The Fire Child (24 page)

And I am not sure what I am expecting, but the ritual surprises me, and after half an hour it ravishes me. Makes me forget the weather. I need this peace.

I have never been to a Christingle before. I imagine this is a Church of England thing: but I like it. Amidst the horrors, it soothes. Local children carry candles stuck in oranges, and carols are sung as these many candles glitter, like the candles in the felt hats of the miners, climbing down the shafts, bobbing down the tunnels that reach under the sea. And then the vicar stands in the pulpit and talks of the great
prediction
, in the
Bible, in Isaiah:

‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor. The mighty God.’

And the words are so beautiful they make my eyes tingle, yet again. As if am learning the great truth for the first time. I hold Jamie’s hand. One by one the candles are extinguished, until the sacred, scented darkness entirely surrounds us.

For unto us a child is given.

When we emerge, it is near dark. We have about twenty minutes of light remaining. And a new front has been opened: the descending snow is heavier than ever. Pausing by the car door, I touch my stepson’s shoulder. ‘Jamie. You know. We could go to a hotel.’

His mouth opens. In shock.

I hasten to explain. ‘It’s just, this snow, it’s dangerous.’

‘No. No we can’t do that. No, Rachel, please. We
have
to go home. We have to go to Carnhallow. Mummy’s there. Please. We have to be there. It’s Christmas—’

His anguish is rising. And it is decisive. ‘OK,’ I say gently. ‘We’ll go home.’

We climb in the car and the car swerves and yaws as it battles the narrow roads, heading west, heading for Carnhallow. Three times I have to stop, back up, reverse, and softly careen into piling drifts, banked against the ancient stone hedges. But somehow we make it to the great gate that leads down to the wood.

The sea is distant, ahead. Like a mighty legion forever advancing, under silver shields. A cold and dark blue dusk surrounds. Once more, the snow has relented, this time with an air of finality: twinkling to tiny spangles of cold and starry dust, then nothing.

End.

There is an air of accomplishment. The weather has concluded its task. Perfected the landscape. Dressed the doomed and lunatic bride. A full moon rises and smiles, complacently, like she is used to this sort of thing. I look up at that moon as I drive, accelerating here, braking there. I imagine that the moon has seen Carnhallow in snow many times before, over the centuries. They are old friends.

‘Rachel?’

Too late.

‘No—’

The car growls, wildly, on a large patch of black ice – we are speeding up, the brakes will not work.

‘Jamie!!’

‘Rachel!’

I slam my foot in panic and throttle the car to twenty, thirty, forty miles an hour – and now we slide over the edge of the path and down a frosty slope and Jamie screams.

Evening

This is the silence. The silence of the mind, contemplating survival. Shaking my head, I rub snow from my face, then I wonder why I have snow on my face. It is so dark in the car, the dashboard lights have gone out, the engine has died. Jamie?

Urgently I press the little light switch above me, and turn: he is gone. Disappeared. I have lost my stepson. As I lost my baby daughter. These children that never really existed.

‘Rachel, I’m here.’

The boy is outside the car, the feeble moonlight illuminates his face: he has opened the passenger door, and made his escape, and a low valley wind is blowing snow into the car. Flakes of crystal and the taste of salt. We are down to the primary sensations. Jamie is standing outside the car, staring in at me.

‘Rachel, I had to get out it was frightening.’

‘Sorry. God, Jamie. We must have skidded, hit some ice. Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think I must have passed out for a second.’

‘Tried to shake you awake.’

‘Thank you,’ I sigh, as the shock ebbs away. ‘I – I’m OK now. But …’

Unstrapping my belt I reach for my phone, and turn on its flashlight. A hasty scan shows that my Mini is angled into a ditch, at the side of the path, and that the bumper is shunted into the base of a dark thick tree trunk: which probably stopped the wild skid, yet made me bang my head on the steering wheel, knocking me senseless for a few moments. The car is dented and immovable. The stilled engine steams in the freeze.

The only way in and out of Carnhallow, for a few days, will likely be on foot.

A cold knifing wind, chilled by its journey over snow, slices through that open door. I need to get Jamie straight inside. Perhaps I could call Cassie and forewarn her: but a glance at my phone says I have no signal. We will have to trudge through the woods, right down to the House.

‘All right, Captain Kerthen.’

