The Girl at the Window

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘I’m still cold.’ Will hugs Mab as she waddles to his side, engulfing her in his duvet so that only her snout is showing, enduring his affections with stoic good grace.

  ‘You go into the living room with Mab,’ Ma tells him. ‘I got the fire going in there already and Mab’ll keep you warm as toast.’

  I watch Will go, his hand on Mab’s collar, already making conversation with her before he’s out the door.

  Ma stands over a kettle on the range, taking a shawl that’s she hung over the AGA and wrapping it around her like a cloak as she waits for the water to boil, looking so much older than she actually is. I never realised it until I left home, but ‘kitchen’ is hardly the right word for this basically equipped room that hasn’t changed so very much in the last two hundred years. With the power off, even the thirty-year-old fridge has become a relic. I suppose it’s something of a blessing that the cold keeps the milk and meat fresh at least, what little there is of it.

  ‘You’ll want tea,’ Ma tells me and she’s not wrong. ‘Looks fine out there now, but those clouds mean business.’

  Is this is how it’s going to be, neither one of us talking about what happened, making small talk about the tea, dog, the weather and Will?

  ‘Always were away with the fairies.’ Ma snaps her fingers in front of my face. ‘Still take sugar, I asked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Boy drink tea?’

  ‘No, he’s eight, Ma.’

  ‘You drank tea when you were eight,’ Ma reminds me.

  ‘But I’m a Yorkshire girl, he’s London.’

  ‘That’d be a double skinny macchiato, then,’ Ma says, and it’s so absurd, coming out of her mouth, that I laugh.

  ‘Where have you heard of those?’

  ‘I’m not a nun, I know about the world,’ Ma says. ‘I have a flat white and a piece of Hummingbird cake in Cobbles and Clay on every second Wednesday and buy some books in Hatchard and Daughters. Do you think I’ve sat indoors moping since you walked out?’

  ‘You know why I left.’ I say it mildly, but it hangs in the air between us, like our icy breath.

  Ma’s glacial eyes hold mine.

  ‘I know what I did,’ she says, passing me tea, strong and sweet just as I used to drink it as a kid.

  For a moment, the hurt threatens to rip out of me, but I swallow it hard and whole, wash it down with a swig of tea. ‘You were wrong about us, do you at least admit that?’

  ‘True enough,’ Ma agrees. ‘Trudy, the time will come when words will be said. But for now there’s more pressing matters. You and the boy need to heal, you need to feel at home. Whatever you may think of me, you’re my flesh and so is that child. You will always have a home here; it’s yours more than it’s mine, after all. And I need to say something; I know you won’t like it, but it needs to be said.’

  Ma goes to the window, pouring the water that’s left in the kettle into the washing-up bowl. Beyond, the valley is utterly serene, a landscape immune to human cares. I wish I didn’t know what she was going to say.

  ‘He was here, you know? The night your Abraham went to his death.’

  ‘Ma, I know how much you love your stories but you have to see that this isn’t the time—’

  ‘You saw him too, didn’t you? No matter what you told the boy. The Gytrash.’ Ma lowers her voice, glancing over her shoulder. ‘Greybeard. Him that’s appeared before every Heaton family death for four hundred years. Maybe not like I did, but in your dreams. You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Ma, there was no other worldly being standing at the end of my bed warning me that my husband was going to die. Jesus, do you have any tact at all?’

  Ma peers at me, just like when I was a kid and she’d work out whether she thought I was lying or not. I turn away from her.

  ‘Middle of the night, it was,’ she goes on, relentless. ‘Mab starts up growling and barking at the window, and she’s too old and too weary to bark that much at anything any more, so when she does I pay her mind. I get up out of my chair and I look.’ Her gaze slips back to that moment and I see the fear and disgust in her expression. ‘And he’s there, just a pane of glass between us, looking back at me. Eyes like black holes, but I know he sees me, I feel it in my bones like … disease.’

