‘Don’t stand about too long, my girl… you’ll catch a chill.’ John put his son to the ground and, when Cassie began fidgeting, Scarlet eased her forward, but kept a firm hold on her hand. She was amused to see young Trent take hold of Cassie’s other hand, determined that she would come and play. ‘They’ll be alright,’ John assured Scarlet, ‘Trent knows well enough that he’s not to stray from the wagon. Boys is rascals, though… you’ll see when your own lad gets a bit older… David, ain’t it?’ He kept on chattering.
‘Stay close, darling.’ Scarlet watched as the two children crawled into a large cardboard box, giggling and contented in each other’s company. With a more serious face she turned to John, saying quietly, ‘It seems my father is dying?’ Since Shelagh had suggested that she ought to say her goodbyes and make peace with her father, Scarlet had suffered the most terrible nightmares. ‘Shelagh thinks I ought to visit and make peace with him. I can’t bring myself to do it.’
‘And who can blame you if you refuse to see him?’ John stridently remarked, his own expression forbidding. ‘I know he’s your father… your own flesh and blood, and the Lord says we must forgive. But, that devil caused you a lot of pain and suffering. He treated you badly… you and young Silas both. They allus say that we pay for our sins in the end, and, since he threw you out, your father seems to be paying his pound of flesh right enough. Did you know the smithy’s closed down altogether?’ When she nodded, he went on, ‘Aye, no doubt Shelagh’s kept you informed… just like she’s kept us informed as to your own well-being. I don’t mind telling you, my girl… I ain’t never seen a man go so far downhill… like a crazy thing he’s been! Ranting and raving one day, an’ meek as a lamb the next. Bit by bit he’s fallen apart… the doctors are baffled. They’ve given up on him… reckon it’s all in his mind. Self-destruction, that’s what I say!’ He shook his head, adding, ‘Shelagh called me in the other day… wanted me to move his bed by the window, where he could see out. He didn’t even know me. Twenty years and more I’ve worked for Vincent Pengally at Greystone House… and he didn’t even know me!’ He lowered his gaze and continued to shake his head, his thoughts speeding back over the years, embracing the strange and wicked things that had occurred at Greystone House: the rapid deterioration of Vincent Pengally himself being only one in a long line. He lifted his gaze to Scarlet, his blue eyes troubled. ‘It ain’t my place to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.’ He paused for a moment, seeming to think harder and his frown deepening until the tiny folds of skin between his eyebrows erupted into mountainous ridges. Presently he said, ‘All I can tell you in good faith is this… if it were my father that were lying on his deathbed… no matter what pain he’d caused me in the past, I couldn’t let him go to his maker without forgiveness. Me conscience wouldn’t let me… I’d be haunted ever after if I let me own father die with bad blood ’atween us.’
John’s words were an echo of what Shelagh had already told Scarlet. And, in truth, there was an unpleasant urge in her to see for herself how close to death’s door her father was. For some reason she was disturbed by the possibility that maybe Shelagh, and now John, was exaggerating his illness. She needed to see for herself, to know that he would die soon. She craved to see the greyness of death in his eyes and be assured that before too long he would lie in a cold deep grave where he could never again hurt her. And even when it happened, when his breath was stopped and his vile body cold and stiff, she was still not sure whether the nightmares would end. In that painful dark corner of her mind that no one else must ever know he would live on, frightening her, touching, adoring, torturing her almost beyond endurance. He and Silas. They were the cross she must bear until the end of her days! And perhaps ever after. ‘Will you go and see him?’ John’s voice filtered into her uneasy thoughts.
‘No!’ Her answer was swift. ‘As you said, John… it’s possible that I may be haunted ever after if I let him die with bad blood between us.’ Again the fear. Always the fear! If she did go back to Greystone House, it would not be pity or compassion that took her back. It would not even be hatred. It would be that same paralysing fear. And an unpleasant curiosity to see the life draining from him. She was so close! So very close. ‘Give my regards to your wife, John,’ she said, beginning to look for Cassie. ‘I must go… I promised Garrett I’d be waiting for him at the Yarn Market on the stroke of noon.’
