Bare feet, bare legs. It didn’t matter.
No hands came clutching out of the flames for her. Of course they didn’t. She hadn’t even thought.
She didn’t need to think. There was a girl on fire, screaming and helpless, batting her hands at the fury of her skirt and doing nothing but spread the flame to her cheesecloth sleeves, making everything worse in a moment.
Girl on fire, and a lakeful of water just three paces off. What was there to think about?
She had no idea how deep the water was. That didn’t matter either. If there was only one thing Grace did well, with a natural confidence and the virtue she was named for, swimming would be that thing. Water became her.
She didn’t need to think.
She hurtled into the burning girl, full on, face to face. Flame to – well, lucky she was only wearing a sleeveless minidress, there wasn’t so much to catch fire. Nylon all through it, though, which would melt to a sticky horror on her skin – except that she wouldn’t let it; it wouldn’t have the time.
Someone had told her once she had a rugby player’s shoulders. It wasn’t true – they were trying deliberately to be unkind, and not making a very good job of it – and she did watch her weight with care, but she wasn’t ever one of those wispy girls who need a man to open an envelope for them.
She slammed into the screaming, skipping, burning girl, scooped both arms around her and just kept going. Feeling heat and not worrying, keeping going. Momentum and determination and the thrust of her legs – thunder thighs, that same unfriend had called her, loudly at a party – carried both of them over the grass and over the stone rim of the lake and into the air and down, into the water.
She’d grabbed air on the way because that was what she did, it didn’t need thinking about; and if it was hot, the air, if there was a mouthful of flame in there it wasn’t burning her.
She was ready, when they hit. Ready for the impact, ready for the plunge. Ready for the water closing over her head, and for her unready companion’s struggles. She’d done lifesaver training at the pool in Billericay, her sixteenth summer, when there’d been a man to train her. She could handle this.
She wasn’t ready for the cold of it or the depth of it, the falling-away beneath her, falling and falling; that sudden crushing squeeze that made her air feel ridiculous and shook her confidence to the marrow.
It couldn’t be that deep, this deep.
Could it?
And the girl couldn’t still be burning, she only thought she was. And was flailing, frantic, still trying to beat out flames with burned palms, didn’t seem to notice that they were underwater now and sinking still.
Until she tried to catch her breath for screaming, and—
Well. That was a hard time. From trying to burn, the girl was trying suddenly to drown: doing her very best, doing everything wrong, fighting Grace and fighting to breathe and dreadful in her panic, dreadfully dangerous.
In all the watery stories Grace had ever read, a rugby-playing man would administer a swift clip to the jaw and thrust the fainting female to the surface before she could drown of her own wilfulness.
Still lacking the shoulders, she did what she could: kicked like mad and hung on grimly, tried to keep below and push the girl upward, not to let her cling like weed and drag them both down beyond saving.
No swimming, mind. Not in that water, Mary had said. It must have meant something. Maybe it meant this: the depth and the shocking chill of it, an icy clutch at her confidence. Not even you, it whispered deep in the bone of her. You’re out of your depth here . . .
Well, but she always had been. Out of her depth all her life, and fighting all the way: grabbing for air, for a handhold, for a helping hand, for anything. Learning to swim the hard way, by learning to stay alive.
She held her breath in the sour murky water, kicked against the bitter sucking grip of it below, pushed hard at the flailing girl above.
Brought them both abruptly to the surface, gasping and choking, to find too many people crowded at the lake’s margin, trying to be helpful: too many hands reaching down to them, too many voices calling, all those bodies shutting out the firelight and only making it harder.
Still. She heaved the girl into those willing hands and felt her drawn away on to solid ground. The same hands clutched for her, but she kicked off from the stone-faced bank and backed water a little way, out of their reach. The cold was vicious but not killing, not yet; if all she had to do was float, she could manage that. And there was a comfort in it, this brief space between her and them like the walls they disapproved of, an absolute line. No one was jumping in to join her. Not in that water.
She could understand that. She could relish it, almost. She’d be glad enough to get out herself, but not until they cleared away from the bank. She didn’t want all their hands hauling at her, touching her, dragging her away. She didn’t want to be one of them, this suddenly easily; she didn’t want to be their hero of the hour. I’m a spy, not a sister.
