Veil of Darkness (6 page)

‘Yeah, you could.’ He dragged a blanket round his stark, crucifixion-type loins and his shaking hands lit up a rollie. ‘Hey, lady. It’s not all bad. You’ve got an open fire.’

It looked like jackdaws had been nesting in it.

‘You’ve got a cooker.’

Varnished with gobs of old fat, most of the enamel had peeled away leaving burnt black patches behind.

‘And a fridge, by that bit of floor that’s collapsed.’ The damp had rotted through the linoleum revealing a loathsome carpet of fungi. ‘Watch it,’ he said, ‘it’s dodgy just there.’

‘You’re quite private,’ said the tenant eventually, sensing her growing gloom. ‘You can close your door and be real quiet here, and the bins are just round the corner. There’s some good stuff gets chucked in those bins if you bother to look. Mostly salad.’

The one hope that remains is the caravan park a mile down the road where some of the mobile homes are let out all year round. It might just be possible to make a home there—well, what alternative has she got—perhaps they run a school bus if there are other children around. She won’t give up hope until she sees it and makes enquiries, but they won’t be able to guarantee anything until the season is over.

The staff recreation facilities, referred to pompously by Mrs Stokes, consist of the large room they found when they first arrived, chairs in various states of distress, the table-tennis table with its cracked or missing balls, one black-and-white TV and a radiogram in a walnut cabinet. In the tiny kitchen adjoining it is a kettle, damp hotel sachets of coffee, tea and sugar, a tin teaspoon, a jar of dried milk and a bin streaked russet by teabags. The heavy iron radiators are strictly turned off on 1 April every year, come rain or shine, and piles of dead matches litter the floor around two inadequate gas convectors.

Not that there’s time for recreation. The hotel is full, in spite of a damp and overcast June, and everyone is baffled to hear that because of its excellent reputation guests book one year in advance to be sure of a vacancy. Kirsty, in her lowly position, is up and dressed in her black-and-white uniform by seven thirty prompt, when a hasty breakfast is served in the kitchens. Then it’s on to one of the three broad landings with her partner and a trolley loaded with clean sheets and towels, fresh soap, tissues, bin liners, shampoo, shower gel and cleaning equipment.

No sooner does one room empty for breakfast than they’re in there like a couple of whippets, and the rush goes on until twelve, by which time she feels as though she’s working in a sauna. It’s heavy, sweaty work and although she has been hardened by stacking shelves at the superstore, this makes that job seem like a luxury cruise.

The hotel bedrooms, Wedgwood and white, sport king-sized beds in every room, four-posters in the suites, satellite TV, balconies, bidets, fridges, fresh fruit in bowls, trouser presses and bathrobes provided, no expense spared. All the luxurious fabrics match and the decor is straight out of
Ideal Home
.

Thirty minutes for lunch and it’s off to the downstairs bathrooms, predominantly marble, sanitary crypts. If their luck is in they can get a sit-down, ease off their shoes and catch their breaths. When the guests’ lunch is over they make for the bar. Then there’s the dirty laundry; it has to be sorted and labelled and the incoming laundry stacked in the linen room (tablecloths to the dining room), silver to polish, bath mats to fold, incoming and outgoing guest lists to check… and so it goes on endlessly until tea time when they officially finish. But every evening during dinner they visit the bedrooms to tidy up and turn down the sheets, and theirs is a six-day week.

But, no longer menaced by fear, to Kirsty this feels like a warm room in winter with a glowing fire to welcome her home. It takes time to acclimatize to the missing threats and shocks to the system—going to bed is a blissful pleasure, as is waking and knowing she’s not going to see him. She is no longer forced to tiptoe round forever metamorphosing herself so as not to annoy Trevor. Sometimes she jumps when someone goes by and then smiles to herself when it’s not him. Difficult guests don’t bother her. She is used to smiling and being humble. She often wonders what steps he is taking to discover her whereabouts, and Jake’s and Gemma’s. His hold over Kirsty is still uncanny; although his physical presence has gone he is psychologically still her keeper. He will go to the school, she is sure of that, but the authorities can tell him nothing simply because they don’t know anything. All she told them on the last day she delivered the children was that they were going on holiday. He knows nothing about the centre, but he’d get short shrift from there if he did. Kirsty left work without giving the required one week’s notice… she rang up and said she was sick.

