Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Dead Son,” he’d kept on saying, and even having landed at some poky little harbour that stank of dead fish, I kept hearing it agin. What with me lumpy, pus-filled leg and me sore throat and eyes, p’raps I’d be next.

  Unlike Angelid Menelos, only the woodyard’s foreman Hans Gulik spoke English. Although a pleasant surprise at first, it could soon have put me in danger of being found by the local coppers. To him and me workmates, I were Fred Lisle, married with a bor back in a place I made up. He’d soon put me on the big saw which almost took off me right hand first time I used it.

  “You were lucky,” said this hairless hulk of a foreman. “Go and count the logs for now, and while you’re at it, get your eyes and that leg seen to. They’re taking some time to heal, aren’t they?” He’d then got out his diary. “Almost four months.”

  I blinked. Where had four fecking months gone?

  “I will.”

  “Go on then.”

  I hesitated. Should I be honest or pretend?

  “Can’t count, sir. Never went to school.”

  “Where was that? Tell me again.”

  Quick…

  His face a red blur. I rubbed me eyes but the whine of the saws and the thick, orange dust made ‘em even worse. I tried to remember me new name and couldn’t.

  “Wales.”

  Straightaway a mistake.

  “You don’t sound very Welsh,” he said. His face getting closer to mine with its sores and all. “In fact, Mister Fred, I’ve wondered about you from the day old Joost Klinger brought you here. Which reminds me, you need still to fill in our special form for foreign labour. You could be anybody.”

  Be careful, Stanley.

  “Can’t write neither.”

  “I can.”

  While he went to fetch the form, I blew on me frozen fingers. Me breath rising up like steam from a horse. I made me decision. Summer had turned to winter. I’d bin long enough on foreign soil. Time to return to Wombwell Farm to see if Ma and Pa still drew air into their shrivelled old lungs. To check on the water pit and the mawther.

  Claim me share.

  *

  While me other workers was snoring their way through the night in the warm hostel heated by two big stoves, I picked up me few chattels and let mesen out into the starry night. That photograph of me as a baby still taped to me belly, and I remember looking up at the moon and seeing Mollie’s pretty face in it. Her little tongue popping out between her lips.

  I needed a few moments for me excitement to subside, then I were off. No time to waste, but me warm seed creeping down me trousers made me left leg sting like buggery.

  *

  No-one followed me outside. No-one gave a pig’s arse, ‘cept I’d bin given me pay with a guilder taken off for bandages. No-one had asked to look at what they hid and that suited me fine.

  There was plenty of bicycles all heaped up together, and too much choice, although them with lights wud be more useful. I picked one with the hardest tyres that didn’t squeal when turning. I did mesen proud, wobbling at first, away from that wooden hostel and its blind windows, then finding me balance. But no switching on the lights at least till I were out of view.

  The cold air tickled me nostrils, but just one sneeze might have drawn the wrong kind of attention and then what? Only while riding out of Weesp alongside a wide canal, did I realise I’d only learnt the names of two other sawyers.

  That moon with Mollie’s image gone, seemed to stare down just at me. A frown on its cheese-white face. Supposing that quack and the Reverend Beecham had bin right about me leprosy? Them new little balloons of pus come up on me other leg? Me blood leaking out? There’d bin summat different every day, and as for me eyes. No wonder I’d not seen that big saw’s blade coming.

  I’d bin lucky. But what if she were dead? Me Mollie? Another reason for going back. To find out.

  I switched on me bicycle’s front light, though I didn’t really need it with that moon so bright, but I had to watch I didn’t tip into the canal glowing like a tart’s silk stockin. I’d seen a few of them at livestock shows over the years while the judging hotted up. But nothing to so far beat what Susan Deakins had offered.

  Holy Christ…

  *

  What were going on? Icy water were up to me knees. Me feet not on any pedals but trapped by weeds clinging like greedy fingers not letting me go no matter how much I tried swinging me legs around.

  “’Help!”

