The Harrogate Secret (aka The Secret)

by Catherine Cookson

  Slowly he pulled the packet out of his pocket, and as his fingers came in contact with the loose powder the word ‘Eeh!’ escaped him again, and, pulling himself into a sitting position, he looked at it.

  The wrapping, whatever it was made of, was split. The inner wrapping which he saw was silk, that too was split. But what he noticed right away was there were two separate little packages: besides the one with white powder there was one holding brown powder. He moved his finger in the white powder and was amazed to feel pieces of glass. Dusting the powder slightly aside he saw the pieces of glass. And when he did the same with the brown powder, the pieces of glass he saw were red.

  At first he thought of them as glass because his mind wasn’t working properly. But of a sudden it seemed to spring back to life and he thought, God Almighty! These are jewels.

  He knew traffic went on in jewellery, but he understood it was just the Newcastle lot who got up to that lark because it was so dangerous. Ten years or more you could get, he understood, if these were found on you. And this is what he had been carrying! He had thought it was just powder which was really a drug. Why people risked their necks for drugs he couldn’t understand because you could go to the dispensary in the town and buy all kinds of drugs and have them made up into medicine. They were all arrayed in coloured bottles around the shop. Some of the bottles were more than a foot high and quite bonny. The lids were like helmets with points on. But this man’s powder had been just a sort of package for stones, like these. Eeh! Dear God! He wished he would come and take them and let him get back home.

  He was feeling dizzy again. He’d better wrap these up as best he could and put them back in his pocket. He had just accomplished this when a bout of tiredness, as he thought of it, overtook him, and as the moon disappeared once more he slipped back into sleep…

  When he next woke it was daylight, and he was so stiff he could hardly move. His head was aching and his hip was sore. With an effort he pulled himself to his feet. His head was just above the brushwood in which he had been lying and there, just a few feet away, was a narrow road. He turned about, to see that the brushwood stretched away into the distance to some houses and his muzzy thinking told him to make for them. But when he attempted to walk he almost cried out with the pain in his hip, and so, dropping onto his knees, he crawled further into the brushwood.

  He had gone about ten yards when he was brought to a surprising halt, for there before him was a shallow gully with a rivulet of water running along it. As if he were in a desert and had found an oasis he slipped down the side of the gully and, kneeling down, he splashed his face and hair with the water. And as he did so his tongue lapped it, and it tasted cool and fresh. He guessed it was from a spring.

  The blood cleared from his hair, his fingers searched for a cut, but he could feel only grazed skin, and he wondered why, if that was the case, he should be feeling as odd as he was?

  You could take your trousers off and look at your leg.

  As if obeying a voice that sounded like that of the Miss he first took off his boots, then carefully slipped off his trousers, lifted up the tail of his rough shirt and saw that his leg was whole but black and blue from the hip down to the side of the knee.

  He was lucky, he told himself, he had just hit the side of that stone. If he had landed full on it he could have broken his hip, or his back. The thought made him shudder; he was always careful about his legs, fearful lest he got a knock. That’s why he rarely went barefooted if he could help it; Sandy Ramshaw had lost a foot after he had trodden on a broken bottle.

  As he lowered his bruised leg into the water he gave a sigh as if of pleasure, but he crawled up onto the bank again and, bare from the waist down, he lay there until the sun dried his skin; then he put his trousers on and, lying flat on his back, he looked up into the sky. He wasn’t hungry, he was just tired; but he mustn’t go to sleep again. If only that man would come and take his package, he could then get home. There came into his mind a picture of home; but again it wasn’t the kitchen with his father sitting propped up against the wall and Lily and Jessie on the mat, his mother at the table and Nancy, sitting beside their father making bobbin lace, while John, worn out with work, dozed in the chair; no; it was the kitchen with the iron range and the table, with the white cloth on it and the delph rack holding all the blue china, and the brass helmet coal scuttle that stood between the fender and the sink, and the pump that splashed water into the sink. The last picture in his mind was of the Miss cutting the crust of the meat pie last night…

  What was the matter with him? He blinked his eyes and stared up into the darkening sky. It was just a minute since that he had been looking up and the sun had been on his face. He couldn’t have been asleep all this time. What was the matter with him? Had something gone wrong in his head? He pulled his stiff slight frame upwards. Had the man been looking for him? Eeh! He’d have to get up and get to the house before it got too dark and he wouldn’t be able to see his way out of this.

