by Sarah May
She put the photograph under the packaging in the bottom of the box because she didn’t want to take Bettina with her. She didn’t want the responsibility Erwin had bequeathed her and was angry with him for attempting to make her complicit in this secret legacy.
Pausing on the landing, she thought about going into Erwin’s room again to tell him what she’d done with the photograph then changed her mind, and went downstairs instead – out into the garden.
It had stayed fine for the rest of the day, and the twilight – just settling now over the garden – was long and generous, but she still had trouble at first picking out Mary, standing in the semi-darkness of the wash house, staring out through the window.
She could tell – from Mary’s posture and the lack of light – that Mary had been crying, and that this was where Mary came to cry. The secret emotional life of a whole generation of women had been lived out within the sturdy brick walls of these perfunctory outhouses built for laundry, tears and – as in the case of Rachel Deane – far worse things, and for the first time ever Anna had an overwhelming sense of this. To the extent that she felt like a trespasser as she knocked on the door and went inside.
There was Mary’s old Hoover twin tub machine, preserved beneath a blanket but rubbing shoulders with the small automatic machine that had usurped it. There was a stack of used paint cans against the far wall and above them a calendar from the Blyth Allotment Association for the year 2000. Hanging from a nail in the wall was her old bucket and spade, and a three-foot doll that had once belonged to her mother, Bettina, and that Anna had been given when she was about the same height as the doll. Its eyes moved and it walked and talked. It had terrified her as a child. It still terrified her, she thought, turning away from where it stood in the corner, leaning back on its heels with its arms outstretched towards her.
‘Nan,’ she said softly.
Mary, who hadn’t turned round when she heard the door to the wash house open, turned round now, reluctantly. She stared at Anna, sighed, then turned back to the window while buttoning and unbuttoning the bottom button on the cardigan she was wearing.
‘Sorry – you weren’t in the house, and –’
‘Just give me a few seconds.’
Anna was about to leave when Mary said suddenly, helplessly, ‘Look at me,’ – as if her appearance was about to jeopardise everything. ‘I’m sorry –’ She faltered. ‘I needed a bit of respite.’
‘It’s fine,’ Anna soothed her, kissing and holding her.
‘Don’t you get lonely?’ Mary said after a while.
‘I don’t really think about it.’
‘You need someone, Anna. What happened to that Frenchman – Alec?’
‘We kept each other company, Nan, that was all. We enhanced each other economically and socially.’
‘Where’s the harm in that? There’s plenty of people who live their lives like that.’
‘What’s so wrong in wanting to be with someone I know I’ll be sitting holding hands with at the age of eighty while we listen to a doctor telling us that one of us is going to die?’
Mary shook her head, smiling.
‘I was twenty-two when I met Erwin, and marrying him was the single biggest act of rebellion in my life. I lost my family over him. This love you’re talking about – it doesn’t just give, it takes away. It forces you to make choices, and sometimes it can leave you stranded . . . lonelier than you’ve ever felt in your life before. So lonely, you wish . . .’ She trailed off.
‘What?’
‘You wish you’d never had it in the first place. Erwin wasn’t my first love,’ Mary said after a while. ‘My first love was Bobby Deane. I never told you that before, did I?’
‘Bobby Deane,’ Anna said, shocked.
‘You should of seen him back then,’ Mary carried on, smiling openly at her – enjoying her shock.
‘Bobby Deane,’ Anna said again.
‘It was before Rachel. I was tiny – sixteen or seventeen. It never meant anything much to him. Not like Rachel,’ she finished, turning away to look out the window again.
Anna watched her cough into the sink then straighten up.
‘That reminds me. I found one of Bryan’s drawings – them ones he used to do. It was up on the wall behind those blankets. The paper’s got damp, but the drawing’s not spoiled.’
It wasn’t.
The brown and black ink drawing of a spider was intact, and underneath in unsure biro, was written: Agelena labyrinthica of Agelenidae family – 12 September 1986 by Bryan Deane.
‘The date on it – that’s a year after Rachel died.’
