by Marie Joseph
Winnie was talking, but Gatty scarcely heard her. She had retreated into a solid mist of cloying terror where Jack Thomson laughed at her with his mad green eyes, and the thing that was his child developed inside her till she grew bloated and fat.
‘When are you due next?’ she heard Winnie say.
‘Two weeks, or perhaps even three or four. I’m not regular,’ she answered automatically. Why had she told Winnie? Winnie hadn’t believed her that she didn’t know properly in shameful detail what had happened. There was that awful word again. You either knew whether you had been penetrated or you didn’t. That’s what her mother would want to know if she tried to confess, and that was what a doctor would ask if she found the courage to go to one.
In a torture of mind she swayed forward, laying her head on her knees. She was whispering to herself: ‘Oh, God, dear sweet Jesus. I never meant to do anything so wicked. You know that’s true.’
‘Have you got any symptoms?’
Gatty lifted her head to stare at Winnie. Now more than ever she wished she’d had the sense to keep it all secret. There was genuine compassion in her friend’s eyes, but Winnie was fascinated. Interested and fascinated. Gatty could see that.
‘Have you never . . . ?’ she asked, knowing the answer, but needing to wound.
‘What d’you take me for?’ Winnie’s answer came pat, then immediately regretting her lack of tact she put an arm round Gatty, drew her close and they sat like that, the uneaten chips in the hearth, their legs mottled into barbed-wire patterns through sitting too close to the fire.
‘You’ll be all right, kid.’ Winnie’s hoarse voice soothed. ‘Your whatsit will come, you’ll see. There’s no point in crossing bridges.’
‘An’ you won’t tell nobody?’
‘Cross me heart and hope to die.’
‘I’m sorry I spoilt your supper.’
‘Best chuck ’em on the fire before me mam comes in.’ Winnie bent down and bundled the newspaper parcels on to the fire. ‘I’ll go and make us some cocoa. You’ll feel better for a hot drink.’
But before she could make a move, Gatty was on her feet. ‘I’m going.’ She glanced at the black oblong of uncurtained window. ‘I’d best go now in case the snow starts to stick. You know what me mother’s like. She’ll have a search party out for me if I don’t turn up.’
She was buttoning herself into the single-breasted coat when the front door banged back and a voice called out: ‘Yoo-hoo! It’s only me.’
Winnie’s mother was back.
Mrs Parker was a much older version of her daughter. At first glance they could have been taken for sisters, but Eileen Parker’s hair had lost its fire and curled over her bulging forehead in a sandy frizz. Living a hand-to-mouth existence on the dole since the nearby cotton mill had closed down, she spent her days in cross-over pinafores and curlers and down-at-heel bedroom slippers. But now, because she’d been out with a friend to the pub, she was resplendent in dusty-black costume and velvet pillbox hat with a veil. When she saw Gatty, her face lit up in a welcoming smile.
‘Hello, love! By gum but it’s parky outside!’ Taking off her hat, she tossed it on to the sideboard, where it ringed a clock in a glass dome. ‘It’s a pity you’ve got to go home, Gatty.’ She slipped out of her coat, revealing a scarlet jumper knitted in raspberry stitch, each bobble furred and felted by careless washing. ‘You’re welcome to stay with us while the bad weather’s on. There doesn’t seem much sense in you traipsing up yon mountainside just to slither down it again in the mornings.’ She went to put the kettle on, talking over her shoulder. ‘See what your mam says, love.’
‘She’s right, Gatty.’ Seeing her friend off at the door, Winnie peered anxiously at the sky. ‘You could go home at the weekends, an’ it might . . .’ she lowered her voice to an urgent whisper, ‘it might take your mind off it a bit. Till you know.’ She jerked her head backwards. ‘She’s not forever asking questions like your mam.’
‘I don’t know. . . .’ Gatty shook her head as if she didn’t know anything, and as she walked away down the street, Winnie noticed the dejected droop of her shoulders and the way Gatty veered from side to side as if she’d been drinking.
She went inside to cut three doorstops of bread, spreading them thick with margarine before sprinkling them with sugar from the blue bag in the cupboard.
‘Make me a sugar butty while you’re at it, love,’ her mother said. ‘I think I forgot to have me tea.’