Whenever she thinks of him she goes cold.

But she has friends, real friends at last.

Close as chums in a Blyton novel, thrown together by bizarre circumstance—people in cold climates huddle together for warmth and safety—Kirsty, Bernie and Avril are confidantes and sympathizers. They have already laughed till they cried three times, a release Kirsty thought she’d lost long ago. But she doesn’t get to see them enough because of Avril’s office hours, and Bernie stays up until after midnight working in the bar. It is heartening how much they have in common when you know how different they are—Avril and Bernie being ten years younger—Avril all soft, jelly and custard; Bernie a fiery, reheated curry.

‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ Avril frowns on Bernie’s self-pity.

‘How would you know?’ quips Bernie.

Sometimes, like children in the dark, they talk so long into the night that Kirsty drops off in the middle of a sentence. Her only moans are of Bernie’s sluttish habits—she stubs out her fags on the bottom of her shoes and drops her old pants around like litter—and Avril’s adenoidal snores are as rasping as blasts from a liner’s funnel.

‘Give and take,’ says Avril happily. ‘We are family now. We must make concessions.’

‘You’re not my family,’ moans Bernie. ‘Prig.’

On her second day at the Burleston Kirsty had poured over a letter from Maddy and two precious home-made cards from the kids. ‘All is going beautifully smoothly. I’ve taken some snaps which I’ll send next time. Jake plays “Peggy Sue” on the guitar and Gemma is breeding newts for her farm. If those two children aren’t in their element then I will eat my hat.’

Kirsty had smiled and hugged the cards close, trying to breathe their soapy smell, but the messy bits of glitter and sticker and the raving mass of colours had said more than words to comfort her.

This evening, after a hectic Saturday and one week after she started, Kirsty takes up Mrs Stokes’s offer and heads for the quiet hotel lounge in search of the promised books. This is a room of antiques and pictures, made fluffy with tasselled cushions. Two elderly ladies reading by the fire sense she is staff and pointedly ignore her. She can smell the books before she reaches them, decaying paper, damp and neglect; dusted occasionally but rarely removed, they are in grave danger of welding together. Far more popular, it seems, is the vast array of periodicals set out on the coffee table, a far cry from those at the doctor’s surgery because every one is up to date, thick, shiny and fashionable. Below the books are stacks of board games, playing cards and jigsaws for use on rainy afternoons, but these days how many kids would be entertained by such simple pastimes?

Most of the kiddies staying here have gone out to the many all-weather attractions, chauffeured in one of the Audis, BMWs, Daimlers or Range Rovers parked round the front entrance, giant wet lizards under the palms. Unfazed by the weather these hearty, healthy, high-spirited kids go riding, sailing, climbing or walking, never a moment’s boredom. Bleep bleep bleep go their Gameboys in the evenings, and while their parents linger over dinner they shriek around in the indoor pool.

There are no lightweight paperbacks here, certainly no Mills and Boons among the colonel’s collection. These are jumble-sale offerings, books you buy by the box-load. Kirsty loses herself for a while reading the introductions so many travel books and manly adventures:
King Solomon’s Mines
and
Moby Dick, White Fang
and
Huckleberry Finn
. She is searching for something more romantic, something written, perhaps, by a woman. Were there no silly women in the colonel’s day? Ah, yes, here is a copy of Mrs Beeton, two by Emily Brontë, one Daphne du Maurier and several Reader’s Digest compilations. Not nearly silly enough for her.

‘Can I help you, my dear?’

One of the white-haired old ladies turns a cross, thin face towards Kirsty. ‘Was there anything?’

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘Well, we can’t help but be disturbed with you poking and prodding away in the background. What a nuisance. What is it you are looking for anyway?’

‘I’m looking for something to read.’

‘Well surely it doesn’t take long to find something to read. There’s hundreds of books on those shelves and all very worthy I’m sure. But this is supposed to be a quiet room

‘Yes, I know and I’m sorry.’

The old lady tuts and looks away, her gnarled old hand reaching grumpily for the silver teapot. ‘Oh, before you go, you could fill up my cup, if you would be so kind.’

‘Certainly, madam.’