  When he got to his feet he buttoned his jacket up because now he was feeling chilly; then he put his hand to his head as though to straighten his cap, and remembered feeling his head and finding the blood. He hadn’t the cap. Then he remembered the stone. He must have left it there.

  Standing up now, he limped his way back through the brushwood to where he could see the road. And, he congratulated himself on his sense of direction because there was the stone and the place where he had lain, and he knew it to be the same place because there was some blood on the stone. That must have come off his hand. But his cap wasn’t lying anywhere about. Somebody had got his cap.

  He stepped onto the road and as he did so he told himself that he didn’t know where this led to, so the best thing to do was to go back to where it branched off and take the road he knew. This he did; and he met no-one, not on this branch which wasn’t much more than a path, nor on the road that led to The Towers.

  He went up the drive, past the front of the house and into the courtyard.

  When he knocked on the kitchen door it was opened by Connie, the maid he remembered from time back with the pockmarks and the wobbly eye and what she said was, ‘My God, it’s you! Come on! Come on! Come on away in!’ She pulled him into the kitchen and, looking towards her mother, she cried, ‘He’s here!’

  Betty Wheatley stared at him for a moment, then as if he had just left the house earlier on that day or perhaps the day before, she said, ‘Where on earth have you been, lad?’

  ‘I hit me head. I must have fallen asleep. He…he threw me into a thicket.’

  ‘Did anybody see you come? What I mean is, did you see anybody on the road?’

  ‘No, not a soul. I was in a sort of field. I didn’t know me way from there and so I came onto the proper road.’

  Betty turned to her daughter, saying, ‘Go and tell your da to tell him.’

  ‘Me da’s had enough of him for one day; I’ll take him in. Anyway, Da’s on the lookout: you never know when we’ll have another visit, they won’t let up. As me da says, they’ve got their teeth in now and they won’t let go. Where’s it all gona end?’

  She didn’t wait for an answer but, grabbing Freddie’s sleeve, she said, ‘Come along with you!’ then, ‘What’s the matter? You’ve hurt your leg?’

  ‘Aye. When he tossed me I fell onto a stone.’

  ‘It’s a wonder you didn’t break your neck.’

  He followed her across the hall and up a corridor; but before she reached the end of it she stopped and, turning, whispered, ‘Don’t aggravate him by answering back. If I remember owt about you, you’ve got a ready tongue an’ it won’t have bettered with time. Now do as I say an’ don’t answer him back.’

  He didn’t want to answer him or anybody else back; he just wanted to hand over the parcel and get himself away from this house and everybody in it.

  Connie didn’t knock on the door but pushed it open, saying loudly, ‘He’s here!’

  Roderick Gallagher sprang up from the ch
air he had been sitting in and in his haste he almost toppled over a table on which there was a decanter, a glass, and a long pipe and two blue stone jars.

  Steadying the table with one hand, he watched Freddie limp towards him. And when the boy stopped by a chair at the other side of the fireplace he spoke, saying below his breath but almost in a growl, ‘Where the hell do you think you’ve been?’

  ‘I…I was lying in the thicket.’

  ‘Don’t tell me bloody lies. I went to the thicket. What’s this!’ He bent over, reached out and picked up the cap from the hearth. ‘I was about to burn it. You forgot it, didn’t you?’

