84k

by Claire North

  … but now it was something else and for a little while Theo chuckled silently as he laid the old woman down on a bed of stolen clothing, resting her head out of the wind, and as she slept, he put two pairs of socks on her feet and, having nothing better to use, another two on her hands, to keep her fingers from going blue.

  For three days

  “For three days,” mused Theo as they stared down at the ice encasing the Hector, thin for sure but even thin ice could do so much damage, “or maybe it was only two? I think that perhaps it was …”

  For maybe only two days

  They hid in that stone cottage on a hill.

  Theo drove the car as far away as he could, abandoned it in a field when even fumes wouldn’t keep it moving, walked back along the paths. That took nearly four hours, and when he returned it was dark and he was cold and soaked to the skin, not by rain but by a falling dampness on the air that made him shiver uncontrollably. The woman was awake, watched him arrive with the setting sun fading behind his back and said simply, “Come here.”

  He’d lain down on the bed of stolen clothes, and she’d pulled a stolen blanket over him, and held him tight, and soon she was shivering from the cold that radiated off his soaking clothes, and after a while they were both warm, and Theo slept, and so did she.

  The next morning she threw up and couldn’t hold even dry bread down and squatted behind the hut and shouted at him not to come near her, not to look at her, and for a while he hid behind the stones and covered his ears as she heaved and shook and choked and spat and coughed orange liquid out of her nose. The act of vomiting made her bowels go too, her bladder her …

  And then she called, “Pass me some clean clothes—don’t look!” and he passed her some clean clothes and didn’t look, head turned down to the grubby earth, and she changed in the cold and returned wearing the clothes of a woman much younger and far fatter than she and without a sound lay down beneath the blanket and waited for Theo to lie down too, so that she might take some of his warmth, which before she had so preciously given.

  And she slept.

  And sometimes, but not very often, Theo slept too.

  Until one evening, probably on the second maybe on the third day, a group of kids appeared at the door of the hut and stared, confused, bewildered, to find it inhabited, and muttered amongst themselves, for they had meant to come here and do such naughty things as open bottles with their teeth and maybe dare each other to touch their own vaginas or penises or something truly dangerous like that and it was going to be …

  But here were two people, a man and an old woman, lying on a pile of filthy clothes and it was obvious to the kids that these were intruders, interlopers, bums, because even the most intrepid walkers of the Cotswolds Ways used licensed glamping sites.

  So they muttered amongst themselves and scuttled back to the village, and one—the second-biggest and most brave—threw a stone at Theo that bounced off his shoulder, and Theo woke and saw the child, and the child shrieked and ran away.

  Theo shook the woman and whispered, “We have to go we have to go there were … we have to go …”

  And the woman opened her eyes wearily, and saw the shadow of the children running down the hill and grumbled, “Very well.”

  And climbed to her feet, pulling her blue cap back over her short white hair, rubbing yellow flakes from her eyes.

  They walked, the woman leaning on Theo, one arm across his shoulders, each step a gasp, her weight swinging from side to side. Their only direction was the opposite of that in which the children had run, until finally the woman stopped, looked up the hill, looked down it, turned to Theo and, craning her neck a little to examine his face more particularly, said, “My name is Helen.”

  Chapter 55

  Sirens in the night.

  Police.

  People—family people—heard rumours of bums, of interlopers on the hills of …

  Theo said, “How fast can you walk?”

  And she replied, “Not fast enough it’s not going to be … but I know a …”

  They stumbled through the settling dark, the sunset sky overhead a purple-blue pillow that stopped abruptly at golden-red sheets thrown up from the western horizon, night and day competing violently for who would triumph at the final bell.

