by Sarah Rayne
‘Nooo …’ It came out in a single streaming syllable, blurred but unmistakable. ‘No – not doctor …’ There was a clumsy, but unmistakable gesture towards the open door of the music room, and Maeve, not knowing what was wanted, closed the door. Then, because for the moment it was impossible to get Aunt Eifa up the stairs to her bedroom, Maeve did the next best thing, which was to half carry, half drag her to the sitting room, where there was a big sofa.
Once lying down, Aunt Eifa tried to speak again, but her words were so slurry it was difficult to understand her. In the end Maeve fetched pen and paper, not knowing if it would do any good, relieved when Aunt Eifa was able to hold the pen.
In shaky letters, her aunt wrote, ‘No doctor – no one to know … ’
‘But I must get a doctor,’ said Maeve. ‘You’re ill – and you fell down.’
The pen scratched frantically again. ‘No doctor. You do all I tell you. Might be safe then …’
Maeve stared at her aunt, seeing the dreadful slipped-aside face, and the frightened eyes under the straggle of hair that had worked loose.
‘I don’t understand.’
The words were scribbled on to the page again. ‘Feel as if I am encased in stone …’
The pen fell from her hand, and she clutched at Maeve. Her face looked as if one half of her was dead. And yet even like this she was stern and insistent and Maeve did not dare disobey her.
She said, ‘What do you want me to do?’
Years later, Maeve was to realize that in almost any other place, with almost any other people involved, what came afterwards would never have happened. In any other place, there would have been hospitals, doctors, visiting nurses. Maeve herself, barely thirteen years old, would have been placed in care – perhaps in a foster home. And in any other environment she would have rebelled.
But Rede Abbas was small and old-fashioned, and Maeve had been under Aunt Eifa’s domination for over three years. So what happened next, happened without anyone questioning or objecting – or even knowing.
Aunt Eifa was disabled by the stroke – which was what Maeve later supposed it to have been – but she continued to dominate.
She refused to be got up to her bedroom, although Maeve had no idea how she would have managed to move her there on her own anyway. Instead, writing with the furious anger that now drove her, Aunt Eifa stated that beds were where people died. She would not be shut away. A bed – more correctly a bedsitting room – must be set up for her downstairs.
It took almost three days for Maeve to arrange things so Aunt Eifa could live downstairs. She had to shunt a bed-frame – then a mattress and blankets – down the stairs, and make up a bed. The sofa that had always stood in the window of this room was banished to what had been the dining room. Aunt Eifa wrote that they did not need a dining room anyway. The dining table could be folded down and set against a wall and the room closed up.
The left half of her body and face were completely useless. At the start she had written that it felt as if it had been encased in stone, and Maeve thought this so dreadful that she did everything her aunt told her without demur.
Eifa Eynon could not walk a step unaided. On Saturday mornings, when Maeve had collected the shopping, her aunt had to be taken into the kitchen, a laborious step at a time, so she could sit at the scrubbed-top table and watch the week’s groceries being stored in cupboards and fridge and larder. Maeve found it disconcerting to have Aunt Eifa’s small, watchful eyes on her all the time, and to hear her aunt rapping on the table with her walking stick if things were put in the wrong cupboards. The clock on the mantel ticked malevolently as Maeve stored away tins of fruit and packs of rice and tea and flour.
She had to come home from school in the lunch hour each day to make lunch for Aunt Eifa, and at weekends she did the washing and cleaning. There was a small, very old-fashioned lavatory on the ground floor, but there were several steps down to it because of the uneven ground of Cliff House; even with Maeve’s help, Aunt Eifa could not manage them. So a horrid wooden structure with a chamber pot inside had to be disinterred from the brick outhouse – Maeve had no idea who it had originally belonged to – and put at the side of the bed. It had to be emptied and scoured every day, but even with liberal use of disinfectant, a sick, sour odour gradually permeated the room. Maeve put dried lavender on the windowsill, but Aunt Eifa said the smell of lavender made her feel sick, so it had to be thrown out.
