by Jo Baker
“No.”
He was sitting forward now, leaning towards me, animated, even with the fatigue of the long day. “And this is what we must change. I don’t just mean money, I mean opportunity, the opportunity to be more than just a pair of hands, employed at others’ work, to be shot for stepping out of line, for insisting that there will be more to your life than work and hunger and death. In this country, privilege and property and opportunity are inherited, passed from parent to child, and poverty’s the same; like having blue eyes, a talent for music, or a weak chest. We need the vote. If we are to effect change, we must have the vote.”
I felt a strange kind of shyness, speaking of it: “There is Heaven, Mr. Moore. We may trust to that. That there will be consolation in the hereafter.”
“What good is consolation?”
“You may not believe,” I said, “but I do, I always have, as long as I can remember. A world without God…”
He raised his hand, palm turned towards me, asking me to stop; it was creased with grass marks and a fragment of bark was stuck to the ball of this thumb. “Even by your lights, then, it still holds true. This is not the world as God created it. Satan has worked his evil. You’ll remember, in Genesis, God created Man and Woman, not Rich and Poor.”
Images of Sin, and of Eve and the serpent and the fruit filled my inner sight, and then Agnes, pale as the sheets on which she lay, and the bucket full of bloody cloths, and her eyes closed and her mouth open as she was crushed by the birthing pains.
“I’m sorry,” he said, in answer to my quiet. He sank back again, his palms pressed onto the earth, his arms locked. “Perhaps if I felt there was another world, I could rest easier about this one.”
We sat in silence. The heat of the sun brought out the scent of the tree, a scent like moss and oatmeal. We looked across the water meadow, across the valley, towards the terraces of cottages at Melling, and beyond. There’s a house on the top of the far hills; a lane runs up to it, it stands square against the sky. I always thought I might walk there one day, knock on the door, and find out who lives there. Stand on their doorstep to look back across the valley, to see what the village looks like from there.
“Perhaps it does not help to speak of God,” Mr. Moore said after a while. “Think perhaps of the Church; this is what bothers me most, that a man like your Reverend Wolfenden keeps a grand house and a good table and a wife dressed in silk, who is herself a luxury, a fancy toy that plays music and looks pretty and is no use or good to anyone. This is all on your goodwill, paid for by your labour, by your tithes. And what bothers me is, what law did God lay down that you, Elizabeth, must labour to keep Mrs. Wolfenden in fine clothes? Did Christ insist that his priests have grander houses, better food and clothes than the rest of his flock—did Christ insist that he have priests?”
I was picking at a patch of parched moss, watching its fibres come apart. I looked up at him. “They look after us. The Wolfendens do.”
“Are you children?”
“They give charity. They have wealth so that they can give charity.”
“So you are given treats for being good. Is this any way for grown men and women to live?”
“But he’s—” I said.
Mr. Moore finished my thought, “A gentleman?” We were looking at each other. He made a comical face, his eyebrows raised, his lips pressed together, as if the phrase were meant to explain and answer everything, and that we both knew that it was entirely inadequate. I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
“That book. The one that you’re writing, what kind of a book is it? Is it like Crusoe, where everything happened but happened differently to someone else, or is it…” I was going to say Gospel Truth, but didn’t.
“It really happened. Everything in that book; it really happened, and to me, or in my presence. I was just trying to get it down as coolly as I could.”
“Why did you come here?”
“I thought it would be quiet. Oversby had not heard of me, but perhaps, by now, he will have: Wolfenden must have spoken to him.” He thought a moment, tilted his head: “It would explain the way Greaves has been working me lately.”
He lifted the bottle and drank. I watched the roll of his Adam’s apple, the sheen of his sweated skin.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” I said.
He spluttered, coughed, and beer ran down his chin. He wiped it away. “You really have seen nothing of the world. I’m common as a sparrow. There’s a meeting next month, on Caton Moor. We expect at least five hundred there.”
