Saturday's Child (35 page)

Arm in arm, they walked into the small hall where a stage and curtains had been installed. It was time for Beth to make yet another of her débuts.

A much thinner Nellie Hulme and a much plumper Lily Hardcastle travelled on the bus up to Hesford. Closer than sisters, these two were welded together by lacework so strong
that only God would ever undo that stitching. They also shared the rearing of Roy and the control of Aaron, whose marketing skills were amazing. In fact, he had done so well that several dozen
homeworkers were now knitting day and night to fill the orders he had taken without informing his employers. ‘But Mam,’ he had answered when reproached, ‘I can sell it, I can sell
it all.’ Which was true, because the lad might have sold coal to folk from Newcastle.

‘Nice up here,’ said Nellie, whose speech was coming on in leaps and bounds.

‘Lovely,’ agreed Lily, her mind fixed on Aaron and Roy. ‘They’ll be all right, won’t they?’

‘Yes, they will.’

Each woman carried a shopping bag containing nightdress, clean underclothing and toiletries. After the play, they were to take supper with Magsy, Paul and Beth. Tonight, they would sleep under
the roof of Miss Katherine Moore of Knowehead, once owner of the house to which they now travelled, Chedderton Grange. Lily swallowed a lump of nervousness. ‘I can’t remember the last
time I slept away from home.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ said Nellie, ‘you’re with me.’

‘I know. But she’s reckoned to be fierce.’

Nellie laughed. ‘Yes, well, so are we. And there’s two of us, so she had better watch out.’

‘They’ll remember to feed Skinny and Spot, won’t they?’

Nellie sighed. ‘Yes, they will. Now stop worrying, here’s where we get off.’

They walked up the road to the Grange, each looking forward to the play. It was good to be out, good to be together even in the chill darkness of October. The house hove into view, its gardens
lit by lamps, the driveway long and winding.

Yes, this would be a good night.

Katherine had not picked up Peter Smythe’s book in weeks, but she had asked Beth to fetch it for her this very afternoon. Weary and made cross because of her inability to
watch the play, Katherine decided to indulge herself.

She opened it at her mark, chewed absently on a rare treat, Belgian chocolate with strawberry filling. Yes, the man had enjoyed an interesting life, but the new painkillers were extremely
effective. After just a couple of paragraphs, her eyelids closed and she was asleep.

The author of the slim volume walked smartly along by the side of his wife.

They moved at exactly the same pace, even strides, she swinging her left arm, he his right. The other two arms were linked, while Peter bore in the free arm that famous cane which had become his
trademark.

They had married within weeks of Ernest’s death. Peter, who had come late in life to love, insisted on keeping his little wooden house. It was snug, tiny, and just about adequate for the
couple. They had a bedroom, a sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and an enclosed wraparound porch. They talked endlessly, listened to certain programmes on the wireless, had obviously been created
with this partnership in mind.

Dot had not expected a second chance. She kept her independence, was still employed by her son, but the centre of her life was now this small, lovable man who was well read, kind and very
affectionate. ‘Peter?’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘We were lucky, weren’t we?’

‘We were indeed, my dear.’

She tutted quietly. ‘Fancy him dying just like that. As if God had planned it so that we could be together, you and me.’

She seldom mentioned her dead husband, and she plainly expected no reply, so Peter kept his counsel. He had led Dorothy into his ways, had encouraged her to wander country lanes with him, to
learn about plants and wild flowers, about cuttings, cultivation, about growing from seed. But his knowledge of poisons sat deep within him and he would never tell her that particular truth.

Peter Smythe owned no God and was owned by none. He saw humanity as an extension of the animal kingdom, a layer not above, yet slightly apart from the rest. Humans had developed beyond plucking
berries from trees, beyond digging for roots and scratching for grubs. Humans killed. They killed not just for food, but also for territory. And he had made Dorothy a widow.

‘I hated him,’ she said now.

‘I know. So did everyone else, or so it would seem.’

He looked back on that night, shivering as he wondered anew that he still owned his freedom, though he regretted not at all the action he had taken. Peter had helped rid the world of a rodent, a
creature who would not have been allowed to remain alive as a member of any other animal group.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘That were a big shiver, love. Do you want to borrow me scarf?’

‘No, thank you. It is rather cold, but we shall soon be inside.’

