‘To him? To your father, not as much as I might have. Dave, you met my husband, told him you were just imaginative because you’re an only child and, it’s true, isn’t it, rather a loner.’
‘Most of my friends live in Sheffield. I don’t like the people round here from my school.’
‘You must be looking forward to being old enough to drive. Anyway, about—you don’t mind talking about it, since you talked about it, do you? Your father said you were very young.’
‘He thinks I still am.’
‘You should hear my mother sometimes. But you were half your age, weren’t you? What made you bring it up now?’
‘I’d forgotten about it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Even he remembers the day it did.’
‘If you forgot something that bad it means it was traumatic. Do you—well, never mind.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘I was only wondering if you’re sure you remembered everything.’
‘I think so. I must have,’ Amy said, growing less convinced in proportion with how certain she declared herself to be. ‘Why are you so interested? You know there’s something, don’t you? Have you seen it too?’
‘No, no. Nothing. I’m sure there’s nothing solid here, let’s say nothing you could photograph. Maybe some places can make you see what happened in them or feel how they felt when it did. Only people should be able to make that go away by living in a place and being happy there, don’t you think?’
‘Depends what it was that happened.’ Precisely because Donna was appealing to her for reassurance, Amy was unable to provide it. ‘What have you felt?’
‘When we were measuring—I’ve been trying to think how it seemed. Older than it looked, but older than it would have been before they got it up like this, I’d say as well. And maybe…’
‘Maybe’s almost as important.’
‘Maybe I’ve felt sometimes as if something that old is, I don’t know if living here is the right phrase.’
‘Where?’
‘Down below, all the way down. You don’t sense anything up here, do you?’
‘Not yet,’ said Amy, then wished she hadn’t. Donna’s impressions had clearly required some effort to communicate, yet she wondered if they were the whole truth. They were enough for now, since they were a good deal less comforting than Amy would have liked, and so she said quickly ‘Did you find out what this place used to be?’
‘I haven’t asked.’
‘Wouldn’t you have expected them to say when they hired you? I don’t think they want to say, or maybe they really don’t know. Don’t care either. I’m trying to find out all about it,’ Amy said, only to realise how much more systematic than it was she’d made her research sound.
‘More power to you, Amy. I want you to know—’
She pressed her lips together, this time with hardly any of a smile, and stared towards the hall. Amy too had heard the outer door—the sound of its closing. In a moment her father called ‘Hallo?’
‘Hello, Mr Priestley. It’s Donna Goudge.’
‘I gathered as much.’ With very little noise he was almost at once in the doorway of the room, where he opened his fist to let his keys jangle into a pocket. ‘Do please continue. You were telling my daughter what you wanted her to know.’
Donna opened her mouth and thought better of speaking, then apparently decided that not to do so might look worse. ‘Just that it isn’t everyone who thinks she’s been fibbing. At least one of us is of the opinion she may be onto something.’
‘I doubt our next-door neighbours would care to hear you say so. I’ve this moment come from speaking to them, and now I’d like a word with my daughter, if you’ll excuse us.’
‘Oh dear. I hope it isn’t anything too—’
‘Good day to you, Mrs Goudge.’
As soon as Amy heard the outer door close she said ‘Do you know how rude you are?’
‘It isn’t rudeness to a woman of her sort.’
‘You heard she believes me, and I’ll tell you someone else I bet does—Beth.’
‘It would tally with the rest of her old wives’ nonsense. What a pair of supporters you have, a charlatan and a trollop. God be thanked you’ve better people who care about you.’
‘Like who?’
‘Mr Stoddard for one. He informs me you’re trying to dig up even more unholy nonsense about our home. I warn you now on behalf of all the good people here, finish. Stop at once.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘I’ll stop you.’ As he spoke his hands gripped the doorframe, which creaked, and his shoulders broadened to block more of it. Then a look of slow realisation settled on his face, an expression so heavy she could have imagined it was its weight that was nodding his head. ‘I know how,’ he said almost to himself. ‘I’ll show you what there is to fear.’
