The Girl at the Window

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Yes, but would you mind if it wasn’t right away? There’s so much upheaval in Will’s life, and I think I forgot that what is a homecoming for me isn’t for him. Can we wait until he’s settled? Besides, there is so much stuff that I need to sift through and clear out.’

  ‘Of course.’ Marcus smiles, but he doesn’t do a very good job at hiding his disappointment. ‘Do tell me if you find any hidden first editions in all that junk; I’m a rare editions collector, you know. OK, so tomorrow I’ll come and survey the later parts of the house, and if you don’t want work to begin right away I can call in some favours to make sure it will see you through winter. Make good the roof at least, get some scaffolding and tarpaulin up; how does that sound?’

  ‘That sounds really good, thank you,’ I say, feeling bad for shutting down the thrill that Ponden had given him. ‘I’m sorry to delay your work a bit, but you know, seeing how much you love my house means a lot. I really only want people who care about it as much as I do to be part of it, and I can see that you do.’

  ‘I do, Trudy.’ Marcus smiles at me. ‘I really do. But even for me, humans come before houses. And you and your son are two of the nicest humans I’ve met for a while, so I want to help as much as I can. You know, I was thinking that if you opened Ponden up as a B & B, the Brontë fans from around the world would queue up to sleep in that box bed. I know I would.’

  ‘Ma would have conniptions,’ I say, almost smiling. ‘But maybe. Maybe one day. So my house, or part of it at least, is a bit of a miracle? How strange. But I’m not surprised, you know. I’ve always thought of her as a living thing.’

  ‘What an incredibly wonderful description.’ Marcus’s eyes shine with joy and I have to look away. Abe would get a similar look in his eye about a new trip overseas, a particular kind of thrill when he thought about the places he’d see, the people he’d help. I’d see the light of adventure in his eyes and know that I was going to lose him for a little while, but that I had to let him go, because if I didn’t, I’d lose the man that he’d become forever. The man that always wanted to make the world a little better tomorrow than it was yesterday.

  What I can’t bear to think of now is that, when he left on that last trip, I’m not sure I even really looked up from the book I was reading to say goodbye. I think I might just have tilted my head to receive his kiss, so certain was I of the bond between us, so used to the way it would unravel and lengthen as he travelled, sure that it would never break, a cord from my heart to his. I was so sure he would always be able to find his way back to me. So sure – and so wrong.

  ‘Trudy,’ Marcus speaks my name with a particular kind of softness. ‘I know we hardly know each other, but I’d have to be blind not to see what you are going through. I’m not sure I can help you, but I can listen if you need to talk.’

  I study his face for a moment, taking in his open features, and all I can think is how much I wish it was Abe’s face I was looking at, his dark amber eyes meeting mine, his hand reaching for me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say to Marcus with some effort, though it’s clearly not true, and I see I’ve hurt him a little, pushing away his gesture of friendship. But there is something I need to talk to someone about, that glimpse of something I saw last night. ‘I mean, I think I saw a ghost last night but apart from that, I’m fine.’

  ‘A ghost?’ Marcus’s eyebrows lift.

  ‘Not really. Not an apparition, more of an impression, a feeling that I could see. Does that sound mad?’

  ‘Not at all. Our minds play tricks on us all the time.’ Marcus smiles. ‘You’re in an old house; there’s centuries of folklore that your imagination is ready to plug right into. Add in tiredness, emotional state …’

  ‘You’re right.’ I smile. ‘Besides, I lived in that house for half my life, so two ghost sightings hardly amounts to evidence of a haunting.’

  ‘Two?’

  I hesitate, a deep-seated discomfort making me queasy. I’ve only ever told this story to one other person in my whole life, and she hated me for it.

  ‘Do you know about the Gytrash, Marcus – the grey-bearded man that foreshadows the death of a Heaton?’

  Marcus nods enthusiastically. ‘Yes, I read about it first in that book by Halliwell Sutcliffe, and then in an account told by the man who claimed to have exorcised his spirit away.’

