella had no idea what the girl meant but she was still being very careful not to let anyone know about being in Priors Bramley that day to find her watch. So she tossed her head and said it was a lie, and people who told lies ended in being punished.
After a while she stopped trying to get her mother to go out. If there were school concerts or prize-givings, she no longer brought the details or the dates home. She could not bear anyone to see the unkempt wreck her mother had become, and as well as that she was frightened her mother would talk about that afternoon inside Cadence Manor.
She had no idea what she would do if Priors Bramley were to be opened up again and the body found, nor whether the man’s death could be traced back to her. But as the weeks and then the months went by, the village stayed behind the black barbed wire and the thing that lay inside Cadence Manor remained in its secret tomb. From time to time Ella thought about the cobwebby music that had drifted so eerily across the gardens, but she never heard it again and after a time she managed to push the memory of it into the deepest recesses of her mind. It was part of a nightmare, and as the years passed the nightmare gradually faded.
Chapter 8
The Present
The man’s body had not been found. Ella knew that for sure, because news of such a discovery would have caused a considerable stir in Upper Bramley. But the body would certainly be found when the decontamination teams went into Priors Bramley. Would the police be able to identify it after so long? Probably they would; you only needed to watch a television crime programme to know about DNA and dental records. But even if the man
’s identity were discovered it would not matter, although it would feel strange to know his name. What would matter was if Clem or Veronica lost their nerve and talked about what had happened all those years ago. How likely was that?
Ella could easily imagine Clem spinning one of his stupid stories, telling everyone how the three of them had walked through Priors Bramley on its last day. He would probably not refer to the man’s death because he was not that stupid, but he might get carried away and embroider his story with ridiculous little fantasies, never seeing the harm he was doing. He was exactly like his name: he was like a clucking old hen in a poultry coop, strutting round the little local library where he had worked almost his entire life, exchanging tittle-tattle with everyone who came in.
Derek, who had Scottish grandparents, said Clem was a bletherskite, but Derek had never liked Clem since he saw him smoking scented cigarettes. Affected, that was Derek’s opinion. He never refused an invitation to one of Clem’s elaborate little dinner parties, though, because Clem was a very good cook and Derek enjoyed his food. What he did refuse were invitations to evenings Clem called ‘musical soirées’, but everyone else called listening to records at Clem’s house. Derek had once gone with Ella to one of these, but said afterwards she was never to drag him out to listen to such a load of boring rubbish again because he would rather watch television. This had surprised Ella, what with Derek being a member of the Operatic Society; music was music, surely. But Derek said there was a difference between Gilbert and Sullivan and the pretentious bilge Clem played. Ella had said, oh yes, of course, she had not seen it like that.
It was starting to seem as if Clem would have to be watched. He often sent articles to local magazines and county newspapers about events in this area. None of them was ever published, but the point was that he wrote about things that happened in Bramley – things that might provide clues to the past.
When Ella thought about it a bit more, she saw Veronica would have to be watched as well. She had been married twice, and had had a number of gentlemen friends since, although Ella did not ask questions and tried not to listen when Veronica talked about that side of her life. Bragging, that was all it was. But Veronica had been hinting that there was a new man in her life, and Ella thought she might spill the entire story to him while they were in bed. Pillow talk, they called that, although Ella had never really understood how it worked, because Derek had always fallen instantly asleep after that kind of activity.
The decontamination of Priors Bramley took place on schedule. A shocking disruption it would be, said people, torn between annoyance at having huge vehicles rumbling through the lanes, and subdued excitement at the reopening of the village. There was not a great deal of excitement in the town as a rule; the last time anything of any real note had happened was when a soldier, deserting from the Royal Fusiliers during the war, attacked a couple of village girls, and everyone thought he was a German spy.
People who liked to appear knowledgeable talked about neutralization and oxidation, which would be used in the spraying of all the buildings, and the Bramley Advertiser printed an article about a decontamination solution called DS2, which hardly anybody understood and which the senior science master at one of the schools said was full of inaccuracies.
Both the local schools took the opportunity to step up chemistry lessons, introducing sessions on the early pioneer chemists and formulae for organic compounds. The sixth formers were subjected to the complexities of synthesis, while one of the more progressive teachers tried to instil some recent history into his classes by drawing a parallel between the opening of the village and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, although as somebody caustically pointed out, unwinding a few yards of barbed wire was not on the same scale as demolishing the Iron Curtain, and Sparrowfeld Lane was hardly Checkpoint Charlie.
No one was allowed into the village itself, but most of Upper Bramley went along to watch the start of things, and the mayor cut the barbed wire with special cutters and made a speech. The decontamination team walked clumpily along the lane into Priors Bramley, clad in white disposable suits and boots, carrying huge pressure jets and followed by a chugging generator on the back of a lorry.
There were parties of students from both the local schools, because it was a piece of local history and the teachers supposed a school project might as well be set up. The students were agreeable to the outing. It gave the girls chance to wear jeans and high heels, neither of which were allowed in the classroom. Watching a bit of barbed wire being torn down and listening to some droning old fart make a long-winded speech was pretty boring, but it was better than sitting at a desk. Some of the older ones sneaked off to Mordwich Copse for various forbidden activities ranging from smoking to snogging, and were resignedly hauled back by their teachers.