  ‘Ma!’ I don’t know how to reply to this voicing of our fear, our own and very particular truth. ‘It was a dream, a nightmare. It’s a legend, a story. It’s not real. You heard about Abe and then you thought you remembered a dream, and in your head it all makes sense but it’s – it’s ghoulish, Ma, and it’s cruel. I lost my husband, and not for one second do I want to think a curse in the shape of a demon came to claim him. Don’t you understand that?’

  The moment I’ve spoken the words I realise what a fool I am. I’m not the only widow standing in this room. And it wasn’t Ma that saw Greybeard the day Dad died, it was me.

  ‘What happened, that day, it was coincidence, Dad’s stories and my imagination, Ma. At the time … at the time I didn’t understand why you were so angry with me for saying I saw him, but now I do. And I’m sorry, really I am.’

  A one-sided conversation takes place behind her eyes, in the tiny muscles around her mouth, the way her fingers knit and twist, but none of it is spoken aloud.

  ‘I’m not much longer for this world, Trudy,’ Ma says. ‘Maybe Greybeard was here for me.’

  ‘You’ve been saying that since I was ten,’ I tell her, with a small smile.

  ‘Yes, but this time I mean it,’ she says. ‘I feel it, Trudy. Drawing in like a winter’s evening.’

  ‘You’re still young, fifty is nothing! Anyway, you can’t die yet, Ma,’ I say very quietly. ‘Not while we’ve got unfinished business.’

  Ma doesn’t speak. She doesn’t look at me. Her hand reaches out for mine and she takes my fingers for the briefest of seconds, squeezing my fingers tightly between hers.

  I know she is doing her best. It can’t make up for everything that has happened between us, but in that one precise moment, it is enough.

  Ponden Hall 1655

  Praise Him and His mercy that a year has passed since I last had time, privacy and ink to test my words on paper, though I have had some use of chalk, stone walls as my paper, Robert my teacher, the sky my classroom.

  Praise God that since I last wrote that which is private, I have not fallen ill, nor been injured, and no great harm has come to me. Though I am ashamed to see what ignorance was shown in my first writings, I am much improved now.

  Praise His glorious name forever, for granting me a year of safety amongst Godley people, enough food and work to make my life a prayer to His greatness.

  Much has changed since I first scratched out my letters, including myself. No longer a false daughter, now a servant, I lead an honest life and thank God that Casson didn’t see fit to put me out or dispose of me as I have seen him dispose of some, but simply to forget he ever claimed I was his child. It may be that he no longer fears what I know of him. And Praise be that Mistress Casson, too, let the lie pass, and upon Robert’s urging left me in the care of the maid, Betty, who is kind and pious, as much a mother to me as I have ever known.

  I work hard, in the kitchen and the house.

  Mistress Casson, as she must now be known, is kind to me. Though she herself be dealt much unkindness, she never lets it show beyond her chamber, and is always a good wife in every aspect.

  Her life eased some after the birth of a boy that Casson named Henry also. The babe has all but supplanted Robert in this house, who no longer has lessons, or new clothes, nor the respect and position that ought to be afforded to him as the rightful Heir to Ponden Hall. Casson sacked his tutor and now he and I must creep into the library to steal books away that we might read them together in a place where we will not be discovered.

  For all that, I am happy, thanks be to God, for Robert spends much of his time with Betty and I in the kitchen, and the three of us make light of what might else be dark, cheering
each other with kind regard.

  Above all, I thank God that now I am twelve years of age Casson has forgotten me, except to bring him ale and food, and light his fire.

  When we may, Robert and I will take ourselves up to our favourite place, which is known about here as Ponden Kirk, and it is indeed a kind of church, made of rock and earth, but a prayer to God nonetheless. They say long ago, before the Lord came to this land, the old people would burn fires there and worship the old gods, side by side with the fairies, though those folk are seldom seen now, Praise Be. At the foot of the Kirk there is the marriage hole, and Betty says that if a maid does pass through she will be married within the year or never at all. We play here, as children may, and call it our castle. And when there is time we lie ourselves down on this great flat rock that protrudes from the hillside and into the air, and feel like we might be one with the sky and the birds and even closer to Our Lord, praise be.

