The Soprano

by England, Sarah

  “Louise? Louise, sweetie!” A soft tap and then Auntie Marion came in.

  She was so different to my mother, hovering in the doorway to tell me dinner was ready instead of yelling up the stairs. I wondered why we were having dinner at night time but then that’s what they called it. They had luncheon at dinner time and dinner at tea time. And it wasn’t bread and pickles either, but soup followed by chops and potatoes.

  At the time, none of us wondered why these women, who seemed so pleased to have us stay the night, chose to live in such isolation, especially once the other house was built – the one that took away all their light. I just recall the simple pleasure of being in the large kitchen at the back of the house that evening, with the cast-iron range churning out heat while I played with little milk bottles, dressing them up as dolls with remnants of material. Grandma Ellen had endless boxes of ribbons and buttons– in every colour you could imagine – and as a skilled seamstress was the first to show me the rudiments of dressmaking. I learned how to tack and how to do cross stitch that night; and how to play gin rummy.

  It’s funny but I don’t remember either of my aunties being around much after dinner. But I do remember Snow. Of course! She’s seared on my memory and always will be. It must have occurred to me when tiredness began to weigh down my eyelids that we were about to spend the night in the same house as her.

  All evening she’d sat in a corner pretty much unnoticed, flicking a ball with a piece of string. Over and over and over. Rocking back and forth she had her back to us, murmuring and mumbling – this great lump of a woman dressed in short, zipped slippers and thick, tan stockings that collected in folds around her ankles. Although she wore the ubiquitous flowery pinafore over a dark green sweater and skirt, and her hair had been tied back, her appearance elicited a sickening lurch to the stomach. You see, from behind she looked like an old woman – a fat, old woman with long, knotty white hair – and that was what you expected to see when she turned round. Only she was not old at all. And when she sensed you looking, her head would suddenly tilt to one side and the humming cease. Then before you knew it she was charging across the room. I saw those hands balled into great fists more than once, and felt the thunder in the floorboards. But on previous visits I’d been shielded by my mother or my dad. I’d never been alone and exposed to her before.

  Snow was an albino and we mustn’t stare, Mum said; it simply meant the absence of colour in her hair and eyes. But it wasn’t that which gave you the fright. It was her expression. There was nothing serene about it. Either she was gazing at something a million miles away or directly into your soul. And when she did that you wished she hadn’t because it made your insides flip, like you’d been defiled in some way, as if she had burrowed into your mind and rubbed dirt into it – a slow, malicious grin cracking open her vacuous, pudding face. Mum said that once she’d thrown a grown man across the room with one hand. She said she should be in an asylum, apparently, but Marion said there was nothing wrong with her and so there it was.

  That night we were lucky, though. Snow flicked the ball, rocked back and forth, and mumbled to herself. She didn’t turn around once and we played cards until late.

  But after the candles had been lit and hot bricks put into the beds, I started to wonder if Snow would wander around the corridors at night, and if she would come into my room to hurt me. As the time drew nearer to go to bed and a pan of hot milk was on the range for cocoa, I stared hard at Grandma Ellen.

  “What is it, Louise?”

  Still I stared, not knowing how to phrase the question.

  “Louise, you’ve got something to say so what is it?”

  I banged my feet together, lips pressed tightly, looked down at the table.

  “Spit it out, Louise.”

  “Does Snow get out of her room at night?”

  There it was done.

  Three pairs of eyes looked at Grandma Ellen for an answer. At least Arthur and Iddy had each other. I’d be on my own.

  A moment or two elapsed before Grandma Ellen nodded. Then after a quick glance over her shoulder she leaned forwards and whispered, “Snow has something to help her sleep through the night, don’t worry.”

  I often think about that. I think about how those three women coped with Snow and how they managed to get those tranquilisers for her; but I’m guessing they had little choice. All I knew, at the age of six, was that I felt the uncomfortable prickle of fear that night for the first time in my life; fear of the dark, of the unknown, of a creaking old house, and of a mad woman who could crack my neck like a nut if I so much as looked at her the wrong way.

  The house had a generator. One of the first in the area to have electricity at all – many of the farms and cottages still had only one main lightbulb – and even more unusually it had a telephone. Located in the hallway, the sisters had it installed because of Grandma Ellen’s ‘dottiness.’ I never found her dotty. Not one bit. That evening she led me by the hand up the stairs, read me a story and kissed my forehead. And within minutes of her closing the door I was fast asleep, all my worries vanishing with the flick of a light switch. For a few blessed hours anyway.

  Fear… Well, I didn’t feel real fear – out and out terror – until later that night, and after that it never stopped.

  You can control it.

  But what if your dream is not a dream even though people keep telling you it is? What if it’s real? Only no one will ever admit to you that it’s real? Well, then it becomes a nightmare. No, more than that… it becomes a night terror. And that, I believe, is what I experienced during all my years as a child from that night on.

  I woke, you see, to the sound of a baby crying. Now, there was no baby in that house. I knew that full well. I had no concept of the time, except it was tomb-black and cold enough to see my breath on the air. And a baby was wailing, it’s cry plaintive and miserable. For a long time I lay completely motionless, listening. It seemed to be coming from outside the bedroom window. My first thought was that there must be a baby in the garden, and it seemed to be getting more and more upset; impossible to ignore. After a while I threw back the covers and padded over to the window, parted the curtains and peered outside.

