The Key to Hiding

by Wendy Reakes

  The Key to Hiding

  First published in 2018 in Great Britain.

  Copyright©thekeytohidingwendyreakes2018

  The moral right of Wendy Reakes to be identified as

  the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

  the copyright, designs and patents acts of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this publication

  may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

  in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the author and copyright owner.

  ISBN: 9781729362273

  Imprint: Independently published

  WendyReakes.com

  For Jake

  Tom and Charlotte

  1897

  It began when she ran like the wind from home, as rain pelted her aching body and silver daggers of lightning streaked across the sky. Normally, she liked to run just for the pleasure of it since she always thought there was nothing more exhilarating than stretching her legs and racing until they tingled red. In those days, when her brother caught her taking a good sprint in the nearby field, he’d shout ‘Watch out for the snakes, Marley,’ but she’d just laugh, and say, ‘Those little vipers won’t catch me,’ chucking back his words as if he’d held a bat in his hand.

  The night Marley ran away had nothing to do with pleasure, especially when nettles stung her calves and a rash dappled her skin, and bruises covered her like spots of spilled paint. The bruises weren’t from the running. They were from something else. And they were fresh.

  If in the future she ever saw fit to look back on that night, it wouldn’t be the hurt she felt, nor the terror of her plight; it would be her shoes she’d always remember. They weren’t up to much. They were the only pair she owned and despite her growing toes making them stretch and groan, they had nursed the soles of her bare feet up until she was fifteen. That’s how old she was then. Just fifteen. Quite old not to be married.

  That night, even though her heart had threatened to burst from her chest, and despite her recent trauma, it was strange how she’d still taken the time to ponder losing those raggedy old things. After they’d fallen from her feet, her head swung about to look back at the empty track behind her. In a state of sheer panic, a thought got stuck in her head, what if they found the shoes? They would guess where she’d gone and then all that dodging, and ducking would have been a waste of time. There was nothing else for it. She had to go back and find the blighters.

  She’d gained a bit of ground since she could run faster than anyone she knew, so with a twist of her body, looking as if her head was going to get there before her legs arrived, she sprinted back along the track carved through the long grass only seconds before. There they were, abandoned by her feet but still together as if they couldn’t bear to be apart. She rushed to gather them up and held them in her hands as she kept on running.

  She wished she could have said the whole saga was uneventful other than the need to escape and find refuge, but as her canniness overtook her desire to hide, she changed direction and ran for a quarter of a mile past Whatley Waterfall, towards the river and nowhere near the destination she’d first planned.

  Panting like a runaway steam train, as if her lungs were going to burn and expel black smoke, she came to a stop at Mells’ river and stood on the bank. Before she threw in the ruined shoes, never to be seen again, she imagined herself as a captain of a ship, sliding a member of the crew over the side. A burial at sea for those blasted shoes.

  She held no remorse for her disrespectful analogy, although she did happen a moment to pray that God wouldn’t hold it against her in the future…wherever she might be. That moment, just as she threw them into a smoothly curdling current, God must have heard her blasphemous thoughts because right then, he sent a lightning bolt and split a tree in two, making the branches lean over the water, looking as if their wooden fingers were reaching out to catch the castaways as they floated on by.

  Getting so close to lightning shook her up good, but since time wasn’t on her side and while God’s wrath had served to punish her, defiantly, she thought nothing more of it when she glanced back to see the shoes sail away to a destination of their own. Without further ado, she kicked up her heels in the terror of the night and she went once more in the direction she had sought before those dastardly shoes had threatened to reveal her whereabouts.

  Finally, after she had disposed of the evidence, she knew she could take her plans and run with them, and never again would she look back; not for shoes, not for snakes, not for splitting trees and certainly not for shiver-making storms.

  Chapter 1

  the day had started out well. It was the season when the village hosted the annual fair down at Cobblers Warf on the outskirts of Mells. They were in September, but the summer was hanging on with no sign of abating. Everyone said that was what made the fair such a good one that year; they had the weather.

  Since she’d turned ten and every year after that, Marley and Mrs. Franklin from the pub, sold jams and cakes from a small trestle table, set up near the old barn. Inside, serving ale, her husband, Mister Franklin, kept his kegs in a row on the grass with the intention of serving beer all day long. Madge had encouraged Marley to start making her jams early in the year so that she could build up a good stock ready for the fair. One recipe came from the blackberries she’d collected in the lane leading up to the farm. She always got there in good time, and early too, just so she could get a good couple of baskets full. She collected the plums from the orchard along Hawthorns Way. The owner let her pick up the bruised fruit from the ground after the collecting had been finished. Each time she came away with a hitched-up skirt full, enough to make many jars.

