The Silk Factory

by Judith Allnatt

  Slowly, she straightened up and turned towards the overgrown part of the garden. As if in a dream, she walked towards the mulberry tree and stood at the edge of the nettle bed surrounding it, peering between its drooping, twisted branches, some bent to the ground creating a shady hiding place within, deep and cavernous to a tiny child. A sharp, musty smell caught her nostrils and she leant forward to look in under the branches where the undergrowth was spattered with mouldering fallen fruits, dark juice staining the broad bramble leaves and serrated nettle leaves beneath.

  In here, Rosie! Quick! Get under!

  Coming … ready or not …

  She backed away and subsided on to one of the patio chairs. With a sharp sense of loss, the memory of being gathered in under the tree suddenly became clearer in her mind, Maria’s arms around her and Lily, staying very still and not making a sound.

  She closed her eyes.What else? What else did they do together? She remembered sitting on a hard bench seat, being strapped into some kind of square truck with Maria between her and Lily. Maria had put her arms around them both then too, and Rosie had felt both happy and sick with excitement at the same time. Then the cart had sped along a track, up and down, mountains and dips, at the apex of each slope a glimpse of something sparkling; there had been a rattle and a clatter and the smell of sweat and patchouli … she felt uneasy. There was something here, something important. She remembered that her legs had felt wobbly when they got off the little rollercoaster. Had they been at a fairground? The wind had been blowing; she remembered her hair in her face and the noise of its buffeting. There had been fish and chips and, later, ice cream. She shook her head. Perhaps that had been on a different day.

  Where could they have been when they went on the rollercoaster? She thought again of the way the horizon seemed to glitter from the top of the peaks – the seaside. They had been at the seaside. But why did she feel dread grip her when she thought of the way the wind blew and blew?

  She squeezed her eyes tight shut in concentration … Collecting pebbles and long, blue razor shells. Damp sand gritty between her toes, a wet swimming costume that rolled into a tight band and stuck to her when she tried to get it off, her mother’s voice saying ‘skin a rabbit’; all of these could have been from any number of holidays, she thought; there was no memory of Lily beside her. Then, suddenly, the sound of the wind again, boisterous, blustery, windbreaks flapping somewhere down below her, something yellow in front of her, flicking round and round, flickering with the sun so bright behind it she could hardly see. Then a horrible sound, someone gripping her hand so tight it hurt – that sound – someone screaming …

  Rosie sat bolt upright in the chair, gasping for breath. Tick-tick-tick, the sound of the whirring yellow object was still in her ears, although the pictures had gone. She put her hand to her throat, feeling sick and exhausted, her pulse beating fast in her neck. The garden had grown dim and she had the strangest impression that the darkness was spreading out from her, a miasma of fear and sadness. She stared at the grass at her feet where dew had formed, unwilling to raise her eyes. She dared not look towards the mulberry tree where she sensed that the darkness concentrated and thickened as though in answer to her own black thoughts. She felt, rather than saw, a girl’s shadowy shape beneath the branches, a pale face peeping between them, its expression pleading, calling for her. Come and find me … come and find me . . .

  Keeping her eyes downcast, she stumbled across the uneven slabs of the patio and hurried indoors, shutting and locking the door behind her. As she turned on the kitchen light it seemed to her that the darkness leapt at the glass pane of the door, pressing up against it, a flat square of impenetrable blackness. She turned her back on it and made her way upstairs. Undressing in the dim glow from Cara’s nightlight, she let her clothes lie where they fell, and crawled into bed.

  Some hours later, she was woken not by a sound but by a sensation. Something light, like hair or feathers, had touched her cheek. She lay still on her back with her eyes closed. There it was again, this time on her forehead and then her lips. She passed her hand over her face and blearily opened her eyes. In the dim glow of the nightlight, between her and the ceiling was a haze of falling whiteness, which, as her eyes found their focus, resolved itself into its constituent parts: hundreds … thousands of tiny threads. The air was thick with them. Half dreaming, half waking, she watched for a moment, as one might watch snow through a window, coming down thick and silent, mesmerised by its steady, continuous falling.

