by Ruth Wade
‘Even when our feet are cracking puddle-ice ...’
They kept her company all the way to Treadwell’s grocery shop. The bell tinkled as the first of the sisters pushed open the door. The interior was dark and cave-like with wooden fittings the colour of molasses that sucked in sunlight through the cracks in the varnish. Smells sat in the air with no hope of escape – birdseed and pickling spice; washing soda and paraffin; smoked bacon and hair oil. Edith’s eyes adjusted slowly as the Cousins peeled away to inspect the line of white linen sacks full of dried goods. It was safe for her to join the queue.
‘Half a pound of best green back was it, Mrs Mountby?’
The grocer had pulled a slab of bacon off the shelf and was holding it up for inspection, a host of translucent rainbows skittering over the surface. Edith wondered what they would feel like on her tongue. Colourful. The red would taste of ripe berries, the green like freshly cut grass, yellow would be full of the sweetness of a clover floret nipped between her teeth; indigo might possess the flavour of the night.
When it was her turn to be served, she was almost sorry; the hubbub of chatter surrounding her had felt calming. A sort of sadness crept over her. That was what you got for spending so much of your life alone. It was amazing how quiet it could sometimes get inside her head. It was probably that stray thought that drew the words from her mouth.
‘I was woken by the geese again this morning.’
Ebenezer Crowhurst was beside her and he yanked at his whiskers as if trying to pull forward a memory.
‘Allus been honkers in Fletching, leastways you’d know that if you’d come from around here. Homelings we call them born and bred in these parts, comeling is what you is; there’s some still that, buried in the churchyard thirty-five years underground.’
Edith did her best to ignore the childlike hurt at being so slighted, and concentrated on avoiding any contact with Ernest Treadwell as he passed over her butter. She never liked to brush up against his damaged flesh. The grocer had no fingers on either hand. On the right they were cut off at the knuckle, and on the left the stumps barely escaped from his palm. Their pathetic inadequacy made her think too much of her own and she didn’t need reminding of that. She looked up and thought she detected the ghost of sympathy in his eyes. So she took a handful of coins from her purse and counted them out with a slow precision she knew would make him want to sweep them up and toss them into the till. This was what life had reduced her to.
Mr Treadwell clicked his false teeth. ‘You have to understand, Wilf Drayton thinks of them birds as his family …’
‘Happen no one else would have him. You smelt down by his privy of a morning?’
The shop filled with a general howl of laughter at Sneezer Crowhurst’s wit while Edith pretended she hadn’t heard and examined a display of baby clothes on the end of the counter. Her fingers strayed across the soft wool of a tiny jacket on the top of the pile.
‘I hear he’s got around to clearing that hedge of yours at the back. Not before time.’
‘It isn’t my hedge, Mr Treadwell. It would never have got into that state if it were.’
Beside her, the butcher’s wife shook her head. ‘It’s a crying shame the churchyard’s in such a state these days. Doesn’t do your garden justice, what with you being next door an’ all. I was only admiring your roses the other day, Miss Potter. Proper healthy they are. I’ve got black spot on mine summat rotten and even Old Ma Taylor’s remedy won’t see it off.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t.’
Despite herself, Edith couldn’t resist showing off her superior knowledge. If there was something the whole village should be in awe of her for, it was her ability with roses.
‘It’s only a scientific approach will work. You can use wettable sulphur but fixed copper sulphate powder is more effective; I get mine sent down from the Royal Horticultural Society to make sure it’s absolutely pure. Mrs Culpert inherited some hybrid teas in an awful state and I’ve been dredging them with it every Sunday after church. I could write out the details if you’d like.’
‘What? And where would I get money like that to spend? It’s all right for some.’ Mrs Gibson shifted her bosom as if some loose change would fall out from under.
Edith turned her back on the lot of them; she should have known better than to think they cared what she thought. The bell jangled overhead as she left the shop, a beribboned fancy blue baby’s bonnet nestling in the bottom of her basket.
CHAPTER THREE
‘They were out there, I tell you, banging on my window.’
‘Now, now, Miss Potter. Don’t you go getting yourself all het up. There was a bit of a blow last night; Mrs Billings woke me up and said I was to go and check the tiles on the roof weren’t slipping. You women do like to go worrying yourselves over things not worth a ha’penny’s fretting. I reckon it was that tree of yours out back.’
‘Do you think I can’t tell the difference between a branch and children set on mischief.’
PC Billings pulled his watch from his pocket and tapped the glass. This was a delicate matter. He had to choose his words carefully. The churchyard was the latest place the kiddies had taken to running around right enough, passing warm evenings leapfrogging gravestones having more attractions than helping their mothers, but Edith Potter was ... what was the most generous way of putting it? She was a tad prone to outbursts of the hysterical variety. Take that business last week over Wilf Drayton’s geese. Like as not they were making a racket fit to wake the dead but that didn’t give her call to be throwing anything she could lay her hands on at them. Wilf had brought one of the poor birds into the Police House with a gash the size of a tanner on its head. Shat all over the counter, it did. Took him ages to clean it off, even with the help of some of Mrs Billings’ Vim. Sometimes he wondered if his job was not so much keeping the peace as simply ensuring that everyone rubbed along well enough – a thankless but never-ending role in itself.
