She carried her things into the bathroom and, as usual, because the lock no longer worked, shoved the cork-topped stool against the door. This wasn’t the first time that her fingers had partially opened the lid whilst moving it, but now she was tempted to peep inside at the unopened First Aid kits, the rolls of bandages and lint, some clearly used, whose faint smell of ether reminded her with a shudder that in days gone by corpses had once been embalmed at the Hall. Made beautiful and acceptable to view in death. But what about the woman who now lay under a makeshift heap by the wall? Had anyone troubled to do the same for her? It seemed unlikely.
She knelt down on the scarred linoleum to take a closer look. There were scissors of every shape and size – all rusted to some degree – and thermometers and then to her surprise, a strange forceps-like instrument with IGM engraved on one of its handles.
Could the I be for Irmgard and the M be for Muller? And if so, what did G represent?
That already faintly remembered surname was now even more familiar, but she still couldn’t place where she’d come across it before.
Damn. This forgetfulness, the losing of the marbles, was getting worse. Was some weird gas being driven off by the marsh, or were even the ravens themselves causing it? That wasn’t such a fanciful idea because in Magical Tales there was a story about the beautiful dark-haired Rhiannon and her birds who could lull men to sleep and even wake the dead.
However, she did recall Anna going on about the strange bathroom habits of one of her German authors during the last Frankfurt bookfair. She briefly glanced over at the loo with its inner shelf partly jutting out over the water, then, having returned the tongs to their original place, rummaged further beneath the bandages. Why was she doing this instead of cleaning herself up? She didn’t know, but something was driving her on. Something she knew was waiting to be found.
Deeper now, beneath clumps of pink and white cotton wool, which further down grew more discoloured, until right at the very bottom, where rust had seemingly liquefied into a thin pool, where nothing had been disturbed for years, she found a small plastic box labelled STRETCH FABRIC PLASTERS.
She peered inside and held her breath. No plasters. Instead, a rolled-up strip of blue cotton, the same as had come from the chimney. It was so heavily spattered with brownish blood that little of the original colour remained and she asked herself what kind of garment it might have come from. A shirt? Pyjamas, even? Then, with a judder she thought of Mark’s blue shirt he was wearing now. Just a coincidence, surely? Because like the identical piece from the chimney, this remnant looked old. Fourteen years perhaps? And if so, whose? And why left to rot here? With trembling fingertips she picked up the plastic casing then sniffed its contents. A less putrid version of what she’d found in the Spar bags. Almost like a sweet and sour sauce, making her recent supper start to protest, triggering a moment’s indecision.
However, that moment soon passed, because she realised that this discovery was somehow hugely significant, and should be kept not only sealed and secure, but secret. Just like what she’d found in Mark’s room.
She stood up and pressed her ear to the door. There were no creaking boards on the landing outside, no sound anything, in fact, so she used her clean dry shower cap from The Larches Hotel to wrap up her find as carefully as if it was the Kohinoor diamond.
She even kept her eye on it while the warm Nocturne-scented water caressed her skin, easing away the day and the strange mix of memories. She thought of strong, urgent Mark. That kiss and the rest, which until that morning would have been all that she’d needed. However, as she later slipped her nightdress over her still-damp head she calculated that there were sixty-five hours to live through before her next meeting with Paul, and another one or two after that at the most before he’d be going one step further than the sawyer and peeling her clothes from her body . . .
Chapter Twenty-Five
From this hour, this ignominy that you have inflicted upon me will rebound to the shame of each one of you. When a time of oppression falls upon you, each one of you who dwells in this kingdom will be overcome with weakness, as the weakness of a woman in childbirth, and this will remain upon you for as long as you draw breath . . .
Anon (with apologies to the goddess, Macha)
The reek of gloss paint still filled the Hall as Lucy took her clothes for washing into the morgue-like scullery where the tiny square window revealed yet another misty morning. Neither Hector nor Mark seemed to be around and, as she took a gulp from the first caffeine shot of the day then loaded up the ancient Zanussi, she hoped that his plan for revenge at Elan had merely been a whim and soon forgotten.
