by M K Jones
Very carefully Maggie unfolded the garment, to find that she was holding a child’s dress, made of grey, serge-like material. The design of the dress was plain, a high neck, buttoned at the back, with long sleeves.
As she picked it up, Maggie saw that another garment was wrapped with it, which she could now see was a white pinafore. Putting the two together, it was clear that this was a uniform. She wrote a quick description of each, carefully placed the two garments on the bed on the other side of the trunk. She unpacked two more dresses of a simple design, underwear of white cotton, stockings, two nightdresses, a coat, buttoned shoes and a pair of stout brown boots that looked hardly worn. Taking care, she wrote a brief description of each item before laying out all of the garments on her bed. Her certainty increased that this was the wardrobe of a young girl of around nine or ten. Her own Alice’s age, and of a similar build.
Maggie didn’t know enough about fashion history to make an accurate guess of the era in which the clothes would have been worn. Her best guess was that they would have been around the turn of the previous century. She would have to consult Zelah, who would probably turn out to be an expert in this, too.
Finally, at the bottom of the trunk, was a shawl. It was old and worn, the colours long since faded, but it didn’t look like it belonged to a child. It had been wrapped tightly and Maggie thought that she could feel something more solid than wool at the centre. As the last fold opened, it revealed a largish, rectangular piece of card with a few words of miniscule, copperplate writing on it. She couldn’t make out what the writing was, so she turned it over, and found that she was holding an old photograph. It had a name and date written in the same script: Garth Hill School, January 1883.
This was a substantial clue and it probably dated the clothes. The photograph was black-and-white and very faded in parts. But it was still possible to make out details of the faces of the thirty or so children seated and standing in four rows in front of the dark wooden door of a whitewashed building. She surmised that the building was Garthwood School. She noted how solemn they looked.
She recognised the uniform she had taken out of the trunk as that of the girls in the photograph. As she scanned the picture she could see that the uniformity extended beyond the clothes. They all sported a similar pudding bowl haircut; some of the boys wore a long jacket buttoned up to the neck on which they wore at the breast pocket a dangling watch chain. Many of the jackets looked shabby, with straining buttons, which she guessed was the result of the wearer being well down the line of family members to inherit the school coat.
Then she began to examine the photo in detail, row by row, face by face. She was searching each face for any sign of a family feature that might help her to identify a child as a relative. At the second row from the bottom, third from the left, she stopped, mouth open, staring at two small girls’ faces. She pondered what to do next, then stood up, went downstairs to the hall, picked up the phone, and dialled Zelah Trevear’s number.
Sixteen
May 1883
Ruth walked slowly down the lane, as there was still an hour to the start of the school day and she didn’t want to linger around the schoolhouse for too long awaiting the arrival of the teacher.
As she walked, she thought over the conversation with Gwen Ellis. Gwen was the meekest person Ruth had ever met, so she had been shocked by such an outspoken display of dislike of the minister. Ruth could understand the dislike. It had been an effort to keep her own face expressionless each week as she and John endured Pugh’s sarcasm and spite so obviously aimed at them during his sermons. They had had many fruitless discussions trying to understand what had caused this animosity towards them.
* * *
When they had arrived at the farm, less than a year previously, and introduced themselves to the local community they had been welcomed, albeit primarily as objects of curiosity. There had been questions about their past, where they had come from, and why they had chosen to move to the Two Locks.
The local shopkeepers and traders were, on the whole, friendly and as soon as their curiosity was sated they maintained a good relationship with the family. Whenever Ruth visited the shops and businesses surrounding the green next to the chapel, conversation settled down quickly to the daily matters of mutual interest. Garth Hill was a small but thriving community, and there was much to discuss. John and Ruth made it clear that they had no interest in local gossip or scandal. However, being the owner of the largest and most productive farm in the community, it wasn’t long before John was sought after for his opinion on local matters.
By Christmas 1882, Ruth felt that they had become a part of the everyday life of the community. Then, quite suddenly, the minister, Richard Robinson, with whom they had developed a friendly relationship, was called away to his dying mother. His place was taken by Robert Pugh, a short, dark, stubby, middle-aged Englishman, from Herefordshire.
Pugh immediately drew them into his circle, asked their advice, and told them how much he valued their friendship. But it soon became apparent that he only welcomed people who agreed with his own point of view. If either of them ventured to offer an alternative opinion, Pugh quickly became resentful and rude.
He was a man with a barely-concealed disdain for the Welsh. “The Welsh must learn,” he would pronounce, “that immoral behaviour is not acceptable in decent communities.”
Also part of Pugh’s close circle were the Morrises, Charles and Bessie. Outwardly, Charles Morris took his role as senior pastor very seriously, but Ruth found that he always deferred to his wife.
Bessie Morris welcomed Ruth’s confidences, shared her own, particularly about fellow chapel members, which were frequently no more than gossip and made plain her disdain towards the poorer members of the parish. One particular conversation had goaded Ruth into a sharper retort than was wise.
“I’m surprised you allow your daughter to mix with the servant child, Mrs Jones. I would not allow mine to do so. Alice should not be so friendly with Esme Ellis.”