  Each day I must thank God for the friendship and brother I have found in Robert Heaton, who, despite the many cruelties that inflicted upon him, remains the kindest and dearest person I have ever known.

  When circumstance will allow me to write again, I do not know. For a girl such as I to know words such as I do would be thought of as wicked and sinful by many, even dear Betty. I prayed on it myself, for many hours, and tried to keep from books and learning. Yet, would God fill my head with such thoughts and such talents if he did not want me to make use of them somehow?

  Despite my claims previous, I have never shown my writings to Robert. I dare not. Not for fear that he would scorn me, or mock me, for it is Robert who gives me this gift, which I treasure above all else saving my Lord God.

  I hesitate because I know not the right words, nor the order in which I may fully describe my heartfelt regard for him.

  Agnes Heaton

  Agnes Casson

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘What happens next?’ Will asks me, as he wriggles down further into my old bed, his toes seeking out the hot water bottle I’d tucked in there earlier.

  Our day had been full, and so much more full of joy than I could have hoped for, the two of us following water-sodden footpaths that reflected fragmented pieces of the sky in footprint puddles, through the fields and across the moors leading directly to the sky.

  And when we got home there was hot soup, fresh bread – and electric light at last. No central heating meant the house was still deathly cold the moment you stepped away from the fire or the AGA, but at least the immersion was working again. Of course, none of these things meant that Will wanted anything but stories by torchlight when he finally surrendered to bedtime.

  An old blanket flung over our heads like a tent, the torch turning shadows upside down, we huddle around my childhood copy of The Secret Garden, the cracking of the stiffened spine, the grainy yellow pages releasing a torrent of memory as soon as I open them, as though a little part of my imagination had been absorbed into the paper alongside the ink that made the words.

  ‘We’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to find out,’ I answer, gently closing the book and holding it to my chest. ‘My eyes are too tired to read any more in this light.’

  ‘No, with you and Daddy, I mean?’ Will rolls onto his side to look at me. I can see myself reflected in his eyes, lost in his dark, dilated pupils. ‘After you decided to be in love for ever.’

  ‘Oh … We wrote to each other like we said we would,’ I tell him. ‘We wrote a lot of letters to each other, for weeks and weeks, actually. Months.’

  ‘Like letters that came in the post?’ Will has been more bemused by this antiquated piece of technology than anything else. ‘You wrote them on paper and posted them and they didn’t come until the next day?’

  ‘If that,’ I say and smile. ‘I know it sounds crazy to you, but it was nice. It was … gentle and thoughtful, slow. We got to know each other, not just by what we said, but by our handwriting, the paper we chose. Sometimes Daddy would draw little things in the margins, or send me a pressed flower—’

  ‘Gross,’ Will says, but he is smiling. ‘Have you still got the letters?’

  ‘Yes, of course, all of them.’ I don’t tell him that they are in a shoebox in my overnight bag at the foot of the bed, the very first thing I packed. Mine to him, his to me, all tied up in a ribbon.

  ‘Can I read them?’ Will asks, and I think of that long, written courtship, so polite, so Victorian by design, each one either far too polite to be interesting or far too intense to be appropriate for an eight-year-old boy. How we danced around each other back then, Abe and I, writing about all the things that we loved, discovering each other’s passion for ourselves; it was an evolution of a friendship almost before anything else. It wasn’t that I didn’t miss him, but I didn’t want to see him because I wanted to miss him, which sounds like madness, but then, when I was not quite eighteen years old, I had this certainty that we had forever to get to know each other. Forever to think of kisses and desires, forever to always have each other’s body as our own. It never occurred to me that the world around us might be the cause of our separation, whether I wanted it or not.

  And yet I still wouldn’t trade those letters for a more conventional romance. Each pen stroke was a stitch that hemmed us close together.

  ‘You can read them when you are eighteen,’ I say, which Will accepts based on the understanding that much of the universe would be open to him upon this mythical day.

  ‘But why not phones? Because new Granny doesn’t even have a land phone?’

