The Memory of Midnight

by Pamela Hartshorne

  ‘Hello, pip,’ she said, unable to resist pushing his hair back anyway. ‘Have you had a good day?’

  ‘I drawed you a picture.’ He thrust the piece of paper at her, and Tess took it and made a show of inspecting it.

  ‘That’s the sea,’ she guessed, looking at the blue scribble. ‘And Ashrafar.’ The cat was unmistakable: black, sling-backed, with a bushy tail and teeth like a shark. She pointed at the two stick figures. ‘And is this you and me?’

  Oscar shook his head. ‘That’s me and Luke.’

  The trip to Bridlington had been an unqualified success. They had watched the kitesurfing while Luke took photographs, and afterwards they had had fish and chips on the promenade and paddled in the sea, and Oscar had been tense with excitement the whole day. His wariness of Luke had turned overnight into slavish admiration, and he rushed home after school if Tess told him that Luke was going to be at the flat, and slid into the study, Bink under his arm, to watch him work. He hung by the door at first, but gradually moved closer and closer, until Luke let him sort out screws or hold the end of the tape measure. As far as Tess could tell, they had no conversation, but the silence didn’t seem to bother either of them. It was bittersweet for her to see her son forming a tentative bond with Luke, a bond he had never had with his own father.

  He was going to miss Luke when the shelves were finished.

  Tess was going to miss him too, but she was trying not to think about that. She had got used to having Luke around. She’d make coffee for them both and perch on the books while he finished planing a board or fitting an awkward corner. There was usually sawdust in his hair and his clothes were stained and shabby, but his fingers were deft and his movements easy and unhurried for a man who had once been so restless. Tess liked to watch him concentrate, liked the way he set his jaw and lined up his sight, the way he rolled his shoulders and relaxed when it was done.

  Then he would hunker down beside her and take the coffee she offered and they would talk about nothing in particular. Sometimes she’d even make him laugh, and whenever those stern features lit up, something in Tess would twist and tighten dangerously. She was being careful not to rely on him – she was – but yes, she would miss him.

  ‘Luke?’ Vanessa didn’t even pretend that she wasn’t listening. ‘Luke Hutton?’ Her voice was blade sharp, and Tess felt a ridiculously guilty flush prickle up her throat.

  ‘Yes. I told you he was making some bookshelves for Richard, didn’t I?’ Tess was carefully casual. She laid a hand on the top of Oscar’s head. ‘He took us to the seaside, didn’t he, pip?’

  Oscar nodded importantly. ‘An’ he lets me help.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to have any more to do with him?’ Vanessa’s mouth was pinched as she drew Tess aside.

  ‘It was just a day out, Vanessa, and it was great,’ said Tess with an edge of defiance. ‘I needed to get away.’

  ‘You could have asked me.’

  ‘It was a spontaneous thing.’ She shifted her bag to her other shoulder. ‘Besides, you’ve done so much already.’

  ‘You know I don’t mind. I’m glad to have you back in York. But I thought we were friends,’ said Vanessa with a hurt look. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about Luke.’

  The prickle of guilt crept higher. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  And there wasn’t. Oscar had been sound asleep by the time they got back from Bridlington, and Tess was woozy from the sun and wind as she carried him upstairs and put him straight into bed.

  Luke had brought her bag up and waited by the stairs as she gently closed Oscar’s door.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you for today, Luke. Oscar loved it.’

  ‘He’s a nice kid.’ The words were said so grudgingly that Tess couldn’t help smiling. After a moment, a reluctant answering grin tugged at Luke’s lips.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tess again, and then without warning their smiles were fading and the air began to thrum with something frighteningly new and yet achingly familiar.

  He was going to kiss her, thought Tess, torn between panic and anticipation. She wasn’t ready for it. She longed for it. Should she lean forward in invitation, or put some space between them? Her breath shortened.

  She was still dithering when Luke stepped back. ‘Well . . . bye then,’ he said roughly, and he turned and left Tess alone at the stop of the stairs, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry that he had gone.

  Nothing had happened.