The Red Lion, never slow to seize its own opportunity, made up batches of sandwiches and baguettes, and went along to sell them to the watchers, with bottles of cider and Coke.
Clem Poulter was there as well, telling the decontamination team please to ignore him, because his mission today was to take notes, like William Russell writing up the Charge of the Light Brigade for The Times in 1854.
One of the teenagers who had worn killer heels sprained her ankle falling down Mordwich Bank; two people were sick in the bushes from what they afterwards insisted was a rogue prawn in the baguettes but which everyone else said was overindulgence of cider, and Clem Poulter fell into a bed of nettles and had to be hauled out.
Ella had not wanted to go, but in the end she had done so because a lot of people were going and it might look odd if she were not there. But standing on the Crinoline Bridge along with a handful of neighbours, including Veronica, who was wearing a totally unsuitable outfit, she felt the past claw at her mind and for a really bad moment she was a child again, in the shadowy old church, listening to the sombre music pouring out, and hearing the agonized sobbing of the musician. But then she blinked and looked about her, and of course she was in the present-day, and the only sound she could hear was the phut-phut of machinery and the chatter of the local people. After a while she drove home, where she felt slightly better, but when Derek suggested strolling along to the Red Lion, Ella said irritably he had better go on his own because she had a headache and was going to bed early.
The air around Priors Bramley was filled with thrumming machinery for the next few days and a mist rose up from the high-pressure jets, causing romantically minded people to say the old village would reappear from out of the fog like the ghost village of Brigadoon in the old film. Less fanciful souls said that it was all a lot of fuss about nothing, and had anyone noticed how extremely low the water pressure was as a result of the Water Board allowing the decontamination team to connect their equipment to the mains?
Two days after the start of the decontamination, Ella went to meet her granddaughter Amy at Bramley railway station. Going down Market Street, driving slowly because of all the untidily parked cars and unwary pedestrians, she saw Veronica in absorbed discussion with a strange man. He could surely not be the one Veronica had hinted and smirked about, but if he was, he was certainly not her usual fare. In fact, Ella did not think he would be anybody’s fare. He might be any age, from twenty-eight to forty-eight, he was wearing an aged herringbone coat that trailed on the ground, and he looked as if he should be queuing up for a hand-out at a Salvation Army hostel. She slowed down and leaned over to wave, but Veronica did not see her so Ella drove on. But pausing at the traffic lights at the end of Market Street, she glanced in the driving mirror and saw the man nod to Veronica, then go into the Red Lion as if he was familiar with the place. This was unexpected, because the Red Lion liked to think it attracted quite an élite clientele and would not be best pleased to have someone who looked like a tramp wandering in.
Parking in front of the station entrance, Ella was glad to think she had managed to veto Amy’s plan to work as a barmaid at the Red Lion for the holiday, or to volunteer to help at the Bramley Gate hostel
with the children taken into care. When Ella had been in her teens the only kind of part-time jobs available had been newspaper delivery rounds or Saturday morning work in shops, neither of which her mother would allow.
But when Amy’s father, Andrew, was growing up, people thought it was useful and admirable for youngsters to take holiday jobs, and he had done what was called work experience, trying out different things for a few weeks at a time. He had finally gone into engineering, studying at a polytechnic ten miles away, catching a bus and later using a little moped, which Derek bought him. He had done well; Ella was very proud of him, although she did not really understand him. She did not really understand Amy either, or why she had decided to read such peculiar subjects as archaeology and anthropology at Durham University. In Ella’s day girls had learned shorthand and typing, or book-keeping, and gone into offices. She could not imagine the kind of job Amy would finally get, but Derek only laughed and said Amy was headed for a very interesting career, and they would be as proud of her as they were of Andrew.
Ella was proud of Amy now; it was simply that she did not understand her any more than she understood Andrew. Still, she was pleased she had talked Amy out of the Red Lion idea. She had persuaded Clem to create a little part-time job at the library, which would be much more suitable and which Amy would enjoy.
Amy Haywood, arriving in a tumble of untidily packed bags and flying hair at Bramley station, thought the next three weeks would be pretty boring. Gran would be stuck in the genteel 1950s, and Gramps would be stuck in his balance sheets by day and Gilbert and Sullivan by night. But it had been nice of them to ask her to stay for the Easter vacation, what with Mum and Dad being in Africa, where Dad was building a bridge or designing it, or something, and taking six months to do it so that Mum had gone with him.
And she would see if she could jazz up Gran’s wardrobe while she was in Bramley, which would be fun, and maybe go along to some of Gramps’s rehearsals and help slosh paint on scenery. She had intended to try working at the Red Lion for a couple of nights a week – it got quite lively there sometimes – but Gran had gone up in smoke at the idea and said they could not have their granddaughter working as a barmaid, whatever would people think?