  An ethereal mist hovered over the lawn. The stone fountain seemed starkly white under what was a full moon, and by contrast the forest so much blacker than I remembered.

  Squinting into the murky dawn, I tried to work out where the baby’s crying was coming from but couldn’t see anything. It’s wailing was escalating, becoming increasingly desperate. The woods then? I stared hard in that direction, ears straining. Yes, the woods…

  And it was then, as my eyes focused on the dark perimeter, that I saw at first one, then more – one, two, three, four - tiny figures dwarfed by the towering trees behind; swathed entirely in black. Just standing there. Staring at the house.

  ***

  Chapter Fourteen

  Harry Whistler – Louise’s father

  Harry Whistler was pretty shaken up and he didn’t scare easily.

  Whistler’s Funeral Parlour was situated at the far end of Moody Street on the T-Junction with School Lane. The tan-painted shop front had a net curtain strung across the lower half of the window; and in the yard at the back stood the hearse, alongside a Victorian horse-drawn carriage. Inside his stall, Mack, the family’s grumpy black stallion, shuffled, puffed and pawed at the door; and sleet pebble-dashed the backroom window where Harry had been preparing to finish up for the day.

  December had been slow for business but people got old early here, and generally speaking once Christmas was over January picked them off - ground down by hard work in their forties and either wheezing with emphysema or crippled with arthritis by the time they reached fifty. Retirement was something to be celebrated simply because so few reached it; and those in their seventies or beyond were considered ‘as tough as old boots’. All of which made Annie Bailey, at ninety one, a walking miracle. Harry was sure she would be absolutely fine, snow storm or no sn
owstorm. Viv was worrying about nothing. Still, if she wanted him to go out there to the back of beyond and check on the old crone he’d better get a move on because another belt of snow was coming. The afternoon had darkened ominously and the wind was whipping up. He muttered under his breath.

  Still, one day he’d be looking down at her in one of these coffins.

  Viv usually took care of the embalming side of the business, blessed with a talent for making even the most haggard of cases look peaceful in their eternal rest. By God, she had some energy that woman – working full time, running the house, looking after the children and then coming here at nights and weekends to work in the embalming room. And to his knowledge she’d never had a sick day in her life, even taking the children to work with her during school holidays so she could continue to bring in the wages. That wasn’t something he wanted for them – stuck under those long trestles in the dark inhaling dust while knives slashed along the sides. But you didn’t argue when you had a nutcracker of a wife like Vivien, and besides she was right when she said they were scraping along the bottom and needed every last ha’penny. At least Arthur was old enough now to take on some funeral work – proper little undertaker he was going to make! Long limbed like his late grandfather, Aaron, he’d shouldered a few coffins already.

  What a bloody awful day and it wasn’t over yet.

  Still in his mid-thirties, Harry’s body had begun to stoop at the shoulders; his cheekbones angular ridges shadowing a somewhat lugubrious face. He suited being an undertaker, people said – looked the part as if born to it – which in many ways he was, following in the Whistler footsteps. The embalming though - no, that wasn’t his favourite bit. Especially not alone in the ethereal greyness of a snow-locked January afternoon.

  It had been Violet Bailey, recently deceased aged three score and ten, who had given him the heebie-jeebies.

  The poor woman had passed of pneumonia according to Dr Ferguson, the local GP, but had in reality been dying for several months of pancreatic cancer. The lack of an early diagnosis could not have made much difference to her, with the understanding and treatment of the condition so inadequately treated at the local hospital; although it surely hadn’t helped that Dr Ferguson had declared she should expect to feel tired at her age and her ailments were nothing a short holiday with her daughter in Scarborough couldn’t fix. As it was, by the time said daughter had arrived home for Christmas, poor Violet’s bones were as brittle as kindling sticks and her skin the colour of English mustard. A week later she was dead.

  Not a good time of year to die, Christmas Eve. By the time he’d arrived at the family terrace Violet’s body was already decomposing, and with the onerous task of removing her corpse from where it had lain since her demise, the thought occurred to him how dreadful it must have been for the family – particularly the grandchildren brought for the festivities. Violet’s body was laid-out on a couch in the parlour. The mirror over the mantelpiece had been covered by a black cloth (in case her departing spirit became trapped) and a candle flickered on a small side table. Presumably the rest of the family had continued to eat Christmas cake, sleep and entertain themselves in the other room while Mother’s body having first set with rigor mortis, then bloated with gasses and tissue fluids before settling into the flaccid, mottled flesh now steadily rotting into the upholstery.

  Liver failure had caused the additional unpleasantness of blood-laced faecal matter, which continued to seep out even after death. The room stank so badly he’d had to cover his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, feigning a cold, to stop himself from gagging in front of the relatives. He and Jack Gibbs had carried her out feet first through the front door, as was customary, trying not to breathe. The stench of corporeal decay had clung to the entire house, a fetid odour that oozed into every corner, permeating the furnishings and coating the walls. Only the bitterly cold temperature had prevented the situation from becoming so very much worse.

