by Laura Powell
‘Well, now. There’s a gentleman,’ sneers Reggie.
Mother does her trilling laugh but it sounds thinner than usual. Betty wants to hug her until she is bright again, but Reggie is patting her bottom and gesturing for the extra kippers to be scraped onto his plate.
‘There’s a good girl,’ he says to Mother, tucking a napkin into his collar and shining his fork on the hem of her pinny.
Betty hurries into the kitchen. She picks up two apples and runs out of the back door, through the yard and onto the lane. At the end, where it picks up the promenade and curves down to the cove, she can make out the back of Gallagher, his hands pushed deep in his pockets.
‘Mr Gallagher,’ she calls.
He strides on without looking back, his coat hem swinging. She trots to catch up.
‘Mr Gallagher!’
He stops and turns, his face still hard. She reaches him and extends a hand with an apple in it.
‘Breakfast,’ she says softly. ‘And thank you… for earlier. That man, Reggie…’
He glares at the apple as if there is a hidden message in it, then accepts it. She bites into her own apple and tries to chew quietly. They walk in step the rest of the way to the shore and Betty allows herself little darting glances at his jaw. The shingle is damp against her feet. She realises that she is still wearing her indoor slippers and hopes he won’t notice.
‘You asked earlier after Mr Forbes the butcher,’ she says, emboldened. ‘Mother sometimes buys shin and ham from him but his cuts are dear so we buy it from Spoole most of the time. But if you’re asking because you think he’s the killer… It wasn’t him.’
Gallagher’s face still looks uninterested but his head half turns towards her.
‘Yes?’
‘That’s all.’
‘That’s not all. There’s something else you want to say about him, or perhaps don’t want to say,’ he says and a lump clogs up her throat. ‘I could tell back at the breakfast room.’
‘There’s not… Just… The policemen don’t think it’s him, do they?’
‘Between us, they do.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘You said you hardly knew him.’
‘I don’t,’ she continues more carefully. ‘But why would he hurt anyone? He might look frightening – and I know that the children joke he turns into a monster at midnight – but that’s only his way. He’s… He likes to keep himself to himself.’
She tries to invent a stronger reason. Their eyes meet again. Gallagher’s glare is piercing.
‘He’s stopped going to church, so I’ve heard,’ he says. ‘Something must have changed for him to have lost his faith.’
‘He hasn’t gone out much at all since Mrs Forbes died, it isn’t just church.’
‘And I’m told he returned from the War a changed man. A loner,’ presses Gallagher. ‘Didn’t he attack his wife once?’
‘I don’t know who’d say such nasty things,’ she says frowning. ‘But he spends his time working and doesn’t bother anyone. He has his own farm and an abattoir and—’
‘Wait, an abattoir?’
‘Only a small one.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘He invited you there?’
‘Of course not, why would he invite me to look at dead bits of cow?’
She blushes. He can probably see straight through her lies. All she knows is that no one must suspect Mr Forbes.
‘It can’t be him, I just know,’ she repeats firmly. ‘And I only really came here to say that I didn’t mean to upset you earlier. The things I said about your manners.’
Gallagher doesn’t look at her; he is still staring at the sea. She shouldn’t have followed him. He probably thinks her dull or difficult, and now she must stand here in this excruciating silence or else slink away, embarrassed either way. A ring of angry seagulls circle overhead. She wishes they would dip down and carry her off.
‘Upset me?’ he says after a long silence, ‘Pah ha.’
It is such a strange barking noise that Betty stops twisting the apple core in her palm. She wants to laugh too but she keeps her eyes on the horizon.
‘But still,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure your mother and father instilled very good manners in you… I suppose you just forgot them for a moment this morning.’
His lips twitch. She thinks he might smile, then he is serious again.
‘Mother’d have liked you,’ he says and Betty curls up her toes inside her slippers. ‘Yes, she’d have called you spirited.’
‘I’m not usually,’ she mumbles.