‘You should keep it,’ Mary said.
Anna sat down on the old stool Mary and Erwin used for decorating – staring at the picture.
‘He must of used a magnifying glass for that. The detail –’
Anna didn’t respond. The magnifying glass again; magnifying glass . . . ‘The magnifying glass,’ she said out loud to Mary. ‘I found it that day.’
‘What day?’
‘In the garden – on the brick path near where the potatoes were growing. It was summer. I must have been thirteen?’
‘What day?’ Mary said again.
The magnifying glass had been irritating her since their conversation that morning, but Anna remembered now. ‘The day Jamie Deane locked me in their wash house. I went round to the Deanes’ house to return Bryan’s magnifying glass, but he wasn’t in. It was Jamie Deane who answered the door. You remember . . . I came home in such a state.’
Mary shook her head.
‘You had that job up at the Welwyn electrics factory where Rachel used to work. It was so hot that day.’
So hot, she remembered her palms sweating as she turned the magnifying glass over and over in her hands, waiting in the overgrown and neglected front garden at number fifteen Parkview. She was on the point of turning away – she’d never rung on the door to number fifteen before because Bryan always came for her through the back garden and knocked on the kitchen window – when the decomposing nets at the window were lifted then dropped. A second later the front door opened and Jamie Deane was standing there in bleached jeans and a black T-shirt – she could hear Iron Maiden playing inside the house.
By then she’d changed her mind, but it was too late.
‘Is B-B-Bryan there, please?’ She could hear herself saying it.
Jamie stared – then laughed and jerked his head at her to come in.
‘What d’you want with Bryan?’
He didn’t mimic her in the way most people did.
‘Just wanted to return s-s-something of his.’
That’s when he pulled the magnifying glass out of her hand and stared at her through it. ‘And what’s Bryan want with this then?’
The scene continued to play itself out – vividly – as she sat motionless on the stool, watched by Mary.
‘Is he here?’ she said, without much hope. Nobody seemed to be here at number fifteen – apart from Jamie.
She’d never been inside number fifteen Parkview before and was trying hard to hide her shock at the fact that there was no carpet on the stairs; that the wallpaper was scratched and shredded, and that the door to the lounge was peppered with darts.
Then Jamie called out, ‘Laura – look who’s here,’ and Anna’s shock intensified as an upstairs door opened – the Iron Maiden that was playing becoming even louder – and Laura appeared at the top of the stairs smoking and staring at her, without warmth.
Anna and Laura had barely spoken for the past few years. Doreen and Mary had, between them both, sporadically attempted to reinforce the friendship, but it hadn’t worked. Doreen was especially keen because Laura was doing badly at school, hanging out with boys much older than her and smoking. She shared all this with Mary knowing that Mary would understand because of what had happened to Bettina, and that she wouldn’t hold it against her. The thing she didn’t share – with Mary or anyone else – was that the happiness had gone out of Laur
a and it was this that was really haunting her. Where had the happiness gone? Who had taken it? The fact was, the Hamilton family was disintegrating and Doreen thought Anna would be a good influence on Laura, which was an honourable enough sentiment but the fact was Anna and Laura now existed in different worlds. Anna broke into a cold sweat if she got a verb ending wrong in a German vocabulary test while Laura was happy to hurl chairs across classrooms and set fire to other girls’ hair in home economics.
In fact, Laura now terrified Anna as much as Jamie Deane did.
Jamie was still smiling at Anna in a slow, lopsided sort of way as he started to run his hand over her back.
She froze, staring helplessly at Laura, who remained at the top of the stairs staring blankly at her and exhaling.
‘How old are you?’ Jamie asked.
‘T-t-thirteen,’ Anna croaked.
‘And still not wearing a bra?’
‘She’s got nothing to put in a bra that’s why,’ Laura said belligerently from her post.
‘Let’s have a look.’ Jamie started to pull at Anna’s T-shirt, dropping the magnifying glass on the floor and breaking it.
