‘Perhaps she is.’
Lana paused. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Possibly then they moved here for Ragdell Place.’
‘The hellhole for halfwits?’
Lana frowned, as she so often did at her husband. ‘The school for – troubled children,’ she said.
‘Who knows?’ said Gregory idly, and stood lighting a cigarette at his own gate. The Dangerfield children, Peter and Jane, had returned from a friend’s house, and Lana neatened their hair in turn as they passed through the gate.
‘I’ll just smoke this,’ said Gregory, and he wandered across the lawn. He made his way down to the shade of the rhododendrons, the ilexes and variegated laurel at the bottom of the garden, and smoked in their shade. Number 1 The Farings, at the end of the path, housed only a taciturn old widower who hid himself either there or in his allotment, but number 2 was now fuller and noisier.
‘Shut up,’ he muttered at the crying baby, and stood there a while, but her mother didn’t appear.
Evangeline paddled in the stream again, winding her way down it towards the pond, where ducks nodded. ‘Come, Freddie,’ she called. She glanced up at the house, checking it, and was satisfied. Afternoon softened, Rowena hushed the baby, and the actress who lived by the centre of the green walked past in her short pink floral dress, much commented on by Crowsley Beck residents. She nodded at Rowena, whose auburn chignon and profile of a model posing as an air hostess made her noticeably smart and attractive for a villager.
The twins sat down for their extra studies, the television and canary cage covered with cloths until the early evening, and Bob made the baby mud pies. ‘Near your room. Near my room,’ he sang to her and gave her a rough kiss so she grizzled, then he repeated it.
Rowena glimpsed the damp wall again, and this time she let out a low moan, for it seemed to be weeping. It might never succumb, she thought, and then what would they do? She had a momentary vision of a dark tunnel of recalcitrance, unspecified trouble. There was something indefinably resistant about the builder who worked on it, too. He was set on his course; he was self-contained. The other smell was now more apparent, borne by the wafts of damp. Je Reviens, it was called. Of course. Rowena was pleased with herself for remembering, but something about it made her uncomfortable, and she couldn’t think what it was.
3
‘GOOD MORNING,’ SAID the vicar, faint bemusement crossing his face as a scrawny girl in a lightly stained Victorian child’s costume walked past the post office towards Beeck Lane. He summoned his genial smile. He had a range of smiles, beams and expressions of gravity at his disposal, suitable to the occasion and the day of the week. ‘Can I help you?’ he said eventually.
‘No, thank you,’ said Evangeline in her husky voice.
He paused. ‘And you are?’
‘Evangeline Crale.’
‘Crale . . .’ said the vicar, pausing again. ‘There is a new family in the village named Crale. They came to the church. You’re a relation?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’
‘I hope you approve of their choice of new home,’ he said, spreading a plump hand towards the green with the air of one who owned it. ‘Can I help direct you? Where are you going? The family live at the other end.’
‘To Poll— Mr Pollard’s house.’
‘I hope Mrs Pollard is there too,’ said the vicar, dropping his affable tone as easily as he had adopted it.
‘She is. He told me.’
Eva slipped away down a little path hung with flower baskets between cottages, her skirts sepia toned as though gas-lit under a dull sky; he waited, but she didn’t reappear, and a few minutes later she was bounding across the fields, the pallor of her clothes glowing beneath clouds.
Pollard’s house was bigger than it first appeared to be. An old farmhouse patchily clad in weathered rendering, it crouched in a dip of field on the edge of the village. Up close, there seemed to be no end to it: a low extension at a right angle behind the main front, outbuildings both intact and in various states of collapse; a disordered alley of greenhouse, sheds, empty animal pens. Fertiliser bags and rusting sheets of corrugated iron seemed to cover mounds of earth or vegetation, with chickens wandering loose and rabbits in a makeshift cage. It was clearly no longer a working farm. Cats seemed to be everywhere. There were several noticeably large cats among them. Eva was unsure whether to enter through a door under a sagging porch, where the windows were blank, or a side door near a caravan and vegetable patch. She chose the side door. A vast tortoiseshell wound itself round her skirts as she stood waiting, and she jumped as she glimpsed its size, absorbing it as some lynx, some escaped creature from a circus or zoo. But it was just a domestic cat, its broad brindled face wrinkling in supplication as it looked up to her with an insistent mew, and she stroked it, its tail filling her hand. Her other hand was tugged by Freddie.