Monkshood, sometimes called Monkshead, had done the trick. Peter pulled his coat tightly to his chest, relived that fateful evening. Dot paced along beside him, quiet, adoring and adorable, a
loving woman who had required just a small amount of respect and affection to bring her back to life . . .

Aconite in his pocket, Peter let himself in through Ernest Barnes’s back door. He listened, just as he had listened many times before, to the moaning of this abandoned
‘widower’. Dot was a bad bitch, Dot had never fed him properly, she was a parasite, a thief, a nightmare. She had spoilt his sons, had turned them into nancy boys, had driven the whole
household into madness.

Peter boiled the kettle, made tea, dropped the aconite into Ernest’s cup, poured a measure of scotch into the drink so that the taste would be disguised. This poison, brought into England
in the Middle Ages, had been used by ancient cultures to finish off old men who had become burdensome and useless. How apt.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Dot. ‘I can tell you’re thinking.’

He returned to the present. ‘Vermin control,’ he replied.

The first symptoms were negligible, just a slight numbing of the tongue, a tingling sensation around the mouth. Ernest sat back, empty cup placed on the table, tongue flicking around lips that
were suddenly pale.

‘Ooh, very nice, I’m sure,’ laughed Dot. ‘Here we are on our way to see Beth in a play, and you’re thinking about rats.’

Yes, very nice. The sensation of small insects crawling over the skin, cold sweats, irregular breathing. Peter knelt beside the perspiring man and whispered, ‘Your pulse is slowing and
breathing is difficult. You are so cold. In a moment, you will vomit. I do this for Dorothy, the woman I love. I do this for all those Catholics who live across the street, decent people whose
faith I do not share, but whose rights I defend.’

He stood back then and watched Ernest’s final agony. Without digitalis, there was no cure. But Peter had saved Dorothy, had brought her a gift whose value was beyond price, beyond measure.
He had given her the freedom to move about Hesford without jumping every time a vehicle approached.

They reached the gates of Chedderton Grange. ‘He deserved that stroke,’ said Dot, ‘Ernest, I mean. God knows he stroked my lads’ backs with a cane often
enough.’

‘Stop thinking about him.’ He released her arm and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Fear is dead,’ he told her. ‘And nothing will ever hurt you again.’

He removed the cup, placed it in his pocket, abandoned the corpse where it was, half on and half off its usual chair. With his own heart beating like a bass drum, Peter Smythe left the scene of
his crime and steered the bike into Prudence Street’s back alley. Like a shadow, he had come and gone for weeks, had gained the confidence of a hateful man.

Well, it was done. As the priest had said at the end of a Mass Peter had attended just once out of interest,
ite missa est
. It was over. And Dorothy was free at last.

‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘you’ve gone all of a dream. Peter?’

‘I am sorry, my love. Yes, we must hurry, or we shall miss the first scene.’ He led his wife towards the next episode in their joint lives, and guilt was not in the equation.

She woke with a start, the book still held in her hand. Oh, she was always falling asleep these days. It was probably a side effect of these new painkillers, great big white
things that required breaking into four pieces before she could swallow them.

Once her focus settled, she fixed her eyes again on the work of Peter Smythe. The man who lodged with his wife in Katherine’s summer house was courteous, well-spoken, almost willing at
times, but there was something, a sort of challenge in his eyes when he addressed her. Was he wondering whether she had found herself in this book?

She read on, learned a little about his background, his mother, his home. Peter’s only parent had been cursed by drink, had been a weekend imbiber. During weekdays, she was sober,
reasonable, a good educator of her only child. But at weekends, she raged about the man who had cast her out after impregnating her. Good God, Peter Smythe had no shame, was screaming his
illegitimacy all over the page.

I am a bastard, but a privileged soul for all that. Mother taught me to enjoy nature, to nurture all things that grow, to respect creatures of the earth. She had a brain that encompassed more
than I shall ever know, yet her bitterness twisted that sweet mind, driving her further each year, then each month, then each day into the madness that would finally engulf her.

Katherine sniffed and rested her vision for a moment. At least he had owned a mother. As she thought about what she had just read, she realized that she and Peter Smythe had much in common,
since her parent, too, had been married to a bottle. Like her, Peter had been lonely; like her, he had remained alone. Until now, until he had suddenly married Dot Barnes.

