The Unquiet House (29 page)

She put a hand to her dress, the left side, just below her shoulder blade. ‘What kind of a soldier? The uniform – were there wings on it, just here, or—?’

He shrugged.

‘Or nothing? Was there—?’

‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I dun’t like you no more.’ He thrust something towards her – the bag he’d been holding, full of prickly
twigs – and he pushed past, heading towards the others. When he reached them they turned and ran, all together, uncaring of the nettles thrashing against their legs.

Aggie stood alone on the path and looked down at the bag. The stitching was coming unravelled. It had never been meant for twigs and rough little hands, to be pulled around in country hedgerows. She stared at the loose threads. She knew her mother would tut over it as she unpicked the work. Then she’d steadily sew it up again before taking the thin square of paper that would bear a young man’s name and stitching it to the front.

The water pump was coated in a thin layer of ice that disintegrated under Aggie’s fingers. They were already nipped and pink with cold and her nose was running as she started to pump water into the trough. That wasn’t frozen, but it would be soon; winter was almost here. She paused, letting the water’s airy coughing subside. The brief low of cattle came from the fold and there was the harsher, nearer complaint of a goose. The sky was like milk, the sun not yet peering over the outbuildings, and frost coated everything.

On other days her brother would have done this, thrown down straw from the hayloft and measured out feed. Today her father had gone out early and so it was up to her. She had heard his heavy step before she’d risen, then the scrape of the door on flagstones in the kitchen below. The wood must have swollen. She wasn’t sure how quickly it would turn colder – the BBC had stopped the weather forecast in case it might help an invasion – but she didn’t think it would be long. Then the world would freeze, covered over in snow that smothered everything – the grass for the animals, the yard between the barn and stables, the fields. It would freeze the water on her nightstand and the insides of the windows and the cloths on the sink, if
they weren’t properly dried and hung. It would touch the world with silver and folk from the village would trample along the lane to the church and call it beautiful. She grimaced. It was all very well for those who didn’t have a farm. Easy to enjoy winter’s beauty for those whose hands weren’t growing numb with cold.

She missed her brother. He was somewhere on the Belgian– French border with the British Expeditionary Force, miles and miles away, somewhere he’d probably never even imagined. She remembered Tom’s words – but of course, the boy was lying. He hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen; he was nothing but a young boy dreaming of soldiers.

She knew her father thought of Will all the time and she imagined Eddie’s father did the same. Her dad went about his work just as he always had, but his movements, though sure, had changed. There was something mechanical about them. He no longer smiled. The lines were etching deeper into his face as worry sank into him and his eyes, under the dullness, were full of fear.

She looked up into the sky. Sometimes planes flew over and she would stop and listen for the air-raid siren, but none ever came. They were cut off from anyone and everything that mattered in the world, and there was no helping it; without her brother, there was too much to be done. The cold clawed its way into her belly.
And if he shouldn’t come back?

She wriggled her shoulders as if she could shake off the thought.

She ’ad ’er ’and on ’is shoulder
.

She started pumping water again, harder this time, no longer caring about her hands. She relished the numbness. First the trough, she reminded herself, then the chickens and the geese,
then she’d see that the cows were fed and check that her father had seen to the horses, and then she’d dress for church and sing with the others, pray for the souls who were …

No
.

She straightened and stretched out her back. Of course her brother would return, probably before too much longer. The war would soon be nothing but a memory. Anything else was unimaginable. He would come back and he would tease her the way he always had, and take the heavy loads on his shoulders so that she could go back to helping her mother, not this, being out here in the cold for always and always. And yet – she couldn’t help thinking of the woman standing under the yew tree, her hand on the shoulder of a young man in uniform next to her. She just couldn’t picture his face.

Eddie
, she thought.

She shook her head. No, he would come back too, and perhaps he would talk to her again the way he had the night before he had left. She knew she shouldn’t hope – they’d never even kissed. He was fancy-free; he hadn’t said anything to her at all, not really – but she couldn’t help but think she might have a life waiting for her, one other than this.

