by Nina Bawden
Mister Johnny was too absorbed in the knife, running his finger along it to feel the pattern stamped out in the leather.
Hepzibah said, ‘Show me, Carrie love.’
Carrie hadn’t wanted to show her, in case Hepzibah should feel she ought to give them parting presents as well, but now there was no help for it. She put the skull down on the table, took the ring out of her pocket, and put it on her finger.
Hepzibah took her hand and bent her head over it. The little stone winked like a red star in the firelight and Carrie thought of Mrs Gotobed, suddenly; of the time she’d had tea with her and of the way the flames danced in her rings as she stroked the silk of her dress.
And because she was remembering that, when Albert said, ‘It’s her ring, isn’t it?’ she wasn’t altogether surprised, only felt a little, shivery shock, as if something she had been half-expecting to happen, had happened at last.
Hepzibah’s fingers tightened on hers. She said reluctantly, ‘Well, very like it, perhaps,’ and looked up at Carrie with what seemed a kind of apology.
‘It is,’ Albert said. ‘It’s her garnet ring! The one she wore most of the time.’
Carrie stood still. The blood drummed in her ears.
Hepzibah said, ‘All right, Albert. Even if it did belong to her, it belongs to Mr Evans now, doesn’t it?’
‘He stole it,’ Albert said.
‘You can’t steal what’s your own! His sister’s rings are his now, to keep or to give away as he chooses.’ Hepzibah smiled at Carrie. ‘I’m glad he gave it to you. Mrs Gotobed would be glad too, if she knew. So don’t you pay any heed to Albert’s old nonsense!’
Albert said, ‘It’s not nonsense. He took it then, if you don’t like the word steal. Took it without saying anything. And he’d no right to do that, until it was all settled up. All the estate! That’s the law, Hepzibah! I read it all up in the library.’ He looked at Carrie and his eyes sparked with triumph. ‘And if he took the ring, he might have taken something else, mightn’t he?’
‘That’s enough, Mr Sea-Lawyer,’ Hepzibah said.
‘What’s a sea laywer?’ Nick asked, looking up.
‘Someone who’ll argue the hind leg off a donkey just for the sake of it. Now, d’you want that old story, or don’t you? It’s all one to me but time’s getting on and your Auntie’ll want you back early if you’re to be up at crack of dawn in the morning.’
Carrie said slowly, ‘I’ll put the skull back first, shall I? In its box in the library.’
She wanted to be alone for a minute, away from Hepzibah’s kindness and Albert’s triumphant look. Of course, he’d been right all along! Mrs Gotobed had made a Will and Mr Evans had stolen it. Stolen it out of meanness and greed. He wanted Druid’s Bottom and he didn’t care what happened to Hepzibah and Mister Johnny. That was the worst thing, worse than stealing a ring, or even the Will. He didn’t care about anyone; he’d turn Hepzibah out and live here himself, where he’d no right to be …
Carrie felt stifled. The library window was open and she went to stand by it, gulping in air. The evening breeze cooled her forehead and ruffled the surface of the horse pond in the yard. The horse pond was bottomless, Albert had said, when he threw the stone in.
Carrie’s thoughts were like bits of a jigsaw, whirling round in her head. Separate pieces but all fitting in, one to another. Albert throwing a stone and it falling. Bombs falling on cities, houses crumbling like sandcastles. Horrible, but somehow exciting to think of. Walls crumbling – and the curse the African boy had put on Druid’s Bottom if his skull ever left it. It had been taken out once and all the plates cracked, and the mirrors. Then they brought it back and the house had stood safe ever since, just so Mr Evans could live here and fill it with his meanness and greed. But the horse pond was bottomless …
Carrie lifted her arm and threw the skull as hard as she could. It sailed high, in an arc, then plopped into the pond. A few ripples, then nothing …
She stood, staring out at the pond and the dark Grove rising up the mountain behind it. She was shaking all over.
Albert said, behind her, ‘What are you doing? Hepzibah’s waiting.’
Had she sent him to comfort her? Carrie said, ‘Nothing. I’m coming.’
She turned to face him and saw his glasses flash in the gloom.
He said awkwardly, ‘It’s all right, you know, Hepzibah’s found a place. A farmer who wants a housekeeper and who’ll take Mister Johnny. It’s a bit bleak, she says, a hill farm, but it’s good and remote and that’s best for him. He’ll be all right once he’s settled.’
