‘Chay-chay-change in…Father, please! You’re hurting—’
‘CHANGE IN WILL, STRENGTH OF SERVICE.’
‘Change in…in will…’
‘STRENGTH. OF. SERVICE.’
‘Streh-streh…’ The girl chokes on the floorboards. ‘…strength of service.’
‘Yes.’ Her father lowers his face to hers, his red hair not so shiny out of the sun. ‘Humble thyself before His will, girl. This house shall be our salvation. Here, our family will grow. Once she finally fulfils her function, once she gives me my son, he shall grow into a man under this blessed roof.’
His eyes cut into her.
‘And YOU, my child…’
Like knives.
‘…shall learn your place amongst the meek.’
Why are they like knives?!
‘Now, get up. But forever keep your head to the ground. Find your place amongst the meek, girl, where you belong.’ He raises a twitching, quivering hand, its fingers slowly clenching.
‘Tell me you see, Renata.’
Choo-choo goes the fist.
3
There was a constant in Millbury Peak: pure, wholesome tradition, running through the town’s history and into its present like an arrow. Change was not on the menu. The small but fervent council had devoted three years to challenging and eventually overruling the proposed development of an industrial estate on its south-east corner, an orgy of concrete that was the complete antithesis to this thread of tradition so vehemently held by its residents. The rabid little consortium never once backed down, tirelessly standing guard over the town like a pride over its cubs.
Traditional values kept Millbury Peak on the straight and narrow as generations of townsfolk dogmatically followed in the footsteps of their forefathers, at times fanatically defensive over their treasured sense of unity. Don’t come a-knockin’ with anything on your mind other than the local crochet club or the biannual gardening gala and you’ll get on just fine.
And today, as autumn sank and winter rose, something neither regular nor rare for the East Midlands maintained a stubborn watch over the town and its surrounding grassy planes: the mist remained.
The small congregation huddled tight as crowds of headstones kept a solemn watch through low-hanging fog. The group would have liked to be larger, but Thomas Wakefield, his unseeing eyes gazing aimlessly into the mist from his rusty wheelchair by Renata’s side, insisted on a modest gathering. He also demanded the service be held in the cemetery surrounding the decrepit, now abandoned church in which he’d spent his life giving impassioned sermons before retirement. This was all in spite of the still pimple-faced Edwin Ramsay’s – Thomas’s successor as town vicar – protestations, for whom the newly built replacement in the heart of town was Millbury Peak’s ticket to modernisation. A wish shared by no one.
The eager young cleric had taken over as vicar after Mr Wakefield’s declining health tore him from his charge. The new church, which replaced the crumbling relic overlooking today’s humble burial, was Ramsay’s brainchild; five minutes with the rosy-cheeked clergyman was enough to witness his pride in the pale, plasterboard facility bubble over like champagne. Thomas Wakefield’s glass, however, was very much empty. His decision regarding the ceremony’s venue had been final. He insisted on a great many things on a great many days, usually from his loyal wife, Sylvia – until she’d been burnt alive upon an altar barely thirty yards away.
Every breath Renata drew was a terror, with so much as a twitch of her finger feeling like an announcement of her presence. She kept her gaze fixed on the rippling grass, away from the eyes – those carving knife-eyes – eyes that speculated, judged, concluded.
Where’s she been all these years?
Is she even bothered?
She could at least shed a tear.
Not for the first time during the service, she risked a glance above to make sure the clock tower remained. Sure enough, her childhood friend was still there, looming over the crowd. It hadn’t abandoned her, not like the others.
The vicar’s monotonous drawl droned on while the police tape over the church’s sealed entrance fluttered noisily in the wind, a hyena cackling from the sidelines.
‘As in life, so in death, Sylvia Wakefield shall inspire us to live our lives fully and with courage…’
The coffin sunk with a terrible creak.
‘…and upon those who adored her most, let God grant solace in His promise of reunion. For in all the Wakefield family have endured, all they have lost—’
Thomas snorted, his blind eyes locking on Ramsay.
