by Andy Conway
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” she said. She gripped his arm suddenly and hissed, “Let’s come back. Tonight.”
He thought about it, working out if he could trust her. “Okay,” he said, as if he didn’t believe it himself anymore. “Six o’clock.”
They walked on, following the others, swallowed in the full sweep of Moseley village, the pedestrian throng, cars tearing this way and that, the buses sailing through the village crossroads, and beyond it, a cityscape of office blocks on the skyline.
— 6 —
AMY PARKER HISSED, “Father! Stop it!” and pulled on his arm. This was a scene. He was about to let The Secret out into the open, for all to see.
He glared at her with such hate and shoved her aside. She stumbled and twisted her ankle, falling to the soft grass with a bump.
The boy called Danny Pearce was gone and father was glancing around like a cat that had lost a mouse. The strange boy had been sitting on the gravestone, right there, a few seconds ago, and now he wasn’t.
She sprang to her feet and rushed to the gravestone. He hadn’t fallen off it. He wasn’t lying in the grass on the other side. He wasn’t down there in the back alley. The wrought-iron gates hadn’t been opened and no one could have run there and vaulted the gate in five seconds. He hadn’t run up the path either. The mourners gathered around poor Mr Rieper’s grave were still clustered there, one or two looking back to see what the shouting was about.
“Was he the one?” her father croaked.
The anger had left him. He staggered and was about to fall so she guided him to the gravestone, where he sat with a groan. A few moments ago he had spat hate in her face, but now he was whimpering. He took his red handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed the spittle from his lips.
“He disappeared.”
“Yes, father. He must have run away. You scared him so.”
“Like a spirit. Like a will-o-the-wisp.”
Amy checked all around again, expecting Danny Pearce to jump out, laughing to surprise, like a boy would, always playing tricks and trying to best one.
“He ran away, father. I saw him,” she lied.
“Oh,” her father said, as if he’d somehow missed it. “Did you?”
He was like a bewildered child. She knew it wouldn’t last. Later would come shouting and raging. It always did.
“Everything all right, eh?”
A man had peeled off from the funeral, in sombre black and top hat, like the other Freemason friends of the deceased.
“Everything’s fine, Mr Harper,” Amy blurted.
“You don’t look so well, Richard.” Mr Harper put his hand on her father’s shoulder. “You look like you’ve taken a turn, old friend.”
“Father tripped on the path, Mr Harper. He’ll be fine in a moment. I should get him home.”
Her father looked through Harper. Didn’t recognize him. But then suddenly said, “Reginald. What are you doing here?”
Mr Harper blushed and didn’t know what to say. “I came for Rieper’s funeral, like you, Richard.”
“Well, I know that!” Parker snapped.
He could turn like that, in an instant, and now Mr Harper had seen it. The Secret was out. All of Moseley would know soon and point and laugh, or worse – cross the road to avoid. They would take her father away and put her in an orphanage.
“Let’s get you home, Richard.”
“He’s quite all right, Mr Harper. He didn’t have breakfast this morning, even though I warned him he’d need it, and he had a little dizzy spell. He felt a bit under the weather this morning and wouldn’t eat, you see. I warned you, didn’t I, father?”
She pulled him to his feet and wiped his mouth, stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. Playing the mother, because there was no mother. Don’t let them see that you’re playing the adult for father too.
“Oh, I see,” said Mr Harper, more jovially. “You should have listened to your daughter here, Richard.”
“I’ll get him right home and give him some soup, Mr Harper.”
“You’re a good girl, Amy.”
She pulled her father away, towards the wrought-iron gate at the rear of the churchyard. They could sneak out the back and avoid a scene. Her father’s Freemason friends might not notice his absence and, perhaps, Mr Harper would say nothing. They were a secretive lot, so perhaps it wouldn’t be all over Moseley.
The gates squealed as she pushed a gap for them to squeeze through. Mr Harper watched them go, smiling faintly. She walked her father down the dank yard space behind the billboards, bordering the Bull’s Head. It stank of dead things. Was it the bodies they buried here, their stench coming up through the flagstones, or might it have been rotting slops from the pub?
“You’re not a good girl,” her father said. “I saw you, talking to that boy. I’ll punish you for that.”
Amy whimpered and pushed her father on. He was too weak to beat her here.
The village green was crowded with too much life. She walked her father past the newsman’s stand, a fake smile on her face. We are promenading on a lovely afternoon in Moseley. A respectable father and his daughter. Everything is all right.
A tram rattled into the village and she thought for a moment about rushing across the road to catch it. But it was too public. Too slow. The thought of him erupting on the tram, where everyone might see.
She pulled him to the cabman’s stand, where the one-horse hansom cabs were lined up.
“Where to, sir?” the driver called.
“Twelve Alcester Road,” she said. “Go via Trafalgar Road.”
“Righto, miss.”
She pushed her father up into the cab and scrambled in beside him. With a snap of a whip, they were away up the hill. As they passed St. Mary’s, she noticed the mourners hadn’t come out yet and sighed with relief.
