by Helen Slavin
“Where are you going?” Lella was refilling the optics as Anna walked through the bar.
“Break.” Anna thought that sounded decisive. Lella was about to protest, she could see it.
“What about afternoon tea?”
Anna raised her eyebrows, Lella really ought to know better and stop panicking.
Outside the day was fresh and chill and Anna thought she would walk a circuit of the town. She turned right to walk up the hill towards the park but then somehow the park seemed the wrong place to go, she needed town and people, and she turned in the opposite direction.
Anna had a couple of errands which were not very pressing and so she opted to head over to Church Lane to pop into Betty’s, the little vintage shop that her old school friend Mari had opened last year. She needed another bar of that fig-scented soap.
At Mimosa, the florist, there was a vivid display of what appeared to be thorns and prickles. As Anna passed she glanced at the deep green tangle of pointed leaves, the barbs and burrs seeming to scratch at the window. Outside, the display was a trip hazard of winding ivies. Anna moved swiftly past. Jackdaws gathered in the yew tree of the churchyard.
It was a relief to step into the low doorway of Betty’s, and the burst of lace and colour and flowers that greeted her. Except that today the lace looked cheap and tatty and the flowers were fake, their leaves crimped and cut from velveted plastic. The scents, which Anna usually found delicious, seemed toxic and chemical, overpowering with their sweetness. Anna felt claustrophobic.
“Hey… how are you?” Mari appeared from behind the glazed and curtained doors of an elaborate armoire. She looked flustered and hot and there were cardboard boxes ranged behind the small counter, their contents spilling out.
“Oh my God what a morning! Where did all those French women come from?” It was obvious Mari did not want an answer to her question.
“France?” Anna suggested, glad of a moment as she could not remember her errand here. The patterns on the quilts and throws which were piled onto the wall shelves seemed like an attack of butterflies, she was reminded of the wedding on Saturday. Black butterflies. This time, instead of taking her down, the thought of black butterflies seemed to cool the air with their wings and where before the colour and frippery had begun to overwhelm her, suddenly, her black butterflies cleared a space and she could turn and look at Mari.
“I need another bar of that lovely fig soap.” She smiled, and the black butterflies fluttered into air. Her head felt very clear indeed.
“Oh.” Mari looked even more flustered. “I just sold the last of it to the French ladies. God they were in here ages mooching about, made me get all the quilts out to look at and after all that all they bought was some soap, actually I might have some in the back…” Mari wiped her hand across her brow. Her hair, always a frizz, looked snarled today. “I can take a look…” She didn’t sound enthusiastic. She puffed out a deep breath and looked at Anna. “You got time for a cup of tea?” she asked, and as she moved to the door and put the shop sign to Closed, Anna realised that she had not come here for soap at all really.
Mari’s living space was behind the shop and was doll-house small, the ceiling low with treacly looking black beams. There was a long thin living room to the left of the short hallway, there were steep stairs to the right and directly ahead, facing into the garden, was the kitchen.
Anna felt the wooden kitchen chair wobble beneath her as Mari shunted herself around the table that occupied most of the kitchen space. It was cluttered with papers and the remains of breakfast.
“Business is terrible. I’m thinking of selling up and going to live in that caravan at my uncle’s farm to be honest.”
Anna said nothing, business was always terrible and the caravan at Mari’s uncle’s farm was rather lovely and luxurious. Mari was always thinking of going to live there and as she sidestepped and shuffled her way around the small kitchen Anna thought that there was probably more room.
“Oh, just shift that lot out of the way.” As Mari put the tea things down Anna scraped up the papers. “…Oh, just bung those in the recycling basket… so anyway… you know Roz Woodhill don’t you?” Mari had a questioning look.
“Not sure. Is she the tall one with ginger hair?” Anna recalled the woman who worked in the florist next door.
“No… no… who’s that?” Mari’s questioning face was even more interrogative now, the eyebrows twisting themselves almost into curlicues so that Anna wanted to give a little laugh.
