Chapter 13
With Nathan napping in his cot, Matt working on his allotment and Mrs Penney invited to Gorran Haven for tea with her brother and sister-in-law, Hannah took the opportunity to put her feet up. Taking off her apron, she carried a cup of coffee and the latest issue of Woman’s Weekly into the parlour and rested against the cushions on the black horsehair sofa. It was a comfortable room, one of the few carpeted parlours in the village; her wedding presents were added to Mrs Penney’s porcelain in the bow-fronted cabinet. She glanced at the regulator clock on the wall; it was two thirty, she could get an hour or two to herself.
Her eyes grew heavy and laying the magazine on the small bump of her tummy, she nestled down for a snooze.
She was out in Rufus Kittow’s tosher, the Wynne, with the other children many years ago. Daniel was rowing towards Hidden Beach, his muscular arms easing them through the grey unfriendly water as if he had the strength of twenty men. Edwin, Hannah’s toddler brother, and Eileen Gunn were floating dead in several inches of green putrid water in the bottom of the boat. They were no more than skeletons, with remnants of purple-blue stinking flesh hanging off them. Their eyes were intact and staring at Hannah, malevolently. Why had she let them die? they silently accused her. She was the oldest girl there, why hadn’t she stopped Daniel’s foolhardy scheme?
‘Forgive me,’ she cried over and over again, but her words were snatched away by the roaring wind that suddenly whipped and lashed about the boat, tossing it round and round as if it was a twig in a whirlpool. Then she saw that it was Daniel scouring the sea with his big rough hand that was making the waves leap and rise, making the boat spin and lurch until it tipped its cargo, dead and alive, into the enveloping water. Hannah gripped the upturned boat. Her elder brother Mitch, Fred Jose, Lizzie, Leah and Jowan were all trying to cling to her, shrieking in terror, ‘Don’t let us die, Hannah!’ In a sweat of fear she tried to grab them but they were dragged away, one by one, to their doom.
There was nothing she could do now but swim for the shore, try to save herself. Her arms and legs wouldn’t move, they were dead weights and she began to sink. A surge of high-pitched diabolical laughter drew her feverish eyes down into the inky-black depths. Daniel was down there, his mouth opened wide, twisted and cruel, laughing as if he was mad. ‘It’s your turn next, Hannah. I’m going to take you down with me, all the way down to the bottom, down, down, down…’
Hannah woke with a dreadful start, sweating and burning, gasping in air to calm her raging heart. The horror of the nightmare clung to her and, with painful clarity, as on Hidden Beach a few months ago, she had the horrible feeling that someone was watching her.
She sat up and turned her head towards the door, then clamped a hand to her mouth to hold back a scream. Daniel was sitting close to her in an armchair, his long arms resting on the upholstery, his face filled with the hate and desire for vengeance that always marked his face when their paths crossed. He was dressed in lightweight slacks and a pale blue open-neck shirt.
It was some moments before she could get any words past her dry throat and when they did emerge, they were little more than a nervous squeak. ‘What are you doing here? How dare you walk into my home.’
The smile on his face was false. ‘I’ve come to say exactly the same thing to you, Hannah, dear,’ he sneered. ‘Don’t ever set foot inside my house again.’
She struggled to her feet, the magazine hitting the carpet and making her blink nervously. She felt less intimidated standing up but only for a moment for he, too, rose and loomed over her. ‘Grace asked me to go there,’ she said hastily, ‘to help her with your little girl. She was desperate to know what to do about Melanie. Surely you can’t object to that. I didn’t want to go inside your house.’
‘I can’t stop her having who she likes in her blasted shop but she had no right to ask you into my house. I’ve made that plain to her now.’ Despite her own fears, Hannah felt a twinge of worry for Grace; had he beaten her? He leaned towards her. ‘Go there again for whatever reason and I’ll come and wreck this bloody place. Understand?’
She didn’t know what made her do it but suddenly she was gripping his arm. ‘Please, Danny, let’s stop this now. There’s no need for there to be a rift between us. We’re both married, have a child. We probably can’t be friends again but let’s put an end to all these bad feelings now. What do you say?’ She was looking up at him with the tender pleading eyes she’d used on him when they had been friends.