Ruth let Bessie know that she had no such qualms.
“Indeed, Mrs Jones. No offence intended, I’m sure. I was only trying to advise.” But Bessie Morris’s tone told Ruth that a great deal of offence had been taken. The resulting coolness between them became icier and for a while they avoided conversation. For Ruth, this would have been a satisfactory outcome. But for BessieMorris, who brooked no argument on any matter, ascendency over Ruth became an obsession, as did finding out all she could about them.
John and Ruth were shocked at the start of the New Year of 1883 to learn that Bessie had gone back to their old farm, and then to the colliery where John had worked as a traffic manager, and even to where he had worked for the rail board. Disgusted as she was, Ruth began to fear that Bessie might dig far enough to find out what John wanted most desperately that none should know.
As she walked, she thought again what Bessie had insinuated in their most recent confrontation in January when much had been said that should have been regretted, but was not.
John had been dignified, as always, but angry. The anger not caused by Bessie Morris’s spiteful insinuations about him, but by the support she received from the school teacher, who added a direct assault upon their children, and upon Alice in particular.
He could tolerate Bessie’s suggestions that he was not what he seemed, but when Miss Eira Probert hinted that Alice got her wicked nature from her father’s family, that was too much for him. When he questioned Eira Probert’s own background, her sudden appearance at the school, and her suitability to teach, Ruth became apprehensive at what was developing.
Eira’s insinuations had been vocally supported by Minister Pugh, the Morrises, and the other chapel elders. But when she claimed that she had been invited to Garth Hill with the support of Robert Pugh, Ruth saw Pugh’s head twitch, and a furrow appear between his eyebrows, his eyes flickering questioningly at the teacher. Nonetheless he had leapt to her defence, exclaiming so loudly as to silence everyone el
se gathered in the meeting room behind the chapel that Eira Probert was an excellent woman and had his total support. He had worked himself up to a fury, declaring that all the others were probably untrustworthy and working against him.
John waited a moment in the stunned hush that followed, then smiled slightly and said, “I understand you, sir. But I am not satisfied. For I have daily witness of distressed children who were before happily involved with their studies. So, despite your excellent endorsement, I will make my own enquiries,” this with a sideways nod to Bessie Morris, whose fat cheeks rouged as she stared defiantly at him.
Since that day the Jones family and the aforementioned group had, by undeclared but mutual consent, rarely spoken to each other, maintaining a frigid public civility.
Ruth knew that Bessie Morris continued to make enquiries, going so far as to speak to a cousin of Ruth’s at a chapel meeting in Cardiff to ask about John’s family background. When they discovered this covert activity, John was angry, but Ruth assured him that the cousin had said nothing, didn’t know anything more than any other member of Ruth’s family, and had, after all, been loyal enough to inform Ruth at the first opportunity. With that they had to be content. John intended to write to the school board. However, the insidious attacks on Alice’s and her friend Esme’s characters and morals continued from Eira Probert.
If Essy hadn’t died, Ruth knew that John would have taken further action, despite possible exposure and further detriment to himself. He cared not that requests for his opinion in the community had declined in the weeks before Essy died. He made this indifference clear to Pugh and Charles Morris, whom he was sure were behind it. What John didn’t know, that Ruth had found out from a conversation with the wife of the postmaster, who had heard it from the manager of the iron factory, was that the coolness was due to questions about John’s heritage. Bessie had done her work well, Ruth thought ruefully.
* * *
Deep in thought, her eyes fixed on the uneven ground, Ruth was jerked out of her musings by the strong scent of lilac that filled the air around her. She looked up and found that the whitewashed schoolhouse building was already in view. There were no children around. She had covered the ground too quickly while thinking, and was early.
She saw too that she was about to reach a fork in the lane, where a smaller, rougher path led up the mountain, one of several that wound their way past cottages and smallholdings to the summit of the ridge, and to The Pond, where Esme Ellis had drowned.
Ruth had never been there, but Alice had described it as a favourite place of the children, because wild lovehearts grew among the trees just back from the water. Alice and Essy had arranged to meet at The Pond after school that terrible day to pick the flowers.
Now she realised that she had never questioned this aspect of Alice’s story. Why had Alice been late meeting Esme? And from what Ruth knew of The Pond, this path came out along the side of the water, but Alice had spoken about coming from behind when she found Essy.
“I must see this for myself,” she thought and turned to head up the mountain.
The route was longer and steeper than Ruth had expected. After she passed some cottages and a few farm buildings, the hedgerows disappeared and the land opened up. The track itself became much rougher with both large stones and potholes, so that she had to concentrate on where she stepped, but when she looked up she could see that she was already quite high. Here there was no respite from the sharp wind that buffeted the heather and gorse that went to the top of the mountain ridge. Ruth pulled her shawl further around her shoulders and walked on resolutely.
She followed the twists and turns of the track into the gulley of the mountain that couldn’t be seen from the valley below. There was only the sound of the wind among the plants and the intermittent bleats of sheep that scrambled to find secure footing among the gorse bushes. The wind caught loose strands of her hair and blew them into her eyes so that she had to pause to tuck them back before she continued. As the path straightened rose up a short inclineshe got her first glimpse of The Pond, sheltered from the wind by the bowl formed in the mountainside.