Scarlet was the first to realise. The children were gone! Panic took hold of her. ‘Cassie!’ She searched frantically, in and amongst the boxes, calling her daughter’s name, each time with increasing alarm. ‘Cassie!… Where are you?’
Realising the seriousness of the situation, John also began desperately rummaging in the stock, throwing boxes aside and yelling out to the other stallholders, asking whether they had seen ‘two young ’uns… playing nearby?’ All but one shook their heads or replied, ‘Sorry, mate… there’s been no young ’uns round this way.’ It was the flower lady who pointed out that she had seen two youngsters, a little lad and a toddler, ‘hand in hand… going towards the shops. I had an idea they were with a plump lady who went into the butcher’s,’ she said.
Scarlet’s footsteps sped over the cobbles, the rhythmic echo from beneath her boots reverberating in the sharp morning air. Cassie! Let her be alright, she prayed. At the entrance to the butcher’s shop, she paused, gasping for breath, her black eyes wide and frantic as they combed the shop’s interior. Then came John’s voice, bursting with relief. ‘There they are!… I oughtta smack you hard, you little tyke. Haven’t I told you never to wander away!’ He pushed into the shop, drawing Scarlet with him. What she saw in that instant struck horror to her senses. The butcher was smiling at her, tightly clutching the children one in each arm and there between them was the apron, the same blood-spattered apron. Surging forward she grasped the small girl, wrenching her from the butcher’s grip. And all the while he kept smiling, staring, searching her face with those pleasant eyes. They just wandered in,’ he told her, releasing the boy into his father’s care. ‘Children are so vulnerable,’ he said, looking fondly on them, ‘they need to be watched… all the time.’
‘I can’t think how they made off without us knowing it,’ John was clearly relieved to find that young Trent had come to no harm. ‘His mummy would have drawn and quartered me if anything had happened to the lad!’
Out of the corner of her eye, Scarlet saw the inner room and the bloody carcasses hanging there, nude, undignified, with patches of bright pink skin and dead grey muscle that created a weird gruesome chequer-work on the ravaged corpses. The awful smell of death permeated the air, a dry choking smell, sweetened with the irritating odour of dampened sawdust. The steady drip, drip of blood was magnified a thousand times in her ears; drip, DRIP, crimson splashes.
Scarlet blurted out her thanks and bade goodbye to John before hurrying from the shop. Her glance met that of the butcher. ‘No doubt I’ll see you again… Scarlet,’ he murmured, his smile deepening. The small hairs bristled on the back of her neck. How dare he call her by her first name! She did not like that man. But he was charming. And she was foolish. Even as she went at a furious pace down the main thoroughfare and on to Church Street, Scarlet could still feel his gaze on her. To others, the butcher’s ready smile might be warm and friendly; to her, it was lecherous and unsettling.
‘Oh, what a little darling!’ The voice sailed out from the newsagent’s doorway. It was Ada Blackwood. ‘My word, Scarlet… hasn’t the child grown.’ She came forward, halting Scarlet in her tracks and laughingly tousling Cassie’s golden locks. ‘D’you know, my dear… it must be what?… three years since I saw the child? And I’ve not even clapped eyes on the lad. You really should visit the cottage more often.’ A look of caution entered her round homely face. ‘But I expect you’ve done right… keeping a distance between you and Greystone House, after that terrible scene when your father put you on the street! I ask you… what kind of monster would do that to his only child? Mind you, me dear!’ She wa
gged a finger in Scarlet’s face. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that you did wrong… getting yourself with child like that!’ she said reproachfully. ‘Still, that’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? Oh, but she really is a little sweetie… Cassie isn’t it… if I remember rightly. Oh, yes, it must be close on three years since I last saw the little mite. It was very good of you to let Shelagh fetch me to Selworthy Manor.’ There was no stopping her, thought Scarlet. ‘Dreadful business… you being found like that on the moors. Goodness! If young Mr Summers and his men hadn’t found you when they did and fetched a trap to carry you safely back… well! You might have given birth to Cassie there and then, in that frightful cottage!’ She lowered her voice. ‘O’ course, you weren’t to know as how that cottage was the very same where them two bodies were found… half-eaten by rats!’ She shivered loudly. ‘It don’t bear thinking about, my dear. But, y’see… again, you brought it on yourself by being too impulsive and headstrong. You should never have gone out riding in your condition!’