  The sound of dogs, dogs howling, and once Helen fell and Theo caught her, and once Theo slipped in mud and Helen hissed, “Come on!” and he struggled up, half-breaking into a run, down a path towards a stream, the forest whispering overhead, getting dark now, too dark, the trees hemming in all things, a prison that hid the howling dogs from sight that made the sound of the police bounce this way and that; a place where men could die and the earth would take their bones and none would ever know that it had happened here, a place where—

  A voice called out from the darkness on a ridge overhead: “Helen! Lady Helen, can you hear me? Are you …?”

  Helen pulled Theo behind a tree three times their width, an ancient monster of gutted wood inside which a dozen creatures played, and the light of the torch passed by, but the barking of the dogs grew nearer.

  “Come,” hissed the woman. “Come.”

  Theo hauled her along, following the direction of her pointing fingers, whispered commands, along a path by the stream which he could barely see, twigs catching, mud rising to his ankles, they scrambled along until the darkness was so thick that Theo could only see the half-blackness of the trees a moment before walking into them, the stream a roar, he kept on missing his step and half-sliding into it, but always Helen hissed, “Come on! Come!”

  Downhill, and down a little further, and then a light ahead, a yellow glow on a porch, and he hesitated but she did not, so he staggered on, and briefly the world was lit up blue as a light swept through the trees to his left, he hadn’t even noticed the road coming close, didn’t know where north was or what land he walked in but Helen seemed confident. Stepping over the now stride-wide stream as it entered a neatly mown garden, a plastic buggy for children to play at truck driver in, parked beneath a plastic swing, a car on the gravel before the door, little latticed windows beneath a thatched roof, a ceramic sign in the shape of a swan paddling on the river by the door: WELCOME.

  Light behind the windows, thin curtains drawn. A floodlight turned on automatically as Helen reached the porch. She checked over her shoulder, then rang a bell, tingalingaling, an old black button with a real bell inside, nothing digital, not round here—nothing that did not conform to the standards set down in the Cotswold Corporate Community Charter.

  The door opened.

  A woman, younger than Helen by some thirty years, a green woollen jumper and bright purple leggings, stood in the frame. Her hair was brilliant red, bundled into a mess around her head. Her fingernails were painted black, her eyes were bright green, and as she recognised Helen with a little gasp of in-taken breath, a child scurried out from the room behind her, saw the older woman in the door and exclaimed, “Aunty!” running forward to wrap her arms around Helen’s mud-soaked legs.

  A hurried conversation in the front hall.

  “They said kidnapped they said—”

  “Not kidnapped. My son has done something—I need your help I need to …”

  “Are you sure because you look and who the hell even is—”

  “His name is Theo, Kirsty please listen to me listen to me look at me do I look insane to you do I look …”

  “No, but they said, I mean I saw you and—”

  “They drugged me, my son—please the police are coming they are going to knock on the door please trust me you always trusted me your mother trusted me you know that I—”

  “The police but this is—”

  “Kirsty. For … please.”

  “I … wait upstairs.”

  She led them upstairs.

  A ladder into a loft.

  The loft was full of ancient trunks. Memorabilia from a bygone age. A grandfather’s gramophone. Models of toy aeroplanes built by relatives whose
dexterous fingers were long since turned to bone. A scythe, rusted red. A bird’s nest, fallen to the floor from the rafters, the tiny white shells cracked, their babies long since flown. The ladder folded up behind them, and Theo sat with Helen on a trunk, and they waited.

  The old woman’s head drifted to one side, rested on Theo’s shoulder.

  A car pulling up below.

  Maybe two.

  Doors slamming, soft thunks in the dark.

  Doorbell, tingalingaling, cheery come-on-Christmas sounds, a merry welcome to the hearth.

  Door opening.

  Voices.

  Concerned.

  Have you

  No officer no I haven’t

  this man is

  I’ll keep an eye out for

  Lady Helen—it’s very

  I know, a close family friend. I’ll absolutely … is the search.. do they think she’s …?

  We don’t know ma’am but if you

  Of course, officer, of course, I’ll give you a call if I see anything

  be safe

  you too, you too.

  Door closed.

  Car doors opened, closed.

