One day, I suppose, they will be gone entirely.
Part of me resists this idea: the total erosion of religion. I was a devout Catholic as a girl: the simple Irish faith knocked into me at Catholic primary school was hard to knock away. I’d like to believe in God, still: to have that consolation, to think there is something Beyond, a brother for the lonely, a father for the orphaned, an embracing and eternal Lord, gathering the anguished. And a God for my unborn child.
But I can’t. My faith died when I was twenty-one. Just after Christmas. And yet now I have faith in a much darker superstition. I believe my stepson can predict the future, and I know his dead mother walks the house, and I know all this is impossible, and it is shredding me to a frenzy of nerves.
Stepping inside the church, I strive to inhale the calming, familiar churchy scent – of rotting flowers, sweetish incense, and mildewed prayer books. Taking out my cameraphone, I take pictures of the various memorials, the Nancekukes of Emba, the Lerryns of Chytodden, and then Jory Kerthen of Carnhallow, 1290–1340, and William de Kerthen of Kenidjack, dates obscured, and Mary Kerthen of Carnhallow, 1390–1442. These people will be the ancestors of my child.
Now I find a humbler grave. William Thomas: kill’d in Wheal-Chance Tin-Mine in Trewey Downs near this Church-Town, by a fall of Ground ye 16th of August 1809, aged 44 years.
That was a Kerthen mine. Wheal Chance. And this man died there. Killed by the Kerthens. Everyone is killed by the Kerthens.
The history is inescapable, even as I escape the church. Halfway down the path I come to the grave I cannot avoid: that particular stone.
Nina Kerthen, died aged 33
This is the light of the mind
A chiselled mermaid arcs across a sculpted half-moon. Juliet has told me the Kerthens are meant to descend from mermaids. She also told me about the stone hedges that surround the little fields of Zennor church. The oldest human artefacts still being used for their original purpose, anywhere in the world.
The wind is rising, a sea breeze from the west; cold with little nagging cuts of rain. The time is nearly here. The time when I must tell.
I get in the car and drive back as darkness descends, the early winter gloom, at 3.30 p.m., so horribly quick and clammy: not exactly raining, yet with that dampness that rots into your heart. My face is dimlit by the dashboard glow, staring out at the gloom of the moorland road, watching the headlights smear across the arches of Wheal Owles, yet another ruined Kerthen mine. As I drive I keep the window open to the cold oceanic air: breathing the savoury and freezing wind, breathing it deep, trying to keep calm. David is coming home tonight.
At last I take the final turning. And still my mood is dark, and darkening, now I am heading through the oaks, the rowans, the kerthens. Carnhallow emerges through the darkness of Ladies Wood; the hamstone balustrades, the wide south terraces, the older monastic stones, castellated, shadowed in the silver moonlight.
I don’t have time to appreciate the antique beauty. Because I have seen David’s Mercedes in the garage. He is already here.
And now I somehow know that something will happen. The rainclouds are too black.
Evening
Why is David back so early? Normally he flies around 4 or 5 p.m., then the drive takes another hour, and he arrives around 6.30 or 7. Today he is back at 4.30.
I drop my keys in the brightness of the kitchen, and there is no sign of him, yet the lights are all on, and I can see someone has used the espresso machine. But he isn’t here. No briefcase, no raincoat carelessly thrown over a kitchen chair. No necktie un-noosed, with a sigh of relief, and chucked on to the big oak table. No whisky bottle. No gin bottle. So he came in and swallowed coffee and then went – where?
Stepping outside the kitchen, all is dark. A few lamps pierce the gloom, but most of the house is shrouded. I think of the bats downstairs in the basement, hanging upside down. Happy in the cold and the black. Eyes barely open. But smiling.
This house chills me now. Its dampness soaks into my bones, drowning me in the dark. And I have to confront David. Dig out the truth, like the vile black tin at the end of the tunnels. Then confront him with my truth. A new baby. Another Kerthen. To go with all the others in the house. Jamie. David.
Nina.
But where is he?
‘David?’
The house is so big it answers me with a trailing echo. David …
‘David? Where are you?’
