by Jane Adams
Tinker, tailor, soldier sailor,
Rich man, poor man,
Beggarman, thief . . .
Over and over again until the petals were gone.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Beth was dreaming. She was walking in a field of flowers with the sun warm on her head and shoulders and birds singing in a blue sky. She felt content, at peace with the world and, in her dream, she knew that she was on her way to meet a friend. In her hands she carried a garland of flowers. The scent of them was so strong it seemed to surround her and engulf her senses. Perfume of rose and lavender and the honeysuckle her mother grew in the garden and others that she could not name.
The heat of the day was making her sleepy and the scent of flowers dulled her thoughts so that the man was standing right in front of her before she even realized that he was there.
She could feel his anger. It surrounded her as the scent of flowers had surrounded her only moments before. It reached out and filled her thoughts and she breathed it in like sour perfume. And then Beth saw another figure. A woman in long skirts, running across the fields and shouting at the man to get away.
Beth was more afraid than she could ever remember being in her life. The man’s anger flooded her thoughts, though when she looked at him his mouth moved but she could not make out the words. She thought she knew him, was certain that she knew him, but her mind refused to tell her who he was. He was only a tall figure, dressed in black with a touch of white fabric tied at the throat. And then, as she looked closer, she realized with shock that she did know this man. He was reaching out for her, his hand raised as though he meant to strike her down, and as she fell to her knees amongst the field of flowers, terrified of what this man would do, Beth looked up and recognized her father’s face.
* * *
Ray had spent the night at Sarah’s and didn’t get home until the Friday morning. There was a message from Mahoney on his answerphone suggesting they meet for lunch again the following day.
‘Call me if you can’t make it,’ George said. ‘Otherwise I’ll assume same time and place as last week.’
Ray was still standing beside the phone when it rang. It was Maggie.
‘I’ve been trying to get you since yesterday,’ she said, an edge of anxiety in her voice. ‘I’d have left a message but I didn’t know what to say.’
‘What’s wrong? Are the kids all right? Is John?’
‘Oh Lord, I’m making a right mess of this. Yes, we’re all fine, Ray. I’m sorry to impose but is there any chance of you calling round today, say around lunch time?’
‘Of course, but—’
‘Look, Ray, I’ve got to rush, there’s someone at the door. I’m about to have a coffee morning.’
‘Lovely,’ Ray sympathized. ‘I’ll be round about half one, two o’clock.’
‘Great,’ Maggie said. In the background Ray could hear the doorbell ring again.
He was tired. He wandered upstairs and lay down on top of the bed intending to rest for half an hour. Instead, it was nearly twelve when he awoke and he wasn’t certain then what it was that had disturbed him.
And then he saw her. The woman sitting on a stool he knew he didn’t have, looking into the mirror above the washstand and combing long brown hair into a neat tail before pinning it back at the nape of her neck.
Ray stared. He was oddly unafraid, but he was aware that the room had grown uncomfortably cold. She was singing to herself, he realized, singing or chanting something to a simple tune.
‘Kitty?’ Ray said.
The singing stopped and the woman half turned towards him before vanishing from his sight.
Part III
Chapter Twenty-nine
‘I don’t quite know how to put this,’ Maggie said. ‘But did you talk to the kids about Kitty?’
‘Why?’ he asked. He’d not mentioned his conversation with Beth to anyone, not knowing what to make of it.
‘Well, Beth brought a note home from her teacher yesterday. They were told to draw a picture of something they did with their family at the weekend and Beth drew this.’
She pulled a drawing from her bag and handed it to Ray.
‘Oh my God,’ he whispered, staring at the picture Beth had drawn. A gallows from which four corpses hung. A fire was lit beneath their feet and they were labelled in a careful, childish hand. Mummy, Daddy, Gareth and Beth. At the side of the picture looking up at the hanging figures stood a woman dressed in black and there were lines on her face, criss-crossing like scars.
