‘We came from Preston originally. That’s where our roots are. I still have some family up that way, but we’ve lost contact now. I was in the biscuit-packaging business. Small family firm. We sold up. Had to because of poor Nancy.’ Georgie thought he winced when he said, ‘A child, you see, it was over a child. A dear little girl. Very sad.’ He drew a deep and sonorous breath, ‘Luckily it was a good time to sell, as it turned out.’ Horace looked round the room and nodded in satisfaction, the first sign of pleasure he had shown. He cleared his throat and became more positive. ‘Yes, we invested the money well and we live quite comfortably on it. And there were stocks and shares inherited. Yes,’ and he stretched when he heard his wife coming back, ‘we live well enough. Nancy and I.’
Georgie breathed in and settled her shoulders. She dropped a sigh heavier than his. Dead children. Dear God. Was there nothing in the world except dead children?
On fast squeaking wheels the afternoon tea came into the room on a hostess trolley. ‘I like a challenge,’ said Nancy, wrapped in an enormous white apron. The silver-plated cake stands were made pink with doilies, and the little round cherry cakes sprinkled with hundreds and thousands were clearly home-baked. The sandwiches, on brown and white bread, had their crusts cut off and were cut into triangles, small and neat, while Nancy, crouched above the trolley said, ‘There’s sardine or tomato paste, or there’s sardine and tomato paste with cucumber.’ And her eyes darted this way and that.
She handed Georgie a plate with a napkin folded on it and a terribly modern knife with a red plastic handle. ‘I do so like having people,’ she murmured contentedly, smacking her lips together, ‘although, just recently, I have become a drudge to this house and we have been reduced to living this creeping existence.’ And when Georgie took a sandwich she knew that Nancy watched to see how she was enjoying it, or if she dropped crumbs. The certain knowledge was that the minute she had gone Nancy would fetch a dustpan and brush and clean out the chair she was sitting on, fluff up the cushions, go round the carpet with a sweeper. She raised sympathetic eyes towards Horace, but he sat giving nothing away, tugging on a sandwich of his own.
Christ. Not only did this poor defeated man have Nancy to contend with, but, until recently, he had heroically coped with Stephen, too.
Nancy did not sit down. She stood beside the hostess like a waitress after a meal in a restaurant, pointing out the desserts with pride. No sooner had Georgie finished than Nancy was there with that plateful of sandwiches, urging just one more.
‘I can’t,’ she confessed after three. She patted her chest. ‘I’m full up. But they were lovely, Mrs Horsefield.’
‘But you’re going to have a cake? Surely?’
Georgie was firm. If she took one cake where would it end?
‘Egg white is the secret,’ declared Nancy Horsefield triumphantly, freed to sit down at last, but her hands remained restless on her lap. ‘Poor, poor afflicted man. It was the drink that did it, of course,’ she said sadly, her eyes brightening. ‘The drink that defeated him. But then, of course, he was an artist. Look!’ she suddenly cried, remembering, and went to stand by a picture on the far wall of the room. ‘He put it in one of those old wooden frames so I had to take it out. It wouldn’t have suited a room like this. But look, Mrs Jefferson! Your brother painted this!’
She beamed at Georgie. She beamed at the picture.
Georgie stared in amazement. The picture was heartbreakingly beautiful. Something had led her to expect Stephen’s work to be modern, slashes and daubs and wild impressions of colour. Uncanny and unnatural? The kind of painting she might have done? But this painting was nothing like that. It was gentle. It was of a child’s face lit up by a strange blue candlelight, and all manner of fears lay beyond the flame. She sat by a tree with her toys half obscured by a tartan rug, but such a yearning was in it, such an understanding of innocence and hope that Georgie gasped. The frame was an awful ornate gold, too heavy, it swamped the picture and tried to squeeze the innocence out. It could not.
