by David Mark
‘I’ve studied the Reivers,’ I said.
‘How?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘How did you study them? They’re long gone.’
‘Read about them, I mean. In books.’ I waved the novel I was reading. It was probably an Orwell. I liked Orwell a lot in those days.
She continued to stand there, staring at me. Now she had recovered herself she seemed disinclined to move on. Behind her the sky was an ugly grey, like wet limestone. Her coat was buttoned up to the top but she looked cold, as if she was suppressing a tremble.
‘I’m not a big reader,’ she said. ‘My husband likes cowboy books. And films. I try to read but I fall asleep.’
‘You’re reading the wrong books,’ I said, primly.
‘Yes?’ She seemed interested in the idea. ‘You can tell me which are the right ones.’
I gave her a little more attention. Angled my head, enquiring whether she wanted any more of my time. The wind played with the long grass. The birdsong was shrill, a plaintive whistle, like a drowning sailor calling for help.
‘Do you know all the occupants?’ I asked, waving generally in the direction of the next headstone. It was a sandstone affair, its letters semi-obscured by wind and rain and time.
‘Not all,’ she said. ‘Most of these are before my time though I recognize a lot of the surnames. Mam’s in a family plot, you see. All the newer burials these days are back in Gilsland. St Mary Magdalene. The new church, we call it, though it’s been up more than a hundred years.’
‘Your family’s from here, then.’
‘Oh, aye. Dad says they built the place around us. Reckons we helped put up the Roman wall. I’m Denton, now, I suppose, but I hope I’m still Gilsland.’
I didn’t let myself laugh. Gilsland was roughly a mile back down the railway line – a village of a few hundred inhabitants clinging to the remnants of Hadrian’s Wall. Its only other claim to fame was a sulphurous spring, rumoured to produce long life among those who held their nose and drank its waters. The village had experienced a boom two decades back when men from the ministry arrived and declared they were going to transform countless acres of virginal peat bog into a modern RAF base. They did so, at colossal expense. Brought wealth and workers to the place. Tested the rockets that might one day have flown to the moon. Broke the sound barrier so often that the locals got used to their windows rattling. Then the government lost interest. The plug was pulled on the space race and the workers went away. The money that locals had earned in the good times was sunk into subsidising family farms and paying the rent on properties they could no longer afford. People stopped visiting the tourist sites. Dr Beeching even closed the railway station. Gilsland began to fade.
‘You’ll maybe know Dolly,’ said my new friend.
‘Dolly?’ I asked. This was the most I had spoken in months. I was torn between craving a return to the silence, and continuing to lose myself in the warm comforts of her inane prattle.
‘Little woman,’ she explained. ‘Lives in the house by the turn. She’s got normal hands but no arms. Do you know who I’m talking about? She’s a dinner lady at the school. She said you’d had a natter a few weeks back. You said you might come and give a talk at the school.’
I had no memory of the conversation. All I could recall was a short, stout woman who had said something about me coming to the school and talking to the pupils about what it was like to be from somewhere other than there.
‘Would you want to talk to the children?’ asked Felicity. ‘Your neighbour, Mr Parker – he talks to the schools. Our Fairfax is a regular too. You might have something worth hearing.’
I considered my new acquaintance properly. She had a nice face. Her teeth were white and even and she was wearing no make-up. Her hair was the brown of varnished wood. She was wearing clumpy brown shoes and her skirt reached past her knee. I would never have spoken to her had she not spoken to me first. I’d have laughed at her type at university. Would have sneered into my drink and made fun.
‘I’m not sure I’d have anything worth hearing,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the area. Not really. And I’m a bit lost, to tell you the truth.’
‘Lost? Like, you don’t know the way home?’
I wished it were that simple. I wanted to tell her how it felt to be me. How it felt to be bereaved beyond enduring; to have one’s insides scraped out with a spoon like a turnip carved out for Halloween.
‘What’s your family name?’ I asked, out of forced politeness. ‘I’ll check the headstones.’
