Flora sat rigidly on her chair gripping the sides till her knuckles were white. She wished she could be anywhere but here, part of this terrible stifling institution that infiltrated all aspects of their lives. The doctrine ordained that they had to be pure; they had to avoid contact with all other sinners, which in practice meant everyone else except church members. They were expected to marry within the church and avoid all forms of entertainment. The church provided them with work and basic sustenance so that they became dependant for everything.
“Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”
Flora had heard this quotation from Corinthians and many like it used to justify the teachings of the church. Since her earliest memories, she had been encouraged to learn and chant passages from the bible. Learning a new passage was one of the few ways she knew to please her parents.
“And so it is,” she heard the elder saying, “that in spite of much counselling and warning, the Fulton child has been permitted to break our sacred rules.”
He proceeded to read a list of alleged transgressions, some of which Flora recognised and some of which were pure fabrications. It was common within the Brotherhood to gain favour with the elders by telling them about the supposed wrong doing of your neighbours.
“Spending time with sinners and taking part in impure activities.”
She had to attend the village school because the community was too small to have its own school. She had been told by her parents to remain separate from the other children and read her bible during breaks. But their constant teasing and taunting made this difficult in practice.
“Reading forbidden and impure literature.”
Her teacher at school had loaned her great novels to read because she showed promise. Is this what he meant?
“Going into the homes of non believers and taking sustenance therein.”
On a cold winter’s day last Christmas, Flora had been invited into the home of a fellow pupil whose mother had taken pity on her. She had accepted a mince pie yet somehow word had got back to the elders. All her life it seemed she had been controlled and manipulated by others in the name of faith, respect or fear. How she longed to be rid of these shackles yet she knew that once she left the Brotherhood she would be ostracised for the rest of her life. The Brotherhood was not forgiving. They would forbid her from ever seeing her own family again.
Now it was the turn of her father to address the congregation and plead for forgiveness in the name of his daughter. How she hated his demeaning and obsequious manner. His tall and gaunt figure was bent from the shoulders down and he wrung his hands in a gesture of piety as he addressed his audience.
“Dearest neighbours and fellow worshippers, in the name of Christ we have always sought to provide a strict and righteous way of life to protect ourselves and our daughter from the evils of the world. We have sought to remain exclusive and reject the ways of the devil in line with the teachings of our leader. But the devil has exploited our weakness and found his way into our lives through the frailties of our daughter.”
Flora remembered a time when they had first come to Frampton. Then, her parents were full of hope and welcomed the friendship of the Brotherhood who helped them find accommodation and even provided work for her father. In those early days, there were frequent feasts and days of rejoicing when the church would be decorated with flowers and bunting would be strung across the small square around which the cottages were arranged. Then new people arrived and there was a change of direction. All frivolity was forbidden and the doctrine of ‘separation’ from non church members came into being.
“You have heard the views of the elders and you have heard the views of Harold Fulton speaking on behalf of his daughter.”
The senior elder was standing and addressing the congregation. Flora fixed her gaze on the floor in front. She felt the eyes of the congregation drilling into her very being.
“It is the view of the elders that the Fulton family must be punished for permitting blatant acts of defiance against the rules of our church. We have heard the pleas of Harold Fulton and believe that he truly repents of his daughter’s sins. However, he was negligent in permitting the sins to occur in the first place. It is, therefore, the recommendation of the elders that the Fulton Family be ‘isolated’ for a period of thirty days. During this period, no member of the Church will speak to them or participate in any activity that includes them. They will be banned from eating in the presence of other members of our congregation and will be required to repent publicly once a week of their sins. Are you in agreement with the verdict of the elders?”
A low murmur of ascent rose up from the congregation.
“Then it is decided. ‘Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord’.”
The congregation dispersed, leaving Flora, her mother and her father sitting on their seats with their eyes cast downward. In the silence of the empty chapel, only the whimpering of her mother could be heard. Then, with a roar that seemed as though it came from the depths of hell itself, her father delivered a savage blow to Flora’s face which threw her from her chair and sent her spinning across the stone floor until she hit the opposite wall. As she felt a searing pain engulf her head, she knew that she could no longer live like a trapped animal in this perverse community. Somehow she had to find the strength to leave.
Jack: November 1917
He lay still in the rickety bed, trying not to wake the other three members of his unit. His army issue tunic itched across his back and he had an overwhelming desire to scratch vigorously. He contemplated turning to his right to face the damp wall, but the smell of mildew deterred him. If he turned to his left he would come face to face with Bill’s boots, still encrusted with cow dung from the yard outside. So he remained on his back and shifted his body back and forth against the rough mattress to achieve some measure of relief.
