Weyward, p.21
Weyward, page 21
‘My mother? Please – where are we? What is this place?’ Violet asked as he walked towards the door. He stood at its threshold, his hand on the doorknob, and for a while she thought he would simply leave without responding.
‘It belonged to her, actually,’ he said. ‘Your mother.’ He slammed the door behind him, so hard that the little house shook.
PART THREE
33
KATE
Kate stares at the writing on the box for a long time.
Orton Hall.
The cardboard is mildewed and lifting at the edges. One side looks as though it has been eaten by something. She remembers the glittering remains of the insects at Orton Hall and shudders. She isn’t sure she can even bring herself to touch the cardboard, but she is conscious of Emily watching her, eyes bright with anticipation.
She takes a deep breath. Then she opens the box.
Dust clouds the air, catching in her throat. She coughs as she peers inside.
All the books are very old, and some are in better condition than others. She pulls out a copy of An Encyclopaedia of Gardening. Its green cover is faded and swirled with mould. She shakes it, and crushed insect wings fall out, glimmering like pearls in the light.
‘Ugh,’ says Emily, reeling backwards. ‘That’ll be the infestation Mike mentioned. He’s been up at the Hall, helping to clear it out. He thought I might want the books. The viscount’s been moved to a care home, over in Beckside. He was in quite a state, apparently. Poor man. Hold on – I’ll get a dustpan.’
Emily bustles out of the storeroom, and Kate pulls the next book out of the box.
It’s a rather dense-looking tome titled Introduction to Biology. One of the pages is folded down, and Kate shudders at the unsettlingly graphic diagrams of insect reproduction.
There are some fiction titles, too: a dog-eared copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. She wonders who they belonged to. If they could have belonged to Graham or Violet.
There’s one last book in there. Kate fishes it out. It is very handsome – it looks as though it could be more valuable than all the others. She should tell Emily, she knows; ask her what sort of price it could fetch. But for some reason she doesn’t want anyone else to see it. She wants to keep it for herself.
She runs her fingers over the front cover. The book is bound in soft red leather, the title embossed in gilt:
Children’s and Household Tales
The Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm. She’d had her own copy as a child, she remembers – though her newer edition had been titled Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Some of the stories, she recalls, had been rather frightening, the characters – no matter how innocent and pure – meeting grisly ends. Hansel and Gretel, eaten by a witch. Good preparation for the real world, she supposes.
Could the book be a first edition? She opens it, looking for a publication date on the first page.
A crumple of yellowed paper falls onto her lap. Unfurling it, she sees it’s a handwritten letter, but before she has time to read it, Emily opens the storeroom door, dustpan and broom in hand.
She slips the letter into the pocket of her jacket before Emily can see.
Toffee creeps in, climbing over her, his claws digging into her legs. He settles into her lap and begins purring. The baby kicks in response.
‘I think she likes you,’ she says to the cat.
‘And he’s smitten with the pair of you,’ Emily laughs. Her feathered earrings quiver as she bends down to sweep up the wings. ‘I can only get him to purr by leaving the room. What have you got there?’
‘Fairy tales,’ says Kate quietly. ‘I wonder if it belonged to Violet,’ Emily says. ‘Though it’s odd, isn’t it – that she didn’t take her things with her, when she moved out of the Big House.’
‘Yes,’ Kate says, struggling to reconcile what she knows of Aunt Violet – her love of green dresses, the insect drawings, the strange collection of artefacts under her bed – with dark and horrible Orton Hall. She can’t picture her ever having lived there. ‘Perhaps she left in a hurry?’
Emily brings her a plate of chocolate digestives before heading back to the front of the shop to deal with a customer. Though she desperately wants to, Kate doesn’t dare open the letter in her pocket. She doesn’t want to risk Emily coming back and seeing it. It feels private, somehow. Secret.
At half past three, after they’ve closed up for the day, Emily offers her a lift home.