I kick open my own door and step gingerly on to the impacted snow. The mild sprain in my ankle still hurts, from when I fell down the stairs, but I have no other bruises or pains save the ache of whiplash in my neck. And a big fat bruise on my forehead where I nutted the steering wheel.

Holding my phone as a torch, I pace round the car and give Jamie a quick, reassuring hug, though he seems relatively unfazed. Perhaps he sees this as an adventure, something to tell his friends at school. Perhaps not. He is a very brave boy, in his own way. There is something admirable, deep in his soul. There always was.

Lifting the shopping bags from the boot, we abandon the car and begin the wintry march to Carnhallow. Jamie has his arm linked through mine: we can’t hold hands, as I am carrying the shopping in one hand and my phone in the other.

We are two people alone in a noiseless wood that feels as grand as a Bavarian forest tonight, on Christmas Eve. All is regal, and lofty, and sombre. Black trees line the path like mourners. Icicles on wet dark branches sparkle in my flashlight, they are the marvellous fangs of invisible dragons. The fresh young snow beneath our feet has a glow of its own.

We walk, together, stepmother and stepson. And say nothing.

Above us the moon rises, queenly and dismissive; the jewels of the stars are randomly scattered, as if Carnhallow has been looted by angels, and her family diamonds are randomly spilled across the velvet sky.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ says Jamie, as we slowly walk down the moonlit path.

‘Yes.’

Shadows leap on either side, apparently alarmed by our presence.

‘But also scary.’

I don’t want him to talk this way. ‘Soon we’ll be back—’

‘Do you think she is out here now? In the wood? Mummy loved this wood. Do you think that’s her over there?’

I jump at his words. Then chide myself. Rachel. Rachel.

Yes. Rachel. I am waiting.

I ignore the voice. But I heard it. The madness returns.
Daddy don’t. Daddy don’t
.

Jamie is pointing at one withered tree, barely more than a stump; it has two outstretched branches, the twigs like extended fingers, writhing in pain.

‘It’s a tree, Jamie.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Over there!’

He’s right, I saw
something
. A brief shadow of darkness passing between the black trees, which are ranked so silent, branches weighed down by the snow: like soldiers bowing for the funeral carriage of a passing queen. But what did I see? It was something. Anything. Please let it be anything. Or nothing. Let us get home safely.

It was an owl, perhaps, huge wings casting even bigger shadows from my phone-light.

‘No, Jamie, that was the wind, or a bird. We’re halfway there now.’

The light of my phone is so meek, it will not stretch more than a few yards. Beyond it, the world is iced, and impenetrable.

‘It’s like the valley is trying to speak to us, isn’t it, Rachel? But it can’t. Like one of those people in hospitals you think is dead but isn’t.’

‘More than halfway there now.’

I am ignoring what he says, even though he is exactly right. Tonight, Christmas Eve, the day before I am meant to die, the world feels like it is immobile but sentient, a patient in a white hospital bed with locked-in syndrome. It thinks and watches, but it cannot move. For the moment.

Desperate to get us indoors.

Onwards we walk. We are nearing the house. Its windows are square and black, and quiet. The West Wing. The Old Hall.

‘Wish Granny was here,’ Jamie says, quietly. ‘Miss her.’

‘Well, when we get to Carnhallow I’m sure Cassie will have something nice for us. Hot and warm.’

My fingers ache in the cold, and there’s still no signal. We must trudge on alone. From the faraway cliffs I hear the sea birds, and then the waves, crashing on the rocks beneath the mine stacks.

‘Jamie?’

He has detached himself from my arm, and is running towards the great house, towards the doors of Carnhallow. The lights are on.

And Cassie’s car has gone.

I catch up, my nose and throat stung by icy breaths. Ransacking my bag with chill-needled fingers, I latch the door. Without hesitation, we both head for the kitchen, both of us wondering – where is Cassie?

The kitchen is welcoming and bright but my hopes are instantly crushed. Cassie has left a note by the kettle, pinned down by a little plastic Santa, a leftover bauble.

Cassie’s handwriting is hasty yet legible.

I will skip Cristmas this year but I hope to back New Year. I saw David at Morvellan Mine I think you need to know. Happy Cristmas. I am scared about the thing Jamie see. I am sorry. Byebye.