  The room was cold and she shivered, rising to awareness through the muzziness of sleep. What was this … stuff? She felt it on her eyelashes as she blinked, dusting her bare arms and shoulders, slippery under her fingers on the surface of the duvet – strands of silk.

  At the foot of her bed, beside Cara’s cot, a figure was standing, looking down at the sleeping child. Through the thick air, Rosie saw her shape silhouetted against the blue-white light of the nightlight: a small figure wrapped in a shawl and with a long plait hanging down her back. A scream formed in Rosie’s throat but couldn’t issue from her mouth; her body felt heavy; she was pinned to the bed like a butterfly to a card. She saw the girl’s serious face, intent on her daughter; in frozen immobility she saw her white hands reaching over the rail as the child bent towards her …

  With a huge, trembling effort, as if pushing her way through quicksand, Rosie raised one hand, groped through the thickening mist of filaments for the bedside lamp and snapped on the light.

  Nothing. Yellow light flooded the room, returning the pastel colours of the floral duvet and curtains, the clumsy shape of the lobster-pot cot, the air as clear as glass. Rosie leapt out of bed and in two strides was lifting Cara, warm and heavy with sleep, and clutching her to her breast. Cara, rudely awakened, let out a long bewildered wail. ‘There now, there now; it’s all right.’ Cara began to cry in earnest. Rosie rocked her to and fro, comforting herself as much as Cara. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ she said.

  There was a thump from Sam’s room as his feet hit the board floor and then running footsteps. He appeared in the doorway in just his pyjama bottoms, his hair all tousled, and stood there blinking. ‘Cara woke me up,’ he said grumpily. ‘Why’s she crying?’

  ‘I … Silly Mummy woke her up,’ Rosie said. ‘I must’ve been having a nightmare.’ She looked around at the room: its ordinary debris of clothes and books, hairbrushes and cosmetics. No intruders. No floating silk or dusty film of threads. But it had seemed so real! The ticking noise and the flashing yellow brightness came to her again like a sickness. What was happening to her? She sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed and Cara’s subsiding sobs gained strength again. ‘Shh, shh,’ she said, rocking and rubbing Cara’s back. ‘Come on,’ she said to Sam, ‘Let’s get in all together.’ She didn’t want either of them out of her sight. Rosie got in and sat up in bed with Cara snuggled down beside her.

  Sam climbed in on the other side, burrowing down under the duvet. ‘Can we have the light off?’

  ‘Not just yet. Mummy’s going to read for a bit,’ Rosie said. She picked up her novel and made a show of finding her place.

  Once the children were asleep, she put the book down and simply sat, watching the room. The clock on the bedside table ticked away the minutes as if nothing whatsoever had happened; the children’s breathing grew regular and light; far away a train rattled through the night and then the ordinary, everyday quiet returned.

  Rosie woke with a start; someone was hammering on the door and leaning on the doorbell at the same time. The noise stopped, as if whoever was down there was listening to see if anyone was coming to open up. Bright light edged the curtains; she must have slept in. Cara was still asleep beside her but the duvet was pushed back on Sam’s side and the bed was empty. Her heart turned over as she remembered the night’s events but then subsided as she heard the familiar strains of loud cartoon music from the TV downstairs. Of course, it was all right; Sam had got himself up, that was all.
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  She struggled from the bed as the row downstairs started again. ‘OK, OK, I’m coming!’ she called out as she hurried down, barefoot and in her pyjamas. She opened the door a crack, thinking that it would be some deliveryman with the wrong address. Instead, Josh was standing on the doorstep. Behind him, his car was parked nose-to-tail with hers. Scowling, he slowly took his finger from the doorbell. ‘Are you up at last? Can I come in?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. Come in.’ Automatically, she stood back and opened the door to let Josh into the narrow hall. Still coming round from heavy sleep, her mind seemed fixed on her strange night-time experience, as if the floaty, cottony stuff were filling her skull, making normal connections impossible. She turned on her heel and squeezed past her mum’s bike to get to the kitchen. ‘What are you doing here? Do you want tea?’ she said.

  Josh followed her, making a meal out of getting past the bike. ‘You can’t be serious!’ he said. ‘You were supposed to meet me at the service station.’ He turned his wrist over to stare at his watch with exaggerated concentration. ‘Oh, two hours ago at least.’