— 7 —
ONCE THEY WERE BACK at Uni, they bustled into a lecture theatre and stared blankly while Mr Fenwick talked through a Powerpoint about local history resources.
Rachel took notes but couldn’t help glancing over at Danny, two rows below, scribbling away in his notebook. It was obvious from the way he worked so feverishly that he wasn’t paying any attention to the lecture.
She craned to see over his shoulder. He was filling a page with images and words, some kind of mind map exercise. She could make out snatches of phrases written in bold strokes: Amy Parker, Edwardian? 12 Alcester Road, Father? Funeral, “Is he the one?” and the single word TOUCHSTONE.
A sketch of a girl in a black gown and a man in a top hat with a cane. The girl’s face, again and again, trying to get the likeness just right. He was a decent artist.
His friends looked at him working hard and giggled, and when he became aware of them, he closed his notebook, sat back, and pretended to look bored, but she saw him open it again later and scribble some more things down.
When the lecture was over, he walked straight out, leaving everyone staring after him, wondering what was up.
She didn’t see him the rest of the day as she worked in the library. Had he walked out and gone back to the churchyard to try it again without her? She cursed herself. She should have suggested that to him, not tonight. He would do it without her now.
She realized what she was thinking. It was ridiculous. But she’d seen it in his face. He believed it — and whatever it was that had happened to him, and the naked honesty and confusion in his manner had made her believe it too. A tiny part of her wanted to believe it, just to be able to share it with him.
After her final lecture, she drifted out. The sun was low in the sky as she waited for a bus. Only four o’clock and already night. A bus pulled up and she realized she might not have any money. She dug in her purse and pulled out a few coins. Not enough. Her face reddened.
She stepped out of the way, mumbling something under her breath, and let the passengers behind her get on. She stood there as it closed its doors and sailed off without her, swearing at herself u
nder her breath. Then she saw the car behind the bus.
Jessica at the wheel. Stacy and Tyrone. Danny in the back, not talking. He saw her and looked back after her. She caught a flash of Jessica’s laughing face as they sped off up the long road.
She started walking.
— 8 —
HOME WAS THICK WITH the smell of fried onions. Olive had cooked tea all afternoon. Crispy, dried out sausages in a gloopy gravy, mashed potatoes, fat slivers of fried onion, peas that had been boiled for about an hour.
Rachel attacked it, even though there was plenty of time to make the six o’clock rendezvous. They sat at the table but the telly was still on across the room.
“Well?” said Martyn.
She looked up at him and swallowed. “Lots of things,” she said. “Stuff.”
“Like?”
“Local history. We’ve got a seminar on you next week.”
Olive laughed.
“And you’ve joined the Stand-Up Comedy Society,” said Martyn.
“She gets that from you,” said Olive.
“Yeah, it’s your fault,” said Rachel. He was still waiting for her to report on her day so she sighed and told him. “We walked around St Mary’s church yard and looked at the gravestones, then we went back to Uni and had a lecture on local history resources and I spent the afternoon in the library researching how Moseley used to be independent of Birmingham and why it took so long to join the big city.”
Martyn pointed his fork at her, with a bit of gravy-coated sausage on the end. “Because Moseley’s always been stuck up,” he said.
“That’s where your great grandma was christened,” said Olive. “My mum. When we lived round the corner. Down Anderton Park Road. Number 28. She was born there. So was I. And your dad. Beautiful big house.”
Rachel had heard this a million times. “I know, I know,” she sighed. “We used to be rich. How did you lose the family fortune, Dad?”
“I spent it on women and booze,” he smiled. “The rest I wasted.” He laughed at his own joke.
“And now we have to live in poverty.” Rachel scowled.
“It’ll make you more ambitious,” he said. “Rich kids are bone idle and they get rubbish degrees. You’ll thank me for growing up a pauper when you graduate with honours.”
He winked. She rolled her eyes.
As soon as tea was over, she washed up and ran to her room to change. She picked out a maxi skirt and the black velvet jacket she’d bought from the Goth shop in Oasis market; an outfit she used to wear when she was more self-conscious about her body and wanted to hide it. It seemed right tonight and would pass for Edwardian, if this whole thing wasn’t a very elaborate joke. She sat on her bed and thought about that for twenty minutes. What if it was? What if she got there and they were all waiting for her in the churchyard, waiting to laugh and point? Stupid Rachel thought she was coming for some time travel! What a loser! Her stomach lurched. No, why would they do that? Danny’s distress had been so genuine. She remembered the beads of sweat glistening on his temple. He wasn’t that good an actor. No one was.
There was only one way to find out. She got up and walked down the stairs, calling out that she’d be back in an hour or two.
— 9 —
AMY PARKER’S ANKLE throbbed. When she had fallen in the churchyard, she’d thought she’d twisted it, but as she’d rushed her father onto the hansom cab, she’d felt nothing. Only now did it hurt.
She limped through to the kitchen and turned on the gas lamp. It hummed and cast a warm glow across the black range where Ida had left pans bubbling.
Perhaps the need to hide her father away had overcome everything else. If the need were great enough, the body would overcome any disability.
