Lyndon Vaughan went to the boot of his car and brought out the same greengrocer’s box I’d seen him with before. The bunches of leaves were handed out, and the ceremony with the water was performed again, each of the congregation taking it in turns to flick their bundles of herbs in the direction of Mally’s house. It made me think of Janet, and the bunches of dried herbs in her kitchen, and the potions she made with them which Lorry had said she was giving to my mother. Perhaps they were more similar than they thought, the chapel-goers and Janet.
The chanting started, and hands were raised, the palms flat. As the voices got louder, and just like the last time, the words were incomprehensible, overlapping each other in a meaningless jumble, layer upon layer. Then, exactly as had happened before, the men and women paired up and trooped into the chapel.
I was sitting on the grass at the front of the cottage. It was late morning and the temperature was stealthily on the rise. There were no grasshoppers around, so I’d been pulling the peeling skin off my shoulders and rolling it into little balls. Even though the skin was white when I pulled it off, it would turn grey when I rubbed it between my fingers. I assumed that this was the dirt ingrained in my skin.
The gate squeaked and I looked over. Janet and Mally were coming down the stone steps. Janet had her hand raised in greeting. She had on a short denim skirt that stopped midway down her thighs and a skimpy red vest. A canvas bag was slung over one shoulder. Mally had both of his hands in his pockets and a big grin on his face, and his camera was hanging from his neck as usual. They walked across the flag-stoned path and around the patch of virgin earth where my dad had dug up the concrete. When I looked up at them I had to shield my eyes with one hand.
‘Alright, Nif?’ The sun made a halo of Janet’s yellow curls.
‘Hello,’ I said, standing up. My mother came out of the house, and I thought she must have been standing at the kitchen window, waiting. She and Janet hugged—a long, lingering embrace. Janet was shorter than my mother, and her head fitted exactly into the space below my mother’s chin, as if it had been carved especially for that purpose. I watched them hug and realised with a start that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mother and my dad touch each other.
When Janet and my mother separated, their eyes remained locked together, and they were both smiling. Janet reached into the bag and pulled out a wine bottle with a cork in the end.
‘Gooseberry wine,’ she said. ‘We’ll need some refreshment in this heat.’ My mother took the bottle from her and put it on the window sill behind her. When she turned back to Janet there was an air of expectancy about her, as if she was waiting for something else to appear from the bag. She seemed eager. Before either of them could say anything, my dad came out of the house, wiping his hands on his jeans. He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt.
‘Hello Janet,’ he said. ‘Feeling better?’
‘Yes, thanks. Tummy bug. You know what it’s like. You feel like death for a few days, and then it clears up and you feel right as rain again.’
‘What’s in the bag?’
‘Tools of the trade,’ she said and patted the canvas. ‘Are you sure you want me to do this? I reckon there’s a storm on the way. All this will probably be for nothing.’
My dad looked up at the sky, which was a lucid, cloudless blue.
‘No chance. This heatwave’s going to go on forever,’ he said, and ran his clay-smeared hand through his hair.
Janet shook her head. ‘No, there’s definitely rain on the way. Trust me, I can feel it.’ She tapped her nose and winked and my mother stuttered out a laugh.
‘Well then,’ Janet said. ‘If you’re sure, we’d better get on with it, before chapel kicks out. Unless you want a hostile audience?’ She was smirking.
‘I’ll fetch some glasses,’ my dad said, and ducked into the house.
Janet had spent at least twenty minutes walking backwards and forwards in straight lines over the scrappy lawn and the patch where the concrete had been cleared by my dad. He’d shifted all the broken pieces of concrete up to the parking area, and now there was a pile of jagged-edged grey slabs next to the Cortina.
We’d all watched in silence as Janet had taken a branch out of the canvas bag, a y-shaped thing about half an inch thick and the length of her forearm. She grabbed each of the handles of the branch—like the handlebars of a bike, with the long end pointing out in front of her—and had started pacing up and down, muttering to herself. A flush was rising up her neck, and for some reason I got the feeling that it wasn’t caused by the heat, but by something deeper. Her concentration was palpable.