  Rosie stopped, the box of tea bags in her hands. ‘Oh God! I forgot.’

  ‘You forgot?’ Josh raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I mean, I knew yesterday – I had it all planned, only I had the most awful night. I must have gone off really heavy when I finally did get to sleep.’ She rubbed her forehead as if smoothing lines away.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ Josh asked, his voice deepening.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Or taking sleeping pills?’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ Rosie said sharply.

  Josh folded his arms and surveyed her. ‘Because I sat there for ages wondering where you were, thinking you might have had an accident; that something might have happened to the kids.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I did,’ Josh said drily.

  Rosie’s eyes flew to her bag on the table beside them, where she knew her phone was – right at the bottom. ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not usually like this.’ She plonked the tea bags down and took some bread from the bread bin for toast.

  ‘Haven’t the kids even had breakfast?’ Josh said. ‘For God’s sake, Rosie, we’re supposed to be going to Monkey World. Remember, I told you – Sam wanted to do the junior zip wire through the trees? I booked for two o’clock. It cost the earth!’

  ‘Look, I said sorry. I was up in the night with a horrible nightmare – really weird …’ Josh was looking at her with a strange, wary expression. She pushed her hand through her tangled hair. ‘Things haven’t been easy, right?’ She felt her voice tremble a little and was furious with herself.

  Josh went to the living-room door and Rosie heard him telling Sam to turn the TV off right now and go and get dressed. ‘We’re going in ten minutes,’ he finished.

  She pushed the button of the toaster down; she would do toast and marmite and they could eat it in the car. She heard the thump of Sam’s feet as he stomped up the stairs and Josh returned.

  ‘He doesn’t want to do what he’s told, does he?’

  ‘He’s fine, just a bit unsettled by all the changes,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to the flat then? It’s a bloody nuisance having to hare up and down the motorway to pick them up.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that kind of change.’ As you well know, she thought. ‘Anyway, it’s not as if I’ve taken them off to Aberdeen, it’s only forty miles apiece.’

  ‘Or a damn sight further today. Sleeping in until midday! What’s the matter with you?’

  They glared at each other.

  ‘There’s nothing the matter with me, I just had a bad night, that’s all.’

  He looked sceptical. ‘Are you sure? Because if you’re depressed, it would be better to get something for it. It’s not really fair on the kids.’

  Rosie said stiffly, ‘I’m not depressed.’ There was no way she’d tell Josh that she was taking pills.

  Josh let the silence lengthen. Pointedly, he looked around at the messy kitchen: a pile of dirty clothes on the floor beside the washing machine, last night’s dishes still in the sink, a litter of crisps and a smear of jam on the table. Upstairs, from Sam’s bedroom, the sound of a computer game began. ‘You know what your mum was like.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘All I’m saying is there’s a history.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Because my first concern has to be the children.’

  ‘I said I’m fine.’ Rosie raised her voice and pushed past him. She ran upstairs, a mixture of anxiety and anger coursing through her, a pressure in her chest.

  She picked Cara up, changed her nappy, dressed her and cleaned her teeth, telling her that she was going to have a lovely trip to some woods with her daddy. She took her into Sam’s room and told them both that they could have toast in the car. ‘It’ll be like having a picnic on the way,’ she said brightly.

  ‘But I want Sugar Puffs,’ Sam said.

  ‘Toast will be nicer.’

  ‘Toas … toas …’ Cara repeated.

  ‘I don’t want toast!’ He clenched his fists, on the verge of working himself up.

  ‘Plee-ease, Sam,’ Rosie said, at the end of her tether.

  The unfamiliar tone in his mum’s voice made him pause.

  ‘That’s my good boy,’ Rosie said and shepherded him downstairs, carrying Cara on her hip.

  Josh was already at the door and, without speaking to him, she put Cara into his arms and went to wrap up the toast in tin foil and fetch the children’s bags.

  Josh strapped the kids in and took the bags from Rosie. ‘Three o’clock tomorrow at the service station then,’ he said. ‘You won’t forget?’