He sighed as he pretended he’d actually been looking at the time, before returning his watch and patting it against his chest. What he wouldn’t give not to be stuck indoors with paperwork on such a fine day. Not that he’d bother to write this up. He’d have filled a dozen of his notebooks by now if he took every one of Edith Potter’s complaints seriously. But just because she was in and out of his door as regular as clockwork didn’t mean she’d worn out his compassion. Who wouldn’t be up to building mountains out of molehills when they’d had such a shock fresh on twelve months back, the like of which would’ve stopped weaker hearts at the sight? Blaming herself was probably at the root of her fancies. She’d been known by all about as only leaving the village when a trip to Uckfield to pick up his medicines was called for. And to come back from one of the same to find her father dead in his bed. Not that she acted grieved at the time, but was doing so now right enough. They never caught up with whoever did the terrible thing. Broke in thinking there was money lying about, like as not. The vicar was coming out of the rectory and had seen a man running over the fields. They’d been left with no conclusion to draw but that it was a Gypsy or tramp long since back on the road when the alarm was raised. But just because such occurrences were as rare as hen’s teeth didn’t mean the body on the receiving end wouldn’t go suffering under the thought of strange noises and the like weren’t it happening all over again.
‘It’s coming up for when I usually pop upstairs for a cup of tea and slice of Mrs Billings’ fruit cake, so now’s nigh on perfect to come back with you and see if I can’t do something about taking a pruning hook to that tree.’
He smiled with what he hoped was reassurance that it would cure the problem once and for all but the only response he received was a deepening of Edith Potter’s sour expression.
‘And then I’ll be seeing it as my duty to be knocking on a few doors to spread the word that the law will be patrolling the churchyard and will be jumping on any child I see playing within a dozen yards of your cottage. No one takes kindly to me appe
aring on their doorstep with their nipper in tow so they’ll be making sure there’s no chance of you not being undisturbed – if only to spare giving the neighbours something to gossip about.’
All eventualities covered, Paul Billings placed his helmet on his head and adjusted the chinstrap before holding the Police House door open for Edith Potter to lead the way out onto the street. He was feeling mightily pleased about the way he’d handled what could have been a sticky moment. As ever, all it had taken was the effort of putting himself in the other person’s shoes and setting his mind to thinking about how he would see the world if he wasn’t fortunate enough to be a policeman, and didn’t have such a settling being as Mrs Billings to come home to of an evening.
He locked the door behind him and caught up with Edith Potter at The Cross. She was staring straight ahead as if she could see something in the distance other than the ordinariness of Fletching. And whatever it was, it wasn’t going any way to soothing her unquiet mind. His heart squeezed; it couldn’t be much of a life to be alone with nothing to look forward to but getting older. His own time to experience one or both of those things would come right enough but he hoped he’d have the wherewithal to make a better fist of holding onto at least a little bit of happiness. Except maybe the truth was that she hadn’t ever had any strong enough to stand the test of time. But he was a firm believer in it never being too late to put things to rights and wondered why attending to her father day and night had been replaced with the mixed bag of delights that was dispensing Christian charity in the stead of dithery Mrs Culpert, and quarterly trips to Cowden WI with Mrs Billings.
They kept an uneven pace until they reached her cottage. It was as if she had arrived at it unaccompanied as she pushed open her gate and stalked up the path without a backward glance. PC Billings tussled with his conscience for a moment about whether to insist she let him into her shed in search of a pruning hook for that tree. Only they both knew he’d been fobbing her off – not unkindly, he hoped – and that cutting down a branch or two wouldn’t bring a stop to her feared imaginings when her wits were lost in the recollection of strangers intent on murder.
He waited until he heard the front door bolt being rammed home before trudging up Green Lane. His feet had started to swell already. He looked down at his highly polished toecaps. Tight in the heat though they were, he was very proud of these boots. It was wanting a pair of them that made him join up in the first place. He took a shortcut across the common in the hope the soft ground would be a little kinder than pot-holed chalk, and rejoined the lane just before it met the High Street where he came across a gang of children hunkered down around something. They were a mite young to be amongst those haunting the graveyard but it wouldn’t hurt for him to invest a little of his flagging energy in ensuring they grew up to be good little citizens all the same.
‘What have you gone and found yourselves here, then?’
There wasn’t a ripple in their depth of concentration. He crouched down to join them. His knees creaked in a way that made him wonder if he would ever get up again. It was a desiccated frog, perfectly flat, its legs splayed as if it was sunbathing on a lily pad.
‘I reckon it was the horse stomping what done for him,’ said a boy with a snotty nose. PC Billings recognised him as William and Betty Shoesmith’s youngest.
‘You stay in the road much longer and a horse and cart will be running over you, too.’
Paul started to laugh but caught the expression peeking out from behind little Elsie Markham’s tangle of fair hair.
