I must have been at the window for ages because I froze to stone standing there – the kind of mortuary-chill you never quite forget. The freeze first gripped my ankles, rising swiftly in a series of ice-cold clamps that quickly riveted me to the spot. My breath plumed on the air like dragon steam as the iciness incrementally tightened around my chest in a vice until I couldn’t breathe. I really couldn’t. The breath just wouldn’t come. My lungs were set hard and I was going to die. It seemed to have happened so quickly, too. One minute the realisation of what was happening, the next I could neither breathe in nor out. I stood there swaying and holding onto the curtain, still trying not to make a sound lest I wake anyone up.
Finally, just at the point where my mind turned black and terror clutched at my heart, I started to breathe again. And that’s when I became aware of something other than the mumbling from next door and my brothers’ snoring. Looking back I realise now that it always started that way – a kind of otherworldly feeling, a sensation of being about to pass out and not being able to breathe properly. But yes, here it was again – an acute and growing awareness of whispering… as if there were people in the same room… and they were right behind me.
I let the curtain fall back and swung around.
Starlight flickered in the mirror on the front of the wardrobe – nothing more than a glint in the pre-dawn gloom - the tiniest of movements. And in that fraction of a second my young mind fancied it saw a woman’s face – glacial and gaunt with feverish eyes, willing me to notice her… No, not one but more…several women now emerging from behind her and gaining in definition, moving towards me in quick succession. And the strongest feeling I had to acknowledge their presence. Say yes, Louise… Louise…
There was an almighty thump in the centre of my chest. I stared in horror. I couldn’t stop myself from staring. I just couldn’t look away. And then the one I had first seen suddenly lunged closer as if rushing out of the mirror and I clamped a hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. I fell to the floor, shuffled backwards against the bed and put my hands over my ears, my eyes. No, no, no… not the ghosts again…
If I screamed everyone would shout and my mother would demand to know what I was doing out of bed, so I lay there, still, quiet, trying to shut it all out. Soon it would pass. They were just ghosts. They would go. You see, this was not the first time. It was one of the worst but not the first.
The first time it happened I’d woken up in the early hours to see an unnaturally pale woman in an old-fashioned, long dress sitting on the bedspread. Everything about her was old-fashioned, her skin so pallid as to be that of one deathly ill. Only her eyes burned with a ferocious malevolence that defied even death. And the second I looked into them I knew she’d come for me and me alone. The air was smoky and there was a smell of bitterness, rotting flowers, decay and dirt. Fear shot right through me and I sat straight up and screamed from the depths of my lungs.
What happened next was a good telling-off and slapped legs. My mother did this thing of holding your ankles and your wrists with one hand and smacking the backs of your thighs with the other. Didn’t I know she had to be up at five? ‘Three in the bloody morning, Louise…’
So this time I sat with my hands over my face and whimpered for goodness knows how long. This was just a dream, I told myself, like the soldier dream. It was not real. How could it be real? I had dreamt the battleground and in exactly the same way I’d imagined the faces in the mirror too. Just a dream… not real… not real… And Mum and Dad were just next door… not… real…
But the whispers came louder and louder that time, almost impossible to ignore. Louise… Louise… you are one of us… Look at us… The same words over and over again, becoming more and more insistent and they just wouldn’t go.
I tried to tell Mum about it once but she said it was in my imagination. Did I want people to think I was a lunatic? Did I want to be taken away and put into a special home for mad girls? I was bawling my eyes out by then, so she said in that case I’d better stop wittering on about hearing whispers and seeing ghosts or they’d pack me off to the funny farm. The thing was, though, that I heard them more often than ever now. It seemed to be escalating ever since the horrible night at Grandma Ellen’s house when Mum was poorly. My mother said I couldn’t stay the night there again ever, no matter if she was ‘dying of the bloody flu’. Did it start then? I don’t know. I only wished it would stop.
