I put down the shopping bag, and took hold of Julia’s cold hands.
‘We’ll be OK.’
‘We won’t be OK. We can’t survive on fresh air. What will we eat? How will we manage? We can’t expect the school to keep educating Viviane for free. We can’t pay the telephone bill or the rates. I can’t even pay the coalman. What are we going to do?’
‘I could find paid work in Bristol perhaps, something to see us through.’
‘Amy, you are a sweetheart, but I can’t ask you to do that. You, work to support Vivi and me, when you’re already doing so much for us out of the goodness of your heart? No.’ She let go of my hands and paced the room. ‘What we must do is sell the cottage, as quickly as we can. We’ll need to tidy it up a bit, decorate the empty bedroom. The wallpaper in that room is hideous. We’ll strip the wallpaper, Amy, you and I, and then we’ll put up something new. Something bright and modern. There are a few tools and paintbrushes in the garage. Let’s see what we can find.’
We found what we needed, a metal bucket and a wallpaper scraper. As I rinsed off the dust and cobwebs at the kitchen sink, I could hear Julia in the living room, talking on the telephone.
‘Yes, I understand,’ she said. ‘I know winter’s not a good time to sell.’
I took an old cloth from the cupboard under the sink and carried the bucket upstairs, slopping water on the bare floorboards. Bess padded after me. The storm had set in now, closing around the cottage. I unlocked the door into the empty bedroom and pushed it open with my foot. The room was gloomy and icy cold and it still had its strange, pervasive smell, not mice, not damp but something old and organic, something unhealthy.
Perhaps it still smelled of Caroline’s death.
No, I told myself firmly. Don’t be so silly.
I set the bucket on the floor, went into Viviane’s room, fetched her transistor radio and set it up on the window ledge. Bess stood at the door whining.
‘Come on,’ I called, patting my knees. ‘Come on in, Bess,’ but the dog wouldn’t move.
I switched on the radio, pulled out the aerial and found some music playing – ‘Walk Right Back’, a cheerful song that I liked. Satisfied, I crossed to the chimney wall and began scoring lines in the dark yellow wallpaper with the blade of the scraper. Then I dipped the cloth in the bucket and slapped water on to the paper, working it into the slashes I’d made, trying not to think how the colour of the yellow paper reminded me of diseased skin, and how the cuts were like wounds. As I did this, the music coming from the radio faded, to be replaced by a buzzing, static hum.
Annoyed, I dropped the cloth back into the bucket and returned to the radio. As soon as I picked it up, the song returned. Pleased it was working, I set it down again and got back to work with the scraper, chipping away at the cuts in the paper and then working more water underneath, trying to drench the backing paper so that it would come easily away from the wall. But within moments, the radio reverted to the hum. This time I could hear voices in the fog of sound. More specifically, I could hear a female voice, a distressed whisper fading in and out of the distortion. The voice was horribly familiar. It sounded like the voice I’d heard on the crossed line of the telephone.
You are being ridiculous, I told myself. I dried my hands and went back to the radio. I picked it up and moved the dial with my thumb, and the noise became louder and quieter as the transistor moved through the airwaves, picking up voices and sounds, all distorted, all crackled but I couldn’t seem to lose the voice in the static. No matter which wavelength I turned to, I could hear the woman’s voice coming through. I tried to turn the radio off, but I couldn’t. I turned it over and prised the cover to the battery compartment off with my thumb. I took out the batteries but there must have been some vestigial energy stored in the radio because the static was still there, and the voice amongst it.
In the end, I threw the radio into the bucket of water where the sound gurgled and died as it sank to the bottom. I stared at it, staring back at me, the odd bubble freeing itself and rising to the surface.
‘Damn!’ I said. Why had I done that? Why had I been so stupid?
I left the room. Bess lay waiting on the landing, her chin on her paws, watching me with wise eyes. I pulled the door shut behind me and the two of us went back down the stairs.
