by Ruth Wade
She stooped and picked them up. They were an odd assortment: the handkerchiefs – she could remember those – a baby’s shawl, a blue knitted bonnet, a wrapped tablet of soap, and a pair of knitting needles. Where had they been hiding and how had they got there? A headache pushed at her temples as she tried to think. When it got too much, she opened the cupboard door above the range and stuffed the strange collection inside; she would come back and sort it later.
But it worried her. She drank her tea and took her slippers off to massage her feet and still it worried her. Because accumulating unexplained possessions couldn’t be considered normal. Be defined as the pastime of a rational person. She struggled to think when she’d first come across the concept of kleptomania. Probably in the notes she typed for her father on shell-shock. Yes, she seemed to remember that a previously well-behaved man perpetrating petty crimes was one of the signs of an approaching breakdown the Regimental Medical Officers were trained to spot. Had Dr Mackie been right in his bumbling way: that what had happened, here in this house, had affected her more deeply than she was willing to admit? Just because she didn’t mourn the old man didn’t mean the manner of his death might not have become twisted in her mind into the need to acquire things as overcompensation for what had been snatched away. A behaviour aberration unwittingly acquired could be dissected, understood, and rectified but first she had to scope the problem by gleaning every last piece of evidence.
*
The basket at her feet was full by the time she sat at her father’s desk in the study. She’d found things everywhere. The strange, the incongruous, and the unnecessary. None of which she’d ever seen before. She supposed that she should begin to catalogue them but she was too tired. She’d add them to her kitchen cupboard hoard and do the whole lot later.
Edith yawned as she pulled open the desk drawer. Five – no, six – cards of buttons winked up at her, glad to be out in the daylight. Sharp-cut jet like shiny blackberries, a pair enamelled with deep blue irises, sugar-almond coloured Bakelite, and a mourning set decorated with delicate silver filigree. She lifted them out and dropped them into the basket. Her fingers slid back into the drawer in the expectation of finding something else that had slipped her mind.
*
She sat in the study as the afternoon sun slid behind the churchyard trees, the journal on the desk in front of her. It had a green leather cover tooled in gold with a pattern of swags and curls. It was altogether too romantic and florid for a man like her father but she recognised it from when it would sit on the corner of his desk in the Cambridge house. She remembered it because she’d never seen anything like it before or since. Edith stroked the spine for a moment and then laid the book down and flipped open the cover with the nail of her index finger. The front page was foxed with little brown splodges like drops of long-ago dried blood, the edges nibbled into uneven waves. It was not written on. Neither were the next half a dozen. The first thing she came across was a list of dates – each followed by a sort of shorthand or code. Edith shivered as a breeze spun in through the open window. She flicked through the following pages. They were covered in writing peppered with blotches and crossings out. It only took her another few minutes to see that the remainder of the first half of the book was all like that.
But then something changed. The script was more legible and the style less frenetic. The pages just past the middle had been written in a state of reflection. These were the words of an older, and possibly wiser, man. They certainly had something about them that was wearier but at the same time more cautious. Had he meant this part of the book to be read by eyes other than his own? Not hers, surely? He’d never have wanted to commit himself in any way to her.
Then she saw it. Her name. Her name wrapped up in a thought that made her teeth chatter and the band around her head squeeze so tight she thought her eyes would pop out. Her father ... writing that ... about her ...
Edith picked the book up and flung it with a force she didn’t know she possessed against the wall. It bounced off the plaster and lay sprawled on the floor like a wanton harlot, the leery scrawl daring her to pick it up and indulge in a little more depravity. Her eyes were dancing with sparks as she staggered over to the shelves and began pulling off volume after volume. When she had made a space large enough, she retrieved the leather journal and stuffed it in its new hiding place before replacing the books in front.
There: out of sight, out of mind.
She had forgotten it already.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Red Admiral and fritillary butterflies fought each other delicately for the last drops of sweetness from the flat heads of the ice plant. Edith kicked at the grey fleshy leaves as she passed. They reminded her of dead men’s fingers. She’d always feared them. There was little else in Wilfred Drayton’s garden – the geese had seen to that – but she hadn’t pushed her way through the hedge to finish their work. She had business to do.
She picked her way over to the small coffin-like box balancing on three oak stumps in the middle of the muddy grass. A faint buzzing disturbed her concentration for a second. She shook her head and pretended it had gone away then squatted down to peer into one of the rat-sized grubby windows in the side of the box. There was nothing. She tapped at the glass and stretched her arm out to reach for the next one, only to recoil when an angry rumble of protest started to swirl out. She hadn’t announced herself properly.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I am Edith Potter. I live next door.’
A handful of bees flew out of the slit in the far end.
‘You might have seen me from time to time pruning my roses. The centifolias have a nice smell, don’t you think? It’s a shame they only bloom once but the portlands are almost as good and they flower throughout the summer. But of course you’d know that.’
One of the insects settled briefly on the pink ribbon threaded through the front of her nightdress and waggled a little dance before flying off again.