When Gatty got off the bus down in the village and began the long walk up the hill, the darkness was so absolute she could almost feel it like a hand on her face. A lamp shone out from the front window of the Thomson cottage, but she hurried past with face averted.
Normally the darkness held no terrors for her. Country bred, Gatty accepted it in the same way she accepted the street lamps of the town. But as she walked up the field path, she was conscious of the beating of her heart and the soft plop of the unfrozen snow falling from branches. In the heightened state of her imagination she thought she saw the dark bulk of Pendle Hill looming ahead, advancing towards her like some dark prehistoric animal.
She began to run. A stitch stabbed at her side, but with dry mouth and pounding heart she scrabbled her way up the stony path.
When she reached the cottage at last, flinging open the door to lean against it panting, the sight of her mother sitting sewing in the lamplight brought a rush of tears to her eyes. It was all there, the security she craved, the reassurance she desired with every fibre of her being. If Polly hadn’t spoken she would have rushed to her, knelt down and buried her head in Polly’s lap to blurt out the fear that was squeezing the very life out of her.
‘What time do you call this, young lady?’ Polly asked, and the moment was gone.
For over two hours, ever since Martin had gone his usual grumbling way to bed, Polly had sat there, staring into the fire, the sewing untouched, her mind a jumble of longings she couldn’t control.
In the space of one afternoon it seemed to her as if her whole world had turned topsy-turvy, leaving her vulnerable and strangely without shame. It was as if her skin from head to toe was alive with an awareness of the man called Robert Dennis. The recollection of his face as he’d drawn her towards him filled her with an elation which surprised her with its intensity. She had tried telling herself that she was a married woman – a happily married woman at that – and it hadn’t worked. She had reminded herself that she wasn’t a young girl any more, that at her age she ought to know better; that it was wicked, even that deep inside her she accepted that Robert was missing his wife rather than wanting her. And the joy and worry churning away inside her had blotted out rational thought.
If it had been possible she would have walked out of the cottage and gone to him. If they’d been on the telephone she would have dialled his number, just to hear his voice. She had glanced at the clock wondering what he was doing at exactly that moment, and the fact that her daughter hadn’t come home from work was no more than a slight irritation on the surface of her thinking.
Her saving grace, a down-to-earth sense of humour, had deserted her completely. Was it just yesterday she had thought that this sort of thing only happened to other people? People without a decent code of honour, or the moral strength to walk away from temptation.
All she knew was that she must see him again. And soon. . . .
Gatty’s sudden appearance was an intrusion, Polly’s chastisement automatic. Polly looked at her daughter and saw nothing of the mute pleading in the dark eyes, felt nothing of the tension which shimmered almost tangible in the air between them.
‘Have you had anything to eat?’ Again, the question was purely automatic, and when Gatty lied and said she’d eaten chips with Winnie, Polly sighed. The smoked mackerel poached and keeping warm between two plates wouldn’t be wasted, though.
‘Dogs don’t eat fish,’ Martin had said more than once, but Jim did. At the rattle of his dish he surfaced from an apparently deep sleep,
tail wagging and tongue lolling in anticipation of an unexpected second supper.
‘I’ll just make myself a slice of toast,’ Gatty said, then widened her eyes in surprise as her mother merely nodded an agreement.
Gatty thought her mother was looking different somehow. Beautiful almost. For her age, of course. With the lamplight shining softly on it, her hair was like a halo round her face, much, much prettier than Winnie’s mother with her dry permed hair and wrinkles showing up through pancake make-up.
Love for her mother flooded Gatty’s heart. She held the toasting fork closer to the bars of the gate. What if she suddenly said: ‘Oh, Mam. Help me. . . . Please listen to me and help me. I’m so frightened, an’ I’m not even sure there’s anything to be frightened about. I’m not clever like Martin, an’ I know he’s your favourite, but, oh God, just listen to me. Now. Please!’
‘Can’t you see you’ve set that slice of bread on fire?’ Polly’s voice was more weary than condemning. ‘Why you couldn’t eat that fish I don’t know. Here, give it to me!’