Julia was rocking in her chair in the back room, cradling Alain’s sweater. I leaned against the wall with my eyes closed until I had composed myself.
‘Amy?’ Julia called. ‘Is that you?’
‘I’m making tea,’ I replied. ‘Would you like some?’
‘The estate agent said it’s too close to Christmas to put the cottage up for sale,’ Julia replied. ‘He said he’ll come and put a board up on the twenty-seventh. Apparently the market’s not good at the moment.’
‘No?’ I stood at the doorway to the room.
‘No. He said it might take a while. After that, I called the bank. I spoke to the manager and asked for a loan.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That he would never lend money to a woman without a husband no matter what the circumstances.’
‘Oh, Julia.’
She looked to me and smiled sadly.
‘It’s as if all my worth as a person was taken by the same bullet that shot Alain.’ She stroked Alain’s sweater, absentmindedly, as if it were a cat. ‘We shall have to make every effort to sell the cottage as quickly as we can. It’s our only option. You’re very pale, Amy dear. Did you make a start on the wallpaper?’
‘I started, yes, but I didn’t get much done. I’ll carry on later.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
VIVIANE HAD ARRANGED to bring a friend back with her from school that evening – Kitty Dowler, a rosy-faced child who lived in a farm up on the hills. She smelled of sweat and dogs, and her tunic was frayed at the hem but she was a cheerful girl not in the least put off by the darkness of the cottage, or its suffocating coldness.
‘Come on,’ she said to Viviane when she had been introduced to Julia and given a glass of milk and some bread and margarine. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’ Her accent was broad Somerset.
‘Stay out of the empty bedroom, Vivi,’ I said. ‘I’ve started to strip the walls. I don’t want you touching anything.’
‘OK.’
I smiled at Kitty. ‘I’m glad your mother didn’t mind you coming to stay tonight.’
‘I don’t have a mother. She died in childbirth,’ Kitty said in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘Oh! I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK. I have two older brothers and a dad. And they were all glad that I was coming here because they can go out to play skittles.’
‘That’s good! Listen, girls, while I’m out this evening, Mrs Croucher’s coming round. She’s baking a cake and you can play cards with her and Mummy. That’ll be fun, won’t it?’
The children nodded.
‘I won’t be late back,’ I said. ‘You’ll be OK, won’t you?’
Viviane pulled a scornful face. ‘We’re not babies. We’ll be fine!’ she said.
The Hare was a small, dark pub. It was busy, with an overflow of clientele – farmers, most of them – standing outside despite the cold. Their breath made puffy clouds about them, and the smoke from their cigarettes was blue and thin amongst all the thicker, grey exhaled breaths. The rain had stopped but the wind still gusted, sending an empty cigarette packet somersaulting down the road. I made my way inside, through a narrow porch lined with posters and fliers. The public area was a tiny room with a sloping ceiling, crooked floorboards and a cavernous fireplace. It was warm and noisy and crowded; the men’s voices were loud, they filled the space with their elbows and bellies, their rolled-up sleeves and burly shoulders, their individual pewter pint jars gripped in their hands reflecting the flames of the fire. I looked around but I could not see Daniel. I excused my way through the men, looking for him, and then I heard a few notes of a guitar and then a male voice. The voice was raw and dear to me. I squeezed
through the crowd and at last I saw him. He was perched on a stool in a corner curled over a battered old guitar with his hair falling all over his face. He was singing a song about missed opportunities.
I watched and listened and my heart felt as if it were swelling inside me. I watched his face, the way he kept his eyes down, looking towards the guitar. I watched the way his lips moved and his fingers strummed the strings, how tenderly he held the guitar. I watched him and I felt something I had not felt for a man before. It was a longing to be close to him, a craving to be held and played the same way he held the guitar … but it was more than that. Daniel moved me. He was a good man. I wanted, more than anything, for him to be happy. I wanted to look after him, to care for him and protect him, to be the one who made him happy.