Something caught my notice, some movement in the water meadow, over in the far corner. On his way home from the willow holts, with that long-legged lope that you would know a mile off. He crossed the stubble in full sun, his head low, a bundle of green willow on his back: Thomas.
“The meeting is just a step. A show of strength and purpose. Today, we’re kept like children, and so, like children, we can only sulk and refuse to do our chores, and be beaten for our disobedience. But when the Charter becomes Law, there’ll be a vote for every man. We’ll all have a hand in the making of all other laws, in the establishment of taxes, in the conferring of rights and obligations on our fellow men, and we will be treated as children no longer. And then you will see what a fine world we make of this.”
I stood up, lifting my shawl. Mr. Moore raised himself on a hand to let it slip out from beneath him.
“So I will have a vote?”
I shook out the shawl.
“Your husband will.”
There was silence. I folded the shawl and drew it around me. I saw Mr. Moore’s gaze catch on the figure of Thomas.
“Are you going to him?” he asked.
“I have to,” I said, meaning that he might have seen us, or might soon, if I didn’t leave. Mr. Moore nodded and looked down, watching his forefinger picking at a crumb of loose bark.
“Goodbye,” I said. “Thank you.”
He glanced up, shook his head, not understanding.
“For explaining,” I said. “For taking the time.”
He smiled, his face breaking out into a map of lines, making me smile back at him.
“Pleasure,” he said. “A genuine pleasure.”
I went out into the sun’s glare, and down the path towards the wash-house where the ways meet, and waited there, leaning against the gatepost, my heart hammering against the stone. Thomas approached across the water meadow. Mr. Moore came down the hill, and crossed the beck; I glanced up to watch him pass. He had his hat on; it shaded his eyes.
He touched his hat, and passed me without speaking. He climbed the hill towards the village, leaving me there.
I walked there, through the fields. I went down the track to the point where the ways part, then climbed up past the oak standing in its own quiet shadow. Storrs Hall stood clear among the trees. I climbed up the open hillside to a narrow wooden garden gate; beyond, the path was squeezed between laurels and rhododendrons. The hinges were stiff, the wood soft and damp; it left algae on my hand.
I should have been going home. I should have done what Mark said I should do. Got a good night’s sleep and packed my stuff into the car and come straight home and gone and got the pills and forgotten all of this, forgotten everything. The wine had switched me off, but only temporarily. When I woke my hand was throbbing under the plaster, and my head was sore and there was the sourness of a hangover in my mouth, and the edge of anxiety that came with it infected everything that had gone before and been dismissed: the reflection in the glass last night; the flood of images at the gravestone; the breath drawn as if someone were about to speak. What if I’d held my breath and listened, instead of running away? A woman’s voice from an empty room. The static. If I were losing my mind, then it was a very specific madness. I had to find out what happened here; only then could I know what was happening to me.
And if anyone would know, it was Margaret.
The building was sheer and dark, flanked by close-growing shrubberies. I followed
the path around the side and came to a broad sweep of gravel, parked with cars. I knew that what I was about to do was almost certainly wrong: procedurally, socially, possibly even ethically wrong. But I didn’t have time to follow the proper channels, and wouldn’t have been able to explain myself if required to. I didn’t mean any harm: I kept telling myself this as I climbed the broad stone steps, as I pressed the intercom. It might not be, strictly speaking, appropriate, but it certainly wasn’t malicious. I didn’t mean any harm.
The intercom crackled.
“Who is it?” A woman’s voice.
I leaned in. “My name’s Rachel,” I said. “I’m a visitor.”
There was a buzz and click; I pushed the heavy wooden door, and was through into the lobby. The room was panelled in dark wood; a flight of stairs curled up the wall; the carpet was old and thick and crimson. I just stood there, staring up at the smooth curve of the staircase; it set off an echo of something I couldn’t place.
A vacuum cleaner kicked into life, making me turn. A long corridor opened off the lobby. At the far end, a young man in a green polo-shirt and jeans was swivelling a Dyson around, rearing it back on its wheels and flapping a length of cable out of the way. The corridor carpet was dusted with Shake ’n’ Vac, as if there’d been a frost indoors. The place reeked of synthetic peach.