‘Oh.’ Her lip trembled. ‘I forgot to bring my door key to tap on your little house with. Is that why you don’t want to stay and talk to me?’ Her bare feet shuffled forward. ‘Is it true that I have to tell you about a death? I know that’s what they believe around here,’ she lowered her voice until it blended with the hum of the hive, ‘but they’re pig ignorant. You’ve more brains in your furry little bodies than all of them put together.’
Her fingers began to beat a light tattoo on the box lid.
‘Because there has been one, you know. But I want it to be our secret. I don’t want you to go spreading it around or, who knows, another might happen.’
She brought the flat of her hand down hard. When she lifted it again the body of a worker bee lay twitching in its last throes.
‘Just like that.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Inside the Barley Mow, Rodney Davies was making a big show of polishing a couple of clean glasses and keeping his back turned to the cluster of drunken strangers standing at the bar.
‘You might as well push off because you ain’t getting served here.’
‘What’s the matter, our money not good enough for you, that it?’
‘Them’s who’ve had a skinful then stroll on in here at closing time ain’t going to be adding a monkey’s spit to my takings. So clear off.’
‘Who you calling a monkey? I’ll bleeding have you for that.’
PC Billings – off-duty or not – decided it was time to walk the slippery path between civility and the law.
‘C’mon, boys. There ain’t no call to be taking on so. Leave peaceful like, and we’ll say no more about it.’
Sneezer Crowhurst looked up from his dominoes and poked the air with his pipe stem.
‘He don’t have to serve ’em, do he?’
‘No, he ain’t obliged. But he’d do well to treat visitors respectful all the same.’
‘I don’t have to serve ’em, do I?’
Paul sighed and raised his voice to that of small-time crowd co
ntrol. ‘No, Rodney, you don’t have to serve them but you’ll be aware like as not that getting a reputation for speaking to customers worse than you would to your dog ain’t a good thing; come next week’s fair you’ll be expecting some trade.’
‘I’d sooner be seeing meat rotting on the slab than have cooty pickers in my shop.’
Giblets Gibson drained his tankard. Then he wiped his mouth with his fingers and flicked the foamy residue towards the strangers’ boots.
‘I wouldn’t piss on their likes if they was on fire.’ Sneezer Crowhurst sniffed. ‘Fill these up again, Rodney.’
A heavy hand slammed onto the counter and set the line of newly washed glasses rattling. Paul could sense this was getting out of hand already. These were probably East End dockers down to join their families in the hop fields at Nutley for the weekend. And they weren’t the only ones in the pub who’d had too much drink for their own good.
He could taste the villagers spoiling for a fight, never being ones to extend the warmth of companionship to rag-tag passer-throughs at the best of times. And now was a long chalk short of being one of those because yesterday Florence Thresher had come into the Police House to report her son missing. Seems he’d been gone five nights although there was nothing fresh in that – the boy had often done a runner over to his gran’s at Cowden to avoid his father’s strap and this time it seemed there’d been a row over missing rent money – but Florence had trudged over that morning to find Alfie hadn’t been near there in weeks. Given the cunning nature of the little tyke, there was no call to make things official with the Lewes force as yet; holing up after he’d been caught up to no good and watching his parents stew in guilt was a favourite trick of his. Only not everyone in Fletching was blessed with the same sense of proportion and rumours had been flying his disappearance was the work of the Gypsies turning up for the Taro Fair. Abduction and the like. Paul had done his best to quash whatever came to his ears by pointing out it would take less brains than those possessed by one of their worn-out nags to steal a child from the village they were camped in, but the rabble-rousers were having none of it. How much they believed their own talk and how much was down to working the fields too long in the unseasonable sun, he couldn’t say. But the result was the hotheads were even more keen to land a fist than normal.
So, all in all, what was brewing in front of his eyes didn’t look set to end happily. He wiped his upper lip clean of beer foam, took a deep breath, and walked up to the more approachable-looking of the strangers.
‘Like to take a moment of your time to introduce myself. Constable Billings is the name – with or without the uniform. So let’s be hearing your feet moving. I don’t want to be having to go against my better nature and be locking you four up. A charge of loitering ought to do it.’
He watched the sort of shared look he didn’t warm to flick between the burly men. Then, with one last thump on the counter for good measure, they stomped towards the door. He followed them out. Then turned to face the handful of regulars that’d tagged along behind.
‘Be setting about making yourself scarce, you lot. Shout at the wife, kick the cat or whatever you do of an evening, but be making it summat I won’t be having to have you up in front of the magistrate for. I’m going to escort our visitors here as far as the Moat, and I don’t expect to see any of you here when I get back.’
He’d allowed a little more edge to creep into his voice than he’d intended; he didn’t like having to throw his weight around at the best of times and especially not when he had a street full of beer-soaked would-be brawlers in front of him. It didn’t look like he’d be tucking up with Mrs Billings and a cup of cocoa anytime soon ...
Mrs Billings. Bloody hell. She was over in Splayne’s Green attending a lecture with slide show in the village hall on missionaries in Africa, or lampshade making or some such. He’d said he would meet her off the bus. For a moment, she’d slipped from his consciousness and he knew enough about modern thinking to know that displacing your loved one from your mind was not a comforting thing to do. He’d send one of the more sober-looking youngsters to fetch her.