  ‘Partly. But also because letters are good for shy people. It meant that before Daddy and I met again we knew a lot about each other, and it was less frightening, because I knew what his favourite colour was—’

  ‘Orange.’ Will nods.

  ‘And his dream pet …’

  ‘Rabbit,’ Will says, giggling.

  ‘His favourite food …’ I wait.

  ‘Food!’ Will bursts out laughing and I laugh too.

  ‘And then spring came, and spring around here is just about as beautiful as anything can ever be. Snowdrops, and daffodils, primroses, sometimes violets if you know where to look for them. The trees full of pink and white blossom, and birds calling and nesting. The heather starts to come back, a deep, deep green that you know will later turn the whole moor purple and gold. You can have blue skies and snow side by side, and lambs in the field making a racket. You are going to love spring here, Will; I can’t wait to show it to you, and I couldn’t wait to show this place to Daddy either, so I asked him to come by.’

  ‘And so what happened next?’ Will persists.

  ‘We met and kissed and kissed and kissed,’ I say with a smile. ‘For about a year.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Will pulls a face. ‘Didn’t you get bored? Or hungry? What about if you needed a pee?’

  ‘Not literally one year,’ I say, laughing. ‘One day you will understand the appeal of kissing, and really, even though the kissing was very nice, that wasn’t the best thing. The best thing was that we’d been a bit shy of each other, a bit scared; but after the second time we met, we never were again.’

  ‘Why on earth would a great big tall man like Daddy be scared of you, though?’ Will asks, incredulous.

  ‘Daddy always used to say that it takes a lot of courage to be happy – do you remember him saying that?’

  Will doesn’t answer for a moment; he just rolls onto his back, looking at the dark gap in the ceiling, and I smile as I look at his face, seeing Abe in the planes of his cheeks and the almond shape of his eyes, even in the sweep of his hairline and seashell curl of his ear.

  ‘I think it’s true that you have to be brave to be happy,’ Will says eventually. ‘Because if you are happy, then you have to know that one day you might be sad too.’

  ‘Daddy wouldn’t want you to be sad,’ I say, laying the back of my fingers against his cheek.

  ‘Then he should hurry up and find us,’ Will says. ‘And I won’t be sad any more.’

 
; Closing my eyes, I remind myself what the experts said, that I have to explain everything to Will as clearly as I can, and I make myself say the words.

  ‘Daddy isn’t going to find us, darling. Daddy died.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’ Will turns his head to look at me, his eyes fierce with certainty. ‘He isn’t dead, I know he’s coming home – and if you really loved him as much as you say you do, then you would know it too, and I just don’t understand why you don’t.’

  ‘Will …’ Back hunched, he drags the covers over his face, his small body trembling with stifled tears beneath them.

  ‘Will, I went out there, I looked for him and—’

  ‘But don’t you see, Mummy?’ he says, dragging the cover back, anger sparking in his eyes. ‘If you don’t believe as hard as I do, then maybe it won’t work, maybe he won’t be able to find us. So you have to believe, you have to, Mummy, you have to.’

  ‘Then I do,’ I say without hesitation. ‘I do believe as much as you do. I was just too afraid to admit it before.’

  There’s a second of hesitation and then he’s in my arms, his around my neck, and I breathe again.

  ‘Don’t be afraid to be happy.’ Will holds me so tightly, the rapid thud of his heart matches mine. The damp of his tears dry on my neck and I know I shouldn’t have said what I did, but what else could I say?

  What mother could ever bear to refuse her child the gift of hope?

  Tru and Abe

  The true story of the second time that Abe and I met is that it wasn’t at all like I expected.

  Our letters had been so close that the words we wrote to one another were interlinked like chainmail, each new letter adding to the armour of us. Every page was so full of heat and longing that I’d had this idea that the moment we set eyes on one another we’d fall into each other’s arms, to be swept away by passion.

  I’d arranged to meet Abe outside the Parsonage, and as I stood there I wondered if Charlotte had ever stood in the same spot, wondering what it would be like to be kissed by the man she longed for.