  That year, she had the benefit of a bit of nous about her because she’d decided in the Spring to make it her goal to prepare a tomato and vinegar compote. There were always cheap soft tomatoes to be had in the market every Thursday so once she got her hands on a pound or two, she made up the recipe and filled Mr. Franklin’s empty stout bottles. Mrs Franklin mentioned that she thought her idea was right queer, but after she’d made some nice labels using the red ink her brother, Brent, had bought her, they looked good and fine when she arranged them on the table. Her sauce had garnered much interest and the lot had sold out by midday. Mrs. Franklin had been very impressed with her and said she should do the same thing next year. She called Marley resourceful and pioneering. She didn’t quite know what she’d meant by that. All she knew, was that her voice sounded like she was giving her a compliment so that was how she took it.

  In the afternoon, the fair was busy with folk from all around those parts. Music for dancing had been provided by a local troupe featuring a lively fiddler who tilted his head side to side and back and forth while tapping his foot on the grass. Just as Marley tapped her own foot concealed under her skirts, a voice came out of the blue, “Want to dance, then?”

  The young man held out his hand, coaxing her to accept his invitation. She smiled politely and shook her head. She’d never in her life waltzed before and she wasn’t about to start making a fool of herself now in front of a field full of folk.

  “Come on,” he urged with a wink.

  She’d never seen him before. He wasn’t from Mells, so he must surely be a local from somewhere else around those parts. He was dashing with wavy black hair and a long fringe falling across his eyes. He was tall and slim and had a smart moustache growing below a strong fine-looking nose. Marley shook her head once more, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He grabbed her hand and led her over to the barn where the dancing was going on in front. There, he twirled her around a g
ood ‘un until suddenly, everyone started clapping and shouting for him to go faster with her. She wasn’t too happy about the situation. To Marley, it seemed frivolous, dancing away when she still had her jams to sell. But then, without her knowing how it happened, she started laughing too and going along with it all. She must have looked she was having a fine old time, a right little trollop to her thinking, but truthfully, her head was still with her merchandise sitting on the table with no one to sell it.

  When the music stopped, the rake of a fellow released her but only after he’d pulled her into his arms and squeezed her tight. Now, she’d been hugged and squeezed by a few men; her brother for one and a relative or two, but certainly not by someone who she still hadn’t been introduced to, dashing as he was. She pushed him off and made her way through the crowd in the direction she’d been brought, and it was only by chance that she saw her uncle standing next to Mr Franklin and his drinking friends at the long table inside the barn. Her uncle was laughing. Watching her and laughing.

  One day when she was old and grey, she wondered if she will still think of that night as the most prominent life changing event she’d ever experienced? She liked to think it wouldn’t be, and that sometime in the future, she would have many more events resting on her mind, stirring happy memories. Not like that night, when the recollection of it made her want to wrap her arms about herself, hold her stomach tightly and curl into a ball in the corner of the room.

  By early evening the sun had sunk on the horizon and the gnats had come out to bite. The farmers were pushing their stock back along the fields to their farms and the stalls had all been packed away while the horses were untied and put out to graze in the opposite meadow. The out of towners had collected their carriages and carts and made their way back down the hill to the village out the other side along the main thoroughfare towards Frome. The revelry had continued for the residents outside the barn, where the locals had stayed, dancing and laughing and drinking. She could see some falling over after a glass of cider, and they were just the young ‘uns. The older folk were hardier, so they just kept on drinking and drinking until the lot of them were out of control by eight.

  That was when she decided to go home.

  Brent had left earlier with a pretty wench from the next village. He’d waved to Marley as he left, after he’d put the maid up on the seat of the cart and turned the horses towards Knapton’s Hill.

  Marley had long since sold her last jar of jam and she’d gone to Mrs. Franklin who’d taken her tuppence as rent for the stall. She told her she’d done a fair day’s work and that she should use the money she’d earned to buy a new pair of shoes. Marley smiled and said she would, but Mrs Franklin didn’t know she had other ideas for the profits. She’d been saving up for the past four-years and she had all of nine shillings collected in a jar under the dresser in uncle’s house. She’d be using it one day to make a living for herself. Maybe open a little shop in the village and sell the things she’d made. Tomato compote in brown bottles wouldn’t have been a bad idea, she reckoned.

  She went to see her uncle just before she left. He’d been propping up the bar with one arm, whilst he held a stone jar of liquor in his other hand. He swigged it when he saw her coming towards him and he nudged his pals who were falling around drunk like a pack of seal pups unable to find their balance. The laughter and gaiety had increased by then, out of control and potentially harmful. She didn’t know why she felt about it in that way. She just sensed it wasn’t the place a young unmarried girl should be.

  When her uncle put his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him, many notions popped into her head right at that time. The first was to ask herself why he’d done it, when, for all the time she could remember, he’d never laid a hand on her, not even to catch her when she’d fallen or to comfort her when she’d cried. The second notion she had was the smell of him, which wasn’t wholly unfamiliar, since many a time in the past, he’d reeled home drunk. She stood so close to him that his reeking whiskey breath made her want to turn her head and push him away violently and she wasn’t the violent type, so said her brother Brent.