‘Yes.’ Carrie felt so tired. Like a piece of limp string.
Albert said, ‘So all’s well that ends well, you might say’
Carrie said, ‘D’you believe that?’
‘I don’t know.’ He sounded ill at ease and she was terrified suddenly. Had he seen what she’d done? But all he said was, ‘Let’s be friends, Carrie,’ and that was easy to answer.
She said, ‘But we are friends, aren’t we, Albert?’
Friends of course, and they promised to write. ‘You write first,’ Albert said. ‘Care of Mr Morgan the Minister.’
Carrie laughed but he meant it. ‘I shan’t write till you do. And if you don’t, I’ll know, won’t I?’
‘Know what?’ Carrie asked but he pulled a silly face and said nothing.
It was as if some queer shyness had seized him. When they left he didn’t offer to walk them up through the Grove and Carrie wasn’t sorry: she felt too chokey for talking.
‘Mister Johnny will see you up to the ridge,’ Hepzibah said, but Carrie shook her head.
‘We’ll be all right. I’m not scared any more.’
She wasn’t scared; not even when she was half-way up the path, dark yews all round her, and heard the sound she had heard the first time. A soft, gentle sigh; a stirring and breathing …
Nick was some way ahead. Carrie stood still and listened but she wasn’t afraid. It seemed a comforting sound now, as if the mountain had grown friendly towards her.
They ran along the railway line. ‘We’re late,’ Carrie panted. ‘I hope Auntie Lou won’t be angry,’
‘Oh no, she won’t be angry,’ Nick said. His eyes slid slyly sideways at Carrie and he started to giggle.
‘I don’t see what’s funny,’ Carrie said, and this set him off properly: he laughed so hard that he had to stop running. He doubled up and lurched about, clutching his stomach.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Carrie said. ‘Of course she won’t realty be angry, I know that, silly fool! I only meant she might worry. And that ’ud be mean of us, wouldn’t it? On our last night.’
She marched off and left him. He followed her at once, as she knew he would, and slipped his hand into hers. He said, very meekly, ‘Honestly, Carrie, I don’t think Auntie Lou will be worried.’
And she wasn’t. Couldn’t have been, because she wasn’t at home. Lights were on everywhere; in the shop, in the passage, in the kitchen …’Wasting electricity!’ Carrie said, horrified. ‘She must have gone mad! Good thing we got home before Mr Evans.’
She had left their supper ready on the kitchen table: a plate of bread and dripping covered with a cloth and a jug of milk with a note propped against it.
‘That’s for him,’ Nick said, watching Carrie. He wrapped his arms round himself like a boy hugging a secret but he was so excited it came spilling out of him.
‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘Gone with Major Cass Harper. They’re getting married tomorrow.’
‘You knew,’ Carrie cried. ‘Nicholas Willow! Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, I could hit you!’
She doubled her fists and Nick laughed and dodged out of reach round the table. ‘You might have told Mr Evans.’
‘Oh, Nick! Did she think that? Was that why she told you and not me?’
He looked at her hurt face and stopped capering. ‘Well, not really. And she didn’t really tell me, it was just that I guessed, I’d seen them quite a few times,
mooning about, and I asked her if she was going to marry him. She wouldn’t say even then but I plagued her a bit till she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. She said, keep it dark, not meaning you mustn’t know, but I thought – well, you know what you are! Sorry for him all the time. Poor Mr Evans …’
‘I’m not sorry now,’ Carrie said.
Chapter Fourteen
Best to be in bed and out of the way before Mr Evans came home! What would he do, what would he say? The thought of it scared them so much they turned all the lights out and went straight upstairs without even taking a candle in case he came up and saw the light under their door. They undressed in the dark, in gathering panic, and fell into bed and closed their eyes tight and pretended to snore. He wouldn’t wake them if he thought they were sleeping.
Carrie thought she would never be able to sleep, but she did – perhaps because she was pretending so hard – and slept deeply. So deeply and dreamlessly that when she woke she couldn’t think at first where she was; nor place the strange noise at the back of her head. Scrape, rattle, scrape, rattle. Like rats scrabbling the other side of the wall.