  ‘Really? Where did you see that?’ I lean forward a little. ‘That account was in the Ponden Library, but it was lost when the library was sold and I’ve never seen another copy.’

  ‘Now I think about it, I’m not sure.’ Marcus looks perplexed. ‘I suppose it must have been online – I’ll try and find the source for you.’

  ‘Well, the exorcist didn’t do a good enough job,’ I tell him. ‘Because I’ve seen Greybeard myself. On the day that my dad died, standing at the garden gate. I was only ten and Dad had told me all the Ponden ghost stories except for that one. Ma said later that it was the only one that scared him.’

  ‘Do you mean you dreamed seeing him, or imagined it?’ Marcus leans a little closer to me.

  ‘I mean I saw him.’

  The moment I recall the memory it is there, the feeling of the sun on my neck, the tickle of the mossy grass against my bare legs, my collie dog, Myrtle, lying next to me in the grass. ‘It was a warm day and I was playing with my dog in the front garden when I felt eyes on me. I looked round, and there was a man with a grey beard who seemed to be all grey – skin and clothes – except for his eyes. They were as black as coal and, on that blazing hot afternoon, I felt cold to my bones. The wind fell silent, the birds stopped singing. There was just him.’ I shudder, the memory passing over me like a shadow. ‘I shut my eyes and screamed for Ma, but by the time she got to me and I opened my eyes again, he’d gone. At first Ma thought I’d been hurt or that someone had tried to take me, but when I told her what I’d seen she hit me harder than she ever had before or since. Within the hour they’d found Dad in a field, dead of a heart attack. She knew, you see, what it meant to see Greybeard. But I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about the legend until that day.’

  I wait for Marcus to laugh, or make an excuse to leave, but he doesn’t. He’s quiet and thoughtful as I say, ‘But if there is something else, something that stays on after death, why don’t the people I love and miss ever visit me?’

  ‘There are no such thing as ghosts,’ Marcus says, but his voice is kind. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve lost people you love. But you know, even if you hadn’t been told the story of Greybeard, it is still possible that you knew it on some level; maybe it was talked about while you were a baby, or you overheard a conversation you thought you’d forgotten. Sometimes a person can look back on the most traumatic moments of their life and fill them with false memories that seem completely real. It’s your brain trying to make sense out of something senseless. When Celia … when my ex-wife left me, it used to make me feel better to think that she had died, because that way I could mourn her without hurt or anger, let her go peacefully and naturally. It took me more than a year to accept that she went to France to live with another man and have his children, when she never wanted to have kids with me.’

  ‘I’d give anything to think of Abe alive and well somewhere,’ I say quietly. ‘Even if it meant he didn’t love me any more.’

  ‘Of course; and I understood that, eventually. I saw that the way she hurt me didn’t diminish how much I’d loved her, how much, even then, I didn’t truly wish ill on her.’

  We are silent for a moment, and in the quiet I think perhaps there might be a chance of friendship here, and that chance gives me a little rush of something like optimism.

  ‘If you think about it, maybe that’s why you remember seeing Greybeard. As frightening as it is, it makes a kind of sense of the senseless if it feels like fate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘for letting me talk and not running away. I feel … reassured.’

  ‘You are far too interesting for me to want to run away from you.’ Marcus pours m
ore tea. ‘And besides, I am hopelessly in love with your house.’

  1658

  Oh Dear Lord please forgive me. Oh Lord, please have mercy on my soul. Oh Lord, please Dear Merciful Saviour, I beg you to show me clemency, for what I have done is the worst sin that a Christian maid can commit and yet I did it willingly, Lord, happily, with a heart full of joy.