Every now and then the end of the branch would twitch, and Janet would stop and frown and lean down and point the stick at the ground, still muttering. Then she’d stand up again and carry on.
My dad was leaning against the porch, his arms crossed over his chest. His shirt was spattered with clay in little orange firework bursts. My mother stood a couple of feet away from him, Lorry clutching at her skirt with one hand, his clown doll with the other. She was biting her lip and looking intently at Janet. It was as though my parents had called a truce, and were both trying to act normally because Janet was there, but I could still feel the friction between them.
Both of my parents held a glass of wine, a cloudy green liquid that looked medicinal. My dad had given Janet a glass too, which she’d drained and put on the window sill. Mally stood next to me, by the patch of soil where my dad had been digging. No-one said anything.
Eventually Janet stopped and wiped her forearm over her face. Her hair was damp with sweat and stuck to her forehead, and her eyeshadow had settled into the creases of her eyelids. She puffed out a breath and walked over to where the wine bottle sat on the window sill. Having tucked the dowsing rod under her armpit, she poured herself a full glass and drank it down in one go, then put the bottle and the glass back down with a clink. She sat on the window sill.
‘A little refresher,’ she said, wiping her arm over her forehead again. ‘It’s thirsty work in this heat.’
‘Oh, now there’s a sight.’
I hadn’t seen them at first. I’d been watching Janet, and so the voice which carried over the still air from the parking space made me jump. It was low and ripe, dripping with sarcasm. It came from Lyndon Vaughan who stood by the Cortina, behind the railings. His face was a mask of disgust, the bulbous bottom lip blubbery and wet and pink.
To his right stood Mr Beynon, staring unseeing in our direction, his eyes like pearls nestled in the white satin folds of his eyelids. I noticed again how his nose was long and hooked, his forehead high and arched, the black hair greased back, and I thought of the raven skull on the altar in my bedroom, the eye sockets just empty holes.
A foot or two behind the beetle man and the minister stood a dozen or so men from the chapel, dressed in their dark suits and looking for all the world like a flock of birds. The women were nowhere to be seen.
The beetle man’s dog came running forward and planted itself at its master’s feet. It drew its lips back over yellow teeth and quivered, its hackles raised in a ridge along its back.
‘Still using the witching stick then, Janet?’ I could hear the sneer in the beetle man’s voice. ‘Up to your funny business again, are you?’
Janet didn’t even look at him. She placed the branch down very deliberately on the window sill, and then she picked up the wine bottle and emptied it into her glass. She lifted it to her mouth and took a deep swig. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and only then did she turn to him.
‘Mr Vaughan. Care for a drink?’ She strode over towards him, and stood in front of the wall that separated the raised parking area from the lawn. He was a good couple of feet higher up than she was and she had to look up at him. She was a tiny splash of colour, standing there in her brazen clothing, her blonde hair springing out around her face, and she was fizzing with energy.
When the beetle man didn’t answer, Janet turned to
the minister.
‘What about you, Reverend? Fancy a snifter?’ She brandished her glass at him and the sudden movement caused her to stagger slightly. ‘Or are you going to stand there all day gawping?’ She smiled suddenly, a cruel grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘Oh no, you can’t, can you? You can’t see a bloody thing!’
It wasn’t humour that fuelled Janet’s laughter, but spite and alcohol, and again she raised her glass at the two men. I realised I hadn’t once heard the minister speak; it was as if the beetle man was his mouth as well as his eyes.
‘Heathen!’ Mr Vaughan’s voice was shrill, a knife cutting though the solid air. ‘Leave these people alone and let us good folk carry on our lives in peace. There’s no place here for people like you.’
‘Oh, I’m no heathen, Mr Vaughan. I just have my own beliefs. Beliefs that are different from yours and that you can’t abide.’
‘Your beliefs are wicked, Miss White, and they have no place in this village.’