A woman stood at the door in a housecoat.
‘Come in, dear,’ she said in a gentle voice. She did not, as most people did, hesitate or stare at Evangeline’s clothes. ‘I was expecting you.’
‘Oh. Oh. Yes. Hello, Mrs Pollard. I’m—’
‘Evangeline is the prettiest name I ever heard,’ she said. ‘I have been thinking about it ever since Arthur said it, my dear.’ Her voice was soft, measured, a notch more refined than her husband’s.
‘My daddy really wanted a boy by the time I was born, and I wasn’t, so then he demanded I was at least called after his mother. And I’m so glad.’
‘Yes, lovely. I’ve been wanting to know. What are your brothers’ and sisters’ names, dear? I’m expecting they’re pretty and fancy too.’
‘Rosemary, Jennifer, Bob and Caroline,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Pollard. She hesitated, her plump face unmoving. Her eyes were childlike in their pale blue roundness, and she wore her hair unfashionably, in a sort of chopped bob with a thick fringe that lent further unsettling aspects of youth to her appearance. ‘Well, you have the prettiest of all, then.’
‘They call me Eva mostly.’
‘I shall always call you Evangeline. Come in, come in and have your lunch I made especially for you. Don’t trip over the cats, my dear. Pretty clothes. Where did you get them?’
‘From my grandmother,’ said Eva tightly. ‘Her name is Evangeline—’
A whistling sounded from behind the caravan, and Pollard himself turned up, covered in dust.
‘Hello, dear,’ said Mrs Pollard.
‘I’m famished. They should never be knocking that wall down,’ he said to Eva. ‘It doesn’t want to go. It’s clinging on. Given me a giant of a blister.’
‘They should never knock into my grandmother’s house,’ she said.
‘It’s a stubborn one, I’ll say that for it. Let me demonstrate you my sheds first,’ said Pollard, handing his jacket to his wife, then he showed Eva the coal shed where many cats lived, and she gazed at their distended abdomens, their club-like heads. ‘Some of them is with kitten,’ he said. He led her past a tangle of chicken wire over some old planks and showed her his greenhouses, and the potting shed that contained the tools and materials for his hobby: he made flowers, primarily roses, from moulded plastic while the wireless played, and the best of them he gave to his wife. He had his own little stove in there, congealed with grease, a kettle and a toaster, and he painted portraits and landscapes in oil. Outside, bramble reared over collapsed cow sheds, discarded twine tangling with thistle and teasel.
‘There’s so much. Anything could be hidden here,’ said Eva.
A slight drizzle was cooling the air, drawing snails on to the dock leaves as they walked back to the house. ‘You can help me with my roses,’ said Pollard. ‘You’re a clever girl, I think.’
Mrs Pollard had laid out a lunch of cold roast beef, beetroot salad, and a bed of a custard tart, half of which she could take home. Bunches of the roses were arranged in vases in the dining room, which contained a thick persistent smell of milk that settled at the back of Eva’s throat.
/> They were so kind to her, a little tear started to creep from the corner of her eye, and she brushed it away, for she feared that if she began to cry, she would never stop. Adults customarily shrank from her, ignored her, or addressed her like a simpleton. At her primary school, they had tied her to her chair to keep her in lessons, then tied her to another at lunch; but largely, she was allowed to disappear, and if people didn’t want her, such absences were her preference.
Mrs Pollard had closed the dining-room windows against the drizzle, but she opened them again, and Eva was aware of a noise drifting into the room from outside. Children. Babies.
‘May I be excused?’ she said, and she wandered to the window. She gasped.
‘Let’s go and see them, dear,’ said Mrs Pollard. Her voice was so soft, it was as though it had been sweetened.
On the sloping lawn with its untidy rockery that backed on to fields, then the elms and horse chestnuts that sheltered the centre of the village, sat pram after pram; played child after child.
