Pa told me to wrap up some bread and cheese in a cloth.
What for? I said.
For Lottie. So she can try taking it through the orchard and down to the field where the men are. Maybe it’s simpler to leave Minnie with Charlie, but Honey can go with her and you can watch them to see that they do it all right.
I thought about this.
She doesn’t even know who the men are, I reminded him.
She knows James. Tell her to take it to him.
I knew he was right. Lottie did know James. All the babies did. I think they could have found their way to James Dix even if he was stuck somewhere in a hayfield halfway to China.
GRAHAM SAYS IT SHOULDN’T TAKE THEM MORE THAN AN HOUR or two, both of them working together like that. But the walls are thicker than he’d thought and by midday he and Eddie are still trying to finish breaking up the first wall. An hour later they’ve managed to prize its shattered remnants away from the rest of the structure, but the second wall won’t move. Three-quarters of the thing still standing there, its dusty, rotting insides half exposed, its bulk still blocking out the light.
Mary watches from the landing window, pacing up and down for a moment or two, the boards creaking under her feet. Then she goes into the bathroom and locks the door and sits for a moment on the hard, cold edge of the bath, looking at the dusty cracks between the floorboards and wondering if she’s going to vomit. No, she thinks, she won’t vomit. Why would she vomit? She hasn’t done that in a while.
She hears Ruby get up out of bed and walk down the passage to the toilet. She’s in there a long time. At last she hears it flush. Heavy footsteps coming back, stopping outside the bathroom. The latch on the door lifting. The door rattling.
“Mary?”
“What?”
Mary lifts her head, looks at the door.
“I need to wash.”
She takes a breath.
“Can you just give me a moment?”
Ruby says nothing. She does not speak or move. Mary knows that she is standing there, just on the other side, her eyes fixed on the door.
She waits a moment, then she gets up and opens the door. Ruby in pajamas and T-shirt, her eyes still dark with yesterday’s slept-in makeup.
“That’s not what I call giving someone a moment,” Mary says.
Ruby doesn’t react, but her face is interested.
“What were you doing?”
“None of your business.” Mary looks at her. “If you get dressed quickly, you could go and give your dad a hand.”
Ruby stares at her.
“With what?”
“Apparently you said you’d help him pull down the shed.”
Ruby shakes her head.
“I didn’t say definitely. I said it depended on how I’m feeling. And I’m feeling like shit.”
Mary thinks about this.
“Why?” she says.
“Why what?”
“Why are you feeling like shit? What’s the matter?”
Ruby shrugs.
“Nothing’s the matter. I often feel like shit.”
Mary looks at her. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
LOTTIE AND HONEY WENT OUT OF THE KITCHEN DOOR AND down through the orchard, squeezing themselves through the gap in the hedge and out to the place where the men lay with their caps over their faces on the flattened grass under the harvest tree. I followed behind, just far enough away that they could feel they were doing it by themselves.
I don’t know if James was surprised or not, but as soon as he clocked them, he held out his arms. He scooped shrieking Honey into the air, at the same time pulling Lottie into his lap and kissing her so hard that she squealed.
I watched them all from the shade of the hedge, pulling my bonnet over my cheeks, my limbs like lead, my mouth dry.
What are those? Lottie said, pointing to all the young rabbits that lay dead under the tree.
James laughed and I saw his hand go under her petticoat.
Well, they’re the young’uns that got trapped, aren’t they?
Lottie caught her breath and I saw her shiver as he blew some quick breaths on her neck.
Who caught them?
I saw him plant a kiss on her head, the tops of her ears. She shrieked and pulled away, laughing.
No one did. They should have got out of the way, that’s all.
I want one, Honey said, and she settled her body against him and twisted her head around to look at him as she slid her thumb out of her mouth and then back in again.
I watched as he ruffled her hair.
One what? he said.
She means one of the babies, Lottie told him.
What? he said. She wants a rabbit?
A wabbit, Honey said.
James laughed.
Then you shall have one. We’ll skin one and make you a little fur coat all your own, shall we?
And me! Lottie cried. I want one too! Eliza said she’d get me a kitten if I didn’t tell you anything, but I’d very much rather have a rabbit!
James looked at her.
Tell me anything about what?
I saw Lottie freeze.
Nothing, she said.
Tell me what? said James.
Lottie gave a little gulp.
I’m not to tell you, am I?
James lifted his head and saw me watching. He held my gaze for a long moment but there was no love there, only a kind of uncouth brazenness that made my throat tighten. Then he patted Honey’s head and, as if he’d never known me or had a single thought about me in his whole life, he let his eyes drift away.
AT ONE THIRTY SHE TAKES THEM BEER AND SANDWICHES, SETTING the tray down on the parched and scrubby grass before standing back to look.
“Part of the problem is that it’s surprisingly well dug-in,” Graham explains, leaning against his spade and rubbing at his face with his sleeve. “Someone actually went to the trouble of digging proper foundations, just for a garden shed, would you believe?”
“It’s more than a shed,” Eddie says as he lights a cigarette. “It’s an outbuilding. They were farmers, weren’t they? And anyway, they did things properly then.”