“Who are you here to see?”
It was the woman’s voice again. I turned towards it. She leaned through the gap between a door and doorframe, revealing a wedge of nurse’s uniform and a cluttered office beyond. She had a pleasant, young, worried face. The Dyson started to drone back and forth.
I smiled. “I’m here to see Margaret.”
“Okay.” Her intonation left the word open; she needed something more.
“Margaret Hutton? I’m Rachel; I’m from down in the village. I’ve been meaning to come for ages. You know how things are; always so much else to do.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, towards the office; priorities were shifting; she was accepting this. She turned back to me, her expression easy.
“She’s in the Day Room. She’s in pretty good form today.” The young woman gestured down the corridor, towards the cleaner, who was moving back and forth in that leisurely vacuuming dance. “You won’t mind finding your own way, will you? I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to get through, and they’re due their meds at ten.”
I thanked her, headed up the corridor. The cleaner swept the Dyson back to let me past. I walked white Shake ’n’ Vac footprints onto the clean carpet. I turned to look back, to mouth the word “Sorry” at him. He was just a lad, his skin blotched and sore-looking with acne. He shook his head at me, and grinned. His smile was catching: I found myself grinning back at him.
—
The Day Room was full of armchairs; they were lined up along the walls, circled around coffee tables and spread in an arc in front of the television set. Nets covered the window so the light was filtered and dulled; the TV was on with the volume down low. The ladies occupied almost every chair. Their clothes and hair and skin were the same muted shades as the furnishings. One was sleeping, her head thrown back, her mouth open on dark wet tongue, pastel-pink plastic gums, white teeth. The others were all looking at me.
The room was warm, smelt of old milk, Shake ’n’ Vac, and pear drops. The vacuum cleaner hummed in the background. The TV prattled brightly.
The women’s collective gaze was mild, interrogative. No one spoke. I swallowed drily.
“I’m looking for Margaret Hutton,” I said.
“Margaret.”
“Oh, Margaret.”
“Margaret Hutton.”
Heads turned stiffly, eyes seeking other eyes, summoning consensus. At the back of the room, a bent head raised itself, fingers unlocked.
“Mrs. Hutton?” I asked. The woman nodded carefully. I threaded through the chairs towards her.
She was a tiny person, frail as wood ash. Age had bent her; she was hunched forward protectively around herself, her chest hollow underneath the patterned polyester of her dress. The other women resumed their conversations, their voices soft as crumbled cake. I sat down in the upright wood-framed armchair on Mrs. Hutton’s left and the seat sank deeply on its springs.
“Is that you?” she asked.
Her skin hung in swags beneath her eyes and at her jaw, in shades of translucent purple and manila. I felt myself choke up. Stupid, that this would make me miss my mum; she never got to be this old.
“No,” I said, and then didn’t know what to say, how to frame the question.
Mrs. Hutton studied my face. Her eyes were smudged with age, the whites marked with yellow and fine webs of pink, the irises watery blue. She shook her head. “I thought you were her.”
I felt my cheeks redden with guilt. She thought I was a friend or relative; a daughter-in-law, a granddaughter, a niece.
“No. Sorry.”
Her attention slipped to my hand curled on my lap; the pink swell at the base of my thumb, the plaster stuck inadequately across the infected cut.
“Been in the wars,” she said.
“A bit.”
“You have to watch yourself,” she said.
I smiled awkwardly. “A friend of yours sent me to see you. Your old neighbour from across the street. Mrs. Davies.”
Mrs. Hutton’s face cracked with pleasure. “Ah. Jean.”
“Yes, Jean.” I seized the name. “She sends her love.”
“That’s nice.”
“She said I should ask you about the house.”
“The house?”
“She said that you were the one to talk to.”
