‘What’s this nonsense?’ said William, coming in for his lunch and seeing them there, three girls huddled around the fourth. ‘Haven’t you lasses enough work to do?’
‘We’ll do it, Pa. Only it’s wrong that Clem can’t even write her own name,’ said Mary.
‘Or anyone else’s name,’ added Josie.
‘She’s no need of it,’ said William, ruffling Clemmie’s hair, sitting down heavily. They all stared at him. It had been a long time since he’d touched any of them in kindness, or with affection. He glowered at their scrutiny so Rose broke the silence hastily with sliced bread and ham, and pickled onions. But the girls were on Clemmie’s side now – even Lizzie, who’d spotted a bite mark on her neck, and woven her mad hair into a loose braid on that side to hide it. Perhaps they hoped to encourage her confidence with such displays of loyalty, but she remained resolutely uncommunicative. In the night, disembodied whispers came through the darkness.
‘Is it Bobby Silcox, Clem?’ This was a slow-witted Biddestone boy who worked in the sawmill there, stacking cut planks, sweating all day long.
‘Is it Jared Hinckley?’ A thin young man with a wall eye, who appeared at Honeybrook Farm now and then, looking for work. Clemmie didn’t know whether to be happy or sad that they never once thought to suggest a Tanner.
When they’d met at the river, for the first time after what had happened at the mill, Eli had asked enough of the right questions to work out that Clemmie had overheard the plan to rob Alistair Hadleigh.
‘I didn’t want to, Clem. I swear to you, I never would have, left to my own devices,’ he’d said, and Clemmie had taken his face in her hands to show that she believed him. ‘And then with what happened … I wanted more than anything for the coppers to take the old bastard in. Even if it meant taking me and John as well … I wanted them to finger Isaac for it. But you can’t count on ’em for a bloody thing.’ He’d had to pause and breathe, slowly, through his anger. In the fortnight since then, and since Eli had realised that Clemmie still wanted him, and wouldn’t betray him, things had changed. His passion for her had crystallised into something deeper, and less childlike; something so intense it gave her a shiver along her spine when she saw it, and a seasick feeling, like the ground was tilting.
‘No one’s ever been as good to me as you have, Clem. No one’s ever been as true,’ he told her, with kisses so strong they bruised her lips, and left them puffy and red. ‘You’re an angel. You’re my angel.’ She couldn’t tell if the shiver were a warning or a thrill, but it was addictive, utterly addictive. It made her feel like a different person to the one she was before – more awake somehow. More real. And she needed his salt-metal taste in her mouth like she needed to breathe; she craved the unexpected softness of his skin in places nobody else knew; she was fascinated by his eyes – older than the rest of him but blue and beautiful, when everything else about his face was ferocious.
And when the police did not return to hound the Tanners, when the investigation seemed closed, she began to wonder if she’d got it all wrong. If she’d misunderstood what she’d overheard at Thatch Cottage – if the robbery at the mill had been aborted, or had happened sooner than she knew, and had nothing to do with the violent attack. If the Tanners had had nothing to do with that, and news of their robbery had been lost in the sensation of the worse crime, or attributed to whoever had dealt the blows. She wished she could ask Eli, wished there was some way she could find out for sure. When she thought back to what she had heard, and what Tanner was like, and how Eli had been afterwards, it seemed obvious to her that it had gone just as she feared it had. But the notion that Eli had no part in it was tempting, and seductive, and as long as she didn’t think about it too much, it remained a possibility. Sudden rushes of emotion assailed her all day long, bringing strange physical side effects – a dizziness, the feeling that she was receding from the world into some wrong-moving tunnel; tastes in her mouth that came from nowhere, stemmed from nothing, and made her either ravenous or nauseous; overwhelming surges of love for her family, accompanied by a wobbling weakness in her legs, which then quickly ebbed into a kind of simmering hostility she had never felt before, which somehow made her notice that her clothes were too tight, and cutting into her.
