‘He’s not here,’ Luella said from the kitchen.
‘It appears so.’ He had received my note and had done as I had bid. My shoulders slid down from where they had been raised in fear; Frank was gone and safe. ‘I shall check the smithy.’
I left her in the kitchen where she was stroking the table as if it were an animal.
Frank was not in the smithy. The coal fire was out, and the bricks of the chimney were cold.
‘Not there,’ I said somewhat breathlessly as I returned to her, for the relief was making me giddy. Luella had taken a seat on the kitchen bench; her arms rested on the tabletop, and her head hung low.
‘Where is he, Bonnie?’
‘I don’t know. He’s gone. None of his things are here.’
‘What’s in the chest?’
‘What chest?’
‘The chest in the bedroom.’
‘How should I know?’
‘It’s locked.’
‘Is it?’ I rubbed my hands together, and they were cool and sticky. ‘I think it must have come with the house. Probably something to do with the landlord.’
She raised her head, and her eyes were wider and bluer than ever. ‘What do we do now?’
It was not yet midday. I had no need to rush. She needed consoling, and then I would be able to get her on her way.
‘Fetch that firewood from outside, and we’ll make some tea, shall we?’
She nodded and, in some sort of daze, did as she was told. There was a bucket to the side of the range with a few coals at the bottom, and after the wood had caught, she placed the coals on top. It was an old range, uncovered, and together we watched the flames grow stronger.
‘There’s a well not far, just by the road. I’ll get some water.’
She did not object to my leaving this time, and I found her in the same place, still gazing at the fire, when I returned to hang the kettle over the heat. A corner in the kitchen acted as a larder, and inside there was a bunch of dirty carrots, a pot of flour and a pot of oats, some sprouting potatoes, and a tin of tea. I shut the door on it before she had time to see the food within.
‘He’s been here recently. I can smell him.’
On the side, there were a few chipped cups, and I laid them before us on the table. ‘What do you mean, you can smell him?’
She was not looking at me. The crease was deep between her brows. ‘Maybe he does,’ she whispered to herself, and I was about to ask her what she was talking about when she faced me. ‘Where is he, Bonnie?’
‘I already said, I don’t know.’
‘You sent him a note.’
I laughed. ‘I did not.’ The kettle was steaming, and I used an old, stinking cloth to lift if off the heat and pour it into the teapot.
‘You sent the landlord with it yesterday. I know you did. Did you tell Frank to go? Did you tell him we was close?’
‘You are being ridiculous.’ The cups ticked as the scalding water ran into them, and they threatened to crack.
‘Then why is he not here?’ Her voice rang in the quiet. She dipped her head as her tears spilled onto her cheeks, and she cradled herself.
Sipping my tea, I let my gaze fall through the window outside. A blue tit, with its black band over its eyes, flitted amongst the shrubbery and onto a branch of a silver birch which looked as if it had only been growing a few years. I sat there, the teacup burning my palms, listening to Luella sniff and dribble, and my eyelids began to droop. I could have rested my cheek on that tabletop and fallen asleep right then, I was sure, and not woken if a war had broken out.
‘Maybe he’s drinking,’ Luella said. Wood scraped against tiles as she pushed out her bench and made for the door.
I caught her dress, and there was a terrible sound as the material ripped. It stopped us both. We stared at the gaping hole near her right hip, at the petticoat beneath.
‘What’ve you done?’ she whispered, before sobbing again and turning for the door.
I pushed it shut, placing myself between her and her escape. ‘You cannot go out like that now; they will think you mad.’
She roared, grabbed my shoulders, and shoved me against the door. Her face came to within an inch of mine, and she bared her teeth. ‘You will go to the inn, and you will bring him here.’
Once she had dropped me, I discovered, with a bark of laughter that bordered on hysteria, that I was shaking. Little Luella had actually frightened me!
I nodded, agreeing to what she asked, and left her at a sprint. Outside, I gulped the air and told myself what a fool I was being. I would go to the inn to please her, to placate her, but Frank would not be there.
Church bells rang clearly through the street. I was aware of the faces peering from the windows as I walked and of old men straightening their backs to stare at me as they weeded their front gardens. I held my head higher, pinched my gloves on tighter, and looked no one in the eye until I reached the inn.
The stagecoach driver had been and gone, so it seemed, for there were a couple of piles of steaming manure on the roadside. Inside, some men sat at the bar nursing beer in glass jugs, their shirtsleeves rolled up to their elbows, their shoes dusted with mud. All of them stared at me as I entered. Not one had the good grace to lower his eyes as I approached.
‘Do any of you know where the blacksmith is?’
They glanced at each other until the youngest licked his lips and spoke. ‘What do you want him for?’
‘My horse needs a new shoe. Is he around?’
‘Best go further on, love. Ain’t seen him these last few days, and when I do, he’s a workshy bastard.’ The others sniggered into their beers, and the man grinned when he saw me blush.
‘Right, thank you.’ I turned for the door.
‘Never knew him to be so popular with the ladies,’ the man said to his friends.
‘What do you mean?’ I could not help my curiosity; I always was a jealous one. They found my interest amusing.