Margaret looked at me a moment, nonplussed. She raised a hand, the knuckles swollen like tree roots. She gestured to the room, frowned deeply. “This place? The Home?”
“No, I mean your cottage. My mum and dad bought it. I’m—”
“No,” she said, and frowned deeper still. “No.”
“Sorry?”
“I told Jack.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I told Jack, I said he mustn’t.” Her voice was raised in irritation. Other conversations fell away; attention was drawn to us.
I spoke low: “He mustn’t what?”
She looked at me sidelong, appraisingly. She seemed extremely lucid, needle-sharp.
“I was sure you were her,” she said.
“I’m not, honestly. We’ve never met. Your neighbour. Jean. She said that I should—”
“You look like her.”
I felt a prickling at the nape of my neck. “Who do you mean?”
Mrs. Hutton’s hand fixed itself around my wrist. Her touch was cold and dry.
“I got so cross with her,” she said. “Getting me up at all hours. Those tricks of sunshine and voices. The kind of smells that get you right here.” She tapped her concave chest with a thick fingernail; a shiver of electricity shot through my skin. “The smell of wet linen, and wood shavings, and woodsmoke, and liquorice. There’d be someone talking downstairs, and I’d think Charlie was there, and I’d think the boys were home, and I’d think it was all back as it used to be, and I was young again, and if I could just find Charlie—”
Mrs. Hutton drew a ragged breath. Her eyes were brimming. She raised a loose-skinned finger to a lower lid.
“I couldn’t bear it anymore.”
She fumbled in a skirt pocket, raised a bunched tissue to blot at her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said clumsily.
She shook her head. “Oh, I like it here, I like it here. It’s a good place; it’s good to have the company—it’s just”—she squeezed my wrist, shook her head—“cruel,” she said. As she looked at me, her expression softened; her face seemed somehow to slacken. She shook her head again, gently.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, my voice thick, colluding with her tears.
“It’s never that, he didn’t mean—”
“He?”
She said something else; I couldn’t make i
t out.
“Mrs. Hutton?”
She didn’t seem to have heard me. Her eyes had clouded; she mumbled something about rain, and something that had to be brought, as if she were trying to convince herself, to set it straight in her own head.
“Are you okay?” I leaned closer. “Do you need anything? Shall I call someone?”
She shook her head, her eyelids sinking.
“Margaret?”
She didn’t respond. I lifted her hand from mine and laid it in her lap. Her fingers, with their loose skin, their swollen knuckles, curled upwards like coral.
The boy was still swinging the vacuum cleaner back and forth. He smiled at me again, then saw my expression, and his smile collapsed.
“Where’s the nurse?” I asked.
He gestured me on, towards the lobby.
The staircase. The sweep of it like a waterfall, like birdsong, and somehow annoyingly, intangibly, important. A figure crossed the landing above; white tunic, navy trousers: the nurse. She came padding down the stairs, her mind elsewhere, her hand skimming the smooth curve of the banister. She noticed me; her smile went. She clattered down the final steps to join me.
“Problem?”
“She’s just—” I tried.
“Margaret?”
“She just. Went blank.”
She glanced down the corridor, glanced back at me. “I’ll check on her.” She touched my arm, gave me a quick smile. “Don’t worry. It happens. It’s not your fault.” She was gone, heading off down the corridor, breaking into a run. I turned, and left: I didn’t believe her.
—
I crunched down the driveway. Dark yew trees lined the way; overhead the branches of deciduous trees were heavy with buds. Crocuses sprouted underneath; celandines dotted the grass.
You look like her.
I came out onto the road, turned towards the village. Hands stuffed into pockets, shoulders up, hand throbbing and hot between the press of my leg, the restriction of denim. Just a narrow grass verge and a wire fence between me and fields. Lambs stood in gangs. No cars passed. A rabbit had been smeared into pulp and fluff on the tarmac. A stray hubcap lay on the grass verge. The road swept down towards the village. Beech trees spread fine branches overhead. I was thinking of her wet blue eyes, smudged with age.