  Nothing. Not even a winter bird. Enough bats, though, fluttering round me head. I’d always hated them little warmints and would have punched them away with me fists. But they’d frozen solid, hand’t they? Numb. Dead. Like me mouth full of the canal up to me nostrils. Up to me bad eyes…

  “Help! ‘Help!”

  Me legs was numb as well and them weeds seemed to be gripping even tighter till I cudn’t call out no more. And what if someone did come along? I’d pinched a bike, were wanted for three murders I never did. Either way, I’d had it. Sinking, like them flat stones I’d kept for skimming along the Howse. Heavy as lead.

  52. SARAH.

  Tuesday 14th December 1920. 9 a.m.

  The water pit had been finished in two weeks after the rains came, and every day since then I’d found harder to recall that summer’s heat. Autumn had delivered gales and lingering mists, then winter with yet more rain. For the past fortnight, frost had lain so thick it clung like our two mercies and five curses, making the pit in the middle of Parson’s Field seem almost invisible.

  The mercies were that I’d not seen or heard anything more of either Matthew Crane or Stanley Bulling. But of the curses, the worst was my monthlies still hadn’t appeared. I’d neither had the courage to confess my situation to Dr. Lovell when the opportunity had arisen, nor persuaded my family to attend that August appointment with him at Myrtle Villa. I’d been too cowardly to face their protests, but during the intervening months, the worm had begun turning.

  Meanwhile, to hide my ever-swelling stomach, I’d worn an extra-tight corset, night and day, so not even the ever-observant Mollie had noticed. Nor Ann Bulling, whose old frame had shrunk during the intervening months; whose breathing troubles had reduced her to sitting down most of the time.

  Because of the late summer and autumn rain, the grass on Fifty Acre field had grown enough for her husband, unsteady on his feet, to take Will out to buy six Norfolk Horn rams and fifty ewes to graze it. Mollie loved them all and being with them diverted her attention from asking about Stanley’s whereabouts, although not from helping herself to his photograph stuck to one of the telegraph poles by the farm gate. I’d found it folded amongst her knickers but said nothing.

  Buck helped with the sheep too, although he preferred the pigs and cried each time the slaughterer came with his truck and gun.

  Meanwhile, all notion of them attending school had been swept away like the dead leaves on the River Howse. And I, week by week, had run out of ambition. Except for one thing. A secret visit to St John the Martyr, where I’d helped myself to one of the four white candles on the alter. Thin and tapering, long enough to reach my womb and bring a thin, pale blood, but nothing else. After four painful attempts to dislodge my second sin with the man of the Forest Eyrie, I threw it into the pit.

  *

  Yet another day dawned bringing Christmas closer, and time to reflect again on the remaining four curses. How all we Parminters had become in our different ways, ill, while the Reverend Henry Beecham, having closed the doors of Vesper House, was still sleeping soundly in his bed. Still holding Sunday Services for his adoring flock. And as if in shame at having let us down, Dr. Lovell with the kindly eyes, had kept himself busy anywhere but here.

  “We’re feeding the Tidswell hunt at one,” announced Ann Bulling as I cleared away the breakfast things. “Best get cracking. It’s good money for us, don’t forget. And you’ll benefit too.”

  “What do they eat?” asked Buck hoarsely, rubbing his eyes yet again. Red and swollen, with yellow matter
seeping from each corner, the various ointments I’d brought back from Diss had made no difference at all.

  I thought of poor Silver.

  “Florrie will do nicely,” Ann Bulling smiled a black mouth. There’ll be no more piglets from her, so let’s not be too sorry.” She managed to raise herself from her chair to pass him a knife whose long, curved blade glowed like an omen under the lit candle set into the kitchen wall. “Yer Pa’s in the store room now. So, get a move on.”

  I saw Buck hesitate; search my face for approval. I nodded, but in my heart knew he was too young for such things. That in taking a life in this cruel way, his own, youthful heart might break.

  *

  On that dead cold dark morning, the store room resembled an ice house where three pig carcasses wrapped in muslin swayed slightly on their black hooks set into the ceiling.

  Even though I wore two coats over my woollen dress, thick stockings and boots, I felt my own marrow freeze. What lay beneath my coat belt seemed frozen too. Something I

  either had to pretend didn’t exist or try again to get get rid in my own way. Sooner rather than later.