And Georgie felt such a stab of pain, it was more like jealousy, when she recognized the fact that Stephen had found a way to cry out while she…
‘Yes, it’s a sight to behold, really, isn’t it?’ Nancy, palpitating and muttering, watched her visitor’s expression with pleasure. She shuffled about in her bag, a red rucksack, obviously new, and pulled out a dainty handkerchief. She dabbed at her nose as if in sorrow, the first sorrow Georgie had seen in regards to her brother’s death. ‘He gave it to me, Stephen did, for altering his jacket. Remember, Horace, that old black canvas jacket of his? Personally I wouldn’t have bothered, I’d have thrown it away or used it as a duster. I said it’s no trouble, Stephen, but he insisted on paying me and that’s how we came by the picture, and it’s one of my most precious possessions.’
Perhaps the picture reminded poor Nancy of the little child she had lost.
Before Georgie left their house, after a third cup of tea, she knew that, whatever else, she must find the rest of the pictures. She must find out all she could about the artist who spoke to her so clearly. So simply. And so directly. As if she had always known him.
SEVEN
SUNDAY TEATIME, THE MOST wretched time in the world for the lonely. But Georgina Jefferson was not lonely was she? She had made her bed and must lie in it.
That first weekend was a long one, with a Sunday lunch that consisted of brown bread and cheese, quickly eaten in the early evening, sitting as close to the fire as she could without squashing Lola.
This was silly. She would have to sell the cottage, this was not the sort of place in which she felt comfortable, in this lost valley with the surly Mrs Buckpit and the vague and defeated Horsefields, some jerk up the road who assumed it his right to raid his dead neighbour’s house and nick whatever he wanted. Georgie did not possess the funds to renovate or maintain a holiday cottage and, if she got back to work, she wouldn’t have time to visit it regularly. As for moving here permanently, the thought never crossed her mind.
Not then.
Not yet.
Had Stephen actively chosen to stay here, or had he somehow got himself trapped?
She would call on the shifty Cramer, collect Stephen’s pictures, attempt to get out on Monday morning and visit Thomas Selby. Then she would return to London and await the sale of Furze Pen Cottage. All very positive and sensible.
London. She sighed. The internal inquiry into the death of Angela Hopkins was due to begin next week. The inquest was over, a slow and merciless exposure, indifferent and formal. The verdict was one of manslaughter, and Ray Hopkins protested his innocence loudly when taken into custody later. Everyone hoped that while on remand his fellow inmates would give him hell. Even better if the devil could be thrown to the crowd to deal with as they wished. Raymond Peter Hopkins, suddenly the most friendless man in the world.
The post mortem report seemed such a defilement of innocence.
And why did everyone have to be told that the child was illegitimate? Shit, what relevance did that have?
Georgie gave her evidence with professional calm, as did everyone else, as if they were discussing a car which had gone wrong, trying to discover the dodgy parts of the engine. A kind of leaden resignation helped her through the dreadful day, it blunted some of the pain. She wielded her weapons well. God helped her to set her teeth, clench her fist and hold herself together long enough to finish the job. No blame would be apportioned here. That would come later, depending on the coroner’s verdict. Even so, Georgie felt she was under sentence of death.
The coroner, a little bright-eyed old man—no aura about him suggested a career presiding over a range of deaths from sad to unspeakable—made his points very slowly and quietly and described the child’s death as monstrous. ‘The last cruel act of a man who has undoubtedly made the last two years of Angela’s life a misery.’ For the record he added with sorrow, ‘But in the circumstances, I have to add that, save for the social services living on the premises nigh
t and day, there were no steps that could have been taken that were not taken. There were no justifiable or legal reasons why this child, registered at risk, should have been removed from her home. Indeed, it is hard to see how any court, given the circumstances, would have agreed to a place of safety order at that particular time.’
Georgie listened to the proceedings with a kind of dull, glum interest, all feeling stunned and stilled. Oh God, oh God, oh God. She leaned forward to hear, her hands clasped over her knees as she tried, by concentrating, to understand precisely what had happened and how. A large square hall, lit from above, packed with people to its cream-coloured walls. A handsomely carved door, surmounted by the royal arms. And there was Georgie when it was over, exhausted, desolate, sitting at the back of the court, wringing her hands and almost weeping when Roger Mace squeezed her hand.