‘But it’s a fine quality to have.’
Her hands are clammy. She wishes she had something fascinating to reply with, or that she was beautiful like Mother and Mary and her Sunday school teacher Miss Hollinghurst, so she wouldn’t be expected to say anything fascinating at all. She clears her throat.
‘One summer we had no fish here at all,’ she begins, trying to sound like Mother who has told this story many times before. It’s a good talking point if you’re stuck for chat with the guests, she once said. ‘Whole armies of seagulls came and ate them all. Lots of the fishermen had to move to the cities for work…’
Betty trails off. She can’t remember how the story ends or even if it is true.
‘Yes, seagulls are the biggest predator here in St Steele, never mind the Cornish Cleaver.’
Gallagher spins around to face her.
‘What did you just say?’
‘That hundreds of seagulls came so we had no fish left.’
‘No, no. The last bit?’
‘Um, I don’t know,’ she says, nervous again.
‘The Cornish Cleaver. You said the Cornish Cleaver,’ he says, leaning so close she can smell his aftershave and hair oil and the damp wool of his suit.
‘Yes, I meant the man who killed Maureen and the second girl, Elsa.’
Gallagher squeezes the tops of her arms in a sort of hug. Her stomach leaps into her mouth.
‘Thank you Betty. That’s your name, isn’t it?’
She nods, certain that her cheeks are the colour of Mother’s boiled beetroots.
‘The Cornish Cleaver. Utterly perfect.’
He pulls out a tiny notepad from his inside pocket and writes something, then stops and looks cautious.
‘Wait, you didn’t hear that expression somewhere else, did you?’
She shakes her head and his face relaxes again. Her skin still tingles from the hug. It was dry and tight, as though they had slotted together for a moment. But when Betty collects herself Gallagher is striding away; he is striding away so fast, she is certain he can’t wait to be rid of her.
Chapter 2
Fifty years later
‘Mary stop it, you’re scaring me.’
Mary sits upright in bed and gasps. Her arms are pimpled with cold perspiration and her nightdress has twisted around, straitjacketing her. Her throat stings too.
‘What time is it?’ she croaks.
‘Four,’ says Jerry, handing her a glass of tepid water. ‘The same one again?’
She nods.
‘Who were you shouting at to let you go?’
‘I can’t remember,’ she lies.
She gulps down the water and replaces the glass on the carafe that sits on the bedside table, exactly where she left it. There is something comforting about its solidity; about the row of perfume bottles arranged beside it at perpendicular angles, about her brush without a single hair caught in its teeth, and the hand-held bone inlay mirror that smells of polish. It is the one she pretends she inherited from her mother to show Jerry something tangible from her past.
‘They must be linked to something.’
‘They’ll pass,’ but she sounds defeated.
‘But something’s not right,’ he continues, fumbling for his reading glasses. ‘It’s been every night for almost three weeks now. There’s definitely nothing bothering you?’
She s
hakes her head. He struggles out of bed and limps away, rubbing his stiff left knee.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You can’t live like this,’ he says gently. ‘There are people who can help.’
‘It was probably just the Brie. You know what they say about cheese and nightmares.’
She watches him pull his silver pen and diary from the pocket of his suit, hung over the wardrobe door ready for morning. He scribbles something in the diary, frowning as he does.
‘What are you writing?’ she says. ‘Don’t do anything, I don’t want a fuss.’
‘Just reminding myself to call Dr Griffiths in the morning.’
‘No doctors. Please! You know how I feel about them.’
‘But he might recommend something.’
‘No doctors,’ she bellows, surprised at the strength of her own voice.
He stops writing and looks at her.
‘I only want to help.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, washed with guilt. ‘I know you do. I’m so sorry.’
His face, lit by the streetlamp glow that creeps into the bedroom through a gap between the curtains, is thin and drawn. He has aged without her noticing. That happens sometimes; she looks at the curled leaves and the naked trees, and realises that two whole seasons have passed without her registering them, as though she has slept through a great chunk of life.