A good spy would take any advantage, she supposed, whatever they might offer her: congratulations, gratitude, towels.
Perhaps she didn’t want to be a good spy either. Even to please Tony.
She raised an arm to wave them away, all those hopeful helpful people – but that was her left arm, her bad hand, and it was aching fiercely now that the cold had got into it. Not in that water, not with that hand. Maybe she was due a scolding, rather than congratulations. It didn’t matter, but in this darkness a wave might look like an appeal for help, a drowning girl going under again. She let her arm drop and snatched a breath to yell at them instead. Clear back out of the way, let me get myself out – the last thing she wanted was anyone pulling on that bad hand, ripping open the stitches again. Mother Mary would understand, she’d corral their eagerness, it only needed a yell . . .
But the air was thin and foul out here over the water; it didn’t seem to be enough. She gasped and gasped again and couldn’t raise her voice. For a moment she thought something dark and sinuous and massive moved in the water beside her.
Oh, that was nonsense. There weren’t monsters in the water. Nor hands in the fire, nor—
Nor a bell, no, tolling deep beneath her, deep deep down. Great thudding strokes that seized hold of her, that crushed her, flesh and bone together; that doubled her up in the water there, no swimmer now. Just a mortal suffering body, breathless and racked with pain and sinking, slipping down into the dark and the cruel cold, and . . .
And something brushed against her body as she fell, and she hadn’t ever been the screaming sort but honestly then she might have screamed if there had been air in her lungs, if she had been in air and not this gripping suffocating water.
The touch startled her eyes open, when she hadn’t really realized she’d closed them. Not that eyes were any use in this dark, this double-dark, dense clouded lake-water in the night; but she’d rather go down fighting. Even if she couldn’t see what it was she fought against, even not believing in monsters even as they swallowed her.
A touch again, fumbling first to find her and then seizing hold. She did try to fight, but that grip had pinned one arm against her side so she only had the other one to fight with, and of course that was her bad arm, which felt almost too heavy to lift now as it burned with cold, as it ached deep in the bone. And she had no air, and there was no strength left in her, and no hope; and she might as well just hang here, seized and helpless, and let whatever had her drag her down . . .
Except that she was rising, all unexpectedly; and that wasn’t a monster after all. Of course it wasn’t; she didn’t believe in monsters. Just a man, she could feel the familiar shape of his body against hers as he kicked powerfully, kicked them both up to the surface.
And she was still in the grip of the tolling bell, still helpless, and that didn’t matter any more. He was strong enough for both of them. All she had to do was breathe, finally, at last: great sodden shuddering breaths as he towed her to the side, as she floated slackly in his arms, as far too many hands grabbed hold and hauled her out.
Then she could lie on the grass and cough and shudder uncontrollably, heedless of all those people all around her; until at last here was Mother Mary pushing through, taking charge, what they had needed all along.
‘Stop crowding them, stop standing there like goons, how do you think you’re helping? Someone run up to the house, put a kettle on, fetch towels and dry clothes for them both. Yes, all of you go if you want to, you’re no use to me here. What they need is the fire’s heat, and you lot are just in the way and I don’t have time for you. Go on, vamoose . . .’
Of course, not everyone went. There’s always someone who thinks general instructions don’t apply to them. And perhaps they were right this time; she was glad enough now to have help to bring her closer to the blaze, where she could sit and shiver and wish that she could dive right through into the fire’s heart. If there were hands in the fire, where were they now? Not reaching out for her, no, to embrace her and draw her in where it was warm. She thought she would have gone. No fighting now, no fight left in her. This numbing cold had frozen out her heart and her will together, every stubborn grain of spirit that she had. She thought she might be crying, perhaps.
‘Hey.’
She turned her head slowly, effortfully to find him. He was sitting cross-legged in the fire’s bask, which was more than she could manage. He was long and lean and angular, his limbs jutting in all directions, and the way he sat, slumped forward – and no blame to him for that! – his long dripping draggled hair hung down over his face, and for that little moment she wasn’t sure.
Then he lifted a hand, tucked most of his hair back behind his ear, and she saw a shaven chin and a predatory gleam, almost a possessiveness, as he gazed at her, as though he had saved her life and so could claim it now.