“I don’t know, obviously, I thought she was Roz Woodhill…sorry. I’m thinking of the woman who has all that ginger hair…” Anna made wild gestures around her head because the woman had very wildly curly hair of considerable length and it was, Anna thought, a rich burnished sort of ginger that probably had a better name for it. Cinnamon perhaps.
“Oh God no… not that one. Don’t know her name, very snobby. No. Roz Woodhill. You must know Roz. She runs the arts co-operative in Knightcote?”
Anna’s mind reached a dead end. It was a long time since she’d ventured into Knightcote, that trip involved crossing the bridge, and at the same moment that she thought it so did Mari. Her twisted question mark expression softened, and she recovered quickly.
“It’s in that old flour mill by the river. Everything is artisan and rustic and three times the price of anywhere else.”
Anna, struggling with memories of the bridge, shook her head. Mari, threw out a lifeline of chatter and Anna, gladly, grabbed hold.
“She’s got long black hair, very shiny, very stylish. She lives up at Villiers House? The one on Lane End with the big corner garden? She started that jam feud at the Cheese Show.” Mari put down cups and reached for a little jug of milk from the fridge.
As Mari chatted Anna’s mind drifted a little. Mari’s milk was slightly off, and the cake was stale and wasn’t the only cake in the kitchen. Anna could smell the lemon butter cream within the big black tin on the sink drainer. She could hear the cream squeaking, little air pockets puffed with lemon, the thin gratings of lemon peel, bright as sunlight. A smile stretched across her face, she felt amused at the secret knowledge, a kernel inside her. She watched Mari talking, the way her face muscles shifted and adjusted into so many expressions.
“You know… we’ve been talking about you.” Mari was suddenly quiet, looking with tender concern at Anna. Anna was suddenly very attentive, she hadn’t come here for this, don’t do this.
“What? Who has?”
Mari nodded. “Us. The Craft Club. Ever since it happened. You know… Hallowe’en. We’ve been concerned, the well-meant and good-hearted concern of friends, Anna.” Mari reached a hand to Anna’s forearm and squeezed comfortingly. The kitchen seemed to shrink inwards. Anna felt the sensation of being on the edge and she was pulling at her mind, trying to take mental steps backwards. Mari continued.
“You don’t know all the women at my Craft Club, but you do know a few of us… and everyone has been concerned for you. We’ve… well we thought, you know, that you might like to join us.”
Anna looked at Mari. She wasn’t entirely sure what the group did, it wasn’t a book club she knew that much. Mari always talked about crafting, so she had an idea that it was probably a big session of quilling and textile collage, a few fat quarters to stitch, possibly some Origami and a lot of white wine. Not really Anna’s sort of thing.
“We’re getting together tonight, and Roz Woodhill suggested we extend an invitation, Anna. Why not come along?”
Anna panicked, there had to be a polite way to get out of this.
“I can pick you up if you like?” Mari suggested, her voice muffling as the stale cake dried her mouth.
“Oh. No. I can’t tonight. I’m up at the Inn till late. Another time?” Anna smiled, and Mari gave a little choking cough as the dry as sand cake crumbs caught in her throat.
“Oh yes, yes… course. We would really love to…” Mari’s hand was reaching out once more to be super comforting and, f
or Anna, super uncomfortable, but then the shop bell rang, and Anna took her leave.
The sky was blue and empty above her. Anna checked her watch, she ought to be making her way back to the Castle Inn. The scent of that lemon butter cream sponge had sparked some afternoon tea ideas. What was she talking about? Why had she imagined that Mari had cake hidden in a tin? Special cake. It was just her brain ticking, Lella had made that comment about afternoon tea as she left, and there you had it, the power of suggestion. Anna turned through the heavy stone arch onto Dark Gate Street and walked up past the small and individual shops. She had not been window shopping since everything that happened last October. She realised she had been looking at the ground. Now she walked past the Foxed Bookshop and its display of troll literature set beneath a paper bridge. The kitchen shop window was busy with copper pans gleaming in the sun. The old shoe shop which had been run by Mrs Montgomery since they were babies showed a display of sensible brown footwear that reminded Anna of Seren Lake’s cumbersome hiking boots.