  And as for Buck, Mollie, Will and myself with strange lesions across my back and shoulders, unless I could get us away to London and the helpful Dr. Goldman, what hope was there?

  “Hey, look at Buck!” Mollie cried out once I’d shut the door behind me. “Like I said before, he’s a real baby.”

  “No, I’m not. Watch!”

  Florrie, a huge, pink sow with her treats shrivelled up against her belly, was being held in place over an oblong depression in the stone floor. Will at the head. Walter Bulling at the rear. Buck poised over her throat. Her mouth stretched open in terror.

  “Go on!” Shrieked Mollie, now thirteen, whose own first, ripe blood had appeared yesterday morning, causing her no great surprise. “Do it!”

  But I couldn’t look. Not at that pained look in his puffy eyes. The tight grimace. He had to be a man in front of the others. Moreover, a man who could kill. And when the poor creature’s screams had died away, I found the soles of my boots sticking to the stone flags and breakfast creeping up my throat.

  *

  Once outside away from the stench of death, I slipped and slid towards the lean-to at the back of the farmhouse where the privy door stood open. I was sick too soon, and afterwards, pummelled my swelling stomach, trying to succeed where that sanctified church candle had failed.

  But no. My sin wanted to be born.

  I then noticed several torn pieces of the Diss Express had been blown into the far corner amongst various dead spiders and a colony of upturned woodlice. I bent down to pick up a section bearing half a photograph of a girl’s smiling face. Her eyes shining with happiness, while underneath I read the words USAN DEAKINS ILL ISSING.

  I couldn’t find any other pieces to match it, so put it in my coat pocket and made my way back into the farmhouse, avoiding all the activity in the old dairy where brooms and buckets of warm water had caused the sow’s diluted blood to trickle outside into the back yard, pinkening its frosted, brick base.

  *

  Ann Bulling was, with some difficulty, gathering salt and other seasonings together in a large metal bowl. Of Buck and Mollie there was no sign.

  “Do you have any idea what this is about?” I showed her the torn scrap of newsprint. “There’s no date, but…”

  “None.” Came out rather too quickly. I showed it her again. This time she stopped her mixing and with a wrinkled hand speckled by various chopped herbs, held it closer to her vole-like eyes. “Now then, it could be… No,” she shook her white head. “I was thinking of someone else.” She handed it back to me and returned to her seasoning.

  “I think you do know,” I said. “I could tell by the way you stared at her face, then shut your eyes. So why aren’t you saying? What are you hiding?”

  Silence followed, save for the men’s muffled voices coming from the old barn.

  “I’ll be seeing Dr. Lovell at three o’clock,” I lied. “Perhaps he can enlighten us. ‘Issing’ means missing. And the name has to be Susan Deakins.”

  “No good using long words with me. I said it don’t mean a thing. Nor that name neither. Besides, the doctor won’t say nothing. Secretive he is. Wouldn’t tell our Stanley nothing. Next thing, it’s the police.”

  She eyed me sideways as she scuttled outside still carrying the bowl.

  “Are we paying for your little excursion? If so…”

  “Just deduct it if it makes you feel better.”

  She muttered something I thankfully couldn’t understand. An old woman who must always have the last word, but more than that, someone hiding a secret.

  *

  2.45p.m.

  The smell of roast pig still hung in the air long after the twenty or so huntsmen had eaten and drunk their fill in the slate-roofed barn. I found the children sitting near the two glowing braziers, each gnawing at a strip of crisply-cooked skin.

  Neither looked up, even though they’d seen me come in. I hoped this was from shame rather than rudeness, although Buck had hardly been a willing helper.

  Time to be less cowardly.

  “We’re ready to go,” I said, deliberately giving them no warning. “So, tidy yourselves up and come along.”

  “Where now?” Mollie as ever, the first to challenge me. More so since Will’s sole aim was to help make Wombwell Farm the best in the area. Better than the Fletchers and even Lord Helvin’s estate, taken over by his nephew now the gout-ridden landowner was an invalid. Better than being married to me, obviously.