Not Tom, no. She hadn’t been able to tell in the water, and she had wondered – but no, of course it was Webb. Strong and dominant, taking charge, seizing control. Seizing her, while he had the chance.
He would think so, at least. The water had first claim on her, though, and a tighter grip. She was still coughing, still wheezing through a constricted throat, as though all the passages of her body had clenched up. The fire’s heat wasn’t coming close. Her clothes were starting to steam, and even so: she still felt bitter, shaking cold, inside and out.
He could see that, she thought. He hitched himself over and put an arm around her shoulders, drew her in close against him. She had no resistance. She felt once again close to tears, unsure that they weren’t actually already leaking down her ice-wet cheeks.
At least that was easy to hide. She turned her face into his shoulder, which was wet enough already. For a minute, she let him cradle her; she thought he was probably enjoying it, despite everything.
He didn’t get it for free, though. Not for long. After that little minute, she made an effort and peeled herself away, face and body both; and scowled up at him and said, ‘It isn’t fair.’
‘What’s that, love?’
‘Why aren’t you shivering?’ He didn’t even feel cold, on the inside. Under that skin of wet clothes, she could sense the heat of him, pulsing through. ‘Look at me, I can’t stop . . .’
Even her teeth were chattering. She’d always thought that was a myth, but she tried to talk and they clattered together like dentures coming loose.
‘So come back here and borrow a bit of what I’ve got.’ He was imperturbable, pleased with himself, irresistible apparently. When he tugged, she went. ‘You were in longer than I was; I expect that’s it. You saved my poor Kathie twice over: once from the fire, and then again from the water. It’s no wonder if you’re feeling a bit spent.’
‘It’s more than that, you idiot. Sit her up and let me look at that arm again.’ Mary, of course, back from wherever she’d been: tending Kathie, presumably, seeing how bad her burns were. At least they’d had the cold water to suck all the heat out of them.
‘Yes, of course. Here, Georgie, you just lean back on me, that’s the way, and let Mary get at you . . . What’s she done to herself, Mother, anyway?’
‘Never you mind.’ Of course he’d want to know; information is power. He’d want to know everything. And of course Mary wouldn’t tell him, even the sum of her guesses. ‘She’s in a bad way, that’s all. Hold this arm still, if you want to make yourself useful. I don’t think you can do it yourself, can you, Georgie pet? Where are those towels, anyway? How long does it take to run to the linen cupboard and back? I can’t be expected to do everything . . . Oh, at last. Thank you, Tom. That’s right, just put it round her shoulders, and you go at her hair with another one. Webb can look after himself – or more likely Kathie – but not for a minute, please. Keep holding Georgie, just as you are; you won’t die of pneumonia, any of you, for one more minute . . . Yes. That’s what I was afraid of: all the stitches gone again, and no telling how much blood she’s lost, but I don’t like the look of her at all. Honestly, Georgie. What did I tell you . . .?’
Not in that water, and not with that hand. But it wasn’t really a question, and she certainly didn’t expect an answer: which was just as well, because she certainly wasn’t actually going to get one. Not from Georgie, who was hardly even there; and Grace was lost in the tolling of a bell, impossibly deep and impossibly cold, the sound of it felt rather than heard. She thought it was still sounding, thrumming through the ground she sat on. Unpicking her mind as easily as it unpicked stitches, slicing the threads of her thoughts apart, opening her up to bleed and bleed.
She was glad enough just to lean shiveringly into Webb’s lean strength, sorry when someone – was that Tom, of all people? – bullied her into leaning forward so that he could get at her hair, violently, with a towel. It’d dry all wild, but oddly even Grace didn’t seem to care. She couldn’t manage it, somehow. Even her arm wasn’t hurting now; it was just numb. If Mary wanted to sew it up again, she wouldn’t need to bother with any novocaine.
Oh. Apparently, she was sewing it up already. Grace hadn’t noticed, and neither had Georgie – well, no reason why she should: it was Grace’s arm, wasn’t it? Grace had done the cutting first, before those damn bells started – but she heard, ‘Pass me my scissors. Or no, better, just cut. Cut there, and wait. I’m putting another one in. I’m putting in a whole lot more, actually. I’m going to hem these cuts, to stop her tearing them open again. I’d do them cross-stitch if I could. Lord knows what she found down there in the water, to cut them through so cleanly. Something that had rusted to an edge, I suppose . . .’