  Engines.

  The cars drove away.

  They waited.

  After a while

  A broom handle knocked against the trapdoor to the loft.

  “Okay. You can come down now.”

  They took turns to use the bathroom.

  Theo went first.

  In the living room beneath Helen and Kirsty talked, and he wondered what they were saying.

  The shower curtain was translucent, painted with whales blowing water from their spouts, a bright red ring of crabs scuttling along the bottom, eyes boggling, claws snapping at dancing fish.

  When he emerged, swathed in towel, Kirsty stood at the door with her gaze averted, a bundle of clothes in her arms. “These were my husband’s. They might fit. You can change in there.”

  She nodded once and said nothing when he thanked her.

  Helen had a bath.

  Theo and Kirsty sat in silence in front of a black iron stove, the TV on low in the corner of the room, the child enthralled at the rare treat of a late-night movie, her mummy should have guests more often if she got to stay up late like this.

  Theo stared at his hands. Kirsty stared at his face.

  From upstairs, the sound of water.

  In the corner, the TV.

  They waited.

  Finally, Kirsty stood up, shot a look towards her child, another to Theo, then left the room.

  Returned a few moments later with a plate of bread, cheese, ham. Put it down on the coffee table between them.

  Theo ate slowly, stomach turning.

  “Mummy can I watch another can I watch another please Mummy please I want to watch another I want to …”

  “One more and then it’s bed—it’s already a long way past your bedtime this is a special treat, do you understand? And I want you to be good when it’s done, I want you to be very very good tonight it’s …”

  Mother and child sat together in a corner and chose a cartoon. Theo watched. In the end, they chose the story of Bobby-X, an ordinary high-school kid who is secretly a ninja spy working for the Company to help stop the evil anarchists before they can destroy innocent children’s lives. He supposed it was quite good, in its way.

  Upstairs, a plug was pulled.

  Water drained away.

  Theo and Kirsty waited in silence.

  Helen came downstairs.

  She was wearing clean pyjamas and socks. A towel was wrapped expertly around her head.

  She took in the room, the cartoon, and at a cry “Aunty!” shuffled over to the child to hold her tight and exclaim how wonderful it was to see her and how she hoped she’d been good at school, good with her mum.

  The child scowled, but yes, she’d been good just like everyone wanted her to be …

  “Bed!” barked Kirsty.

  “But Mum …”

  “You’re not going to behave badly in front of Aunt Helen, are you?”

  “No, Mum.”

  “Bed!”

  Mother and daughter hurried away.

  Helen sat in the seat that Kirsty had vacated, and examined the half-consumed plate of ham and cheese in front of her. After a while, she reached out, made herself something resembling a sandwich, put it on a napkin and took a careful bite from the corner. The bread was thick and tough, took a long time chewing. She worked, swallowed, laid the napkin back on the table, folded her hands and looked at Theo.

  “So,” she said. “We should talk.”

  Chapter 56

  “Family is everything,” Helen said.

  “Family is everything,” whispered Dani Cumali to the winds that shred the ghosts.

  “Family is everything,” muttered the father of the man who would be Theo as they severed his hand at the wrist.

  “Family never did very much for me,” muses Theo Miller, the real Theo Miller, the one whose grave has no name.

  They sit by the fire as Kirsty puts her daughter to bed, and Helen declares again, sacred words to steady her soul: “Family is everything.”

  Her voice, tired, ragged around the edges. Theo wondered how much the words were costing, how much she remembered of the days before the forest, hot baths and this house, or whether she could still remember the smell of urine and puke on the bedroom floor.

  After a while she leaned back in her chair, arranging words slowly around ideas, piecing them together as a child might tentatively try some new mathematical formula, or an artist compose with unusual paints. They came slowly at first, then a little faster.