* * *
‘We met the kids out of school,’ Ray told Sarah, ‘and I went in and talked to Beth’s teacher. It’s quite possible Beth overheard us talking and that it played on her mind. She’s only a little kid. I told her teacher what she said to me and she understands why I didn’t mention it to Maggie and John, though I think Maggie’s really pissed off at me for not telling her. The teacher said the best thing to do is not make any more fuss. See if Beth lets it drop too, she said that sometimes kids hear things but don’t realize what they’re hearing until later when something reminds them and they try to make sense of it.’
‘Sounds like a lot of psychological hooey to me.’
Ray smiled at her. ‘But I really didn’t think about talking to Maggie about what Beth said last Sunday. I assumed she’d just been listening and, well, you know what an imagination kids have. I wish I’d said something though, but she ran off happily enough to play with her dad and I thought making a big thing of it was not the right way.’
‘I think I’d have felt the same way,’ Sarah agreed. ‘It’s a very odd thing for a child to draw though, isn’t it? I really don’t know what to think, Ray, but I like Maggie and John and I’d hate to think this got in the way of us being friends.’
Ray nodded. He hoped he’d made peace with Maggie but it still worried him.
‘I saw her today, Sarah.’
‘Who?’
‘Kitty, at least, I think it was her, she had her back to me.’
‘You, seeing ghosts? No. That is something. What was she doing?’
‘Combing her hair. Sitting in my bedroom, looking into the mirror and combing her hair.’
‘A vain ghost.’
‘You believe me, don’t you?’
‘I believe you saw something. Hey, I thought you were the born-again sceptic.’
‘So did I. That’s not all, she was saying something, or chanting. A nursery rhyme or little song, something like that.’
‘Maybe she was a witch.’
‘You think it might have been a spell?’ Ray laughed. ‘Who knows. I wasn’t scared. The room was dead cold, but there was nothing frightening about her. It was just strange, I’m not used to being invaded, especially by ghosts who want to comb their hair in my bedroom.’
* * *
Ray met George Mahoney for lunch on Saturday. ‘I went to see Walters,’ he told Mahoney. ‘Asked him about the clipping.’
‘Any joy?’
Ray grinned. ‘You’re not surprised?’
‘I know you.’
‘No joy, he knew little and cared less. Not his problem. Halshaw’s moved though, do you know where?’
‘Up to Manchester, but right now he’s in the same boat as you’re about to be. Retirement due to ill health.’
‘Ill health? Halshaw? I never knew a fitter bugger.’
‘Stress,’ George Mahoney said, savouring the word.
Ray was incredulous. ‘Stress? Halshaw? My God, the man thrived on it. He never went after a woman unless she was married to someone twice his size. Never went after a perp unless the odds were way off. Halshaw loved all that glory stuff.’
‘The doctors said stress,’ George reiterated. He smiled. ‘You didn’t like him much, did you?’
‘Guy Halshaw? I didn’t dislike him. We were just of a different type. I thought him a good enough copper and he had the nerve to stick to his guns over that drugs business. Liking didn’t come into it.’ He frowned, calculating the time since the att
ack and Halshaw’s retirement. ‘Bit sudden, wasn’t it?’
‘There are rumours that he didn’t go quiet into that good night. That he was allowed to retire rather than face disciplinary proceedings.’
Ray frowned. ‘No, I can’t believe that. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t corrupt.’
‘The suggestion was that he was overzealous. That maybe the evidence wasn’t always there before Halshaw made an arrest. You said yourself he played a wide field when it came to running someone down.’
‘I didn’t mean that way, George. Look, Halshaw was like most of us. If he was certain someone was guilty he didn’t let a lack of evidence stand in his way. He kept on pushing till he had it.’
‘Or planted it if it couldn’t be found. I’m not making accusations, Ray, I’m just reporting what’s being said in the rumour market. And there’s another thing, I’ve asked a lot of questions this week, most of them the quiet sort of questions that no one notices but it turns out we aren’t the only ones with an interest.’
‘Oh?’