Janet sneered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Vaughan.’ She turned away, as if dismissing him, and sauntered towards where my parents were standing, watching silently.
‘Go on, off you go,’ she said, and waved a hand in his direction. ‘Take your crappy little dog and your…your “good folk” and get back to your bloody chapel and your lousy god and see where that gets you.’ She stepped deliberately over the path and marched past my parents and in through the front door of the cottage.
Lyndon Vaughan’s bottom lip was quivering dangerously as he watched Janet disappear. The minister stood next to him, unspeaking, eyebrows drawn together, his eyes empty. Slowly, the congregation started to disperse, moving backwards, returning to the cars that were parked on the verge.
Finally, the beetle man started to walk away, his hand supporting the minister’s elbow. Abruptly, as if he’d had a second thought, he turned back and stepped forward, to the top of the steps, and leant over the gate. His voice was a whispered hiss, and I had to strain to hear his words as he spoke to my parents.
‘Don’t be taken in by her. I’ve warned you before, but you didn’t listen. She’s evil, that one. She’ll draw you in, fill you with her beliefs, and you’ll never be the same again.’ Then he turned away and walked back towards where the minister stood, blind and helpless.
The little terrier started to follow, but then seemed to think better of it and stopped. It sniffed the gravel, and turned around a few times. It looked at my parents challengingly, and arched its back into a question mark, as if to say, ‘What are you looking at?’ Then it coiled out an enormous, mustard-coloured turd. Nonchalantly, it scratched the ground a few times with its back feet, then scampered after its master.
‘What was all that about, then?’ My dad plonked the empty glasses onto the sideboard. Janet and my mother were sitting next to each other at the kitchen table, both tugging roughly on cigarettes. Lorry had said he was too hot and had gone to sit in the relative cool of the living room.
Janet blew out smoke in a long stream before she replied.
‘Oh, something and nothing. History. Bad feelings running high in a little village. Nothing to worry about. They’re all inbred anyway. Have you noticed how they all look the same?’ She snorted and then readjusted her face into a sneer; suddenly she looked old and ragged. Her lipstick had worn off and the wrinkles round her eyes looked deeper. She took another drag on her fag and blew out smoke. ‘They hate anyone who’s not like them, simple as that. When we moved here they instantly took a dislike to us. It’s because we’re different. We’re not like them.’ She shrugged.
I remembered what Mally had told me about the plague coming to the village, brought by outsiders. Outsiders that had been Mally and Janet’s ancestors. Outsiders. The word had got stuck in my head and the more I thought about it the less meaning it had. I turned it round in my brain, the syllables clicking, until it meant nothing. It was just a collection of vowels and consonants.
My dad ducked out into the hall and I could hear him rummaging in the cupboard under the stairs. No doubt Janet thought she was being surreptitious when she dipped her hand into the canvas bag that was hanging on the back of her chair and handed a small, brown bottle to my mother, but her actions were made clumsy by the wine she’d drunk, and her hand slipped slightly as she slid it across the table. It made a loud scraping noise. My mother didn’t meet my eye, but at least she looked embarrassed when she picked up the bottle and put it in the cupboard of the sideboard behind her, just as my dad came in with a bottle of wine.
‘Well, we didn’t find a spring, but at least we can water ourselves,’ he said, trying to be funny. No-one laughed, but Janet managed a half-hearted smile.
My dad took a corkscrew from the drawer of the sideboard and squeaked the cork out of the bottle. He poured the wine into the glasses and handed them to my mother and Janet, who drank greedily. Mally looked at me, his eyebrows raised, and I gave him a tiny nod.
‘But what does Lyndon Vaughan have against you? He’s really got it into his head that you’re trouble.’ My dad was smiling to soften the significance of his words, but I could tell that the confrontation outside the cottage had shaken him. ‘He actually said you were evil.’
Janet smiled back, a faded smirk that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
‘It’s not Lyndon Vaughan who’s the problem. It’s the minister, old Beynon. Vaughan’s nothing more than a mouthpiece for him. Beynon’s the really nasty one.’
