by Jane Harris
I was about to close the notebook and shove it back in the drawer when I noticed some thin paper shreds caught in the stitching and—upon examining the crease of the spine more closely—I realised that several pages had been removed. Not ripped out, as that would have left frayed edges and those I would have noticed straight away. But cut very close to the binding, quite deliberately and with something very sharp.
Now given the dates and what was described in the rest of the book it seemed a fair bet that what was in the missing pages was an account of Noras last days at Castle Haivers, perhaps including this walk north that she’d mentioned in her last entry. But why would she have wrote things down and then cut them out? Had she decided to hide her doings from missus? Perhaps when she went on the walk she got in a fight. Or was she being diddled by a secret sweetheart? I tell you what, I was highly delighted to have discovered something that might blacken Noras character for once. Sicken her, the mimsey mouse. Well if she could do a walk for missus, then so could I, fine rightly. Not that I’d be able to tell Arabella about it because that would mean revealing that I’d been snooping about the place, in her drawers and all. But I was most curious to walk in the footsteps of MY RIVAL!
I put wheels under myself to get through my chores and by ½ past 3 o’clock I was heading up the top field with a coat on my back and a hat on my head. The coat was one missus had give me, an old one of hers made of grey worsted. The hat I was none too happy about, I’d found it in the cloakroom, it was an old-fangled poke bonnet that a granny might have wore, it kept my lugs warm—although a few months previous I would not have placed it on my head even had you paid me one hundred pounds.
At the highest point of the field was a wall with a slate stile set into it, this I climbed and then stood for a moment on the top step. Behind me in a hollow lay the woods and Castle Haivers. I was about to go on when I was startled by the faint but distinct slam of a door. The granny bonnet restricted my view and so I had to turn my whole entire head in the direction of the noise, which had come from somewhere to the left of the woods where the bothies lay. I was surprised to see how close I had passed to these for I could look down on them like they were a set of dolls houses. A wisp of smoke rose from one of the little chimneys. Then a movement caught my eye and I saw a miniature Hector scuttle away from the buildings towards the trees, perhaps he was headed for the house well he was too late the scut, there was nobody home, he should have been there in the morning to help with the flipping bags so he should. I considered whistling and giving him a wave but then remembered my daft bonnet and changed my mind, I’d never hear the end of it.
Stretched out before me was another field of grass, sloping downhill. Beyond this, the land levelled out though the distant horizon was invisible because of mist. I jumped down and carried on walking. Behind me, Castle Haivers disappeared below the brow of the hill. On I went, keeping to the hedgerows until I came to a narrow dirt road where the pasture seemed to end. Straight ahead lay an area of scrub-land, blotted here and there with great heaps of coal. The track I’d been following continued across this expanse and so I pressed on, for I knew that if I kept heading away from the Great Road I would stay roughly northward bound.
This was now a bleak, scarred landscape that I walked through. Against the wintry sky a few bare trees showed black and scrawny, bent from the prevailing wind. To my mind they looked like giants lifting their arms and fleeing in shock from some great terror. Not a bird sang in that place and nothing of beauty grew, it was all rusty bracken, moss and weeds. The air grew colder as the light began to fade. Mist rolled along the ground like smoke and a scent of burning hung on the air. I gave up trying to keep my skirts clean for in places the path was only muck and glour. My face was numb with cold and my eyes watered.
But for flipsake. It was only walking! Anybody could walk. And I was fairly sure that I was doing it just as well as old Miss Perfect. And under worse circumstances what was more! For had she not been doing it in summer whereas now it was cold enough to freeze your fartleberries. I found myself wondering whether she had indeed trod this same path or crossed this burn or stared at that tall works chimney visible to the north-east, the black smoke rising from it to mingle with the mist and clouds. What was on her mind as she trotted along with her neb stuck in the air? I doubt she would have liked getting her skirts dirty. Probably she was plotting how to worm herself further into Arabellas ear, the cleg. And she was that Holy it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d tripped along saying her prayers. As for whether something had happened on the walk that she might have wanted to keep secret, well as for that I was mystified for there was nought about here to speak of. Nowhere to get drunk or in a fight. And certainly this was no lovers lane, not at all the kind of place you would go to join giblets with somebody.