No, not rats! She woke fully and knew that Mr Evans was home and riddling the fire. The noise always travelled like that, up the chimney.
She lay still, quaking a little to start with, at the thought of him sitting down there, angrily riddling the fire as if he were punishing it because his sister had left him, and then she began to feel angry herself. She thought of all the wicked things he had done and her anger grew and grew like a dark flower opening inside her. She had been sorry for him, and he had cheated her! He had given her a ring that didn’t belong to him; a ring he had stolen as he had stolen Mister Johnny’s safety and Hepzibah’s happiness when he had stolen the Will! There was nothing she could do about that, but she could give the ring back and that would show what she thought of him! Albert had said she was brave! Well, she would do a brave thing, for once. She would go straight downstairs, now this minute, and throw the ring back in his face!
She flew out of bed, out of the room, across the landing, down the stairs, treading as heavily as she could and wishing she had hobnailed boots on instead of bare feet! That would teach him, that would wear out his carpet!
A great wind of rage seemed to blow her along the passage, flung the doors open and then dropped her, becalmed, just inside it.
She breathed hard but said nothing. Mr Evans was sitting there, staring at the dead fire, the poker in his hand. He looked up and saw her and said, in a puzzled voice, ‘Bit early, isn’t it?’
She said, ‘Late you mean, don’t you?’ and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half past five in the morning.
Mr Evans said, ‘I was just going to wake you. Train goes at seven.’ He stood up, his bones creaking, and went to the kitchen window to take the blackout frame down. Light poured in and the sound of birds singing.
Carrie said, ‘You been up all night?’
He nodded. He took the kettle from its hook above the fire and filled it at the sink. He hung it back in its place, then knelt to put screwed-up newspaper and kindling in the grate. When it flared up he put the coal on, small lump by small lump as Auntie Lou always did and as Carrie watched him, doing Auntie Lou’s job, all the anger went out of her.
He said, ‘Soon get it going. Cup of tea, bit of breakfast. Bacon, I thought. Fried bread and tomatoes. Something hot to set you up for the journey.’
Carried said, in a small voice, ‘Not for Nick. The grease might upset him. He gets sick on trains.’
‘Porridge, then.’ He looked round, rather helplessly.
‘I can do that,’ Carrie said. She took the double saucepan from the rack and the packet of oats from the cupboard and busied herself, not looking at him.
She could feel him looking at her. His eyes on the back of her neck! But when she turned round, he was laying the table.
She said breathlessly, ‘Auntie Lou …’
‘Gone. Off with her fancy man. Did you know?’
She bit her lip till it hurt. ‘Nick did. I didn’t.’
He grunted, dropped a spoon and bent to pick it up. ‘She’s made her own bed. Much good may it do her!’
Carrie said, ‘Are you – are you angry?’
He sucked his teeth thoughtfully. ‘Ate a lot, your Auntie Lou did. Always at it, munch munch, nibble nibble, just like a rabbit. Now she’s gone there’ll be one less mouth to feed, one less mouth to eat up the profits. Fred will feel the benefit when he comes to take over the business.’
Carrie thought of Fred, standing in the hay field. Standing there and scowling and telling Mrs Gotobed that he wasn’t coming back after the war, that he wasn’t going into the shop …
Mr Evans said, ‘Told the boy, did she? Why couldn’t she tell me, then? Face to face? Instead of stealing away like a thief in the night! Just leaving a note! That does rile me, a bit!’
‘Perhaps she was scared of what you might say,’ Carrie suggested, and he snorted contemptuously.
‘Scared? What’s she got to be scared of me for? No – to make me look small, that’s her object! Just like her fine sister, Dilys. The two of them make a right pair, sending messages, leaving notes – you look at this, now!’ He turned to the mantelpiece, took a brown envelope from behind the clock, and shook something out, on to the table. ‘An old photograph!’ he said. ‘That’s all I had from Dilys on her death bed – and not even sent to me neither! I had to find it, going through her things and making a record as her grand London Lawyer instructed me!’
The photograph was brown and curling at the edges. It was a picture of a girl wearing a frilly bonnet and long, frilly drawers that reached down below her dress to her ankles. She was sitting in a chair, her feet on a footstool, and a boy in a sailor suit stood beside her. Both children had high, bony foreheads and pale, bulgy eyes.
