The Woman in Black (12 page)

‘But I saw someone. In the graveyard.’

‘Yes, but you said yourself that she disappeared when you tried to follow her.’ He tried to laugh, failed. ‘I mean, really, if I didn’t know better, I would say she was a …’

‘Ghost?’ asked Eve, eyes locked on to his. ‘Is that what you were going to say?’

Harry shook his head in exasperation. The children were supposed to be working, but they were all staring through the open doorway at the two of them. After what had happened, neither of them could blame them for being scared and curious.

He hoped they couldn’t hear what he and Eve were talking about. ‘What about the key?’ he asked. ‘Have you … have you had any luck?’

‘No,’ said Eve. ‘I’ve tried it everywhere, every lock I could find in the whole house. Even the ones I didn’t think it would fit. Nothing. Whatever it opens isn’t here.’

Harry shrugged. ‘Then wherever it fitted wasn’t here in the first place.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Eve, frowning, trying to recall something. ‘But I’ve seen those letters somewhere before, I’m sure of it.’

‘Someone at school? Someone in your family, perhaps?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s since I’ve been here …’

She looked back at the causeway, stretching to the village of Crythin Gifford and beyond.

Crythin Gifford …

She glanced at the key clutched in her hand, at the initials ‘HJ’, then back to Harry. ‘The village.’

He looked puzzled. ‘Really? You’re sure?’

‘Yes. Definitely. I went there the night we arrived. I … Yes. Those initials. I saw them in the village.’ She looked through the double doors at the children. They immediately pretended to be working once more. ‘I’ll tell Jean we’re going now. She can take the class.’

A ghost of a smile appeared on Harry’s lips, accompanied by a twinkle of humour in his eye. ‘Would you like some moral support with Sergeant Battleaxe?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Eve, blushing slightly, ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Good,’ he said, heading towards the front door. ‘Then I’ll get the Jeep started.’

Eve walked towards the children’s dormitory to talk to Jean. Before she reached the door she turned.

And saw someone at the end of the corridor.

A figure, all in black.

Eve’s heart skipped a beat. She froze to the spot. The figure didn’t move.

‘Jean?’ Eve asked, her voice smaller than she had intended.

The figure remained motionless.

Eve felt her legs and arms begin to tremble. ‘Get out …’ The words came out in a hissed whisper.

She moved slowly along the corridor towards it.

‘Get out …’ She had found her voice now. She moved faster, anger overtaking fear until she stood right before the figure.

‘I said, get out!’

She pulled her arm back, let go a punch at the figure.

To find that it was a coat hanging on a peg.

Eve stepped back, shaken.

‘No … no …’

She turned round to find Jean standing in the corridor, staring at her, features impassive.

‘A word, please?’

Jean walked back into the children’s dormitory. Eve, dumbfounded, followed.

Jean shook her head vigorously as if trying to dislodge something that shouldn’t be in there, a thought that she found alien to her belief system.

‘No,’ she said, unwilling and unable to countenance what Eve was telling her. ‘No, no, no. Absolute poppycock.’

‘It’s not, Jean,’ said Eve, trying to be patient and not let the exasperation show in her voice. She faced Jean across one of the beds. There was more than
just physical space between them. ‘Whoever she is, we – that’s Harry and I – think she had something to do with Tom’s death.’

‘Oh, Harry and I. Of course.’

‘Jean, please, just listen …’

‘No,’ said Jean, snapping at her, eyes fiery. ‘No. You listen. Listen to yourself. You should hear what you sound like.’

Eve sighed. ‘Look, Jean, I know it must sound mad …’

‘Yes, it does. Sounds it and looks it.’

Jean spoke as if that were the end of the argument. Eve pressed on.

‘Jean, please. She seems to be trying to talk to Edward, to communicate with him in some way.’

Jean drew in a sharp breath, used it to hold her posture in its usual military bearing before she spoke. ‘Do you want to know what I think this is?’ Her voice was no longer angry. There was still the usual authoritarianism, but it was tempered by a kind of compassion. ‘I think you’re looking for any way not to blame yourself.’

Eve felt tears prick behind her eyes and was determined not to let them fall. ‘That’s not true …’

‘Miss Parkins …’ Jean put her head to one side and spoke slowly, spelling things out for her. ‘It is my belief that you are not suited to this. And I
don’t want you to blame yourself. If anything, it’s my fault for bringing you here.’