Standing in the New Hall, with its photos of bal maidens in their tatty shawls, I take out my phone and dial his number. Voicemail.
‘David?’
Walking to the foot of the stairs, I can see a sliver of light. Coming perhaps from Jamie’s room. Switching on more lights – more light, more light – I ascend the grand staircase and walk the landing to Jamie’s door with its blue Chelsea FC pennant hanging from a nail. I can hear low voices inside. Like people exchanging secrets.
Something makes me hesitate. Alarm. Fear. A basic silly dread that I will find Nina Kerthen in here, talking to her son. Calmly existing.
Taking hold of my growing insanity, I knock on the door. ‘Jamie. Hello, Jamie, it’s Rachel.’
There is no reply. But I can hear whispers now. Beyond the door.
‘Jamie, please, can you let me in? Can I come in? I’m trying to find your father.’
Another silence; but then Jamie says, ‘Come in.’
Turning the knob, I push the door. And there he is, in his school uniform, sitting on his bed. And in the chair near the bed is his father, dressed in his work suit and tie. Their stance is somehow furtive. They look like two people who have been discussing me. I know it. I know it. Their faces say: We were talking about you. David’s expression is deliberately blank, yet that alone is suspicious. He’s making an effort to look normal, and unconcerned.
What were they deciding, or conspiring? How to get rid of me? Abruptly I feel like the worst kind of intruder: an outsider. Someone who shouldn’t be here. But I should be here. I am proudly, helplessly, inexorably, carrying David’s child. Now I belong in Carnhallow as much as them. Even if I don’t want to be here, even if I don’t want to be one of them: I am.
‘David, what’s going on?’
His face comes alive, flickers with contempt. ‘Going on? What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re home so early, and um, now—’
I am about to say, You are having secret conversations with your son – but I restrain myself. ‘I was unnerved,’ I say. ‘I came home and the house was dark yet your car was here and … it was a bit odd.’
He frowns. ‘Are you sure you feel all right, Rachel?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Really?’ He stands, and puts a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘OK. Jamie. You do that homework and then we can all have supper, unless Rachel has already had food. And drink.’
He eyes me again. A lawyerly gaze. I stammer, defensively, ‘No no. No. I had lunch, took some photos at Zennor and – supper would be nice.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Let’s go down and talk. Let Jamie do his homework.’ He turns to his son. ‘Remember what we said, Jamie? Remember that promise? What we agreed?’
Right in front of me, David tilts his head, and raises his eyebrows, significantly, towards Jamie. As if to say, That thing we agreed about Rachel, remember that, and don’t tell her.
Jamie nods in response, then turns to his school bag, fishing out his homework.
What are the two of them hatching? Now I bristle with anger. I have secrets too. But enough of this. He needs to know. And maybe a bit of me wants to put him on the defensive. You can’t touch me now, I’m carrying your child. I’m as good as Nina.
Taking my arm, David steers me downstairs to the Yellow Drawing Room, turns on the lamps. Closes the curtains on the black winter lawns outside, shutting us off from the winter-black woods, the narrow lane through the sobbing trees, the great black moors. Then we sit down and he starts asking me questions, about my day, about photography
, about Christmas arrangements – the most trivial things. Why this interrogation?
He is drinking now. He has one gin and tonic, then another. And still I wait for the right moment, to tell him my secret. Yet something stalls me. I count the clink-clink-clink of ice cubes. Followed by sliced limes, from the Carnhallow greenhouse, speared from a little Georgian silver bowl. Here is the wealth and elegance of his life in one action. The Kerthen signet ring glints on his little finger.
‘Do you feel happy here, Rachel?’
He is five yards away, in the chair so carefully recovered by Nina Kerthen. The psychological distance between us is almost immeasurable. I struggle to answer.
‘Yes. Well. Yes. It hasn’t been easy, but yes, we’re muddling through.’
Another big glug of G&T, draining the glass. He pours himself a third from the fat bottle of Plymouth gin set on a silver tray, alongside the silver tongs and rocks of ice.
