Long Lankin (31 page)

I felt tired, numb.

“I don’t know what to say,” I told Cora. “There’s so much. . . .”

After a few moments she spoke quietly. “That’s my Kittie — Kittie Wicken. She is still singing that song, but not in the old rectory, in — in Guerdon Hall.”

We stood at the top of the hill. I held Mimi’s hand. It felt sweaty.

“What we waiting for?” she said, pulling at my arm.

The sides of my head began to press in. I felt a dull ache in my shoulders and knees.

For three days he swung there, out in the lane on the brow of the hill, for all to see. . . .

The gibbet must have hung here.

“Come on, Sis,” I murmured. “I don’t like it here. Let’s run.”

“Can’t run. Feel sick,” she said, swallowing.

“I hope you ain’t got what Baby Pamela’s got.”

I tried to hurry her, but she pulled back.

“Mimi, I want to get off this hill. You’ve got to run. Hold my hand tight.”

“I can’t,” she whined. “My tummy feels bad.”

“You’ve got to — you’ve just got to,” I said, pulling her roughly. I dragged her faster and faster, until her little feet slapped up and down on the road behind me.

“Don’t do that,” she sobbed. “Don’t like you. Sid! Sid’s dropped!”

She dug in her heels. I had to stop. In the second that it took for her to pick Sid up, I looked back and noticed a tall, dark figure moving swiftly down the hill behind us.

Swaying, dizzy, I swept Mimi up in my arms and started to run, staggering under her weight. She was too heavy for me.

“Please come, Auntie Ida,” I breathed. “Please come.”

Mimi wailed, her head bobbing from side to side. I tottered into the Chase, tripping in and out of the ruts.

A man was shouting. “Cora! Cora! What’s the matter? Stop!”

Still running, I turned my head back. Father Mansell was puffing along the track. I stopped, exhausted. Mimi fell out of my arms. My stomach churned. I swayed, turned away, and was sick in the grass by the side of the road.

“Dear girl,” said the rector, trying to catch his breath. “Dear, dear, dear. Is that everything? Dear, dear, let’s get you home.”

I stumbled down the Chase.

“I came down,” Father Mansell was saying, still breathlessly, “to apologize to your aunt Ida for not picking her up in Daneflete yesterday. It was a terrible thing to do, and I’ve had the deuce of a headache today, so I’m paying for it.”

I just wanted to lie down, right there, and sleep on the cool, hard earth.

“Not far now,” Father Mansell droned on, his hand under my elbow. “As I was visiting Mrs. Pembroke in Bryers Guerdon this evening, your aunt asked if I could pick you up from the Jotmans’ and walk you home, but by the time I got there, you’d already left.”

I lurched towards the verge, then was aware of standing in the hall, with Auntie Ida, in a misty haze, holding me gently by the shoulders and peering into my eyes. I turned away, and the wooden floorboards came rushing up towards my face.

The bread in the bread bin was going mouldy.

Mrs. Lester, next door to the Wickerbys, brought round a couple of cans of tomato soup for me to heat up in a pan if anyone was well enough for dinner. Then she bundled Pamela up and said I was to take her for a walk. I went up Back Lane because there’s only one broken-down old house there and nobody would see me pushing the pram.

I thought Cora must have been ill or she would have come.

The day becomes the night, but I don’t know when it happens. My throat and my tongue taste bitter. My stomach aches. Mimi isn’t here. I spread myself out over the big bed. Sometimes I am so hot, I push the eiderdown and blankets away with my feet. At other times, I shiver with cold and reach for them, wrapping myself up uselessly in a tight cocoon, unable to still my chattering teeth.

Auntie Ida tries to make me take a cool drink. As soon as it reaches my stomach, it rushes out again into the bucket by the bed. I hear the swishing of the mop on the floor, again and again.

Somebody sponges my arms and legs with cold water and wipes my face and my hair with a warm flannel. Sometimes I think it is Auntie Ida and sometimes the lady in the uniform at Roger’s house. Other faces appear — an old burned man, a witch with flaming hair screaming,
Libera me! Libera me!

The children come.

Cora, save us. . . . Save us, Cora. . . .

Kittie bends over me, singing:

“‘The nurse how she slumbers, the nurse how she sleeps.

My little son John how he cries and he weeps.’”

I can smell her warm breath and feel her plaited hair fall across my cheek.

Two people are talking quietly in the room, their soft voices coming and going. My eyes are closed, but I am only half-asleep. I feel a little stick being tucked gently into my armpit. Someone holds on to my wrist lightly.