‘Eagles,’ she said. ‘Though I’ve married a Goose. There aren’t many women can say they’ve gone from an Eagle to a Goose and never flown. My John says I’m bird-brained, but he doesn’t mean it nasty.’
She waited for me to smile at her joke and I obliged. I lowered my book. Marked the page. Readjusted myself against the hard stone.
‘You’re from the Zealand place,’ she said. ‘Farm over the river. Mrs Winslow’s.’
I nodded, watching as her features realigned themselves.
‘I was so sorry to hear about your son,’ she said, looking down at the ground. I think her lip even quivered. ‘Horrible. Just so sad.’
I kept staring at her. I think I did it unkindly, so as to make her feel uncomfortable. I was full of venom, back then. Angry at everything. Hateful and spiteful. I was surrounded by so much blackness it felt like I was swimming through ink.
‘Thank you,’ I said, quietly, though my expression didn’t change.
‘How are you coping?’ she asked, putting her head on her own shoulder so she looked briefly like an injured chicken. ‘I wanted to come and bring you something but John said you’d no doubt have staff for that sort of thing. Are you on the mend?’
I gave a short, harsh laugh. It was a ridiculous question. My child was dead. The child I’d changed my life for. The child I’d given up everything to keep. Every day it felt as though I were wearing damp sheets around my skin and that my throat was being slowly dammed with smooth, cold stones. My existence was sorrow; my every thought an agony.
‘Not well,’ I said, and my face twitched. Just one rebellious muscle, high on my cheek, pulsing like a tiny heartbeat.
‘How old was he?’
‘Just under two.’
‘Awful,’ said Felicity. She sniffed, smearing the heel of her hand across her nose and eyes and shaking her head at herself as if in reprimand.
Tears have always undone me. I’m not one for crying. I can’t see the sense in it. I never feel any better for having squeezed out a few tears. But other people’s weeping is impossible to endure. I find myself overcome by pity. I pulled myself up without thinking about it. Before I knew it I was standing in front of her and offering a handkerchief which she took with a grateful smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head again. ‘It’s just so sad. I thought of you, up that place on your own, having to go through it all. I cried a bucketful when my husband told me.’
‘Do I know him?’ I asked. ‘Your husband?’
‘No, no. But your neighbours, Mr and Mrs Parker, they let people know what had gone on. It’s a small place, even with the airfield and people passing through. People hear things quickly.’
I thought of the Parkers. Her, with her serious face and eyes like Roman coins. Him, with his bad wig and his hunched shoulders in a suit three sizes too big. They’d descended on me after the doctor left. Could they do anything? Did I need help? Was there anything they could get me or anybody they could contact? I’d wanted none of it. They’d never taken the trouble to get to know me or my boy while he was alive and there was no chance I would let them have a part of his death.
‘Is your son buried here?’ asked Felicity, quizzically.
‘He was cremated,’ I said. ‘I scattered him places he liked.’ I gestured around me, remembering his little plump legs kicking at the air, laying on his back and smiling, gummily, with a face he had yet to grow into, on the brown sum
mer grass at my side. ‘I scattered him here.’
‘Cremated?’ asked Felicity. There was something like disapproval there. Something else, too.
‘It felt right.’
‘People get buried around here. I’m surprised I didn’t hear. That sort of thing can be a scandal.’
I felt my expression change. Forced myself not to let the temper out. I didn’t know this woman well enough to give a damn about upsetting her but I knew that if I started shouting, I might never stop.
‘It’s nobody else’s business,’ I said. ‘He was my son.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Felicity, suddenly looking aghast at having spoken so freely. ‘Truly. You and your husband must have been through so much. And with him being away so often …’
I nodded, sparing her the embarrassment of having to finish the lie.
‘I’m Felicity,’ she said. ‘Mrs Goose, really.’
‘Felicity,’ I said, surprised. ‘I knew a Felicity at university. Flick, we called her. Do you get Flick?’
Her face broke into a beam. ‘Never! No, I get the full title, or Phyllis, to those who think the name’s too fancy. Flick! Well, I never.’
‘I’m Cordelia,’ I said. ‘From King Lear.’
‘Where’s that?’ she asked, interested.