The shifting sands she’d been walking on for over a week now were still shifting this way and that, with every hour seeming to deliver some new secret, some unforeseen event. But she’d made up her mind despite everything, it was time to dig in. To drive her own stake into the heart of indecision and get the little house and its land ready as soon as possible, so her own plans could take precedence. This wasn’t selfish as no doubt her former nuns would be saying. It was survival.
She’d already worked out a typical day for herself at Wern Goch. Mornings spent out of doors or in the barn, and afternoons working on Anna’s manuscripts. What could be more perfect? she asked herself watching her denim jacket and other stuff nudging around in the foam behind the glass. Except that now there was an added bonus. Evenings out with Paul, of course. Discreetly, however, at first, to spare Mark’s feelings. But then, evenings could become nights with weekends away and eventually, who knows? Wern Goch might eventually become home to two not one.
‘You ready?’ came a voice from the kitchen. Lucy spun round to see Mark checking through his wallet. He then looked up at her expectantly.
‘What, now?’ she said, mentally rustling up an excuse not to go.
‘Yeah. Could take a while with this mist hanging around.’
‘Look, I’ve got so much to organise. I need a phonecard and there’s still the plant hire the pipes, the . . .’
‘It’s Sunday, remember?’ he interjected. ‘This is Wales.’
Damn.
She had no answer for that. She’d literally forgotten which day of the week it was and, in that moment of hesitation, Mark moved closer and took her hand.
‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘It’ll be perfect over there. Besides, we can sort things out once and for all. This is for you and me, don’t forget.’
She glanced back at the washing machine and her familiar clothes inside it as if she was about to leave some kind of mooring. A rare normality growing yet more rare by the minute.
‘Off out then?’ quizzed Hector from the top of the stairs. His bulky old dressing gown made him look like Rodin’s statue of Balzac. ‘You take care in that mist.’
‘Will do.’
‘What about those hurdles?’ she whispered as her hand closed round that shower cap package in her fleece pocket.
‘Sssh.’ Mark closed the front door behind her and blinked as if to see better. ‘I got up early and dumped them back where they belong. Carreglas Farm.’
‘Any sign of the preacher?’ she asked.
‘What do you think?’ Then he stopped short and pulled her back towards the Hall steps.
‘Something’s wrong. I can feel it.’
She felt his hand tense in hers, just like those two little kids’ had done yesterday. He led her under the beech tree which loomed like some weird spectral shape in front of him and then around to the side wall where he suddenly let go of her hand to kneel down by a body’s length of red-brown soil which she’d never noticed before. A smaller more freshly made mound lay like a pimple at its far end.
‘Is this a grave?’ she dared to ask, dreading the answer.
‘My mam’s. And Rhaca’s.’ He leant forwards then steadied himself. ‘Looks like the bastards have been here too,’ signalling for her to see more closely what he’d found. A strange hole had been scooped out three quarters of the way down
the grave and in it nestled a square of white card, rumpled by the damp. She felt the mist’s chill sneaking under her fleece as she thought of the two words in her wallet. Also on white card. And here was more. WHORE.
‘My God,’ she shivered. ‘Why do something like that?’ Then she realised that the hole had been specially created over where her sex would be.
‘Because they’re freaks. That’s why.’ He sprang up and tore towards the Hall leaving her marooned in a rising sea of apprehension. She stared at this crude memorial to a much-missed mother. It was horrible. At least her father hadn’t been left to moulder like this. And why no proper headstone nor even a name with dates? Was it possible that in this family’s eyes she didn’t deserve one? Lucy recalled Rhiannon George’s remark about Marilyn Monroe. Clearly Sonia Jones had loved life. Loved company and attention, but what kind, she wondered, for the Deacon preacher to label her a whore? Suddenly raised voices came from the Hall steps.
‘What the hell did you say to them to make them do this?’ Mark yelled at his father. ‘You cloth-head.’