Lifting her hands again, she continued to read.

Nellie stopped in her tracks.

Lily carried on, realized that she was suddenly alone, turned on her heel. What was Nellie playing at now? ‘Nellie?’

There was no reply.

‘Nellie? Come on, we’ll be late.’

An owl cried mournfully into near-darkness. Nellie, scarcely breathing, heard the bird’s wings as he raised his body into the night sky. Water. Water splashing onto a cotton dress, a
woman’s laughter. Mother. The same fountain, silent now, no water because of the frost of autumn, but that cherub would be there, the little angel with a chip taken out of his nose. Hard
ball, tiny hard ball, Father with a stick. Golf club.

‘Nellie!’ Had the poor woman gone deaf again?

Powerful eyesight adjusting quickly to darkness, Nellie took in the lie of the land, tall Edwardian windows, a lion couchant at each side of those double front doors. She recalled two knockers,
again with lions’ heads, brass, a word printed somewhere, the name of the house. ‘I cannot read yet,’ she whispered.

She would see the injured cherub soon, once she got close enough. The hall floor would be marble, black and white. There was a red room . . . Oh, dear God, no, please, no, have mercy upon me,
your child. Balustrade. Tiny infant, female, peering through the gaps, watching that lady, teacups on the lawn, dark laughter from him. Him. He was Father, strange smells, tobacco, amber fluid from
a tantalus, crystal. Mother – ‘Don’t drink any more, Bertie.’ Here it came, now, full circle, dream spilled into reality, sanity a lifetime away.

Lily, poleaxed to the spot, could only watch and wait. Ah, here came Dot with her new husband.

At the rear of the house, there would be cobbles, a horse trough, stables forming three sides of a square, the house itself providing the fourth, except for gaps, gates, latches high, she would
have to climb the gate to lift the mechanism. The wail of dry hinges, Father’s dogs barking. Red. He wore a red coat, many horses, many dogs, the wail of a horn. Run, foxy, run. So much
scarlet, such anger, very little love from the man.

Lily rushed to greet Dot and Peter. ‘I can’t do nothing with her,’ she jabbered, ‘she’s come over all peculiar, like.’

Peter left Lily to the care of Dorothy, ran to the side of the woman whose neighbour he had terminated. ‘Miss Hulme?’ he asked.

She turned slowly, like one in a dream, a person forced to obey the farcical rules of unreality. ‘I am Helena,’ she said.

A shiver ran the length of Peter Smythe’s spine, but he held himself together. ‘Take my arm, Helena,’ he suggested, the tone gentle and persuasive.

‘I know you,’ she replied. For one terrible moment, Peter thought that she had recognized him from his expeditions to Prudence Street, but no, she spoke in the voice of a child.

‘Come along,’ he urged.

Nellie held her father’s hand as she walked the rest of the way. Father pretended to be kind, but he wasn’t. Bloodied birds hanging in a shed, eyes turned to glass, flesh decaying
into tenderness for cooking. Large table, white from scrubbing, beefy arms on the woman who made the meals. ‘Where’s Mother?’ she asked.

‘We shall find her,’ was the answer from Peter Smythe.

They walked up the steps and she knew that there would be seven, dips in their centres worn down by many years of feet, touched a pillar that supported the outer porch. Twin lions, twin doors,
black and white marble on the hall floor.

Pulling herself away from her guardian, not noticing groups of people chattering and laughing, she walked to the staircase. Yes, handrail in reddish-brown wood, stairs that curved away and round
towards . . . the red room.

Peter remained at the foot of the stairs. He turned to his wife. ‘Go and find Miss Earnshaw, she is the head teacher – a very approachable woman – I do the gardens sometimes.
Go, Dorothy. Something very strange is afoot here.’

The knob was in reach – she had grown. When the door swung inward, Nellie Hulme failed to see the headmistress’s office with its desk, filing cabinets and bookcases. Instead, Helena
saw a four-poster, its side curtains half drawn, its foot facing the door.

Father roared at her, ‘Go away, Helena.’

But she could not move. Nailed as firmly as Christ to His cross, she watched a small body, saw it lifted high into the air, a woman holding its feet as if it were an item in a butcher’s
shop. The noise came then, a horrible sound that cut through her head as if threatening to slice it in two. Mother screamed and screamed and . . . And the red, the red . . .