It were all a mess as someone came about me and held my arms by my sides. My feet was still kicking at the man curled up in a ball, and I managed to get one last blow to the side of his head with my boot before I were bundled away.
My anger went almost as quick as it had come. I saw the scene – Bonnie shaking and staring at Paul, the landlady fussing over her and stroking her like she were a spooked mare, the men from the pub muttering amongst themselves and frowning at me.
I were breathless. My pulse beat against my stays. My knuckles was all red, and I winced as I flexed my hand.
The landlady led Bonnie inside and I followed. The inn were empty; all the men was out there. The landlady took Bonnie up and told me to get a bottle of wine, and as I went behind the counter, I heard the men shouting at Paul Meadows and the sharp smack of a man’s hand against another man’s face.
I took the liberty of pouring myself a measure of rum and downing it in one while I were all alone. The strength of it brought me back to my senses.
‘She’s waiting for you,’ the landlady said as she came downstairs. She weren’t as nice to me as she were to Bonnie and looked me up and down like I weren’t natural. I were too tired to care what she thought of me. I shoved past her with the bottle of wine in my hand.
Bonnie were sat on the bed, her eyes wide and wet. She were scared and needed comforting, and though it were the last thing I wanted to do, I couldn’t just ignore her.
‘Did he get to you? Properly?’ I asked, because Bonnie had thanked me, and I were feeling a bit guilty; I’d only beaten him off because he’d reminded me of the hangman, after all.
She said she were fine, though it were obvious she weren’t. It were like she couldn’t move, and to save time and having to talk, I went to help her out of her dress. I think she thought I were going to strangle her or something because she went still, and I knew by then that when she went real still it meant she were frightened, but she started to relax by the time all her hair were out of its pins and her dress were off.
And then she were just stood there in her shimmy. I took the chance to look at her properly. The shape of her. The smoothness of her skin. The length and gloss of her hair. The foreign look of her face what made her seem exotic. What had she got, that’s what I wanted to know? What had made her so special? What did she have what had made my pa blind to the rest of us?
I couldn’t find the answer. As I said, I were too tired. I stopped looking at her for fear I’d say what I were thinking out loud and went to get her nightgown out of her case. There were a whole bundle of stolen trinkets wrapped in her dresses, and I wouldn’t have given a single penny for any of them.
‘It was my mother’s husband,’ she went on to explain, not that I’d been wanting any explanation. It did surprise me though; she were too calm and toity to have been fiddled with like that as a child – so it seemed to me anyway. I didn’t think folk like her had that sort of thing happen to them.
‘Didn’t your ma stop him?’
‘Mother didn’t see what she didn’t want to.’
My ma had been the same, though the circumstances couldn’t have been more different.
I were just about to get into that horrible little pallet bed when Bonnie said I could come in with her. Well, I weren’t so boiling with rage and disgust that I were going to refuse a good soft mattress for the night, even if it meant lying next to the likes of her. I kept myself at arm’s length. My backside were half out the covers, but at least I were comfortable.
‘How did you meet Frank?’ I couldn’t help it; I’d always been nosy. The room were so quiet it were like it were only me and her in the whole world. I didn’t think it would matter to learn a bit about her.
She said about Frank being her stepfather’s apprentice and what-not, and I were getting real drowsy with tiredness, but my ears pricked up when she said, ‘Frank and I … we saved each other, you see. We got each other out of there.’
‘You loved him.’ You could hear it in her voice whenever she spoke of him, couldn’t miss it.
A tear fell from her eye before she swiped it away.
‘So much that it hurt.’
And that were the truth of it all, weren’t it? That’s why we was both here – because of love.
It seemed to me that there were only ever pain: my pa had hurt my ma; my ma had hurt me; Bonnie had hurt Pa and Ma and me all at the same time; and all of it because of love. The thought of it hit me and took the breath straight out my lungs.
‘I suppose love always hurts.’