  “To Doctor Lovell. It’s urgent, I said.”

  Buck’s head jerked up, but Mollie spoke first.

  “Don’t we have a say?” Those fierce blue eyes unwavering.

  “I’m your mother.” As I spoke, my heart seemed to jump in my chest “And we’re ill. All of us. It’s leprosy. You’re old enough to be told, and to grasp that if there isn’t a cure, we could all… ” I took another breath. “We should have gone in August. It’s our last chance.”

  “Liar! Liar!” She screamed. “There’s nothing wrong with me or him.” She jabbed an elbow in Buck’s direction. He swallowed his mouthful and began coughing. “You’re trying to take us away somewhere. Make us go back to school.”

  “Do you want your feet to fall off? Your fingers? And that would just be the start.”

  At this, she began to laugh, rocking back and fore on her heels, but Buck got up, wheezing badly, and gripped my wrist, rubbing his red eyes with his free hand. “I’m fed up with being like this,” he sniffed. “And Dad doesn’t care.” He looked at Mollie. “Are you coming?”

  “No. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  I shook my head.

  Your third finger’s pink and swollen. Look at it. Your father’s thighs are full of lumps and sores, just like my chest and stomach. If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you. As for Buck…”

  “Why d’you care so much about Dad? You hardly speak to him.” She flung her chewed rind on to the stone floor. As she did so, something in my soul seemed to crack.

  Buck let go of my wrist to crouch behind the nearest brazier while I grabbed her coat collar and pulled her to her feet.

  “Ouch!” She cried, her cheeks glowing from the heat. Grease glistened around her mouth as she tried to butt me; kick my legs, but a strength that had deserted me on July 29th forced her to stop. She glanced at her abandoned rind.

  “If you’d not messed about with Stanley Bullling,” I began, “none of this would have happened. He was infected by Angelid Menelos. Remember his left leg? Then he passed it to you first. Unlike Buck, you were sitting on him. Playing with his hair, fitting a rope between his teeth. And now, you’re coming with me.”

  “Never! Anyway, how was I to know? And what about the Bullings?”

  She tried wriggling free, without success.

  “Doctor Lovell thinks that so far, they’re in the clear. But if they find out about us, we’re
finished. And then what? Then what, you little…?”

  Here I stopped myself, and in that split second, she punched my middle so hard, I let go, called for Buck and stumbled towards the white light beyond the barn door. Despite his presence and his warm hand in mine, I’d never in all my thirty-six years, felt so alone.

  A glance back told me all I needed to know. Mathew Crane’s daughter stood motionless against the barn’s faintly lit darkness. Her pink tongue poking out at us from between her teeth.

  *

  “Mrs. Parminter?”

  “Who’s that?”

  Buck held my hand even more tightly as I spun round to see a tall, stout figure in mud-spattered hunting clothes. His black horse held by another huntsman near the gate.

  “Peter Holden. Master of the Tidswell Hunt. Sorry to give you and the boy a shock, but I’ve just been to see Walter and Ann Bulling. Something you ought to know. The police have been told already…”

  When he’d finished his news, I felt sick and shivery with fear. Not even the walk to Myrtle Villa made the slightest difference. I knew beyond any doubt that this small patch of Norfolk, a tenth of the size of the New Forest, was cursed.

  Cursed and damned, while the small diary I’d kept since the day we’d all arrived at Hecklers Green, would soon be coming to an end.

  53. JOHN.

  Tuesday 15th November 1988. 10 p.m.

  “Whose name? Catherine demanded. Her hand bag still lay wide open on her lap. Its contents in disarray.

  Keep her guessing…

  “Tell you in a mo, sorry. I need to concentrate” Just then, flashing lights lit up all my mirrors, followed by a siren’s blast as an ambulance tried to nudge past us in the crowded street. I pulled over, mounting the kerb, just missing a lamp post. Nottingham all over again. One of the worst sounds in the world faded as it wove in and out of the traffic ahead which began to slow down and eventually stop. Brake lights glowing like so many evil eyes. Drivers behind it hoping to move off again within seconds.