‘You’re quite right, Mrs Blackwood.’ Scarlet did not need a lecture just now. ‘I really must go.’
‘You do know your father’s badly?’ She swayed her head gravely. ‘Won’t last till summer, they say. And you’re on your way to call on him, eh?’ She smiled approvingly. ‘That’s a fine thing to do, after the way he’s treated you, but like I said… you did bring some of it down on your own head! Still, you do well to pay your respects. You are his daughter after all, and his only kin.’
Not wishing to discourage her and at the risk of seeming impolite, Scarlet hastily excused herself and was quickly on her way. She wished now that she had not sent Mr Summers’s motor vehicle back to the manor. She regretted having come out to the market altogether. She knew now that it had been a foolish thing to do. People never forgot. All this time, ever since first arriving at Selworthy Manor, she had resisted the insane desire to return to her father’s house. Once Cassie was born, Scarlet had been content to busy herself with the child’s upbringing and to while away her leisure hours in the magnificent grounds at the manor. Occasionally, when the moors had beckoned, as they always did, she had been satisfied with a ride in the back of the motor vehicle, gently pursuing the narrow meandering lanes that wound through the moors, following the safest routes. In truth, Scarlet would have preferred to saddle up the most spirited hunter in the Summers’s stable and to gallop over the wild primitive landscape until she reached a place where no one would ever find her. She deliberately suppressed these feelings. Not for herself, but for Cassie, who was her only purpose in life. At Selworthy Manor Cassie had been blessed with all those things that Scarlet had never known – respect, social standing, wealth, a kind man to be her father – it was all hers for the taking. The only price would be exacted from Scarlet, who would never hesitate to sacrifice everything for her daughter’s sake. Strange, how her son rarely came into her mind.
Deep in thought and drawn by instinct, Scarlet found that she was treading the footpath towards the moors. The experience was unpleasantly strange. In her mind, Scarlet had lived it over and over, but now that she was actually crossing Packhorse Bridge and coming closer to the path that would lead her right up to the door of Greystone House, she felt herself trembling. There was an uncanny, unreal quality about her slow determined steps, as though she was moving in a trance. At the curve of the bridge, she stopped, gazing up at the house and instinctively drawing her child closer to her.
She ventured towards the weed-strewn path. All round her were signs of neglect: the garden was wild and overgrown, green mildew and rampant vines had begun to climb over the smithy; there were gaping holes in the roof where the tiles had slipped away. The smithy was crumbling. He was crumbling. Scarlet smiled. That was why she was here. To see him decaying! She turned away, but was at once arrested by the homely figure of Shelagh, emerging from the house, a look of astonishment on her face on seeing Scarlet there.
‘Must we huddle in here, Scarlet?’ Shelagh gasped in the cold damp air of the potting shed, where so often Scarlet and John had braved the elements in their work together. ‘Come into the house, why don’t you?’ she asked for the third time. ‘You needn’t be afraid. Your father’s sound asleep after his medicine. He can’t hurt you any more.’
‘I won’t come into the house.’ Scarlet was adamant. ‘I can’t do that, Shelagh… I told you.’
‘I know, I know… but I do wish you would find the courage, my love… if he dies and there’s bad blood between you, it could haunt you for the rest of your life. You wouldn’t want that, would you, Scarlet?’