She tried to do a runner on me the next morning. I had a panic when I saw her side of the bed were empty, and I almost cried with relief when I saw her hobbling off down the road. She couldn’t escape me that easy!
She did look a pathetic sight, with her dress hanging off her all floppy because she’d scarpered without her corset or her cage – how desperate she must’ve been to get away. She told me she were doing it for me and tried to give me a five-pound note so I could sail away to America without murder on my conscience.
For a moment, I thought about it. A part of me were getting a bit soft with her. A couple of times I’d found myself asking how her ankle were doing and thinking to myself whether or not she’d like something or other. I suppose it were just being so close with someone that you started to get used to them. Like I had been with Grandma; I’d hated her and at the same time I’d always made sure her tea weren’t too hot to burn her lips, and I’d taken it on myself to cut the soap because I knew how stiff and swollen her knuckles got.
But I’d left Grandma with the last words that I wished her dead. And I’d known Bonnie less than a week, and most of that week I’d hated what I’d seen. And really, her plea for me to leave were only to save herself the hassle of having to deal with me, and I weren’t about to make her life easy.
So on we went.
The air were so heavy that day it were like fingers pushing down your eyelids; it forced you to sleep. I woke up feeling sick as the coach rattled along. I were disorientated and sticky, but as I looked out the window, things seemed familiar. We weren’t far off Bridgefield.
‘Want to call in? Tell them what you’re planning?’ Bonnie were in a mood with me because I hadn’t done what she’d wanted. She proper had a pout on her. ‘How old are you?’
I said I were eighteen, that I’d been ten when Pa had swung. For the first time since meeting, she asked what had happened to me afterwards.
Progress, I thought; perhaps she were feeling some guilt. But she ruined it when I told her about Grandma’s cottage, and she had the cheek to say it must be pretty in summer. Yes, pretty for a fool what don’t have to live there! Pretty for someone what don’t hate the very sight of it. I don’t think she heard the sarcasm dripping from my voice as I told her about the flowers.
She’d riled me, and I were taking it out on her best I could. I talked about tickling and if she thought men was only interested in that, and she said she didn’t think so, but she said it in an odd way. The subject were making her go funny. She’d started to bite her lip, and her face were all shiny with sweat.
‘Have you a handkerchief?’
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Surely now, with her all edgy and jumpy, the handkerchief would do it, would make her confess. I gave it to her, and she neatened it out, and then she saw it – the stitching. It were like my pa’s ghost had slapped her in the face. She didn’t half go white. I thought she’d start crying or screaming or do something at least, but she just stared at it and stayed silent.
‘He dropped it when he were being arrested,’ I said, trying to prompt her, but she kept quiet. ‘It were dirty from all the boots what trampled it, but we saved it.’
‘We?’ she said, and it were like someone had their hand round her throat and were squeezing hard.
‘Ma and me.’
She didn’t flinch when I mentioned my mother. She smoothed her fingers over the white cotton and the red letters like she wer
e in a trance. ‘It’s clean now.’
Grandma had boiled and starched it until it sparkled. Ma had cried for days after because all Pa’s scent had gone. Grandma told her to stop being so daft and to start looking for a new husband, one what’d marry the widow of a murderer and take on a petulant child what weren’t his own.
‘At least you have something to remember him by,’ Bonnie said and tried to smile.
I snatched the handkerchief out of her quivering hands. Still, she would not confess.
Yes, it were the perfect thing to remember my pa by; it showed exactly the type of man he were. I shoved it inside my bag so I didn’t have to look at it. I might have torn it to shreds otherwise.
Bonnie made us stop at another inn that day, saying she weren’t up to getting to Frank’s so soon. She were looking a bit green in the face. I didn’t know whether this were to do with seeing Frank again or doing what she’d been planning on doing to me. Though I made a face and rolled my eyes, if truth be told, I were starting to get a bit worried too.