She grabbed a tea towel and opened the oven door. A blast of delicious heat hit her face. Pork belly shuddering in an enamel pot.
It smelled ready, but father was still asleep.
She closed the oven door and limped back to the parlour. It was best to let him sleep. It was safer. She would ignore her hunger all night if he might stay asleep. The body would overcome.
But her belly grumbled and she swooned with desire, slumping into the armchair by the meagre fire, holding a cushion to her belly.
Potatoes, pork belly and peas.
It wasn’t much, but one had to be grateful. It was certainly more than Ida would get at home in Highgate. It seemed unfair, somehow, that Ida would prepare a meal for them every afternoon and leave it for them, before going home to eat dripping on bread.
There was a time when Ida would have eaten her own dinner in the scullery, and retired to her own room in the loft. But the Parkers no longer employed a domestic. It was Amy’s job to serve dinner, eaten with her father in cold silence in the dining room, the dirty plates left in the sink for Ida to wash in the morning.
Her mother’s face gazed down on her, frozen in monochrome.
When she’d died, the socialising had stopped. There were no more dinner parties where the Parker family could entertain their friends with several courses of the finest food. There were no more French dishes. There were no more friends.
The food had become simpler, more functional. Amy served it at the table every night and ate in silence, her father staring at the window to the front garden and the road outside where the trams passed, as if he might see his wife return and apologize for being late.
Pork belly and potatoes. It wasn’t quite the level of a labourer, but how long before it was?
Gazing into the embers, she wondered at the strange boy again. What sort of name was Danny. Was it what the working classes called Daniel? He hadn’t seemed so common. He had more of an aristocratic air. Perhaps that was it. He was posher than she was. She was stuck in the middle.
Was he a magician? A parlour trickster, like granny Parker? The whispers about the séances she held in the front parlour. Adult talk, quickly hushed over. Father would never talk about it. Her mother had gossiped with friends about it. Amy had overheard them talking over tea, thinking she didn’t understand.
Richard’s mother was a psychic. They came to this house from far and wide to talk to the dead. No wonder she ended up in the whisper, whisper, whisper.
Was it the fate of the family to fall into madness?
Grandma Parker, and poor uncle Herbert, who’d taken to drink and was frequently seen skulking in the churchyard with only a bottle for company. Thank God he hadn’t been there today. He’d known Mr Rieper and would have paid his respects at the funeral, but evidently had enough shame not to show his face.
And father? He too was mad.
The family was sinking. Like the Titanic. Somewhere, long ago, an iceberg had struck, and every member of the family was drowning in the dark waters.
They were doomed.
“Amy!”
Her heart thumped in her throat and she jumped up, the cushion falling into the hearth.
He came clumping down the hall, his footsteps booming on the floorboards.
Fee fie fo fum.
The door flew back and she stood frozen in his glare, stammering, “Father, you’re awake. Dinner’s ready. I’ve set the dining table. I’ll bring it through to you.”
“Was he the one?”
The heart that thumped in her throat sank to the pit of her stomach.
“I don’t know what that means, father.”
“You brought him to us. You called him.”
“No, father, no. I didn’t.”
“You called the devil. Here. To our home.”
“I didn’t do anything, father. He was just a boy passing by.”
He scrambled back to the hall and snatched up the stick.
“You made me do this, damn you, Amy.”
“No, father, please.”
He pointed to the dining room. There was no escaping this. She had thought he might sleep and forget but she had known it would come to this.
Head bowed, she skulked past him, down the hall to the front room. The din
ing table laid out for dinner. The table where Grandma Parker had summoned the dead.
Her father followed close behind, panting, a harsh gob of phlegm catching in his chest. He was sinking fast. Would he be alive this time next year?
“I don’t know who that boy is, father, I swear it’s true.”
“Do not lie to your God, or your father.”
She put her hands on the table and bowed down till her forehead met the cold mahogany.
“Forgive me for what I’m about to do,” he said.
She was about to say she forgave him and that he didn’t need to do it, but realized he wasn’t talking to her at all.
The stick hissed.
Thwack.
She yelped. It came out of her, unbidden, like a dog’s bark.
Another hiss and
Thwack.
He groaned with the effort, a sob catching in his throat.
Thwack.
Hot tears sprang to her eyes. No matter how much you said you wouldn’t cry, how much you said you would bear it in silence, you couldn’t stop that.
Thwack.
We are losing our way. The ship is sinking. Water is pouring in.
Thwack.
Such certainty they had, those poor people. Even at the end, when the ship was low in the icy water, they still believed it was unsinkable.
Thwack.
The icy waters were rising through the lower decks. Soon the ship would split asunder and the end would come swiftly. What was it they had said? It was there in the dark water, still so magnificent, and then in a matter of minutes it slid under and was gone.
“There,” her father said. “You make it so hard for me, who has to fight the evil that assails us.”
She pushed herself up from the table, the imprint of her hot cheek fading in the mahogany, afraid to look at him, afraid she might wet herself.
“I’m sorry, father.”
“I know, yet still you turn to sin. Time and time again. How am I to save you, Amy?”
“I don’t know, father. But I’m glad you try.”