The Secret by the Lake (29 page)

We looked at one another. I could see the exact pale colour of Julia’s eyes, the tiny dark rim around her pupils, the flecking of the bluey colour over the pale aquamarine. I could see the colour and I could see my doubt reflected in Julia. For a few moments neither of us spoke; I am sure the same thoughts were going through our separate minds.

‘I can’t bear to think of it,’ Julia said eventually. ‘Caroline was
always
in trouble. She was
always
sitting outside that man’s office, she and her sidekick, Susan Pettigrew. What if it
was
true? If he made her do that, if he humiliated her like that, might that not explain some of her subsequent confusion? Her hatred of authority?’

I took hold of her hand.

‘If it was true,’ Julia whispered, ‘then it went on for years and nobody did anything to protect her, or the others. Nobody helped her; she had nobody to turn to. Nobody.’

The two of us sat together, in silence. The rain fell outside. It fell into the reservoir and it fell on to the hills. It streamed down the windows of Reservoir Cottage. It fell on to the church, on to the churchyard. It soaked into the earth that lay above the lonely grave of Caroline Cummings and through the white marble chippings that covered the final resting-place of Jean Aldridge. It ran down the windows of the village school and was carried away by the guttering into the drains, and the drains took it down to the lake and all the new water became part of the old, part of the reservoir, part of the valley.

‘Fetch Daniel,’ Julia said. ‘Fetch him now, Amy. Tell him to open the trunk. We need to know what’s inside.’

I PUT ON
my coat and went to find Daniel. I saw him, from a distance, on the other side of the upper field. He was blurred by the rain and at least a hundred sheep were between us, the animals streaming towards me like a force of nature, like water running downhill. The tricolour collie was herding them. I stepped sideways, to be out of their way, and I waited as they ran past and were funnelled through the gate. The collie’s ears were flat back against her head; she was panting, stressed – she did not seem to notice me.

Daniel followed after the sheep. He came straight over to me, took my face in his hands and kissed me deeply.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Why are you here and all out of breath?’

‘I’ve been running. I needed to find you. Can you come to the cottage?’

‘I was going to pick up the paint this afternoon and drop it by later.’

‘Julia wants you to come now. She’s desperate to open the trunk that was in the shed.’

‘I need to get the ewes penned, Amy. If I’m not ready when the wagon comes we’ll end up sending the wrong sheep away.’

‘I know, but—’

‘I’ll come as soon as I can, as soon as I’ve finished this. That’s the quickest I can be. The wagon will be here in an hour. I’ll come straight after that.’

‘OK.’

‘Will that do?’

‘Yes, that’ll be fine. Thank you.’

Daniel put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Walk back up the hill with me. I’ll show you something.’

We trudged up together towards the sheep, which were huddling together, eyeing us suspiciously from the higher ground. When we reached a rocky outcrop, Daniel turned me around so I was looking back towards the valley. From where we stood, there was an excellent view of Fairlawn, the house standing proud in its gardens. The lodge, behind, was obscured by the skeleton trees.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

‘I always loved this view.’

‘I love it too.’

‘And one day,’ Daniel said, ‘all of this will be ours.’

‘Ours?’

‘We could live there, you and I, if you’d like to.’

‘I think I would like to.’

‘There would be room for plenty of children.’

‘Then we should make sure plenty of children lived there.’

We smiled at one another.

‘What about your father?’ I asked.

‘He’ll come round to the idea,’ Daniel said.

I lifted my face up and Daniel leaned down to kiss me. I closed my eyes so that the rain would not fall into them. While we were kissing there was a call from the direction of the lane. Daniel’s father and another man were standing by the pens at the top of the field, by the gate.

Daniel acknowledged the men with a wave.

‘Amy, my darling, I’ve got to go. I’ll be round at the cottage later, as soon as I can.’

‘OK.’

I turned and walked away from him, back to the entrance of the field and then on through the village. And that’s when I saw Susan Pettigrew. She was carrying a shopping basket and she was heading towards the vicarage.

I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. I went after her.