‘A widow came in here a while back and saw him and seemed to like the look of him. Took her back with him to that palace of his.’
An older man blew bubbles in his beer as he laughed.
‘A widow?’
The speaker nodded slowly as he looked me up and down. ‘Needed a bit of comforting, I expect. What’s it to you anyway?’
‘No. No, nothing. It’s nothing to me.’ I marched for the door and ignored him as he called, amidst a hail of laughter, if I too would not like to be comforted this afternoon.
I had reached Frank’s cottage before I realised it. I had walked down the street seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, my mind blazing with who that widow might have been, what she might have looked like, how she might have made eyes at my Frank, and where they might have made love in that poky little place where every surface was skimmed with smuts. I gasped at the pain in my lip as I bit open a healing cut.
It had been months since I had seen Frank. He was a man, and hot blooded, and who could really trust a man? But it had never once occurred to me that he might take a lover. How stupid was I? For this was a village where strangers passed through all the time, the ideal place for indiscretions. How many might there have been, in all his years of living here, with me miles away making money for the both of us?
With my mind so full of fear and hatred and jealousy – and hope, for there was always a fleck of hope that the man at the inn had been nothing but a teaser – I had forgotten to plan what I would do with Luella. I reached the back door of the cottage and was about to enter when I heard a snatch of a conversation.
All fell silent as I opened the door. The kitchen was empty; they were in the other room. I could feel the buzzing of an energy and did not want to see what awaited me, but I pushed myself forward.
Luella cowered at the far end of the room. Frank was nearest to me, glaring at her. Both of them faced me as I entered.
Frank had grown fatter since I’d last seen him, and his beard was longer than it had been. His skin had bro
nzed with the summer sunshine, and the lines around his eyes appeared ingrained with soot, so dark were they. He held the hammer that I had seen lying outside the smithy, his knuckles white from gripping it so tightly.
‘Frank.’ I smiled as widely as I could, though it pained me. I ran for him and kissed his cheek. ‘This is Luella. She is a friend of mine from Stowmouth.’ He frowned at me as if awaiting further explanation. ‘We could not find you, so I went looking for you, and Luella stayed here. I hope you have not scared her.’
He dropped the hammer by his chair. ‘Sorry – Luella? That right?’
His voice seemed strange to me – it had been so long since I had heard it that I had imagined it different in his absence. His Cumbrian accent was thick, and in that instant, I saw him as something like an ape, too big and animalistic and uncivilised, but just as soon as the thought came to me, I crushed it, embarrassed by my own snobbery.
‘And you’re from Stowmouth an’ all?’ He sat on his seat and picked the muck from under his fingernails, acting oblivious, acting as if her name had not been branded on to his skull.
‘That’s right.’ Luella unfurled herself.
‘Sorry to have scared you, Luella, only I don’t get many visitors, and I thought you might’ve been coming to rob me.’
‘That’s all right.’ She stared intently at the grate so that she didn’t have to look at Frank. Perhaps her conscience was pricking her, for he had suddenly turned friendly and was smiling at her.
‘Would you like any tea? Bonnie, would your friend like some tea?’
Luella fiddled with the chain about her neck. She was losing her nerve; I could see it. It was one thing to murder a stranger, but to murder someone after you’d sipped tea with them?
‘Frank, could I speak with you outside?’
Both of them flicked their heads at me, but neither, not wanting to give up their secrets, objected when I led Frank into the yard and dragged him to the side of the house.
‘What are you doing here? Did you not get my note?’
‘I did, yes.’ He was leaning against the wall, smirking as he brushed a curl of hair behind my ear.
‘Then why are you not gone? I told you to wait on the beach for me.’
‘Bonnie, the girl wants me dead, I can see it plain as day. You’re too soft.’ His smirk fell. ‘We will stick to our plan.’
‘I … I can’t Frank. She is just a girl. She’s … She is Samuel’s daughter. I see him in her.’
‘So?’
‘I can’t, Frank. Not after everything he –’
‘He shouldn’t mean anything to you.’
‘He doesn’t. But …’
‘But what? What, Bonnie?’
‘She is just a girl! She is scared, and she is hurt, that’s all, but when she has healed, she’ll forget all about us. If we go now, go to America like we’ve always dreamed about, she’ll never find us.’
‘I’ll not be looking over my shoulder forever.’
‘But you will have her death on your conscience. You are not a murderer, Frank.’
‘No, I’m not.’ He spat the words. I felt them stab into me.
The air shifted between us, grew taut. I backed away from him.
‘The men at the inn said you had a woman here not long ago,’ I said, trying to hurt him in return. ‘A widow.’
He laughed and became very interested in the scenery beyond me.
‘Is it true? You have been with other women?’
‘They think me a single man. Other rumours would spread if I didn’t take a girl now and again.’
He said it casually as if he had no idea of the force of the blow he had just delivered. I felt it in my gut, felt it knock the air out of me, and I staggered to the wall so that I did not fall to the ground. His attention remained fixed in the distance.
I glared at him and longed for the boy I had first seen when I was sixteen years old. The boy with the long limbs which never seemed under control, the boy who smiled when I smiled, the boy who held my hand and led me away into heaven with him.