She shook her head. She had to stop thinking of it. Whenever she felt hope rising for Eddie or her brother she felt she was betraying one or the other, as if the woman in her dark veil had summoned one of them to her and it was up to Aggie to make the choice.

*

In church, it was impossible to think of anything other than the war. It was there in the vicar’s solemn tones as he prayed for all their young men, all their brothers, and they rose to their
feet to sing ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’. It was there in Mrs Marsden’s face; her son had gone for a sailor back in May. His knees had always been scabbed from cricket – he was a natural fielder, though his long limbs had made him look like a gangling calf as he ran. Now he was gone, sunk on the HMS
Rawalpindi
between the Faroes and Iceland, hopelessly outgunned by German warships. Mrs Marsden choked under the words and everyone else just kept on and on. They sang of the raging waters and the indifferent waves and Aggie couldn’t help but think of the cold; huge and endless, a cold that would swallow a lost boy so easily and sink deep inside and last forever.

She glanced aside and saw Mrs Marsden was the only one still sitting, rocking herself with her hands pressed to her eyes. Mrs Pinchbeck stood next to her and she was singing, but her hand was gripping Mrs Marsden’s shoulder. Aggie’s mother nudged her in the ribs. She hadn’t taken her own eyes from her hymn book, but Aggie knew she was aware of everything. She tried to focus on the song but she stumbled over the words. She didn’t need to look around the pews to see the empty spaces: Peter Ackroyd was gone, with his freckles and red hair; Daniel, his brother, who always irritated her by kicking at his pew; Stephen Smith, who had once called Aggie ‘loose’ because she’d tried on Nella Tunstall’s lipstick. Now Nella was here but her brother was not. Her father was gone too. There was only her mother and her gran, who rarely attended because of her health, but she was here now.

The song ended and everyone began to sit down again. The shuffling and knocking subsided and for a second all that could be heard was Mrs Marsden’s dry sobbing. Aggie pressed her lips together. She glanced at her mother’s hands, still holding
her hymn book, so tightly her knuckles were the colour of bone. Before she could think, she had reached out and grasped them. Her mother’s hands curled around her own, gripping hard. She did not let go.

Aggie closed her eyes, suddenly wanting to cry, but she knew she could not. If she did, her mother would cry too, and her mother couldn’t cry here in front of everyone; she would hate it. She would believe she’d never live it down. And perhaps it would jump from one of them to the next and they would all give in, and the thing that was always threatening to swallow them would have won. She thought of the first Mrs Hollingworth, wearing her mourning dress, sitting on her bench. She had only gone a little ahead of them, after all: perhaps she had simply been the first to sense the darkness that had come.

Her mother squeezed her hand and let go at last and Aggie stared down at it. The backs were still browned from the summer. Her palms were callused, her skin dry. Then everyone was standing. It was over. As they turned to leave she leaned over and whispered, ‘I’m just going for a little air,’ and she hurried towards the door ahead of her mother.

She emerged into the cold. She didn’t catch anyone’s eye and she didn’t stop, she just walked away from them all, turning the corner and striding away up the path through the graveyard. She didn’t need to look where she was going and she didn’t want to see ahead of her; she wasn’t sure if it would be better to know if someone was waiting for her there, or if the sight of the woman would steal her resolution away. The frost was letting go of the land now, though it still crackled and hissed where the grass lay deepest. She could see the shadow of Mire
House in the corner of her eye and she realised she hadn’t seen the Hollingworths in church. Too hoity-toity to be with the rest of them perhaps, to offer a neighbourly hand – someone to grip your shoulder when the unthinkable came. Well, the unthinkable would not visit
them
. Her home had always been full of noise and chatter and life and she couldn’t imagine it being any different.

The grass was a vivid green against the stone, a sign of life clinging on, resisting the cold. She stomped down harder, crushing the blades. The house lay to her right, dark and silent, and the tree was ahead of her. She stopped when she reached the edge of its shadow. It moved at her feet, stretching and retreating as if trying to draw her in. She couldn’t hear anything and she couldn’t sense anyone but when she looked up she thought she saw a woman’s straight back. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe – then she saw it was only a drift of fallen needles.