‘You don’t ever feel strange, or scared of things?’
‘Scared of what?’
‘Does the thought of Nina in the mine unnerve you?’
I shiver. I hide my shiver.
‘No.’
‘Her dead body in the tunnels, trapped for ever?’
What is this?
‘No. It doesn’t. Not really.’
‘So the thought of her, trapped, a face in the black water, it doesn’t give you bad dreams, or make you think strange things? Make you feel persecuted?’
He is implying I am losing the plot. Again. Has he been talking to people? This doesn’t make sense. No one is allowed to talk, not even to my husband. And how dare he investigate me, anyway?
I bridle. My own anger isn’t far from the surface. ‘No. David. I am fine. Please stop this, stop it now.’
‘I will stop. Sure. Once you’ve calmed down.’
‘Calmed down? I am totally OK. Totally fine.’ I hurry on, ‘David. We’re just having problems, we both know that, but we can get through them. We have to get through them. But only if you answer my questions, too.’
He swallows the rest of his rocky gin and tonic, his handsome face smeared with insobriety. His eyes glittering with a sullen drunkenness. I think of his father: Richard Kerthen, and his boozy cruelty. I see the father now, see it in David. Yet I still hope he isn’t really like that, because David is the father of my child.
‘So you’d say you are doing a good job, as a stepmother? Perhaps you still think your stepson can predict things. Do you think that, hmm?’
I am about to snap back – to defend myself loudly, tell him about the pregnancy – but his phone rings. Silencing us both. He drags it from his pocket, looks at the screen, scowls in puzzlement. Then he waves an irritated hand my way, as if to say: This is more important than you. He goes out into the corridor, closing the door to take the call clandestinely.
I want a joint. I cannot. I am pregnant.
The house sits quietly all around us. Waiting. The silk-upholstered chairs are silent but poised. The yellow damask wallpaper gazes at me, suspiciously, with its meaningful patterns.
Getting up, twitching with nerves, I walk to the curtains and pull at a handful of heavy velvet, gazing out at the dark trees lacing the blue-black sky, and the rain that approaches. Like a hunter, down from the moors. But there is no one out there, no one between the moors and the mines, and the carolling sea. No one is watching. The valley is empty.
The door opens. David has returned. There is something about his expression. This I have never seen before. Black dark anger. He is furious. His left fist is clenched. He comes closer.
‘You went to see her?’
‘Uh—’
‘You went to see her. The child psychologist. The fucking shrink. You went to see her?’
What can I say? ‘Yes, but—’
‘Mavis Prisk rang me. She was quite surprised to find I didn’t know. About your little visit. She explained everything.’ He is growling. ‘How could you fucking do that? How? After I explicitly told you not to?’
‘David—’
‘How dare you fucking do that? Do you know what could happen?’
He is standing so close his spit hits my face. I can taste the Plymouth gin in his cold saliva.
‘You fucking bitch. You stupid fucking slut, you little whore, you stupid little cockney whore, you did that, you risked everything, you fucking little cunt from nowhere.’
The blur of his hands is too fast. The first crack of his fist in my face is a white-out. My mind blanks to light. Then he hits me again, very quickly, sending my face spinning left, blood like splattered ink from my mouth, my lips crushed against my teeth. The third blow is a violent slap, it stings so much it makes me choke with pain. I groan as I fall.
I wonder if he will kill me.
21 Days Before Christmas
Afternoon
‘Lovely coffee.’
‘Don’t thank me, thank Nespresso.’
‘Hah, yeah. Should pay more attention to Mum, she loves those ads on telly.’
Kelly looks at me in that innocent way. It strikes me again how young she is. Barely twenty-five, yet apparently in charge of my life. For the moment.
Kelly Smith, fair-haired and freckled, and a little plump in the ill-fitting black uniform of a Police Community Support Officer, has been with me, morning or afternoon, for the last seven days. Sharing cups of tea and coffee, basic suppers. Talking about anything and nothing. Being normal.