  ‘Really,’ she told Vanessa. ‘He’s just . . . building shelves.’

  ‘Well, I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Vanessa said. ‘You’re still married, you know.’

  Tess took a step back before she could snap at her friend. ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she said.

  Luke had gone by the time they got home. ‘Never mind,’ said Tess as Oscar’s face fell and she tried not to notice the dip of her own heart. ‘I’ll make you a sandwich and you can watch TV with Bink for a bit if you like.’

  Television was still a treat. Now there was no father coming home, no need to watch with one eye on the clock, one ear straining for the crunch of tyres on gravel. Oscar’s face lit up. He ran down the corridor to his room while Tess got out bread and jam, but she was still only buttering when he was back, his bottom lip stuck out.

  ‘I can’t find Bink! He’s gone!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, of course he’s not gone,’ said Tess, pausing with the knife in mid-smear.

  ‘He has! He’s not there!’ Oscar wailed.

  An unpleasant feeling twitched in Tess’s belly, like a snake stirring its tail. She put down the knife. ‘I’ll come and find him for you.’

  She had set Bink on Oscar’s pillow that morning, the way she always did. Hadn’t she? She was sure she remembered doing it.

  But Oscar was right. There was nothing on his pillow.

  ‘Where is he?’ Her son’s face crumpled.

  Tess stretched her lips into a reassuring smile. ‘He must be here somewhere. Perhaps he’s gone on an adventure?’ she suggested, looking under the bed, behind the headboard, on top of the small wardrobe.

  No Bink.

  Oscar perked up at the idea of his beloved toy adventuring away from the bed, and entered into the search with gusto, but Tess was feeling increasingly panicky. What had she done with Bink? Oscar might believe in an adventure, but he was only five. She was nearly thirty-one and she knew that stuffed monkeys didn’t move themselves.

  ‘Do you think he’s gone outside, Mummy?’ Oscar asked.

  ‘I don’t think so, pip. I think he’s hiding in here somewhere.’ Surely she would remember if she had carried him out of the room? Or would she? There was too much she didn’t remember nowadays. A memory of Nell flitted into her mind. There was also too much she did remember nowadays that she shouldn’t.

  Mindlessly, Tess pulled open the drawers of the chest, more to look as if she was searching than with any expectation of finding Bink.

  ‘There he is!’ Oscar gave a shriek of excitement. ‘There’s Bink!’ Pushing past Tess, he grabbed the toy from where he had been stuffed in amongst his socks and underwear and hugged him to his face. ‘Naughty Bink!’ he said delightedly. ‘You’ve been hiding.’

  Tess stared down at the drawer. Had she really taken Bink and hidden him in the drawer? Why would she do such a thing? But if it wasn’t her, then who? Her mind darted to Martin, but there was no sign of a break-in. How would he have got in? How would anyone have got in?

  She didn’t know what was worse – that someone had been in the flat without her realizing it, or that she had lost her memory and was randomly moving objects around.

  Or perhaps she had just misplaced them. She had been making a point of learning to be untidy. Martin had insisted on a rigidly controlled environment at all times, but now she didn’t have to have everything perfectly ordered any more she could leave a pile of books on the desk if she wanted, or a newspaper open on the sofa
. Deliberately, Tess left her clothes tossed over the back of a chair. She left dirty mugs in the sink and cluttered the worktop in the kitchen with herbs and spices. She left books open on the sofa and took pleasure in shoving the cutlery back into the drawer any old how. In her new, happily muddled world, it wasn’t surprising if not everything was where she expected it to be.

  But the monkey’s disappearance nagged at her. It seemed bound up with locked cat flaps and scrabbling walls and Nell and the whole strangeness of life in this flat. It was never so bad when Luke was around, but he would be finished soon, and she would be alone here all day, every day. The ache that always seemed to be lurking behind her eyes these days simmered into life, not bad enough to take an aspirin, but too insistent to ignore completely.

  Perhaps she should think about moving, Tess thought, frowning, as she peeled potatoes. But where could she afford to go? Besides, she had promised Richard that she would look after Ashrafar for him, and she owed him too much to let him down.