I wished the song would never end, but when it did, the drinkers clapped and cheered. Daniel nodded his thanks then leaned down to pick up his tankard and took a long drink. He kept his head low but I saw that the flesh around his right eye was swollen and the eye narrowed to a slit.
‘Danny’s old man’s been at him again,’ someone muttered and someone else replied: ‘He stopped him beating ten bales out of some kid he caught trapping birds on the lake.’ I turned towards the voices to hear more, and while I was not looking, Daniel picked up his guitar and disappeared into the back of the pub. I tried to follow but the pub was busy and by the time I had squeezed through to the spot where he had been, there was no sign of him. I asked but nobody knew where he was. Had he forgotten that we had arranged to meet? Had he changed his mind?
I went outside, but I couldn’t see the jeep. And I couldn’t bear to go back into the pub again, to endure the sympathy or the scorn of the drinkers if it turned out that I had been stood up. I decided I would go back to the cottage, to the company of women and a slice of Mrs Croucher’s cake.
The air was bitterly cold and damp and smelled of woodsmoke. I followed a footpath down an alleyway that ran past the backs of a jumble of cottages and outbuildings until I reached the crossroads where I could either follow the path or divert back to the road. The path would be quicker but it would mean cutting across the churchyard in the dark.
I set off at once, without giving my imagination time to get to work, walking quickly, hearing the rhythm of my own footsteps, the in and out of the air in my lungs, my heartbeat. I passed the last few houses in the village, light shining around the edges of the curtains and the flicker of Christmas lights in the windows. The lake, down below, was wide and quiet, like something sleeping, something old and knowing. I could not see, from this distance, but I imagined how full it must be after so much rainfall, and how the excess would be gushing over the overflow into the spillway, thousands of gallons of ice-cold water rushing back to the sea. I thought of all those cold, dark tunnels that carried the water away, all those secret passageways, the power of all that water.
I reached the churchyard, took a deep breath and went through the lych-gate. It was perhaps forty paces to the other side.
I counted to seven, and then I broke into a trot as I went into the shadow of the great church tower, out of the moonlight. I was blinded by the dark, immersed in it as if it were something solid. I had to slow down; I couldn’t see two feet in front of my face. I held out my hands, feeling my way through, counting my footsteps, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one … Then from the darkness, I heard footsteps behind me. I quickened my pace until I was running, and then I stumbled on something and fell on to the grass.
The footsteps grew closer; I could hear panting, and a voice.
‘Amy, it’s OK, it’s me, Daniel!’
I turned and he was there, behind me. He helped me to my feet and I held on to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’ I was embarrassed now by my show of panic. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘to make such a fuss of nothing.’
‘I shouldn’t have come up behind you like that but I didn’t see you until the last minute. I always come this way. I know it like the back of my hand.’
‘I know – I know it’s stupid. I just … oh, what an idiot I am!’
I put my face into the shoulder of Daniel’s jacket, and the feeling I had felt before in the pub returned, only now it was me being protected by him. Alone I had been vulnerable, with him I was inviolate. He put his arm around my shoulder and we walked on slowly together.
‘My mother’s grave is here,’ he said.
‘Yes, I noticed it before. What happened to her, Daniel, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘You haven’t heard?’
‘I hardly speak to anyone. Only the shopkeepers and Mrs Croucher.’
‘Well, she drowned. In the lake.’
‘This lake? Blackwater?’
‘Yes.’
I looked over towards the moonlit lake flattening the valley below, so smooth and quiet, so large and, from this distance, so still. How deceptive it was. It seemed benevolent and gentle, but beneath the surface the water was moving. It was forming currents, shifting and sliding, deep streams of water weaving past one another like sinews, travelling from the river inlet towards the spillway, water twisting and twining like huge, invisible eels trying to find their way back to the sea.
And Daniel’s mother had drowned in that water.