‘You shouldn’t be carrying heavy things, you know,’ she says. ‘Not now, in your condition.’
Kate looks down at her stomach, swaddled in layers of wool. She eases herself into an old coat of Violet’s, pulls a velvet green beret over her head.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I want to see the snow.’ It’s funny, now, to think of her early walks into the village, back when she’d first arrived at Crows Beck. How she’d flinched at the rustle of leaves, startled by a sparrow. Now, her amble home is something to look forward to; something to savour. She loves noticing the little seasonal changes of the landscape – how now, in winter, the trees reach bare and graceful towards the sky; the hedgerows are jewelled red with rowan berries.
She hoists the box onto her hip and pushes open the door, leaving behind the musty warmth of the bookshop. Outside, she inhales the wintry air, savouring its crispness. The cold prickles her cheeks, and she grins at the sight of the village: the buildings half hidden under great lips of snow; windows glowing orange. Someone has strung Christmas lights from the street-lamps, and as the sun sets pink in the sky, they twinkle into life.
For the first time in years, she has been looking forward to Christmas – her daughter is due a few days before. With only weeks to go, she can feel her body preparing for the birth: her breasts have swelled, and she’s begun to notice streaks of golden fluid on the inside of her bra. Colostrum, Dr Collins calls it.
Even her senses seem to have sharpened: sometimes, she thinks she can hear the most incredible sounds: the click of a beetle’s antennae on the ground; the whirr of a moth’s wings. A bird clamping its beak around a worm. It’s strange, how she feels attuned to things happening at such a great distance, and yet all the while her child’s heartbeat thrums in her ears.
But now, as she walks home, the countryside is still and silent, muffled by snow. It is so still, in a way that unsettles her: she has the sense that the land, and the creatures in it, are waiting for something. As she strides on, the only sounds are her own footsteps crunching in the snow, and the rustle of the letter in her pocket. The letter. Something about it doesn’t feel right. Foreboding creeps across her skin, setting the hairs on end.
When she does get home, she is almost afraid to look at it. She takes her time lighting the fire, boiling water for her tea, chopping vegetables for the stew that she’ll prepare later.
Finally, everything is done. She can no longer put it off.
She sits down at the kitchen table and unfurls the piece of paper.
The note is very yellow, almost translucent in places. Lined, as though it was torn from a school exercise book. There is no date.
Dear Father, Graham, Nanny Metcalfe, Mrs Kirkby and Miss Poole,
I am very sorry about what I have done, especially to whomever it was who found me.
Father, I know that you think taking one’s own life to be a mortal sin, and that you will be shocked – and perhaps ashamed – by what I have done. But please understand that I truly felt I had no other choice after what happened.
I know you all – Father especially – think very highly of my cousin, Frederick Ayres. But please believe me when I tell you that he is not the man you think he is. I know he seems charming and chivalrous – like a knight from a fairy tale, with his dark hair and green eyes. But something has happened – something terrible and wrong. I do not quite have the words for it; just that I am plagued by memories of it, night and day. Perhaps it is my fault; perhaps I should have done something to prevent it, though I do not know what. In any case, I cannot see how I can continue in this fashion.
Graham, I am sorry that I was not a better sister to you. Nanny Metcalfe, I am sorry if I have been a difficult charge. Mrs Kirkby, I am sorry about the time I said your roast beef tasted like a shoe. Miss Poole, I am sorry for all the times I made fun of your singing voice.
My best wishes to you all, and my deepest apologies once again,
Violet
PS. If it isn’t too much trouble, I should like to be buried under the beech tree in the garden. Perhaps you could also ask Dinsdale to plant some flowers above my grave. Something bright and colourful that will attract bees and other insects. Any flowers will do, so long as they aren’t primroses.
Kate reads the letter again.
I am plagued by memories of it.
She shuts her eyes, touches her arm, where the skin is smooth and pink. Sometimes, Kate would wake in the night to Simon’s insistent mouth on her neck; to the feel of him inside her. As if she had forfeited the rights to her own body the day they’d met.