So lost was I in my own thoughts about Nora that I failed to notice the ground directly before me, which dipped away sharp of a sudden. I stepped into mid-air and lost my footing then tumbled down a slope. I only just managed to stop myself from slithering further by grabbing handfuls of coarse grass.
Stunned I was and lay there stock still for a moment to catch my breath. My ankle throbbed, but I was not hurt bad. In the process of saving myself, I had twisted round to face the way I’d come. My first thought was I had fell into some kind of sunk fence for at the moment of tripping I had glimpsed another grassy slope opposite and I’d heard tell of these hazards and the folk that stepped into them by accident to the great amusement of their companions. But then I turned my head and seen that I was wrong. For at the base of the hollow or cutting formed by the two slopes (and stretching out to either side where they disappeared eventually into the mist) were wooden sleepers and gleaming metal rails.
I was on the point of getting up when I became aware of a faint whispering close at hand. The air seemed to shimmer as the whisper increased to a roar and then all at once there was a shriek as a great black train hurtled out the mist and passed before me in a Pandemonium of fire and steam and smoke, with a wail and the clang of a bell and the many lit windows flashing by so near that Jesus Murphy you could have reached out and touched them.
I had to run most of the way back to beat the dark. All the way I was thinking about Nora and the railway line. Right enough I couldn’t help but wonder about Janet Murray and all those hints she’d dropped that night when I’d been at The Gushet, about missus being involved in Noras death. But I was trying not to jump to conclusions. Certainly it was not impossible that Nora had been hit by a train whilst out walking for missus. But surely it was unlikely. The Observations did go on about how loyal and obedient Nora was, all this. But I doubted that her obedience included stepping into the path of a moving train just because missus told her to keep walking without stopping, that was not so much dutiful as plain daft. Of course it might have been an accident, after all had I not near tripped onto the line myself. But she’d have had to fall down at the exact moment a train was passing. Either that or banged her head and been knocked out cold. Otherwise she could just have picked herself up and gone on her way.
Or had Janet been implying something worse? The most dreadful thing I could think of was that missus had followed Nora to this desolate place and then pushed her under a train. But that was just ridiculous. Missus held Nora in great esteem. (Why, I don’t know. But she did.) It just was not possible that she could have done her harm.
Besides which. Catch yourself on! I didn’t even know if this was the right line. Sure were there not railway tracks all over the countryside that Nora might have stumbled onto by accident, all by herself. Matter of fact master James had a map on the study wall upon which, if I recollected right, the position of all the local railways was indicated.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t too worried about missus being to blame, not a bit of it. But I just thought that I might take a look at that map, if only to prove Janet wrong.
When I got back the house was cold as the grave. I headed straight for the study where
I lit several candles and their light cheered me a little. Then with lamp in hand I peered at the maps on the wall. Most were of the Empire but I soon found the one that depicted the local area. It was smaller than the rest and framed in dark varnished wood. I lifted it off the hook and set it on the desk amongst the candles. Then I leaned over it to take a look.
There was Snatter at the crossroads, a cluster of buildings straggling along either side of the Great Road. I found Castle Haivers nearby marked next a group of tiny fir trees. On the far side of the wood, the bothies were shown as four little squares. To the west, Flemyngs farm, the Thrash Burn itself and its tributaries spreading out across the map like thread veins. And there sure enough was a railway, a black and white line that curved across the country towards Bathgate. But a little further to the east another similar line swep up and entered the same town. And to the south and west there were yet more lines, thinner than these two, but with rails marked across them, I reckoned they must have been branch lines that served coalpits or works of some sort.
