Cherry Tree Lane

by Anna Jacobs

  The following morning Bart went off to work as usual when the hooter sounded at the Works. It was so loud they said you could hear it from ten miles away, and it sounded not only to start the day, but to end it, too. Most able-bodied men in Swindon and the nearby villages hurried off to the Railway Works on its command; most housewives planned their days around it.

  Nell and Renie got ready for their jobs in the local laundry, both looking slightly plumper than usual because they were wearing as many clothes as they could.

  Nell came running back to give Mattie a final hug. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ But Mattie’s voice rasped and she could feel the phlegm rattling in her chest as she fought the urge to cough. ‘We’ve got no choice, you know that.’

  ‘I’m going to miss you.’

  Mattie saw tears welling in both her sisters’ eyes. ‘None of that! Do you want to make people guess something’s up?’ she demanded sharply. ‘We’ll see one another again.’

  ‘We won’t even know where you are, or you us,’ Nell said, sniffing and wiping away a tear. ‘And you’re still not well. I don’t know how you’re going to manage.’

  ‘Cliff can write to his family in a year or two. I’ll find out where you are from them.’ She reached out to hold on to the table.

  ‘You’re still dizzy,’ Renie protested. ‘How can you possibly manage on your own?’

  ‘I’ll manage because I have to. I want to get away as much as you do. More. This is my only chance to escape marrying Stan.’ She not only feared her stepfather’s violence, but the way he might use her sisters again to persuade her to do what he wanted.

  She packed as much as she could in a bundle and dressed in some old clothes she’d been keeping to tear up for cleaning rags, covering her head with a shawl they used to run out to the backyard privy. Today she wanted to look old and poor. But her red hair showed clearly still, so she got out the flour and rubbed it into the front. That was better.

  Pulling the shawl low over her forehead, she practised hobbling along with a stoop and thought she was doing quite well. But she didn’t try to leave the town. Not yet. She knew she was taking a big risk, but she couldn’t, she just couldn’t leave till she’d made sure her sisters had got away safely.

  As the fingers on the big station clock twitched their way towards nine o’clock, she stood across from the station, leaning against the wall in a little alley. She watched as Nell and Renie arrived, hurrying into the station by the side entrance. Nell had been going to pretend they had a dying relative and needed to visit her.

  Where was Cliff, though?

  The station clock ticked the minutes off and Mattie waited, getting more and more anxious. What were the others going to do if Cliff changed his mind at the last minute? They hadn’t even got the money for fares, because their father took everything they earned.

  With only three minutes to go till the train left, Cliff came running down the street, carrying an old suitcase. She closed her eyes for a minute in shuddering relief and when she opened them, she saw him at the ticket window, pushing some money across. He ran towards the platform and out of her sight.

  She waited in the alley till the train left in a cloud of steam and even then she had to go across and check that her sisters weren’t still standing on the platform.

  To her horror she met a neighbour coming out of the station, but the woman didn’t seem to recognise her and simply walked past. Had she seen Renie and Nell?

  Feeling faint with relief that they’d got away safely, Mattie turned and went across to the tram stop. She spent some of her precious coins to go to the end of the line, heading south-eastwards. Then she began walking towards Wootton Bassett, thinking of making her way to Bath eventually. She couldn’t afford to spend any more on fares, not if she wanted to eat. She wasn’t sure how she would earn a living, but surely something would turn up? She was a hard worker, and wouldn’t mind what she did.

  If only it would stop raining! She was soaked already and it was hard moving against the driving rain coming in from the west. She felt to be burning up with fever one minute and shivering with cold the next. Every now and then she was forced to stop and rest, because she felt so weak, but fear of what would happen if Bart caught her made her summon up the strength to trudge on.

  As she was taking a rest on a stone by the side of the road, a man in a trap stopped to ask, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Just a bit tired, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Are you going far?’

  ‘Bath,’ she said. ‘To my brother’s. But I’ve not got the money to go by train.’

  ‘That’s a long way to walk.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I can give you a ride for a few miles, if you want.’