‘No …’ Eve shook her head. ‘No … I can’t leave them here. I won’t.’

‘And yet,’ said Jean, continuing in the same calm, rational voice, ‘you now want to abandon your duty of care to them and go to the village with the captain.’ She smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. ‘Do you see what I mean?’

‘I … I … no. It’s not like that. I have to go to …’ Eve swallowed hard. ‘I’m going there now. That’s all I came to say.’

Jean nodded, her features hard, cold. ‘Very well. But should you choose not to return, I would find that perfectly acceptable.’

Eve had a retort planned but thought better of it.

Instead she went to join Harry.

Harry watched the road ahead. Eve watched Harry.

The RAF captain was tense, his hands gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles were rigid and white. The charming, smiling young man she had become used to had disappeared. In his place was a wild-eyed bundle of nerves. He drove the Jeep at great speed across the causeway.

‘Harry …’ She spoke gently, not wanting to disturb him but hoping that he would take notice of her and slow down. She was becoming frightened.

‘I received a message on the radio,’ he said, eyes never leaving the road ahead. ‘I’m needed back at the airfield. I’m afraid I can only drop you off and pick you up in a couple of hours. Will that be all right?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that should be fine.’

Harry gave a curt nod. Eve noticed that the sweat on his forehead was beginning to run down his face.

‘Harry, is everything all right?’

‘Fine,’ he said, his voice slightly too loud and too high. He still wouldn’t look at her. ‘The tide’s coming in. We have to hurry.’

Eve looked out of the window. The sun was high, the sky clear and the snow had started to melt. The water was calm, hardly even lapping at the edges of the causeway.

‘It’s fine,’ she said.

‘No, it’s not,’ he snapped, and pushed his foot harder on the accelerator.

Eve gripped tightly to the edges of her seat. ‘Harry, please …’

He drove even faster, his eyes mad, staring, focused not on the road but at something far beyond it.

‘Please, slow down …’

Harry took deep breaths while he drove. He was trying to keep himself calm. He hit the steering wheel hard. Once, twice, three times. It didn’t seem to work.

Eve turned to him. ‘Harry …’

‘Quiet!’ He shouted the word out.

Eve flinched, shocked by the ferocity in his voice.

‘Sorry, I …’ The words seemed unconvincing, even to him. ‘I need to concentrate …’

The Jeep went even faster. Eve held on to her seat, closed her eyes.

Eventually they reached the other side and Harry brought the Jeep to a halt. He slumped forward over the steering wheel, breathing hard as if he had just finished a marathon. He was shaking.

Eventually he regained control of himself, wiped the sweat from his forehead, swallowed hard.

‘I suppose,’ he began, his voice cracked, hesitant. ‘I suppose I owe you an explanation.’

‘No, it’s …’

He gave a sad smile. ‘Please. Don’t be polite. I was awful back there.’

Eve said nothing, just waited.

‘We got … shot down. Over the sea. My crew were trapped in the fuselage as it … as it went under …’ Harry stared out of the windscreen, eyes focused on somewhere Eve couldn’t see, didn’t want to see. ‘I swam down to rescue them. They were … were calling to me …“Help me … Help me, Captain”… and I could see them, I was … I was almost …’ He shut his eyes tight, let go a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. ‘It was sinking too fast. I … I couldn’t reach them.’

Despite the brightness of the day, he seemed to be in shadow.

Eve searched for the right words. ‘I’m …’

‘I was the only survivor.’

Neither of them spoke; they just sat there, staring ahead. Then Harry turned to Eve.

‘So now I don’t like the water.’ His voice aimed for lightness. Missed.

Eve said nothing. Just placed her hand gently over his.

Jean looked anxious. Her eyes were darting about nervously and she kept knitting and unknitting her fingers as the children filed into the dining room for their next lesson. They all noticed her out-of-character behaviour. That, combined with the absence of Miss Parkins and the death of Tom, had unsettled them greatly.

‘Come on,’ Jean said, attempting to chivvy them along, ‘break-time is over.’ She looked round the group, making yet another head count. ‘Where’s Edward?’ Panic rose in her voice.

‘He was on his bed, reading,’ said Joyce.

Jean stared at her, fear expressing itself as anger in her features, her voice. ‘What did I say about rules? Hmm? What did I say?’

Joyce just stared back, unsure whether the question was rhetorical or not.