Intermittent snoring from the other bed where Greg and Fred slept told him that he was the only one awake. If he listened carefully, he could hear guns booming from the distant front line. How lucky he was to be in the relative safety of this French farmhouse rather than the squalid hell of the trenches. It was less than six weeks since he had been pulled from his unit on the front line and told to report to HQ some two miles back from the fighting. It was in a bombed and half ruined French chateau that he was introduced to his three unit members. Jack had been chosen for his fluent French, Greg for his pyrotechnic skills, Bill for his combat skills and Fred for his way with the carrier pigeons. They were to form a unique unit in the British army and try something that had seldom been attempted before – to go behind enemy lines and collect intelligence.
As trench warfare became increasingly futile, pressure had grown on the British Government to inject new life into the war initiative. The voices of younger officers began to be heard, considered heretics by the older brigade who had learnt their fighting skills confronting Zulu warriors in Africa. The new voices talked of intelligence, sabotage and espionage. And so Jack led his squad of three men across no man’s land one dark night in April to acquire intelligence and feed false information to the Germans through a network of French collaborators.
Chief amongst these collaborators were two sisters in their mid twenties, Yvette and Simone. Their parents had died before the war and left the sisters to run the small farm consisting of a few milking cows and goats plus numerous hens. Jack had met Yvette in a café and, using his impeccable French, had recruited her and her sister. Now the unit lived in the farmhouse with the two girls – the four men sharing two single beds in one room.
Lying on his back with the first light of dawn filtering through the tattered curtains, Jack knew that their position here was precarious and they would need to move on. As the network of collaborators increased, so the opportunity grew for someone to inform the Germans i
n return for favours. Outside the window, he could hear the cooing of the carrier pigeons in their basket, waiting for their turn to carry messages back to the British front line.
He thought he heard a rustle, a scrape of a boot – something out of the ordinary. His body froze and his right hand gripped the knife that was strapped to his leg above his right boot.
With explosive force, the door to the room splintered from its hinges and the air filled with shrieking German voices. Guns fired. Bullets ricocheted off stone walls and a smell of cordite invaded the room.
He leapt from the bed, brandishing his knife and lashing out wildly. In the smoke and confusion it was impossible to make out what was happening. The room was full of enemy. Through the smoke, he could just make out their silhouettes. The sound of Germans yelling was now joined by the agonised screams of his comrades as rifle butts pounded their prostate bodies. Jack let out a primal roar and leapt with his knife outstretched towards one of the attacking figures. In full flight he was caught on the back of his head by a leaden instrument and his body crashed heavily onto the stone floor.
When he awoke, he was aware of being trussed with his hands tied to his feet. His head was on the floor and a sticky red substance flowed from his nose. His line of vision was limited but he could see Greg and Bill on the stone slabs bound and bleeding. A black boot was landing heavy kicks into Bill’s groin, each strike causing further agonised screams. By moving his head slightly, he could see Yvette. Her night clothes had been ripped from her body and she was kneeling on the floor with her hands bound behind her. Outside of his line of vision, he could hear the sounds of another woman screaming. He felt a pistol pushed against his temple and heard the click of the trigger being cocked.
The Guest Who Stayed: Chapter 2 – Autumn 1919
Jed
Jed sat disconsolately on the top of Offa’s Mount, a large outcrop of rock in an otherwise flat landscape. It had been a favourite place to visit with his elder brother Matt when he was younger. From here, you could see for miles across the flat and featureless Norfolk country. To the east, it was just possible to catch glimpses of the sea sparkling on the horizon. The origins of the rock were hotly debated, some claiming it was a meteorite from outer space, others arguing that it had been deposited there by an ancient glacier. Human remains had been found at the bottom of the steepest face suggesting that it had once been used as a sacrificial site.
He came here to think. Since his mother’s death less than a year ago, he’d tried to become involved in running the farm with his father and Tom. But the daily ritual bored him. Walking behind the two Shire horses as they ploughed the ground ready for winter barley, his sense of isolation only grew. He sometimes wondered whether he truly existed or whether he was just a figment of someone’s imagination. When he was with people they didn’t really seem to notice him.
It had been so different with Matt. People had been drawn to him, even from an early age. If he was naughty, people said he was mischievous and laughed. When Jed was naughty, people shouted at him and he was punished. It seemed so wrong that it was Matt who had been killed. Matt had already achieved so much and would have succeeded at whatever he did, bringing great joy to his mother. Jed had achieved so little and had no idea where he was going. His life seemed to stretch ahead of him like a void.
Looking out across the fields below him dotted with newly stacked hay bales, Jed realised it was time to confront this demon. At eighteen, he felt unprepared and ill equipped for what lay ahead but he knew for certain that his destiny lay somewhere down there in the real world – not suffocating up here on the family farm.