I went outside so I didn’t have to watch her pick at her food. She’d changed over the days; she weren’t quite so calm and calculating. I could see some of her truthfulness coming through in the way she did certain things like bite her lip or stare too long at me with soft eyes. Maybe her conscience really were catching up with her, and it made me think of my own conscience.
I sat there with the cat curling round me and let the sun bake me. Were it really worth it? Killing her wouldn’t bring Ma or Pa back. It wouldn’t make my childhood any better than it had been. Nothing could be changed. Nothing would stop the ache in my eyes and my guts whenever I remembered I’d never feel Ma’s hand against my cheek again, nor hear her singing as she tended her favourite rose bush.
It were all too late.
Thinking like that were making my head hurt. I talked it over with the cat, but he didn’t have much to say to me. He got a bit fed up of me and clawed me and drew a little drop of blood, and I took that to mean he were telling me I’d have blood on my hands. Who knew cats could be so smart?
I watched the wisps of cloud amble along in the sky as the sun went lower. I thought of the times before, when it had been just Ma and Pa and me, and how happy we’d been. For the first time in years, the memories didn’t make me cry; they made me smile. I sat there, remembering, until my legs started needling and my arse had turned numb and the cat meowed at me, and then I went to find Bonnie.
The bar were empty and the landlord nowhere to be seen (I were going to tell him the cat wanted feeding). I poured a saucer of milk for the cat and stayed with him while he drank it, and then I too were feeling parched from all the sun, so I got myself some water and crept upstairs.
Bonnie’s door weren’t locked. On the chest, there were a pen and ink pot what I hadn’t noticed before, and as Bonnie were sleeping on top of the covers, I could make out the black splodges of ink on her right fingers. She lay with her head on the pillow and her hair spread out around her. As her chest rose and fell with each breath, her gold wedding band glinted in the light.
Her face weren’t peaceful though; she kept frowning, and the corners of her eyes was a bit wet, and then she started saying stuff. A lot of it weren’t clear, but I could make out some words like no and stop that and please and go. It weren’t a nice sight, tell the truth, and I had a sudden urge to wake her and kiss her forehead and tell her she were only dreaming, but then the cat jumped on the pillow beside her, and the movement roused her a little. When she didn’t wake, I nudged her arm.
‘You was talking,’ I said, because she looked alarmed to find me so close. She asked what she’d been saying, wondering, I imagined, whether she’d given anything of herself away.
‘He’s gone, the landlord. I can’t find him nowhere.’
Her gaze darted straight to her blackened fingers, and I knew that she must have sent him with a note of some kind to Frank; we was less than five miles from Ulstone. But I didn’t want the hassle of calling her out on it.
Instead, I couldn’t take my eyes off that gold ring on her chest. The gleam on it – how she must polish it! The simplicity of it – with most other things, she had a fancy for decoration. I wondered if she’d been holding on to it as she’d fallen asleep, as if it might have been a child’s soft blanket.
‘What’s it like to be in love, Bonnie?’
‘We talked about that yesterday.’ She returned my glass of water, what she’d drunk herself, to the table.
‘Love hurts, you said, and I can believe that. But there must be more. There must be joy. Why would anyone do it if there were no joy in it?’
It were a proper question – I weren’t asking it to rile her; I truly wanted to know. I wanted to know what love were like between a man and a woman because I’d never known it and couldn’t understand it. It seemed to cause such trouble and so many complications – sometimes it were even fatal – that I didn’t know why anyone would want to love at all. Better to feel nothing than feel so much pain.
‘There is joy.’ She turned towards me, smiling, and it were a proper smile, not like all her other smiles; it actually went into her eyes. ‘There is nothing better in the whole world than to love and be loved in return.’
I couldn’t vouch for that. The only thing I knew were that love made people do daft things, terrible things.
‘Love is when you’ll do anything for someone, ain’t it?’ Like what I were doing now for Ma. Like what Ma had done for Pa. ‘Like die for them.’ Or kill for them, but I didn’t say that.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘And what makes you love somebody?’