  ‘I’m tired, not mentally deficient,’ she snapped.

  After they’d gone, Rosie made tea and took it up to the bathroom. She stood under the shower with her eyes closed, letting the warm water run over her hair and skin, trying to focus on the sensation and let it soothe her uneasiness. Although she’d never admit it to Josh, she was really worried about the things that were happening to her: the strange memories that were surfacing, the waking dream, the appearance of the girl … Well, seeing things: that wasn’t normal, was it?

  She opened her eyes and the white steam filling the bathroom took her back with a lurch to the night before and the heavy, choking sensation that had felt so real, not like a dream. She wondered if the anti-depressants might be behind it all, whether the muzziness she often felt was only part of a far worse side-effect, but she quailed at the thought of cutting back on her pills. She knew she wouldn’t cope without them. If she could just get back on top of things Josh wouldn’t be able to needle her so. She didn’t like the way he had said ‘my first concern has to be the children.’ What did he mean? He seemed to imply that she wasn’t in a fit state to look after them properly. He needn’t know she was taking anything; nobody need know. The phrase ‘mother’s little helper’ drifted through her mind, making her feel anxious once again. She wondered if this was how her mum had sometimes felt: as though what was demanded of her was just too much, as if she were crawling through the days with her secrets a crushing weight on her back. The steam was horrible; it made it hard to breathe …

  She turned the shower off, stepped out and wrapped herself in a towel. The shower dripped for a few moments and then stopped. Silence. She dried herself slowly, listening to it. She would put the radio on when she went downstairs; get some voices in the house. She thought about the night to come. Perhaps she would leave the radio and the light on through the night.

  SEVEN

  1812

  Effie sat next to the fire in the shepherd’s cottage, a newborn lamb wrapped in a sack upon her knee. She dripped some beestings, the ewe’s first milk, from the pen filler on to her fingers and tried again to get the animal to open its mouth, holding her wet fingers to its muzzle so that it should get the scent of the milk. ‘Come, come,
won’t you give suck, little one?’ she murmured to it, but it lay inert, its damp body smeared with streaks of blood and blue-white matter.

  The shepherd, old Martin Eben, had found it caught in a drift against a hedgerow with its dead mother. The snow had come down fast and the north-easterly was whipping it into drifts before he could gather all the flock in from the lower pasture; the worst snow he’d seen in twenty years. Even though Hob Talbot had set the other men on to help gather the sheep into the fold and had stridden out himself in overcoat and gaiters, there were still ewes unaccounted for. Seeking shelter in the lee of the hedges, deep in between the gnarled roots of cob and hawthorn, a few might not be found until the spring thaws and the gatherings of crows. This lamb had only a slim chance, for it must have the beestings in the first twenty-four hours of its life or it would not survive. The shepherd had brought it back over his shoulder to one of the pens made of hurdles and thatch within the fold, and tried to introduce it to another ewe. He had rubbed it with the afterbirth of her single lamb to make it smell like her own and put it to the teat but the ewe had repeatedly rejected it. The lamb’s strength had begun to wane; it would not suckle and he had been forced to bring it indoors to try feeding it by hand.

  Once again, Effie rubbed the lamb’s body briskly with the sacking to try to stimulate the coursing of its blood. This time, it struggled weakly, its bony knees digging into her thighs as it tried to rise to its feet. Quickly she dipped again, held her dripping fingers to its mouth and exclaimed, ‘There, now we have it!’ as the lamb’s rough tongue rasped her fingers. She picked up the pen filler and skilfully substituted it for her fingers, smiling as the lamb coughed and then swallowed as she squeezed the dribbles of liquid on to its tongue.

  The wind whistled in the chinks between stones and lintels. The dwelling was crudely built and the circle of warmth around the scant fire was a small one. She felt the cold against her back and the draughts around her ankles and was glad that she had worn all the layers she owned. Snow blew in below the door in gritty puffs of vicious cold. She was glad, too, that Beulah and Tobias would have been safely at the manufactory before this blizzard started and hoped that it would blow itself out long before they made their way home. She hoped that Jack had not been fool enough to set out in such weather and reassured herself that it was certainly too poor to ride.