Wildfell

by Sam Baker

  Grinning, Helen told her the truth. ‘Standing on top of a huge outcrop of rock staring down over a patchwork landscape.’ Helen could almost hear her consultant wonder if that was literal or a description of her state of mind. Deciding her call had gone on long enough to be traced, Helen cut to the chase. ‘I’m out of pills.’

  ‘Since when?’

  Helen counted back in her mind. ‘A couple of weeks. A month.’

  ‘Long enough. When do you want to come? Tell me and I can make myself free,’ Caroline said. ‘Provided it’s not Friday, that’s operating day.’

  They both knew she meant free for Helen. Caroline Harris’s time was like gold dust. A minute later Helen had an appointment for the following Monday, plenty of time to decide whether to drive herself or take the train. Whether to tell her sister she was passing through London. Whether to contact the police.

  Helen tried to distract herself by photographing the Scar, noting the time of day and the light in her notebook, shooting first with the phone, then with the point-and-shoot. Neither offered flexibility for exposure, shutter speed or depth of field and she struggled to muster any enthusiasm. The call to Caroline had left her empty. It was a feeling she recognised. A fall always came right after a high. The cold was eating at her and the sky looked less certain than it had. Helen wasn’t the only one who’d been duped by the break in the clouds. The landscape below was alive with climbers and walkers. Even the sheep and birds were noisier than usual. Noisier than she’d heard since she arrived.

  When she saw a school party slung out across the valley below – pairs of adults front and rear, marshalling a crocodile of small children in Smartie hues – she started photographing them, for no reason other than primary colours made a change from the more muted grass, rocks and sheep. Hidden behind her phone, she felt far less obtrusive than with a camera. Their erratic meander towards the crag warmed her, as she captured the four adults trying and failing to keep some semblance of a neat line.

  She’d reeled off dozens of shots when she first saw the boy. He was standing with his back to her, not quite with them, not quite apart; far closer to her than the main group. The boy was small and dark and, somewhere on the day out, he’d lost his anorak.

  He must be cold, she thought, shivering as she tried to zoom in. The boy didn’t move in the frame. Helen swore quietly under her breath. What did she expect from a practically obsolete camera phone? But even from this distance Helen could see his clothes didn’t look right. He looked separate, other, and not just his lack of coat.

  Poor kid, Helen thought. She knew how that felt. Picked last for games, no one to sit with on the school bus, no one to hold hands with in the crocodile. Still, there was something about him that was familiar. She started back down the escarpment to get closer.

  All it took was one child to trip.

  One, perfectly positioned Jenga.

  A smallish boy, near the front, took another down with him, or her. A girl, possibly. It was hard to tell, they were all dressed in bright anoraks and dark school shorts. The whole line concertinaed. The crocodile bunched at its head, the tail scattering into groups. They looked like nothing so much as spilt M&Ms. Helen cast about, looking for a single M&M without its primary-coloured coat.

  There wasn’t one. He was gone.

  Frowning, she scoured the Dales below her. Where was he? Perhaps he hadn’t been with them after all. Perhaps he’d gone with his parents. But there hadn’t been any other adults between her and the school party. Helen was sure of it.

  Head down, eyes on the rocks at her feet, she took the winding path at the back of the Scar at a sprint, feeling the jolt in her spine as her trainers slammed into dirt pounded hard by dozens before her. A couple coming towards her moved aside. The woman said something, something snipey. Helen didn’t care. She was so lost in thoughts of the boy she almost missed seeing the man ahead. At least, she missed him seeing her. As Helen reached the final slope she picked up pace, close to flat out, pretty stupid this far from home.

  As she tried to swerve, he tripped and fell into her path.

  ‘Shit!’ she felt her ankle turn on rock. Putting out a hand to break her fall, she landed awkwardly on her wrist, then elbow, somehow managing to wind herself with her knee. Blood rushed to her face as she hit the ground.

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what …’ He stopped. Helen didn’t look up, she was too furious; embarrassed and winded. Don’t look at me, her body language screamed. I’m fine. Go away.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he sounded worried.