  Henry Casson beat Robert this morn. Robert stood against him, seeing how his mother was once again broken, this time almost to the point of death, and how that John Casson’s own blood cowered and screamed when his father came near. Robert is not yet as big as Casson, nor as strong, and though he has the heart of the people with him, Casson holds them in his sway for they are terrible afraid of him. But on this day Robert challenged Casson’s command and he was struck, most forcibly, knocked into the mud. He did not cower, but rose again, was struck again, rose again and was struck again, and this did happen more than ten times, perhaps more than twenty; I do not know, in truth. Betty held me back in the kitchen and did not let me go to Robert until he was stone cold and so still I feared him dead. As soon as Casson rode out with his henchmen, I ran to Robert, as did Betty, and we bathed him by the fire, and tended his wounds where we might, Betty putting some of her own ointment into his cuts, made from the honey from the bee boles and heather from the moor. And it shames me to write it, Dear Lord my Saviour, please forgive me, but I must be truthful in this confession: as I looked on dear Robert lying there, and saw the rise and fall of his chest, the muscles in his arms and chest, and his dear sweet fair face, topped with golden curls, I felt a longing so strong and so pure, to put my lips on his, and my body on his, and to touch him in every place, and for him to touch me in return. Oh Dear God, Dear God, will you ever forgive me such wickedness?

  Later Robert woke and Betty found him a mended shirt, and he was in a great state of agitation and fury and Hell bent on finding his tormentor and attacking him. Betty feared for his safety and so did I. She bade me take him up onto the moors as we did when we were children, even telling me to take a horse from the stable. With me at his helm, Robert rode us high onto the moors to our favourite place, our castle at Ponden Kirk, and there we rested, and though it was cold, the sky was as bright and beautiful as is all the creation of the Lord Our God, amen.

  ‘I should not care to live without you,’ Robert whispered to me as we lay on the rock, and oh how my heart sang to hear such words. ‘I should not care to take another breath if it wasn’t to know that I will see your face again on the morrow. I know now that you are more than a sister, more than a friend to me. You are my dearest love. Agnes … Agnes, will you come with me to the fairy cave, and tell the sky that you are my wife?’

  And he took me down the steep hillside at Ponden Kirk, though I was afraid that I might fall, and he showed me the long dark hole in the rock that I had heard the other maids at Ponden call the fairy cave, and where, on the eve of the Solstice, some did come here to be married the old way.

  I was afraid of your wrath, Dear Lord, but the day was warm and kind as I followed Robert through the hole and, when we reached the other side, he threaded wild flowers in my hair, and kissed me and held my hands to his heart and called me his dear, beloved wife.

  Dear God, oh Lord, I cannot write here what I felt because before that moment I had never known a second of pure happiness and joy, just slight glimpses of it here and there. And then, in an instant, I was transformed into the happiest soul that ever lived. I lay there on the rock, and Robert leaned over me, the sun making a halo of his hair, and I have never seen a more beautiful mortal thing. Indeed, in that moment he might have been an angel.

  ‘Let me kiss you, Agnes,’ he begged me, and I did let him kiss me. And Oh Lord, Dear God, Forgive me, I was lost in pleasure. I let his hands uncover my flesh to the cold wind, as my hands discovered anew that which they had always known and longed for.

  ‘We are already married,’ Robert whispered to me, ‘you and I. We are man and wife in our hearts and souls and under God. Here is our church, these kisses are our vows.’ And Dear Lord, Dear Lord, I let him lie with me as man should only lie with his wife and it was a terrible, terrible sin which will only be cleansed on the day we stand before a man of God and take our oaths as we should have.

  It was a terrible, terrible sin. Oh Dear Lord, my Saviour, please forgive me.

  It was a terrible sin. And it was Glorious.

  Agnes Heaton, for now that is my proper name

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A wide-load lorry, following its satnav through narrow lanes, delays me and I’m the last parent in the playground, jogging in with bright cheeks and sweaty hair. I can feel the eyes of the other parents on me, and I shoot them a shy smile. If I was willing to look up, look around and say hello, I might well see someone I know, someone I used to go to school with, but my desire not to make small talk with people I don’t know is only outweighed by my eagerness to see Will again.

  Children in a kaleidoscope of coats pour out the door into the arms of mum or dad, talking, running, skipping and shouting. Pasta-shape collages are handed over and there is still no Will.

  It’s only when Mrs Rose comes out of the school holding his coat, anxiety etched into her expression, that my heart drops like a stone.

