‘And you don’t think the same?’
‘Not anymore.’ He were rubbing his chin again, and I had an awful notion that he were on the edge of saying something what would change everything. I thought about running, but I were too late. ‘I don’t love her, Luella. I haven’t loved her for years.’
‘Does she love you?’
‘Bonnie doesn’t love anything but money. She’s a cold-hearted bitch.’
Well, I weren’t going to argue. I’d just called her worse, and I didn’t even know her then.
‘I’ve been thinking today, while I’ve been working, and you’ve been in here, in my home.’ His lips pulled up into a little smile. ‘It’s been so nice having a woman here with me. It was never like that with Bonnie. Anyway,’ he said, and he shook his head as if he wished he hadn’t mentioned her name again, ‘what I wanted to say was, I was thinking, with you saying you never wanted to go back to your grandmother’s … what if you stayed with me?’
The thought of it repulsed me, but he were looking with big, sad eyes, so I just said, ‘Here?’
‘No, not here. She knows where we are here. We’ll go abroad. We’ll leave with all that’ – he nodded at the trunk – ‘and we’ll be gone before she knows it.’ He were getting all excited. He came before me, took my hands, and pulled on me, trying to make me see sense.
‘I can’t.’ I walked away from him, away from that vile trunk, and sat at the table. The sky outside were starting to look like cloudy water as the daylight faded. I heard his shoes scuffing on the tiles as he dragged his feet into the kitchen.
‘I think I … What I mean is, I like you, Luella.’
He’d known me less than a full day! Grandma had told me men was half stupid, their main sense coming from their privates, but I were still shocked at how quickly he could think himself in love.
Now, I’d never been too smart myself, never claimed to be. Pa used to get all huffy when he tried to teach me to read and write because I were always getting things mixed up. He’d do a tight smile and shut the book and say it were time for a biscuit, but I knew he just couldn’t bear to be beside me another moment. And, as I said, I’d not had any experience with boys or men. But I had a thought while I were sitting there, with my private parts still sore and reminding me that now I really were a woman and that my ma were dead and that I were all alone and only had myself to rely on, that it would do me no harm to keep Frank close, for a while at least.
‘Where might we go?’ I said.
My God, if he were a dog I think he’d’ve peed himself, he were that thrilled.
‘America. We can sail from Bristol and be in New York before autumn.’
‘What would we do?’
‘We wouldn’t do anything! We’d have servants to do it all. You’d have your own maid to wait on you, and I’d have a valet, and we’d have footmen going about in the finest outfits you could imagine.’
I made myself smile back at him though he were talking nonsense. ‘I’d like that.’
He let out a real long breath like he’d been holding it in for years. ‘We can go now – tomorrow! There’s nothing here for me. We’ll go at night so no one sees us. I know a man with a cart who can take the trunk and us for a payment, and we can be at the docks … we can be on the boat before the week is out!’
‘There’s something I must do before we go, Frank.’
He swallowed, and I could see he were trying not to lose his spirit. ‘All right.’
I gripped his hands, made my eyes nice and wide. ‘Will you help me?’
‘Of course, I will. What is it?’
‘I must kill Bonnie.’
I worried he’d turn on me, say that he’d been having me on and that he really did love Bonnie still, but he showed no qualms at my suggestions. He even added some of his own.
I were to claim I were looking for him and go on and on about killing him, and he knew that Bonnie couldn’t let me find him – and all her thieving – all by myself. Because, you see (he said this quite mutteringly), he thought she might love him after all and wouldn’t want to see harm done to him.
So I were to find her and act as if I knew all about her to scare her. I were to say I were looking for a man but couldn’t remember his name – that would be my reasoning for tracking her down. Then I were to say my intentions of killing him.
Frank would do his part, he assured me, and together we’d lure her to the cottage.
Now, tell the truth, I were not too sure of all this. I’d only just been sneering at Frank for claiming he loved me after only knowing me some hours, and there I were trusting him when I knew him to be a thief and a murderer’s accomplice! But, see, I didn’t have much other choice. The rage that were in me whenever I thought of Bonnie … I could have gone up in flames with it. I were blinded by it, in all honesty.
The light had started to bleed into the sky again when Frank kissed me and promised me the world. He took me to bed and had his way with me one last time. I didn’t flinch at the pain; I were too impatient to feel it. The soles of my feet was itching; I wanted to be on my way to Bonnie. She couldn’t be dead quick enough.
I watched Frank as he slept; I couldn’t rest for them final few hours. His mouth were open, and he were drooling as he snored beside me. He were a bit like Pa in looks, I realised as I studied him, what with his thick, dark hair and the general handsomeness of him, though Pa must have been smaller because he were only a bookkeeper, and never once did I see him use tradesmen’s tools or do any heavy lifting.
With this in my head, I couldn’t look at Frank no longer without feeling ill, so I got up and dressed. I woke him and wished him farewell and had to keep still as he kissed me with his morning breath and said how he wished I’d stay a little longer. I said I wished the same, but time were running away from us if we was to be in America by September. Then I patted his cheek and scarpered.
