‘Thank you,’ she said, very quietly.
But he didn’t go upstairs to Toby’s room. He took his beer and went out through the kitchen, the utility room and finally the connecting door into the garage. It had enough space for two vehicles but at the moment there was just his van – an old blue transit with Feenan Electrical decalled in white down the sides – which for so many years had been his only truly private space. It didn’t just carry his tools and gear, it had a gas camping stove, a little 12-volt fridge and a couple of folding chairs, and some days when a job wasn’t taking quite as long as planned he’d take off for a couple of hours to somewhere green for a cup of tea and a bit of a think. He’d never had garage space before. Now that he did, he envisaged the blank brick walls racked with new kit, giving him space to convert the van into something with maybe a fold-out table or bunks that they could take on actual proper family holidays, like he should have been able to do when Toby was much younger. He felt the sucking vacuum of lost time and missed opportunities pulling at his gut, so to distract himself he got in the van’s cab and picked up the thing lying on the passenger seat – the thing that had been bothering him all day and making him ratty with Trish.
It was a smoke detector, its sleek silver-white plastic case looking like a movie model of a UFO. Its packaging declared that the HomeSafe3000+ Combined Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector was a ‘next-generation security device employing dual ionisation sensor technology and loud piezoelectric alarm to guard your family against the threat of fire and deadly CO fumes’. It was also, in Peter’s professional opinion, a mass-produced piece of Taiwanese crap which was about as much use as tits on a fish. It just about scraped EN14604 and EN50291, but some of the other sparks he’d spoken to had told him horror stories of how unreliable it was. One said he’d rather trust his family’s safety to a canary with a bad head cold.
And Dino Periccos, on-site supervisor of the electrics firm that Richard Nash had subcontracted to wire the houses of the Clegg Farm development, had four hundred of the bloody things that he wanted Peter to install.
One of the last things that Peter wanted to do was go over anyone’s head to their boss – it was a dick move guaranteed to lose an independent sparks like himself a lot of goodwill and future work. But he tried to imagine waking up to find his own home full of smoke (or worse, not waking up at all) and it didn’t leave him much choice but to take his concerns directly to Nash. After all, the Trust looked after its own, right?
Nash had refused to listen.
‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ he’d said, in apologetic tones that didn’t convince him one bit. ‘But it’s a budgetary issue. The costing has been finalised and there just isn’t any wiggle room. I’d love as much as the next man to fit these properties with top-of-the-range fixtures for everything but it just can’t be done.’
‘These aren’t luxury items, Richard,’ he protested. ‘They’re required by law.’
‘But these ones aren’t illegal, are they?’
‘No, but—’
‘Well then.’
Peter had paced Nash’s office in frustration, trying to find some way to make the man see reason. ‘But the cost difference is peanuts! You’re talking an extra twenty quid per unit for one that will do a decent job. That’s only eight thousand pounds on a development which must be costing a good couple of million.’
‘Yes, and where do you think all of that’s coming from? Not out of my back pocket, that’s for sure. Investors, Peter. Look, I’m going to tell you this in confidence because you’re a good man and I can trust you not to go spreading gossip, but the truth is that the budget of Clegg Farm is already in overspend, and the investors are breathing down my neck. I can’t justify tacking on a few thousand here for super-duper smoke detectors and a few thousand there for, I don’t know, dimmer switches or something. What if the plumbers all decide that they’d rather install swanky granite hand basins instead of the bog-standard ones? No pun intended.’ He chuckled a little and Peter could quite easily have punched him in the face right then and there. ‘The investors would have my guts for garters.’
‘A granite hand basin,’ Peter said with iron control, ‘isn’t going to kill someone if its alarm doesn’t go off. What happens when there’s a fire – because it will happen – and the detector fails and a family dies? How will your investors feel then?’
Nash’s complacent smile faded. ‘Listen, Peter, I don’t know how you and I have managed to get off on the wrong foot with each other after everything I’ve done for you so far, but just listen to yourself for a moment. Do you seriously think that I would knowingly put families’ lives at risk? Let’s talk about families, then, shall we? You remember how I told you that a proportion of the new development is being set aside for affordable housing?’