Replacing the note I look across the kitchen. The shopping bags are sitting on the floor, wet with melting snow that dampens the polished wood. Jamie is taking off his raincoat. What do I tell him? Closing my ears to the voices in my head I step over, and give my beautiful stepson a big, big hug.

‘Happy Christmas, Jamie. Happy Christmas.’

Now he is all alone. With me.

Evening

Sweetly, sweetly, I breathe in. Staying calm, not hurting anyone. Feeding Jamie milk and biscuits. Then we go into the Yellow Drawing Room and I light a big fire in the magnificent stone hearth. It is a primal act. A fire to keep the marauding predators at bay.

The Christmas tree fairy watches us, calculatingly, from the top of the tree.

We are watching.

Then I turn on the TV and Jamie lies on his stomach, on the big Turkish rug bought by his mother, and he watches
The Muppet Christmas Carol
, a Christmas Eve special. And I sit on the sofa hugging a costly velvet cushion to myself, trying not to think that we are alone in this vast house, so appallingly vulnerable. Him and me. The stepmother with a child that is not hers, a boy who is entirely at the mercy of her faltering mind.

Suicide. And infanticide.

My phone rings. I jump. It’s David.

‘Rachel. At last. I’ve been trying for a while. Is Jamie OK?’

I want to cry out; I want to beg him for help; I want to tell him everything. And yet I hate him and despise him, and I fear him. What things he might have done to his first wife. What he might do to me, on Christmas Day, to make that Christmas Wish come true.

‘Wait.’ I haul myself up and make for the corridor, and the New Hall, where the antique engravings of Kerthen mines line the wall. I may be lost in confusion, but I know that Jamie must not hear this conversation.

‘He’s fine, David. We’re all OK.’

‘But the snow—’

‘I have noticed. Yes. We’ve got snow.’ I’m not going to tell him about the car. It might give him an excuse to come here. He will be itching for an excuse. ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to see him tomorrow, David. The roads are all blocked. And you can’t come here, can you?’

‘Well. That’s it. I thought you might—’

‘Thought I might what?’ My voice is raised, I can’t help it. ‘Thought I might let it go, for Christmas, let you march in here and beat the shit out of me again, really? Really? Because it’s Christmas?’

I expect him to yield, and apologize. Instead he is quiet, then curt. ‘Look after my son. Are you sane enough for that?’

‘Fuck you, David.’

‘Look after Jamie, and get Cassie to drop him off with me as soon as this snow has melted—’

‘Cassie has gone.’

The hiss of silence. I imagine his angry face, handsome and furious: eyes glittering.

‘What do you mean, Cassie has gone?’

‘What I said. She’s gone. For Christmas. Left a note. David, we will be fine. Stop this.’

‘Cassie has quit? So you’re there all alone? With my boy? Fantastic. Look, Rachel, this is ridiculous, you can’t be alone in that house, with my son, over Christmas. You’re not capable, not right now. I’ll walk to Carnhallow tomorrow. I can walk there. Along the coast. Come to get you.’

The fear fills me. Us, all alone, and then him, arriving along the cliffs. No one to protect us from each other.

‘NO. If you dare come here I will call the police.’

‘Rachel—’

‘No! There is an exclusion order, they will arrest you. Don’t be an idiot, David. Don’t. Don’t do it. Don’t.’

This apparently sinks in. He says nothing but he sighs, and this next sigh is concerned, even conciliatory. Is this because he knows I am right? Or is he faking it, lulling me?

‘Please, Rachel. I’m only asking that you be careful. Don’t let Jamie out of the house. It’s dangerous in this snow. And there’s something else – Morvellan.’

My turn to react.

‘I know.
I know.
Cassie saw you. You were there. You broke the restraining order.’

He is silent, then he speaks:

‘I did. OK. I did. What the hell, the point is I left the damn door open, open and unlocked, to the Shaft House. I remembered.’

‘What? Why would you do
that
?’

The Muppets are singing a Christmas song on the TV. I can hear it through the door.
O star of wonder, star of night, story of royal beauty bright
. David answers. ‘I did, I forgot. I walked away without thinking. The point is, Rachel, it’s Christmas! Christmas is the worst time, always was. It’s his birthday right after Christmas, and his mother died right after Christmas. For God’s sake, you know this.’