With Isaac Tanner safely away from home during the day, or safely at the pub in the evening, Eli began to take Clemmie home to meet his mother and younger siblings at Thatch Cottage. They were nervous; there was a watchful uneasiness about them all – except for his grandmother, who slept in a chair by the stove the whole time Clemmie was there. At first she thought they were unsure of her, or bothered by her silence. After a while she saw that they were scared for Eli. Frightened that he was there, where his father might catch him not working, might catch him bringing an outsider into their home. Mrs Tanner looked up sharply at any sound from outside – a pheasant coughing in alarm, a snapping twig, any sudden noise from the mill. She had long, bushy hair that stayed in a bun at the back of her head without the help of pins, and a weary, knowing look in her eye. But her smile was ready enough, though it was wry rather than warm. Whenever they were there she made sure that the windows stayed covered with the thick felts that the mill gave away when they got too worn for the paper-making machine. So for Clemmie the inside of Thatch Cottage was a place of shadows, with dark corners and watchful inhabitants moving in them, whatever the time of day. A place that had turned its back on the rest of the world. She could hardly bear it when it was still daylight outside. She fretted and fidgeted, feeling the walls close in around her. But once it was dark the cosiness drew her in, and the candlelit dimness seemed soft and cosseting, and Clemmie stopped feeling as though she had walked willingly into a den of thieves.
Clemmie knew that her family were poor – God knew there was never any money for anything – but compared to the Tanners she saw that her life was blessed in many ways. That at Weavern Farm they had eggs and milk and cheese and fresh vegetables, and clean air and space, and the reassurance and rhythm of constant work. Thatch Cottage was dank amidst the trees, and dirty for having too many people inside, trying to live, trying to breathe. The patch of ground they had outside was muddy and too shaded to grow anything; it stank of the privy and the pigsty, from which the sow gazed out, unhappily, through her white eyelashes. There was never enough food, and the food they had was unappetising, and monotonous. The children had coughs and snivels, even then, at midsummer. Two of the littlest had angry skin rashes, all red and scaly, which they scratched at constantly. Mrs Tanner cut their nails as short as she could and mixed up an ointment of tea leaves, comfrey root and pork dripping to rub on, though they grizzled as she did. The smallest child, a little boy called Jacob, took an instant shine to Clemmie and crawled into her lap whenever she was there, knotting his fingers into her hair and sucking his grubby thumb. The child, not yet two years old, smelled of earth and leaves, and Clemmie remembered the story she’d heard, that Tanner had drowned this baby’s twin sister in the river at birth. Seeing the way their mother was with them, and the way she made do, Clemmie knew it was nothing but a vicious rumour. Eli brushed his little brother’s cheek with his knuckles, his expression keen, tender.
‘Takes after you, this one, Ma,’ he said.
‘For a change,’ said his mother, with a smile. She looked at Clemmie. ‘Every other boy I’ve had has been a copy of his dad – like they were struck from the same mould. But if you marry a strong man, perhaps you’d best expect it. I’d all about despaired of having a sweet one until my Jacob there came along.’ Clemmie smiled, but Eli’s face had closed off, and he went to the cupboard to look for something. ‘If this first of yours is a boy, perhaps you’ll have a sweet one too, young Clemmie,’ Eli’s mother said, quietly, so that he wouldn’t hear. ‘My Eli has always been soft underneath, even if he can’t let himself show it. Drink this, child.’ She handed Clemmie a steaming cup. ‘Nettle tea. It’ll stop you looking so swollen up and ripe. But your folks’ll work it out sooner rather than
later, as will Eli – best to just tell him.’ Clemmie sipped obediently, and thought little of it.
Eli returned to the table with a cloth doll of a little boy: soft, stuffed arms and legs, with dark brown wool hair and blue eyes in needlepoint – just like a Tanner. It was wearing a yellow twill waistcoat and trousers, a white shirt and tiny black shoes, which Clemmie felt sure no Tanner child had ever worn. It was dirty, but not as dirty as it could have been – the pale cream fabric of its face had been grimed yellowish from the touch of human skin, but on the whole it looked as though it had been kept safe, for special use.
‘The vicar’s wife gave us this, when I was only knee-high,’ said Eli. ‘She brought us a load of stuff – clothes and shoes the church had collected, and other toys. Dad chucked it all out. He got into such a rage, saying we didn’t need their charity, and how they thought they were so godly and above us. I only managed to save this by sitting on it.’ He tucked the doll under Jacob’s arm, and the toddler squeezed it tight to his ribs, his eyelids drooping with sleep. ‘Why shouldn’t the littl’uns have a doll?’ Eli murmured. Clemmie wanted to ask how they’d kept it hidden from his father all that time, and it was as though Eli heard the question. ‘We keep it in a flour pot. My dad never looks there – you can’t eat flour right out the jar, after all.’ He smiled briefly, and it caused Clemmie’s heart to clench. She realised how few times she had seen him smile.