I HAD NEVER
been to the vicarage before. It was a tidy house of modest size. There was nothing grand or ostentatious about it and the exterior, at least, was masculine in its austerity – a concreted front garden, a couple of ugly pots with equally ugly, spiky bushes growing out of them. I had seen Susan go inside only a few minutes earlier, but she took a long time opening the door to me. When she did, she peered around the edge with suspicion.

‘My father is out,’ she said.

‘Good. It’s you I want to see.’

‘I haven’t done nothing wrong,’ Susan said.

‘I know you haven’t,’ I said. ‘I just want to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘About your friend Caroline.’

‘I’m not supposed to let anyone in when my father isn’t here. Especially not strangers.’

‘But you know me,’ I said. ‘I’m not a stranger.’

Susan hesitated still. I should have stuck up for her the last time I saw her, I thought. She doesn’t trust me.

‘Where is your father?’ I asked gently.

‘At Sunnyvale. They’re getting ready for the concert this evening. But he’ll be back soon.’

‘Please, Susan, let me in. I’ll be ever so quick. And if your father comes back while I’m here I’ll tell him it was my fault.’

‘He’ll say it was mine for letting you in.’

‘Then I’ll make sure he doesn’t see me. I promise I won’t let you get into trouble again.’

She bit her lip.

‘Please,’ I said.

She opened the door reluctantly and I stepped into a gloomy hallway lined with bookcases and dark, religious images. The inside of the vicarage smelled of cauliflower and Vim scouring powder.

‘We’d best go into the kitchen,’ Susan said, ‘then we’ll see him coming.’

She was not, I realized, as simple as she made out.

She showed me into a square, joyless room. The cupboards, the cooker and the sink were old and shabby and there was no colour in the room, but everything was clean. The shopping basket was on the counter and ingredients were laid out beside the cooker for a meal: bread, potatoes, onions, a packet of meat. A huge twin-tub washing machine was rattling in one corner, and there was a mangle beside it. Susan shuffled forward and picked a bundle of parish newsletters off one of the chairs, gesturing that I should sit there. She sat in the opposite chair and looked at her lap and twisted the fingers of her hands together, as if she were waiting for an accusation. I didn’t know how to start to ask her the questions I wanted to ask. I didn’t want to alarm her by being too direct and I didn’t want to upset her by bringing back memories she’d probably spent a lifetime suppressing. So I dithered and she waited and the silence became uncomfortable.

‘I have heard some things about Caroline,’ I said finally, ‘and I don’t know what to believe.’

Susan’s cheeks coloured slightly, but she did not move.

‘You’ve tried to tell me about her, haven’t you?’ I asked. ‘You’ve tried but other people keep stopping you.’

The woman shrugged. She was wearing a housecoat over an awful, beige-brown jumper with sweat stains under the arms, and those same ugly trousers I’d seen her in before.

‘It’s the past. It’s best forgotten,’ she mumbled.

‘Well, that’s what everyone says, even Julia, but I’m not sure that that’s right. What do you think, Susan?’

She shrugged again. The washing machine slowed and began a rhythmic sloshing. The smell of detergent in the room was making it hard to think straight.

I looked at my watch. The minutes were going by.

‘I know what the schoolteacher made you do,’ I said, ‘when he was punishing you.’

In a heartbeat a deep red flush spread from Susan’s neckline to her jaw and her cheeks. She coloured so violently that I was afraid for her. The flush had told me everything I needed to know. What Julia had heard was true. Anger rushed up through me like boiling water through a geyser. I had to fight to contain it. Carefully, I breathed, counting the breaths in and out, and when I could trust my voice to be calm, I asked, ‘Have you ever mentioned this to anyone?’

Susan moved her head very slightly to the left, and then back to the right.

‘Frank Leeson was a wicked man,’ I said. ‘You were not bad children –
he
was the one who should have been punished.’

Still Susan looked down. She would not meet my eye.

‘The thing is,’ I went on, ‘the other things I’ve heard about Caroline – most of them are bad. Perhaps some are true. I don’t know. You are the only person in this village I can trust to tell the truth.’

Susan twisted her hands together. The washing machine rattled and clanked.