  Her uncle’s friends had all laughed and egged him on. “That’s a fine wee lass you got there,” one of them had said with a Scottish accent. And another, “Time you got that young ‘un off your ‘ands ‘aint it?”

  Marley was offended by the banter, not because she hadn’t heard such lewd talk during her young years, but because she thought the conversation was not one for public exchange, and that ultimately, it certainly wasn’t in her best interest to have the matter debated in a make-shift pub so late at night.

  “Will you take me home now, uncle?” she murmured as quietly as she could, preventing the rest of them hearing her pleas. She would have considered making the journey down the road to the village on her own, but there was no light along the way and uncle had promised her a ride back in his friend’s cart, since Brent had taken off with theirs.

  “I ‘aint finished ‘ere yet, girl,” uncle slurred. “You can go and wait outside until I’m good and ready.”

  “No uncle,” Marley said in an unfamiliar demanding way. “I want to go home now.”

  She was sure both their faces looked startled at the same time, because he was as surprised as Marley when she’d raised her voice to him. “Well, look whose got some sass at last,” he said with a sly grimace on his lips. But then he gave her a look that demonstrated he’d take his belt to her if she carried on with her grizzling. That was enough for her to cower down and she thought she must surely be a timid young girl with no substance whatsoever. With that, she left that place and went outside into the clean air, which didn’t smell of stale hops and old tobacco.

  Marley wished she’d asked for a ride from someone else in the village, but she missed her chance of catching a lift on the last cart when that young rogue she’d danced with earlier went back to torment her.

  He asked her to dance once more but she stood firm and refused. Dancing wasn’t a passion of hers, so she opted to stand up for herself for the second time that night and said no. He laughed at her and said he didn’t know any girl who didn’t like dancing and that she was surely an odd sort. Then he called her stuck up and that if he had his way, he’d teach her a lesson or two. She saw him go into the barn then and while she looked passed the folks dancing about like fairies in a glade, through the doors, that young rake walked up to her uncle and spoke in his ear. They both laughed before uncle slapped him on the back and offered him a swig of his cup.

  Afterwards, there was no sign of that young man, and she was glad of it.

  Finally, when a half-an-hour had passed, and her uncle still hadn’t alighted from the barn, she decided to start walking back alone without any light to guide her apart from the moon which wasn’t that bright. A storm was brewing in the distance and she could smell the promise of rain. That would cool the heels of that lot still at the fair, she pondered as she walked. “Good job too.”

  The way ahead was darker, since the hedgerows and overhanging trees were bursting over the road and blocking the light from the sky. Marley wrapped her shawl about herself and felt the stones on the track in the road under her feet, beneath the thin soles of my shoes. Suddenly she felt a spurt of energy. She could run that road, she reckoned. She kicked up her heels and started to sprint until a few hundred yards along, where she stumbled in a pot hole and almost turned her ankle. That was the end of that. She slowed her pace after she concluded it was best to get back to the village in one piece.

  Just as she began to stroll again, she heard a moaning sound like an animal in pain. She stopped and strained her ears to listen for it again. ‘Arghhh!’

  There it was once more, coming from the side of the road above the grass verge. She inched closer and saw, flat on his back, the young man who’d dragged her up to dance only a couple of hours earlier.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, bending over to see more than the lower part of his body. “Hello. Are yo
u hurt?”

  He groaned in pain. “Aye, I am that.”

  She placed her body out of the way of the moonlight and allowed it to cast its light upon the lad’s prostrate form. He leaned onto his elbow and looked up at her, flicking the black fringe away from his eyes. Marley pulled her shawl further around her body to keep out the chill in the air and to stop him staring down the bodice of her dress. “Well, look who it is,” he said with a chuckle. “Here, help me up.” He raised his hand and she grasped his wrist as he grasped hers. Upright and staggering, he leaned over her and put his arm around her shoulder.

  “Oy,” she shouted, trying to push him off.

  His body tilted but then he fell back against her once more. “You don’t expect me to walk without a bit of help do you, lass?” He raised his leg. “It’s me foot it is. Gone and turned my ankle I reckon.”

  “Only girls turn their ankle,” she said, not really knowing if that were true or not.

  “Men too,” he laughed. “I’ve seen it ‘appen.”

  He grabbed her shoulder once more and leaned in for her to take his weight. “I can’t hold you.” He must surely have known she was slight and certainly not strong enough to hold a big clot like him.

  “I won’t put all my weight on you. Honest. I just need a bit of support to get down the end of the road and into the village.”

  She granted him that. What else could she do? She slipped her hand around his waist and together they stumbled forward taking slow staggered paces along the road towards home. “You’re not a villager,” she said. She knew that much were true. “Where are you from then?”

  “Out Frome way, but I’m staying at the inn tonight.”

  She had no more energy to talk. Holding him up was draining her of all the strength she had left. With his body draped over her, behind them, she heard hooves trotting fast along the lane coming their way. Thank heavens, she thought. That was probably her uncle and his friends coming to find her. Now she could get the young man up on the cart and let uncle take him back.