‘The two of you need to think,’ said Mrs Tanner, gently enough. ‘When he finds you out – and he will find you out – he’ll like as not turn you out from under this roof, Clemmie, and like as not you’d be glad of that. He’s worse than ever of late, since what happened at the mill. I don’t know what ails him.’ Mrs Tanner shook her head. ‘But something ain’t right. He’s full of nightmares and pain, and the only way he knows how to deal with that is with his fists. But I dare say your folks’ll turn you out an’all. So. You need to think.’
Eli’s smile vanished. One of his sisters worked at the stove, jamming in a poker, feeding in dry twigs. From upstairs came a loud thumping.
‘Go on and see what your granddad wants,’ Mrs Tanner told one of the children. ‘Tell him supper won’t be long.’
‘We’ll get gone,’ said Eli, rising and holding out his hand to Clemmie. She took it, and got up, and nobody argued that they should stay longer, or eat supper. They slipped out into the night together, moving quietly, assuredly, west of Slaughterford through the mill’s potato fields and up the hill, until there was no chance of being seen. Then they stopped and kissed, held each other tight, carried on walking again, until Eli stopped by the bridge to Weavern Farm, with the river’s rush to hide any noise they might make. ‘Go on in to your bed,’ he told her, pushing her gently. Clemmie held his hands and wouldn’t go. He would sleep rough to keep out from under Tanner’s feet – a bed of long grass under a hedge somewhere. He’d wake before dawn, drenched with dew, chilled, restlessly exhausted. He was becoming a bird, a rabbit, a fox. Becoming wild. She wanted to stay with him, and be like him, and at the same time she wanted to take him inside with her, to a feather bed and the clinging safety of the loft room, and give him that life instead. ‘Go on, Clemmie,’ he insisted. ‘We’ll think of a plan, just like Mum said. But not tonight. I’ll think of a plan, I promise.’
Clemmie woke with the sun. Her head was thumping and her body felt limp. Her sisters were stirring, and she forced herself to sit up. There were small twigs in her hair and mud under her fingernails. Josie, beside her, pinched her arm fondly as she got up.
‘Scarecrow,’ she said. Clemmie shut her eyes and swallowed. There was a lump in her throat that wouldn’t go, and a taste of iron, or blood. She tried to ignore it for a moment, then lurched over the side of the bed to reach for the pot, but it was too late and she threw up all over the rag rug and Josie’s feet. ‘Oh, Clem!’ Josie cried in horror.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Mary grumbled.
‘What did you eat, Clem?’ said Josie.
‘What didn’t she eat?’ said Lizzie, always at her worst first thing in the morning. ‘No wonder she’s getting so fat.’ Shakily, Clemmie got to her feet and patted Josie’s arm in apology. She wanted to go and get water and a cloth to clean up with but couldn’t quite make her legs work. Mary was watching her intently, with her head on one side; thoughts marched across her face, and the quality of her silence was such that, gradually, the other three stopped and stared at her.
‘No!’ said Lizzie, her face falling into astonishment.
‘What?’ said Josie, frowning.
‘Fewer rags to wash last month, weren’t there?’ said Mary.
‘And she’s been as moody as a mare. And eating like a pig,’ Lizzie pointed out. Realisation dawned on Josie. Her hands flew to her mouth, and she turned wide eyes on Clemmie.
‘Oh, no … oh, you’re not, are you, Clemmie?’
‘I reckon she is,’ said Lizzie, excitedly.
‘Well, we can’t keep that a secret for you,’ said Mary, her shoulders dropping wearily. ‘You daft cow. Dad’ll go spare.’
They fell into a heated debate about when to tell Rose, and how their mother might react, and what was to be done, and how they could find out the man responsible and whether William would force them to marry, or kill him and then beat the baby right out of his daughter, and solve it that way. There was a kind of frenetic excitement to their words, their voices, their movements. Clemmie was buffeted to one side of the flow, and drifted over to the window. She pushed the thin drapes aside, sat down on the sill and took a deep lungful of the morning air. The chickens were muttering for release from the barn, the cock was warming up his disjointed crowing, and the cows were milling at the yard gate to be let in and milked. Clemmie put her hands flat on her stomach, and thought for a while, sending her mind inwards until she found what she was looking for – the unmistakable sense of new life. Chicks and goslings, kits, kids and piglets, and now herself. Clemmie and Eli. Hello, piglet, she said silently, and smiled. She let the early sun fall onto her at the open window, hoping that, however impossible it was, Eli would see. It seemed to her entirely right, and entirely as it should be. She felt certain that all would be well. The piglet would become a part of their plan, and all would be well.
