The One I Was (18 page)

Andrew stared at the marks without saying anything. I knew he wanted to find Cathal, to make him pay for doing that to Mum. ‘Rose should ring the police as well,’ he said.

‘And what should she say?’ Mum smiled gently. ‘That a man I invited into my house has hit you and ill-treated me? They will expect to see more than bruises. They’ll say it’s just a domestic dispute.’

‘
Just
,’ Andrew muttered. Then he looked at me. ‘Go to the phone box,’ he said. ‘Do what Mum says. Hurry.’

‘Yes, hurry.’ Mum spoke with composure, every bit Granny’s daughter. But I could see the fingers of her uninjured hand clenching themselves together. ‘But Rose, mind how you go.’

‘I’ll go through the shrubbery,’ I said.

The ghost of a smile played on my mother’s lips. ‘I used to do that, too, if I wanted to go and buy sweets without Granny knowing.’ She looked more serious again. ‘My bag’s up in my room. You’ll need to get some ten-pence pieces for the telephone. Everything you need to say’s written down on that piece of paper.’ She explained how to use the telephone.

I slunk upstairs, ears open in case Cathal was still around. At the bedroom door I stopped, placed my ear to the wood before tapping very softly on the door. No answer. I pushed the door open. He wasn’t in there. Mum’s black bag sat on the dressing-table stool. I took the purse and crept out again.

Downstairs in the hallway she emptied the purse of its few bits of silver. ‘I’m sure I had some money in here.’ She looked surprised. ‘Never mind, it’s enough for the telephone box.’

I was almost out of the front door when she called me back. ‘I know I’ve been a useless mother,’ she said, clutching my hand. ‘That’s all going to change now.’

I squeezed my way through the shrubbery and into the lane, finding it impossible not to look over my shoulder at intervals, in case Cathal was tracking me. How had it happened that this man had gained so much power over all of us? I asked myself this again and again as I crunched through the snow.

I’d never used a public telephone box before and studied the instructions carefully, glad Mum had explained it all to me first. The phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up when someone answered.

‘They’re all out at the firm’s Christmas lunch,’ a woman replied when I asked for Mum’s solicitor. ‘Doubt we’ll see them back here this afternoon. I work in the next office, may I take a message?’

I tried to give her the details, but in the telling the story became garbled.

‘So your Mum’s boyfriend hit your brother and now he can’t walk because his ankle is fractured?’

I explained that it was my mother’s ankle that was fractured.

‘And your mother’s boyfriend caused the injury because your mother doesn’t want you to go to school?’

‘She doesn’t
not
want us to go to school. She doesn’t want him in the house. He’s dangerous. Once he drove into someone. On purpose.’ The pips went. I froze. Just in time I inserted more ten-pence pieces.

‘There was a car crash?’ the woman said. ‘And you’re truanting? Have the police been round to see you?’

‘No.’ I sighed. ‘Perhaps it’s easier if I call back tomorrow morning.’

‘I’ll tell the partners when they come back. You look after yourself. And call the police if you’re worried.’

She sounded kind, but I knew she wouldn’t pass on the message the way Mum had intended. My fault.

Meanwhile the document Mum had signed would still be on its way through the post alongside all the cheerful Christmas cards, giving Cathal the right to run this residential college at Fairfleet. And I hadn’t even told the woman I’d spoken to about our own telephone not working any more. Perhaps I should just call the police right now, ask them to send a car to the house. Even if they couldn’t do anything, it would show Cathal that we were on to him. Maybe he’d leave of his own accord if he thought the police were showing an interest.

The shop door opened. A middle-aged woman came outside. ‘I’ll bring those cabbages in before they turn to ice,’ she said. I hadn’t noticed the vegetables stacked outside the shop.

She looked at me. ‘You’re from Fairfleet, aren’t you?’

I nodded.

‘Haven’t seen much of you since your grandmother passed away. I’ve seen your step-dad around, though.’

‘He’s not my step-dad.’ The words sounded almost fierce. The interest on the shopkeeper’s face grew more marked. I knew she’d be telling other shoppers that there was something odd about that Fairfleet family.

The door opened again. A woman a bit younger than Smithy stood shivering on the doorstep. ‘Want me to help with those veg?’