  Glancing up through the frizz that sprayed from her ponytail, Helen scowled. ‘Yes, fine,’ she said, not really looking at him and not meaning it. She hauled herself up, swiping furiously at the mud that smeared her legs. But getting back on her feet wasn’t as easy as she’d expected. When she put her weight on her ankle it gave.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me. My stupid fault.’

  His hand was under her arm before she could resist.

  He tried a joke. ‘Like Leeds in rush hour out here today.’

  Helen knew she should smile, be polite, but she was too cross – and shaken.

  ‘It’s fine, really,’ she said, through gritted teeth, trying to shake his hand from her without physically removing it. ‘I just need to walk on it and I’ll be …’

  ‘Madame Graham?’ she heard his voice change. ‘I mean, Mademoiselle …’

  She looked up and her heart sank. His face was familiar. His height. His spectacularly out-of-place suit. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she recognised him exactly, but she knew she’d seen him before and that could only be in one place. To her annoyance, tears sprang to her eyes. Frustration balling in her chest. She groaned audibly and his face collapsed in misplaced worry. He thought she was in agony and he was responsible.

  Let him think it. He was sort of right on both counts.

  As he fussed and fretted and apologised, Helen gave in to the inevitable and let him take her weight. She could have limped her way home alone eventually, but why bother?

  She could just imagine how they looked, lurching across the Dales. Her hopping, him half carrying her with his hand under her elbow rather than around her waist where she could tell he was resisting putting it. As they lurched three-legged through the straggle of ramblers, Helen swore inwardly. First a migraine, now this. Stranded in the middle of a field with no transport, one good leg, in the clutches of a concerned neighbour.

  Trapped, and it was all her own sweet fault.

  12

  ‘Call me Helen,’ she said eventually.

  The first thing she’d said for half an hour. Gil took it as part apology, which it obviously was. ‘My French pronunciation is that bad?’ he asked.

  ‘Atrocious.’

  They’d made slow progress, the difference in their height not helped by the fact Helen alternated between leaning on him and trying to manage on her own. More than once, he’d had to resist the urge to suggest a piggyback or tuck her under his arm and carry her like a child. Not that he could. He might be tall, but he wasn’t that strong any more and she wasn’t that light. Plus, two falls in as many days meant his knee was killing him.

  Finally they were stumbling past a mud-splattered silver Peugeot parked on the gravel in front of the great house. While Helen rummaged in her pockets for keys and undid three Chubbs on the front door, Gil looked around him. All these years and he’d never been this close to Wildfell before. Never paid the mansion that much attention to be honest. It was red brick, ivy covered. Faces carved in cheap sandstone around the main door were weathered Botox smooth. If you’d gone to central casting for haunted houses you couldn’t have done a better job.

  Gil eyed her car. He was pretty sure it was the one that almost hit him. It was definitely the one that she’d parked so badly outside the General Stores. There was no child seat in the back, and no sign of any of the rubbish that usually accompanies small children. Empty crisp packets, sweet wrappers, discarded toy
s.

  The front door groaned as she opened it.

  ‘Needs …’ she started.

  ‘… oiling,’ he finished. For the first time a flash of a smile crossed her face, blue eyes lighting, before she turned her back on him and hobbled inside, flicking on a bulb that hung without shade from electric cord so old it was plaited.

  ‘Welcoming, huh?’

  Gil grinned. Winced.

  She frowned. ‘What happened?’

  He put his hand up and realised the scratch on his cheek was open again. ‘Oh that.’ He looked at her, seeking a hint of recognition and finding nothing. ‘Took a bit of a tumble into a hedge, that’s all. Nothing serious. It’s just a scratch.’

  ‘Looks more than a scratch to me.’ Her sudden change of tone surprised him. Efficient, maternal, bossy. The tone Jan had used to tell the girls it was time for bed, no arguing. ‘You need to see a doctor. That probably requires stitching.’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘You don’t seem the type to interfere in other people’s business.’

  ‘I’m not, I …’ then she laughed. ‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘It looks bad, like it might be about to go a bit septic. Trust me, I know a bit about these things.’