‘Yes? So?’
‘What do you think makes them affordable? Yes, we have a legal obligation to provide a certain proportion of cheap housing, but if the developer’s financial viability assessment shows that the profit for the landowner isn’t high enough at the end of the day they can simply walk away and sell those houses for prices way above what ordinary folk like you and me can afford.’
Nash’s office in the Manor House overlooked the emerald sward of the village green, with its church opposite and its surrounding parade of olde-worlde boutique shops, and its families strolling with pushchairs or parked in gleaming SUVs. Peter looked at it all and listened to Nash talk about himself as ‘ordinary folk’ and nearly laughed. ‘I’m glad you’re so passionate about it,’ Nash continued, ‘because it shows that you care, and I do too, I really do, but there simply is nothing I can do. Anyway, there’s absolutely no point in making wild speculations about… incidents like that.’
He could have walked away then. He really should have, but something in Nash’s arrogance made him want to see the man squirm, just once, just a bit. ‘People are entitled to speculate whatever they like, given the right information,’ he said carefully.
Nash took a long time before answering, measuring him up as if seeing him properly for the first time. ‘As a tradesman you’ll appreciate this analogy,’ he said. ‘Information, like any tool, can be dangerous to all concerned when used irresponsibly. Here’s a piece which I think you might be neglecting: the Trust looks after its own, as you know, and while your wife is a Trustee, you aren’t. We’ll see that she’s looked after regardless of whether or not you’re able to support her. Don’t be under any illusions about that.’
The threat was clear. Peter felt his temper rise at the sight of this smug arsehole acting like the lord of the manor chastising a wayward peasant. He did his best to hide it but it must have shown because Nash’s smirk widened a fraction.
‘Are you going to hit me, Peter?’ he asked. His tone was mild, even slightly surprised, but something danced in his eyes that gave Peter the impression that Nash would like nothing so much as for him to reach over the desk and take a swing. ‘I know you want to. I know you have a history of it. We were very thorough in our background checks on your family when assessing Patricia’s eligibility to be custodian of Stone Cottage, so I know about your police record. The assault charges. Please be assured that whatever happens to you – wherever you end up – your wife and son will continue to be looked after by the Trust.’
Seething with impotent rage, Peter bit his tongue and stalked from Nash’s office. Then he came home and discovered that his son was getting into fights at school, again, and his wife was hanging up crucifixes in the house, again, and it seemed to him that rather than this move to Haleswell being the opportunity for a new start, things were sliding irrevocably back into the past.
14
HESTER
MAY 1349
IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, AS THE PESTILENCE BURNED its way through her village, Hester would blame herself even more bitterly for running straight back to bed, telling herself that maybe if she had woken the household immediately the stranger would still have had the strength to walk an
d so could have been driven out. But as it was, by the time the family was waking he was so ill that he could not move, his throat bulging grotesquely with blackening lumps the size of plums. Nevertheless, he could not be left where he was and the Attlowes could not simply abandon their home.
‘We should take him to the Priory of St Thomas,’ suggested William Priour. ‘They will look after him there.’ He was a freeman farmer, one of a number of villagers who had gathered outside the Attlowes’ house upon hearing the news and now stood in a fearful knot at what they evidently believed to be a safe distance. Hester saw other good men amongst them, their normally affable faces lined with anxiety: John Hastynge, father of Agnes of the golden hair; Richard Colleson, the charcoal burner; Henry Clech, who had the best pear tree in the village.
‘The priory is in Birmingham, and that is nearly eight miles,’ pointed out her father. ‘Will you carry him yourself?’
‘A cart, then,’ insisted Priour.
‘And who will pull it? Who will let their cart be used for such a purpose? And if he should die on the way, how shall he receive his last rites? How shall he be buried?’