‘Now don’t you go fretting yourself over a little police humour; a nag with only one eye and a blinker would be able to see little nature-lovers like you from the bottom of the rise. But I have a mind that you should be getting yourselves home for a spot of bread and jam to keep your strength up – where I should be, in fact; Mrs Billings is most particular on not leaving the fruit cake out of the tin for too long.’ He straightened up. ‘Why don’t one of you slip this poor victim of a traffic accident into your handkerchief – Freddy, it’s not looking like you’ve been using yours much – and give it a decent burial? Not in the churchyard, mind, or the vicar will be having something to say about it. And while I’m telling you where you’re not to be at, stay away from the Moat Pond. I know a little splashing is attractive to kiddies but it’s dangerous. Frogs like that one there should stay in the water and not try to walk up the road while you lot,’ he wagged a finger at each of them in turn, ‘should stick to this end of the village where your ma can keep an eye on you. Now, hop it.’
Paul Billings chuckled at his unintentional joke and walked away with an exaggeratedly heavy tread to remind the little scamps that there was more than one way to squash an excess of misdirected energy.
CHAPTER FOUR
The obscenity Edith found on her path the next morning was an omen. Something to remind her – as if she needed it – of the portentousness of the day ahead. In a few short hours whatever was left of her peace of mind could be destroyed forever. She returned to the cottage to fetch the coal shovel. Her back muscles protested as she bent to scoop the object into her handbag. It was very, very flat. Nothing but a dried husk of its former amphibious self. Tempting though it was to present it as evidence of an escalation in the taunting, she knew she’d only be tolerated, humoured and patronised in turn before the incident was waved away with one snap of the elastic around PC Billing’s notebook. He cared nothing about the burdens she had to live with. Witness the fact that he’d totally ignored her request to come and cut down the tree branch. No, she would save this for when she was less tired. When she had more energy than she needed to survive whatever other horrors the day had in store for her.
The dead frog secure in its black leather coffin, Edith walked down to the road to catch the bus into Uckfield.
*
‘So, how are you ... well ... you know, coping?’
Dr Mackie picked up a pencil and started twirling it between his fingers. Edith remembered his clumsiness at attempting conversation from when he’d attended her father. On those occasions the physician had delivered his diagnosis of a chest infection or gastric upset, then dithered in the hall checking the instruments in his bag as he asked how the roses were doing or if she thought the weather was going to brighten up in the near future. This question carried the same connotations of polite necessity. A portly man with red-veined cheeks and receding sandy hair, his diffident manner had never struck her as being one to set the medical world alight but he was a competent general practitioner. And, more importantly, the devil she knew – although up until this moment she’d never had to call on his services on her own behalf. Despite her childhood trauma she’d been blessed with absurdly rude health, and on the rare occasions she’d been unwell had visited the chemist or treated herself with natural remedies. But this malaise was beyond those options. No fancy-packaged bottle of tonic or foul-smelling herb decoction could stave off the slow disintegration of the mind. Let alone cure it. Except, of course, neither could any doctor. Knowing what to expect was the best she could hope for.
‘I’ve already told you about the headaches, insomnia, and memory lapses; in view of them, how do you think?’
She knew she wasn’t helping her cause by being so snappy but, try as she might, she couldn’t quell her anxiety enough to stop being defensive; she’d been particularly prickly under his interrogation concerning her bowel habits; although she had been spared the worst. On the fifteen-mile journey over, the dread that had been palpable from the moment she’d made the decision and wrenched herself out of bed had deepened until it had wiped out – and replaced – every other thought in her head. That he might insist on conducting a full physical examination. To have to go through the ordeal of explaining how she’d got the scars, and then to be forced to reveal the rest ... But, mercifully, he’d contented himself with a look down her throat, in her ears, and a listen to her chest – through her blouse – with his stethoscope. After each procedure he’d pro
nounced the results satisfactory. So now they both knew there was no malignant germ behind the reason she was sitting in his consulting room. The discovery was apparently causing him a level of discomfort commensurate with her own.
‘Yes ... quite ... What I was actually referring to was your emotional state. After your father’s mur ... untimely death. Things can’t have been easy.’
The tension of waiting for him to stop pussyfooting was becoming unbearable and she thought that if he didn’t desist fiddling with his pencil she’d be unable to prevent herself from reaching across the desk to snap it in two. She stared over Dr Mackie’s left shoulder at the print of a stag posed majestically on top of a heather-clad mountain as she considered what to say. Caution at revealing any of her failings had become so second nature that it was a struggle to find the right words to express herself. On this occasion she was aware that pride too was playing no little part in her reticence. But hiding the truth wasn’t going to get her the accurate prognosis she wanted.
‘I find myself somewhat adrift without the routines of caring for him – the days can often seem longer than simply sunrise to sunset. And having the house violated by the entry of a stranger has resulted in a certain amount of jumpiness …’
‘Quite understandably ...’
But it was more than that; she knew it was more than that. Her father’s dedicated inquiry had been into why some people survived life’s traumas with their minds and personalities intact whilst others were unable to assimilate the experiences and turn them into memories. As far as she knew, he never reached any conclusions, but if he had would she have been forced to concede the same weaknesses in herself? This was a waste of time. She shouldn’t have come. She’d ask her one burning question and then leave.
‘Could it be I’m suffering from a form of inherited madness?’