‘My father will be home in a minute,’ she whispered.

‘You’re afraid to speak out, aren’t you? Well then, how about I tell you what I know about Caroline and you tell me if I get anything wrong.’

She said nothing. I took that as acquiescence.

‘OK then. I know that Caroline was your friend.’

Silence.

‘Your best friend. And that you two were inseparable. You did everything together.’

‘Inseparable,’ Susan repeated softly.

‘And that people – adults – weren’t always kind to you.’

Silence.

‘So you grew up, and after you left school I assume you went to work at the asylum, as it was then.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Caroline found a job working as a maid for Mrs Aldridge at Fairlawn House.’

‘Yes. The committee found the jobs for us.’

‘The committee?’

‘Yes.’ Susan nodded more emphatically.

I thought about this for the briefest moment and of course it made sense. The teacher, the doctor, the vicar and the politician – between them they would have the authority to slot the village’s difficult-to-employ young people into available roles.

‘Did you know Mr and Mrs Aldridge?’ I asked Susan.

Silence again.

‘Robert was an awful lot younger than his wife, wasn’t he? Some people thought it was a marriage of convenience. Mrs Aldridge needed a husband from a respectable family and Mr Aldridge needed money.’

‘And Sir George Debeger was going to help Mr Aldridge get into politics,’ Susan added.

‘Did he want to be a politician?’

‘Honour thy father and mother.’

‘He was told that’s what he had to do?’

Silence. A bird flew across the window, casting a shadow into the room. The movement made Susan glance towards the back door. I looked too, but there was nobody out there. The washing machine sloshed. I tried to get to the point.

‘Caroline didn’t get on with Mrs Aldridge, did she?’

‘She said she was mean.’

‘But Caroline would say that, wouldn’t she?’

Susan looked up then. ‘It wasn’t just Caroline who didn’t like Mrs Aldridge. Hardly anyone minded when she died. They all came to the funeral and stood around the grave, but it was only her parents as was crying, Sir George and Lady Debeger. And the baby. The baby cried the whole time. Poor little mite.’ She looked again towards the door and then up at the clock. ‘You have to go now.’

I leaned towards her, made her look at me.

‘Tell me one more thing, Susan. Tell me what happened on the dam the day Jean Aldridge died. You said it was an accident.’

‘Father will be home any minute.’

‘What happened on the dam, Susan?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘I was told Mrs Pettigrew saw Caroline push Jean Aldridge into the lake, deliberately.’

‘Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered.’

I stared at her, confused. ‘Is that the Bible?’

‘If you don’t keep a secret when you promised you would, everyone you love will burn in hell.’

‘Please, Susan, just tell me what happened on the dam.’

We both heard the click of a gate opening. Susan jumped to her feet and looked through the window.

‘It’s him!’ she cried, her hands clasped over her mouth.

‘I’ll go out the front.’

‘Quick!’ she squealed.

I scuttled towards the dark hall. She stood in the kitchen doorway, blocking me from her father’s view as he approached the back door. And as I fumbled with the front door, she called something out to me in a low, urgent whisper.

‘What’s that?’ I called back.

‘Sam knows,’ she replied. ‘Ask Sam Shrubsole!’

I ASKED IN
the shop and was directed to Sam Shrubsole’s home, a small, neat bungalow right at the top of the hill, a good mile out of the village.

I walked up a narrow path, paving stones bordered on either side by parallel strips of bare soil interspersed with a few tidy pansy plants, not yet flowering. I prayed that Mr Shrubsole would be in, and he was. He was a small man in early middle age with large ears that stuck out at right angles from the side of his head. His hair was oiled back, he wore gaiters on his arms and his shirt was tucked into his trousers which were supported both by braces, and a sturdy belt. There was a gentleness about his demeanour which I found reassuring.

‘Yes, miss?’ he asked from the gloom of the hallway. ‘Can I help you?’

I told him the bones of how I had come to be knocking on his door. When I explained that Susan had sent me, his face softened.

‘Bless her,’ he said. ‘Her grandmother would turn in her grave if she knew the way that poor girl is treated. What is it that you want to know?’