‘Haleswell, then!’ Priour’s voice was becoming shrill with fear. ‘Take him to St Sebastian’s Well for healing! We can do nothing for him here! Think of our families!’ There were mutters of agreement from the group at this.
‘It would be quicker to send someone to bring here the water,’ said Hester’s father. ‘Easier for him, too.’
‘There is also this, which you are forgetting,’ put in Father Cuthbert, in tones of calm reason which none could ignore. ‘The Lord has sent this man to our village. A charge has been laid upon us and we must not fail this test of our faith. We must not be as the priest and the Levite who saw the wounded stranger and passed by on the other side, but rather we should be as the Good Samaritan who took care of him and healed his wounds. For how shall we expect charity in our own need, rendering none to others? The stranger will come with me to the Lord’s house, and I will tend to him.’
That being the word of their priest, backed by the decision of their reeve, the men of Clegeham had no choice but to acquiesce, and returned to their homes, though there was much muttering between them as they went.
Father Cuthbert blessed Dick and his son Henry with holy water from the spring at Haleswell, and they wrapped their faces around with cloth stuffed with crushed blackthorn blossom and cloves to protect them from the dying man’s pestilential vapours, and they carried him to the chapel where the priest could tend him and administer his last rites.
When her father beat her for disobeying her mother’s orders, he did it with his reeve’s stick rather than his hand, so that she knew he was only doing his duty and that there was no anger in it.
As elected reeve of the village, Dick Attlowe’s duties involved ensuring that each serf and villein worked his allotted share of the manor’s lands without shirking; he was accustomed to being obeyed and now turned that to his advantage, ordering work to continue as normal, and the villagers went about their daily business, albeit with a strained calm. They would not look at the church directly, casting only sidelong glances at it and giving it a wide berth – especially when the stranger started calling for water in the most piteous tones. As the morning wore on his pleas diminished into little more than gurgles, groans and occasional barking howls of agony, resembling more the sounds of an animal dying slowly in a trap.
There was some heated argument about the best way to treat him, for this was beyond the petty day-to-day injuries and illnesses with which they were familiar. Father Cuthbert avouched that prayer would sway the Lord’s mercy in his favour. Dick Attlowe fancied himself a more worldly man who had travelled as far as Warwick and spoken with men learned in physick, and insisted that the pestilence was caused by an imbalance of humours, for which evidence he pointed to the man’s raging fever.
‘It is obvious that there is too much blood in him,’ said her father. ‘If he is to stand a chance of survival he must be bled. We should send for Hordern the barber.’ A Haleswell man, Hordern was the closest any of the surrounding villages had to a physick. As well as trimming the beards of the great and good he set broken limbs, pulled teeth, and lanced boils. A boy was sent to run the mile to Haleswell and beg his help, and by mid-afternoon he had arrived: a stooped man with hooded eyes and a sour demeanour.
Hordern hesitated when he saw the sick man. ‘I was not told that he has the pestilence. I will not touch this man.’ He moved to leave, but Dick Attlowe arrested his attention with a silver penny which he held up, shining in the spring sunlight.
‘Will you touch this instead?’ he enquired. ‘Father,’ he said to Cuthbert. ‘Will you bless this man to protect him in his work?’
Father Cuthbert shook his head in disapproval. ‘I will take no part in this,’ he replied. ‘The Church expressly forbids any man of the cloth to participate in such a practice.’
‘Then pray for us, Father, if that is all you can do.’
So they removed the plague-stricken traveller back to the Attlowes’ barn, since Father Cuthbert would not have this in the church, and they bled him.
The barber of Haleswell bound a cord around his arm above the elbow so that the veins stood out on his forearm. Then he took a slender but wickedly pointed knife and, with his long pale fingers, pushed the blade lengthways into the largest blood vessel as the patient screamed and writhed against the hands that held him down. The jet of crimson which arced out of the wound was caught in a small bowl by her father with trembling hands, and a little slopped over the side. Hordern let it flow until the man’s struggles eased sufficiently for him to judge that some of the excess had been removed, then repeated the procedure on his other arm, so that his humours would be balanced in both sides of his body. Then, because the grotesque swellings in the man’s throat indicated that the worst of the excess had built up there, he was bled from the throat also. His wounds were treated with a mixture of clay, meadowsweet and treacle, and by the time the barber had finished Dick Attlowe was paler than the patient. Hordern was paid, and hurried from Clegeham without looking back.