‘But—’

‘Listen to me!! Last year, last Christmas, he tried to get into the mine, but he couldn’t find the key. You know where it is. Out of his reach. You have to make sure he’s safe.’ He pauses, oddly, then he rushes on, ‘If he goes to Morvellan he could fall in. Go and lock the door, please. For my son. Please.’

David never pleads or begs. What is he hiding? Something about Morvellan.

‘David, I’ll keep him indoors—’

‘No!’

What is this anger, this desperation?

‘Please. I know you loathe me, Rachel. I know this. But lock that damn door. I implore you as a father, not a husband. Do it because you care about Jamie.’

He sounds sincere. For all his lies and manipulations, this is a father talking.

‘All right, David, enough. I’ll do it.’

‘Thank you.’

And yet the anger rises again. ‘Don’t thank me, you hypocrite. You broke the restraining order. Why? What were you planning? To come and throw me off a cliff, down a shaft, like Nina?’

‘Rachel—’

‘You can call again tomorrow and wish Jamie a happy Christmas, but don’t do anything else. I mean it. If you do it again, if you come within five miles of this fucking house, I will call the police. I will. You know I will. Don’t you dare come here.’

The phone call clicks dead. I stand here, heart racing.
Morvellan.
I’m not sure what game David is playing with my anxieties, but his own anxiety for Jamie seems clear and truthful enough. I have no alternative. I must go down there, now.

Even as I think this, I realize I’ve never been to Morvellan. The place where it all happened. Not once have I opened the weathered and padlocked wooden door to that terrible place. The place that might explain everything. The day before I am supposed to die?

I have to go, to protect Jamie. I need to do it for him. Protect the child.

In the Drawing Room my stepson is still engrossed in the movie, the Muppets doing Dickens, the ghost of a Christmas Past. I tell him I am going outside to check on things. He nods without turning, absorbed, his chin cupped in his upturned palms. Apparently calm, as if most of this is in my mind.

Returning to the kitchen, I place the stool under the big cupboard behind the freezer, climb up, open the cupboard door, which is high above childish hands. I can only just about reach for it myself. I scan the rack of keys with their antique, handwritten signs. Scullery. Chinese Bedroom. Engine House.

Here it is. A humble little key, on a hook, under a sign saying
Morvellan Shaft House.
Taking a head-torch from one of the drawers, I swap my trainers for wellington boots, then walk to the kitchen door, and open it to the engulfing cold and dark.

The shadowy path down Carnhallow Valley is ermined with snow. Two or three times I tumble left, leaving handprints in the pillowing drifts. Marking my unsteady path. What a nightmare to do this in heels, in the dark of night, in deepest December, drunk with guilt, trying to rescue your son. Panicking, stumbling. Shouting.

Jamie Jamie Jamie. Jamie I am coming!

The rowans drip trickles of chilly water down my neck as I push through their enclosing branches. The tamarisks aim for my eyes. Then the trees shiver, in the Atlantic breeze, as they cede to open space, and wilder air. I am out on the wind-streaked, snow-combed field that leads to the cliff path, and the tiny cove, our private zawn. The snow is thinner here, melted by sea spray. But still very slippery.

I am scared. Don’t want to go falling down any mineshafts, in the cold and dark. But I am also determined.

Painstakingly, I make my way along the slender cliffside path that slithers up and down, with no room for two people to walk side by side. The earth crumbles away to my right, down to the huge and bucking waves. Flickers of salt-water sting my face. An enormous herring gull swoops close and sudden, maybe attracted by the cone-light of my head-torch.

Nearly there. The path divides now, leading leftwards up a steep incline to the Engine House, and rightwards, down an even steeper path, to the Shaft House. I take the second, scrabbly path, crouching, almost sledding through snow and grit on my bottom.

I am here.

David was right. The door is swinging in the wind, inviting me in. The chains of the padlock hang loose. I cannot resist: I have to see where it happened. That drama which rules us, almost two years later.

My head-torch adjusted, I brace myself. I am about to do what I have never done before: step inside Morvellan Shaft House. For a moment I wonder if this is precisely what David intended. That this is some trap. He wants me to fall in.

And yet, I don’t care. My curiosity is overwhelming.

The door is already open; I cross over.