‘My little nursery, my dear,’ said Mrs Pollard in tones that were so soothing, Eva shivered. ‘I look after some of the village children for a few hours. It’s almost bottle time.’
As though by rote, a mass grizzling set up. Eva skipped over the lawn, and, reaching through a cat net, she plucked a bawling infant from its perambulator and rocked it. As it quietened, she lifted its neighbour with her other arm and held it to her chest, comforting the two babies at once until they ceased crying. The others were silent only once their mouths were plugged with rubber teats, and they drained their bottles, their rhythmic gulping like so many calves.
Groups of cats gathered round in a cacophony of competitive mewling, and Mrs Pollard fed them in bowls from the same vast vat of milk she had made up for the babies.
‘Bring your sister if you want next time,’ said Pollard, setting off back to the village after lunch. He was upright, oddly graceful in his strength.
Eva’s face darkened into its usual pinched little heart. Pollard’s words hit her like a blow to her middle.
‘I thought—’ she almost sobbed, but she couldn’t finish. ‘That is what they always—’
‘I like you the best!’ he said cheerfully.
She suppressed a gasp. ‘Do you—’
‘You know I do. Come September, you can help with the babies and the roses if you want to escape the mad school.’
‘You know I am not mad, don’t you?’
‘Course you aren’t. Nothing wrong with you.’
‘Yes. Thank you. I’d like to help with the children.’
‘There’s many!’
‘Do you have some too?’
‘No,’ he said quite brightly. ‘None born to us. Don’t suppose there will be now. So the missus, she collects cats and children. She doesn’t collect them, exactly – they come to her.’
By early afternoon, Rowena had cleared away lunch, and was increasingly anxious because the Crowsley, Beershott and Leas Wives’ Association was coming over to The Farings for drinks that evening, and though she had warned them of the building works, a damp oozing wall would be an embarrassment she could barely contemplate. She took a sip of sherry. The twins were playing outside, and Bob and baby Caroline were napping. A door shut upstairs, and she stood up at the sound, pausing, but then she remembered how crooked Pollard had said the top floor was. She tried to read the newspaper. It seemed she never used her mind these days, barely stretching it since she had been at grammar school – those precious few years when she soared now contained like a dream – and she tried to concentrate on Premier Khrushchev’s nuclear test ban treaty. Pollard harried his men and took up his tools again with renewed vigour, while Eva, who had been out all day, sloped off once more. ‘I am taking Freddie out to air,’ she muttered as she left.
‘Eva!’ Rowena called, but she had gone.
There was someone in the area leading to the downstairs lavatory. Who was it? Rowena ran through the five children and their whereabouts. No. There was no one. She felt confused as though waking from sleep. Bob was in his bedroom and Caroline was sleeping in her pram. So why was there the feeling of another child in the house? Near the doorway. Freddie? She tutted, annoyed – Evangeline’s disturbances were infecting her brain.
She walked into the room next door where Pollard was working after his lunch break. A battery of hammer blows hit the house, and the wall seemed to bow, tense, suffer in small explosions of plaster and wallpaper.
‘This isn’t right,’ murmured Rowena, and again she wondered if she could smell the Je Reviens.
Pollard heard her. ‘It’s safe, Mrs Crale. We’re using an I-Beam.’
Bob came down from his after-lunch nap.
‘Have you slept, my darling?’ Rowena almost sang, attempting to sound cheerful. She scooped him up and kissed him. She drew in his smell. It was the best perfume in the world: hot cheek.
Bob shook his head, grinning at his mother. ‘They up there,’ he said.
‘Who was up there, darling?’
‘Dem. Noises. Peoples.’
‘There’s no one up there, darling. The building work must have disturbed you.’
Bob shrugged, and swung his head from side to side like a pendulum, making silly faces until Rowena laughed and kissed him again.
‘Out of the house now,’ she said, taking his hand, and led him to the sandpit where baby Caroline lay in her pram, her eyes reflecting clouds. The twins were on the green. Eva was where Eva was. No one ever knew where, but she looked after herself, and she came back.