‘I’m all right, Mum, you keep in the warm.’

But the older woman’s attention was on me. ‘You’re Clarissa’s daughter, aren’t you? What’s happening up at the house? I used to know some of the boys who lived up there during the war.’

For a second I was tempted to tell her everything. This woman might be a way of communicating with the outside world. Then I looked again at the sharp curiosity in her eyes. I couldn’t tell her about Cathal and the way he’d eased his way into our family. How to explain Mum’s weakness? How to explain that she hadn’t always been like this, but that separation from Dad, her illness and Granny dying had worn her down? It would be disloyal to tell this woman those things, to let her imagine Mum and Cathal lying together in Mum’s room, making those noises.

‘We’re keeping ourselves busy,’ I said.

‘You heard from Alice Smith? She left sudden, didn’t she?’

I nodded.

‘Those were good times, those war years,’ the woman said, sounding wistful.

‘Get inside, Mum,’ her daughter ordered. ‘You’re letting all the heat out of the shop.’

I made my escape, walking as quickly as I could through the snow. I wished I’d thought to save some of the coins.

As I reached Fairfleet I remembered to squeeze back through the hole in the fence. I emerged from the shrubbery, shaking snow off my shoulders, cold, uncertain that I’d achieved anything helpful at all.

The sky was a mink-coloured wash behind the house. More snow on its way; even harder to make contact with people outside Fairfleet. I broke into a run.

My brother met me by the shrubbery, brandishing an envelope. ‘He’s back. But Mum wrote this, though, to the lawyers, telling them she’s changed her mind about the legal agreement.’

I looked at the letter. ‘There’s no stamp.’

‘Have you any got coins left from the phone?’

I shook my head.

He looked white.

‘There must be more coins somewhere.’ Hadn’t Smithy retrieved ten-pence pieces from under sofa cushions when she was cleaning? And we could search the pockets of our summer clothes.

‘What should I do with this in the meanwhile?’ He waved the envelope. ‘We can’t let him get hold of it. It’s got other stuff in it, all about what she suspects Cathal has been up to in the past. It’s probably not the first time he’s tried to wriggle his way into people’s families and take over their property.’

I scanned the house mentally, disregarding cupboards and drawers. Then I thought of Smithy lugging furniture down to the basement, those chests of drawers and bedside tables.

‘I’ll hide it in the basement.’ I held out my hand for the letter. ‘Until we can post it in the morning.’

He looked as though he wanted to argue, but I knew I would be lighter on my feet, that I could creep across the hallway and down into the basement without Cathal hearing me.

I took a circuitous route back to the house, hugging the garden wall until I reached the topiary garden. I hid behind the overgrown box-tree elephant with its white mantel of snow, peeping through the kitchen window. Cathal was with Mum. She sat pale-faced at the table listening to whatever it was he was telling her. I’d have to creep past the doorway and pray the basement door had been left unlocked, and if it hadn’t been, I’d have to hide somewhere until Cathal left the kitchen and I could retrieve the key from the jar.

The front door had been left on the latch and opened quietly. I removed my coat and boots slowly and deliberately, placing them on the mat without a sound. I could hear Mum now. She was telling him that he had to go, that she wanted no more to do with him. His reply was a low rumble I couldn’t make out clearly. I stuffed the letter up my jumper.

My socked feet moved me towards the kitchen. The door was open. He’d hear me. But still they kept on talking. His back was to me. Mum was out of sight. Good, she wouldn’t show any reaction at my appearance.

The couple of feet of open doorway felt like a thousand miles as I inched my way past. Once Cathal stopped talking and I froze. But then I heard liquid pouring into a glass.

‘You said you didn’t drink,’ Mum said. ‘Remember? When you first came here?’

His reply was inaudible. I hurried on, reaching the basement door. The key was in the lock and the door opened to my touch. I almost sobbed with relief. I knew it would emit a slight squeak if I pushed it all the way open, so I squeezed myself through the narrowest gap I could manage, taking my time, not letting myself rush it.