She understands, she thinks, what happened to Aunt Violet.
Obviously, she hadn’t gone through with the suicide attempt – somehow, Violet had left home and found the strength to live the academic, adventurous life that awaited her. To break free from her past.
Kate wonders if Violet ever told anyone, in the end. She knows what it’s like, wanting to tell: to no longer be alone with the awful, secret knowledge, poisoning your cells like a disease. Wanting to speak but being choked into silence by the shame of it.
As she rereads Violet’s words, something else leaps out at her.
His green eyes.
She thinks back to her visit to Orton Hall, to meeting the old viscount. He had green eyes, too. Her spine tingles with revulsion at the memory – his fetid, animal stink; the yellow curls of his nails.
Fingers shaking, she unlocks her phone and taps Frederick Ayres into Google.
The first result is an article from the local paper, dated five years ago.
FLY INFESTATION BUGS VISCOUNT
Local exterminators have struggled to remove thousands of mayflies from Orton Hall, the seat of the Viscount Kendall.
According to residents in nearby Crows Beck, the infestation has plagued the Hall for decades, worsening in recent years.
‘Every pest control company in the valley has had a go,’ said a source. ‘Insecticides, LED traps, the works. But they won’t budge.’
Mayflies are most common in the summer, when the females can lay up to three thousand eggs. The insects normally frequent aquatic environments and rarely infest dwellings.
Lord Frederick Ayres, the Tenth Viscount Kendall, has lived in Orton Hall since succeeding his uncle to the title in the 1940s. He served as an officer in the Eighth Army in World War II and saw action in North Africa.
Viscount Kendall has not been seen in public for some years and could not be reached for comment.
Her stomach drops.
There’s a photograph with the article. A young man in military uniform, handsome features blurred by time. But she can see him there – just – in the firm line of the jaw, the deep-set eyes. It is the same stooped, haunted man she met at the Hall.
Frederick is the viscount.
What kind of father would disinherit his children in favour of a man who had raped one of them? Surely he couldn’t have known. For a moment, Kate allows herself to consider a worse possibility: that Violet had told her father about the rape, and that he simply … hadn’t believed her.
Outside, an owl hoots mournfully. Kate feels a surge of sadness for her great-aunt, this woman she can barely remember. They’d had more in common than she realised.
She goes to the sink for a glass of water, gulping it down as if it can flush away her memories. She stays there for a moment, looking out at the snowy garden, flaming with sunset. Violet’s garden.
Despite everything that happened to her, her great-aunt had built an independent life for herself. She may have never married and had a family of her own, but she had her cottage, her garden. Her career.
Now Kate, too, has built her own life.
And she won’t let anyone take it away from her.
34
ALTHA
Grace and I stood looking at each other for a long time before she spoke. It was the first time she had looked at me directly in seven years. Since we were thirteen, I had only ever seen her from afar: in church, or shopping on market day. She had always passed her eyes over me as if I were not there.
‘Will you not invite me in?’ she asked.
‘Prithee, wait,’ I said, before shutting the door. Hurrying, I herded the goat into the garden, my mother’s warning ringing in my ears.
When this was done, I opened the door and moved aside to let Grace through. I noticed she walked slowly, as if she were a much older woman. She sat heavily at the table. She kept her cloak on, even though it was soaked from the gale outside.
‘Would you care for some food?’ I asked.
She nodded, so I cut a slice of bread for her, and some cheese, and sat down opposite her. As she ate, her cap shifted, and I saw a dark shadow on her cheek. I thought perhaps it was cast by the flicker of the candle on the table. Still she did not say anything until she finished eating.
‘I heard about your mother,’ she said. ‘Now we are both orphans.’
‘You have your father,’ I said.
‘My father’, she said, ‘hasn’t looked at me properly since I was thirteen years old, though I kept house for him and brought up my brothers and sisters until I left home.’