‘Oh Daniel, I’m so sorry. Being here, living so near to the lake must remind you of her all the time.’
‘My father likes to take a boat out, and he sits there alone and thinks of my mother.’
‘That’s romantic.’
‘He likes to feel close to her. He still loves her so very much. I don’t believe he will ever stop loving her.’
I didn’t want to have a reason to dislike Mr Aldridge any the less, but this revelation caused me to feel a pang of sympathy in my heart.
We reached the gate on the far side of the churchyard, went through it, and walked away from the darkness together, our bodies touching in a way that was both comforting and companionable. ‘I heard you singing,’ I said. ‘You’re very good.’
‘I wasn’t sure if it would be your kind of thing.’
I held on to his arm. ‘Well, it is. And you are my kind of thing, Daniel Aldridge.’
I sensed that this pleased him. ‘Is it too late to buy you a drink?’ he asked. ‘We’re only two minutes away from the Lake Inn.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’
The Lake Inn was not like the Hare, it had been done up to appeal to the kind of people who drove out to Blackwater on Sundays for the view: flock wallpaper, stuffed fish in glass cases on the walls, fishing rods strung on the ceiling, horse brasses nailed to the beams and silk flowers in coloured glass vases on the tables. That evening, the Blackwater Horticultural Society had taken over one side of the bar for their Christmas social and a dozen elderly men and women in paper hats were arguing gleefully about the best time to plant Hellebore. I sat on a bench by the window, feeling the draught on my back while Daniel went to the bar. He returned with two pints of cider, pulled up the stool opposite and sat with his elbows on his knees and his head held low so the wound to his eye was less obvious. I wondered if I was supposed to avoid talking about this for the rest of the evening, or if it would be impolite to ask about it already knowing, as I did, the cause.
Instead, I steered the conversation round to the wild birds Daniel loved, and he told me about the lapwing and golden plover that only came to the Mendip Hills in the winter months, about the hunting birds – the hen harrier and the merlin – and birds with names like the words of poetry: fieldfare, siskin, whinchat, nightjar, ring ouzel and brambling. I finished my drink and he bought me another. I drank, felt pleasantly soft and dizzy.
‘Who taught you about the birds?’ I asked.
‘My father. They’re his passion. That’s how he met my mother. They were both down at the lake at the same time. He wa
s in pursuit of the very rare Lesser Scaup and instead he found her. He lent her his binoculars.’
‘That’s a sweet story.’
Daniel took a drink. ‘Nobody sees that side of him. People don’t realize how much he loved her. I’ve heard it said that my parents’ marriage was one of convenience, that Jean Debeger wanted a young husband with prospects to save her from spinsterhood and that Robert Aldridge needed a wife with money to save the estate from bankruptcy. They say it was no more than a business arrangement between a young, impecunious man and a wealthy, middle-aged woman. But if they saw how much my father still pines for the woman he lost, then they wouldn’t talk like that.’ He put the glass back on to the beer mat. ‘I don’t remember her, of course. I only know her through what he tells me.’
In that respect, I was luckier than Daniel. I thought of my own mother smiling as she leaned to kiss me, the fur collar of her coat, her red lips. Her hair was swept back from her head, a blonde wave. She was wearing gold earrings. I wondered, for the briefest moment, if she was happy, then put her from my mind.
‘Will you have another drink?’ Daniel asked.
‘I’d like to, but I’d better get back. Vivi has a friend staying over and Mrs Croucher is keeping Julia company so I can’t be late.’
‘Half an hour won’t hurt.’
‘I don’t like to leave Julia on her own. The doctor told me it’s not good for her.’
‘Perhaps she wants to be on her own.’
‘Even if she does, Dr Croucher said I’m not to leave her.’
Daniel said: ‘When animals are hurt, what they do as a rule is find somewhere quiet and dark and private, and they lay low until their wounds are healed.’
‘Time doesn’t seem to have helped your father.’
The Secret by the Lake Page 11