‘—uh, their place in Heaven is ensured. I ask the friends and family of this cherished woman to bow their heads for Sylvia Wakefield’s favourite prayer.’
There was a bellowing roar.
The Harley skidded to a halt on the track, spraying dirt into the face of a stone cherub. Despite Thomas’s drowning in the fraying, black robes of his old cassock, Renata was still able to detect the tightening of his emaciated frame. His face glowed red.
Like a balloon.
‘What is that accursed racket?’ he spat.
Quentin stepped off the bike and approached the congregation amid tutting and shaking heads. He knelt in front of the elderly man. ‘Mr Wakefield,’ he announced with clichéd US theatricality, ‘sorry for interrupting. I’m here to pay my respects to what I’m told was an awe-inspiring woman, an angel who—’
‘Get this beast OUT OF HERE,’ roared Thomas. Spit dotted Quentin’s glasses.
The young vicar lowered his prayer book. ‘Mr Wakefield,’ he said, ‘Mr Rye consulted with me before the funeral and I gave him my blessing. He feels profound remorse for his novel playing any part in Sylvia’s death, and has expressed a deep desire to—’
‘The man’s a damned hatemonger, Ramsay!’ Trembling fingers tugged at his yellowed clerical collar as he spoke. ‘With God as my witness I want this foul soul away from my wife.’
Quentin rose, wiping his glasses. ‘Mr Wakefield’s wish is my command,’ he said, smiling at the shocked faces. ‘I’ll leave you folks to it. But know this.’ He scooped a handful of dirt and held it over the open grave. ‘I’m gonna do everything I can. Sure, I don’t know who did this, and I can’t give Thomas and Renata back their beloved Sylvia…’ The dirt trickled from his fingers. ‘…but that doesn’t mean I can’t help make things right.’
He looked to his audience, shaking the remaining dirt from his hand.
‘I’m keeping on my rented accommodation in Millbury Peak. My production company’s gonna film the latest movie adaptation of my work right here in your magnificent town.’
Jaws dropped.
‘We’re talking big-budget here, guys. Trade, jobs, recognition. It’ll bring all these things to Millbury Peak. Nothing can replace Sylvia,’ he looked at Renata, ‘but that won’t stop me giving something back.’
‘Out…NOW,’ exploded Thomas, before breaking into a coughing fit. Chatter erupted.
‘He can’t do this—’
‘Nobody wants him here—’
‘Mr Wakefield’s wife just died—’
Renata, paralysed with terror, watched Quentin walk silently to his bike. The prattle was suddenly decimated by another roar, this time from the tower as its bell tolled noon. She turned her eyes to the great clock face of the stately stone column, then, glancing back down, met Quentin’s eyes as he revved the engine. He flashed a gentle smile before tearing down the track back towards Millbury Peak.
‘Father,’ she’d said, ‘it’s been a long time.’
Their reunion had been blunt. She’d found Thomas alone in front of the dead fireplace, save for the decrepit grey mongrel in an immobile heap by his side. The rusted tag hanging from its collar read the name ‘Samson’, the same name transferred to every grey mongrel Thomas had owned through the years. She wondered what number he must have been on now. Samson Mark VI? Grey mongrel replaced by grey mongrel. If only everything in life was as simple as Samson.
Ramsay had been taking care for the former vicar prior to Renata’s arrival, before terminating his duty and leaving the responsibility of her welcome home party to the old man and his senile canine companion. She’d froze before approaching the gaunt figure in the wheelchair, horrified at the pastiche of memories that was her childhood home – or, more specifically, horrified at what now encased the home.
The minimal décor still functioned only in painting a picture of a home, not creating one. In this respect, little had been removed or added since she last stood in these wide open rooms, with mainstays such as the heavy doors and thick oak shutters having proved immutable through the passing decades, not to mention the grandfather clock by the door, its hands now dead, the eternal ticking of its pendulum silenced. The main divergence from memory, and the source of Renata’s horror, was the house’s state of uncleanliness. Corners where Sylvia’s duster once obsessively frequented were now pinned with festering cobwebs, while dust floated from the Persian rug as Renata crossed the hall. The door handles even left a sticky residue on her fingers, a thin scum presumably covering much of the house. She’d frantically wiped her hand on her long pleated skirt.