The tobacconist had closed down recently and the windows, once filled with pipes and tubs of tobacco, were whited out and ‘Coming Soon’ was pasted on a poster in the window but did not suggest what might be coming soon. As she walked up towards the refrigerated truck parked at the kerb, the doors clattered open and there was a sudden scent of blood. Pig carcasses were racked on hooks inside the white interior and, as she approached, the butcher and his apprentice hefted them onto their shoulders. Ribs sawn. In the window display the sign pinned into the purply fleshed flanks said Wild Rabbits. Anna turned from the display, her heart slowing as if it might stop.
It had stopped. At Hallowe’en last year. The rain lashing the Knightcote Bridge. Thunder. Lightning that took out the power right across to Castlebury. They had only just reopened the bridge after the emergency repairs. Everyone had had to drive around via Little Whimton and Cressbury and only now was the bridge open once more. It was as if it was opened again in honour of that last Terrible October, as if time must be marked out. She kept walking, on up Castle Hill, trying to hurry away from her thoughts.
Anna halted at the gate of the Plainsong Chapel. It had been disused for as long as she could remember, she had never once been inside, only, on a very few occasions glimpsed the interior through the open door as workmen shored up bits of the roof or, in more recent years, blocked out windows.
It had been like a lantern when she was a teenager. The tall arching windows let light through and she had enjoyed, as a girl, playing her own kind of hopscotch in the square paned shadows it cast on the path. She looked at it now, the two front windows looked like shut eyes with chipboard lids and she saw that a little more of the stucco was crumbling above the doorway. Once she had taken comfort just from the walk up here, now she felt it was too horribly symbolic.
The gates were locked with a big security chain and warnings told her that dogs patrolled. The For Sale sign had fallen over.
* * *
Back at the Castle Inn Anna started baking and by the time the afternoon tea crowd arrived from the castle they were greeted with the creamy temptations of a four-tiered Victoria Sponge, a chocolate brownie so fudgy you had to wait until it melted in the heat of your mouth before you could cram in a cherry scone and still must find room for the towering unctuousness of the lemon buttercream layer cake.
“I don’t get cake.” Lella, having sorted out her menus for next week, watched as Casey pushed the last piece of chocolate brownie into her mouth.
“You don’t get it?” Anna asked. Lella finished tapping at her tablet and looked up, puzzled.
“I don’t get the point of it.” Lella smoothed her hand unconsciously over her hip, the formal fabric of her sleek black work dress making a slightly staticky sound. “I mean… no one goes ga-ga for sausages, do they?”
Casey gave a smothered guffaw but, mouth full of chocolate squodge, had to wait a moment or two before the chocolate melted enough for her to be able open her mouth and comment, by which time Lella had high-heeled it back to reception and the moment was gone.
Casey smirked at Anna.
“I know… your brownie saved me from myself.”
10
Poachers
By rights Emz ought to have been in L2 taking part in her last lesson of the day. She should have been lending her opinions to the general debate that her A level English Lit group were participating in, regarding whether or not Macbeth was a bad guy. Instead, she was wrestling a swan.
It had landed at Cooper’s Pond at Prickles and as it crashed into the water Emz, from her vantage point at the eastern hide, saw something was wrong. As it flapped and swiped across the surface of the water Emz ran along the shore to meet it. Its left wing was horribly twisted and as the bird thrashed and strained, without a thought Emz stepped into the water, finding her feet crossing the mud, the water rising up her legs and the swan panicking and vulnerable as she did so. She reached into the frothing mass of white feather and white water, wings, water, where? The question swam into her head, a still point amongst the panic of her own heart beating and the swan’s powered pounding. She saw then where the wire cut into the feathers and the wing had twisted around as the swan had tried to free itself. The line was wound through the wing and down around the foot. Emz focused, her hand closing on the muscled neck, her other hand moving up to pinch at the wings. It was a fight then, the swan thinking itself dead and defeated, the wings lashing at Emz but she didn’t care, she focused on the sound they made, blade-like and beguiling. She stepped through the water, pulled the bird closer, her arm closing around the breast as her right hand worked quickly to untwist the fishing line. It would be simple to cut it but she had no knife. The pattern of it clicked into her mind at once, Unwind here. Untwist, round, back. Undone. Her fingers worked swiftly, the wing, suddenly freed, unbent itself, opening full width, towering above Emz for a moment before the swan pulled free and, with only three steps across the water, took off.