  ‘Where is he?’ I ask her as I hurry over.

  ‘He was here a few minutes ago,’ she said. ‘I saw him as I sent them out to get their coats on. He’d had a good afternoon and … Mrs Heaton Jones, I’m sorry, I’ve lost him.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve lost him?’ I ask her, the words emerging as my mind races a thousand miles ahead.

  ‘I’m sure he is around here somewhere – I’ll check the loos again. Come in with me.’

  We hurry into the empty classroom after searching the loos, then out into the corridor, the hall – and there’s no trace of him anywhere.

  Then I remember our conversation that morning, when he asked me the way home. I was late, just a minute or two late but maybe he didn’t see me and maybe he panicked. And suddenly I know exactly which way he’d be heading.

  My exit from the school is a blur of dark windows and electric light, voices echoing down empty corridors, glimpses of reflected faces, and then I am out, into the cold air, filling my lungs with the cold air, forcing my thighs to keep pumping up the steep gradient of the main street, tumbling up the steps past the church, finally, finally onto the great expanse of the moor, a great black bulk of land against the dark-blue sky rising up all around me.

  Now there is only the sound of my breaths coming shallow and fast, my feet grinding against wet, stone-filled mud.

  If he was trying to get back to me, then he would have come this way. I told him it led to Ponden, and while it’s not the home he wants, it’s where he knew I’d be.

  What I didn’t tell him was the walk was not a straightforward one. That you have to make sure you take the right turn, or follow the right footpath so as not to get lost in the middle of the moor; and even if you know the way, it would take most adults over an hour. My poor Will – if he was sad, if he was upset and alone and he didn’t know who to talk to, or who to ask, and he wanted to come home, of course he’d come this way. He’d come this way looking for me.

  He wasn’t ready for school, I knew that. I could see it as clearly as day and he told me as much. He didn’t want to go, and I took him anyway.

  My legs are weary, but I don’t stop, can’t stop. If I can just keep up this pace for long enough, I’ll find him, I’ll see him; any moment now he will be there. But the path that follows up to the crest of the hill is empty, and the path that leads down in the dark is impossible to discern.

  ‘Will!’ I call out. ‘Will! Are you there?’

  There is no reply but the wind in the restless trees and the distant hum of cars. I can hear the cry of curlews carried on the wind, but I can’t see anyone. I have never felt so alone as in this moment, have never felt so much despair, not even in the chaos and heat of Lima, when
I realised I wasn’t going to be able to find my husband.

  And then I see a light.

  It could be car headlights, but unlike those I see tracking along the valley in the far distance, it is closer and static. It could be fool’s fire, the local name for the will-o’-the-wisp, the naturally occurring lights that come from the build-up of methane on the marshy ground of moors, once famed for leading travellers off the beaten path to their doom. But I was lucky enough to see those lights when I was a little girl, and this is different.

  ‘Look.’

  I think the word, and as I think it, I hear it, and know that it hasn’t come from me. Before I realise what I’m doing, I find myself running towards the light without a second of doubt in my mind, not knowing or caring who spoke the word because I need to believe it. So I run as hard as I can, towards the constant calling of something I don’t understand, but trust.

  At last I turn into a lane, made into a narrow valley by the high sides of the fields on either side. On the other side of a barbed-wire fence there’s an old, derelict house, a sign saying ‘Danger Don’t Enter’ just about readable in the gloom. Nevertheless, it could look like shelter to a lost little boy. And just inside the gaping dark mouth of a glassless window, that same light glows once again and the wind drops as I hear the sound of a bird calling. It’s a sound I’ve only ever heard once before in my life, on the Halloween night as Dad was telling me the tale of Lily Cove. The call seems to be coming from within the house, beckoning me in. And then it falls silent.

  The barbed wire bites into my palms as I pull it apart and clamber through, snagging my coat and my jeans, hearing a rip in the fabric, and feeling one in my skin. Will is here. I can feel him, the spark of him glowing brightly against the night, huddled in the dark.