  Vivien though, well, Violet’s decaying body hadn’t fazed her one bit. In fact, Vivien had rolled up her sleeves and got straight on with the business of washing and disinfecting. She seemed to enjoy it. Said it gave her satisfaction to make someone look nice for their funeral, so people could look at them lying there all serene and peaceful before the Service. But as it turned out, even she had been sorely challenged with this one. The funeral was booked for Wednesday if they could get the hearse out. If not, they’d have to use the horse and carriage, something he’d kept on from his dad’s day and occasionally came in handy. Some folk actually preferred the slow dignity of the horse-drawn carriage and he didn’t blame them for that. It wasn’t a day to rush. Not your last day.

  Time however, was running out for Violet Bailey’s corpse.

  The problem was that not only had she been left far too long after death, but that disease had already wasted her body. The skin was so papery thin it broke with the slightest of touches, and tore a little more with every attempt to massage in the embalming fluid. When Vivien punctured Violet’s femoral artery to inject the formaldehyde mixture the needle had shot straight through and out the other side, leaving an open zip of ripped skin in its wake. Eventually though, she’d managed to inject enough to lift the colour of the skin to a waxy lemon. Still it hung from the bones, sagged into crevices and seeped fluids; and despite the copious use of disinfectant, soap and talc, and blocking orifices with cotton wool, the stink of putrefaction pervaded the entire building. The sickly stench of death. It got into their nostrils, coiled itself around their tongues and slid down their throats.

  After many hours of work, Vivien eventually conceded defeat and decided to use a plastic sheet. In all her years, she told Harry, she had never once had to resort to this and it displeased her greatly, but even she had little option: the relatives had to be presented with a person they recognised and she, Vivien Whistler, was not going to be gossiped about as having proved inept. All of which was why Violet’s entire lower body had been encased in plastic, her favourite dress pulled over her head and then her ankles clipped together. In haste, Vivien had popped cloth underneath the sunken eyelids, stuffed the toothless mouth with cotton wool and finally sewed the lips together. By then, however, the weather was deteriorating rapidly, there was Chapel next day, and she’d had enough. Marching home, she threw her coat across the back of the sofa and told Harry he’d have to finish the job.

  So there he was on a Monday evening, and after a full workload he’d still to fix Violet’s hair and make-up before the family visited tomorrow. In fairness and after a night’s sleep, Vivien did say she would have come back to do it if she hadn’t to trek down to Grytton this morning to check on her mother. And on top of that the children had been sent home early from school on account of the weather. But it wasn’t a big job and had been his last before finishing up.

  Violet Bailey’s remains, however, had still looked ghastly, especially under the oily glow of the lamp. The facial skin had markedly disintegrated in less than a day and now oozed fishy slime. The slightest pressure and his finger punctured it further. In vain he tried to recall how she used to look but could not for the life of him conjure up an image of where or when he’d last seen her alive. Thus, with the acrid stench constantly hitting the back of his throat, he tied a handkerchief around his face and got on with the task, praising the Lord she couldn’t see and be offended.

  Wind soughed under the window frame, and a feeling of being utterly alone crept up on him, as slowly and methodically he worked as delicately as possible. It had been a while since he’d done this, using wax, applying rouge to cheeks and lips, brushing hair, spraying perfume, packing the casket underneath so the body looked fuller. Oh, there were lots of tricks but still nothing that could transform this festering corpse into anything that resembled what had once been Violet Bailey.

  In the end he took off his gloves and threw them into the bin. No one could do more. And had been about to close the casket lid when the lamp snuffed out.

  That was odd.
>
  The electricity had been cut off since last night but this was paraffin. Puzzled, he walked over to the desk to fetch his torch and returned to the casket. But just as he was about to close the lid something feathery brushed against the back of his neck and he swung around, letting it drop with a slam into the frame.

  The room was now utterly dark.

  He shone the torch into every corner, sweeping the light over the coffins. Six in a row. All of them with the lids closed.

  A prickle of unease crawled up the nape of his neck and he backed out of the room, floundering for the door handle. Once he had hold of it he shot through and pulled the door shut, turning the key with a firm click. Shivers goosed up and down his arms. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. Nothing. It was as if a fear hitherto unknown had suddenly found him.

  Once outside in the street, Harry’s claustrophobic terror instantly dissipated. The icy coldness felt wonderful and he lifted his face to the falling snow, inhaling lungful after lungful of sobering fresh air. What in God’s name had happened back there? He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, trying to make sense of the incident, waiting for his heart to steady. Bloody hell, my hands are still shaking. But after a minute or so the arctic chill forced him to start walking and besides, he’d not had much sleep last night thanks to Vivien. Maybe it was just that he was tired then? Imagination playing tricks or something? Anyway, there were still the old witches to check on or Viv would play merry hell, so best get it over with. Frankly, though, a shot of whisky right now would be a hell of a lot more preferable. He shook his head. Bloody hell, though, bloody hell… Talk about shaken up… Perhaps a little detour to The Quarryman? God knows he needed it and she’d never know.