by Diana Powell
Beneath her, the old women gather for their daily chat, look up, and, seeing her, smile and wave. Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Monaghan. She knows their names now. They introduced themselves when they brought her ‘hand-me-downs’ and ‘cast-aways’ from their worldly goods, ‘to help’; ‘so that you will not be without, love’; ‘so you’ve got something!’ How could she ever have thought they were cold and unkind? How she wished she had let people help her after John’s death. Perhaps, then, none of this would have happened. And their voices… she loves the up and down lilt of their words; she could listen to them all day. She smiles down at them, and waves back.
There is a knock at the door.
‘Can I get you anything, bach?’ Mrs Evans asks her. She is staying with the Evanses ‘for as long as you want, bach, as long as you need.’
‘No, thank you, I’m fine. You are so kind. Everybody is so kind.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, love. Dim ots. Nothing at all. Just you shout when you want your tea.’
It was Mrs. Evans’s son who pulled her from her bed, through the back window. Just in time, they said. As soon as they’d seen the smoke, half the men of the village had rushed to the house, and worked to put out the fire, and reach and rescue her. She’d been lucky, very lucky. Thank goodness she had unfastened the shutters in time. Thank goodness she had woken.
She didn’t tell them how John had shouted to her, shouted and shouted until she had to listen; how, otherwise, she would have just carried on lying there, until—
There are lots of other things she hasn’t told them, just as she is sure they keep plenty to themselves. But she knows, now, about a recent spate of poison-pen letters in the village, how several people had been victims of the vicious attacks. The local policeman had dealt with it… Sergeant Thomas. He had come to explain it to her. ‘It’s something that happens in a small place from time to time. Gossip getting out of hand, and put down on paper. A bad show.’ He had told her how, as a constable, some twenty years ago, he had found Esther Bligh dead in her bed – the same bed Grace had been sleeping in.
‘From starvation, they reckoned. Nobody had seen her for months. And nobody had cared to go and look.’
That answered… something, she supposed – the new letters, and… As for the rest…
John has gone now for good, she is sure, and all the other voices – all. When she leaves, to go back… somewhere, she will be on her own, she will have to start again, somehow, because, of course, the house had been burnt to the ground, along with everything in it.
She is glad. It means there is nothing left of Esther any more. There is nothing left of the words any more. There is nothing left of that other. She will be only ‘her’.
It is light again. Good. I have got the light back now.
I have got light, and colour and air – everything that had been taken from me.
I can breathe! I can glide down the street, so fast that no-one seems to feel me, beyond a lift in their hair, a brush against their coats.
The noises I hear are sounds I want to hear – hustle and bustle, and music and idle chatter. Some, it is true, are different from those I was used to, just as the world is a different place, for time has moved on. I have moved on.
On from the dark, on from that house, from that place, back to the city where I belong. To streets, with shops and theatres and public houses, things I can understand, the crowds who speak in a language I understand. A shame, then, that they don’t understand me, or hear, or see, or touch me. I am nothing to them, beyond that shiver, that frown, that question.
Still—
Still, the words are gone. They have left me, or I have left them – left them in the ashes of that house, black lost in black, burned as they should have been from the start.
No more whore and bitch and slut, unless I choose to move amongst the alley-ways and red lights, except I don’t.
No more Jezebel, and harlot, and Lot’s wife, unless I should find myself in a church on a Sunday morning, but, of course, I stay away.
I stay away from all those things. I go, just where I want to go.
I am me, again. Esther Thorpe, dancing in a dress of rainbow colours, with lips of shining scarlet, and diamonds, rubies, emeralds decked upon her.
Mrs Edmund Bligh, Mrs Esther Bligh, Esther Bligh – she is gone. Gone for good.
Now there is only Grace.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Helen Carey and Maria Donovan, two authors who helped me believe I could write.
To my writing group, for all their encouragement and support… and great company!
To Robert Peett, for making this happen.
A different kind of gratitude to my wonderful family and friends, who are always there for me – especially, of course, to the boys and their loved ones. I am so lucky to have you.
And to Dai, most of all, for putting up with my dreaming.
About The Author
Diana Powell was born and brought up in Llanelli, South Wales, and studied English at Aberystwyth University. Her short stories have featured in a number of competitions. She won the 2014 PENfro prize, and in 2016 was long-listed for the Sean O’Faolain, short-listed for the Over the Edge New Writer, and was a runner-up in the Cinnamon Press awards. Her work has been published in several journals and anthologies.
‘Esther Bligh’ is her first novella.
She now lives with her husband in beautiful Pembrokeshire, and is currently working on a collection of stories, and a new novel.