‘No, the play. Shakespeare. The name’s from there.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and did not seem to realize she should be embarrassed at her lack of knowledge. ‘Mrs Hemlock, yes?’
‘I’m fine with Cordelia. I haven’t got used to the Hemlock yet.’
‘It’s funny, isn’t it? Having a new name. I still get mine wrong and I’ve been married thirteen years.’
‘And your husband?’
‘John. Works in Carlisle for the corporation. Two children. James and Brian. Brian’s a little so-and-so. Could charm the skin off an apple. You’ve probably seen him in your garden. He knows you’ve got goosegog bushes and he’s the sort to help himself.’
‘Goosegogs?’
‘Gooseberries. Mrs Winslow’s father planted them years back. They still yield?’
I looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. She started talking quickly then, as if to spare me the embarrassment of not knowing.
‘Grand old place, the Zealand Farm. Went there when I was little. Day out with the school, I think. Mrs Winslow played the piano for us. She was already on her own by then. Grand old woman. Strong as an ox. Worked until she couldn’t stand and then took to her bed and gave orders the rest of her days. Shame her son couldn’t take it on but I’m sure your husband’s going to do right by it. Must get lonely up there though. Cold, too. A bugger to heat, I’m guessing …’
I let her talk. Stefan had been dead seven months. I don’t think I’d exchanged more than a handful of words with another soul in that time. I wrote letters to family but couldn’t bring myself to read their replies. I gorged myself on food and drink or starved myself as my mood dictated. My face had begun to look unhealthy, like meat left out in warm weather. When I did take the trouble to brush my hair I would find whole clumps of it wrapped around the brush. If I dressed myself in more than a blanket it was in Cranham’s discarded clothes – big, patterned shirts with extravagant cuffs and collars; rugby shorts so big I could fit my whole body through one leg-hole. I floated around the house like a leaf on the breeze, wafting into empty rooms and nudging against the great thick walls and ancient bannisters; knocking pictures askew with careless movements, hugging myself in the dark behind thick, dusty curtains; cuddling my knees in front of a dead fire.
It took me an effort of colossal will to emerge into fresh air. Took small walks to the pretty places Stefan and I had enjoyed. Dragged myself down muddy tracks and over damp wooden stiles to look upon waterfalls and deep pools of whisky-coloured water; breathlessly clawing my way up steep riverbanks to stare at landscapes that had made my baby smile; mosaics of so many different greens and browns; the houses and farms arranged as if a giant hand had scattered them across the landscape.
‘… but you went to university, you say?’ asked Felicity, when she finished a lengthy monologue on the various people who had showed an interest in the Winslow place before Cranham had bought it.
‘Classics,’ I said, and realized I might have to add a bit more. ‘Nuffield. Oxford.’
‘Oxford? That’s a good one, yes?’
I smiled, not unkindly. ‘It is, yes.’
‘They let women go, do they?’
I let my surprise show. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Felicity, and seemed to mean it. ‘Just seems a man sort of thing. You must be very clever.’
I wasn’t sure what to say. What was the right story to tell? That I was one of only three females on the course? That I’d had to fight twice as hard to prove myself? That I was seen as a tea girl by half the faculty? Or should I tell her how I’d ruined it? How I’d let a married man become the only thought in my head? How I’d become infatuated? I was Byron’s lioness; a creature of undiluted passion, driven mad by a desire to possess and be possessed. I had thrown myself at him. His protestations and dismissals were twisted by my imagination into declarations of eternal love. I left him no choice but to have me. He did his damnedest to resist but I was young and my skin was soft and my mouth was hot and in the end it would have taken more strength than he possessed to resist me. He cried afterwards. Sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, weeping at what he had done. I see myself there, now. Laying on my back with a triumphant smile on my face and a warm, pleasant pain between my legs. I had done what I set out to. I had earned him. Taken him inside myself. His tears spoiled the moment. I told him not to cry – that he had done nothing wrong. I wanted it. I had forced it. He had earned the right to some happiness. I’ve never forgotten how he looked at me. At the disgust and the anger and the sheer contempt in his eyes. I had trapped him, he said. I’d ruined everything. He did not want this. Never had. I was a whore. A tramp. I was repellent to him …
‘I didn’t finish the course,’ I said, briskly. ‘Baby came along.’
