“Most probably blow off into the trees, then the birds use them for nests.”
We laugh for a bit, then carry on writing. The hands of the clock are at five to twelve.
“How’s it going?” I say. “I’m almost done.”
“And me. Grammar’s all over the place. I’m so tired.”
With a flourish I finish my last sentence, slam the book shut, and exhale loudly. A couple of minutes later Cora closes her own book and starts to put everything back in her bag.
We sit in silence for a moment. A little click comes from the kitchen clock as it hits midnight. The one in the hall chimes twelve whirrs and clunks.
“The spring’s gone,” I say.
Cora yawns. “I’m going to be like one of the living dead tomorrow.” She realizes what she’s said, shoots me a look, then drops her eyes and stares down at the table.
I gaze at the empty cup in front of me, at the frothy cream-coloured ring of dried Horlicks just below the rim.
“Do — do you ever think about what happened before?” I ask quietly.
The clock ticks on.
It’s ages before Cora speaks.
“Think I’ll go back to bed,” she says, getting up, taking her bag, and heading for the door. “Night-night.”
I glance up. Swallow.
“Night-night,” I mutter.
I pull off my jumper, lay it on the chair, and notice Mimi’s blankets have slipped down. I reach over to pull them up, and the sheet catches on something. I lean over. It’s the red exercise book, clutched to her chest. She didn’t leave it behind at Guerdon Hall, though she left everything else in her haste to get here last night.
I take hold of the corner between finger and thumb, wriggle it, try and pull it away.
Mimi stirs, hugs it even closer.
I sigh, let go, lift up the fold of the bedspread to cover her shoulders, and see that there is a loose piece of paper almost completely fallen out of the bottom of the book. I hold my breath, watch Mimi’s face, and carefully, softly, slide it away. Then I gently tuck her in, tiptoe to the crack of the doorway, and unfold the paper in the line of light from the small lamp on the hall table.
An address is printed on the top right-hand side: St Lazarus Hospital, Founded 1453, Church Road, Hilsea. Telephone: Hilsea 266. There is a pencilled ring around the telephone number, and written in the middle of the page in spidery letters are two names: Mrs Lailah Ketch and Miss Iris Jewel.
In the lower corner somebody has drawn a curving M, and touching the two points at the top is a circle like the moon — the sign that was chalked on the doors at Guerdon Hall.
I stand in the half-light and look sideways at Mimi, lying in the shadows, and my heart beats so fiercely I think the pounding might waken her.
Along the hall the kitchen door opens. Yawning loudly, Roger makes his way back to his makeshift bed. When I hear the sitting-room door closing gently behind him, I tiptoe out to my coat and push the paper deep into my pocket.
Dad brings fish and chips — and Ange.
I am sitting across from Mimi, watching the television, pretending not to see her thumbing through her exercise book then holding out the covers and shaking the open pages over her lap. The car growls down the Chase, and from the window we see the sweep of the headlights over the creek. Relieved, we rush down the hall and along the stone passage to the back door. Footsteps crunch along the gravel path. I pull open the door, and a thin woman is standing there with a wary smile on her face.
Our mouths drop open.
She is wearing a drab, pink bouclé two-piece with an off-white Bri-Nylon blouse underneath, making her skin look sallow. The suit has definitely seen better days — like her, by the look of it. The woman’s hair, a faded red, is back-combed into a beehive, half covered with a gauzy blue chiffon scarf tied under the chin.
I can’t think what she is doing standing at our back door. Dad comes up carrying an old, battered suitcase. I smell the reek of vinegar and realize that the woman is holding, slightly at arm’s length, four portions of fish and chips wrapped loosely in the Daily Mirror.
“They’re from the chippy in Hilsea,” Dad says. “Hope they haven’t gone cold. Oh, this is Angela.”
I recall the scrap of paper pinned to his jacket when he was drunk — Angela Russell, The Cosy Café, Hilsea 463.
Surely not. She isn’t Dad’s type at all — far too skinny, and she must be the wrong side of forty.
“Ange — call me Ange,” she says, pulling off the pale-blue chiffon. “Got any red sauce?”