‘Didn’t think you’d care anyway,’ he said. ‘Thought you’d be relieved, if anything.’
‘How could you?’
He rolled his eyes to the sky. ‘You’ve done the same to me.’
‘Everything I’ve ever done has been for both of us. I did not take pleasure in any of it, and you know it!’
He sniggered, and it was just like the men at the bar that it made me want to heave.
‘After all I have done for you. All the money I have made for you while you wait here, idle! They called you workshy, you know, at the inn. They called you workshy and lucky, and they were right. I have kept you, and you have grown fat and ugly on my work!’
‘On your thieving, you mean?’
‘Yes! You may laugh at me, Frank, for I surely am a fool. But I am more of a man than you have been these past few years.’
He had me by the throat before I knew it and hissed at me so that his spit flecked my face. ‘I’ve been waiting, as you told me to. I’ve been ready, Bonnie. I could have gone years ago.’
‘Then why didn’t you? I know. Because you want as much money from me as you can get.’
‘It is you who likes living like a lady, Bonnie! I would have been in America with you now if you’d had the guts to start afresh when we said we would. Do not blame me for your cowardice and greed. And do not speak to me like I am not your husband!’
After a shove, he let go of me, and I felt all the love between us dissipate into the air. This was why we lived so far apart: because we could no longer bear each other. Both of us loved the people we used to be before Bridgefield; neither of us could stand what we had become. We were stuck together not because of love, but because of our crimes.
He threw his head back, and his chest rose as he breathed in long and slow. ‘We will stick to our plan.’
‘I won’t do it, Frank.’
‘Then I shall tell her what really happened that night. Is that what you want?’
His scowling face blurred in my vision. I blinked, and a tear fell over my cheek. I shook my head.
‘Then go and boil the kettle. Make us tea before she starts to suspect anything.’
I did as he said, shivering as he followed me inside.
‘Tea, Luella?’ I set the kettle over the fire again and arranged the cups again, though now my hands would not cease their shaking. Frank leaned against the back door watching me.
‘Put my case in the bedroom will you, dear?’
Reluctantly, he took my bag from where it had been lying on the kitchen floor and passed Luella at the entrance to the bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them hesitate beside each other.
I made myself busy, tidying things that were already tidy. I wiped the top of the table, feeling crumbs under my hands that I had not seen before. I threw out the old tea leaves from the pot. I washed the sink clean of coal smears.
‘What is that tune?’ Luella said.
I was so on edge that I hadn’t realised I’d been humming. ‘Oh, just something my mother used to sing.’
‘My ma too.’
Our eyes met. Suddenly, it was as if there was a gaping chasm between us; we were both too far gone in our plans to save each other, but oh, how we wished we could have stopped everything right then! Tears stung my eyes as I struggled to smile.
‘Do you know the words?’
‘It’s about a baby,’ Luella said. ‘Rock a bye baby on the treetop …’
The image of my mother peering over me, a bottle of gin and a spoon in her hand to shut me up, her lips forming those words which were laced with a hidden threat … I couldn’t bear to hear any more.
‘Funny how you forget the details of things,’ I said, cutting her off.
The moment between us was lost. The kettle’s spout was steaming.
‘Time for tea.’
I felt the heat of her through my dress as she watched me pour. Frank was somewhere behind us in one
of the other rooms though I was aware that he could sneak up on anybody easily.
‘Where’s your flask?’ Luella whispered. Her white fingers fluttered to a cup, then back to her chest.
‘In my case.’
‘Go and get it then.’
Trying to keep my footsteps light and regular, I made my way to the bedroom. Frank was not there; he must have been in the front room. My case lay on the bed, unopened, and my fingers were so stiff that it was a task to undo the clasps, and as one flicked open, it cut my flesh. I did not feel the pain of it, only saw the slice start to seep with red until it was as if there was a rosehip at the end of my finger. I watched it grow and grow until the weight of it was too much, and it fell off my finger and dropped onto Miss Grey’s silver salter. The splatter of blood shocked me. I sucked at my wound and quickly grabbed the flask without another glance at all the stolen goods amidst my silk dresses.
In the kitchen, Luella stared at the three cups. A raindrop crashed into the window and startled us both, and for a moment we watched as water fell as big as buttons from the sky.
‘This is yours.’ Luella moved the cup that I had drunk from before nearer to me. ‘Which one for Frank?’
The other two were clean; Luella had not drunk any tea earlier. Both were quite similar in appearance with blue paintwork that had once looked dainty and grand but had faded from so much use. I pointed at the one on the right and handed her the flask.
She opened it slowly as if death would spring out and take her if she disturbed it too much. The arsenic came out the same colour as the tea and mixed well. She sniffed it and gestured that I do the same. No one would ever have known it was poison.
‘Half a cup won’t be enough,’ I said, though I didn’t know why I was bothering; the amount would surely end a small girl like Luella, which was the point. My mouth was running away, trying to fill the silence in my panic. ‘He’d need all of it to kill him.’
Convenient Women Collection Page 9