I looked longingly at the light switch on the wall. The short winter day was almost over. Too risky: Cathal might see the beam shining beneath the door. I crept down the stone steps, one hand out in front of me. At the bottom I stood still, listening. I made out the deep
melodic tones of Cathal’s voice in the kitchen as I padded along the flagstone floor. The room where Smithy had stored the old furniture was right at the end of this passageway. If only there’d been time to find a torch. Eventually my eyes adjusted to the gloom. I made out the white oblong of the door I needed.

Something crashed above me. Someone shouted. Andrew? Mum? And then Cathal raising his voice in a deep bay of anger. I hurried towards the door. Inside the dark shapes of the discarded furniture greeted me like silent friends. I squeezed myself between a cupboard and a bedside table, hands feeling for drawers. I found one and pulled it open. The lining paper rose as I poked underneath it. Something was preventing me from lifting it up completely, something dark and heavy, like a leather bag or pouch. I pushed the letter underneath the lining paper and pulled the unidentifiable leather object back over it. I wriggled my way free of the furniture and was almost out again when I heard the basement door open. I held my breath and crouched down behind the cupboard.

Cathal’s footsteps came down the stone-floored passage. Lights turned on and off as he went from room to room. I could squeeze into a safer position between the tallboy and wardrobe. I told myself not to rush, to move carefully, there was time.

I slid in between the two bits of furniture, feeling their solid presence as reassurance. Cathal was in the doorway now. The light came on. I was still, my breath coming very light and slow. He couldn’t hear me.

He switched off the light again. I waited until he’d reached the cellar steps before I stood. As I moved, I caught the side of the bedside table on my thigh. I let out a gasp.

‘Rosie?’ I heard his footsteps returning to me. ‘I know you’re in there. If you like this basement so much you can stay down here. All night.’

I heard him shut and lock the door. Then I was alone with my fear and frustration.

21

Fear and frustration. That’s what this basement smelled like now to the adult me, the nurse Rosamond Hunter. Decades later the bitter note overcut the scent of the apples they’d once stored down here. A note that even Benny’s benign ownership of Fairfleet for the last thirty years hadn’t smoothed away.

I made myself take a few more steps until I was standing on the flagstone floor. This was mad. The furniture would long since have been cleared out of the storage room. Mum’s envelope wouldn’t still be stuffed inside the drawer of a chest stored down here. But still I walked down the basement steps, telling myself there was just a chance that the letter might have stayed down here during all the years of Benny’s ownership of Fairfleet. Benny hadn’t thrown much out, Sarah had told me when I’d arrived, just stored discarded furniture down here.

I trod along the passage, keeping my eyes focused ahead of me as though afraid that demons lurked just out of sight, still feeling the childish hope that if I didn’t actually make eye contact with them they wouldn’t bother me. I reached the laundry room. The familiar outlines of washing machine and dryer, the soap-powder box, the bundling of the washing into the machine, all these things soothed me for a few minutes. When the machine was switched on I was tempted just to go back upstairs again.

But on I went down the passage, half expecting, half hoping the storage room would be locked. Then I’d have an excuse not to go in. But the door opened.

Inside stood a collection of furniture. Chairs, tables, chests of drawers. Standard lamps. Desks. All jammed together. I didn’t recognize most of it. It would take me ages to move the things around so that I could open drawers. And there was no way that this could be done without a lot of noise. I stared at the objects and it was like staring at a projection of my own mind: a collection of unrelated objects, dusty yet throbbing with old emotion. Anger, mostly; bitter anger that, even as an adult, I could still taste in my mouth.

*

Cathal had meant it when he said I’d be locked in the basement all night.

I emerged from my hiding place between the old pieces of furniture in the storage room to slump on the stone staircase, my face resting against the cellar door, almost comatose, legs numb, fingers blue from cold. I covered myself in a fur-lined coat I’d found in the storage room and lay on an old velvet curtain. Nightmares punctuated my sleep.

A devil materialized through the wall of the basement corridor. It stalked the rooms, finally coming to stand over me and stare down at me as I lay there. I felt the hatred in its red eyes scorching me. I was down in hell and I would suffer worse pain.

I woke, a scream on my lips, to find myself alone, with just the hint of a draught from the corridor behind disturbing me. An open window in one of the rooms, I told myself. Sometimes Smithy opened them, even in winter, to prevent damp. Just a draught.