As She Left It

by Catriona McPherson

  “Whose outhouse?” Margaret said.

  “Mine,” said Mrs. Pickess. “And I chased him out. Margaret, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve prayed for forgiveness. He was hiding in there, and I chased him away. I had just given it all a coat of fresh emulsion and he’d gone in and scuffed it.”

  “Right!” said Opal. She put her hands against both sides of her head to stop the pounding. “He was covered in paint! You thought if they found him in my mum’s outhouse, they’d know he’d been in yours.”

  “Margaret, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Pickess said again.

  “How could they find him in your mother’s outhouse?” Margaret said.

  “Because that’s where he was,” said Zula. “That’s where he’s been all this time.”

  Opal nodded. “And because you believed that, you gave her the stuff to fill in the floor. And when she’d died you kept an eye on the place, didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t want bailiffs poking round,” said Zula.

  “And you tried to make sure I came back so that new people wouldn’t come and dig it up again.”

  “We’d have bought it if you hadn’t come.”

  “And you did it on the quiet so that no one would know you were involved. And you told me time and again that you would help if I ever started working on the place. Right? But can I ask you something? Why did you think he was in there?”

  “Because he was,” said Zula. “He is. Like Vonnie said. Nicola talked about it all the time. The kiddie in the outhouse. Locked in. ‘All the blood,’ she used to say.”

  “Oh, Lord, so she did,” said Mrs. Pickess, and she put her hands over her face and started rocking.

  Margaret was shaking now as if she was holding onto a pneumatic drill. Her heels rattled against the floor and her arms shook at her sides.

  “Craig,” she said. “In your mother’s yard? All this time? Little Craig?”

  “He isn’t,” said Opal firmly. “He never was.” Her head felt like a peeled egg, just a membrane holding it together and like it would burst any minute. “The kiddie in the outhouse with all the blood? That was me.”

  “Ladies?” One of the auxiliaries had been watching them from the nurses’ station. “Is everything okay? Are you feeling ill, love?” They all looked at her to see which one of them she was talking to.

  “Just upset,” said Zula. “Tired out.”

  “Do you want me to ask how your …” she ran out of words, looking round the four of them wondering what relation they could all possibly have in common.

  “Although Opal here needs to go and have a check for concussion, don’t you, my soul?”

  Opal put her hand up to the back of her head and felt the lump there. Then the auxiliary nurse did the same and her eyes widened.

  “You better had,” she said.

  “I’ll take her.” Frank was back, with four plastic cups of tea. “Save one of those for Mr. Kendal, eh?”

  But when they were on their way, walking through the corridors, following the painted lines that showed the route, Opal started arguing.

  “It’s not concussion,” she said. “It’s not my head, it’s my brain. Listen, can we just sit down and I’ll try to tell you?”

  So they got another two plastic cups of tea from another machine and sat on a windowsill on a long empty corridor and Opal tried to tell him: about Gene and George Gordon, about Friday night not Saturday morning, and the little boy who hid in vans and outhouses and got paint on himself, and the brandy and the concrete and the kiddie in the outhouse who wasn’t Craig Southgate at all—it was her, Opal Jones.

  “Only … God, I can’t explain it. I know it was me, but all I can remember is Robbie’s arm with the bluebird tattoos. I’ve been having nightmares about them.”

  “Who’s Robbie?” said Frank.

  “Craig’s dad. My mum’s boyfriend. But there’s something I’ve forgotten.” She shook her head, frustrated.

  “Hang on, love,” said Frank. “Are you saying Craig Southgate’s dad did something to you in your outhouse that you can’t remember? Or that he made you promise not to tell? You need to go to the police. They need to find that little boy’s body, for his mum and his granny’s sake, and if you know that his dad was the kind of man who’d—”

  “No, no, no,” said Opal. “That’s not right. It’s not what you think. Even Karen Reid said her ex-husband would never hurt Craig. Hurt any kid, really. She was so angry with me for even saying his name.”