  They hovered in the doorway for a moment. Her just inside, balancing on one leg, supporting herself with one hand on the door frame. Gil standing awkwardly outside on the mat. There was no noise from within.

  ‘Well, Mr …’

  ‘Markham, Gil Markham. It’s Gilbert but …’

  ‘Gilbert?’ Her mouth twitched.

  He nodded. ‘I know. Family name. Gil, really.’

  She frowned, put her head on one side as if deciding whether or not he was a Gil. ‘Well, thank you for helping me back, at least. But I’m home safe so I’d better let you go.’ She put out her hand and he looked at it for a moment before realising they were meant to shake.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing …?’

  She shook her head firmly, already beginning to close the door.

  The doctor couldn’t fit him in that day, nor the next, so Gil ended up driving to Keighley and spending three hours sat in A&E with the pond life of West Yorkshire, plus a few sick babies screaming the place down. All for two stitches, a prescription for codeine, questions about his drinking and a lecture on being more careful at his age.

  At his age, indeed.

  He seethed all the way home, putting his foot down on the dual carriageway just because he could. You should take more care at your age. What was it the nurse had said when he’d muttered some half-truth about taking a tumble while climbing on the Dales? You’re lucky it’s not worse. Rock climbing? At your age? In those shoes? She hadn’t said any of those things; but she might as well have done. The way she’d looked at him. Like, if he was her dad, she’d be giving him a proper talking to and grounding him indefinitely.

  This … regression. He couldn’t stand it. Who wrote the memo saying at what point you started going backwards in the eyes of everyone younger? He was sixty-one, for God’s sake. Harrison Ford was making Indiana Jones movies when he was older than this. Bruce Willis was still dying hard, or as good as. Five years ago, he’d been grown up, successful, respected. Although nothing perceptible had happened, he’d somehow become a man that nurses less than half his age could scold. Gil wanted to see the small print. He didn’t sign up for this when he decided to step down from the news desk.

  Gil had no idea how long the text had been there, flashing silently from his phone. He only knew he’d missed it. He discovered it when he got through the front door and tossed his mobile along with his keys on to the little table in the hall, which had been there since Jan decreed they needed a telephone table. The telephone was long gone.

  Above the ‘table’, a kind of a semi-circular thing he’d never liked – too fakely old-fashioned in the way it fitted snugly against the wall – hung a mirror. It was oval, in the same dark wood as the table. Jan probably bought them at the same time. Since she’d moved straight into her new man’s house, already fully furnished and on an executive estate with half a dozen similar, Gil kept telling himself he could throw it away if he wanted. Somehow, like the kitchen clock and reclaiming her side of the bed, he’d never got round to it.

  Still, he wouldn’t have cared if Jan had taken it. She could have taken the lot as far as he was concerned, so long as she’d left a bed and a telly. And even the telly … All that stuff was easily replaced and something about the idea of ‘travelling light’ appealed to him. He liked to think of himself as a man who was above needing things. But no, she hadn’t wanted the telephone table, the television, the bed. She hadn’t wanted much, now he came to think of it. Except the kids.

  ‘Not really Kev’s style,’ she’d said of the rest.

  Something along those lines.

  ‘What makes you think it’s mine?’ he’d wanted to reply.

  Maybe he had. That was possible. Not that the split hadn’t been amicable enough; but there had been moments … Well, there would be, wouldn’t there? Dismantling a marriage after twenty-odd years. And even saints snark. He couldn’t remember the detail. It was a long time ago now. So the table and the mirror, and the bed and the telly, and plenty more besides, stayed. Ten years later, all that stuff was still here. Except the telly. Sometime in the last four or five years he’d found his way to replacing that with an enormous wide flat-screen thing the bloke in Curry’s had convinced him he needed. Flicking on the overhead light, Gil blinked, examined the stitches, neatly tied and self-dissolving, and tried to look at himself impartially. Not much to see except floppy blond-grey hair and heavy black-framed glasses.

  Without those he couldn’t see a bloody thing.

  Well, not unless it was very close, and even then not in focus.