  Unable to believe her luck, for a minute she couldn’t speak, then she gasped. ‘Thank you. Oh, bless you for that, sir.’

  ‘Hop up.’

  The struggle to haul herself up left her breathless.

  He eyed her pityingly. ‘You’re not well. You shouldn’t be out in weather like this.’

  ‘I don’t have any choice. I’m really grateful for your help.’

  It seemed only a few minutes before he set her down again, but she felt it was an omen, because it had moved her on more than she could possibly have managed on foot, even if she wasn’t ill, which would surely put them off the scent if they came after her.

  She was going to get away, just like her sisters, she told herself, her spirits lifting. She was going to do it. Why, even the rain had stopped. She looked up at the sky and her heart sank. More dark clouds were massing in the west. It’d not be fine for long.

  She lost all sense of time, but later it started to pelt down and she stood under a tree for a while, shivering as she sheltered. But the rain had clearly set in and she couldn’t stand here all day. She was still much too close to Swindon, so had to keep moving.

  She was soaked to the skin and her shoes squelched as she walked, which made her smile grimly. If she died of pneumonia, she’d definitely get away from him.

  After a while she found herself talking aloud and stopped in dismay, trying to pull herself together. But soon she found herself muttering again. ‘Just a few more steps, just a few more steps.’ It helped to walk to the rhythm of those words, so she gave up trying to keep quiet. There was no one to hear her because no one else was mad enough to be out in such a storm.

  Time passed in a blur and she found herself sitting on a bench under a tree without the faintest idea of how long she’d been there, then resting in the lee of a wall overhung by a tall bush. Her clothes were dripping water, her bundle too.

  She wasn’t sure where she was when night started to fall. She seemed to have left the main road and taken a side road, but that was probably a good thing, because he wouldn’t know where she’d turned off the main road, even if he traced her this far.

  ‘Find a barn,’ she muttered. ‘Got to … find a barn. Got to … stop for the night.’ Darkness had fallen now and she was shivering continuously, her hands and feet feeling like blocks of ice. She had some bread and cheese in her bundle. It’d be soggy, but you could still eat it if you were hungry, only she wasn’t. She had the housekeeping money to buy more food with and water was free in any stream. She was managing. Just. But oh, she felt so weary and so cold.

  Surely there should be houses nearby? She looked ahead for lights but saw none. She’d slowed right down now, could only stagger a few steps, stop, stagger on again.

  Then, just as she was thinking she couldn’t force herself to take one more step, she saw it – a light shining in the distance, slightly to the right, and a lane that turned in that direction. A few steps more and she could see what looked like the lights of a village down a lane to the left, but they were further away than the first light, so she headed for that.

  A few steps, then stop. A few more steps. She stumbled and fell, lay for a minute or two with rain beating down on her in the dar
kness. Dragging herself up on her knees, she summoned up the strength to get to her feet and staggered on.

  When she fell again, she couldn’t get up or even find the breath to call for help. Darkness wrapped itself around her, sucking her down into a big hole.

  I’m dying, she thought, and was too exhausted to care.

  Chapter Two

  Rain beat against the windows and pounded down on the roof. Jacob sighed and looked at the clock. Half past eight. Time seemed to be dragging tonight. He tossed another lump of wood on the dying fire and picked up his book. But he was so tired he couldn’t settle to it, though normally he relished a good read in this last half-hour of the day. His little lass was asleep, but his son wasn’t home yet.

  Luke had been to the Friday night choir practice at the village church and should have been back an hour ago. He couldn’t come to much harm when he left the other lads, because he only had to walk up the hill from the village, then along their lane, so the practice must have gone on for longer than usual. A boy his age shouldn’t have been out so late on a stormy night like this, but Mr Henty didn’t think of other people when it came to his beloved church choir.

  As another squall made the window panes rattle and an icy draft whistle under the door, Jacob scowled round at the big room that was both kitchen and living area. Oh, it was tidy, he made sure of that, however tired he was. But it wasn’t home-like any more. Mrs Grey from the village hadn’t been able to come in and clean for the past week, because her husband was ill. Little Sarah had done her best to help him in the house, but there was only so much an eight-year-old child could manage and it was the busy time of year for him in the gardens.