But the light had changed, and they weren’t huddled by the fire any more. When had that happened? She blinked around, and here they were: herself, and Mary, and Tom. No Webb. Tom was holding her with one arm, helping Mary with the other; and they were back in the familiar bathroom again, bright lights and clean water and Mary’s medical bag opened up on the marble side there.
She didn’t quite understand what had happened, but she was glad enough to have the lake water washed out of her. And she wasn’t shuddering now, and she couldn’t hear the bell, and all of that was good. And Mary said, ‘She’ll do now. I’ve put in double the number of stitches this time round. You get her to bed. Up with Kathie, please. They’ll be company for each other and I won’t have to disturb anyone else when I check on them. Oh, I’m sure half the house will be sitting up all night anyway, but not on that corridor. You and Webb can take turn and turn about, if you insist . . .’
And then she must have drifted off again, by herself or perhaps with help if Mary gave her something: because now she was in bed, in a bedroom, or at least in a room set aside for sleeping. The bed was only a pallet on the floor, but she was a little surprised to find that she didn’t mind that. For Georgie it would probably be like camping with the Guides, a girlhood pleasure rediscovered, nights of whispering in the dark with friends when they should have been sleeping. Grace was more practical. She was warm and cosy and weary to the bone, and she never wanted to move again and had no reason to. Half the aristocratic beds she’d slept in had been more lumpy and less comfortable than this.
There was another pallet in the room, the other side of the little window where a night light burned. That was just enough to show her a muffled shape asleep, and that must be Kathie the burned drowned girl, not burning now, not drowning. That was good, that must be good enough.
Between the two of them sat a third figure on the bare board floor. A shadow, long straight hair lit by the window’s candle. A sharp red glow as he inhaled; a slow breathing-out, and the smell of acrid leaves.
She murmured a soft, ‘Webb?’
‘Tom,’ he said, half apologetic. ‘Webb’s sleeping the sleep of the justly famous. So are you supposed to be. I said I’d keep watch over your snoring forms.’
‘I don’t snore!’
‘Yeah, you do. Little feminine snorts, it’s quite cute. Maybe it’s just because you’re full of lake. Or drugged up.’
‘You can talk.’ He could, but his voice was slurred a little, slow and dreamy; that was surely not his first joint of the night.
‘Hey. Got to do something to pass the time. You wouldn’t like it if I made a noise.’
She might, actually, if he made it with his flute. She could see herself lying here in the dark and letting soft breathy music carry her away. Like a child floating on a lullaby. It wouldn’t take much; her body was half asleep already.
‘I’m not drugged up, anyway,’ she said, just because it was needful, not because it was true. ‘I don’t.’ Grace did, of course, she was a party girl, she took anything she was offered if anyone was looking; but Georgie did not. Of course not. Georgie had never even had a cigarette. She was trying gamely to be cool about it all, but the waters had closed over her head long since.
‘You do now. Mother Mary stuck you full of things. Don’t ask me what. They were supposed to make you sleep, though. Like poor Kathie.’
‘How is she?’
‘Better than she would’ve been without you. She’s got burns, of course, but they’re all superficial. Mother Mary says she’ll be sore for a few days, but nothing worse than that.’
‘Well, that’s good news. So why do we need you to watch over us?’ Just let us sleep. Kathie was comatose, and she herself was wrapped in a lovely lethargic feeling, safe under blankets, nothing to do but lie here and let the world turn beneath her . . .
‘Just in case. Mary’s confident, but she could be wrong. She’s not a doctor. What if Kathie comes round and she’s really hurting? Webb said someone should be here through the night. And he was falling asleep where he sat but still in a state over Kathie and trying to hide it, the way he does, so I said I’d spell him for a while. And just as well, see? Here you are, awake.’
‘I might not be, if you weren’t sitting there smoking at me.’ In truth, though, she didn’t mind a bit. There had been times when all she wanted was unconsciousness, if she couldn’t actually be dead – but not now, apparently. Not right this minute. She was oddly happy, half afloat inside her body, bickering lightly with this boy. She felt like a night light herself: barely awake, barely troubled.