  ‘I kept fallin’ asleep an’…and I felt funny. I was gona try to reach a house, so I crept back an’…and I came to a stream, a little stream, and I bathed me head an’ me leg.’ Now his voice dared to rise a little as he said, ‘You could have knocked me out; you did for a time. I hit some stones when I fell and after that I…I kept fallin’ asleep. Me leg’s all black an’ blue, an’ me head’s cut.’ He pointed first to his side and then to his head.

  ‘Where’s the package you were given?’

  ‘It’s in me pocket here.’

  ‘Well, let me have it. Come here!’

  Freddie took two steps towards the man, undid his belt and the flap of his trousers, and as he put his hand down to his pocket he said, ‘It got bust on the stone when I fell.’

  ‘Bust? What do you mean, bust?’

  ‘Well, it split.’

  ‘And it spilt?’

  ‘Oh, no, no; it just split. I put me hand in to see if it was all right and I felt it split.’

  He drew out the package and placed it on the outstretched palm; then he watched the man look at it for a moment before moving his fingers in the white powder, and then in the brown. ‘You knew what you were carrying, did you?’

  He told himself he had to be careful here, so he said, ‘Aye, powder, a kind of drug. I’ve carried it for you afore.’

  ‘Have you looked into this powder?’

  Freddie looked towards the palm now and shook his head, saying, ‘No; I told you I was too tired to bother. As long as it was all right and the powder hadn’t spilt. I was careful when I pulled it out and put it back again.’

  He now looked towards the fire. The room was very hot; he felt he could fall asleep again at any minute. He said, ‘Please…please can I sit down?’

  He shrank back a little as the hands came out towards him, and felt surprise as he was lifted from the floor and placed in the big leather chair. Then a glass was being held to his mouth and the man was saying, ‘Drink that. Sup it all up.’

  He knew what rum tasted like, and ale, he’d had drops on the sly, but this was different, and when he screwed his face up and coughed the man said, ‘It’s a pity, but you’ll never acquire a taste for fine French brandy.’

  He sipped at the glass again. He liked it, and it seemed to take the tiredness away.

  The man was sitting opposite to him now and he was saying, ‘You kept your word. Do you remember the last conversation we had in this room?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He remembered that too: he had always to address him as sir.

  ‘This is the first time we’ve met since that night; there’s been a go-between at other times, hasn’t there?’

  When he didn’t answer the man said, ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth, and go-betweens get greedy. You were never greedy. What did Freeman give you?’

  ‘Sixpence.’

  The man put back his head and looked up towards the ceiling saying, ‘Good God!’ and the gesture brought back the time when he had watched him do that before. Then he was looking at him again and saying in quite an ordinary tone, ‘I hate that fellow, you know. I hate meanness, but I’ll fix him before he’s finished. He’s got enough stored away to fill Jingling Geordie’s Hole. You know the hole?’

  ‘Yes, the one above the short sands, near the castle. They say the Romans made it.’

  ‘They say more than their prayers and they whistle them; they’ve got no authority for that, no more than they have for the subterranean passage that was supposed to run from there under the Tyne all the way to Jarrow so that the monks could trot through to visit their kin on the other side. But anyway, who knows? They were merely men with men’s wants and women are always ready and waiting; no need for enticing. How old are you now, boy?’

  ‘Twelve, sir.’

  ‘Oh well, it’ll soon be on you.’

  He didn’t know what would soon be on him, but again he was feeling sleepy and the man’s voice became a drone in his ears. He was talking about the money that was being spent on Lord Collingwood’s monument that was to be erected next year. Something about it standing on a fifty foot pedestal. Now he was on about the Black Middens below the Spanish Battery. Now he was talking about South Shields and the Herd sands.

  His eyes were closing and he seemed to be on the point of sleep with the voice saying, ‘That bloody lot in Newcastle sucking the river dry. But their time’s running out, did they but know it.’

  Then he was shot into wakefulness by the bursting open of the door and Mrs Wheatley’s voice crying, ‘Frank’s just signalled. They’re here again.’