She insisted on seeing every scrap of paper that came into the house, and if she could not make herself understood through the blurred speech, which was most of the time, she wrote down what Maeve must do. Money had to be drawn out of the post office to pay all the bills, which must never be allowed to go over their due date by so much as an hour in case anyone came to the house to ask for payment. It was God’s mercy that her right hand was still as good as ever, and that she could sign cheques, but she made Maeve spend an entire weekend practising her signature so she could sign cheques as well. Maeve thought this might be against the law.
Sometimes, during the evening, if Maeve was trying to watch a TV programme or read or listen to the radio in the small music room, Aunt Eifa rapped sharply on the wall with her stick, wanting something – a drink, a cushion, a book. Sometimes she rapped on the ceiling in the middle of the night, for Maeve to come down to her. Maeve did not dare ignore any of these summonses, but it was exhausting to be dragged out of bed at 3 a.m. simply to find reading glasses or that evening’s newspaper, and then have to be at school for nine o’clock next day. It was exhausting in a different way to pretend to people that she had a normal home life.
At first local people occasionally asked about Aunt Eifa: did she still take her long cliff walks? Quite a familiar figure on that path, and it was strange not to see her striding along in her mackintosh. Maeve mumbled something about her aunt having had a bout of flu, but said she had almost recovered from it now.
When she told her aunt about the questions, her aunt pointed with her stick to the hall cupboard, where the outdoor coats hung. With a feeling of near-despair, Maeve put on the long mac. It had a stale smell, like bread left out of the tin for too long, but Aunt Eifa jabbed at the window and the cliff path with her stick. Maeve, studying her reflection in the long hall mirror, understood and was horrified. She was not only to shield her aunt’s illness from everyone, she was to become her aunt – to take the long, solitary walks, so that no one would suspect that Eifa Eynon was helpless.
During the weeks and then the months that followed, Maeve wondered about asking someone for help – a teacher, the vicar, a doctor – but she did not know what kind of help could be given, and she was afraid of being taken away from Cliff House and made to live with strangers. And every time she thought about all this, she remembered how furious Aunt Eifa would be, and how much worse life would be afterwards. Even if Aunt Eifa was taken to a hospital and Maeve was sent somewhere else to live, Aunt Eifa would find a way of spoiling life even more for Maeve.
At intervals Maeve remembered that this could not last for ever. One day she would be free of this grinding dreariness.
It was a week before her eighteenth birthday when she realized there was a way out.
TWENTY-ONE
Michael said, ‘I refuse to believe there’s no way out.’ He stared angrily round the dim stone room of the bell tower.
‘There isn’t, though. I’m the practical one, remember, and I’ve looked and searched, and I can’t see anything.’
Part of Nell was glad beyond belief to have Michael with her, but she was also appalled, because it meant they would both die. If that happened, her beloved Beth would be on her own. This thought was so unbearable she pushed it away, and said, ‘I keep hearing voices inside the sea sounds.’
‘I heard them as well a minute ago. Like singing.’
‘Yes. Are we imagining it? Which is worse – hearing ghost voices or thinking you’re hearing them – or hearing the sea creeping in?’
As she said this,
the whispering seemed to come closer.
I sang on the night I died … I waited for help to come, but no help came …
I’m not hearing it, thought Nell, shivering and wrapping her arms around her body. It’s the sea. Water does create odd resonances.
All I had for comfort as death approached, was my family’s song … The people here called it the devil’s song … They did not understand the old Welsh that some call Primitive Welsh – the ancient Brythonic tongue … They said if you listened to it, it could draw the soul from your body … But it felt as if it was a hand holding mine … It felt comforting …
Nell stood up and walked around the room, stamping her feet loudly on the stones to cover the sounds. The heels of her boots rang out sharply on the stone floor.
Michael said abruptly, ‘Do that again.’
‘Do what again?’
‘Walk across the floor like that.’
‘Why?’ asked Nell, doing as requested.