It seemed to drive him wild. He grabbed her arms. ‘Never! I’m going to make your life as wretched as I can.’
‘But why? Because I married Matt?’ His vicious grip hurt her and she felt she was suffocating. His mouth, open and threatening, was almost on top of hers, his blue eyes blazed.
He tightened his hold. ‘Because I love you, Hannah.’
His words made no sense to her. ‘But if you love me, Danny, why do you want to hurt me?’
‘Because I spent every damned moment in that stinking hellhole of a prison yearning for you, that’s why!’ he snarled. ‘No matter what I did I couldn’t get you out of my head. I had visions of everything we’d said and done together, how we’d kissed in Roscarrock’s stable and nearly made love in the coachman’s cottage.’ He was trembling now, as if some kind of raw malevolent energy had overtaken him, drained his reason, his humanity. ‘You used me, Hannah, and all because you weren’t sure of your feelings for Matt. You kept us both dangling on a string while you lived the life of a lady in the big house, you bloody bitch. Then you chose him, you jumped into his bed like a common whore! We’d been friends all our lives and when the police arrested me you scorned me in front of the whole sodding village. I want you to feel as lonely and as empty as I do.’
He must have felt the furious beating of her heart against his chest, heard her laboured breathing. Her shock and fear seemed to satisfy him. A wicked shadow flitted across his face, then his manner softened. Hannah didn’t trust the sudden change. She struggled but it was futile. ‘There is a way I could forgive you, Hannah,’ he breathed.
‘What do you mean?’
He looked deep into her soul. ‘You can leave Penney and go away with me.’
Tears coursed down her cheeks. She couldn’t lie to him, even if it cost her dearly. ‘I–I couldn’t do that, Danny. I love Matt. He and Nathan are my life.’
‘You can have me or nothing! I’ll take everything else away from you. I can hurt you, Hannah, in a way you’d never expect.’
She was petrified, certain he was about to rape her, hurt her cruelly. The world seemed to exist only around the two of them and the fact that Daniel had her totally in his power.
He let out a long, shuddering breath, as if he had made a decision, a judgement. Then suddenly he let her go and was gone, disappearing from the room like a wraith, leaving behind such a strong sense of malevolence that she felt it could yet reach out and destroy her.
Shaking violently, the taste of sour plums in her mouth, she stumbled to the kitchen for water. At the sink she swayed on her feet, her legs seemed to turn to pulp, her head buzzed. She had an overwhelming feeling she was going to be sick. Her vision blurred, blackness came in thick suffocating folds and she hit the floor with a resounding thud.
Matt found her half an hour later. ‘Hannah!’ He was alarmed but not scared at first as he rushed to her for she had fainted once while pregnant with Nathan. As he lifted her into his arms, his heart missed a beat in a long, sickening pause. He felt the unnatural heat emanating from her, he heard her forced, shallow breathing. She seemed to be in a deep coma, about to slip away from him for good. Nathan started crying upstairs but he did not hear his son. In a moment of blind panic, Matt screamed, ‘For God’s sake, someone please help me!’
* * *
Fred Jose had Hidden Beach all to himself. He had been fairly sure he would. On Sunday afternoons most of the adults took a well-earned nap and few children ventured here on the Sabbath; their superstitious paren
ts forbade it as it had been on a Sunday that the boating tragedy had occurred, and Brinley and his mates never came here.
Fred had brought a week’s copies of the Daily Mirror with him. He had been ogling the cartoon drawings of Jane, a scantily clad, curvaceous, leggy blonde, and he was now lying down with his head on an old rolled-up towel, his eyes closed, picturing himself as part of the mildly catastrophic adventures which always befell her just as she was dressing or undressing. There was a huge grin on his scrawny face.
‘What are you looking so pleased about, Jose? But then I suppose gawping at those pictures is the nearest you’ll ever get to having a proper woman.’
Fred nearly wet his faded serge trousers. He’d rather face the most perilous sea than Daniel Kittow. ‘I–I was j-just…’ he blubbered.
Daniel kicked the newspapers away; they caught on the sea breeze and scattered down the beach. ‘You’re leaving the village. Get on your feet.’