“In — in the kitchen,” I say.
“I could murder a cuppa tea,” she says, following my pointing finger and pushing open the kitchen door. “Ooh, very nice, very modern.” She runs her lean hand across the counter. “Is this that Formica stuff? Love them curtains — like a tin of mandarins, or sunset over Clacton-on-Sea. Need to get them walls sorted, though. Could do with a lick of paint.”
“The wallpaper fell off,” I say.
“There’s a funny thing,” she laughs. “Never heard of that one before. Still, I’m a dab hand with a paintbrush. We could do it together. Go to the paint shop and choose something nice and bright. Cheer the place up. Cold in here, isn’t it?” With a little shiver passing across her shoulders, she runs her hand over the radiator.
“At least the boiler’s working,” I say. “Last week it went off and we didn’t have no heating at all.”
“Crikey,” she says. “Must have been like Captain Scott up the Pole.” She points to the kettle. “Do you mind?”
I shrug, still bewildered.
Ange fills it, lights the gas, and looks for the tea caddy, puts the sugar bowl on the table, opens a drawer, and finds the teaspoons.
“How many sugars do you have in your tea, Cora? Do we want plates for the fish? Where do you keep them?”
“Don’t bother, Ange,” says Dad, coming in. “Why don’t we eat it out of the newspaper in the other room.”
We sit in front of the television, pulling the fish apart with our fingers. Dr. Kildare starts. Ange sings along with the theme tune, her mouth full of half-chewed chips: “Laa, laa, la-la-la-la.”
Dr. Kildare strides manfully down the hospital corridor towards the emergency room, his white coat open and flapping behind him like angels’ wings, his face, knitted with a sensitive frown, a study in concern. Behind him trot a group of nurses, all starched cotton and perky little caps, lipstick and flicked-up glossy hair.
“Ooh, he can take my temperature any time,” Ange squeals, and elbows Dad so hard in the ribs that he drops a piece of fish onto his knee. The laugh turns into a fit of coughing. A mouthful of chips flies out, and Ange catches them in her hand.
“Ooh, look at me. Sorry.” She clears her throat self-consciously, pulls a lavender-scented hanky from her sleeve, and wipes her fingers.
When we’ve finished eating, she gathers all the bits of vinegar-soaked newspaper and scrunches them together into a great big ball.
“More tea?” she calls as she leaves the room.
“No, thanks,” answers Dad; then he whispers, “Do you like her?”
“Seems all right,” I say. “Don’t know her, do we?”
“Where did you pick her up from?” asks Mimi. “What’s she doing here?”
“That ain’t a very nice thing to say,” I scold her.
Something smashes in the kitchen.
I jump up.
Ange is at the table, where she’s been setting out the cups and saucers. Her hands are trembling as she fumbles in her bag and pulls out a packet of Capstan Full Strength and a box of matches. She shakes out a cigarette, and two more come with it. She squashes them back into the packet.
I pick the broken pieces of a teacup up off the floor and drop them in the bin.
Ange strikes a match so hard it snaps. She tries another, then another, until at last she manages to light the cigarette and draw it in, then lets the smoke out slowly through her nose in two thin streams. Her h
ands become still, but her strained face remains colourless.
“What’s the matter, Ange?”
“Sorry about the cup. I hope it wasn’t dear.”
“‘S all right. We’ve got loads of them ones.”
“Sorry.”
“Shall I finish doing the tea?”
“Thanks. Yes. Thanks.”
I empty the tea leaves out of the pot, then, just as I go to put another teacup on the empty saucer, Ange stubs out her cigarette in it.
“Would you — would you shut the curtains, love?” she says, taking one of the squashed Capstans out of the packet and rolling it smooth in her fingers before lighting it.
I pull the orange curtains together — sunset over Clacton-on-Sea — happy to shut out the blank black miserable evening outside. When I turn back, I notice Ange staring at the window as if she were still looking through the glass.
“What — what happened, Ange? Why did you drop the cup?”
“We’re — we’re on our own out here, aren’t we?”
“Yes, the nearest people are the Treasures, up at Glebe House, past the top of the hill.”