13 - Face to some face
The bus to Sheffield was smaller than last year’s, and it was almost ten minutes late. When Amy had arrived in good time at the brick bus shelter by the Scales & Bible it was full of Bettina and Deborah and Zoe pronounced Zoh, or at least they behaved as if it was. They had made grudging room for her, though not on the cigarette-scarred bench under their names scratched on the wall, and once they’d each said ‘Hi’ to see whether she would respond three times they had set about pretending to ignore her. Whenever any of them glanced at her they all giggled behind their hands, and so she knew they were saving extra for the journey. She might have stood outside the shelter except for the rain that was weaving its way through the town. While she gazed at the dance of water in the air she was able to persuade herself that her three schoolmates had ceased to exist, until the sound of the bus chugging up through Partington roused her from her trance.
The vehicle was less capacious than her bedroom. It smelled of upholstery faded by last year’s sun and of a recent presence which Amy identified after some reflection as wet dogs. By then she was seated immediately behind the driver, whose neck put her in mind of a joint of pork encircled by several grooves incised by string, and the three had spread themselves across the back seat. As the bus laboured onto the moor and the sky lowered a smoky chunk of itself to meet the headlights, she was tempted to hope the other passengers had forgotten about her. Then her left ear grew hot with a breath which at once turned into a shriek of ‘Boo!’
She couldn’t help jumping. She stiffened herself at once and clamped her hands between her knees, but her reaction was good for a few shrieks of laughter from the girls at the back of the bus as Bettina returned to it. At least Amy had resisted looking back. She readied herself for the next onslaught of wit, signalled by silence from behind. ‘Boo!’ screamed Deborah, almost precisely when Amy expected her to, but in her right ear.
Amy wasn’t about to let it affect her this time, any more than whatever her father was planning would. ‘That’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘That’s really imaginative. Did you think it up all by yourself?’ She was preparing to continue along these lines until Deborah either retreated or was goaded into a response as stupid as her joke when the driver turned one cratered ruddy cheek but not his eyes towards them. ‘If you’re going to play, sit at the back where I won’t be irked.’
‘I’m not playing,’ Amy protested, and heard how she sounded: not just as petulant as her choice of words but years younger than she ought to feel. She twisted round so violently that Deborah shied into the aisle. ‘Come on, Zoee,’ Amy called. ‘Your turn. Get it over with. Say boo and then the three of you can fuck off.’
‘Eh. Eh. Eh,’ the driver said, the high-pitched syllables as terse as the pauses between them. ‘I won’t have language on my bus. Any more and you’ll be put off.’
‘You can’t put her off out here in this,’ Bettina objected.
Even if this wasn’t slyly designed to cause the event it purported to be forestalling, Amy didn’t want her tormentors to side with her. ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I don’t give a, what you are.’
/> Since she’d faced front, perhaps the driver thought she meant him. ‘Just you remember I know which school you go to. I know your headmistress.’
‘We know about you and all,’ Zoe told him. ‘We’ve seen you looking at us in your mirror when we sit down.’
At that moment the blurred speeding lights of the motorway swam into view ahead, and the driver braked. He was going to turn everyone off the bus, Amy thought. While she might resign herself to being left alone out here, might even perversely welcome it, being stranded with three of her least favourite people was another matter. But the driver had decided against this, unless he’d braked as a final warning. He set the windscreen wipers sweeping faster as the bus rushed along a mile of open road.
When the vehicle found itself space on the motorway it proved to be capable of as much speed as most of its competitors, even if it shook as though its nerves weren’t up to the situation. Amy’s weren’t, not once she found herself thinking of her mother. It had been fog which had taken her, and the spray from all the traffic very much resembled fog. A watery taste kept trying to gather at the back of her mouth, and she knew that if any of the girls tried to torment her again she would say worse than she had. They confined themselves to bursts of giggling, however, renewed when necessary by muttered comments. They didn’t stir from the rear seat until the bus was out of the drowned race and in sight, or as much of it as the fleetingly clear windscreen admitted, of the school on the outskirts of Sheffield.