Even her wrist didn’t hurt right now. Well, there were no bells cutting at it. She thought about that, about houses like this, how she had lain awake on other nights with other men beside her and listened to their snores interspersed with a community of chimes, a carriage clock in the room and a grandfather clock down the hall and the big clock over the stable all out of time with each other and picking fights about it, loudly, all through the night.
The thought became a question: ‘Why aren’t there any clocks here?’
‘Oh, there are plenty of clocks. All in one room, put away. Nobody winds ’em. The captain won’t have ’em around the house.’
‘No, but why not?’ He wanted discipline and order, didn’t he? Everything shipshape and Bristol fashion – and ships ran to time, she was sure of that. She’d known sailors enough, and seen all the movies too. Everything was governed by the ship’s bell, which in olden times was governed by the captain’s watch. These days they’d do it the other way around, she supposed: run the bell off a clock and let that govern everybody’s watch. Here they used the bell to announce a stranger, and no one ran a clock at all. Except Mary, with her secret fob.
‘He says that clocks are tyrannical, and that tyranny is the enemy of order. He says that time and clockwork are antithetical, that the universe is consensual and not mechanistic. God is not a horologist, he says.’
‘Says a lot, doesn’t he? Uses big words, too.’
‘He does. Also, he says when it’s time for lunch and dinner. Well, lunch is noon, that’s easy enough. We ring the bell anyway, but we can pretty much all tell that. Dinner is when his stomach says it’s dinner time: which is sunset around the equinox, which makes sense, but this far north the sun’s no guide at all. We hardly see it in the winter, and it hardly goes away midsummer, so we rely on Leonard.’
‘Leonard and a bell,’ she said, with an edge she hoped he wouldn’t hear, because he couldn’t understand.
‘That’s right. He says, “Make it lunch,” or, “Make it supper time,” and someone runs down to the kitchens to tip them off, and someone else runs up to Frank in the wood. Frank rings the bell to tell us all.’
Frank. She was here to look for a Francis Gardiner, as well as to learn what she could about the set-up here. Francis might well come down to Frank. If she was going to bleed twice a day, though – if he was going to make her bleed – then she couldn’t stay. Sorry, Tony, but she’d be like a vampire’s victim, ever more pale and ever more frail, mysteriously weaker every morning. Mary would summon doctors, or send her to the cottage hospital more likely. She’d be away from here, anyway, safe and useless.
Bells didn’t make her bleed in London, except in her heart. Something here took her literally. She ought to be more scared than she was, maybe. Except that she really wasn’t scared of dying any more. Well, you couldn’t be, after you’d cut your own wrists open; it wouldn’t make sense, would it?
Just to be clear, she said, ‘Not for breakfast, then? The captain’s tummy, I mean, telling you when it’s time, and that big bell to wake everybody up?’
Tom laughed softly in the darkness. ‘Not for breakfast, no. The captain doesn’t eat breakfast. Except at sea, he says. Dawn watch, sandwiches and cocoa. Here he has a cup of tea and leaves the rest of us to look after ourselves. Or each other. Somebody usually makes up a cauldronful of porridge and leaves it keeping warm. But some people are early up, and some sleep late; you really couldn’t make us all eat at the same time in the morning. Not without sacrificing what this place is really about.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Us,’ Tom said. ‘Each of us individually, and the group of us together. We’re like a hedge: lots of separate different plants growing all together, growing tough and strong and intertwined, marking out a boundary, making a shelter. It’s the new way, the coming thing. Have you ever seen a hedge being laid?’
No, of course she hadn’t. She’d seen a bishop being laid, but she decided not to say so. Georgie wouldn’t dream of such a thing. She said, ‘No, I haven’t. Is that what you call it? I thought you just planted hedge plants, and they grew . . .’
‘No, it’s a real craft. And at the start, it’s all about discipline: chopping back what’s there, cutting and bending the green wood and weaving it into a sort of frame, so that the new shoots will bind together the way you want. Then you can encourage all the growth and variety you like, shape it if you want to or just leave it alone, let it run rampant. That’s what the captain’s after, you see? Something enduring, where every individual adds to the strength of the whole, and everyone can flourish. It’s why he needs the big house; it’s a big ship he has in mind. And this is just the start. We’ll be a beacon, and a seed pod. People will go out from here, spread the word, set up daughter-houses all over. We can change the world. Everyone will want to live like this, once they’ve seen how it works.’