‘Go and fetch him, please, Joyce.’

‘Yes, Headmistress.’ And Joyce ran off.

Joyce put her head round the double doors, ready to shout at Edward, mimic Mrs Hogg’s authoritarian manner, but the room was empty. She checked every corner, even looking under the beds in case he was playing some kind of hide-and-seek. She avoided Tom’s bed, though. The mattress had been stripped, the blankets removed. It stood bare and lonely at the end of the room. Joyce noticed that the black rot had spread so much on the wall behind it that it looked like a permanent shadow was standing over the bed. She shivered. It gave her the creeps.

In fact, the whole house gave her the creeps. But Mrs Hogg was right. The only way they were going to get through this was to follow the rules. Joyce had learned that at a very early age at home. Both her parents enjoyed having a good time, so much so that bills often went unpaid and groceries had to be negotiated for. Her father had gone to fight, leaving her mother to bring up Joyce. She spent most of her time in the pub, drinking away what little money they had.

Joyce decided she would never end up like that.
Thank goodness for Mrs Hogg. Joyce loved and admired her, wanted to be like her when she grew up. She had taken to ensuring she was always dressed smartly for school, even if she had to wash her clothes herself, and always arrived there on time. In fact, she regarded Mrs Hogg as more of a mother to her than her actual mother was. She would never dream of telling Mrs Hogg that, though. That wasn’t in her rules.

She heard a floorboard creak and looked round. Not in the room. She heard it again. Upstairs. That was where it was coming from. Edward must be up there.

She left the room and made her way up the creaking staircase, stopping at the top. She saw Edward at the end of the corridor, standing on the threshold of the nursery, the room Tom had locked him in yesterday. He had that horrible puppet thing in his hand. Joyce hated it. Every time she looked at it, its teeth seemed to be blacker and more rotten, its grin wider and more unpleasant.

Edward hadn’t seen her. Joyce started to walk towards him. He had the puppet up to his ear, as if listening to it. Then he nodded and held the puppet out, as if he was talking through it to someone else in the room. A quick shake of his head, then the puppet was at his ear again. He paused, nodded again. Joyce could hear a faint hissing sound while
he did this, like something sliding about in water. She could smell something too. Rotten, like old fish.

‘Edward?’ she said.

He jumped, put the puppet behind his back, stared at her, round-eyed.

Joyce tried to see round him into the room. ‘Who were you talking to?’

Edward ignored her and, pushing past her, walked off along the corridor and down the stairs.

Joyce opened her mouth to say something, admonish him for his rudeness, but she decided against it. He had been through a great trauma, which had obviously upset him in some way. Instead she looked at the open doorway. Should she go in and investigate? See if there was someone in there, someone he had been talking to? Or had he just been playing, making up an imaginary friend?

Her foot was on the threshold, ready to step inside, when a strange feeling overwhelmed her. It was like she felt when she looked at the black rot behind Tom’s bed: creepy and lonely. Scared. She pulled her foot back and ran quickly back down the corridor, to Mrs Hogg and safety.

The sun was almost gone by the time Harry pulled the Jeep up by the church on the edge of Crythin Gifford. Eve got out and looked round at the ruined village. The gathering dusk caused the shadows to lengthen, the village to darken, as if some giant, taloned hand was grasping it in its clutches.

Harry leaned out of the driver’s side window. He was clearly torn between anguish at leaving Eve there on her own and worry at disobeying orders. ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay,’ he said. ‘Truly.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Eve. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine.’

Harry nodded, wanting to believe her.

‘I think it’s admirable, you know,’ she said. ‘I mean that.’

Harry frowned. ‘What’s admirable?’

Eve’s eyes drifted towards the sky. ‘That you still go up there. After what happened.’

‘You have to carry on, don’t you?’ he said, his voice trailing away.

Eve nodded. ‘Yes. You’re right.’ She smiled. ‘Good lu—’

‘Don’t,’ he said sharply. ‘Wishing luck is bad luck. And no goodbyes. Ever. They’re forbidden, too.’

He offered her a pale smile and drove away.

She stood watching him go. No goodbyes, she thought. What must it be like to wave someone off, thinking it could be the final time you would see them, and knowing that they were thinking the same thing? Would you both pretend that nothing was happening? Would you both lie to each other? And if you did, what would that do to a person? How could you carry on? She shook her head. This war had a lot to answer for.