I walked a fair few miles before a coach came by, and then I sat as patiently as I could until the stop for Bridgefield, at which point I jumped off and hurried through the town. I didn’t take no notice of nobody, and before I knew it, I were back at Grandma’s cottage, and it were like I’d never been gone. I could have walked in and rolled up my sleeves and got on with the day’s work if Grandma hadn’t come flying out through the door like a goose, honking at me.
I ducked under her blows. She were still coming for me as I were tearing off my dress, and for a while I let her hit me, but then I’d had enough. I were down to my shimmy when she went for my head again, and I caught her arm and held her still as she struggled. I held her tighter and tighter until her hand started to turn red, and then I stared at her straight in the face and saw what I’d never seen in her before: fear.
I let go. Both of us was breathing hard, but we didn’t say nothing to each other. I pulled out Ma’s old dress what I’d folded neatly in my bag at the asylum, and put it over me. Grandma gasped. I think she might have crossed herself had she been Catholic. I understood why when I saw my reflection in the rusted old looking glass. I were the spit of Ma.
I turned away before my tears came and stalked out the bedroom. Near Grandma’s chair next to the fire were the flask she kept for night times. She’d made a new batch of medicine from the poppies in the garden some weeks previous, and I took off the lid and saw that the flask were almost full.
‘I’m taking this.’ I put it into my bag. She went to protest, but I give her such a stare that she backed off.
On the windowsill, there was a few more pennies since last time, but I left them. I had no need of them after Frank had give me a couple of pound notes – more of Bonnie’s fortune.
‘You won’t see me again,’ I said, as I looked round what I’d known to be my home for the last eight years. I were sure not an inch of me would miss it.
‘What nonsense you spouting, now?’
‘Ain’t nonsense. I ain’t never coming back, Grandma.’
The look of fear went over her again, and for a moment I a
lmost felt sorry for her, but then her face hardened into a sneer. ‘And where is it Lady Muck thinks she’s going?’
‘None of your business. From now on you can think me as dead as your daughter, and I’ll think the same of you.’
She flinched at that. Nothing so mean had come from my mouth before, at least, not about my own family, not outside of my own brain. I felt thrilled by it a bit and wanted to say something else what would sting her, because she’d stung me plenty times before now, but at the same time there were a burning in my cheeks what I knew to be shame, so I kept my mouth shut.
I marched away from Grandma and her cottage at the edge of the woods for the very last time that lovely summer afternoon. I didn’t look back once.
Chapter 10
Stowmouth were quite a nice town, though it had the smell of old fish blowing in the wind and there were gull shit everywhere. But it were big enough that no one took much notice of a stranger, and there was rooms to rent easily.
I found a friendly looking grocer as I were strolling through the streets. He had a belly what made him look like he were expecting and cheeks what was flushed. It turned out he had a room of his own to rent, and he showed me upstairs, pushing on the mattress to show that it were soft, opening his arms wide to show just how spacious it were, beckoning me to the window so that I might see what a nice view it had over the town and of the church not too far off. I took it without asking the price, and he brought me up a pot of tea as I settled in. I told him I’d be staying only a few nights at most, and then I wrote to Frank to tell him my address.
That first night, after going to the post office just a few doors down the street to send the letter, I couldn’t move from the chair by the window. I just stared at the church, for I knew that beyond it were Bonnie.
I imagined myself flying over the thatched roofs, over the tip of the spire, over the green, and crashing through one of her windows. I kept playing the flight over and over in my mind so that at one point it truly did feel as if there were air billowing underneath me. When I opened my eyes again, the sky outside were black – how the time had passed! I made myself go to bed and lie down so that I’d be thinking straight for the morning.
I must have slept a bit because a bang downstairs startled me, and I realised it were the grocer opening up for the day. I went downstairs and outside, saying a quick hello and that I’d slept like a baby, and then I went to the sea.
It were one of them perfect summer mornings. The sky were pale, pale blue. The beach had lovely golden sand as if it had been toasted. Fishing boats bobbed gently out on the calm waters.
I sat there for a few hours just looking at it all. To the left of me and out of the boundaries of the town, a red-faced cliff rose up out of the sea. The town were held in its shadow until the sun got higher up, and then the new buildings behind me twinkled and sparkled like shells polished by the waves.
The fishing boats came back in for the day, and when my backside had lost all its feeling, I went to a man selling cones of cockles and ate them as I wandered about.
I were putting it off, see. I’d come all this way and got myself all worked up, and now I were dreading seeing Bonnie. I fair on had to drag my own feet towards that church, where I had to lean on the stonework for a while before I could carry on over the green.
It were mid-afternoon by this point, and lots of ladies was out taking their afternoon strolls. They didn’t like the looks of me one bit, so I kept to the sides and tried to hide myself in the shade of the trees until I had a good view of Bonnie’s home.
It weren’t a bit like Mrs Campbell’s house. That one had been ramshackle and made of red brick, with bits of new rooms added on here and there over the years. Chimneys had stuck up all over the place, and barns and outbuildings had been dotted about haphazardly. It had dirt tracks all around it, and the grounds had been taken over by animals and the wild.