‘Why, though,’ asked my dad. ‘I’ve never even heard him say anything. Even that night at the pub, you know, when you were…under the influence.’ He smiled at this, and even my mother allowed a small smile to spread over her mouth.
It seemed to me that Janet’s presence had brought about a thaw in my parents’ relationship. They’d managed to be civil to each other and were more relaxed in the other’s company. It was as though she had a soothing effect on them, as though she had charmed them. Maybe it was just the wine.
Janet grimaced. ‘I know. Everyone round here thinks I drink too much.’ She raised her glass in a mock salute. ‘Well, the truth is, I probably do, but there’s not a lot else to do around here is there?’
‘So why do you live here, then?’ my dad said. ‘I mean, we’re just here for a month or so to get our heads together. We don’t live here like you do.’ As he carried on speaking I saw my mother’s shoulders slump a fraction of an inch. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a backward place like this.’
Janet snorted and took a slug of her wine.
My dad persisted. ‘So why do you stay? Why do you choose to live here when it’s so awful? When they all hate you and things like…that happen?’ He flung his hand out towards the window, gesturing at the parking space where the beetle man and the minister had stood just a few minutes before.
‘Because I have history here,’ was all Janet would say. She leant back in her chair, and took a swig of wine and a long pull on her cigarette. The smoke curled out of her nostrils and hung in the air in front of her when she spoke.
‘What about you, Clive? What do you do?’ She was looking my dad right in the eyes and a sly grin had attached itself to her mouth.
‘He’s a sculptor.’ It was the first thing my mother had said since we came into the house, and her voice was so quiet I couldn’t tell if she’d spoken those three words with pride or derision.
‘A sculptor, eh?’ Janet nodded slowly. ‘What sort of things do you sculpt, then?’
‘Busts, mostly,’ my dad said. ‘You know, head and shoulders, that sort of thing.’ He took off his glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt. He was blushing, and I thought he looked younger, almost like a boy. Janet was nodding slowly, and her head seemed to have grown heavy.
‘Working on anything at the moment?’ Despite the slur in her voice, it held a slippery slyness. She had her elbow on the table in front of her, her chin resting in her palm, and she was looking at him sideways. My dad opened his mout
h to say something, but my mother was quicker and her answer darted out into the stillness of the kitchen.
‘Me. He’s working on a bust of me. He has been for months. And it’s nearly finished now, Clive, isn’t it?’
My dad carried on polishing his glasses, grinding away at them as if trying to remove some stubborn but invisible stain.
‘Nearly. Nearly, love.’ I thought of the bust in his studio, the bust that my mother had refused to look at since he’d started working on it. How he’d had to work on it from photographs and his memory because she refused to have anything to do with it. It was nearly finished the last time I’d seen it, with just the eyes left to be carved. And then it would be an exact replica of Janet.
‘Can we see it?’ Janet leant back in her chair, the end of her cigarette a trembling tower of ash. She seemed to be goading him, and I wondered if she knew about the bust.
‘Not yet,’ was all he would say. He looked defiant now, a man again and not a boy.
It was a sudden silence that filled the kitchen, and it was broken just as abruptly. My mother scraped her chair back and stood decisively.
‘Well, look at that. Lunchtime already. You’ll stay Janet? We’ve got ham and cheese and eggs. I could make you an omelette. Go on, say you’ll stay?’ My mother’s voice was pleading, and she was gazing at Janet intently. Janet nodded and raised her wine glass in silent assent. My dad pushed his glasses higher up his nose.
Mally gave me another look and I nodded again. I slid backwards against the sideboard and in one smooth movement, grabbed the corkscrew and sidled towards the door, hoping my dad didn’t notice. I stepped out into the hall and Mally followed me.
‘Hey. No funny business, you two, OK?’ My dad thought he was being funny and chuckled to himself. He still thought I was a child.
‘No way, Mr Allen.’ Mally’s face was a study in innocence. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
Water Shall Refuse Them Page 18