  “So what is it that happened then?”

  “I can’t remember, but it wasn’t when I was tiny. It was just before I left and went to Whitby. I was twelve. It was a few years before Craig went missing. How can I not remember something that happened when I was a great big girl of twelve?”

  “A great big girl of twelve?” said Frank and there were tears in his eyes. “Opal, love, listen to yourself. What are you saying? My Charlie’s twelve, and she’s a baby.”

  “Can we go and see Norah?” Opal said. “I’m so sure if I talk to her, I’ll remember what it is I’ve been trying so hard to forget. I know I sound crazy. But Norah sounds crazy too half the time. I think she could help me.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  She was in the morning room, tucked up in her chair with the tray table pulled in front, watching her circus.

  “You!” she said. “And you too! Both together.”

  “Hiya, Norah,” Opal said. “Yes, both together today. And I bet you can’t guess where I’ve been since I was here earlier on. God, was that really today? It feels like a week ago.”

  “I’m not allowed to bet,” Norah said.

  “I’ve been down to St. Michael and All Angels,” Opal said. “I went to see Martin.”

  “Sorry,” said Norah. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  Frank shifted from foot to foot, and Opal knew what he was thinking. It was a long time ago, no way of knowing what really happened, and this sweet little thing would melt a heart of stone. But Opal had been a sweet little thing once too, and she wasn’t so easy to fool as him.

  “He died, didn’t he?” she said.

  “I haven’t got a brother,” said Norah.

  Opal signalled to Frank to move out of view behind the armchair and she moved too, leaned over the back and waited a moment or two while Norah watched the screen.

  “How did he die, Norah?” she said.

  “A rope,” Norah said.

  “Were you there?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Norah said. “I was only playing.”

  Opal heard Frank catch his breath, and she held her hand out to him to keep him quiet a little longer.

  “Is that why you went away?”

  “I didn’t go away,” Norah said. “Martin went away. And he never came back, ever again. I haven’t got a brother, I never had a brother, I don’t want a brother.”

  “But you were away when Father died, weren’t you?” Opal said.

  “They sent me away,” Norah said. “It was them.”

  Opal looked down at the top of her head, wondering what to ask next. There was no point in saying 1943 and 1945 to Norah, trying to talk about when Martin died and then her father. But it occurred to her that she didn’t know how old Norah was. If she could tie Father dying or Norah’s trip away from home to an age in her girlhood, maybe Norah would remember.

  “Was he your big brother or your little brother, Norah love?” she said.

  “Big,” said Norah. “Little. They sent me away when he was born.”

  Opal gripped the back of the armchair so tightly that her knuckles cracked.

  “Well, we’ll get off then,” she said. “Do you want anything? Cocoa again?”

  “Cocoa,” said Norah with her thumb in her mouth, and Opal beckoned to Frank to follow her as she crept away.

  “So,” he said in the kitchen, as the milk boiled. “She got sent away when the new baby came and twelve years later she got her own back by … what? Hanging him?”

  “Or tricking him into h
anging himself,” Opal said. “She’s no angel, little Norah. But you got the first bit wrong. She didn’t get sent away when Martin was born in 1929. She’d have been tiny herself then. She got sent away after he had died, when he was twelve, in 1941. She got sent away when her ‘little brother’ was born, when she was in her teens. She got sent away for her ‘little brother’ to be born. That’s how Norah can be an only child with nephews and nieces. That’s what Sarah’s dad found out in the family tree that made him stop looking.”

  Frank whistled long and slow between his teeth.

  “Norah is really Sarah’s granny? Finn and Charlie’s great-granny? Grandpa unknown. Father unnamed on the birth certificate, to the Fossett family’s eternal shame.”

  “Yup,” Opal said. “Looks like it. And now I’m going to take her this cup of cocoa and say goodbye. I don’t think I’ll be back again.”