Eventually, after I really don’t know how long, I dared look up from between my fingers. I had a feeling the ghosts had finally gone: the atmosphere had changed – was somehow clearer – and the whispering had stopped. Arthur moaned in his sleep, a huddled shape muttering under the blankets; and when I glanced into the mirror the only reflection was my own murky silhouette. The whole episode had probably taken less than a few minutes but it seemed like hours.
It was then I realised mum and dad were not just talking but arguing; snapping at each other in hisses. Occasionally one voice would rise and the other would say, “Shush!”
Slowly, taking care not to make the floorboards creak, I crawled over to the wall connecting the two rooms, shivering, teeth chattering, but propelled by curiosity. My mother often went on at my dad but it was normally when they first went up to bed, and soon after that his snoring started. My mother was one of those hyper-energetic women and the undisputed queen bee around here – always first to know things and the first to decide what to do about it. She didn’t look or act like Auntie Rosa and Auntie Marion. My mother was the youngest of the three and didn’t resemble either her sisters or Grandma Ellen, who were all tall and fair. Instead she had the same blackcurrant eyes my great grandma Annie had – glittering beads that darted and sparked behind horn-rimmed specs. If I had to describe my mother in one word I’d choose ‘forthright.’ Dad said you could slice a knife between Annie’s daughter, Agnes, on the one side of the family, and her other daughter, Ellen, on the other. The only physical characteristic that bound all of the women in my family together (apart from Snow who was different to everyone) was a distinctive streak of copper in our hair. Even Grace, Agnes’ daughter – amid that cascade of glossy dark curls there were filaments of copper; although where ours were at the front or to the side in a badger stripe, hers, I noticed, was virtually undetectable.
I should perhaps mention that my mother was an exceptionally busy woman too. During the week she worked up at the velvet factory and at weekends she helped Dad in the funeral parlour, and still she had time for a succession of visitors. We always had visitors. They were here before breakfast. She’d be frying bacon, talking ten to the dozen while they sat at the kitchen table smoking and knocking fag ash into a saucer. She talked over the top of her washing as she put it through the mangle, non-stop while she shopped in the Co-op, and was constantly at the back door of the kitchen nattering to some old biddy or other, arms folded; yacking, Dad said, to ‘the coven.’
The key word that indicated something important was coming, I quickly realised, was ‘apparently.’ After the word, ‘apparently,’ the conversation would become subdued and more difficult to hear. But it would be by far the most important bit, you could bet your life on it. I think her true skill, however – and you had to be impressed – was to acquire far more information than she ever actually gave out; yet still leave her audience feeling privileged and part of her inner circle.
This time though, Dad’s voice could be heard too, which always meant it was even more salacious and I should definitely know what was going on – partly because although my mother was a dyed-in-the-wool gossip, she didn’t discuss family stuff with the other women. But she did with Dad and that was where the secrets were. Oh, the darkest, deepest secrets a family could keep. I had no idea, of course, despite instincts that were switched on like radar, just how truly dark and hideous our family secrets were; let alone what they would lead to. How could I? But I did know there were secrets.
I can’t be sure of the time by then but guess it must have b
een around four in the morning because of the tinkling, quick-fire Grandmother clock in the hall downstairs … ching-ching-ching-ching. Far too fast to be sure you heard the hour correctly. But I think it was four. Arthur sighed heavily again and turned over into my space in the bed, the mattress sagging visibly. Swallowing down my irritation I pressed my ear to the wall.
“Apparently–”
My father mumbled something.
“Well, we ought to check on ’er.”
“I’m not bloody going now, Viv! Have you seen it?”
“I’m worried…first light, then.”
“Aye, get some sleep, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well…not like mother… and in weather like this… out of her wits. And now the lines are down—”
“Viv! I get it.”
“Shush! Keep your voice down.”
“Well, be sensible…can’t do anything right this minute…be holed up somewhere—”
“…five hours?”
“…home by now…go in the morning.”