‘Do what?’
‘Come and see for yourself.’
Soon Hector still wearing his dressing gown over his pyjamas, was examining the evidence for himself. When he looked up, she saw how his face had whitened around his bruise. How his paint-spattered hands trembled as he held the piece of card.
‘I swear to God, son, I just warned them off normal like. Told them to back off. That Miss Mitchell was entitled to peace and privacy.’
Peace and privacy? The last time she’d known that was in her cosy old bedroom looking out over the vegetable garden and, instead of finishing homework, dreaming of that magical Queen of the Faeries on her white horse.
‘So, nothing about their private lives eh?’ Mark sneered. ‘Everyone round here knows you can’t hack gays.’
Hector bristled.
‘What d’you take me for?’
‘Sometimes I don’t bloody know. But you don’t get knocked about like that for asking the bloody time.’
‘It could be a fox,’ she suggested, trying to diffuse the situation. But neither men responded.
‘Just fill in the hole, son,’ Hector said finally. ‘And I’ll keep hold of this.’ He held the piece of card delicately between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It was obviously put there during the night sometime. There’s at least six hours’ damp on it.’
He was on his way back to the Hall when she caught up with him.
‘This was on my windscreen yesterday and to me they look similar.’
Both men fixed on her as she extracted the torn fragment from her wallet inside her bag, and turned it over to show the fine blue lines and the letters ARD. ‘I bet they match,’ she said.
Hector and Mark exchanged a troubled glance then held the two halves together to make the word POSTCARD.
‘By Christ. You’re right.’
She then revealed the other side and heard both men gasp.
‘You’re next,’ whispered Mark. ‘Shit. Where was your car at the time?’
Still unable to mention her Crossgates trip, she simply said, ‘Llandrindod town centre. I’d just done some shopping there. I don’t understand. Why me, for God’s sake? Why her?’ indicating the grave.
‘Like I said,’ Mark stroked her arm and she flinched. ‘Freaks.’
Hector squinted at the block capitals and it seemed a look of despair darkened his whole face. ‘Can I keep this as well? Tomorrow’s going to be my busy day.’
She nodded glad to be rid of it.
‘If these have come from Evans or Hughes, is there some way we could check their handwriting?’
Father and son exchanged a quick glance.
‘First things first, eh?’ Hector suggested. ‘Was anyone else parked up near you? Anything odd you might have noticed?’
‘No.’ She gripped the end of the balustrade by the steps. She felt her eyes begin to fill up. She was so bloody tired – no, exhausted more like – by the ups and downs of the past week which only that morning while forcing herself out of bed, had seemed like forever.
‘I don’t think you’re telling us everything,’ Hector said with surprising gentleness, ‘and we need to know, believe me.’
‘OK,’ she caught Mark’s eye and he nodded encouragement. ‘We’d better sit down somewhere. Because this’ll take more than a few minutes.’
*
‘For a start, I can’t believe you actually went to Rhiannon George’s place. And that you believed anything she said. I mean, at school, most kids gave her a wide berth. Except the lads who wanted a quick grope, that is.’
Lucy winced at Mark’s harsh appraisal of a woman she’d grown to like, as he drove his van away from the Hall twenty minutes later, with less care than usual. Several times her seatbelt locked across her chest where anger was beginning to ferment.
‘I saw someone there too, remember?’ she countered. ‘Like I’ve just told you both, it was pretty nerve-wracking. I’m sure if Rhiannon hadn’t got away, she and her boys would have been in some kind of danger.’
Suddenly she spotted an animal hovering by the verge in front of them.
‘Evans’s dog,’ Mark announced. ‘Shall we make things quits?’
‘What do you mean?’ She looked at him in horror.
‘Dog jam. Nice little gift for him.’
‘Ugh. That’s so sick.’
‘Only joking.’
But Mark’s sudden callousness had unnerved her all the same.
He slowed down to let the collie cross the lane. She watched it lope away and creep under the hedge.