“What a lonely place to die,” she thought, sadly.
The path was flatter and wider now, and much easier to walk along as she approached the water’s edge. The Pond itself was roughly oval, around fifty feet long, and twenty feet wide, shallow around the edges, and deep in the centre. Grass and mud ran seamlessly to the water’s edge except for two or three wooden walkways that jutted out into deeper water. A group of trees nestled against the mountainside close to where the path came in. At the valley side of the water was a large rock, which Ruth knew was where Essy had fallen in. She walked up to it and could see the bottom, about three or four feet below. She supposed that Essy had been standing or crouching down on the rock when she had slipped, hit her head and fallen in. But what had the girl been doing here? Alice had said that she and Essy had come to The Pond to pick the lovehearts, and they were in a small copse of trees which was about thirty feet away from the water.
Alice said that she had come up the path behind Essy, found her in the water and pulled her out, then had run back to get help. There had been no mention of flowers so Essy must have waited for Alice by the water’s edge. But Essy had always been naturally nervous, so Ruth was surprised that she would have ventured over the water by herself. And how could Alice have been behind Essy if she wasn’t in the trees? Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t work out what it was.
She stood up and looked around. She took in the deep blue of the fading lovehearts that carpeted the grass among the trees. The colour drew her around the water and she walked slowly towards the trees, with a vague feeling of concern, suddenly imagining that the trees could be sheltering more than lovehearts.
“Stop! This is foolish imagination,” she told herself.
She walked past two prominent trees that stood like sentinels. Their trunks were almost touching from their bases to waist height then separated forming a Y-shape as they rose. Ruth stooped within the little wood to pick a few of the pretty flowers, but remembered that she had to go the school and stopped. She turned and noticed that from this angle the twin trunks formed both a barrier and a perfect view of the rock at the edge of the water.
She walked again to the edge of the lake where she stood for a moment in sad contemplation of the fun that Alice and Essy must have had so many times here.
Seventeen
The whitewashed school sat just off the main lane into the village and close to the central green. Around the green were the shops and post office that made up the village of Garth Hill. The school served both the village and the outlying farms, plus the growing number of ironworkers’ children from the cottages that were spreading out from Newport. The children were all taught together in one classroom, with the small children at the front and the big ones assisting and sitting in a row of higher desks at the back.
Ruth walked up to the entrance door. It was locked. She peered through the glass circle in the top half of the solid wooden door for a sign of the teacher moving inside, when a voice close behind her ear made her turn quickly in surprise.
“May I be of assistance?”
Ruth looked into the blank face of the schoolteacher, Eira Probert. Eira Probert’s small-eyed, expressionless stare bore into Ruth, who instinctively retreated a pace pressing her uncomfortably against the handle of the door. She felt cornered. To add to her discomfort Eira stepped closer so that their faces were just inches from each other and Ruth could feel the other woman’s warm breath on her cheek.
Eira had always looked pallid, and close up Ruth saw that her skin was pale and sweaty, like uncooked dough. For a moment Ruth thought that the skin was swirling. Her light brown, tightly bunned hair, seemed to be plastered to her scalp with something akin to animal fat. She gave off the aroma of a rotting carcass. Ruth felt sick.
“No wonder the children dislike her!” she thought. Then aloud: “I have come to speak to you a
bout Alice and William, Miss Probert, and would be grateful if you would allow me five minutes of your time.” She smiled weakly at the teacher.
There was no response in Eira’s expression, but she retreated enough to allow Ruth to move away from the door. Eira produced a large iron key from her pocket, turned it in the lock, and they entered the school with Ruth taking the lead. Ruth was unable to hear Eira’s footsteps and when she reached her desk and turned around, Eira was standing just a few inches in front of her.
Eira Probert’s hands were clutched in front of her with her fingers pointing up to make a bony spire. She stared, unblinking, expressionless, waiting. Interpreting both her stare and the proximity as an attempt at intimidation, Ruth determinedly kept her feet still, despite a feeling of crawling flesh and a strong desire to step backwards. She returned the stare for a moment before she spoke.
“I think you know that my daughter is missing, Miss Probert.”
Eira’s head inclined, but she remained silent. Ruth detected a thinning of her lips into the ghost of a smile.
“I think you know something.”
Eira hesitated, her mouth open and her eyes widened in surprise at the directness. Ruth pressed on.
“I understand you encouraged unkindness towards Alice yesterday when she returned to school. I would like to understand why.”
She saw twitches in Eira’s face as she blinked and shuffled backwards. Ruth, to her own surprise, moved a step towards Eira, straightening her back and clutching her shawl closer to her chest.
“Well, Miss Probert? You spoke of ‘sin being its own enemy’ or some such. I believe this was in response to words spoken too loudly by Miss Elsie Morris.”
Ruth held her ground and stared at Eira. The teacher looked down at the ground, then slowly up at Ruth. As her head came up the look of sheer malice in her face was unmistakeable and made Ruth’s heart pound so loudly she felt sure that Eira could hear it. If the woman had looked at a child like this… But she had no intention of letting her know how nervous she was.