  “And did you remember the thing you thought Norah would help you remember?” Frank said, when they were back in the van.

  “Yeah,” said Opal. “Part of it anyway. And my headache’s gone. I knew it wasn’t concussion.”

  “What was it?”

  “I did the same thing she did—no, scratch that! Sorry. But close enough. I said, at school in Whitby, that Michael, my half-brother, was my son. I told everyone. Told my guidance teacher, told the school chaplain that Steph and Dad had made me give him up and they’d adopted him and not told him who I really was. You would not believe the stink I caused. No wonder Steph hates me.” She shook her head in wonder at all she’d managed to forget.

  “Now why on earth would you do something like that?” Frank said.

  “Exactly. I’ve finally remembered. Norah helped me.” Frank swung the van round the corner of Mote Street. “But can we leave it for tonight?”

  “Gladly,” said Frank, parking. “I don’t think I could take any more.”

  Opal opened her door. “Any chance you could bunk off work tomorrow?” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Would you give me a lift to Whitby?”

  “What for?”

  “Tell you when we get there, if it goes the way I’m hoping.”

  “Yeah, all right,” said Frank, stepping down from the van and slamming the door. “Like you said—we’ve both had enough for today.”

  But there was just a little bit more. At the sound of the van door slamming, Sanjit had come out onto the pavement and was staring hard at Frank, with his fists clenched at his sides.

  “Oh no, Sanj, yeah,” said Opal. “I had that completely wrong.” She turned and smiled at Frank, but he backed away with his hands up.

  “Don’t tell me, “he said. “The hints are bad enough. I don’t want to know.”

  “Okay,” Sanjit said. “If you’re sure.” He turned round and called back into the house. “Opal Jones is here.”

  Sunil joined his son, squeezed his shoulder briefly, and then walked over towards Opal, putting out his hands and taking hers in them.

  “Zuleika called from the hospital twenty minutes ago,” he said, and he didn’t have to say any more.

  “Fishbo?” said Opal. “Oh, Mr. Fish! Oh, no.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  The front seat of a van was better than a bus on the country roads, and Opal was almost cheerful as they climbed up from Pickering to the high moor. As long as she only thought about little bits at a time, anyway, and that wasn’t easy.

  “Margaret says the funeral will probably be Friday,” she said. “Three days—not counting today—to learn the trumpet part for ‘Moon River.’ I should have brought one with me, practised on the journey.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” said Frank. “This is not a big space. Are you going to tell me the rest now?”

  Opal nodded. She owed him that much, but her hands were sweating and her mouth was full of water.

  “It’s all connected,” she said. “Everything’s joined to everything. You think you can keep things out of your head, if you concentrate hard. You think your brain’s in charge. And then Blammo! Like from nowhere, one little thread starts to fray, one little rock gets lifted, and the light shines in. That’s when you know it’s your blood that runs the show. Your bowels, you know? Your guts and your. … what do you call them? … your glands. When you’re shaking so hard you can’t talk and you’re breathing so fast you can’t think and all your … stories have … Pffffffff.” She lifted her hand from her mouth like blowing a dandelion away.

  “Tell me,” he said, in his gentle voice as the van rocked along. There wasn’t another car or house or sign of life in sight. The moor fog was coming down. “Start talking.”

  “Dunno where to start,” said Opal. She looked at her watch. “Dunno if there’s time.”

  “Make time,” said Frank. “Talk fast. Tell me now.”

  “Okay … Okay … Well, it’s all connected, see? That’s the main thing. I see that now. The mum and the dad and the boy and the girl.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “And the little old lady and the poor old man. The baby that’s lost and the baby that’s …” She took a big breath, swallowed, tried again. “They’re all the same.”

  “Start at the start and tell me it all,” he said. “Keep on talking right till the end.”

  “The start?”

  “When does it start?”

  “I suppose … I dunno.”

  “So … once a upon a time,” Frank said. The words made gooseflesh pop out on her arms.