  Oscar’s euphoria over finding Bink had evaporated by the time she called him in for supper, and he was in a petulant mood. Tess let him feed Ashrafar, and he carried the dish over, the cat weaving industriously between his ankles, to set it precisely down in the middle of the tile in front of the cat flap that was set into the wall. It led out onto a tiny terrace from where Ashrafar could jump down into the yard or prowl the red-tiled rooftops.

  ‘Oscar, did you touch the cat flap this morning?’ asked Tess, remembering the cat’s outraged yowl at being stuck outside.

  She wasn’t surprised when Oscar shook his head, not even a flicker of guilt on his face. He clambered onto his stool at the tiny breakfast bar, but he was more interested in watching the cat than eating his own supper. Listlessly, he pushed slices of cucumber around his plate.

  ‘Don’t play with your food, Oscar,’ Tess said. Her headache was getting worse and she put down her own fork, unable to eat herself.

  ‘Mummy.’ Oscar’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. ‘Mummy, look at Ashfer!’

  The cat was crouched low by the dish, but she was not eating either. Her ears were flattened, her fur erect, and a low, somehow terrible growl was rumbling from her throat.

  And her great yellow eyes were fixed on Tess.

  ‘Ashrafar,’ she whispered, her mouth dry, fear beating a frantic tattoo in her chest. She half-rose from her chair, thinking to reassure the cat about whatever was distressing her, but the moment she moved, Ashrafar abandoned her meal uneaten and shot outside, leaving the cat flap to bang back into place behind her with a sharp crack.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! The feast had been cleared away, the tables put to one side. The waits had been tuning their instruments, and now there was a stir of anticipation as the drum was beaten to announce the dancing.

  ‘Wife?’ Ralph Maskewe’s big teeth flashed as he smiled at Nell and held out a hand.

  She couldn’t refuse to take it, just as she was unable to refuse when he put his mouth on hers to seal their betrothal. There were witnesses, who had looked on approvingly. They knew that she and Tom were sweethearts, that she was betrothed to him, but they nodded anyway. Nell could not find it in her to forgive them that.

  ‘Husband.’ Nell dipped a curtsey and let Ralph lead her into the dance. She had a smile fixed to her lips, but every time he touched her, every time he looked at her with those eyes like pale pebbles, something in her shrank away.

  And he knew it, she was sure. He knew it and he liked it.

  A great weight had gathered in her chest, so heavy she could hardly hold herself upright, but she kept her chin lifted. She would not weep, she would not wail. She had made her choice and her kin were safe. She would not give Ralph the satisfaction of knowing the depths of her pain.

  ‘I lay with your brother,’ she told him clearly when her father had left them together. She would not lie. ‘I do not come to you a maid.’

  Something had shifted in his face at the mention of Tom, but the next moment the toothy smile was back. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Tom is in no position to think of a wife in any case, and you, Eleanor, are in need of a husband. You are too beautiful to wither away in waiting for a boy like Tom who may never come home. You know what Tom is like. He has foolish dreams of setting sail and seeing the world. No, he won’t be coming back, Eleanor.’

  Tom wouldn’t come back now, Nell knew. He wouldn’t come back when he heard that she had wed his brother. She had taken his ring and hidden it in her purse. She would not wear it now, but she kept it as the only way she could be true to him still as she had promised.

  Ralph was watching her face. ‘Foolish Eleanor, did you really think he would?’

  Oh, Tom! Nell hated the fact that a little bit of her wondered if Ralph might be right. Tom had always longed to see the world. Did he really want a wife to chain him to home?

  But she would not let Ralph see her doubt. Tilting her chin at him, she answered his question with another.

  ‘Why would you want to marry me, knowing that I love your brother? That I have lain with him? If I marry you, I will be breaking my troth to him. Do you really want that?’

  ‘Ah, Eleanor, if you knew how I loved you, you would not ask that!’ Ralph reached for her hand, and she had to force herself not to pull it away in disgust. ‘I burn for you. I have always burned for you!’