“What if…?”
The voices became too muffled, as if they were continuing the conversation from the bottom of a well and my eyelids were getting heavy.
But after a few more hissed exchanges I heard Mum say, “And Agnes—”
Dad said something rude like, ‘bugger’. He didn’t like either Annie or Agnes, and my ears strained as hard as they could now ‘the witches’, as Dad called them, had been mentioned. Great Grandma Annie lived miles out on the edge of the moor, in a tiny cottage without running water or heating. She had one main room for cooking in, with a big fire and a range. In the corner she had a table set with an oil cloth and always left the salt and pepper out, alongside bottles of pickles. I don’t know what she pickled but there’d be dozens of bottles of them in the larder too. I used to like visiting her because she had cats and kittens that were allowed to run wherever they wanted, and she always gave us a sixpence each out of the top drawer of an old dresser; but my dad wouldn’t go anymore for some reason, and knowing what I know now, I shouldn’t have been within a mile of the place either. She’d smile at me, hold my chin up and say, ‘She looks like one of us’. Never bothered with either of my brothers, but me – she kept saying I had ‘the gift’.
Mum’s face… it could’ve stopped a clock when she said that, but Great Grandma Annie… she’d be smiling.
I pictured that old cottage with snow up to its roof and the occupants frozen dead inside, but I couldn’t hear what Dad said and had to admit defeat. And anyway, by then my bones felt like icicles and my teeth weren’t just chattering they were gnashing. Suddenly bed seemed like a good place to be. I rushed over and dived in, giving Arthur a good shove over before rolling into the warm dip he’d just vacated. Squeezing my fingers and clenching my toes over and over I knew I had to sleep but I just couldn’t. My mind was playing tricks. Images flashing… I had this awful feeling of impending doom, you see, and I’ll not forget it, especially after what happened. But at the time I didn’t know why. Maybe it was something in my mother’s voice, I don’t know. I was just convinced something terrible was going to happen and it was going to happen very soon. Turned out I was right, as well.
***
Chapter Seven
1908
Castle Draus, Ludsmoor
Annie Bailey, mother to Ellen and Agnes
Standing on top of the castle ruin walls with his arms flung wide, the man’s voice lifted into the fresh March breeze, “All need to be saved!”
“All need to be saved!”
Echoing his words, the crowd worshipped him with their eyes, faces freshly scrubbed and wind-whipped pink. Maids holding onto their hats lest they were blown across the moors, had raced from duties, jumping onto passing carts to get here on time. Miners and factory workers who had hurried from their cottages after Sunday lunch, now all stood as one, breathless and expectant. Every square yard of the field was crammed with people, elbow-to elbow, squinting into the sun, straining to hear the most important sermon of their lives.
Castle Draus stood high on the top of Kite Ridge, which overlooked Ludsmoor and from where, on a clear day it was said you could see four counties – even as far as the coast if you were lucky. Originally a medieval fortress, it was now a crumbling but still imposing silhouette against a blinding sky; a beacon for miles around.
“All may be saved!” cried their preacher.
“All may be saved!” the crowd roared back.
The preacher’s voice broke with emotion, “All may know themselves saved!”
“All may know themselves saved!”
Spring sunshine chased bundles of clouds over hotchpotch squares of land marked out with drystone walls, and a kestrel hovered overhead, riding the air currents – occasionally disappearing from view as it nose-dived for prey; the only sound apart from the speaker, that of a few bleating sheep from adjoining fields
A contagious feeling of anticipatory excitement now rippled through the crowd, mostly local workers standing in their Sunday best, a throng of avid listeners craning to see this man and intent on hearing every word, because this was for them and them alone. Aaron Danby was bringing the light of Methodism to the heart of their community – this lonely outback of a place where little had changed for working people like them in centuries. They still continued to labour six days a week up to their elbows in grime, and nothing much brought relief from that. Still worn down with poverty. Still second class.