‘No,’ Anna yelled, instinctively knowing that whatever happened, she mustn’t let Jamie Deane lift up her T-shirt.
‘Alright – alright,’ he said, laughing, and stumbling back towards the staircase.
Then he was staring at her again – they were both staring at her, Laura and him, and it occurred to Anna that behind the blankness, Laura was scared as well.
‘Bryan’s in the wash house,’ Jamie said suddenly.
Laura stood up on the stairs, throwing the cigarette down. It looked like she was about to say something but in the end changed her mind.
Anna ran through to the kitchen, out into the back passage and through to the garden aware of Jamie directly behind her. The wash house leant against the back wall of the house just as it did at number nineteen Parkview, and every other house on the Hartford Estate. It was where a lot of women still spent their Mondays only not here at number fifteen because there were no women at number fifteen Parkview, and she should have thought about that – she should have known then that the wash house was the last place Bryan would be . . . the wash house was where Rachel hanged herself, but all Anna could think about was Jamie Deane behind her.
The door to the Deanes’ wash house had been painted green by number fifteen’s previous tenants, and there was a piece of orange string with rabbit’s feet tied into it nailed to the doorframe. She should have thought about that as well, but she didn’t.
The door opened easily and she slammed it shut behind her, leaning against it and breathing hard. Then she heard Jamie turning a key in the lock and realised – too late – what was happening. That’s when she remembered that it was the wash house where Bryan discovered Rachel Deane, hanging from the roof beam – and there were a pair of large, still round eyes staring at her through the dark.
She screamed, turned round and started to pull on the door, pulling on it so hard she broke the handle, dropping it at her feet.
‘Laura!’ she screamed out automatically, her eyes shut now, pressing her face into something soft hanging from the back of the door – Rachel Deane’s old apron? ‘Laura!’ she screamed again, her eyes shut still and breathing hard – not wanting to touch anything.
Then there was a tapping on the wash house window and turning to look she saw the eyes staring at her again, and what it was the eyes belonged to, which was also the source of the terrible sweet smell filling the wash house – a dead fallow deer hung up by its legs, which were bunched together with blue rope. The deer’s head was hanging back and there was a yellow plastic washing up bowl on the floor, positioned to catch the blood coming from its throat. The deer must have been hanging for a while because there was no blood coming out of it any more. There were only the eyes, staring, and beyond them Jamie Deane’s face grinning at her through the window.
After the first hour passed and she’d given up shouting and kicking at the door, she was almost glad of the deer. She had no idea how long she was in the wash house, only that the quality of light gradually changed and that at some point the door was clumsily unlocked and slammed suddenly open – so forcefully that in its juddering rebound it nearly shut itself again. Who was it who opened the door? Who let her out?
‘Anna, pet?’ Mary said, concerned.
Anna stared at her, aware that she was breathing hard. ‘There was a deer hanging up in the wash house.’
Mary was nodding slowly at her now. ‘Bobby used to hunt them over the border, in Scotland. He started when the strikes were on.’
‘You must remember that day, Nan. You have to,’ she insisted, looking at Mary, who she could barely see now in the doorway. Neither of them had made a move to switch on the lights. ‘I was in such a state when I got home.’
‘I think we should go back inside the house and have a sherry.’
‘Don’t you remember it at all?’
‘I don’t, no – come on.’
It was night outside as Anna followed Mary back indoors, turning on the light and watching her take the bottle of sherry out the cupboard, placing it with due reverence on the table.
Apart from the consecrated bottle of sherry, Mary didn’t keep alcohol in the house. Life was too hard and the temptation of the bottle too strong, and so many men – women as well – had lost their reputation in the bottom of a bottle. You were only as good as your reputation – if you lost that, you lost everything.
So the unspoken rule was that you drank up at the club, in public and among friends. It was the only guarantee of being able to escape daily life – even if only momentarily – while at the same time preserving its sanctity.
Mary looked terrible beneath the unforgiving strip lighting in the kitchenette and suddenly, without knowing why, Anna realised that Mary had been lying in the wash house – about not remembering that day.