‘Not a lot I can tell you yet, Ray, and I’m sorry about that. But there’s an internal investigation going on.’
‘Into what?’
‘It’s more of into whom. Rumour says that someone was taking backhanders from Pierce. Halshaw was involved but it’s not clear how. And he wasn’t the only one.’
‘And I suppose that’s all you can tell me?’
‘I don’t know a lot more. Yet.’
Ray frowned, far from satisfied with George’s responses. ‘So, what’s the bottom line?’
‘You’re treading on toes, Ray,’ he said. ‘There are those who think you should butt out and retire quietly.’
Chapter Thirty
In the spring of 1643 Matthew wrote that he and his family had been forced to move within the city walls. Most of the property in the outlying area was demolished and the building of new defences had begun. Kitty had urged them to come to her, or to go to Edgemere where she had heard of a house to rent belonging to a friend of her father’s.
Emotions had begun to polarize and tales of atrocities had begun to filter back to the village. After Edgehill, there had been talk of a Royalist massacre of civilian women, who had been waiting by the baggage carts. Camp followers or soldiers’ wives, no one was certain. In his latest letter to her Jordan had spoken with horror of the battle of Hepdon Heath on 19 March, a week or so before. The King’s men had lost the battle, but not content with just a victory, Sir John Gell, the governor of Derby, had paraded the naked corpse of the Earl of Northampton around the city walls, demanding that all should come and see how God’s enemies perished.
These were lonely times for Kitty. The ease and regard with which she had once been accepted by the village was no longer there. An atmosphere of dread and sadness pervaded the place. Randall’s preaching had become more and more political and there seemed to her to be so little joy in his form of worship. He had even forbidden his congregation to sing the psalms.
To make it worse, Randall’s wife complained constantly of her. She corrupted the children, Martha Randall said. Taught them to think too highly of themselves and not respect their elders. And more forcefully now, she objected to Kitty’s presence at the birthing of infants and the sickbeds of men. Calling her corrupt and immodest. Many of those who had previously come openly to her for help now came in secret and by night.
She thought about returning to her father’s house.
The worst time so far came one cold March Sunday as she left the church. Edward Randall, his face stern, crossed the churchyard towards her, calling her name.
‘Mistress Hallam, I would speak with you.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘I have heard grave news of you. Accusations that I would have answered.’
Oh what now?, she thought. What was she supposed to have done?
‘The dolly. That idol I ordered from the church. I am told that you kept this thing. That you took it to your house and have it there still, though I ordered it destroyed.’
She nodded her head in acknowledgement, somewhat surprised that it had taken him this long to find out. ‘I have it, yes.’
‘Then you will give it to me now. God will not be mocked like this.’
You or God? she thought, but deemed it wisest to keep such thoughts to herself.
Randall walked with her to the cottage and pushed inside the door ahead, looking around as though he expected to see the straw dolly hanging there. ‘Well, mistress?’
‘Be patient, sir, I will fetch the thing.’
He watched her come back down the stairs carrying the woven straw in her hands then he snatched it from her and carried it out into the street. Most of the village had heard the exchange in the churchyard and, it seemed, most had followed to see how the argument turned out. They stood in silence as Randall came outside. They made no sound as he lifted the dolly into the air, displaying it like a trophy won in battle. And then he tore it between his hands, ripping and shredding the little idol until only wisps of straw remained, blowing in the chill March wind.
Chapter Thirty-one
Sunday and Ray was restless. Even Sarah’s presence couldn’t ease his mood. He was thinking of the previous Sunday, which they had spent with John and Maggie, and worrying in case this business with Beth had spoiled the chance of their friendship deepening. A man with no great history of relationships, Ray was beginning to realize that he liked having them and didn’t want this embryonic association to slip away.
‘Oh for goodness sake,’ Sarah exploded finally. ‘Get in the car and we’ll go over there. I’ll drive.’
‘What, uninvited?’
‘They’re friends. You’re allowed to call in and see friends.’
‘I suppose.’