‘The sound changes. The floor’s different in that corner.’
‘Is it? Yes, it is. There are wooden planks over here. Thick, heavy ones – almost like floorboards.’ Nell stared at the floor. The planks covered almost a third.
‘Who would put down a wooden floor in a place like this, with the sea and the damp and everything?’ said Michael.
‘It is odd. Any wood in here would warp and rot over the years – even without the sea washing in twice a day, the damp would be ruinous.’
They knelt down to look. There were ten planks altogether, each one about eight feet in length and about two feet wide.
‘But I can’t see that they provide any means of escape,’ said Nell.
‘There wouldn’t be a trapdoor beneath them, going down into the cliff? No, of course there wouldn’t; I’m straying into the realms of children’s adventure stories.’ Michael stood up, but Nell remained where she was, studying the wood.
‘You’ve got an idea,’ he said, after a moment, hardly daring to voice the thought.
‘Yes, but I can’t get hold of it. There’s something in my mind, but I can’t— Oh, yes I can, though!’ She sprang up and grabbed his arm. ‘Michael, listen, this might not work, but it’s worth trying. If we could prise up one of those planks and get it on to the stairs, we could lay it across the gap where the stairs have crumbled away.’
He stared at her, not instantly understanding, then said, ‘Creating a bridge to the top of the tower?’
‘Yes. It wouldn’t get us out, but I think it would get us above the water level when it comes in.’
‘Let’s look. Is there enough light?’
‘I don’t know … Oh, hold on, I’ve got a thing on the phone. Torch app. Beth downloaded it when she was experimenting. She said you never knew when things might come in useful.’ She was already going up the stairs, switching on the phone-light. It was quite small, but it was surprisingly powerful.
‘That’s the sea mark,’ said Michael, as they reached the collapsed section of stairs. Nell was directing the small light upwards as far as she could, letting it play waveringly over the section of the stair above them.
‘There’s very nearly an actual line, isn’t there?’ she said. ‘It’s way above the gap. But it’s at the same level all across the walls – it must be the mark the water’s left over the years … centuries, even, perhaps.’
She shivered, and Michael said, ‘If we could get across this gap, we could wait up there – above the water level – until we’re found.’
‘They’ll send out search parties, won’t they?’
‘Yes, of course. The Swan will do that if no one else does,’ said Michael. ‘I told the receptionist that if I hadn’t traced you by about six I was going to call the police anyway.’ He looked upwards again. ‘If we could get up to where that window is – perhaps up to the bell chamber – we might even find there’s a phone signal.’
‘We haven’t got much time,’ said Nell, as they went back down the steps.
‘Then we’d better get started. How do we prise the plank up? Think, my love – you’ve already said you’re the practical one of the party.’
‘Several of them have lifted a bit anyway,’ said Nell, surveying the floor. ‘I don’t know what we can use for the actual prising, though … Oh, unless the iron staves on the stair wall would do it. Some of them must be loose and we only need one.’
After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, they managed to work one of the staves free. It was a thick, sturdy length of iron, one end tapering to a sharp point. But their first attempt to lever up the planks simply split the rotten sections of wood. Nell swore, but moved over to another piece.
‘It’s oak,’ she said. ‘It’ll be heavy to move, but there should be sections still intact. Oak’s very thick and dense.’
‘Only you would know something like that. And,’ said Michael, smiling at her in the wavering light, ‘only you would say it at such a time.’
‘I do love you,’ said Nell, irrelevantly. ‘Very much. Have I ever said?’
‘Yes, but I can bear hearing it again. Try this plank here – no, let me do it.’
‘It’s all right, I’ve got it. You’d make a total pig’s breakfast.’
‘I thought you loved me.’
‘I do, but it doesn’t mean I think you’re the world’s greatest DIY expert.’
This time the oak plank came free and, when they lifted it, it stayed in one piece.
‘And it’s only slightly rotted at that edge,’ said Nell, as they manoeuvred it around the narrow twists of the stairs.