As she walked, drenched, back towards reception, Emz thought that there was nothing in the world as beautiful as a swan’s foot. She thought of the liquorice-black webbed skin. Her mind was clear, and she felt light.
At school, the light feeling transformed into a too light-headed, uncertain panic. She was not looking forward to the thrills of university as her friends were. She did not want to leave home, in fact for the last year it had felt as if home was under attack. She thought again of Ethan’s small feet, his tiny face. She thought further back still, to her sister’s wedding, to her own bridesmaid dress and it grew confused with the black they had worn at the funeral. Losing Grandma Hettie had been another heavy blow and Emz had begun to feel safe only when she was at Cob Cottage or wandering the woods. Any time she could spend at Cob Cottage was precious now because it was limited. She understood that the cottage couldn’t just sit empty, but the holiday rentals made Cob Cottage sort of out of bounds. As a consequence, Emz found the lure of the woods had become very strong lately.
This morning she had gone into school with the intention of staying for all of her lessons and using her double free study period to tweak the essay she’d been writing for History, but Mark Catton and his best friend Logan Boyle had snarled up the day.
Mark Catton was scrawny thin but powerful. He was a triathlete, always training for some fresh torture tournament and with one eye on the Olympic squad now that he was headed off to university. He had in fact, run, swum and cycled his way to a place at Oxford and thus considered himself elevated to Godhood. Logan Boyle on the other hand worked at his grandfather’s farm at High Ways when not at school and therefore gave the impression he was welded out of steel. He almost never spoke, letting Mark blunder and insult for the two of them.
Except for this morning.
“What are you reading?” Logan Boyle had sat down beside her, very close on the common room sofa and his arm had reached around the back of her shoulders. It was not touching her, that arm, but it wanted to. She could feel the pr
ickling charge of it. Logan leaned in so close she could smell the toothpaste on his breath. “Wildwood? Is it a shoot ’em up? Is it starring some badgers?” He spoke the word loudly, his breath a little pellet against her ear. He laughed.
“Badger,” was Mark Catton’s comment, a little idiotic bark of the word that sent them both laughing even harder. “Bad-ger!”
“It was very tasty.” Emz threw her comment without looking up from the book. Mark Catton stopped laughing for a second and he and Logan exchanged a “what the fuck” look.
“You’re shitting me?”
Emz did not lift her head from the book.
“Roasted. With some potatoes. And green beans.”
“You are fucking shitting me.” Mark sat forward, his glance shifting from his friend to Emz with an amused panic. “You did not eat the badger.”
“And there’s a lot of fat so you can make a really thick gravy.” Emz continued, she felt powerful.
“You like thick gravy then?” There was a look exchanged between Mark and Logan that cut through the feeling. She felt uneasy, a sensation of threat and although her head was still tilted towards the book she could no longer read the words, her peripheral vision was watching the two boys. She turned the page.
“I hadn’t finished that page,” Logan moaned. Emz ignored him, the words a blur of shapes in front of her. Logan’s fingers reached for the page and half turned it back, his head tilting down so he could read the words. As he did so their eyes met. Logan’s eyes were the green of a forest, and, for just a second, they looked right back at her and his real face stared out. It was all Emz could do not to gasp. He was not Logan for a moment. He was not the shiny-skinned youth. He was older, wiser, sadder.
“You going to Tasha’s party on Friday?” Mark’s words interrupted the moment and Logan’s real face was gone.