As he draws on the cigarette, he lifts his eyes and looks over at Mary. She meets his gaze, then looks away.
“But it’s also his fault,” Graham says, smiling and indicating Eddie. “Because we’ve got to keep the bloody shelves intact. Means we can’t just hack away at it, which would be so much quicker.”
Eddie grins, blowing out smoke.
“A whole set of hundred-year-old apple racks. How could I not want them?”
“What are you going to do with them?” Mary asks him.
He smiles at her. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me anymore.”
Graham looks up. “Why wouldn’t she be speaking to you?”
Eddie grins. “Mary’s sulking. About something I said.”
Mary feels her cheeks growing hot.
“Don’t be silly,” she says.
“Anyway”—Eddie puts out the cigarette, “I don’t know what I’ll use them for. Does it matter? I just have to have them. Don’t worry, I’ll find a use.”
Graham laughs. “Firewood. That’s what I’d use them for.”
“It’s more than a hundred years old anyway,” Mary says, “the shed. It’s closer to a hundred and fifty.”
“Mary reminded me we’ve got the deeds somewhere,” Graham tells him.
Eddie flicks open a can of beer.
“If it was up to me I wouldn’t even be pulling this thing down. I don’t know why you’re doing it. I think it’s beautiful. Don’t you agree, Mary? Isn’t it beautiful?”
Mary says nothing.
“If it was in good condition, I wouldn’t,” Graham says. “But look at it, it’s completely rotten. Five years and I reckon it would have collapsed anyway.”
Mary can’t help it—she lets her eyes go to the shed. The wood spliced and exposed where the first wall has come away.
The black earth floor, light falling on it for the first time.
“Give me a shout when you want tea,” she says, and she walks as fast as she can back toward the house, leaving them both standing there.
But just an hour later, Graham comes and finds her. His clothes are dark with dirt, his face white and shaken.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you, but you’d better come. We found something. Something horrible. Oh God, Mary. I don’t know what to do.”
IT WASN’T JUST THE MAN FROM LONDON WITH THE CAMERA POKING and prying around the village. The constables were going around to all the families and houses asking questions. They said it didn’t mean anything, but they had to do it to get a picture of what might have happened to a young girl who had gone missing seemingly without a word or a by-your-leave. A young girl with her whole life ahead of her and nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of.
I didn’t like her at all, Jazzy stupidly told the constable. I’m glad she’s gone and good riddance. She gave me a kitten that she already knew was poorly.
I scowled at her to shut her up—the fear starting up inside me so fast I could barely breathe—but of course the constable was very interested and wanted to know as much as she could tell him. I watched as his hairy hands wrote kitten in thick lead pencil on a piece of paper that was mostly empty but had a lot of lines on.
Jazzy looked down at Lupin, who was curled so upside down in her lap that all I could see was the creamy white triangle of her chin.
Not this one, by the way, she said. It wasn’t this one. This one’s the dearest little cat in the world. It was another one.
At that moment, Lottie, who’d been sitting in the corner, put down her slate and came over. She stared at the constable for a moment, then asked him if she could rap her knuckles on his big tall hat.
It’s a door, she said. And if I knock on it, you’ll have to let me in.
He looked surprised, but he laughed and bent his big head down. She rapped on the hat.
There you go, she said. Can I come in?
The constable laughed and winked at me.
What a card your little sister is.
Yes, I said. A card.
After that, because she knew he’d taken a shine to her, Lottie went and fetched her slate. She thrust the drawing in his face.
What is it? Is it a cat, a candle, a leaf, or a pair of shoes?
Lottie, I said. Not now. Can’t you see this isn’t the moment?
But Lottie didn’t care if it was the moment or not and anyway the constable was finding her very amusing.
Don’t worry, he told me. My daughter’s got kiddies of the same age. Five, is she?
Four! Lottie shouted, a little too loudly. I’m four years old.
We’re the ones that are five, whispered Minnie, but no one heard her except Charlie.
The constable gazed at Lottie.
Well, my word, and what a great big girl you are for four. Now let me see—he put his head on one side and smoothed his fingers over his mustache—I’d say it’s a pair of shoes.
Lottie laughed quite rudely and told him he was wrong.
A candle, then?
She shook her head. He bent forward to see it better.
It’s not a cat, is it?
Lottie came closer and rested the palm of her hand on the constable’s big black leg. It was the same thing I’d seen her do with James. It gave me a cold, tight feeling in my throat.
It’s not any of them, she said in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. Do you give up? Shall I tell you? It’s Mary Coles.
The constable looked at her.
Mary Coles? Is that a little friend of yours, then?
Lottie shook her head.
Not little. She’s big. Mary Coles is big. A big pretty lady with black hair and a very sad face. She’s the lady whose little girls were taken away by the—
Lottie, I said. That’s quite enough.
Lottie threw me a mischievous look, then glanced back at the constable. A sharp black dread shot through me. She had the look on her face that meant she was starting to enjoy herself.
The little girls are dead, she said.
The constable stiffened.
Dead? What little girls?