After a moment she settled onto the cold stone, smoothing down her dress against her legs. She tried to imagine what Mrs Hollingworth had been thinking of as she stared down at the house. She wouldn’t have guessed there was anyone inside. It wasn’t full of laughter, she realised now. It hadn’t been filled with life when the children came. They were hollow-eyed and confused and missing their parents, and the woman who lived there would not comfort them. The life was being sapped from them already.

She looked up into the pale blue sky. It had been different when the first Mrs Hollingworth had come here. She must have been thinking about the baby, perhaps wondering how many she would have to fill the empty rooms, wondering what her life would be like. Now there was only this, a forsaken bench in a
forsaken place, and Aggie felt the sadness of it. Her anger was evaporating into the air; she only felt like crying.

Then she remembered her brother and his friend and she pushed herself up. ‘You can’t have them,’ she said, and her words hung there, hollow and empty, smothered by the tree’s heavy branches, but there was nothing and no one to hear her.

Her first thought was that it didn’t look like Tom at all. The morning was frost-coated and the colour had leached from the world. Everything was pale and shining and silent. Aggie couldn’t even hear the cluck of a hen. She was glad to be outside. Her mum had been quiet over breakfast. Will’s usual letter hadn’t come and every time she looked at her Aggie had to swallow down the fear. But she didn’t
know
anything, did she? A child had made up a story and that was all. As soon as Will wrote, the fear would come loose. She would be free of it. Now, just as she’d been thinking of the child, there was this: a flash of golden hair disappearing around the side of the barn.

Her first thought was,
He’s playing sardines
. Her next was:
How did his hair grow back so quickly?

But she had caught only the briefest glimpse: enough to see he had been grinning at her, as if he had decided to be friends again, and the thought warmed her. It was good to see him outside, banishing the memory of his half-lit skull as he sat on the stairs. Now he looked exactly what he was, a young boy exploring, his cheeks rosy from the cold. She had said he could come and see the animals and here he was, too shy to greet her.

She stepped carefully across the yard, the ice splintering under her boots. She put out a hand to steady herself against the rough wooden wall. The ice was thicker here, and slippery. It was odd that Tom had been able to move so quickly, but that was the way with children; they felt no fear. She looked around the corner, bracing herself for his teasing shout, but there was nothing there but a trail of footprints leading away, catching splinters of light where he’d shattered the ice under his feet. She looked towards the yard. She hadn’t finished her work but it would surely wait a little longer. She walked after him, around the side of the fold. It was a little warmer against the wall and she could hear the animals shifting in the straw on the other side. When she reached the edge it was suddenly colder. She couldn’t see the child at all now, but there was a sound coming from the lane: a quick high giggle.

He was playing a game. She should probably ignore him and get on with her day but she remembered the look he’d given her when they’d been nutting and instead she hurried after him. The lane was empty save for a flash of movement disappearing around the curve of the road. She thought of telling her mother where she was going – but why should she? She could take care of the animals and drive the cart and plant the fields. She wasn’t a child any longer.

She pursed up her lips. Why should she follow him? He wasn’t her responsibility. She wasn’t sure she even liked him. Then she thought of Antonia Hollingworth crossing her arms over her thin chest, the fox fur curled around her neck, and she went on. She wasn’t sure she believed the woman’s words any longer about doing
what one can
and providing
a refuge
. She was beginning to suspect she hadn’t volunteered to take care of
the boys at all: her nephews had been foisted on her, one by a sister and one by her husband, and as for Hal and Tom – they’d probably been forced on her by the local billeting officer.

She hurried down the lane, catching herself when her feet slipped, pulling her scarf tighter. She didn’t see him again until there was a flash of something golden entering the path where the hazels grew. She frowned and thought again of Mrs Hollingworth. Even if she didn’t like the children being in her house she couldn’t imagine her allowing him to run wild like this, away from the others, getting his clothes dirty. Whatever would she say? Aggie would have to find him and take him back – perhaps then she wouldn’t be so snooty, rubbing her hands together as if brushing off something distasteful.