Amy let them dash between the puddles in the schoolyard and into the elongated building, which was at least twice as dark a brown as usual, before she allowed herself to run. At least none of them was in her class. She shed her cap and hung it over her coat in her tin locker just in time to join her classmates as they were herded to the assembly hall.
That delayed her having to answer the questions and respond to the comments she could see had been stored up for her. Nevertheless she felt conspicuous, especially once the headmistress had given her cropped head a sharp look while delivering her customary New Year speech with all the enthusiasm it exhorted from the school. Some of the teachers went further than looking. ‘I see we’ve a novice among us,’ the maths master remarked at the beginning of his class, and the English mistress said ‘Dear, dear’ before ‘Dear’, perhaps a lofty endearment, as a preamble to informing Amy ‘You make my head feel cold.’ All this was only a prelude to being surrounded when the bell at the end of the morning let everyone loose.
As it turned out, Amy wasn’t surrounded for long. Her friends lost a good deal of interest in her encounter at Nazarill once they learned how dated it was. Neither the uproarious dining-hall nor the classroom to which the rain confined them afterwards seemed the place to discuss her subsequent impressions, even with those of her friends whom she would expect to be sympathetic, and so the conversation drifted onto the subject of horror videos which had left people unable to sleep, and the parties the films had been viewed at, and the boys who had been at the parties.
The final lesson was Religion. Last term’s supply teacher had applied herself to raising ethical questions, but now Mrs Kelly was back, two sizes thinner and the more intense for it. As she marched with a limp into the classroom her eyes, which shared more than one quality with slate, sought Amy out and shot her a rebuke. Long before the end of the period crammed with sharp questions about Biblical punishments Amy was wishing the lesson could be like every one she’d seen in films, lessons that lasted two minutes at the outside before being terminated by a bell. At least she proved to know more of the Bible than she’d realised, which might have been the reason why she became the target for more than her fair share of questions. After longer than she would have believed it possible for a lesson to drag on, the bell was unable to restrain itself. She thought she was succeeding in concealing her relief as she headed for the door when Mrs Kelly said ‘Who’ll carry my bag to the staffroom for me. Amy Priestley?’
Despite their tone, the last two words had ceased to be a question. Amy picked up the battered leather briefcase stuffed with books and moved towards the corridor again. ‘No fire, is there, that I know of?’ Mrs Kelly said. ‘That’s not the bell we heard.’
‘I have to go to the library in town.’
‘That’s good to hear at any rate. I’ll be driving that direction, so.’
If anything her last word made it even less clear whether she only now would. Apparently the delay on which she’d insisted was to enable her to watch everyone other than Amy out of the classroom. ‘Tell me now, Amy Priestley,’ she then said. ‘Do you enjoy my lessons? Shame the devil.’
‘Sometimes. A bit.’
‘That’s what I asked for, so,’ Mrs Kelly said, looking as though she was bracing her face against an unexpectedly chill wind. ‘You can be honest when you want to be. A girl like you who reads her Bible, I’d think she would be proud of what she could achieve.’
By now Amy had little sense of being alluded to, and less of how to respond. ‘Mm,’ she said, and having heard the inadequacy of that: ‘Mm hm.’
‘You can’t just read the book and put it away from you. You’re the intelligent one. You know that, don’t you?’
Amy had to guess what she was being asked; even by the standards of most of the teachers she knew, Mrs Kelly appeared to feel entitled to use language as loosely as possible. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Too intelligent to—Yes?’
The last word was aimed with no little force at a third-year who would otherwise have tapped on the open door. ‘Excuse me,’ the girl said, and hid her inky hands behind her back. ‘Excuse me,’ she repeated, apparently for having paused. ‘Excuse me, is she Amy Priestley?’