This house here were all very neat, like a box what’d been stretched skywards. It were painted bright white, and it hurt your eyes to look at it when the sun were full on it. It had a sharp set of black iron railings hemming it in, and the plants inside them railings was trimmed nice and smart. It didn’t look like the sort of place what kept animals.
I sat on one of the benches under a tree and waited for a sign of life. Not a single one came for ages. The church bell chimed half past two, then three, then half past. The wind picked up with each tolling of them bells, and the sound of the leaves rustling around me drowned out everything else. So bored I was, I took to watching the sky. Clouds had started to build, and they was scudding along in the wind so fast that they looked like sailing ships. It were as I were watching one white cloud go whipping along that something caught my eye: movement in one of the windows.
The angles made it so that I couldn’t get a good view from my bench. I had to walk to the middle of the green until I could see inside properly, and then I really were rooted to the spot.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting. A monster? But Bonnie had never looked like a monster. She were in a light grey gown covered with a little white apron, and she were in the window on the top floor. She held a dusting cloth in one hand and one of her mistress’s trinkets in the other. She hadn’t changed much in eight years, maybe a little plumper, maybe slightly softened with age. But her hair were still as dark as one of Mrs Campbell’s mahogany tables. Her skin were still the colour of coffee laced with cream. I would never have called her pretty. My ma were pretty, the prettiest girl in Bridgefield; Bonnie were more … striking. She weren’t the kind of woman you’d see every day. She were unusual in her beauty.
I were just noting how she’d changed or stayed the same and feeling all them funny feelings brewing up in me again, when blow me down but she didn’t just slip that little trinket what she’d been polishing into her apron pocket! She did it so casual and then picked up another trinket off the windowsill, dusted it, and put it back in its place as if she didn’t have something stolen in her pocket at all. She hadn’t changed one bit!
Suddenly, she stopped what she were doing and looked out the window and straight at me. I couldn’t move; I were a little girl again what had been caught with her fingers in the jam. A frown came on her face, she cocked her head to one side, and I thought she were going to remember me and do something dramatic, like wave at me or run outside to meet me, but then she stopped frowning and put her head back on straight, and her face went hard.
We stood looking at each other for a fair few moments. My stomach were bubbling – all them cockles rolling around. Part of me wanted to run for her and grab her by them dark locks and drag her out kicking and screaming. Part of me wanted to turn tail and flee. She were all too real. All of this were too real. I thought if I looked at her another moment I would be sick.
Then there were a bang from somewhere in the house what made my heart come into my mouth. I turned and I ran. When I were back in the safety of my rented room looking across at the church spire, God how I cursed myself for my own cowardice!
The next day I vowed I would not be so weak. After some hours on the beach, I marched all the way to Bonnie’s house before my feet had chance to stop.
I waited in the shade of a tree by the house railings, for it were a blasted hot day with no breeze to speak of. I scanned the windows, and then below me (there were a short flight of steps what led down to a narrow yard and a basement area), in what I assumed must have been the scullery, I saw movement. I half wondered whether to make a dash for it because I didn’t think Bonnie would lower herself so much as to be working in the kitchens, but then a door opened, and she were walking towards me before I knew it.
She came right up to me, bold as anything, and folded her arms across her chest, looking most displeased.
‘Bonnie Hearn?’ My voice were queer to my own ears, as if I’d been strangled. I coughed to try and make it strong again, but I were losing my nerve. I needed something; I needed Ma. I held the chain and thought of her and what this wo
man, who were standing in front of me so brazenly, had done to her, and my hands stopped trembling.
She asked who I were, but I weren’t ready to tell her just yet. It were enough to have come this far, and I needed to stay in control, so I told her she were to meet me in the tea room I’d found earlier that day.
I’d had an idea to get her on her own because it were dangerous for me to be seen with her by someone she knew. I thought a tea room in the town would be well enough; as I said, there was so many folks on holiday, so many strangers coming in and out the place, no one would take much notice of us in a tea room.
Bonnie started shaking her head, saying it weren’t possible. I were losing patience with her. If she’d kept on being so ignorant and up herself, I’d have surely throttled her, so I took a breath and said over her, ‘I know Miss Grey likes to sleep then, and I know how you fills your time when she does so.’
The threat seemed to work; it shut her up anyway. She smirked at me as if I were the most amusing thing she’d seen all day, and by God, it took some strength for me not to smack that smirk right off her face! I nodded and turned away before I did anything I’d regret.
The following afternoon, I stood by my window watching the town below, waiting for the three church bells. I had to grip the back of the chair to stop me fidgeting. I were feeling so sick, as if I were all wrung up inside like one of Grandma’s wet sheets when we squeezed the water out of it.
The bells chimed. Would she be at the tea room? She didn’t strike me as the sort what would be late for an appointment. Maybe she’d be sitting at a table right now, and here I were, biding my time.
All night and all morning I’d been mulling over the conversation I’d have with her. I’d played out imaginary scenarios: she’d suss me out straight away and call a policeman on me; she’d turn vicious and scald me with the teapot; she’d break down crying and admit to everything and hand herself over to justice. I’d thought of everything, and still I could not decide whether to take the handkerchief with me or not.
Convenient Women Collection Page 13