Sarah drove, taking her little Fiat rather than Ray’s tank of a Volvo. Ray sat uncomfortably beside her. He was a bad passenger at the best of times and hated small cars, especially when driven by a female Stirling Moss. He knew better than to say so.
‘So,’ Sarah said. ‘George Mahoney thinks you’re stepping on toes?’
‘Looks that way. I’m going to talk to Jones’s widow.’
Sarah glanced at him, then gave her concentration back to taking a thirty-mile-an-hour bend at sixty-five. Ray flinched and closed his eyes.
‘Do you think she’ll see you?’ Sarah was asking.
‘I don’t see why not.’ If I survive that long Ray thought. ‘I’ll make out he was an informant of mine. Come to give condolences now I’ve heard.’ Jesus woman! Who taught you to drive?
‘Think she’ll buy that?’
‘Won’t know unless I try. You ever thought of taking up rallying?’
They arrived at John and Maggie’s about ten minutes earlier than if Ray had been driving. The children were playing in the front garden and greeted them with shouts before running in to tell their parents.
‘I couldn’t rest,’ Ray told Maggie. ‘Not knowing if you were still speaking to me.’
‘Oh, don’t be so soft,’ Maggie told him. ‘I’m not mad with you, Ray. I’m just a bit put out by it all.’
‘Is Beth OK now?’
‘Well . . .’ Maggie shook her head. ‘She seems fine, but she’s having these awful dreams. It’s not like her to have nightmares.’
‘What are they about?’ Sarah asked.
‘She dreams the house is burning and she can’t get out,’ John told her. ‘Then her hair catches fire and is burning her face. She woke up the other night screaming the place down and tearing at her hair trying to put out the flames.’
‘Do you think she heard us talking about the fire?’
‘I don’t remember that we did,’ John said. ‘Anyway, let’s be reasonable about this, she’s seen stuff on TV far worse than talking about a house fire. We watch the news. Talk about things that happen, no, it’s not that.’
Ray hesitated, then said, ‘She spoke to me about Kitty, you know that. Do you think it would help
if I had a chat with her now? I’m not good with kids, but . . .’
John and Maggie looked at one another. ‘I don’t see that it would do any harm,’ John said. ‘And it does seem to be something that you and Beth share. She likes you,’ he added. ‘And I can’t say that about many adults.’
Maggie nodded. ‘OK, do what you can. I’m really not mad at you, Ray, I’d just like to know what’s going on here.’
Beth was in the garden when Ray found her. He’d waited until Gareth had gone inside, lured by some favourite programme on satellite. Beth was playing on the swing.
‘Want me to push you?’
‘No, thanks. I’m feeling a bit sick actually. I’ve been swinging for ages.’
‘Ah.’ He found a place to sit down on what might be a rockery once the weeds were pulled out. ‘Your mum says you’re having nightmares,’ he said, feeling that coming straight to the point might be the best way.
Beth regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Do you get nightmares?’
He touched his face. ‘Yes, I do. And I’ll tell you something, they scare you just as much when you’re grown-up as when you’re a kid.’
She looked doubtful as though not certain whether to believe him. ‘Can I touch it?’ She pointed to his face.
‘Touch . . . ? Oh, sure. Why not?’
Beth slipped from the swing and touched his cheek lightly with her fingertips. She giggled. ‘It’s all smooth,’ she said, ‘and your whiskers are all clumpy.’
Ray nodded. ‘I have the devil’s own job shaving.’
Beth giggled again.
‘Sorry, maybe not the best way of putting it. I’m not used to children.’
‘You don’t have any?’
‘No. I don’t have any.’
Beth took herself back to the swing. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked.
‘I’m not certain, Beth. I’m not even sure I know what a ghost is.’ He paused, dredging a half-remembered theory from somewhere in the back of his mind. ‘There are some people who believe that what we call ghosts are sort of recordings. That buildings and wood and oh, all sorts of things, can record stuff that happened in that place a long time ago. A bit like recording your voice on tape.’