‘Donald. Go and get my bicycle and wobble down to the Tilgate stop – the ride should sharpen your wits a tad. Be telling Mrs Billings that I was held up by summat I could hardly help, and walk her back.’
Sneezer Crowhurst sniggered. ‘I wouldn’t like to be taking a try-on of his shoes when she finds out he forgot her.’
Donald Loader scurried off. Paul was watching him turn the corner out of Baker’s Lane when he caught sight of a handful of horseshit flying through the air. It hit Sneezer on the shoulder.
‘Let’s see just how much you can swallow with that bleeding big gob of yours, carrot-cruncher.’
A glass then hurtled in the other direction and exploded on the wall of the forge. The air was full of threats and curses. Paul tried to shout above it all but he was like a puppy in the middle of a dogfight. One of the dockers had taken his jacket off and thrown it on the ground, his shirtsleeves now pushed up to his elbows. Another snatched up a fallen branch. Giblets Gibson had unsheathed the knife he always carried for skinning rabbits. Paul wondered if he had time to run back to the Police House to fetch his truncheon.
The only thing that stopped things escalating into an all-out bloodbath was the sight and sound of Edith Potter dressed only in her flannel nightie, her hair sticking out like a storybook witch, weaving right and left, hammering on doors and screaming Merry Christmas! at the top of her voice.
*
By the time he’d read the riot act, threatened imprisonment, seen the hop-pickers off with the assurance that he’d recognise their faces in they ever came to Fletching again, and told sleepy wives that their men could all do with their heads dousing in buckets of water, Edith Potter had been wrapped in a blanket hastily gathered from Mrs Billings’ spare bed. She had refused to step into the calming atmosphere of the Police House so Paul had thought it best to take her back to the familiar surroundings of her cottage. There had been more than enough unpredictable goings-on in the streets of a small village for one night.
He locked her elbow under his as they walked. They made erratic progress, partly due to the increasing darkness the further they walked from the lamps glowing in a smattering of windows, and partly because of the woman’s stubborn resistance to being helped.
‘I am perfectly capable.’
Paul turned his face away from the rush of whisky fumes. ‘No one is saying otherwise.’ He smiled in the hope it would give his voice added sweetness. ‘But I always think it’s a fine thing to have a companion when you’re travelling; it makes the journey a pleasure of its own making. Many’s the time I wished they’d issued me a tandem so I could take Mrs Billings when I have to fetch up in Lewes on police business; it’s a long way to pedal with only your own thoughts for company.’
Edith Potter seemed to accept this and stopped trying to pull away and thwart his gentle – but insistent – propulsion. After a while she started singing softly, each word drifting out as she planted one foot, heel-to-toe, in front of the other.
‘One ... man ... went ... to ... mow ...’
After that things got progressively slower until Paul was forced to a complete halt a third of the way along Green Lane. There was still about the same distance to go again until they reached her cottage. He wondered if he should scoop her up and carry her; except the last thing he wanted was for her to go thinking she was being kidnapped or suchlike. A woman in her state couldn’t be relied on not to be leading bodies to be thinking all sorts of goings-on were, in fact, going on. Besides, Kitty and Sadie Cousins lived down aways and they were the type of onlooker no police constable needed in the more delicate aspects of the pursuance of his duty. He waited until he thought Miss Potter might have got her breath back and then moved off again, almost teasing her along with him.
‘Last time I took to checking the calendar on the wall, it said it was still September. I’ve the young’uns to deal wi
th over their bonfires and throwing bangers before we get anywhere near Christmas.’
He looked across at her as she picked her way along with doll-sized steps. She was swaying so much she shivered like an ear of barley in the breeze.
‘I am as aware of the passage of time as the next man ...’ and she broke up into howls of laughter.
Then the howls turned into whimpers, then sobs that shuddered the blanket from around her shoulders. She seemed to be shrivelling before his eyes. Paul took her in his arms in the hope the contact would still her into quiet. But the poor soul couldn’t – or wouldn’t – stop crying.
‘Please, Miss Potter, please don’t be distressing so much. You’ll be making yourself sick.’
She pulled free, wailed once long and loud, then flung her hand up to her mouth and clamped it tightly shut. He didn’t think it possible for a person to have so much of the hard stuff inside them and still be standing.
‘I’m ... going ... to ... get ... a ... new ... bicycle,’ she began chanting in a childish voice, ‘what ... about ... you?’
Paul felt as though he was having one of those nightmares after too much cheese for supper. He picked up the blanket and wrapped it back around her shoulders. Then he pushed her gently forward until they were once more walking towards the church.
‘Nearly there now, Miss Potter. Soon have you in the warm and you can tuck yourself up in bed once more. You’ll feel right as rain once it’s worn off in the morning. I wouldn’t go trying to dig over your rose beds though; I reckon your tummy might be complaining a mite if you do. Take my advice and have yourself a pot or two of sweet tea before you go doing anything more than getting washed and dressed.’