  “My son has been poisoning me. He has been … no, that’s not the place to start. I have this condition. My kidneys. Really, I feel absurd when I say it, you always think it’ll be something like the heart that gets you rather than bloody urine. It’s manageable. Not treatable. Just manageable. But after Philip found out—after he started … treating … me, it was …

  My friends would visit, people I’ve known since I was … and they’d talk to me in that stupid little voice, that stupid ‘Oh Helen isn’t it lovely yes it’s so lovely you’re so lovely well we’re going now.’ Even though I wasn’t there, even with the drugs, I still knew. They put it in my drink, at first. Sedatives, mostly. Some other things. My son didn’t come to see me. He had people for that.”

  A pause, scratching at the skin on the inside of her right arm. It flaked in little white mounds of damp flesh, forming ridges under her nails. If she noticed, she didn’t seem to care.

  “Family is everything. I was born into wealth. We were what you would call the landed gentry. My father was a sir, my mother was a ma’am, and we lived in desperate poverty. It was desperate poverty because we had a manor house in Devon, and the upkeep of the place was eighty thousand a year. My father farmed the land nearby; to not farm the land was to let it spoil, and to let it spoil was to destroy the essence of what the land was. What it means to have land. What it meant to our ancestors. My mother worked as a manager at a call centre handling telecoms complaints. Between them they brought in around sixty thousand, which was spent on stopping the roof falling down—and the roof was always falling down—repairing the tractor, paying labour, providing electricity, water and heat for a family home containing seven bedrooms, five receptions, three kitchens, eight bathrooms and a billiards room, though no one enjoyed billiards except me. They took out loans, mortgages, and every few months let visitors come in for a fee, in order to raise a little more cash. But they were very badly organised; they never promoted it properly and never managed to turn the house into a business. Sometimes people turned up to the official open days. Usually people would just drift in at random, assuming that you were living in a public museum. My brothers hated it, and once George even threatened a man with a shotgun, and was arrested and had to be got out by his godfather, who was the magistrate. We couldn’t have afforded the indemnity. If my father had been willing to
let someone else do the farming, if he’d not resented the idea of any other kind of work, then perhaps we could have saved something. But quitting wasn’t what men like him were meant to do.

  By the time I was sixteen, my older brother was off at university, where he got a 2.2 in economics, and my younger was thinking of joining the army. I knew that we were in trouble, so I’d set up little events—fêtes and open days and trips for the local scouting group—to try and raise some cash. I’d get a few hundred quid too, but it never meant anything. Not in the grand scheme of things.

  I tell you this because it’s very important that you understand—we never considered selling the house. Never. And we never went to the pound shop either. Frugality never occurred to us as an option. We still wore the best clothes, attended the best events, ate the finest food. We had no conception of alternatives.

  Attempting to run the estate in a more businesslike manner, hosting weddings, conferences, that sort of thing—it wasn’t what you did. The house, the lands, the title. This was why we were born, our purpose, and we would see it all destroyed rather than dream of leaving our home. We felt, I have to tell you, very sorry for ourselves. Surrounded by silverware and the weapons of our grandparents pillaged in colonial wars, my family and myself would very calmly and simply state that we knew precisely how the people on council estates felt, except that they were lucky because they could get emergency corporate sponsorship, and we weren’t eligible.

  When I was twenty-three, my father died, and the estate passed to my brother. He moved back immediately—it was his duty—and continued to run it into the ground. It wasn’t ever said that I needed to go, but it was obvious. He was the master now and naturally Mother could remain, but siblings were … well it smacked of something medieval, shall we say. Successors at the dinner table, with opinions …

  I moved out, got a job selling perfume at the local superstore pharmacy. I wasn’t very well educated. It had never seemed like something that a girl needed to be. But my name still got me into the right places. When people asked what I did, I said I was a perfumer. Perfumer is an acceptable business for a daughter, as are vintner, equestrian and extreme sports. I met Jeffrey, my husband, at one of these parties, and lied to him about where I really worked until the day after we were married, and he laughed and forgave me instantly and we were very much in love.