  “No!” She shivered. No more stories. Time for truth now. “It’s … maybe a month ago.”

  “So …” he said, “once upon a month ago then.”

  She turned away from him and looked out at the fog drifting towards them. Beautiful, ghostly fog. Bloody cold too and murder on your throat. “Three months ago really,” she said. “I missed my mum’s funeral.”

  “Margaret told me,” said Frank. “As part of the general introduction to Mote Street, when she came to offer to keep a hold of my key.”

  “Good old Margaret,” Opal said. “Yeah, I missed it. I had a hospital appointment. I didn’t know if it could get it put back and I was scared to ask.”

  “Is that why we’re going to Whitby now?” said Frank. “Have you got another one?”

  “No,” Opal said. “But it’s sort of related in a roundabout way.” She took a deep breath and turned so that she couldn’t see him. “I was having an operation,” she said. “A procedure.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A termination, as they called it. Except who the hell calls it that? I was having an abortion. And I couldn’t put it off, because you’ve no idea what it was like trying to get the appointment for it in the first place. All the interviews and counselling and leaflets.”

  “It’s just to make sure you’re sure.”

  “Well, I was sure. Baz—he was my boyfriend—was off as soon as I told him. Which was a big surprise—never saw that coming at all. I’d imagined … had a name picked and everything. If it was a girl, leastways. Charlotte. But … stupid cow, as it turned out. Baz-shaped hole in the wall from him leaving so fast, you know? So I tried to get a loan of a caravan so I’d have some peace and quiet to think it through, but that didn’t happen either, so I ended up in this bedsit and there was no way you could have had a baby … and anyway, the day I was booked in was the day that Nicola got cremated. So I missed it. So there you go.”

  Frank said nothing. They rolled on northwards along the moor, dry and brown from the weeks of no rain, the road kicking up dust behind them like something out of a cowboy film.

  “What’s that got to do with today, though, love?”

  “I’m still ‘love’,” said Opal. But she still kept her face turned away from him as she went on. “It started something off. I went back to Leeds because I hated the bedsit and I started remembering stuff I’d totally forgotten. Things started joining up, you know. Then I found out about Fishbo missing his family and I found Norah’s notes in her bed—Martin’s notes in
his bed, as it turned out—and, of course, I heard about Little Craig and … I really needed a distraction from the thing I didn’t want to remember—so I started meddling, but it only made it worse, and then that song started …”

  “The outhouse song?”

  “And the nightmares started …”

  “About the tattoos, is this?”

  “And the thing I didn’t want to remember got mixed up with the thing I couldn’t stand thinking about until last night, when it all burst like a great big toxic boil.”

  “Lovely,” said Frank.

  “Sorry,” Opal said.

  “And what was it then?”

  “In the boil? Sorry. It was what happened in the outhouse. I thought it was intuition telling me Craig was buried there, but it was a memory, like I said. It was about being pregnant.”

  “You mean, like the hormones made you remember … What do you mean?”

  “The first time I was pregnant,” Opal said. “Before. I was twelve.”

  “Twelve?” Frank was staring straight ahead, but his jaw had dropped open.

  “And it wasn’t my mum’s fault or my dad’s, before you start. It just happened.”

  “My Charlie’s twelve! How can you say it wasn’t your mum and dad’s fault?”

  “It wasn’t!” said Opal. “My dad wasn’t even there. He’d been gone years by then. So he was hardly to blame.”

  “Oh, Baby Girl,” said Frank.

  Opal gaped. “That’s what Fishbo always called me!” she said. “Anyway, okay. This is the bit.” She breathed in very deep and held on to the breath until her chest started aching. “Okay, this is the tough bit. It’s about Robbie Southgate. Craig’s dad.”

  Frank hit the brake hard and pulled over to the side of the road. Another white van went past them with the driver leaning on his horn. Typical! Only other car for miles around and it nearly hit them.