Hardly aware of what books she picks up, Kirsty hurries to obey.

‘It’s so difficult when your bones get old,’ says the old lady unpleasantly, lifting a sugar cube with the tongs. And a dismissive, ‘Thank you, dear,’ as Kirsty hastily leaves the room.

She leaves the fat orange book called
Magdalene
until last. During the next couple of evenings she forces herself to get through the others, although the first one loses her completely, clearly a clever literary work, and the second is all about the Boer War: blood, dead horses and heroes.

‘I’m going to Truro on Monday, I’ll get you some Mills and Boons from the library,’ says Avril. ‘Anything to stop you moaning.’ Kirsty has put
Magdalene
aside, fearing the worst; it’s a waste of time. ‘I can’t think why they don’t sell books in the hotel foyer,’ says Avril. ‘You’d think they’d sell out in this weather.’

‘What about you, Bernie?’

‘You could get me the latest
TV Quick
and a
Take A Break,
they’ll do.’

Bernie, a bird-brained beautiful butterfly, has skipped through life without reading a paper or listening to the news. ‘Now what would I want to do that for?’ She laughs it off. She can name the present prime minister and she knows where Liverpool is on the map, but she runs out of ideas when she reaches the leader of the opposition. Ask her who Bach is and she hasn’t a clue. ‘Was it your school?’ Kirsty muses. ‘Will my kids end up daft as you? Or is it because you’re so self-obsessed?’

‘Obsession keeps me thin,’ says Bernie, casting an unkind glance at Avril.

‘I’d rather be fat than in your sort of love,’ Avril sneers. ‘Uncanny and unnatural, that’s what you are.’

Bernie does every quiz she can find just to read questions about herself, delve into herself, test and judge herself by the pitiful answers on page forty-nine. She devours all horoscopes as though she’s starving for news of her future. And it isn’t that she’s stupid, far from it, it is just a complete lack of interest.

But although Kirsty knows she is limited with her easy reading and low expectations, how she wishes, now, that she had made more of her education. If she’d had a decent career she’d have had the confidence and the means to leave Trevor years ago. If she had bothered with exams she wouldn’t be making the beds of strangers, with no prospect of a home for her kids. Even the poor, defeated Avril has managed to get an office job and is
au fait
with computers, despite lacking good looks and normal communication skills. Poor Avril is as dated as the Queen, overprotected, childlike, still stuck in the Fifties when children walked towards rainbows with their Clarks sandals properly fitted.

Oh my God.

This book is so utterly compelling she cannot believe what she’s reading.

Never has she…

‘
And the petty roundabout a woman must ride in order to reach her goal
…’

This is…

There are no…

Profane and shameless stuff from a nun posing in a state of grace. This woman is a set of wings, she is a suit of armour, with the black habit she dons and discards as her nefarious behaviour demands.

‘
God deliberately created some of us to be evil. It is not for us to question why. It is up to us to worship; and on bended knee to give thanks for what we are
.’

Her first reaction is shock and confusion, before being drawn in by appalled fascination. She has to read on, breathless, excited. Some of this is outrageous, vile, she cannot believe it is here, in print, and that she could be so absorbed by such evil.

One hour passes. This is no good. Kirsty has to get up in the morning; if she reads any more she’ll be exhausted, but she can’t carry on reading in bed, cosy with the light on, without disturbing Avril and Bernie. Nor can she put this book down. So she creeps to the recreation room in her nightdress and her parka and curls up on a battered chaise longue; she can’t put
Magdalene
down.

For these are no ordinary words.

This is not writing, this is witchcraft.

Everything in the world is forgotten as if it never existed.

‘
I started my writing wearing gloves in a quiet corner of my room, covering each page with a hand as I went in case someone came up on me and learned the abominable secrets of my soul… like stone gargoyles on churches they were, be-winged devils straight out of hell…
’

Tense and taut through the weird experience, one moment Kirsty is laughing out loud, the next she is breaking her heart as she unconsciously curls up tighter, pulling her feet up under her and wrapping her arms round her knees, a variation of the foetal position because she feels in need of protection.

‘
He who killed me with his smile had to die. I hated him for his treacherous tenderness. I loved him with the terrible burden of my own desire
…’