‘What, smoking pot and dancing round the fire? I know a lot of people who absolutely wouldn’t.’ She knew a lot of people – in houses like this, mostly – who’d come stomping down the hill with shotguns, if people tried to do it on their land.
‘Not that, no. Even now, even here, not everyone wants to get high. Some of us do, sure – but that’s not what it’s about. The captain doesn’t, and he’s our guiding light. Give us ten years, time to settle in. Time to make a mark. Already we’re doing what we can in the neighbourhood –’ ladders on a roof rack, screaming at passers-by: she wasn’t impressed – ‘but we’ll be a power in the land, once we’re settled. People will see, people will listen. And they’ll want this, and eventually they’ll realize they can have it, just for the asking.’
She couldn’t say so, but she didn’t think she wanted it herself. She would never have come here, if not for Tony; having seen it, she wouldn’t stay, if not for Tony. What did this house have to offer her? She wasn’t some older generation that could safely be outlived, so that the young and hopeful could inherit the world. She was Tom’s own kind in every way that mattered, or ought to matter, except this one. Which was, of course, the only one that mattered. She was a city girl, he was a hippy freak. Back-to-the-land meant nothing to her, and what else did he have in his gift?
She said, ‘This isn’t paradise, you know.’ That was OK; she could say that. Cynical Grace would have said it already, but even vulnerable Georgie would work her way up to it at last.
‘Of course not, but we can make it a garden of Eden. A guiding light. Word will spread, people will come. You came, all the way from London.’
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’ I wouldn’t have. Don’t call me as a witness. I’m being paid for this. She’d almost forgotten the money. She shouldn’t do that; it was the only reason she was here. Georgie didn’t care about money, she’d never needed to. Grace, though, oh yes. And it was Grace she’d go back to, when she went.
Poor Grace. Even this little distance gave her perspective, to show just how mean and cramped and bitter Grace’s life had become. A good-time girl who was just not having a good time: how sad was that?
But it was still the life she had, the life that waited. She couldn’t afford to get too judgemental about that, nor too sentimental about this. It was an effort just to roll on to her side, to look at Tom more clearly. She made that effort, grunted as her body settled again into a delicious languor, and said, ‘Yes, I did. I don’t suppose I was the first, either.’ Tell me about Frank – except that she didn’t give him the chance. It was like opening a door and walking on by, not even glancing in, never mind waiting to see what came out. ‘But I’ve only been here a night, Tom, and look at me. Look at Kathie.’
What they could see of her was insensible under the covers, and just as well. Even if her burns were superficial she’d be horribly sore when she woke up. No comfortable way to lie. Grace might envy her unconsciousness; Georgie was happy just as she was, and couldn’t imagine ever wanting to move again.
Well, Georgie could stay here when Grace moved on. Shrugged off and left behind, she could be, like an old coat no longer wanted. Right now, all Grace wanted to do was move Tom just a fraction, shake him out of his complacency. He was a true believer, and they were dangerous: to themselves, and to everyone around them.
He said, ‘Accidents happen, in any community. What matters is the way we meet them.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘What matters is the way they happen. What makes them happen. There’s no such thing as accidents.’ She did, perhaps, believe that. Certainly she believed it here. Maybe she was a true believer too; maybe this place made them so. She took a breath, took the plunge; said, ‘How come you think I keep bleeding? I’m not cutting my own arm open, just to be dramatic. There’s something here that cuts me, every time you ring your bloody bells. You know that, you were there the first time. You wanted to think it was brambles, remember?’
He was quiet, smoking, listening.
She pressed on. ‘And Kathie, she didn’t trail her skirt in the fire, to have it catch like that. She wasn’t that stoned. You couldn’t get that close, anyway; it was way too hot. Something reached out for her. I saw it. It was hands, fiery hands . . .’
Now he was laughing at her. Softly, not unkindly, but still laughing.
He said, ‘Never mind how stoned Kathie was – how about you? What had you been smoking?’