‘There is no logic to it.’
‘So we can love the wrong people? Like you loved Frank, and he were the wrong person?’
She scowled at me when I mentioned his name. Suddenly I wished to tell her what he were planning, that man what she loved the bones of, that man whose ring she polished and kept warm by her heart day and night. I wished to tell her that he were planning on doing her over and leaving the country with her money and a girl what she despised. I were building myself up to it as I were stroking the cat, and I promised that by the time I’d stroked all the way from the cat’s head to the tip of its tail, I would say it, but she said something else first.
‘I never knew my father.’
I’d lost my chance. She were staring through the window at the thin line of the sea on the horizon, and she weren’t thinking of Frank no more.
‘Not even his name,’ she carried on. ‘Hearn was the name of the man my mother married after I was born. For three years I was just Bonnie. All I know is that he came on a ship from some hot country, for my mother was as pale as you, and was gone on it again before the sun had risen.’
I wanted to tell her she were lucky to have never known him and the disappointment he’d no doubt bring, but really, when I thought about it properly, maybe she weren’t very lucky; maybe I were luckier to have known Pa for them lovely ten years, after all.
‘Do you think of him?’ I said.
‘Only when I look at the sea.’
‘You’d like to find him?’ Never before had I considered whether she’d had hopes and dreams for the future. The idea that she might were dreadful, knowing she’d never experience them.
‘What would be the point? I might not like what I find. Sometimes it’s better just to dream and leave it at that.’
I didn’t know if she were playing me, if she’d all of a sudden got the ability to read my mind, but she were doing a good job of making me think about things. Maybe it would be better just to dream of killing her and getting my revenge? Maybe we’d have all been so much better off if Pa had only dreamt of kissing her and had never actually done it.
‘Bonnie, I think you’re right. What you said before about being free. I should like to be free, Bonnie.’
I should have liked to have been free of all that pain and all that hate I’d felt for the last eight years. It were a weight what h
ad been hanging round me, and no matter how hard I shook, it wouldn’t ever come off.
She grabbed this notion with both hands and went on about how I should leave, take the money she’d offered, go and have a new life, find someone to love. She were getting a bit hysterical about it, and I knew then that she weren’t looking forward to killing me any more than I were looking forward to killing her.
But I couldn’t just let it go like that. If she’d have told me the truth I would have gone, swear it on that cat’s life (well, I weren’t going to swear it on my own seeing as mine didn’t mean nothing to me). I just wanted to hear it from her and know the truth so that it would all make sense. I wanted to know she were sorry for what she’d done and everything what had gone wrong since. I wanted to know that she’d felt some of the pain too.
If she’d have done that, I’d have gone.
But she didn’t.
Chapter 12
I’d waited around outside, pacing in and out of empty barns and talking to some farm dogs, wondering if I should go back to Bonnie and have it out with her, when I saw the landlord come running back. God, he were an ugly fellow, and bright red after tiring himself out. What had made him run so quick? What were he so eager to get back to? Bonnie, of course; I got sick just thinking of what she’d promised him and all the other promises she’d made to men like him.
So I walked to the beach. It were one of them empty sorts of places. There was no houses around, no promenades; it were just a great long stretch of sand, and the sea were far out. I sat in the dunes and played with the strands of grass and watched the sun set and the sky go from blue to navy to black. The moon were full and bright and shone over the landscape so that the water shimmered silver.
Then, in the darkness, I sobbed. I wept. I howled like a dog. There were no one around to hear me. I let everything go coursing out of me. I tore the grass out from its roots. I kicked the sand until my toes felt like they’d snapped. I cursed my pa. God, how I cursed him! I took the handkerchief out of my bag and spat on it and screwed it up under my shoe, and I were going to leave it there for the birds to shit on, but I just couldn’t. Crying, I shoved it back inside my bag.
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