  ‘It is not love when you force me against my will.’

  ‘Force? Who said aught of force?’ His eyes glittered at the word. ‘I will give you everything: fine clothes, a fine house, fine food to set on the table.’ He gestured down at his embroidered doublet, at the slashed velvet breeches and expensive nether stockings. ‘Aye, and a fine husband! What other maid would talk of force so? The choice is yours, Eleanor,’ he reminded her.

  A choice that was no choice. They both knew that. Nell looked back at him coldly. ‘I ask only for security for my family,’ she said. ‘You will forgive my father’s debt if I wed you?’

  ‘Eleanor, Eleanor . . .’ Ralph sighed. ‘So crude!’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘It shall be done.’

  And now they were wed.

  Chapter Ten

  November was not a good time to be married. The city had been shrouded in fog all day. The damp gloom crept murkily, sneakily, into every corner, muffling sound and blocking out the sun, smothering the light and the air and the life in the city, and Nell didn’t seem to be able to get enough breath. She was suffocating under the weight of the fog, under the knowledge that she was trapped as surely as she had been trapped in the chest so long ago. When she stood in the church porch with Ralph and made her vows, she could have sworn she still smelt the oppressive heat of that day and the wood of the kist.

  She wanted to wait until spring, hoping for a reprieve, but Ralph was not to be put off. ‘I cannot wait for you any longer,’ he told her. So there were no flowers strewn in the street, and her maids shivered beneath their cloaks as they picked their way through the puddles to the church, the fog swallowing them up so the front of the procession could not be seen from the back.

  After the marriage there was the nuptial mass in St Helen’s, and cakes and wine, and then the wedding procession made its way back through the fog in Stonegate to the Maskewe house. The hall was richly decorated for the celebration, and there had been a feast fit to put before the Queen’s Majesty herself. Capons, fowl and suckling pigs served with frummenty and fritters. Then pigeons and partridges, rabbit and roast beef, young herons and baked larks. Jellies, custards, comfits. Ralph insisted on putting a slice of everything on the dish that they shared. Nell watched his big teeth biting into a tiny roast sparrow and nausea rolled thick and clotty in her stomach.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see the door to the closet, closed now for the feast. Sometimes she could almost see her younger self, tiptoeing over, peering inside, spying the chest and the chance of somewhere clever to hide.

  ‘No!’ Nell wanted to shout. ‘No, don’t go i
n!’ But then she would blink and the vision would be gone, leaving only a sense of impending dread looming over her shoulders and tickling the back of her neck.

  Her wedding feast. It was not as she had once imagined it. People were laughing too loudly, eating too greedily. The wine was too spiced, the food too rich. The flickering candlelight sent shadows swooping over familiar faces that gleamed with such grease they looked like strangers. Beside her, Ralph’s lips glistened with fat and he smiled as he methodically pulled the little birds apart piece by piece with his teeth and sucked every little bone clean.

  But through it all Nell smiled. What else was there to do?

  Behind the smile, she felt disconnected from it all. She picked at a fritter, but it might as well have been the rush matting on the floor, chopped onto her plate, for all that she tasted it. She chewed and smiled, chewed and smiled. Sometimes she took a sip of wine. The sweetness of the honey tasted bitter in her mouth, but still she smiled.

  Chew, sip, smile. Chew, sip, smile. Smile, smile, smile. Never had smiling been so hard. The muscles in her cheeks were aching with the effort.

  ‘You are not eating.’ Ralph took a partridge wing and held it out to her when she decided she had made enough of a show of enjoying the food. His fingers were slippery and slick and she pressed her lips together against another heave of revulsion.

  Even then, she kept her smile in place. ‘I thank you, but I have had enough.’

  ‘Eat it,’ he said, and though his mouth was stretched in an answering smile, there was an implacable note in his voice. At last Nell’s own smile faltered. There were just the two of them, marooned in a pool of silence while the feast chortled around them. ‘You want your father’s debt paid, do you not?’ said the devoted bridegroom.