There you go. Railways all over the place so there were and Nora could have met her fate on any one of them. I have to admit to being a little relieved. I was just about to lift the map and put it back on the wall when something made me glance up. Perhaps I had sensed or heard movement outside, I don’t know. But there at the study window, though horribly distorted by condensation and darkness, was the unmistakable shape of a face, close to the glass and staring straight in at me.
All this happened in seconds. I do believe I screamed and jumped to my feet, in the process knocking over a candle, which was instantly snuffed out. My first impulse was to hide from view. How I negotiated the desk I can’t remember, I may well have vaulted it since I all but fell from the room. Once I was stood in the hall I felt a little more safe because out there the only window glass was etched and impossible to see through. In the darkness, I fumbled my way to the front door. Both bolts were still fastened and I knew the kitchen door was also secure for I was after bolting it behind me when I came in. I retreated a few paces and stood there, trembling and panting, every fibre of my being alert.
At first I could hear nothing. The lamp in the study spilled a faint glimmer into the hallway and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I peered around for a potential weapon but all I could make out was an old gamp in the umbrella stand. Then I remembered Noras knife in my pocket. I had been carrying it around with me ever since I’d found it in her box.
I took it out, unfolded the blade and extended it in front of me, my ears, eyes and mind alike strained by dread. After a moment, I detected the crunch of gravel, someone was approaching from around the side of the house. They reached the portico and climbed the steps. Then silence fell. I waited for something to happen, for the handle to turn or for hammering blows to ring out. Instead, a pair of glinting eyes appeared in the postage slit. Someone was staring directly at me! I shrank back into the shadows. And then the intruder spoke my name.
‘Bessy? Fwhere are you? Bessy! Hit’s me.’
Jesus Murphy, Hector! I could have knocked the bark off him. Given how alarmed I was you will forgive me that I neglected my manners and discharged in the direction of the posting slit an explosion of oaths like so much cannon fire, I’ll skip the worst and come to my closing remarks. ‘You scut what the flip are you doing staring in at the flipping windows!’
‘Now chust a minute!’ says Hector from the other side of the door, he sounded most offended. ‘I fwhas not staring hin, not a tall, not a tall.’
I tellt him I doubted his word and mentioned an impolite act in which I suggested he’d been engaged whilst looking through the window. Hector protested this allegation most hotly. Something about the careful way he pronounced his words made me realise that he was in his altitudes. I invited him to depart without delay.
‘Listen now,’ he says. ‘I seen the light on hin the rhoom and I looked in—I did—but I swear I was chust habout to tap on the glass fwhen you saw me and then you chumped up and started screaming like a lunatic. I honly came to see hif you fwhanted to come and haf a dance with me? Fwhee are haffing a ceilidh.’
Shaken though I was I had little desire to present myself at the bothies with Hector for I could not bear the thought that Muriel and the rest would think he and I were courting or anything like it and I suspected that Hector would do all he could to convey that very impression, false though it was.
‘Hy am a ferry good dancer,’ he says and as further enticement he averted his face from the door and belched.
‘That’s kind of you for inviting me,’ I says. ‘But no thank you.’
‘Ach, go on! Don’t fwhorry. None of us fwhill feel you up or nothing.’
I tellt him he was a smooth talker and that he knew how to tempt a girl but that I was too tired for dancing. Then I crouched down beside the posting slit.
‘Listen d’you remember a girl used to work here, Nora was her name?’
His face appeared in the slot, the drink had filled him up it was brimming out his eyes, they were silvered like mercury. The fumes would have knocked you down.
He says, in a low voice, ‘Fwhill you be fwhanting me to come in for company?’
‘No!’ I says. That put his wick at a peep. Without reply, he stood up abruptly and stumbled away down the steps. I peered after him. ‘Wait!’ I shouted and he turned round, swaying. ‘Which line was it Nora died on?’ I asked him.
He pointed vaguely over the roof of the house. ‘The fwun hup there.’
‘Past the top field?’
‘That’s de fwun,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ I says, deflated. ‘Well—was she deaf or blind or something?’
‘Fwhat?’ he says. ‘No! There fwas nothing wrong fwith her.’