“They wouldn’t come down here, would they?”
“Never,” I say. “Not in a million years. Why? What’s the matter?”
“Someone — no, maybe they didn’t… . I was over at the sink just now, rinsing out the cup, and I thought — I thought someone was looking in — looking right at me.”
“What? What did they look like? You sure it wasn’t your reflection — you know, against the dark?”
“Yes, most probably.” Her hand shakes again as she draws on her cigarette. “Stupid, eh? I thought it was this woman. It gave me such a fright I dropped the blimmin’ cup… .” She blows out the smoke. “Then — then I saw the face was mine after all. It was just me looking at myself.”
This woman is a gift to me. She does not know it, but the dying lights are on her. Her skin is thinning.
Patience, Aphra, patience and endurance — and you will get inside.
The kettle starts whistling.
Ange turns towards it, squashes the barely smoked cigarette into the saucer.
“It’s all right,” I say. “You sit down. I’ll make some for the two of us. Dad doesn’t want any more.”
I pour the water into the pot.
Ange coughs, then we sit in silence for quite a while. So many questions I want to ask her, sorting them out in my head so they won’t sound like prying. In the end I needn’t have bothered because, out of the blue, she says simply, “You’re wondering what I’m doing here, aren’t you?”
I lower my eyes. Ange pours milk into her cup. “I come from near Mistleham way,” she says, “but there’s no work for a woman on her own up there. I saw this advert in the paper — a job with a room at the Cosy Café — you know, the transport caff on the other side of Hilsea, set back off the road, opposite the Hand and Flowers.”
“No, sorry.”
“Never mind. Anyway, I was getting really fed up with it, earning peanuts — the long hours on me feet all day, and living in this bedsit over the kitchen, with mould coming down the walls and smelling of grease.”
She takes a sip of tea, blows across the cup, sips some more.
“I haven’t been feeling too good lately, and the caff was getting a bit much, wearing me out, ’specially the evening shift, and I’m not really what you’d call the sort of woman lorry drivers like serving up their bacon and eggs. They like a bit of glamour — to be honest, I couldn’t have been much good for business.” She stirs another spoonful of sugar into her tea. “Mike, the owner, only took me on because he was desperate for a waitress quick when his wife, Beryl, ran off with the chap who delivered the baked beans.
“Anyway, I decided to look for another job that wasn’t going to do me in so much, and put a card in the newsagent’s window in Hilsea, and this barmaid, Muriel, who works in the Thin Man, telephoned me Tuesday night, said she’d seen my card, and this bloke was in the pub and was grumbling about —” Ange breaks off, puts down her cup, and reaches for her cigarette packet. “Oh, listen to me, going on… .”
“Grumbling?” I don’t really want to say it. “About Mimi and me?”
“About you and Mimi?” she comes in quickly, pulling out another cigarette and tossing the packet back on the table. “No, no, dear, no.”
I decide to believe her.
“Was he grumbling about Auntie Kath, then? She came with us out here for a bit, but she went back to London — last week.”
“Yeah, that was it.” She strikes a match, sucks the cigarette alight, then shakes the match out and drops it into the saucer. “This Muriel said your dad was having a moan about your auntie Kath — all that sort of thing, you know — and was looking for somebody to mind his two kids — six quid a week in your hand, all expenses, board and lodging thrown in.”
She blows out a stream of smoke. “Seemed too good to miss, a doddle really, and better money, and I’ve always liked kids, not having had any of me own. Thought you was a bit younger, actually, the way Muriel was talking, though I don’t suppose she would have known. What are you — sixteen yet?”
“Nearly.”
“Anyway, Muriel passed me on to your dad. He was happy as Larry, didn’t even want no references, said he had to go up to London for a bit the next day, the Wednesday, and he could pick me up from Hilsea Friday night on his way back. I thought he sounded a bit squiffy, so I told Muriel to write down my particulars and make sure he took the bit of paper home with him, so he’d remember when he sobered up.”
She taps off some ash, wants to ask me something but doesn’t quite know how to put it. At last she says, “Your dad win the football pools, did he?”
“Sorry?”