It’s what I wanted, and now I’ve got it. Beans on toast, and reality TV. Something regular and simple and unambitious. For months I have been lost amongst the exotic. Beautiful, dead Nina Valéry, handsome, arrogant David Kerthen. Juliet in her dreams. Jamie alone in his room. And in the middle of it all, this house: Carnhallow, baroque in its sadness, tragic in its ruined wealth, still somehow lording it over the rest of West Cornwall.
And then the mines. I look at them endlessly, every day, perhaps more than ever. Because I am desperate now. I need to understand, I need to see what the mines are saying, with their upwards–jutting chimneys, giving a forefinger to the heavens. Black gloved fists.
And even as I think of hands, and of fists – it returns. From nowhere, in my mind, I see him again, punching me, his fist slamming in to my face, hard and then harder, his face racked with anger, ugly with violence, like a sexual expression, but horrifying, and the blood spurting bright crimson, blurting from my mouth.
Dizzy and faint, I turn from the kitchen window. I realize I’ve been staring at the window, blank-faced, mouth half open, like an idiot.
‘You OK, Rachel?’
‘Yes, sorry, Kelly, yes.’
‘Was it a flashback?’
‘Yes. Kind of.’
‘Well, you can expect that.’ She sips more coffee, squints my way. ‘But the bruises are going down. You look a whole lot better than you did, when … You know …’
I know what she is about to say. When it happened. When I first went to Treliske Hospital, rushed there by ambulance, following a panicked phone call once I’d heard David leave, slamming the door, when he’d come to his senses and left me bleeding in the corner of the Drawing Room.
When it happened. When the doctor stared at me, pitying, as she patched up my face. When I decided I wanted the police involved. When I first met Kelly Smith, PCSO. And when I first learned all the language. Book 124D. Domestic Violence Protection Notice. FME statement. Early swabs. Imminent risk to victim based on DASH, 2009 High Risk Factors.
‘I don’t look like a gargoyle any more?’
Kelly smiles, politely.
‘Nah, you look a bit dazed, Rachel. But that’s not a surprise, izzit? God, is it raining again? My mum’s garden will be underwater.’
I touch a finger to my cheekbone, recalling the first time I summoned the courage, and I took up a mirror and looked at myself, the morning after David beat me, seven days ago: my face was vivid with bruises and cuts. At least he only punched me above the neck.
Calming myself, I pl
ace a hand on my stomach. My baby is still alive. Still growing inside me. Yet this baby is the child of a man who beat his wife. The father of my child is violent. Whatever I do, wherever I go, I shall be trapped in a room with that thought, for the rest of my life. I will never escape David Kerthen.
Kelly is observing me, her head slightly tilted. Perhaps assessing the way I’ve placed my protecting hand on my stomach. Let her look. I want this baby to grow, to come soon, to come to her mother. I don’t know why I believe this child is a daughter, but I do. Perhaps because I want a daughter. Right now I can’t help thinking there are enough men in the world.
Kelly sets down her coffee mug.
‘You know, if you hadn’t been pregnant we wouldn’t have got the exclusion order.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep. It’s pretty unusual. This is your husband’s house, he’s got no previous history of DV – not on file anyway. And this is where his son lives. Magistrates don’t like kicking out parents from family homes, even when they are total and utter bastards.’
She stops. I shake my head.
‘Kelly. It’s OK.’
‘No. I’m sorry. Not my place to judge.’
It’s my turn to reassure her.
‘Of course you can say it. David’s a bastard. How else would you describe him? He did this to me.’ I gesture at my face, proving my point. ‘He could easily have killed the child inside me. I was lucky.’
She nods. Grimly.
‘Well, yeah, that’s what I was driving at: what kind of bastard would beat his wife when she’s pregnant? You know,’ Kelly leans closer, in the humming quietness of the kitchen, with the clinical steel sinks. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I’ll bloody well say it. There’s a good chance he’ll do it again. Don’t matter how rich or important he is. They always say they won’t, but – I’ve seen it too many times – a few weeks later, a few months later, there he goes again. On and on. Think of that when the injunction runs out. Three months’ time. Think of that, for me?’
The Fire Child Page 16