  The evenings could be very quiet after the kids went to bed. Recently one of his friends in the village had told him he should look around for another wife to be a mother to the children and look after his house, but Jacob had told him to mind his own damned business and that had been the end of that. If he ever married again, it’d be because he loved the woman and wanted to spend his life with her. His mother and father had been like that, loving and kind to one another. They’d had him late in life and he’d lost them before he was twenty, his mother simply fading away after his father died.

  He’d spoken a bit sharply to his friend, maybe, but Ben hadn’t taken offence and most likely wouldn’t mention the matter again.

  Jacob had been more than a bit sharp with the new curate, too, who had said the same thing to him last Sunday for the third time, probably at his wife’s urging. Mrs Henty liked to poke her nose in everyone’s affairs, but it was Ernest Henty’s job to see to the welfare of his flock. The suggestion that Jacob marry Essie Jupe from the village had been the final straw, though. She’d lost her husband six months ago and desperately needed a father for her three unruly sons, but it wasn’t going to be Jacob. He’d been at school with Essie, hadn’t liked her then and she’d not got any kinder over the years. He wasn’t having a shrew like her bringing up Luke and Sarah.

  The door burst open and Luke nearly fell into the room. ‘Dad! Dad! Come quick! There’s a dead body in our lane!’

  ‘What?’ Jacob went to grasp his ten-year-old son’s shoulders and look him in the eye. ‘If you’re making this up—’

  Luke gulped for breath. ‘I’m not! When I was running up the lane, I fell over something. I thought it was a pile of old rags, but it wasn’t! It was a body, a woman’s body. Dead! In our lane!’ He spoke with some relish.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Luke had a vivid imagination, which often got him into trouble.

  ‘Dad, there is a body!’

  Sighing at the thought of going out into such a wild storm, Jacob reached for his oilskin jacket, which was hanging on the wooden pegs near the back door. He lit the old lantern, clicking his tongue in exasperation at the cracked glass panel he’d been meaning to replace for some time, then led the way outside. ‘Show me!’

  Luke splashed through puddles beside him, seeming oblivious to the cold and rain. He was still talking excitedly, but the sense of his words was snatched away by the howling wind. Within seconds Jacob was shivering, but he hunched his shoulders and carried on. You couldn’t leave a body lying there. If it was a body.

  ‘Here, Dad.’

  Jacob held the lantern up and blinked away raindrops from his eyes. To him, too, it looked like a bundle of wet rags. There was a smaller bundle beside it. Together father and son bent over, but as Jacob tried to check whether the woman was indeed dead, the wind at last succeeded in blowing out the lantern. Muttering in annoyance, he felt for her face, touching damp flesh. She didn’t move or respond to him in any way, but it seemed to him there was still some warmth in the cheeks, and when he felt carefully, he could feel a faint pulse in her throat.

  Thrusting the useless lamp into his son’s hands, he bent to pick up the body and felt a shiver rack her. Definitely alive, then. But whether she’d stay alive was anyone’s guess. How long had she been lying here unconscious? ‘You bring that bundle, Luke. It must belong to her.’

  By the time they reached the house, Jacob had lost his cap, was as wet as his burden and almost as cold. He kicked the rag rug away from the floor in front of the big kitchen range and set the body in its sodden clothes down gently on the stone-paved floor, gesturing to his son. ‘What are you standin’ gawpin’ for, Luke? Shut that door quick, then light the other lamp!’

  He had to smooth the tangle of hair back from the woman’s face before he could see what she looked like. The intimacy of this action made him feel strangely tender towards her. He unwound the shawl from her head and shoulders. It was so wet it made a flopping sound as he dropped it on the floor. What was a woman doing out on her own on a night like this? She was a stranger in the district, to add to the mystery. He knew everyone in the village of Shallerton Bassett, because he’d lived there all his life, knew their relatives too.