In the space of a second, Gatty’s mood switched from despair to anger. It was no use. Telling her mother was the last thing she could do. She gave Polly a black look from beneath the dark wings of her eyebrows, then spoke in a clear cold voice filled with adolescent loathing: ‘Winnie’s mother asked me to stop at her house during the week. With the snow coming, she thinks it’s daft me struggling back here every night after the shop. She thinks folk who live out in the wilds are daft anyway. Catch her living in a dump like this!’
There was no way Polly could even begin to feel the arousal of anger. The strange, sweet lethargy held her still.
‘Tell me why you’re so unhappy, love,’ she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. For probably the first time in her life, her thoughts were turned completely inwards on herself. What Gatty did, or wanted to do, mattered. Of course it mattered, but not all that much. Maternal feelings counted as nothing against this fever raging inside her. Pulling herself together with an effort, she said: ‘I’d have to go and see Mrs Parker to arrange about paying her something. You’re not sponging on her, Gatty. Your dad wouldn’t like that.’
‘You want me to go, don’t you?’ There was heartbreak in the question, but all Polly heard was the sullen defiance, the whining self-pity.
‘Now why on earth should I want you to go?’
It was starting again – the futile wearying arguments, the total lack of anything approaching communication. Polly handed a perfectly toasted slice of bread over.
‘I’d have to write to your dad first, anyway. He likes to think of us all here, just as we were when he went away. I’ll want to see what he thinks about it first.’
In spite of her distress, Gatty took the toast over to the table to spread it thickly with margarine and jam. Hunger pains were gnawing at her stomach. She felt light-headed, and asked herself how on earth she had imagined she could unburden herself on her mother sitting so quietly in her chair, her hands uncharacteristically idle in her lap.
‘It’s got nothing to do with our dad,’ she said rudely. ‘What’s he stopping down in London for anyroad? He can’t be liking his job all that much or else why doesn’t he talk about it more? He can’t even be bothered to write these days.’
Polly flinched. She didn’t want to get into an argument about Harry. She didn’t even want to think about Harry. For a little while, before Gatty had burst into the cottage bringing the reality of the outside world with her, Polly had found herself deep in a fantasy where Harry never came back, leaving her free to be with Robert, living with him in the house with the flame-patterned curtains, and the rug with the dragon on it by the leaping fire. Her thoughts appalled her, even as they ran uncontrolled through her subconscious. And now Gatty was here, intruding on her dreams.
‘We’ll wait and see what your dad has to say about it,’ she said. ‘I’ll be writing to him at the weekend.’
Gatty closed her eyes and smiled derisively. ‘Well, I’m still going to stop at Winnie’s.’ She clapped a hand over her mouth to still the hysteria rising in her throat. Bowing her head, she finished quietly: ‘I’m going to bed now. But it’s best, Mam. Believe me, it would be for the best.’
‘You’ll go if and when I say so.’ Polly spoke into thin air. Without once glancing round, Gatty had made one of her silent accusing exits, leaving her bad humour behind, expecting her mother to storm after her demanding an apology.
‘I must go after her. She’s not going to get away with that.’
Polly spoke the words aloud, but first she pulled her chair closer to the fire and picked up the sewing in her lap. It was a fiddly and mundane task, stitching new suspenders on to one of her narrow belts. The elastic was thick and strong and the needle had to be pushed through with a thimble.
For a moment she heard her mother’s voice: ‘You’ll suffer for not wearing a proper corset, our Polly. By the time you’re my age, you’ll have a stomach fit to rest on your knees.’
Allowing the belt to drop back on her lap, Polly patted her taut flat stomach. The birth of two children had left her figure as firm as it ever was. She wasn’t thin, not by a long chalk, but then she wasn’t exactly fat either. Nicely rounded, Harry often said. It was a long time since she had given her shape much thought. Gatty took after her father, or her grandma, but she must take after her maternal grandmother who, with her wasp waist and high breasts, had been a real Edwardian beauty. Complacently Polly cupped her rounded breasts in her hands, imagining . . . imagining what?
When the door burst open she swivelled round in her chair, her expression a mixture of guilt and shame.
‘Bella!’ The sewing slipped to the floor as Polly stared in dismay at the small dishevelled figure standing there. ‘What’s wrong? Is it Jack? He’s not . . . ?’ Her voice tailed away.