‘Will he live, Father?’ asked Hester, looking at the patient lying as if dead amidst piles of bloodstained sacking.
‘That is in the hands of Father Cuthbert now,’ Attlowe replied, and went back out into the daylight on slightly tottery legs.
15
HISTORY LESSON
THAT MORNING, THE DEAD GIRL WALKED WITH TOBY to school.
He had to admit She was dead – quite apart from the fact that Krish obviously couldn’t see Her – in the broad light of day there was no way to pretend that it was just movie make-up. Even the most realistic prosthetic effects couldn’t hide the fact that fake flesh had to be built up on the actor’s own face, so that they always ended up looking slightly chunky and oversized. The slight figure of the girl walking calmly beside him was ravaged with marks of a terrible disease which had not just bloomed out of Her in sores and pustules, but eaten craters of infection and necrosis into Her flesh which could not be faked. He could see the deep tissues of Her muscles working as She walked, though he tried not to look at Her directly, partly because he was terrified of Her reaction but also because, well, staring was rude. The idea made him want to laugh, but he was afraid of how it would sound, and that he might not be able to stop. It was hard enough trying to keep up a conversation with Krish, who was walking on the other side of him and totally oblivious to the dead girl’s existence.
‘So I’m chasing this noob across the Plains of Pain, right?’ Krish was chattering away. ‘Because points multiplier decreases the longer they’re out of the Shell, yeah?’
‘Mm-hm.’ Toby knew how the game was played but Krish liked to explain everything anyway to prove that he knew what he was doing because he actually wasn’t all that good. Besides, Toby was slightly distracted. The girl’s fingers were black to the knuckle.
‘And he’s like, “You can’t do this! It’s soul
-farming! I’m reporting you!” And I’m like, “Bitch, how old are you, twelve? This is Hellscape! If you can’t handle it, go back to some baby game like Fortnite!”’
‘Yeah, absolutely.’ Toby watched from the corner of his eye as She walked right over a crisp packet without disturbing it, which meant that She wasn’t real and only in his head. Or actually dead and a ghost.
‘So then he finally ghosts and I stack him with the rest of my Flock—’
‘Hey listen,’ he interrupted. ‘Did you spend any of last night doing the history homework?’ Listening to Krish rattle on about a game involving soul-harvesting demons was just too weird. The girl gave a quiet little snigger and then wasn’t there anymore.
* * *
‘I was sorry to hear what Rajko did,’ said Maya on the way in to morning registration. She found Toby by the lockers as he was getting his books out for the morning. History, Chemistry, Maths. Nice, safe, ordinary lessons. He’d been keeping his head down on his way into the building because the last thing he needed to see right now was the dead girl standing in the corridor, so Maya caught him by surprise.
‘Oh! Yeah, right. Um, it was just a thing. No biggie.’
‘But he hurt you!’
‘Look, I don’t want to make a fuss.’
‘He was massively out of order. My mother has invited you to tea to apologise. Please say yes? If you don’t then she’ll be offended and I will beat you up.’
‘Put like that, how can I refuse?’
‘Good decision.’
She went off to join her friends further down the corridor who were looking back at him and whispering amongst themselves. He grabbed his books and shuffled off to registration. One thing about ghosts: at least they didn’t gossip.
* * *
‘Sir,’ said Toby, ‘if a person died from sores all over their body and huge lumps in their throat and black fingers, what would that be?’
Without looking up from his marking, Mr Willis replied, ‘A very unusual death for Joseph Stalin, which is what you’re supposed to be revising right now.’
The Plague Stones Page 11