  Hanging his suit jacket on the end of the banisters, where it would stay until he put it back on again to go out, he picked up his phone and wandered into the kitchen. That’s when he saw the envelope flashing on screen, with a number underneath he didn’t recognise. Heart pounding, he fumbled to enter the pin-code to unlock it. It wasn’t from his ex-wife or his elder daughter. It wasn’t likely to be from his youngest, but he couldn’t help hoping.

  I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at The Bull? I wondered if you’d like to have a drink sometime? Maybe dinner?

  Liza x.

  PS hope you don’t mind, Margaret gave me your number.

  Disappointment surged through him. Who’d he been expecting? Jan? Karen? Lyn? Helen Graham? That was hardly going to happen. And who the hell was Liza anyway? Margaret had to be Margaret bloody Millward. He didn’t know any other Margarets. How in God’s name had that Millward woman got hold of his mobile number? Christ, she’d missed her vocation. And had he just …?

  Been asked on a date? By a woman?

  Don’t be such an old fart. It’s the twenty-first century. He could imagine Lyn saying it. If he’d ever been able to have those kind of conversations with her, which he hadn’t. Women asked men out all the time these days. He should be grateful anyone was interested. He tried to picture her, couldn’t get her face. He did remember her though, sort of. Or he would if he’d been looking. The Liza was followed by a single kiss. It didn’t mean anything, he knew. People did that these days. Everything was xxx. Texts, Facebook, emails.

  See you later, kiss.

  Dinner’s in the dog, kiss.

  You’re invited to apply for early retirement, kiss.

  Gone nine now. They’d be wondering where he was down The Bull; wondering if they should still be keeping his pint warm. Well, let them wonder. Gil tossed his phone on the kitchen table, not sure how to respond or even whether to respond at all. Turning on the TV produced some ITV crime drama just starting.

  It would do. Squabbling women juggling families and crime-scene investigations. Made a change from dysfunctional old sods who couldn’t hold down a relationship … Gil fired up his laptop,
dragged a cottage pie out of the freezer and bunged it in the microwave. He bought them by the dozen. Hot, filling, vaguely passed for healthy. Occasionally, he could have sworn he saw a carrot. Flipping the top on a can of Sam Smith’s, he sat down at the kitchen table to kill a bit of time with his good friend Google.

  Seeing the old house up close had intrigued him.

  He caught himself. Who was he trying to kid? It was Helen Graham who intrigued him. That was the truth of it.

  Three hours and three more cans later, cottage pie stone-cold in the microwave, Gil remembered Liza’s text. Gone midnight was too late to reply. It would have to wait until morning. Not that he knew how to respond anyway. He’d been thinking of saying yes, but he’d probably have changed his mind by tomorrow. Couldn’t think of a reason to say no; any more than he could think of a reason to go.

  Somehow he’d managed to move enough to get those three cans of Sam’s from the cupboard, but not to take his supper from the microwave. Bit of an art that.

  He was still no closer to finding out about Helen Graham.

  Her voice had an accent he couldn’t place. Not French exactly, but something … International. European, maybe, more member of the global community than anywhere specific. And that comment she’d made about knowing a bit about wounds. Thanks to that he’d spent the evening down a blind alley with the medical profession. Wouldn’t be the first time, although she’d been a nurse, and that was decades ago. BJ: Before Jan.

  He’d even spent a bit of time exploring the history of the big house, as if to prove to himself it wasn’t the woman that interested him. Trouble was, in the scheme of things, it wasn’t that big. Not significant anyway. So there wasn’t that much to tell. Owned by an old local family, the usual rifts over a couple of centuries. Then nobody but an old woman in the decades after the Great War. Gil put two and two together and assumed she’d been a war widow. After that, nothing much to report until that scandal that got the boys’ school closed back in the nineties. That rang a bell, now he thought about it. Some local bigwig got it hushed up, if he remembered right. So there must be some extended family somewhere locally with a vested interest. Since then, tenants had come and gone, but the last couple of years it had stayed empty. Not a word about a ghost, but that kind of tittle-tattle didn’t tend to come from computers, it came from old wives and kids with nothing to do but smoke at the bus stop and break into empty houses at night and scare themselves witless.