‘Oh well, at least you must have learned something, eh?’ said Felicity. ‘And you’re married now so it doesn’t really matter anyways.’
I wasn’t sure where to start with Felicity. Wasn’t sure how to begin re-educating her. I didn’t know whether to let her ignorance go by unremarked, or to analyse her every statement to see if she could possibly mean the things she said.
‘Dulling over,’ said Felicity, looking at the sky.
We both looked up. I hadn’t noticed the change but she was right. The sky was a leaden grey and the clouds that were tumbling in from the east were black battleships. The birds had fallen silent.
‘Spot of rain,’ I said, extending a hand.
‘You walk here?’ asked Felicity.
‘I don’t have a car,’ I said.
‘Of course you don’t have a car,’ she said. ‘A bicycle, I meant.’
‘No. I just walked. You?’
‘I’m only up the road. White house at the top of the lane. Two minutes. You’ll never make it back to Winslow’s.’
‘It’s fine. I don’t mind the rain.’
She looked at me as if I was mad. ‘There’s going to be a storm. You get caught out in it, well, it’s not the rain you have to worry about. It’s the lightning.’
I dismissed her fears, screwing up my face as if to say that such a thing was a needless worry. Above, the clouds twisted upon themselves, like milk being poured into black tea. I heard raindrops begin to hit the leaves. Felt droplets of water fall as footsteps upon my skin. There was something in the air; a static and charge. The hairs on my arms began to rise like sails.
‘Come to my place,’ she said. ‘You can wait out the storm. I have a nice apple cake. The children are at school. I would be worried sick letting you walk.’
‘I’ll just pop in the church,’ I said, waving at the sturdy grey oblong with its flat roof, leaded wi
ndows and thick walls.
‘Is it open? It’s always locked. Fairfax is the warden and he lives two doors from me. You’re just as well popping to my place.’
I was torn. Part of me was enjoying this sudden moment of human contact. Felicity was a warm, kind and generous soul who wanted to keep me safe from the storm. What did it say about me if I refused? Yet the idea of a warm, comfortable family home filled me with dread. I would never have such a thing myself. I would never know such a life.
‘Here it comes,’ said Felicity, and she raised a hand above her head. She was still holding the flowers and seemed to realize it. ‘Here, give these to the grave you’ve been laying on. I’ll get more for Mam.’
For a moment I felt as though I was inside a tin shack and somebody was banging upon it with a bat. The rumble in the sky was a colossal thing. God moving furniture in the heavens. I ducked my head into my shoulders. The shiver that passed through me was primal; a fear that would have seemed as familiar to the Romans who stood on the nearby boundary wall as it did to me. It was a feeling that the ground was about to split; that some almighty force was preparing to plunge His fists into the ground and pull up the earth’s foundations.
‘Come on,’ said Felicity, and to my surprise, she took my hand. I found myself smiling, grinning inanely, as I was led briskly between the ancient graves that stood out of the long damp grass and the untended wildflowers like boulders from the sea.
‘Oh goodness, here it comes …’
I gave a shriek as the skies opened and a deluge like I had never witnessed tumbled down. It was as if somebody had flipped the earth; as if the sea had become the sky. I felt as though I was running through a waterfall. Felicity kept hold of my hand and we staggered up the shingle path towards the rusty black gate. Felicity wrenched it open and turned to tell me to hurry.
I felt the lightning strike rather than saw it. I experienced a sudden moment of light and heat and power at my back, as if somebody had suddenly opened the door of a furnace behind me. I spun and lost my footing, dropping painfully to one knee and my hand was wrenched from Felicity’s. I lay there, twisted and sprawled, watching the deluge beat down upon the tiny church and the ancient tombstones, flattening down the grass and thistles, ragwort and cow parsley. Then came the sound. A noise like the cry of a dying beast; a keening wail that grew to a scream before climaxing in a crack that hurt my ears.