‘Nothing. I don’t.’ Well, Grace did, if some man passed her something. Georgie, not. Something to be grateful for, that she needn’t pretend to want it.
‘Well, you must have caught a backblow from someone; there’s enough dope in the air here to send anyone high.’ Indeed, he added to it deliberately, blowing out a thick cloud into the small room. ‘Or you’ve taken too much acid in your time, and you were having a flashback. There’s nothing in the food, I know that. We don’t spike people. But straight up, Georgie love, come on – hands reaching out from the fire? Something collapsed in there, that’s all, an old cupboard or whatever; everything else fell in on top of it and blew out a shower of sparks. We ought to be more careful. So should you. How did you cut yourself anyway, the first time?’
‘With a razor,’ she said nastily.
He sat over that for a while, smoking, thinking. Then he said, ‘Why?’
‘Because . . . Because I was in trouble, and I couldn’t stand it any longer.’ Let him sit over that. He’d think she meant I was pregnant when she said I was in trouble, and he already knew about the baby. Let him do her lying for her. Lying for herself was far too much effort, with this warm lethargy laid over her like an extra blanket. It wasn’t really lying anyway, if she just allowed him to misunderstand.
‘I’m sorry, love. Poor Georgie.’
She thought he might let it go at that. He was a nice boy; he might be too nice to bother her further. Maybe she could just drift off again; she only felt half awake anyway. Mary’s drugs, or his: she was breathing a lot of that smoke. If this kept up, she really could find herself high on the backdraught.
Perhaps she already was. She had to be, didn’t she? He did have to be right. Fire and bells . . .
As if reading her mind, he said, ‘Bells, though, Georgie? What do you mean about the bells?’
‘Just the sound of them cuts right through me. I hate bells.’ And then, because that wasn’t enough – his silence said so, and her own creeping honesty, masks slipping one by one until she was almost dizzy with confession – she went on, ‘They let me out for my baby’s funeral, and the bell, the bloody bell . . .’
They’d tolled a single bell that morning, on and on. Three strokes three times, to say they were burying a man, though he was just barely begun, not properly born even; and then a hundred and one strokes more, because the parish custom was to ring the number of years the dead had lived, but stillbirths counted none-at-all so they did the other thing, they rang their bell for ever. And she’d stood there for every stroke in her foul black coat and veil, and they’d pounded through her like body blows while the camera shutters clicked and journalists yelled questions across the wall of the graveyard – ‘How do you feel, Grace? And how are they treating you? And have you got anything more to say, any secrets to share while we’re waiting? And how do you feel . . .?’ – and she bled and bled on the inside while her face showed nothing at all.
And no, she’d not been punished enough.
Still not.
Really, it had been no punishment at all, nothing but relief when they took her back to jail to wait for her trial; and it was no release at all when the judge then let her go. He was so pleased with himself, with his own generosity, lecturing her pompously from the bench and then throwing her back like a tiddler, too small to be worth keeping; and the baying pack outside the Old Bailey, so much worse than anything or anyone in Holloway; and they followed her home and bayed all night outside her flat, and followed her all the next day, and some of them just kept on following.
‘What do you mean,’ he said slowly, carefully, ‘they let you out? Out of where?’
Oh. Damn. ‘Out of hospital,’ she said: which was true, sort of, almost. ‘They didn’t usually have a proper funeral for a stillbirth – I think they just went into the furnace with all the, you know, waste. But I couldn’t stand that. I’m afraid I made a fuss, and then they made an exception.’ Or really it was her lawyer on the outside who made the fuss, scenting advantage in it, scenting release: which would work in his favour, at least, if not hers. She really didn’t believe he’d thought at all about her. ‘So I did have a funeral,’ she said, ‘and I really wish I hadn’t, now.’
‘Still,’ he said, coming back to where this had started, ‘it’s not the bells that make you bleed, Georgie. Really, it’s not. That’s just in your head.’
Of course it was in her head, she knew that. Her head was a dangerous place. She thought about things, she worked things out, and then there they were: in her head and in the world, doing damage. Hurting her and hurting others.
In her belly, going bad. Hurting her, from now on in.
All her own fault, but Tom didn’t need to know that.