‘Oh.’ The syllable summed up so much disapproval that for a moment the teacher seemed prepared to restrict herself to it. ‘Has her reputation travelled all the way down to you young ones?’
‘I don’t, I don’t think so, Mrs Kelly. Has it?’ The girl was confused enough to ask Amy the question, not that Amy felt able to help. ‘Are you her?’ the girl then said.
‘She is she. Perhaps now you could have the grace to address yourself to me and explain—’
‘Miss Sadler wanted me to find her and send her to the office.’
‘Well, now you have, and you may tell the headmistress we are on our way. What class are you in, and your name?’
‘Gillian Fairbrother in 3A, miss, Mrs Kelly.’
‘I shall look forward to taking you next year.’
Perhaps the girl had been hoping for praise. The implied threat sent her away trying not to look dismayed. Mrs Kelly gave a sharp nod to indicate that Amy should follow the girl’s example, which she did to the extent of stepping into the corridor, briefcase in hand and her own bag strapped over her other shoulder. ‘So what do I hear?’ Mrs Kelly said.
Though Amy had worked that out, she saw no reason to admit it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, which was a pronoun more than she would have offered her father. ‘What?’
Mrs Kelly waited until Amy had held open the fire doors to the staff corridor and the doors had closed with a slow attempt at a thud. ‘You know you did wrong.’
‘No, I don’t. I didn’t.’
‘We’ve talked about false witness in my class, and worshipping false gods. A girl like you knows what those mean.’
Amy couldn’t tell whether that was an accusation or a claim made on her behalf. ‘I don’t know what they have to do with me.’
Mrs Kelly either limped hard or stamped her foot, halting a few yards away from the open door of Miss Sadler’s office. ‘Worshipping false gods, I remember you were there the day we spoke about that because you tried to make out capital was one. What were you, busy with your own thoughts when I counselled you all against spiritism? That’s one of the paths to the false gods, no better than witchcraft. And bearing false witness is lying.’
‘I didn’t lie.’
‘The other’s even worse.’ Mrs Kelly jabbed a hand at her, but only to
seize the briefcase; then the fierceness of the gesture transferred itself to her voice. ‘You aren’t telling me you believe in the things you told that, that fellow on the radio.’
Amy felt she had already answered this, and so nothing was left except to look forthright. ‘Dear heaven, what a stare you have about you. You’re giving me a headache,’ Mrs Kelly complained, and glanced past her, towards Miss Sadler’s office. For a moment Amy felt triumphant, even though the distraction was presumably the headmistress. But when she turned she saw her father.
The surprise wasn’t pleasant, and gave her no time to choose her words. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.
Mrs Kelly uttered a sound between a grunt and a gasp, to which Amy’s father responded with a smile suggesting he was having to employ a habitual saintly patience. ‘I’ve come to run you home,’ he said to Amy. ‘We don’t want you catching a cold in the rain and having to miss school.’
‘I need to go to the library.’
‘Not today, young lady.’
‘Yes, today.’
Mrs Kelly produced her sound again, and this time she followed it up. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Priestley, you’ve a girl there that in my childhood we’d have called wilful.’
‘You’ll be which of her teachers?’
‘Religious.’
‘I’ll do my best to ensure you see an improvement next time. Amy, look at me.’
Amy did so, earning herself more of a grunt and less of a gasp from Mrs Kelly, who then stalked askance into the staffroom. ‘Now, Amy,’ her father said, ‘we both know you don’t want to visit the library for your schoolwork.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘Oh, now, Amy.’ This was the headmistress, emerging from her room and folding her arms as though to ensure her large breasts wouldn’t draw attention away from her small solemn face. ‘If I had a day off for every girl who thought that… We folk whose job it is to help you grow up do have the odd insight you might find useful if you slowed down long enough to listen. We’ve been you, after all.’
Amy liked her enough not to want to antagonise her, and so extended her a smile as far on the way to agreement as she could force it, to which Miss Sadler responded ‘Your father and I were just saying—’
The House On Nazareth Hill Page 21