The wall let out a bellowing groan and dust belched through the open window. Rowena patted Bob and ran inside. Damp clung; hair bristled in the plaster. Pollard had all three of his men there with some extra casual labourers, and issuing a warning to Rowena, they all took to the wall at once. It screamed like wood splitting, and a large section caved in. Inexplicably, Rowena felt tears in her eyes. She had a momentary sense that it was quite hopeless, that this was all wrong, that it would never be right. She tried to steady her breathing. The labourers carried on, battering like crazed men, and the wall spewed a surge of wetness, stinking of cats. She called her husband in London to tell him that it was becoming unbearable, tensing her hands as he talked impatiently of employing explosives, engineers, decent builders. The hammers began a fresh round.
‘My word. This is fascinating.’ Gregory Dangerfield stood in the doorway.
He had come home from the power station for a late lunch; his dog, which had a few lumps under the skin that seemed to be proliferating, lay slumped on the path outside.
Rowena turned to him, his wide-shouldered figure outlined against the sun, his shirtsleeves rolled up as ever.
‘Hello,’ she said, intensely grateful for the presence of a man who could take charge.
‘This is the most stubborn section of masonry I’ve yet had the pleasure of encountering,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. He nodded at Pollard.
‘I barely know what to do,’ said Rowena, hurting her palms.
‘Let me lend you my hammer drill,’ he said, laying his hand momentarily on her shoulder.
Pollard put down his tools.
‘It belongs to the power station,’ said Gregory. ‘It will blast through it.’
He issued some brief instructions to Pollard and scrawled him a note.
‘It has to be finished. I have the Wives’ Association here tonight,’ said Rowena, then her mouth twitched with self-consciousness, almost amusement, as she heard herself.
‘Oh, those hens,’ said Gregory. ‘I don’t mean my wife, of course.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Pollard, and slowly drank the gin Rowena offered him, talking to her, then a second.
‘You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ he said, his voice low and steady.
Rowena’s cheeks flared crimson. She played the words back, to be sure he had said them.
‘I—’ she said. ‘I’d better think about dinner. Douglas will be home before long.�
��
Pollard appeared with a large electric hammer drill, and he and his men turned on the wall. They attacked it like a firing squad, and all that could be heard was the deafening battery of blows. A stench of cat and putrid damp ballooned through the air and Rowena and Gregory went outside, where baby Caroline was crying. A few houses away, Lesley Gore was singing loudly on someone’s wireless. They heard a scream like a death cry, a caged bear making one last attempt to escape before slaughter, then the sobs and oozings of gas.
Rowena ran back inside. The two cottages were joined, a gaping expanse of air between. Moisture spread over the floor. Je Reviens again. There seemed to be sections of mane in the leftover plaster, layers even of a parchmenty substance that resembled dry skin among the rusty stains. There was hair that looked like no horse’s. It was slightly curled.
‘Is that a pig’s tail or something?’ said Rowena, unsteady on her feet, and Gregory snatched it from the plaster where it nestled. Frowning in distaste, he tossed it through the open window into the shrubbery.
‘What was it?’ she asked.
He shook his head and shrugged, not looking at her.
Eva appeared. The wall was down, dead, and it looked like a pelt. Men were standing around, sweating, exhausted after the kill. Pollard was trembling with exertion; there was dust and hair all over the floor, shattered brick, an uneasy quietness in the house. None of them, Eva could see, was quite comfortable. The canary was silent. She lifted up the cloth. It had died.
She began to shake as a fresh surge of anger hit her.
‘Mummy!’ she shouted, in a strangled staccato, so different from her usual low rumble.
‘Hello, my chickabiddy,’ said Pollard, out of Rowena’s earshot.
‘How dare you, dare you, this is, this is—’ said Eva to her mother, but she couldn’t finish. They had killed the canary; they had killed the wall. They had stolen the house, and now it was dying in front of them.
‘Darling, not now,’ said Rowena, laying her hand on Eva’s shoulder, as Gregory had done to her, and noticing that she was tottering slightly on her heels.
Touched Page 3