So much out of place.
The week since her mother’s passing wouldn’t have been sufficient for this degree of filth to take hold; Sylvia Wakefield had quit her compulsive cleaning long ago. Aside from her mother’s obvious abandonment of a once manic cleaning habit, the damp-plagued ceiling and mildew-stained walls betrayed the presence of issues beyond the neglect of routine housekeeping duties. The house was a shadow of its former self.
Two whitened orbs had shot at her, glaring blankly, then resumed their vacant lazing in their eye sockets as she’d approached the armchair. The blindness of his eyes should have been a relief, but Thomas Wakefield didn’t need sight to put her on edge.
‘It’s good to see you,’ she’d said, dropping A Love Encased into a brimming wastepaper basket. Her pale face tightened in disgust as a cockroach scuttled over the binned book. She’d closed her eyes and thought of those white walls. So clean, so orderly. Everything in place.
‘I was sorry to hear what happened,’ she’d continued, eyes still shut. ‘Mother’s at peace now.’ Peering through half-closed eyelids, she’d seen the man’s face twitch, more as if recalling a forgotten detail than his deceased wife. ‘I’m going to care for you, Father,’ she’d continued, ‘until we can arrange something more permanent.’
Was now the time to ask about her brother, Noah? Her father’s leathery lips pursed. As part of a lifelong habit, one of his ragged fingernails tapped and scraped out some frantic pattern on the arm of his chair like a confusion of meaningless Morse code.
The lips tightened. The finger sped up.
Perhaps later.
She’d finally managed to coax something from the old man when enquiring as to the following day’s funeral arrangements – who would speak, was he acquainted with the minister, why hold it a stone’s throw from where his wife’s flesh melted from her bones just a week prior (well, maybe not that part) – to which he’d grunted some names and times and Bible verse numbers. His biblical utterances made her shudder. Bible studies had ended for Renata long ago, Baby Jesus having checked out of her life the same time as everyone else. That didn’t stop his mention jolting her like a defibrillator.
Suddenly she’d noticed the ghostly condensation following her father’s words. Her disgust at the state of the place had seemingly overwritten her sense of temperature. She’d knelt by the hearth, Samson watching through one half-open eye, and started a fresh fire. Flames lit the musty room, giving the man’s cracked face a warm glow. It was then the reality of whom she was knelt before dawned upon her.
Despite the atrophied muscles of his trembling, cadaverous form, the core of Thomas Wakefield remained, the part which caused grown men to hold their tongues and divert their gaze. The underbite protruded even further in his old age, seemingly reaching up for those wild, arched eyebrows – eyebrows of the same faded copper as the thin smattering of hair on his scabby head. His face looked like it had been smashed then glued back together, a roadmap of wrinkles consuming every inch of skin. As for his once-broad shoulders, they’d shrivelled to resemble a scrawny clothes hanger upon which sat his quivering head in place of a hook. The tattered clerical collar hung loose around his throat, beneath which threadbare robes sagged over a wasted body. Youth had abandoned Thomas totally. Although his shell was in tatters, the same man from her childhood lurked inside, fingers forever locked in that twitching fist. Her mother had made her promise to take care of this man should anything ever happen to her, but all Renata saw in that reeking armchair was a monster.
And tonight, the crispy remains of Sylvia Wakefield cast to the earth, here they were, father and daughter. With the carrots cut and potatoes peeled, Renata stood simmering water over the hot stove, staring into a bubbling oblivion. She stepped to the sink and turned the tap. Rubbing her hands under steaming water, she thought of the coffin, pressed down this very moment by six feet of soil. That sweet six feet should have been hers, it was meant to be hers, yet somehow her mother had taken her place, and she’d taken her mother’s place: by the stove, cooking for a monster.
It would have held.