Over a hundred and fifty year ago, John Wesley had stood in this exact same spot and preached the exact same words, but where once Ludsmoor had been little more than a string of wind-blasted sheep farms, it now housed hundreds of those who worked in its mines and mills: the working poor who felt excluded from the restraints of the Church of England, particularly a parochial church with separate pews for wealthy families.
The message here, though, was one of inclusion, morality and, above all, charity to the poor. And song played a huge part, with John’s brother, Charles Wesley having composed over six thousand hymns – something which appealed greatly to those who had toiled hard all week and could now open up their lungs and vigorously praise the Lord who would save them. All of them. Not just those who presided over them and dished out the rules. This church was for them, about them, and would be run by them. And they couldn’t get enough. The movement grew rapidly in the north of Staffordshire as it did in Wales and other parts of Great Britain, uniting working people in song and belief. No longer dry doctrine, this was exhilarating stuff and their hearts soared.
“All may be saved to the uttermost!”
“All may be saved to the uttermost!”
‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise,’ now resounded across the bleak landscape in full glorious voice, a valiant and powerful chorus. Poor they may be but their faith, renewed and invigorated, was fast becoming invincible. And with Aaron Danby’s help they would soon have a chapel of their own too. Certainly it was needed…by God was it needed…
Aaron was thirty-five, the only son of Edward and Clara Danby of Danby Grange – landed gentry who owned thousands of acres, including forests, rivers, moorland, farms and cottages. The family tree could be traced back to medieval times and the knights who fought in the Christian Crusades – their ancient tombs in Danby Church testament to this. However, fact had mixed with fiction somewhere along the line and become blurred. The story went that these same knights had returned with slaves – dark skinned folk who settled on the moors and would later farm their own patches of land. It was also said these people were heathens and had brought with them strange Eastern customs, notably black witchcraft; but there was little to back this up apart from certain members of the farming community possessing swarthier complexions and notably coarser features than others.
The family also owned several shirt mills, together with rows of terraced houses in Leek, Ludsmoor and Danby. And although Aaron had an older sister, she had died in childbirth many years previously, which left h
im, with the exception of his young nephew, Thomas, main heir to a vast estate including Blackwater Colliery, potteries in nearby Stoke-on-Trent, and all three of the velvet or ‘fustian’ mills as they were colloquially known, on the slopes overlooking the village. The family’s enterprises had rapidly transformed the bleak landscape. Row after row of back-to-back stone terraces now lined the main streets of the village in order to house the ever increasing population, which arrived to work in these thriving industries. And directly opposite the mills on Tower Hill leading up to the mines, the Danbys had constructed several dozen more grim-faced but sturdy Victorian terraces complete with backyards and outhouses.
Mostly the mines were for coal, but the quarries, which had been passed down through successive generations of Danbys, were for gritstone, a substance later milled into a fine, white powder before being transported to the potteries and added to the clay. As a result, the whole area was constantly coated in grime - from coal dust, horses and carts churning up the lanes, and muddy fields swilling with rainwater running off the moors. Consequently Tower Hill Road became a dirt track with carts racing down it full of miners desperate for a pint at The Quarryman on the corner, which was precisely where and how those hard won wages clinked back into the Danby purse. The Danbys, naturally enough, also owning the public house.
After drinking their wages dry, many of the miners slept where they slumped until the next shift started at first light. Meanwhile, their children ran around without shoes; and wives shouted at their husbands from the pub doorway, but it made no odds. The men still drank. And thus their poverty rolled into another week. Women scrubbed floors and pounded sheets with a mangle, hung out the washing in winds that blew it horizontal, and all before labouring in the mills for the day – often shoving the children underneath the long tables used for cutting cloth, hissing at them to keep quiet down there in the dark. And to keep back from the knives as they swished up and down, up and down, dozens and dozens of times a day, in the barely lit rooms flickering with candlelight and cloyed with dust.
The Soprano Page 5