  As he sat back on his heels, wondering what to do next, a sigh escaped the blue-tinged lips.

  ‘She’s alive.’ Luke’s voice was flat with disappointment.

  Jacob would have smiled if the matter hadn’t been so serious. To a lad of that age, finding a dead body was much more exciting than finding a live one, something to boast about to one’s friends. ‘I wonder who she is. Never seen her before.’

  Another sigh, then the young woman’s teeth began to chatter and she moved her head from side to side with a moan.

  ‘We’d better get her out of them wet clothes. Go an’ throw down a towel, Luke, then pull the blankets off my bed and throw them down the stairs. Change out of those wet things into your pyjamas and don’t come down till I call. This poor creature won’t want a lad of your age gawpin’ at her.’

  She wouldn’t want a strange man gawping at her, either, but Jacob had no choice. He had to get her out of the sodden garments if he was to save her life. They were beginning to steam gently at the side nearer the fire and were so wet, tiny runnels of moisture were still escaping from them.

  When he began to investigate the mysteries of her clothing, he found she was wearing several layers. To keep her dry? Well, they hadn’t succeeded, had they? Or perhaps they were all she owned.

  As his work-roughened fingers fumbled with the tiny buttons of her final blouse, he couldn’t help noticing that she had a trim, gently curved body. He turned her over and paused, frowning. The white skin of her back was marred by some old scars. He’d seen the like before on the back of a lad he’d played with many years ago, scars left by a belt buckle. Someone must have given her a vicious leathering when she was younger, poor thing, to mark her like that.

  Within minutes he had her dried and wrapped in a blanket. Holding her body in his arms again, he kicked the rug back into position close to the fire and laid her gently down on it. The only thing he could do now was keep her warm and hope she survived the night.

  ‘Who is she, Dad? Luke says he found her lyin’ in the lane.’

  He swung round to see Sarah standing in the doorway, in nightdress an
d bare feet, long blonde hair streaming over her shoulders. ‘We don’t know. She’s a stranger.’

  ‘She’s caught a chill, poor thing. Look at her shiver!’

  ‘And you’ll catch a chill if you don’t put something else on. Just a minute.’ The pitiful state of the stranger and his own embarrassment at her nudity forced Jacob to a momentous decision. ‘Go up and put a shawl round yourself, then …’ he had to take a deep breath to nerve himself to utter the next words ‘… fetch me one of your mum’s nightdresses from the bottom drawer in my bedroom.’

  Sarah stared at him open-mouthed and he knew why. No one except himself had been allowed to touch Alice’s things since she died. He still remembered how Poll Titcombe had come and asked him what he was going to do with Alice’s clothes. The day after he buried his wife! He’d been still on crutches from the accident. He’d slammed the door on his neighbour and then cried like a baby, leaning his head against the wall. He pushed that memory away.

  ‘While you’re upstairs, Sarah, tell our Luke to get himself off to bed. There’s nothing more he can do down here.’

  Within two minutes, Sarah was back, proffering the faded nightdress. ‘It smells of mothballs.’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  ‘This poor soul’s in no state to worry about how it smells.’ Jacob forced himself to ignore the memories the nightdress roused. It was only a piece of flannel, that was all, he told himself firmly. And Alice would be the last to begrudge the loan of it to someone in such dire need. ‘Right then, Sarah. I’ll hold her up an’ you slip the nightdress over her head.’

  Eyes screwed up with concentration, breathing deeply, Sarah managed the difficult feat of dressing a grown woman who was as helpless as the Titcombes’ new baby. As they laid the sick woman down again, she moaned, as if in pain, then jerked her head from side to side.

  ‘Mustn’t let him catch me,’ she said in a hoarse voice.

  That explained why she was trudging across the countryside on such a stormy night dressed in several layers of clothes, in spite of being ill. Who was she running away from? Jacob wondered. A husband? He glanced quickly down at her left hand. No sign of a wedding ring, nor was the skin on that finger marked to show a ring had ever been there.