The familiar grey shawl was slipping from Bella’s head. Her pale face was pinched and mean with cold, and her eyelids blinked rapidly over her colourless eyes as she fought to regain her breath.
‘He’s escaped,’ she managed to gasp. ‘He went for an orderly, battered him senseless, stole his watch and his jacket with wages in the pocket, and scarpered.’ Her feverish glance darted round the room. ‘They’ve set the police on him, Polly, but they’ll never find him. I know my Jack. He knows the fells like the back of his hand.’ Her voice rose surprisingly strong and harsh. ‘He split the orderly’s head open with a bracket he’d wrenched from the wall, an’ they say he might die.’
The pink eyelids quivered so jerkily that Bella’s little pinched face was contorted into a frightening mask of hysteria. Ignoring Polly’s outstretched hands she groped her way to the nearest chair and sat down, burying her face in her hands.
Her voice came muffled. ‘An’ if he dies then my poor Jack’ll be up for murder!’ Bella raised her head. ‘Oh, Polly! You’ve tried to tell me what to do afore, an’ I haven’t heeded a word of what you’ve said. But this time I’m listening. What can I do? I’ve allus shielded him afore, but this time I feel I can’t do nothing.’
‘The baby?’ Polly moved to get her coat down from the row of pegs at the foot of the stairs. ‘Shall I go down and get him? You can’t be down there on your own. Not tonight.’
But in spite of her plea for help, Bella wasn’t listening. Her head jerked towards the window. ‘It’s come on to snow again, and Jack is out there in the cold, running away as if he was an animal, with them after him.’ Her eyes were hard and tearless. ‘It wasn’t his fault, Polly. Jack has to be out in the air, an’ yet they shut him up in a room on his own. It was like taking a bird and shutting it up in a cage. They were supposed to be making him better, but what they’ve been doing to him ’as made him worse. He’s not really bad, not like a lot of folk are bad. Not many can ‘old a candle to my Jack when it comes to kindness. Not when he’s in a good mood.’
There was a scar on Bella’s cheek that would be visible for the rest of her life. There were two teeth missing from her lo
wer jaw, and Polly knew that her back bore raised weals that the years would never smooth. She lived on the edge of starvation in a cottage where the walls oozed damp, with a leaking roof and a door that fitted only where it touched. Yet, because Jack Thomson had smiled on her once with his green eyes, loved her and carried her in his arms across the moors, settling her in the only home she had ever known, unstinting devotion was his for ever.
‘Oh, Bella . . .’ Polly shook her head slowly from side to side, ‘I wish I could tell you what to do.’ She went to kneel by Bella’s chair. ‘But if Jack turns up, if he tries to come back home, you’ll have to give him up. For his own sake, as well as yours. You must know that.’
With a swift movement that sent the chair rocking wildly and almost knocked Polly flat on her back, Bella leapt to her feet. Her thin little voice rose to a raucous shout.
‘Oh, God, you make me sick! I might have known it was a waste of time coming to you!’ She backed towards the door. ‘Oh, aye. You’d split on Jack, wouldn’t you? You’ve never had a good word for him. Never! If he came knocking on your door you’d have the police on him as fast as you could get your big feet down the hill. You’ve not got feelings, Polly Pilgrim. There’s a great hard stone where your ’eart should be.’ She wrenched the door open. ‘Look out there! It’s snowing like the clappers, an’ unless he finds shelter my Jack’ll freeze to death.’ Her face was a stiff mask of pain as she clutched the shawl closer round her chin. ‘I hope the day comes when you don’t know where to turn, an’ when it does don’t come to me. Jack allus said you was a heartless bitch, an’ you are! Thanks for nothing, Polly Pilgrim!’
There was no point in running after her. Polly knew that once inside her cottage, Bella would bolt the door and scream abuse through its rotting timbers, just as she had done with Jack after one of their many shouting rows. For a while she stood in the doorway, imagining the small flying figure hurtling down the hill. The wind blew the snow into whirling gusts, tossing the flakes high, snatching them up again as they touched the ground. Rubbing her arms she stared out into the darkness, over to the east towards Pendle where the two lonely trees were etched like witches crouched over broomsticks, leaning into the frozen teeth of the gale.