Alice
The cottage was cold and cramped. Water dripped from the broken thatch and formed puddles on the clay floor. Alice was struggling to cook a meal on the stove but the meagre flame from the coals was failing to heat the rabbit stew. Polly was seated close to the stove to warm her thin body. She had developed a chesty cough and Alice feared for her health.
Her father was readying himself to go out. As soon as he’d eaten, he’d be off to the Fox and Hounds in Frampton to join his drinking friends. Since they’d arrived in Frampton he’d managed to secure occasional employment and this tumbledown cottage was at least better than sleeping under a tarpaulin.
But money was still in scarce supply. Sometimes there was no money for days on end yet still he managed to drink. Alice feared he was stealing again and if he was found out, they’d be forced back on the road. That was why Alice had been enquiring about part time work. She’d also been corresponding secretly with an aunt in London, collecting letters from the post office rather than let them be delivered. She needed to speak to her father before he engaged in another bout of drinking.
“Father, I’ve got something I need to tell you,” began Alice as she doled his stew onto a plate. “I‘ve got a little job lined up, nothing much but it’ll help out a bit and bring in a little money.”
“What sort of job?” he enquired slurping stew into his mouth.
“Working in the baker’s shop in the mornings – seven till eleven. I’ll be home in plenty of time to get your lunch.”
“What do you need to work for? Your place is at home looking after me.”
“But, Father, we need the extra money. We need clothes for Polly and she needs feeding regular like. Sometimes she only has one meal a day.”
“So what are you saying? Are you tellin’ me I ain’t providing for my little girl, because if that’s what you’re saying you can shut your bleedin’ trap – Bitch.”
With this he leant forward to hit her, but the weight of his body tipped the wooden table and sent the contents crashing to the floor where they formed a sludge of broken earthenware and rabbit stew. Alice rushed to the scullery and tried to close the door, knowing what would follow. But before she could slide the bolt he had his shoulder pinned to the door. Desperately, she pushed against the weight of his body.
“Father, please, I’ll still be here to look after you. It’s just a little job, that’s all.”
He heaved at the door and pushed it further open. Alice braced herself against a work table, using all her strength to keep him out. But he managed to squeeze his unshaven head around the door and Alice found her face inches away from his, breathing in the stench from his stale mouth. His toothless grin sent shudders down her spine.
“You see, you can never get away from me our little Alice,” he called in a taunting voice. “Your place is here with me and if you don’t understand that I’m going to teach you a lesson so you’ll never forget.”
She heard him trying to undo the belt to his trousers and knew what to expect. Feeling his weight still pressing against the door, she adjusted her own position with her back to the table. Then stepping quickly sideways, she pulled the door open which had the effect of propelling her father forward in an uncontrolled stumble, crashing headlong into a clothes mangle and crumpling into a heap on the stone floor.
Seizing a knife from a drawer, she held it in front of her, expecting the next attack. Her main thought was to prevent him getting to Polly in this state. She braced herself, prepared to use the knife if necessary. But instead of an attack, she heard crying. Her father was holding his head and crying loudly.
Alice was rooted to the ground, completely unprepared for this. She had only ever seen aggression and rage burning in his eyes. But something had snapped. His misery was so deep that finally it had engulfed him.
“Father, stop that at once,” Alice heard herself saying with an authority she didn’t recognise. “I’ll be here for you but there are going to be changes. I am going to work because we need the money. And though it breaks my heart, I’ve arranged for Polly to go and stay with Mother’s sister in London. She’s ill, Father, and she can’t stay here any longer. It’s killing her.”
Tears were spilling down Alice’s own cheeks now as she leant down to place a hand on her father’s shoulder.
“Things has got to change now and you must accept th
at, Father, because with Polly gone, there’s nothing holding me here anymore.”
Flora
They had told her to expect a visitor but they hadn’t said who it would be. Visitors seldom came to their cottage so Flora knew it must be important. She had been told to wear her black church dress with the white apron. Her father wore a black suit with a starched white collar. Her mother was dressed in her black gown and grey bonnet trimmed with white lace.
There was a light knock at the door. Flora’s father heaved his bent body from the chair and shuffled to the entrance. The door opened to reveal a man who Flora knew was one of the church elders, Eli Krautz. He was in his early sixties but looked older. His head was bald except for a fringe of white tufts which circumnavigated the perimeter of his crown. His lack of growth on top was compensated for by the abundance of hair sprouting from his ears and his nose.
“Brother Eli, what an honour to welcome you to our humble home. Please come in and be at peace,” grovelled Flora’s father as Eli Krautz made his way into the living room.
Flora couldn’t understand why a church elder was paying them a visit. Had she been involved in some ‘transgression’? She couldn’t recollect anything. For months now she had hardly left the community, spending most of her time sewing in the work shop.
The Guest Who Stayed Page 2