‘We beg to differ on the Rhiannon George business, I’m afraid,’ he went on. ‘More to the point, she could have nicked your credit cards, the lot. Who’d have helped you then?’ He turned to her, his eyes dark, demanding an answer. ‘And secondly, Christ, I just don’t believe you’d pick up a total stranger and agree to see him again. I mean, is that sane?’
‘You were a stranger to me this time last week, OK?’ Her voice rose more than she’d have liked and she nearly added, you still are. ‘Anyway, I’m thirty now and quite able to make up my own mind, thanks very much. Besides,’ she added, glancing at his strong intense profile, ‘it’s hardly been a barrel of laughs here for the past eight days. I’m used to having a bit of fun occasionally. Letting my hair down.’
She knew that would hurt, just like her dig at Jon during his last phone call, but at the moment, charity wasn’t very high on her agenda and the tense silence which followed, was almost a welcome relief. ‘Anyhow,’ she went on as the town was left behind, ‘never mind that I’ve had a threat, or whatever it is. That doesn’t seem to matter to anybody. Or that some car or other was tailing me.’
‘That’s unfair and you know it. Why are we here then? For a bloody picnic?’ Mark steered the van towards signs for Elan Village and a notice that the Bog Snorkelling Championships near Llanwrtyd Wells had been cancelled due to foot-and-mouth. Anna would have laughed her head off at that, she thought. But not in this van. Not in this atmosphere.
He then drove past a cluster of quaint houses where, to her surprise, she noticed that the window surrounds and gable details were identical that of Wern Goch. And seeing these dwellings so well restored and lived in gave her some hope. If these people could do it, so could she. Having left the Elan River’s Suspension bridge glinting in the clearing mist with the sunlight brightening the tops of the surrounding hills, Mark pulled into the visitors’ car park and hauled up the handbrake.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she turned to him. ‘There’s been so much happening that’s nothing to do with getting Wern Goch habitable. It’s as if somehow I’m being drawn into an extra complicated Celtic Knot, with no bloody way out.’
‘And all I’m saying is that it’s dodgy to go out with some guy you barely know. You could be in trouble. I can feel it here, in my heart.’ He banged his chest. ‘It’s crazy.’
‘What about me here then?’ She looked around a
t the chiffon blue water and the partly forested bare-crowned hills. ‘There’s not a soul around.’
‘There’s yours and mine,’ he said, locking up the van. ‘And Rhaca’s.’ He cast his eyes upwards to the perfect blue, then slipped his arm around her waist as they made for the framed tourist map positioned on the visitor centre’s wall. This showed a selection of walks available for the tourist, all of varying degrees of difficulty.
‘So, which one are we doing?’
‘Just trust me, okay?’
Another shiver. Another twinge of panic. This was Crossgates all over again. Utterly deserted. No cars, nothing. Just the occasional mewing cry of a buzzard somewhere circling over its prey. If she just shut her eyes she could be back in time, before the drowning of the valleys for Birmingham’s water supply. Before the dams when Shelley and young Harriet had Nantgwllt Mansion to themselves . . .
Yes, she’d looked all this up before the sixth form trip and now twelve years later, here she was again, not with an exuberant group of seventeen-year-olds but a man who still remained a mystery . . .
‘I’m not sure about this,’ she said, pulling away from him, remembering with a jolt that her phone was still out of action should she need it.
‘It’s our only chance. Like I said, there are people we need to see. Evans and Hughes included.’
‘The Dagdans, right?’
‘Sure. About two miles from here. Above the Claerwen reservoir. There’s an oak grove that’s been used for ages.’
‘Your father said he’d been to Caban Coch.’
She sensed Mark stalling.
‘They like to keep moving. With the new moon it’ll be Claerwen, I’m telling you.’
‘What for?’ She eyed the quickest way to exit if necessary.
‘The Morrigan demand sacrifice.’
She felt her own blood run cold.
‘What kind of sacrifice?’
A Night With No Stars Page 21