Mary looked up then – instinctively aware of Anna’s eyes on her – before looking away again.
‘Jamie Deane’s out of prison.’
‘Jamie Deane?’ Mary sat down and tried to pour the sherry, but her arm wasn’t steady enough. ‘Can you?’ she said to Anna, handing her the bottle.
‘I’d forgotten he was even in prison. Did Don and Doreen not say anything?’
She passed Mary her glass of sherry.
‘No,’ Mary said, her tone implying that Anna should know how the situation was. ‘Nobody’s got anything to say about Jamie Deane any more.’
Anna nodded, drank her sherry, then put the glass back down on the table.
Mary’s glass was empty as well.
Anna poured them another one, staring at the replenished glass and the thick amber liquid that slid sluggishly to one side when she tilted it. ‘You knew about Jamie being out of prison,’ she suggested quietly.
‘I’m tired –’
‘You knew.’
Mary drank the second glass of sherry, but held up her hand when Anna tried to pour her more.
‘Is this the only alcohol you’ve got in the house?’
‘You know it’s the only alcohol we keep. I’ve seen him – Jamie.’ Mary sighed.
Anna was shocked. ‘You’ve seen him?’
‘At Bobby Deane’s.’
‘What the hell were you doing at Bobby Deane’s?’
‘He’s not well – he needs stuff doing for him.’
‘And you’ve been . . . doing that stuff?’
Mary nodded sadly.
‘Why?’ Anna demanded.
‘I told you why,’ Mary responded angrily.
‘He’s got Alzheimer’s.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Inspector Laviolette told me – he’s been to see him because of Bryan. You need to contact social services, Nan. Where’s Laura in all of this?’
‘Bobby and Laura never got on. Laviolette?’
‘You know him?’ Anna asked, interested.
‘Is he involv
ed in this business with Bryan? That can’t be right –’
‘Why not?’
Mary fought briefly with herself then pushed her glass forward for some more sherry. ‘It’s his father, Roger Laviolette, who Rachel Deane –’
‘Had the affair with?’
‘Spent time with,’ Mary corrected her.
‘The widower? What happened to him?’
‘You don’t remember?’ Mary said, surprised. ‘He died.’
‘How?’
‘Jamie Deane killed him.’
‘You said Roger Laviolette had an accident.’
‘Dying’s an accident,’ Mary said, uncharacteristically obtuse.
‘But murder isn’t.’ Anna paused. ‘Laviolette told me people thought it was Bobby who did it and Jamie who took the blame despite never actually confessing to it.’ She didn’t say that he’d failed to mention it was his father who was murdered.
‘He said that – to you?’ Mary shook her head. ‘No. It was never Bobby. Bobby Deane never hurt anybody,’ she said shortly.
Anna left Mary standing at the front door, one arm pulling her cardigan around her against the night, the other waving.
She got back to the Ridley Arms just after nine and put Bryan’s picture of the spider next to the photograph Martha had given her, which she’d balanced against the wall on the kitchen bench. Bryan Deane . . . sitting sad and preoccupied in an island paradise Laura and he had paid a substantial amount of money to spend time in.
She picked up the photograph and read ‘Cephalonia – Aug 2007’ written across the back before putting it down, looking round the empty apartment and deciding to go for the run she’d been trying to have all day.
*
It was too dark to run on the beach so she stuck to the coastal road, her ankles bearing the brunt of tarmac. She passed the bandstand – still semi-flooded from all the recent rain – and defences from the last war, buried in dunes that rose in a high line now alongside her. When they dipped she could just make out the blockish silhouettes of the tank traps – that she remembered playing on as a child.
She carried on running – past the Shipwright’s Arms Bryan failed to show up at the night before, and the Duneside development he failed to return home to – until she got to the harbour at Seaton Sluice where she stopped, breathing hard. The tide was on the turn and the sea was loud in her ears. There was something large and white lying on its side at the water’s edge – an abandoned fridge that the tide must have brought in.