Lottie blinked at him and held up both hands and sighed.
The little girls of Mary Coles. And one day we’ll be dead too. Just like the girl in the black water. The man will come and I’ll be dead and Honey will be dead and—
Lottie! I said. Stop it right now. For goodness’ sake, whatever has come over you?
Lottie gazed at me and her chin began to wobble. She clutched at herself.
My tummy hurts, Eliza. I’ve got a tummy ache.
Come here, I said, and I pulled her to me and took her on my lap. She began to suck her thumb. I smoothed her hair. The constable looked at us both.
Do you know what she’s talking about? Who is this man? Have you seen him here in the village?
I tried to laugh.
It’s nothing, I told him. It’s just a silly game she plays. The Mary person is a made-up person. She tells a lot of boomers, Lottie does. I don’t know where she gets the ideas about the dead children. You make it all up in your head, don’t you, Lottie?
And I kissed her head, but Lottie looked up sharply.
Not boomers! she said, and she began to cry.
The constable put down his pencil and took off his helmet and put it in his lap. He scratched his head. He was looking hard at Lottie. My blood was jumping and I felt shaken right down to my boots, but I smiled as brightly as I could at him.
Lottie’s very excited because she’s getting a new kitten soon, I said. Aren’t you, Lottie? A little tabby kitten all of her own. Remember how I promised you, Lottie?
Straightaway Jazzy looked at me.
She’s not getting a kitten.
Yes, she is.
It’s not fair. I’m the only one with a kitten.
We want a kitten! shouted Charlie and Minnie together.
Lottie looked at them and began to cry.
Don’t want a kitten! I don’t want one, Eliza.
She turned her face to my chest and kept on crying. The constable looked very bewildered. Jazzy turned to him.
I’m the one who likes kittens, she said. It’s me. I told you: I had a kitten but it died. Phoebe knew it would die, because it was very poorly. James said she was a very bad girl to let me take it when she knew it was so sick. He said he would punish her for it.
No, he didn’t, I said. Of course he didn’t. Shut up, Jazz. You’re making it up.
But the constable looked interested.
And who is James? Is James your brother?
Oh, no, Jazzy said. James is just a man.
I felt Lottie stiffen.
He’s the man who’s going to kill us, she said. We don’t really know him, but Eliza does.
For a moment everyone stared at her. I flushed hot to the roots of my hair.
What do you mean? I said. I don’t know him any better than you do. We all know him and like him very much and you know very well that James wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Lottie thought about this.
He wouldn’t hurt a fly perhaps. Not a teeny tiny little fly. But I do think he would hurt a child.
I looked at the constable—I was getting desperate now.
James helps my father out on the farm, I said. He’s perfectly all right, but he didn’t know Phoebe Harkiss. When the first cat died, James helped Jazzy pick out another one. That’s all it is.
I watched as the constable drew a line under something I could not read. He put his helmet back on and put his writing things away in his coat.
All the same, I’d like to talk to him.
I shut my eyes. I had a vision of the sky falling down on me like a great big black pack of cards.
Why? I said.
Just to find out what he knows.
SOMEONE—MARY CAN’T ANY LONGER REMEMBER WHICH ONE IT was of all the many t
rauma and bereavement counselors they saw—told her that grief is not really grief, but love. It is love, they said. Or a corollary of love. Another branch. Or simply normal love expressed, through force of circumstances, in a different way.
Strange, then—because these bones have nothing whatsoever to do with them, could never in any way be linked to anyone she has ever loved—that grief, simple, pure and heart-shaking grief, is what she feels as they wait for the police to arrive.
She sits in the kitchen, dry-eyed, calm, decisive even—it was she, after all, who called them, who went and Googled what you had to do and then reported it. But inside, somewhere in the very rawest part of her, her heart feels like it’s dying all over again.
Eddie—who squeezed her shoulder and patted Graham’s arm before he left—told them not to go jumping to conclusions.
“People find bones all the time,” he said. “They’ve obviously been there for years. It’s a shock, but you mustn’t think about it too hard. It may not be anything.”
But less than ten minutes later, the phone rang.
“I can’t believe it,” Deborah said. “This is awful. What a terrible shock. And after all that you’ve both been through as well.”
She reminded Deborah of what both Eddie and Graham had said. That what they’d found could easily be the bones of an animal. A large dog. A sheep. A small horse. A beloved pet that someone had decided to bury long ago under the floor of the apple shed.
She heard Deborah thinking about this.
“All the same. Until you know for sure, you’ll be in shock. You won’t know what’s hit you. Don’t underestimate it. The impact, I mean.”
Deborah asked if there was anything she and Eddie could do. Did they need supper? A drink? Just someone to come over and be with them until the police came?
Mary told Deborah that they were OK. That they wouldn’t worry till they had to. That they were keeping an open mind.
Yet even as she said it, she saw them all over again. The bleached nubs of what looked like vertebrae lying there in the dark, disturbed earth. The gleam of what might have been part of a rib cage. An unmistakable jawbone with some teeth attached. A dirty, webbed fragment of what might once have been a skull.
The Stopped Heart Page 33