Stonemount Central crept back into her mind. The thought of those eyes – those watching, scrutinising eyes – caused her heartbeat to quicken, her mouth to dry. She forced her thoughts back to those long, white corridors. Those sweet, serene corridors…
She calmed.
It hadn’t always been this way. Once, she’d been indifferent to the presence of others. She’d lived happily outside the waters of her mind, introversion a concept of no consequence. Everything had changed when her father moved them to the new house. The first time he’d raised his fist to the girl marked her permanent relocation to these waters, the never-ending narrative of her thoughts becoming her only place of peace.
Time marched on and reality transposed from the outside in. Thoughts and dreams and stories became the only plane in which she felt sane, her head breaking the water’s surface only when unavoidable.
Will you please pay attention in class?
The waters would part.
What did you learn in school today, girl?
She’d peer out.
My love, they’re just bruises. He would never hurt us, not really.
Back under she’d go.
It was this introversion she had to thank for her profession; her life as a novelist was down entirely to the waters of her mind, her font of fiction. This career in romantic literature was, in turn, to thank for her life of reclusion. It was also responsible for her sole experience of that thing called love – not that that had ever shown itself outside the pages of her paperbacks.
By the time they’d told her she was finally well enough to conclude her years in hospital following the crash, it had been obvious to all she was destined to live apart from the world, away from the pain that plagued her when around other human beings. Five of her novels had been published before even leaving care, and these provided her with sizeable unspent savings. Options, her doctors had called them. The option she’d suggested had been received surprisingly well, so long as she found her way back for regular checkups when instructed. What she’d proposed may even be for the best, they’d said. They were right. It had been for the best.
A two-hundred-year-old cottage on a secluded, unpopulated island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland – unnamed, save for the unofficial title afforded by neighbouring islands: Neo-Thorrach. Gaelic for ‘infertile’, the nickname originally referred the island’s inability to grow anything of any value to anyone, leading to its lack of habitation. Once word got around of the strange hermit lady in residence upon Neo-Thorrach, the name took on a dual meaning as the bored children of the islands concocted stories of the woman. The ‘Neo-Thorrach Buidseach’, she came to be called. The ‘Infertile Witch’. She was no witch, though. Far less gla
morous. The sole inhabitant of Neo-Thorrach was nothing more than a second-rate romance writer who needed to be alone with her thoughts and live out her days at her Adler typewriter. Away from the eyes.
Now, in the presence of just two blind eyes, Renata and her father dined in silence. She ate little, her decade and a half of hospital food having permanently crippled her appetite in the years since. Her courage to mention Noah remained as absent as her hunger.
Thomas’s shaking grew worse as the evening wore on. She sat watching his trembling frame, curling her fingers into a fist to stab uncut nails into the palms of her hands. She looked at his twisting, yellowed talons. Maybe they weren’t so different, after all. Had she intended to give herself a few more decades, could this have been a window into the future she’d planned to abandon? It didn’t matter. Soon, nothing would matter. Disease and degeneration had picked away at her father through the years like a fussy eater, but something with a far greater appetite had torn into Renata. Thomas’s flesh was on a steady decline, but Renata’s once creative mind was ravaged; somewhere along the line, her gift for writing had flown from the tiny island of Neo-Thorrach, never to be seen again. For days at a time she’d sat at that typewriter, the rain and gales battering the stone walls of her cottage as doggedly as her publisher’s written demands for more cheap romance.
There was no escaping it. Inspiration had abandoned her.
As her ability to write had dissolved, so had her bank balance. Inhabiting an uninhabitable island was an expensive deal. Generator and purifier repairs were costly, not to mention food and fuel deliveries, forever left in an agreed location away from the cottage so as to maintain her reclusion. A private courier had even been required so as to be able to correspond with her agent and publisher. Manuscripts out, cheques in. That had been the arrangement, until the manuscripts stopped sprouting from her aged Adler. Then the cheques were replaced with demands for contract fulfilment. A couple of failed novels and the correspondence finally ended following one final ‘don’t write us, we’ll write you’.
For Rye Page 3