She didn’t say anything, only lay there watching him while he puffed his joint down until he was sucking on the roach and burned his tongue and yelped like a little boy and stubbed it out crossly against his jeans; and she might have laughed but really she was too sad and too sleepy, and she closed her eyes and listened to his breathing until he went away, or she did.
When she woke again, it was still dark, darker. No smoking-glow, no smoking boy. The night light was still burning, but all that did was define the edges of every shadow, to show her where was darkest.
Between her and the slumped form of Kathie – lucky Kathie, she was starting to name that girl privately: lucky to be alive, perhaps, and lucky to be as little hurt as she was, perhaps, and lucky for sure to be sleeping so soundly, hurt as she was – at the foot of their beds was the darkest point in the room, just where it ought to have been brightest. Where there was no furniture – nothing to block the fall of moon and starlight from the window with the night light’s glow to back them – darkness had gathered itself together. Shape and substance, all of a piece, physical dark: she could have touched it if she sat up, if she reached out, if she dared.
It wasn’t the lethargy now that held her motionless. She felt frozen, bitter cold where she had been so warm before; and frightened, where she had felt protected.
Tom, where did you go? Weren’t you supposed to be watching?
But no one ever watched over Grace, not in a good way, not to keep her safe. They gathered by the pool to see her swimming, naked and tipsy and look at me!; they watched her in prison, on remand, every hour of every day; they watched her flat for sight of her; they watched her at parties and on the street and in the papers; they watched her for opportunities and for pay.
When she really wanted watching, there was no one there.
Tom had saved her once, in the woods, by chance perhaps and all unknowing. He wouldn’t come again.
There were no feral pigs in the house here, snorting among the leaves, shoving though undergrowth, coming.
This was that sucking solid emptiness she’d seen between the trees, come for her again.
Waiting for her, perhaps, only that she couldn’t move.
That was odd, maybe: to be saved by her own terror, if anything could save her. It didn’t seem to be coming any closer. Settling, maybe, like a little boy sitting in the dark to watch his mother while she slept. If she lay here long enough, still enough, perhaps it would go away, like a little boy disappointed.
She held her breath, not like a mother at all: like a little girl, trying desperately not to be noticed. It was like being underwater again, sinking, helpless. Her wrist ached fiercely, her muscles cramped with the effort of not moving, and she found herself listening for the sound of bells—
—and almost thought she caught it, that deep-sunk distant tolling, rising from the lake. Her hand spasmed beneath the blankets, and the shadow perhaps drifted closer.
She didn’t think she’d ever really been bad at heart, not to say evil. Only out of her depth all her life and struggling, snatching for something to hold on to, perhaps not caring too much who she hurt in the process, or how badly. Perhaps not caring enough.
She might have liked a little boy, she thought. Something to hold on to. She might have made a terrible mother, but she would have liked the chance to try.
Too late now. You never, ever got the chance to go back and try again.
What she had was what she’d given herself, what she’d made: a terrible hollow at the heart, absence made flesh, brought here, set now between two beds.
She probably deserved it. She’d surely never deserved better. What had she ever done that was worthwhile? Maybe she should be sitting up right now, holding her arms out, drawing this close. Making an end of it. Going with grace.
Poor Georgie. Maybe they’d bury her here and never know, no one would ever know what happened to Grace Harley . . .
Tony would know. She’d make him one more story, gift him another front page. He’d like that.
She only needed to sit up. Let it happen. What did she have to lose?
Only a life she hated every time she stopped to look at it, every time she dared. A life not worth living. It took so much and gave her back so little; it was dreary habit that kept her going. Habit and fear, perhaps. She was deathly afraid of this thing, this nothing at the foot of the bed. Fear was like a weight on her chest, holding her down, keeping her from that one swift move of welcome, of surrender, of . . .
It wasn’t her who sat up, in the end. It was Kathie.
There was a moan from the other bed, and then that sudden movement, the girl sitting bolt upright all in a rush. And it wasn’t fair – to either of them, perhaps: she might not have deserved it, but Grace did think she’d earned it, and she’d almost argued Georgie into reaching out for it – but this had happened all her life, that other people paid the price on her account.
Swiftly now, too swift for interception, that woven, textured shadow went to Kathie.
Then, safely too late, Georgie sat up and screamed.