“I’ve always wondered what this old house was like, Mrs. Eastfield,” a man whispers. “What with living at North End, you know. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. It’s not my place.”

“Oh, it’s all right, Doctor,” murmurs Auntie Ida. “It’s all so long ago now.”

“What were they like, the Eastfields? We only met the daughter, Rosalie, when we bought the house. A charming woman, extremely elegant.”

“Ah, Rosalie was beautiful. But then they all were. It was one of those golden families, Doctor, one of those families that always seemed to be bathed in sunlight.”

“Old Colonel Eastfield was dead, of course, by the time we came,” he said, “but Mrs. Eastfield and Rosalie moved to Sussex. I believe there were relatives there. Strange she never married, a woman like that.”

“Many women were left all alone after the Great War, Dr. Meldrum.”

They fall silent. The man lifts my arm briskly and removes the stick.

“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Eastfield,” he mutters. “I should never have brought it up.”

Someone tucks the covers in close around me. It seems a long time before Auntie Ida speaks again.

“Well, what difference does it make now? So long ago, it feels I lived another life, yet these days I seem to be thinking of the past more than I have done for a long, long time.” She sighs. “It was the wrong thing to do, Doctor — marry Will, I mean. I only married him because he looked like his brother.”

The man coughs awkwardly.

“Always looking at him and wishing he was someone else, sometimes even pretending he was that other person.”

“I — I think I’d better be off now, Mrs. Eastfield,” the man mumbles.

I don’t think Auntie Ida is really talking to him anymore. I don’t think she is bothered whether he is listening or not. She is in her own place.

“My brother, Roland, and . . . and . . . they met at Marlborough. Strange, how they lived so close to each other but only really met when they were away from home. But then we were always isolated from other children. Nobody wanted to come and play here — their parents wouldn’t let them, anyway. And we were never allowed to associate with the children of the labourers in the farm cottages, you understand. We just had each other for company until we went away to school.

“Of course, the tragedy for the Eastfields was that they ever became involved with the Guerdons. Little by little, we drained them of their lustre. . . .”

The man is uncomfortable. “Yes, well —” he begins.

“It’s a dangerous thing to do, to fall in love with a Guerdon. I should know — my mother did the same thing,” Auntie continues, in her own world. “He knew he was going to have his work cut out persuading the Colonel. The old chap would never have allowed it, and we were so young. He didn’t even approve of his friendship with Roland, so we kept it secret. Then, after the war, the world was changed —”

“The girls are both on the mend now,” the man says quickly. “As I said, this germ has gone through a lot of people in the village, but it doesn’t last long. I haven’t lost anyone yet. By Monday this one will probably be eating like a horse. It might take the younger girl a little longer, but you’re doing all the right things. Call me back immediately if things don’t improve.”

A bag clicks shut.

“If I might be so bold,” he says, “I do think you should seriously think about getting connected to the telephone. You’re very isolated here. It’s a good job the rector rang to tell me I should come down and take a look at the girls. But what if he hadn’t known? What if it had been something more dangerous? You don’t even have anybody to run a message for you.”

He rests his warm hand on my forehead. I feel peaceful.

The curtains darken. I slumber, I wake, I doze, and my visitors drift in and out of my dreams. I have no way of knowing how real they are.

Suddenly bright sunshine fills the room.

“Cora, try some of this, dear,” says a soothing voice. A hand cradles my head, and I sip sweet water, and a little more. Then it rests me gently back on my pillow.

Auntie says, “I don’t think you need this pail anymore.”

Half in and half out of waking, I see her lift the bucket from the floor. There is a thud, and Auntie cries out in pain. She goes down on her knees, lifts up the edge of the eiderdown, and looks under the bed. I hear her suck in her breath through clenched teeth, scuffle around, then get up quickly, clanging the bucket against something metal. She leaves the room with quick hard footsteps and slams the door behind her.

How dare she! How dare she prowl around my house! Jasper’s box — how the hell did she find out about it? Has she shown anything to the Jotman boy? Prying into things, snooping and prying!

I’ve written another letter to Harry, but I can’t even go and post it with the two of them sick. I’m going to have to light the copper and do the washing. I can’t leave that stinking stuff soaking until tomorrow.

There are flies everywhere. If only I could fling all the windows open and let the fresh air blow through the house, but even if I could do it — they’ve been nailed up so long — I wouldn’t dare. Not now.

I’m so angry with Cora — raking up the past like this. How dare she — making me go through all this — all over again.

Oh, God, it’s the photograph they put in the newspaper. Oh, Agnes . . . Annie was such a sweet child.

I’m so weary.