‘You see,’ he said, outside on the steps, ‘what more can be said to convince you? The coroner had no need to add that opinion. There is nothing you could have done to prevent Angie’s death, Georgie, nothing. And yet you continue to torture yourself.’
But the media, howling for headlines, did not take the coroner’s view. And even then, standing on the steps with her name virtually cleared, they swarmed towards her with their microphones and their notepads, jostling and shouting so that Roger had to put his arm round her and hurry her away to the car. Like a criminal. She might as well have worn a blanket over her head. She heard the hisses and jeers of the idle and the curious, and assumed a kind of carelessness as if they really didn’t interest her. And that same little huddle of crones was bunched on the courtroom pavement eager to get a look at her, faces ugly with hate, waiting to attack, made sick by their own twisted perceptions.
‘Blast them all,’ muttered Roger, frazzled.
Right out of the blue the thought sprung on Georgie of how appalled her mother would have been to see her pilloried like this, to read the cursed newspaper comments and realize they were maligning her very own daughter. Neighbours would know. The places where she shopped. The man at the garage, the mobile librarian. Her fragile image would break into fragments. Far from providing any support, Sylvia would have slapped her down with, ‘I told you it would end in tears, if you will work with people like that. Associate yourself with those types, Georgina, and what on earth can you expect?’
As bad as refusing to pluck her eyebrows. ‘No, I’m sorry, I wipe my hands of you.’
Sackcloth and ashes.
There were more abusive phone calls that night, but Mark stayed with her, so he took them. While Georgie’s hands, trembling badly, curved round a glass of brandy.
Oh, there were so many echoes. Whenever Georgie closed her eyes her head turned into a cave and they came. The utilitarian, chilly conference room in the social services building, with its apology for a carpet and its scrounged soft-seated chairs. The metal blinds, half pulled, were slotted with a weak, dust-seeking sun when they held that first case conference. ‘She is a lovely mum,’ said Judy, the playgroup leader, plump and woolly in the Fair Isle patterns of childhood. A young hopeful with little experience of life and a face angelically healthy. ‘Patsy and Carmen are always beautifully dressed, pleased to see Gail when she comes to pick them up, mostly with some little surprise, a cheap toy or some sweets.’
‘It’s not Gail we’re concerned about,’ Georgie remembers insisting. ‘Does Ray ever pick them up?’ The scars on the laminated table top cried out to be traced with the tip of a pen.
‘Oh yes, and me and the other helpers have often seen him give piggy-back rides to the other children. And I’ve always said how much better we’d be if all the fathers took part like he does,’ Judy continued bouncily, her cheerful face and her bright-blue eyes avid with absolute honesty. ‘All the kids adore him, and I must say we like him, too.’
Miss Parker, the class teacher from Angie’s infant school, told a similar tale, but with a frown in her wary brown eyes. ‘There is definitely something the matter. It’s not what Angie says or how she acts, no, it comes out in her drawings. And, of course, we are particularly worried because of the weeks she’s off school. But there’s always a convincing reason given. Ray was working away from home and Gail was in bed with flu, couldn’t get up to bring her, no neighbour available, didn’t think we’d mind as it was only a few days, but then it dragged on.’ Miss Parker, intense and nervous with the thinness of a very quick knitter, shuffled her notes, but the action was more to do with sorting out her thoughts. ‘The burn on her right wrist was the result of cooking fudge. Gail Hopkins told the school nurse that the child was being supervised, that Gail only turned away for a second and that Angie tried to test the consistency by dripping the boiling hot stuff on a spoon. Angle’s story matched this exactly. The child did not sound as if she was lying.’
‘And the bruise on her foot?’
‘She told us quite happily that she’d stepped on some sharp farmyard pieces that the younger children were playing with. She said that Gail told her off for going round the house with bare feet when she should have known the toys were all out and that she might hurt herself. We’d never have seen that bruise if one of the kids hadn’t got a verruca and we decided to check the whole class. But Angie didn’t hang back. If I remember, she was first in the queue.’
‘But the cut on her head, that needed stitches. The doctor was involved, I believe.’