‘Well, you have your husband.’
She laughed. It was a dry sound, like the crackling of flames. She did not laugh like this before, when we were children, I remember thinking. She’d had a sweet laugh then, sweeter than the hymns we sang in church, sweeter even than birdsong.
‘You will have to tell me what it’s like, sometime,’ I said. ‘Being a wife.’
‘I haven’t come here for idle talk,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m here on business. To purchase something from you.’
One small white hand went to the pocket of her kirtle, and I heard the clink of coins.
‘Oh,’ I said. My face flushed, and a tide of pain rose in my throat. I had been stupid to think she had wanted things to be as they were before, after all these years. After everything that had happened.
‘I am with child,’ she said, turning her head away. Her voice was very quiet; her face hidden by the cap.
‘What joyful tidings,’ I said. I remembered how much she had spoken of wanting to grow up and have a babe of her own when we were children. When I was very young, I had told her, horrified, of Daniel Kirkby’s birth: his mother grunting and glistening all over with sweat, the child sliding out of her in a rush of slime and blood. Grace, who had seen her brothers and sisters born, laughed at my ignorance. ‘That is just the way of things,’ she had said. ‘You’ll learn yourself one day.’
There had been rumours of a pregnancy around the village in the months after she married, and when I saw her in church, I had noticed a swell beneath her dress, a plumpness to her face. But no child ever came. I did not know if she had lost the baby, or if there had never been one. Either way, she must be very happy now, I thought, to be so blessed.
She did not say anything for a moment. When she spoke again, I was sure I must have misheard her.
‘I need something’, she said slowly, as if she were reluctant for the words to leave her mouth, ‘that will make it go away.’
‘Go away? Morning sickness, you mean? I can see to that. I can make a tonic with balm, to settle the stomach—’
‘You misunderstand me,’ she said. ‘I meant the child. I need … I need something to make the child go away.’
Her words hung heavy in the air. Neither of us spoke for a moment. I heard the pop and hiss of the fire, the drum of rain on the roof. These sounds swelled in my ears, as if they could take away what she had said.
‘Has the baby quickened?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Are you quite sure? What you are asking of me … it is a sin. And a crime. If anyone were to discover it …’
‘It will die anyway.’ She said this as coolly as if she were commenting on the yield of the harvest or the turn of the weather. ‘You would be doing it a kindness.’
‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Even if I knew how …’
‘You must know,’ she said. ‘Your mother would have known. Look through her things. There’s certain to have been a village girl or two who came to her for help after some indiscretion or other. Besides …’ She paused. ‘She was good at taking life, wasn’t she?’
The memory of that terrible night swam before me. Anna, still and lifeless while Grace sobbed.
‘Grace. Your mother would have died anyway, had we not come. She was too ill by then … the fever was so strong. And the leeches …’
Her head turned sharply back towards me. In the candlelight, her eyes were bright – with tears or fury, I did not know.
‘I do not wish to speak of it,’ she said. ‘Just tell me if you can help me or not. If you ever loved me as your friend … then you will do this thing for me. And you will ask me no more questions.’
All the moisture had gone from my mouth. I felt giddy, as though the room had lurched to one side and taken me with it.
‘I will try,’ I said softly. ‘But I cannot promise that it will work.’
‘Aye, then. I will return in one week. Will that give you enough time?’
‘Yes.’
She rose from the table. ‘I must be going. I have left John asleep. He does not normally wake until dawn, after so much ale. But I cannot risk him rousing to see that I am gone.’
I myself slept a poor night after she left. I thought for a long time, wondering what I had agreed to. All for the love of someone who – and I knew in my heart that this was true – still blamed me for her mother’s death. Still hated me.
How it pained me, to hear that hate in her voice. My mind ran over her speech, remembering the coldness of it, and my eyes burned with tears. As children, we had learned each other before we could speak. I had once known the meaning of her raised brow, the curve of her mouth, as though they were words in a book. Now she was a stranger.