It was more difficult than they had expected to position the oak across the gap so that it fell squarely and securely on to the other side, but eventually it dropped heavily and firmly on to the undamaged stairs on the other side, although it did so with a crash that echoed all round the tower, and sent up clouds of dust. Nell gasped and coughed, then, through the reverberations came a faint thrum from above, then the sound of something tapping against a hard surface.
Michael said, ‘That seems to have disturbed the bell’s mechanism, doesn’t it? I expect some of it’s still in place, even if the bell itself can’t sound any longer.’ He glanced at Nell, and said, ‘But we don’t give a stuff for whom it’s tolling, because it isn’t bloody tolling for us.’
But when they went back to the ground-floor room for another plank, Nell pointed to a corner of the room, where a trickle of water was seeping through the stones.
‘A second plank would have been good,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think there’s time.’
‘Nor do I. The one we’ve got should be wide enough to walk across.’ He took her hand and they went back up the stairs.
‘Will you go first, or will I?’ said Nell.
Michael hesitated, then said, ‘I will,’ and Nell knew he was afraid of the makeshift bridge giving way. If he fell through to the ground, he would probably break his neck, but at least Nell would be left to make another attempt with more planks, and she might get to safety.
She said, softly, ‘If I hadn’t loved you before, I’d love you now for saying that.’
‘Nell, I’d walk over broken glass barefoot for you,’ he said, very seriously. ‘Going across a plank of oak is nothing.’ He looked at her. ‘We’re being very emotional, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, but in the circumstances, I think we’re allowed.’
‘If I say, “See you on the other side”, will it sound like a metaphysical farewell?’
‘Yes, but it’s better than bad jokes about walking the plank, so say it anyway.’
Michael said it, then gave her a swift, hard kiss. ‘This is only a matter of about six or seven steps – two or three seconds per step. I’ll be on terra firma in thirty seconds maximum. You’ll be there with me in another thirty. A minute for the whole operation. Here goes.’
He stepped on to the oak plank and Nell shone the phone-light, seeing that there were several of the iron staves in the left-hand wall.
‘Can you
use those for extra balance?’
‘I’ll try.’
He began to walk slowly and carefully, and Nell counted the steps. At four she dared hope he would make it. At five he seemed to fumble his grasp on one of the staves, and she saw it had worked loose. Her heart came up into her mouth, but Michael put the flat of his hand on the wall for balance, and went on. Even so, it seemed as if hours slid by before he stepped off the plank and called back.
‘Easy as a walk in the park. The staves all felt firm except that last one, so avoid it. But don’t rely on any of them too much – just use them for balance. What about the light?’
‘If I throw the phone across will you catch it, then you can shine it for me?’
‘Let’s not risk it. It would be appalling if I missed.’
‘Well, if I prop it up in my pocket I think there’ll be enough overspill … Yes, there is.’ Nell slung her bag over her shoulder and across her body, and reached for the first iron stave. She would not think that the plank might not bear a second lot of weight, because if she did not do this – if she remained here – she would certainly drown. The sea was coming into the lower room now – she could hear it and she could smell it. But all she had to do was take these six steps. Michael was waiting – he was holding out both his hands. He would not let her fall.
The world shrank to the dark stairwell and the stench of the sea, and to the rough feel of the iron staves in the wall. Nell managed not to look down, or even to think that on her right-hand side, within a few inches, was a black gaping hole that went all the way down to the ground. Three steps. So far so good. The plank creaked, but it did not move. Here was the stave that had shifted when Michael grasped it; she avoided that one. She was almost there. Four steps. Five. She was nearly within reach of Michael’s waiting hands. She would not leap forward though, in case it dislodged the oak. With the thought, it shifted slightly, and Nell’s heart leapt into her mouth. She felt it move again, and instinctively threw her body forward. There was a split-second of nothing, of no feeling, then Michael’s hands closed around both of hers, and he was pulling her on to the stones beyond the gap.