There was a note from the family GP. Georgie read it out to the meeting. ‘The bruising around the wound was accounted for because of the weight and the speed of the swing on impact. This was quite conducive to the kind of lesion that would be caused by such a common accident. I chatted informally to Angela while I sutured the wound. Angela Hopkins gave a clear and precise account of how the accident had occurred and her version of the event matched that of her mother’s. She is a bright, attractive child, and likeable, and I am satisfied that she told the truth. However, naturally I will keep a close check on any further incidents which might occur in view of the concern expressed.’
Barbara Brightly, the health visitor, was also uneasy. ‘But that’s mainly because of the times I’ve called and been unable to get in. Although I’ve been absolutely certain there was someone there. Of course, it’s impossible to say whether the door was kept closed because my visit was inconvenient, maybe Gail considered the flat was a tip, maybe she hadn’t got herself dressed, maybe she just had a headache and didn’t welcome a call from me. That’s understandable.’ But Mrs Brightly frowned. She who was usually so sure of herself disliked the uncertainty she felt about this. ‘It’s happened so many times that I have to admit to the feeling that all cannot be well with that family. In view of everything else.’
Georgie asked, ‘And Angie’s attitude? The way she responds when you do get in?’
Barbara referred to her notes. ‘Always alert. Always happy and chatty. Clean. Well dressed. Hair brushed. Runs to the door to meet me, drags me into the room, shows me the pictures she’s been crayoning, offers to make a cup of tea.’
‘The perfect child then,’ observed Georgie dryly. ‘Never grumpy, never naughty, never teasing her siblings, never out of sorts with Gail, never in any trouble.’
‘Exactly.’ Barbara Brightly closed her file and stared straight ahead with worried eyes. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
Barbara Brightly’s experiences inside the Hopkins’s flat mirrored Georgie’s own. Calling at number 108 Kurzon Mount Buildings was always a harrowing experience, and the door was rarely opened on the first visit. It took a note, a warning of a return in the afternoon or on the following day, to insure success. And then, entrance gained, the visits tended to follow a formula. But whose formula? And how could a five-year-old child be forced to play such a difficult part?
High up on the third landing there was only a slither of flaking concrete to separate the front door from the carpark below, a slither of concrete and a tall yellow wall too high for kids to fall over, even a small adult had to stand on tiptoe to see down.
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Inside, expected as usual, into a narrow hall and turn right into the sitting room. Square, and one wall made up by double-glazed windows, and a French window onto a ‘balcony’ large enough for a pot plant, but nobody at Kurzon Mount Buildings bothered to put a pot plant there; one had a dog tied up on it, a dog that barked pitifully all day. So the balcony was bare save for a puddle and a pile of old leaves. A beige and white striped put-you-up on splayed wooden legs, nearly paid for, filled the room, it took up most of the longest wall. The two matching chairs beside the gas fire slanted slightly to face the telly. The adults ate off plates on their knees while the children knelt at the glass coffee table, but no drinks were allowed in here in case ‘the kids fuck up the carpet’.
Pert, pretty like a pixie, Angela Hopkins, with her huge grey eyes and her curly hair, her small elfin face. She had the paleness of a child who lacked enough fresh air, and the drawn features of one allowed to stay up way after bedtime. And she fiddled too much with her hands. She might look clean and well cared for, but her nails were often uncut and there was no quiet around her. She was not the sort of child, the kind of victim, to ask for abuse, not smelly, not dim, not rude, and her manners, for her age, were near perfect. Her communication skills were good. Was she genuinely pleased to see Georgie, to bring her a cup of tea, to turn from the TV immediately without needing to be told, without any fuss?
The pictures she showed Georgie, once she got used to her, once she understood why she came, the pictures she laid on Georgie’s knee were meant to be proof of her happiness. And Georgie felt that Angela brought them to her triumphantly, as a defence lawyer might place his evidence with a slap on the bench of the court. They were crayoned, pictures already printed in a colouring book. Neatness was the criteria. ‘Look, I haven’t gone over the edge, not anywhere,’ said Angela Hopkins in her crisp little way, aged five.
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