‘B-but I—’
Fred howled as Daniel hauled him to his feet and shook him violently. Daniel looked out of control, his colour high, eyes narrowed like a reptile’s.
‘A-all right, I’m g-going,’ Fred whimpered.
Daniel whipped him close, making Fred’s twisted collar cut into his neck. ‘Let me make myself clear, Jose. You’re going now, right this minute, and you’re never to come back. If I see you again I’ll kill you with my bare hands.’ He pushed Fred away so roughly the weaker man hit the sand in a heap. ‘Now get!’
‘But my things,’ Fred wept, his small work-scarred hands held out as he pleaded. ‘I haven’t got my clothes, no money.’
‘That’s right, Fred.’ Daniel kicked him viciously. ‘You’re going out the same way you made sure I did. Without even your dignity.’ He lashed out with his foot again and Fred scrabbled away. ‘Go before I drown you in the sea. It’s all you’re fit for. You’re not even a good fisherman,’ he taunted. ‘Your father won’t miss you, he’s ashamed of you. You should have drowned that day my grandfather’s tosher turned over.’
Sobbing like a stricken infant, Fred tore up the beach. Daniel chased him until he crashed through the gorse bushes, ripping his clothes and flesh. Only then did Daniel slow down and stop. He caught his breath and let his rage subside. It was some time before he made his way to an outcrop of rock where he sat down and lit a cigarette. His expression was merciless. His revenge had only just begun.
* * *
Dozing in her threadbare easy chair at her kitchen hearth, Prim was gradually awakened by a low tapping noise. At first she thought it was Josh tilting his box of draughts from side to side. He would do this over and over again, taking out the last black or white piece to slide down until he had an eventual winner. The clicking sounds sometimes drove Prim crazy but it kept Josh contentedly occupied for hours.
‘It’s not the boy, he went up bed t’sleep,’ she told herself, reluctantly dragging her plump body out of the chair. ‘’Tis someone at the door. Probably Mrs Jose forgot to buy in enough for tea again and wants to borne something.’ As Jeff never spent a second longer in her company than he absolutely had to and Josh was unable to hold a conversation, Prim, still trying to come to terms with the unnatural solitude caused by nearly all of her large brood having left home, had developed the comforting habit of talking to herself. The gentle knocking on the door persisted; Mrs Jose wouldn’t walk straight in on a Sunday, believing it was impolite. ‘I’ve got plenty in the cake tin,’ Prim mumbled wryly as she pulled down the latch on the back kitchen door.
The shape of a man filled the doorway, blocking out the sunlight ‘Oh, ’tis you, Brinley. Summin’ up?’ Prim patted her grey bun hoping it was tidy and wished she had taken off her apron.
Brinley had brilliantined his sparse hair down on his lumpy scalp. Prim had only seen him in working garb before but today his paunch was spread out like a huge lump of dough over a tight pair of pinstriped trousers. He tugged nervously at his stiff collar and navy blue tie which seemed to be threatening to cut off his air supply. He stuck out the tin mug in his thick hand. ‘Afternoon, Prim. Could ’ee lend me a cup of sugar?’
Like a shy maiden encountering an awkward youth, Prim asked him inside. She knew he didn’t really want any sugar and she was flattered, unnerved and excited by his arrival. She went to the built-in cupboard in the kitchen and took out the sugar packet. Taking the tin mug from Brinley, she filled it to the rim. ‘That should keep you going for a while,’ she said, her face on fire, patting her hair again.
‘Thanks, Prim. I’ll go up to the shop first thing tomorrow and reimburse you.’ Brinley felt pleased with the word ‘reimburse’. What else could he impress Prim with? ‘Merv ’n’ Eric are sleeping off a skinful. I didn’t go out last night.’
Prim already knew this. The antics of the Sunrise’s crew were discussed daily; today after chapel. Merv and Eric had drunk themselves stupid in the Ship Inn last night and had roamed through the streets loudly singing bawdy shanties until Miss Peters had poked her elfin head out of her bedroom window and emptied the contents of her chamberpot on them. Before the drunkards could gain retribution, Matt, John Jacobs and Hamlyn Innis, who were taking their turn at providing a watch for the village, had forced them on their way. Porthellis was hoping it was a good sign that the big man had stayed home.