Carrie said, ‘Is that – is that you and Mrs Gotobed, then?’
He nodded and chewed at the side of his thumb. ‘I’d be ten years, about. Dilys a bit older.’
Carrie stretched her mind to imagine Mr Evans being so young. Younger than she was now. Younger than Nick.
He said, ‘Forty-five years ago. Long time, you’ll be thinking it? Only other picture I’ve got of her, I keep in my watch.’
He took his old-fashioned fob watch out of his waistcoat pocket and clicked the back open. The girl in the photograph smiled out, rather older now, her hair in a bun, one hand touching her cheek. Mr Evans said, ‘See that ring she’s got on? That’s the one you’ve got now. I bought it for her, see, with my first wages, and when she gave it back, I gave it to you. So there’s a bit of old history you’ve got with that ring.’
Carrie swallowed hard. ‘When she gave it back?’
‘Don’t parrot, girl! You heard me! It was with the picture. No letter, nothing – just my name on the envelope tucked away in her jewel box.’
‘Nothing else at all?’ It was hard to ask, but she had to make sure.
‘What else should there be?’ He looked suspiciously at her. ‘What are you grinning for?’
‘I’m just glad,’ Carrie said, and she was. Glad to know he wasn’t a bad man, not a thief, after all. But she could hardly tell him that! She said, ‘I’m glad she sent them back, the ring and the picture. It meant she remembered, didn’t it, that she’d thought of you?’
‘Seemed more like a slap in the face to me,’ he said. ‘But take it your way, if you like. Now you get upstairs double quick and wake up that idle young brother of yours, or you’ll be missing your train.’
He came to the station and saw them into the carriage. He said, ‘You’ll be all right now. No point in my waiting.’
He didn’t kiss them good-bye but he touched Carrie’s cheek and ruffled Nick’s hair. ‘Young Nicodemus,’ he said, and turned on his heel.
‘Well, that’s over,’ Nick said, and sat back.
‘Don’t be mean,’ Carrie said. ‘He was quite nice at the end.’
�
��Nice?’ Nick rolled his eyes upwards.
‘Not so bad, then.’ She wished she could tell him that Mr Evans hadn’t stolen the Will after all, but Nick had never thought that he had, so there was no point in it. And there was no chance to tell Albert. She had half hoped he would be at the station but there was no sign of him.
She said, ‘I wonder if Albert’ll be waving up on the line. I would, if I was him.’
‘This time of the morning?’ Nick said.
Carrie sighed.
‘We can wave to the house, though,’ Nick said. ‘There’s a place where you can see it, after the bend.’
‘I shan’t look,’ Carrie said. ‘I don’t think I can bear to.’
She leaned back and closed her eyes. She felt tired already, though the day had hardly begun.
Nick said, ‘When can we open our lunch packet, Carrie? My stomach’s flapping.’
She ignored that remark. She sat, feigning sleep: she had decided to keep her eyes closed all the way to the junction. And when the train started she wished she could close her ears too, because Nick stood at the window and sang, ‘Good-bye town, good-bye. Good-bye War Memorial, good-bye square. Good-bye Chapel on Sundays. Good-bye old slag heap …’
Carrie thought, my heart’s breaking …
‘Good-bye mountain, good-bye trees,’ Nick chanted as the train gathered speed.
Carrie felt she couldn’t bear to hear that light, cheerful voice sing out, ‘Good-bye, Druid’s Bottom.’ She jumped up and thrust him down on the seat, holding his shoulders. He said, squirming, ‘Let me go, Carrie, let me go, rotten beast,’ and she laughed and released him and turned to the window …
And screamed. The train whistle blew at the same moment and her scream was drowned in it. Nick only saw her dark, open mouth and her eyes, shocked and staring.
He stumbled up and she clung to him. The train whistled once more and shot into the tunnel.
Nick felt Carrie shaking and shuddering. The train joggled and they fell on the seat, clasped together. She said, in the dark in the tunnel, ‘It’s on fire, Nick. Druid’s Bottom on fire. Blazing away, flames and smoke – they’ll all be dead, Nick …’ She started to cry. She said, between sobs that seemed to tear her chest open, something that sounded like, ‘All my fault …’ He knew it couldn’t be that because it didn’t make sense but there was no point in asking her what she had said because she was crying too hard.