Inside, it is a little smaller than I expected, and much colder. The fervour of the sea is instantly and spectacularly muffled.

The granite walls are black with damp, mossed to head height. There is no roof. The polygon of hard starred sky is brutally framed above. The arched windows are glassless, like any ruins; the place feels like the tower of an ancient, gutted priory.

Now I look at the one place I don’t want to look.

The shaft, the hole, the sea-grave.

It is wider than I expected. Maybe four yards across. David once told me Cornish mineshafts were often no wider than chimneys; but he was referring, perhaps, to the earlier shafts, from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. But Morvellan made so much money they poured investment into the mine, right up to the 1880s.

That meant they widened the shaft, I guess, to take all the machinery: the kibbles and man engines, the pumps and cages. The irony is brutal. A narrower shaft would be harder to fall down. If the Kerthens hadn’t made so much money, the wife and mother might not have died.

If she died. You know she’s come back.

I can also see how very easy it would be to fall here. There is no grille over the yawning hole. No protective wall, or fence. Just flat, damp, slippery concrete, surrounding a big black void. Like the shouting mouth of Hell, waiting to swallow me.

Sliding forward, nervously, then outright crawling on my knees, I stare directly down the shaft.

Nothing.

There is nothing visible. At the top I can make out sheer curved walls of well-masoned brick. There are a few modest recesses, intended for machinery perhaps, metalwork long since taken for scrap. There is certainly nothing serious to use as a handhold. If you fell down here, you’d fall fast and hard, without hope.

But where is the water? I am surprised: I thought the mine was watered. Then I realize – the sea must be at sea level, which is forty or fifty feet below me, and it must rise and subside with the waves and tides, like a living thing, expanding and contracting. Respiring.

My torch-beam dims to nothing at the distance: a grey-black circle of darkness.

Reaching around in the cold, I seek a pebble or a rock, something to throw. This will do. A chunk of dark rock, veined with a hint of black tin. A piece of the deads. Leaning over, I drop the rock down the shaft and wait. One. Two.
Splash.

So there is water down there. Again, I imagine Nina’s mental terror as she fell into this caging void, banged from wall to wall, severing a vein on some sharp metal or stone, the excruciating pain, the spraying of blood – and then the hard impact in the water. The cold. The frothing. The Drowning.

A few minutes alone in that black water, in this freezing black mine house, and you’d be streaming blood from your fingers as you scraped the wall in desperation, splintering your nails, as the water dragged at you with its icy gravity. I wonder if in the end she yielded, and accepted, drowned peacefully?

No. She felt terror to the end, surely. Such a horrifying way to die, after all. Trying to rescue her son. That’s if he really was here. And if it really was him here. And if she really died here. And if she wasn’t really murdered.

That’s if she was ever here at all.

The tunnels stretch deep under the sea and I will never find their end.

The trapped and icy brine stirs, far beneath me. I can hear it shifting. Curious, I look down the pit once more. And my torchlight now returns something very different.

I put a hand to my mouth to stop my own scream.

I am staring at Nina Kerthen – or what remains of her. The black water has ascended, and is displaying Nina’s body, like she is raised on a velvet bier.

The fingers are split at the end, one arm is lofted above her head, saluting me; half her face has gone, but it is recognizably a young woman, in a pinkish-red party dress.

Her feet look so sad and bare, like they have come such a long way – she must have kicked off her shoes in her attempt to climb out. And the blonde hair forms a corona, as if her head is streaming silver filaments, or gathering threads of starlight. I wonder how long she has been here, floating sad and unobserved, in the mine.

But one thing strikes me, even from this distance, even with the horrible disfigurement of the face. Is this really Nina Kerthen? Is this really Jamie’s mother? The decomposition is so horrible. Her wounds do not help: the blood from her hands, the silvery hair, the nails.

‘You used to be able to see the steam from all the miners’ breath.’

I swivel, startled. It’s Jamie’s voice. My first thought is: Nina. Down there. He must not see her. It is far too desolating. But where is he? My torch scans the darkness.

‘Jamie?’

Where is he? Did I imagine that?

‘Jamie? Don’t freak me out? Jamie!’

‘I’m here.’ He steps out of the darkness. He was right behind the door. He has his own torch, handheld, which he is flashing in my face, blinding me.

‘Please, Jamie, I can’t see.’