Her shyness suddenly gone, deciding she might never get another chance, Prim whipped off her apron. ‘Jeff’s in the pub, with Maggie Curnow,’ she said meaningfully. ‘Josh is upstairs. He’ll sleep all afternoon.’
Brinley smiled at her, the same warm, loving smile that split his broad, brown-weathered face every time they met. Prim hadn’t been filled with desire for over thirty years but she burned with a sweet longing for the man who’d come courting her in her kitchen. Jeff had broken his marriage vows a thousand times. Surely the Lord would understand if she did the same, just this once.
She said tenderly, ‘Why don’t you put that mug of sugar down, Brinley?’
* * *
Grace was in the kitchen with Melanie, who trotted round after her everywhere she went, when Daniel returned home. ‘Oh, good, you’re just in time for tea, darling,’ she said cheerily, hoping he had recovered from the dark mood he’d been in since she had told him about asking for Hannah’s help. He had sworn at her over it last night and again this morning, pointedly ignoring Melanie who shrank away from him nervously whenever he came near her. He had barely looked at her when Grace had introduced him to his daughter this morning.
Muttering something unintelligible, Daniel lit a cigarette and stalked off to the dining room, seating himself at the head of the oval-shaped table already laid with Grace’s finest embroidered linen cloth, plates and cutlery. She made no mention of his smoking at the table while she put down plates of tiny sandwiches, scones, sausage rolls, a Victoria sponge, a bacon and egg flan and fancy biscuits. Melanie, dressed in a silk frock that hung off her skimpy frame, stayed in the kitchen until Grace brought her in with the last plate of food.
Grace lifted her on to a chair at the side of the table, fondled her head gently then sat down opposite Daniel.
‘Where’s the tea?’ he asked sulkily.
Grace frowned, perplexed. ‘This is the tea.’
‘I meant a cup of tea or are we only to have these bloody glasses of water?’
Grace had never been served a cup of tea at a meal table before. ‘I thought I’d make it after we’ve finished,’ she smiled, ‘if that’s all right.’
His answer was a snort and he helped himself to food. Melanie had surreptitiously taken a pink wafer biscuit off a plate and was nibbling it with her head down. Grace didn’t chide her. She must have fought for a share of food in the past and manners could be taught later. ‘Have a sandwich next, sweetheart,’ she said, putting a tongue triangle on the little girl’s plate.
Daniel picked up a piece of flan, chewed, swallowed, and stared at Melanie. He felt no emotion but he did not doubt she was his child; she resembled him too closely to b
e anybody else’s. He said to Grace, ‘Have you told her I’m her father?’
‘Not yet,’ Grace replied, pleased by his acknowledgement of Melanie’s existence and his paternity of her. ‘As she doesn’t speak I’m not sure she’d understand. Do you want her to call you Daddy?’
‘Father’s more usual around here,’ he said drily, ‘but I’m not fussy. She’s not backward, is she?’
‘Dr Makely doesn’t think so. It’s likely that she can speak but has been told to shut up so often she’s too afraid to. She’ll talk in her own good time when she’s learned to trust us.’ She turned to Melanie. ‘Do you want to go to the bathroom, sweetheart?’ Grace was proud that she had got Melanie’s ‘accidents’ down to about one a day. Melanie shook her red head and continued eating.
‘She knows how to tuck in,’ Daniel observed.
‘She should soon reach her proper weight. She likes storybooks,’ Grace said, cutting the Victoria sandwich while Melanie watched closely. ‘Would you like to read to her later?’
‘Christ,’ he swore irritably, doubly offending his wife.
When Grace went to the kitchen to make the pot of tea which would be drunk in the sitting room, he followed her there. Melanie climbed down off her chair and stayed by the table. She stuffed food into her mouth and into her pockets, then clutching as much as she could hold in her two little hands, she sneaked upstairs to hide some in her bedroom. She had been left alone in various homes for anything from a couple of hours to a few days before.
Grace was about to pick up the silver-plated tea tray when Daniel wound his arms round her from behind. He nuzzled her neck and she responded by leaning her head against his chest. ‘I’m glad you like Melanie, darling,’ she said.
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