“Just wondered how you came by this big house, as you’re from the East End by the sound of you.”
“No, we — er — it was left to us,” I stammer.
“Family?”
“On — on my mum’s side. They were Guerdons.”
She draws on her cigarette, her almost colourless eyes shaded with pity. I shift uncomfortably in my chair, look at the tabletop.
“Hard being a widow man, ’specially with kids,” she says, then adds, “Oh, I forgot.”
She balances her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, then bends down and rummages in her handbag, eventually pulling out a couple of little brown bottles. “The doctor gave me these. Should’ve taken them this morning.”
She shakes out some tablets and swallows them down with a gulp of tea.
Thinking Mum is dead makes her mindful of her own health.
In the night the snow comes.
The boiler breaks down again.
Even when the radiators are working, Guerdon Hall is never really warm, but when they are not, freezing, biting air from the surrounding marshes flows like icy liquid under the doors, finding its easy way through the little gaps and spaces between the splitting wood, the ancient, ill-fitting glass, cracked and hairy plaster, and crumbling brickwork.
Before I even open my eyes, I can hear that snow has fallen in the night — muffled stillness, broken by the soft crunch of the postman’s boots on the steps of the veranda, the thud of the letters on the hall mat, the distant hum of the milk-float coming, late, carefully, up Fieldpath Road.
The phone rings. I turn towards the wall and pull the blankets up around my ears. Silence from Pete in the bunk below.
A door opens. The rumbling of Terry’s feet on the runner in the hall.
“Hello. This is North Fairing 410 — yes, all right. I’ll tell them.”
From the bottom of Terry’s lungs comes a mighty yell, almost loud enough to send the walls vibrating. “Pete! Rugby’s cancelled!”
From behind Mum and Dad’s bedroom door, a groan from Dad. “Terry, for Pete’s sake …”
A distant cry from Dennis: “I’ll blinkin’ get you, Terry!”
Terry scuttles up to Pamela’s bedroom and is probably pulling
off her covers. “More snow, Pam. Get up. Come and build a snowman.”
I hear Pam shuffling down her little staircase and into Mum and Dad’s room.
“Can Mimi come and make a snowman with us?” she calls.
“Pam, it’s only half past six,” I hear Mum mumble. “We’ll telephone later. Go back to bed.”
“Not tired no more.”
The sound of metallic scraping. Someone in one of the new bungalows is already up and out with a spade, clearing their concrete path. The milkman climbs the steps in the postman’s footprints, clinks the empty bottles out of the metal crate by the front door, and clunks in the full ones.
Early in the afternoon, Dad phones Guerdon Hall, asks if Mimi wants to come and make a snowman with Pamela. He’ll go and pick her up in the car if he can get to the house.
“Come down with me, Roger,” Dad calls, “in case I get stuck.”
I pull on my boots, my big coat, gloves, and scarf.
The car makes it along Old Glebe Lane as far as Glebe House, but Dad doesn’t want to risk the hill, so we get out and walk the rest of the way.
At the bottom of the hill the road divides. Ahead of us is the thickly covered track to All Hallows, under a network of snowy branches.
I feel a tingle of sweat on my forehead, a hollow feeling in my stomach.
Thank goodness Dad doesn’t hang about, but tramps off to the right up the Chase.
“Why anyone would want to come back to this godforsaken place, I can’t imagine,” he says, stopping to wipe some snow dust off his glasses. “I thought that after Mrs. Eastfield died, the house would have been pulled down. Would have been the best thing for it.”
A heart attack in the graveyard — that’s the story that went round in Bryers Guerdon four years ago. A small tucked-away paragraph in the local paper — subsidence in the old church, built on wet ground too close to the marshes, causing part of the crypt to collapse. In the village, whispers behind hands, knowing nods. Then, after a couple of days, nothing more. The village continued to do what it had always done — kept quiet.
Softly curved drifts on either side of the Chase close us in like a tunnel. At its end is the dark, looming shape of the old barn. Everything is densely silent, but for the noise of our breathing and the dull thump of our boots breaking through the flat surface of the snow.
The Mark of Cain Page 14