‘No. I wouldn’t want that!’ Scarlet agreed. She would be haunted for the rest of her life in any event, she thought wryly; whether her father lived or died it made no difference. ‘And the doctor really thinks there’s little hope for him?’ she asked now, praying with all her heart that it was so. In spite of the fact that she was struck with terror at the very thought of ever again entering Greystone House, and even more horrified by the awful prospect of looking on her father’s face, she was also driven by an insane desire to witness for herself the shadowy mask of death creeping over his fearsome features. Yet even that would not temper the fear and hatred he had long fostered in her. She felt Shelagh’s comforting hand on her arm, saw the homely face looking at her with concern, and Scarlet was moved to guilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I know you’re only thinking to spare me pain.’ She thought the young woman looked terribly worn. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes and a ghastly look about her. She had been such a friend. Oh, but Shelagh did not know all that had happened between the Pengallys of Greystone House! She was not there before, to protect the terrified child in the dead of night when the dark stranger came. She could not imagine how that monster had toyed with the child’s gentle soul, tormenting it, shaping it with his rough probing hands, his cajoling evil tongue, and those unspeakable vile deeds, until that innocent child’s soul was also black and wicked, twisted beyond repair and made to skulk from the daylight. Hideous! The loathing coursed through Scarlet’s veins, engulfing every normal decent feeling. Oh! To gaze on that face now, just once more before it was too late! To see it emaciated. To bury that shame, that fear, along with him, and never again to suffer because of him. If only she had the courage! But death would never ease the horror; not his death, nor hers! Scarlet visibly shuddered.
‘There!’ Shelagh had seen her tremble. ‘The pair of us will catch of our death lingering about in this damp air.’ She glanced to where Cassie was engrossed in piling up the dozens of loose plant pots that had lain dormant in an apple crate. ‘Won’t you at least bring the child in for a hot drink?’ Scarlet shook her head, her quiet expression belying turbulent thoughts. ‘Do you want me to send for you if he gets worse?’ Again Scarlet shook her head. Shelagh sighed noisily, drawing her woollen jacket tighter about her. ‘John sent for the doctor, you know… while I was away for a few days, visiting friends in Taunton. Well!… I really thought he was much better, or I would never have left him. I was so tired though. And your father was up and about… even talking of going back to his work. He seemed much more like his cantankerous old self.’ She smiled, and even her smile was weary. ‘It really all began on the night he discovered you were with child… self-destruction the doctor says… all in his own mind.’ Glittering with emotion, her brown eyes beseeched Scarlet. ‘If only you could bring yourself to see him… talk with him. I’m sure there could be forgiveness between you. His health would quickly improve, I’m convinced of it.’
‘NO.’ Scarlet stooped to take hold of the child’s hand. ‘How can I ever forgive him?’ Besides which, the thought that she should help to ‘improve’ his health was repugnant to her. She wanted him dead; craved him dead! Yet, in doing so, Scarlet knew that she was creating another nightmare for herself. No matter. It was already too late.
Long after Shelagh had gone into the house, Scarlet stood on Packhorse Bridge, gazing across at Greystone House, reliving mem
ories and besieged by all the ghosts that were embalmed in the house for all time. Had she really escaped, she wondered? She knew instinctively that she was still inexplicably bound to the past: the house, her father and mother, Silas. They all rose up before her, taunting and enticing, beckoning, always beckoning. She wanted to run from that place. But something held her fast. Some compelling, intangible thing kept her there, owned her, body and soul. She reflected on Shelagh’s words, ‘He can’t hurt you any more… haunt you for the rest of your life.’ And beyond, Scarlet thought now; haunt me even beyond my life.
When the child began fidgeting, trying desperately to break free from her mammy’s hold, and calling for her daddy, Scarlet lost no time in turning from the house, her frantic footsteps hurrying along West Street as though the devil himself was on her heels. Suddenly the wind was more fierce, cutting with spite against her face, piercing through the layers of her coat, causing her to tremble. Instinctively, she turned into St George’s Church.
From a safe distance, Silas followed.
At the door Scarlet lingered awhile, her quiet gaze roving the church interior, and she thinking how beautiful it was – the high roof with its most exquisite fan vaulting, the magnificently carved rood-screen, then beyond, the altar… the heart of any church. ‘Ssh, Cassie,’ Scarlet bent to the restless child, putting a silencing finger to her lips and flashing a warning with her dark eyes. Together they went forward towards the altar, one with some reluctance, the other bathing in the aura of calm and tranquillity all around. The silence was complete. Nothing disturbed it. When they knelt before the rood-screen, the child was distressed to see how freely the tears ran down her mammy’s face. ‘Don’t cry, Mammy,’ she whispered, gently shaking Scarlet’s hand, being overwhelmed by the sight of such tears and made fearful by the awesome atmosphere. Quietly she snuggled into Scarlet, her wide eyes filled with wonder as they alighted on one grand ancient artefact after another.
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