  He was dragged from the chair as the man swung him round towards the woman, saying harshly, ‘Get rid of him.’

  ‘Where? But where?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘That’s a daft answer.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is, but where?’ The man was now beating his fist against his brow. ‘He can’t go outside: he’s been concussed; he’ll fall asleep in the yard. Put him in the cupboard in the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh, talk sense!’

  Fancy her talking like that to him. But she still went on: ‘The cupboard in the kitchen after they prised the floorboards up in the attic!’

  ‘The attic.’ He was wagging his finger wildly at her now. ‘The cubbyhole.’

  He wasn’t fully awake but wide enough to listen and to see a look almost of fear on the woman’s face as she stammered now, saying, ‘You’ve always said…’

  ‘Yes, I know: I wouldn’t put a dog in there. But woman, what’ll happen if they come in and find him?’ And saying this, he thrust his fist now into Freddie’s chest, causing the boy to stumble against the edge of the chair and to sit down; but only momentarily before he was whipped up again.

  ‘Put him in there; it’s the only place. God damn it! He’ll be the death of me yet, this one. Take him, quick!’

  Holding a candle in one hand, the woman was now dragging him along the corridor with the other; then up the stairs; across the wide landing; up another flight and onto a bare landing; and from there into a carpetless room.

  In the flickering light of the candle he saw that the room, except for a few trunks, was entirely bare. There was an iron fireplace built into one wall with a high grate and a small mantelshelf above it, and there was a window to the side. But there was only one other door in the room, and this she wrenched open and thrust him into what he imagined must be a broom cupboard. The Miss had a cupboard like this where she kept her brooms, buckets and cleaning things. And there was a brush in here and a bucket and what looked like rough dishcloths hanging from a peg.

  Holding the candle high, she put her free arm upwards and pressed her hand against the low ceiling. And now his eyes nearly popped out of his head as the whole wall of the cupboard slid away and there showed up before him a weird room. Even in the poor light of the candle he knew it was weird. But what was more weird still was the movement in the far corner of it.

  He was shaking visibly as he watched her pressing something in what looked like a mattress stuck to the wall while the door slid into position again.

  When, his voice a whimper now, he said, ‘Missis,’ she said, ‘It’s all right, lad, it’s all right. You’ll come to no harm in here. And she won’t hurt you, poor mite.’

  His eyes were stretched wide, his mouth agape as he stared in amazement down on the child sitting on what look
ed like a half single mattress in the narrow slit of…he couldn’t call it a room, just this place.

  Again the woman was speaking to him. She had her arm round his shoulder and she was pointing to the child, saying, ‘You remember the baby? He…he wanted to do away with it. Well, he…he thinks it’s gone, but…but we couldn’t. Connie defied him on the side like. He doesn’t know she’s here. He’d murder the lot of us if he did. We’re at our wits’ end. We don’t know what to do with her. It’s keepin’ her clean an’ fed, that’s the trouble.’

  He muttered now, ‘What’s…what’s this place?’

  ‘It’s what we call the cubbyhole. He’s frightened of it, the master; he’ll never come near it. You see he used to be pushed in here when he was a young lad. I think it’s gone a long way to make him turn out as he has. It was his father. You see, his grandfather built this place, I mean the whole house, he was a master builder, and he built this special room on with his own hands so he could put his wife in when she had one of her turns. He wouldn’t have her put away to an asylum. You see there’s no sound can get out; these are all hair mattresses.’ She put her hand out and tapped the padded wall. ‘An’ behind them is another layer of padding. The grandmother didn’t last all that long but I think the master’s father was given a taste of this room himself; then he passed it on to his son. Give the master his due, he always said he wouldn’t put a dog in here. So the child’s been safe so far. But God only knows what would happen if he found out. I tell you he’d murder the lot of us, ’cos he still has nightmares about her, the mother. You remember? He can’t get over the fact that she made a cuckold of him.’