Jerry clambers back into bed. He wraps an arm around her middle and kisses the back of her shoulder with dry lips.
‘It’ll be all right. I’m here for you.’
He slips back to sleep while she lies rigid, counting the rings of Artex around the brass light fitting on the ceiling until her eyes scramble.
Autumn sun streams into the bedroom. Mary stretches and touches Jerry’s cold, flat pillow. Morning terrifies her these days: how to fill another day? She snaps on a bra with gentle underwire, a blouse buttoned to the throat and a slick of rose blusher, then sweeps a comb through her long hair that age demanded she shorten long ago. As she pins it in her usual chignon, she registers that the house is so silent, it hisses.
To fill the emptiness, she hums tunelessly and looks at the framed photographs on the dressing table, careful to appreciate the faces smiling at her as she does every morning, but then the brown envelope lying flat beside them catches her eye. She grabs it and stuffs it into her bottom drawer beneath a ball of nude stockings. Careless of her to have left it out where Jerry might have seen it. She closes the drawer and walks downstairs.
In the kitchen is a mug with a teabag inside, a cereal bowl with a spoon poised beside it. The kettle is already filled; thoughtful Jerry. All she needs to do is flip the switch and add milk; kind Jerry. She pours herself a sour black coffee instead and chews a dry Ryvita, leaning against the patio door and watching a family of sparrows hop around the breadcrumbs on the bird table. Something about them makes her queasy.
She will do something special for the family today. For her family today. Yes, she will prepare a supper and invite them around this evening. She will do it well for once without forgetting a vital ingredient or burning something, and without Cath having to rescue it all. She will marinate lamb, serve Jerry’s favourite Rioja and a chocolate tart for Holly. She will even write a shopping list.
If it all goes well, maybe she will tell them over pudding. ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ she might say reassuringly, the way a mother and a grandmother and a wife ought. ‘The nice lady consultant said I have a good chance of making a full recovery.’ She did say that, didn’t she? Though Mary had planned not to tell them at all.
She had thought she might reverse Jerry’s little automatic car out of the back of the garage and drive herself to the appointments – surely one never forgets how to drive – then park it back behind his Jaguar before he comes home from work. She would take a handbag full of magazines with her as company and treat herself to some of those boiled toffee sweets to suck on for the nausea.
Stepping onto a ward again will be the worst part, she reassures herself, pouring a second coffee; after that it will only be as painful as going to the supermarket or the dentist or doing any other chore. That moment the phantom smell returns – bleach and stringent detergent and that gelatinous gravy she was once force fed – making her drop her coffee mug. She leans over the kitchen sink and retches.
Hours later, Mary flies back home along Richmond High Street, a heavy grocery bag cutting into each hand and a wide smile on her face. She had found everything she needed in the supermarket and didn’t even go into one of her strange mind freezes, where she wanders vacantly around the aisles and forgets what she is looking for.
She gulps big mouthfuls of the meaty, pasty air that pumps out of the bakery and swings her shopping bags, exhilarated to have been so decisive for once. She will stick to her original plan and do without their help; without them having to divvy up lifts to her appointments, without Jerry incurring a premium on their private health insurance, and without Cath waking in the night to worry and trawl the internet for herbal cures or complementary oncologists. Yes, she will manage it herself and when she has recovered she will tell them. They will be surprised – impressed even – at how well she coped.
Mary looks around at the other fast people on the street. She must look purposeful, just like them, and she is elated that it is all going so well. Why did she ever find such a simple task as going to the supermarket so daunting? Then her eyes fall absentmindedly on the headline board across the road, just outside Star Newsagents.
Mary stops dead. She opens her lips. She screams.
It is a strange scream but a scream nonetheless, yet no one else seems to notice. Swarms of shoppers shoulder past without registering Mary. She doesn’t register them either. All that exists in this second, in this street, is that headline board. At first, Mary reads it again and thinks she must be hallucinating, but she screams again, and again it comes out as a peculiar, raspy cough.