* * *
The whole of Slaughterford turned out for Alistair Hadleigh’s funeral. The mill was left to fall silent – the machines halting their endless turning, beating, stirring and drying, the hiss of steam petering to nothing. Even farm work stopped for the day. Nancy Hadleigh had refused for any work of any kind to go on at Manor Farm, bar the essential feeding and milking of animals, and the brewery and smaller farms had followed suit. Nobody could remember such a happening before, and nobody had ever heard such silence in Slaughterford. The quiet belonged to bygone years before any of them had been born. Voices were lowered outside the church, and though it might have been out of respect for the occasion, people kept turning to look down into the valley, to wonder at the gentle nudge of the breeze and the skylarks’ constant song, and the incredible hush everywhere, as though they couldn’t quite believe it. They searched the valley as though the view must have changed along with the sounds in their ears – the mill must have vanished, the brewery chimney toppled, the cottages swept away by some massive hand. When the breeze dropped they could even hear the river, parting sibilantly around the piers of the bridge. The stillness cast a magic spell that enthralled them all.
Alistair’s body had come back from Chippenham that morning, in the undertaker’s ebony carriage, its glass sides showing the glossy coffin and the multitude of white flowers inside. The horses were black, and wore black plumes; their harness had silver buckles, brightly polished, as did the carriage and the coffin. The whole sad parade was monochrome, and so wildly out of place against the greens, yellows and pinks of the flower-strewn churchyard that it might have dropped down from the sky. Or risen up from some underworld. Irene wore black from head to toe. She had a veil so thick she could ha
rdly see out from under it, and, crucially, it was nearly impossible for anybody to see in through it – to see her face. Which didn’t stop them trying, of course. Word had got about, as word will get about. Word of what Pudding had accused her of, and that the police superintendent had been up to Spring Cottage to interview her about it. Word that she hadn’t loved Alistair, and that her grief was a sham. A rapid spread of incredulous words, passing through the villagers like an infection. She felt their looks, and felt them speculating. She felt, more than ever, her every move scrutinised; she felt that if she got one tiny thing wrong they would fall on her and devour her. She wondered if only Nancy were stopping them. As the coffin was carried, with excruciating slowness, from the lane to the side of the family grave, which gaped in readiness, Nancy took Irene’s arm. It might only have been to keep herself standing, but it felt like unity. A show of support. Irene clasped her hand, never more grateful to Alistair’s aunt, even if the gesture were not all it seemed.
Chairs were brought out for Irene and Nancy, and while Nancy sank carefully onto hers, Irene felt wound too tight to sit. When it seemed that things would not proceed until she did, she perched on the edge of the chair, her body thrumming with tension. The crowd of mourners seemed to cluster in and tower over her, like a wave that might break, and wash her into the grave along with her late husband. The black coffin was like a tear in the world. Looking at it gave Irene the same electric shock, deep in her bones, as the memory of Alistair’s wounds; the same terrible lurch of dissociation from reality. She tried not to look at it because she couldn’t help picturing him inside: pallid now, washed clean of blood but still broken and torn. She couldn’t help picturing his sinking cheeks stuffed with cotton wadding, and his eyelids stitched shut and his lips entirely bloodless, and all the quietly violent things that would have been done to his insides in preparation for burial. As though what was left in the coffin were a doll of Alistair – a life-sized doll, put together from his remains in macabre imitation of the real man. It sent cold tingles over her scalp, and washed her cheeks with saliva, and she shut her eyes and longed for the moment when the thing in the coffin would be dropped into the ground and covered over forever. She didn’t hear the sermon; she was concentrating too hard on surviving the horror of simply sitting there. When Gerry McKinley took her arm and helped her to her feet, she had no idea what he wanted. She panicked as he walked her closer to the grave, and tried to pull her arm away, until she saw that the coffin had been lowered in, and everyone was waiting for her to throw the first handful of earth over it. Then she had to fight the urge to fall to her knees and push great armfuls of it in, and shovel it in with her hands, and keep going until there was nothing left to shovel.
The Hiding Places Page 19