‘So what happened to her then?’
Hector shrugged. ‘She used to be doing your chob. Then one night she fwalked in front hof a train.’ He paused, then—‘Fwhoosh!’ he went, smashing his hands thegether and rubbing them against each other until Nora was just smithereens that he shook from his fingertips. ‘Now, hif you fwhill forgif me I haf lost good drinking time.’ He made a low bow. ‘Farewell Scary-bunnet,’ he says.
Then he staggered away across the gravel and was gone.
I got to my feet and wandered across the hall in a dwam. Well then fair enough she had died on that line. But that didn’t mean to say it was the fault of missus for having sent her on a walk. The stupid girl could have stepped in front of a train at any time. In fact, hadn’t Hector said it happened ‘one night’? And now I thought about it, according to missus had it not happened after a hooley? If that was the case (which surely it was since missus was no liar) then it certainly followed that Nora was not engaged in any experiment at the time of her death and that missus had nought to do with it.
Besides. It suddenly occurred to me (of course!) that Nora must have returned from the walk experiment alive—otherwise how would she have wrote in her journal and then later cut out the pages? It did cross my mind that perhaps it wasn’t Nora herself had done so but I dismissed this notion almost as soon as I’d thought of it for as far as I could see there was no earthly reason why anyone else would deface her journal.
But what was it Nora had wrote that she wanted to hide? I would have loved to find that out so I would, especially if it showed her in a bad light.
I wandered awhile from room to room and then went upstairs, wishing that the shadows thrown by my lamp did not jerk and shudder so. It was like an icehouse in missus chamber because after airing the room I had forgot to close the window. I pulled it shut then noticed that the The Observations still lay on the floor where I had thrown them.
A thought occurred. And the thought was this. That I hadn’t checked on what missus had wrote about me of late. I opened the book just to take a peek and was sore disappointed to see that she had added not a single word about me since her husbands return. The entries ended with her remarks about withdrawing her affections, as had upset me before. I flicked th
rough the rest and found nothing but blank pages. That is, until the very last leaf where the following phrases appeared scrawled in large and jagged letters.
IT IS HER
I KNOW IT IS HER
SHE HAS COME BACK
MAY GOD FORGIVE ME FOR WHAT I HAVE DONE
At first glance I just about died, it looked as though the words were wrote in blood. But on closer inspection I came to the conclusion that missus had used a brown ink instead of her usual violet (at least I hoped that was the case). Even so, the hairs at the back of my neck were up on their hind legs. Jesus Murphy! It seemed certain that missus had wrote this about Nora at some point (though when exactly she had done so was impossible to tell).
Here she was again, begging forgiveness. The more I thought about it the more it seemed likely that she was under the same misapprehension that had (briefly) bothered me, in other words she thought that Nora had died whilst carrying out her instructions. Would that not explain why she blamed herself and felt so guilty? And why in the graveyard she’d sounded as though she were trying to convince herself (as well as me) that Noras death was an accident?
If only I could persuade her otherwise. Poor dear missus! She was such an angel.
I shoved the book back in the desk just the way I had found it, open at the page about Nora. Of a sudden I realised I was banjaxed. It would do no harm, I thought, just to have a little lie down on the bed. I whipped off the coat and bonnet and laid them on a chair. Then I slid off my boots and climbed between the sheets. It was not done out of disrespect, I just wanted to warm up a little and to rest. The lamp was shining in my eyes and so I extinguished the flame.
I only meant to lie there for a minute before going to my own room but I must have fell asleep for next thing I knew it was some time later and I was waking up (or at least I thought I was waking up), convinced that somebody was standing over me. My head was filled with a strange buzzing sensation and my teeth felt like they were vibrating in my skull. I had not yet opened my eyes, nonetheless I knew that somebody was there, standing right beside the bed. And even without looking I knew that the person was my mother. I could picture her, she was stood there with a lantern in her hand, glaring down at me with a great leer on her face and I knew that she had come to get me and kill me.