A double-decker bus draws up and Star Newsagents is blocked from view. Mary doesn’t move. People trickle off the bus. It slides away again. The headline board reappears and, that same moment, the bottom of one of Mary’s polythene bags gives way as if it too is strained by the shock of it all. Lamb cutlets, crème fraîche, a box of aspirin, a bunch of asparagus and a tart tumble out. Jerry’s Rioja crashes to the pavement.
‘Are you all right?’ says a girl with blue mascara, gathering up the asparagus.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ breathes Mary.
She doesn’t see the groceries on the pavement and hasn’t felt that one of her bags is weightless.
‘I’m doing my nurse training so you’re in safe hands. Do you need to sit down?’
Mary crosses the road without hearing the question and without looking for traffic, her eyes still on the newsstand. She doesn’t notice the crescendo of horns, the sharp brakes or the bald man with who leans out of his car window and shakes a fist at her. She reaches the newsagents and touches the metal grille that holds the headline in place, just to be sure it really is there. It says:
CORNISH CLEAVER SPEAKS
Chapter 3
Early June 1956
The Irish reporter slams his fist on the afternoon newspaper spread out on the dining table.
‘How the hell did Gallagher come up with that?’ he yells.
‘The Cornish Cleaver,’ reads Tony, spitting out each syllable and Betty almost drops the decanter. She stops dusting and listens. ‘It’s good,’ he continues. ‘But I’m not buying that he came up with it himself. Reckon his daddy paid someone to write it for him?’
‘Calm down, it’s hardly a story,’ snaps Reggie.
‘Easy for you to say. Your editor’s not threatening to pension you off if you don’t come up with the exclusives,’ slurs Irish, his glasses steaming up. He wipes the lens with a corner of the tablecloth. ‘And it had to be him, didn’t it? Sodding Gallagher.’
Betty grips the neck of the decanter. She couldn’t feel more exposed if she were s
tanding there in her nightdress. She wants to scream: those were my words; that was our private conversation, but another bit of her isn’t sure why she should be angry at all.
‘Enough shop talk boys, we’re done for tonight,’ says Reggie, hoisting himself to his feet. He tucks his stomach into his waistband and shuffles towards Betty, carrying their four empty glasses. ‘Top these up will you, Betty love? And have I told you that you’re looking as pretty as a picture again today?’
She ignores the last bit and pours the whiskies.
‘I couldn’t help overhearing,’ she says in a low voice when the others are talking. ‘That you said something about the Cornish Cleaver expression… and Mr Gallagher.’
Reggie leans a thick arm around her waist. She stiffens. He smells eggy.
‘We were just saying that he came up with that rather good nickname for the murderer and now everyone’s using it from here to Timbuktu. Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about. Probably just given to him by some cheap source or other.’
Betty runs very cold. Reggie drains his glass and belches.
‘Now, where’s that delectable mother of yours?’
Four days later, Betty is home alone. Her hands tremble slightly as she polishes the silver spoons in the dresser drawer, her ears trained on the moan of the floorboards and the burble of the restless water pipe. She hates being home alone now. The carriage clock sings and she jumps; the two spoons in her hands ting together.
It is the third time it has chimed since Mother left for the greengrocer’s, her lips slashed with scarlet lipstick and her breasts bulging over her tight coral dress. Betty isn’t sure how long she should wait before alerting the Inspector or Joan next door that Mother still isn’t home; she tries not to panic but the greengrocers is only three miles away so she should be home by now. Eventually the front door clicks open and Betty exhales with relief, but then two feet stamp on the hall mat that don’t sound like Mother. Betty freezes, gripping the spoons.
‘Staring at your reflection in the silver, are you?’ booms a voice and she jumps again.
‘Mr Gallagher,’ she exclaims, relieved and embarrassed at once.