Robert
Kanburi Camp, ? June 1943
Dear Evie,
Not sure about the date for this letter. Lost track of time again. Been working out on the next patch of ground to be cleared for the railway, breaking stones and clearing trees. Not much food.
‘Why do you write all these letters you’ll never post?’ Macgregor asked me yesterday. ‘What’s the point?’
It was hard to explain. But somehow when everything’s written down it feels more controllable.
You’ll remember my friend, Noi? I have been able to repay her for saving me from snakebite last month. She and I were sitting at the edge of the market stalls in town. I’d bought some sweet potatoes from her. You may think it strange that we’re allowed to go into the settlements and openly barter with people. But the Japs know we won’t escape. Where would we go? We’re surrounded by dense forest and mountains. I suppose someone could smuggle themselves onto a barge, but these are regularly inspected. Even if you managed to make it to the coast, this is controlled by the Japanese, too. A white man is an obvious fugitive.
I drew Noi some pictures in the dust of my home: Mum, Matthew, you and Charlie. It was hard to explain who everyone was – she thought you were my wife! I also drew some cows, which interested her greatly. They don’t have cows in this part of the world. Pigs and chickens were less interesting for her as she sees them here. She liked the horses, though.
Then she drew her barge and herself, parents and baby brother. Her mother called to her, presumably warning that they were about to leave. I looked up and saw why: a guard was staggering around, drunk out of his head, armed with a club. Noi jumped up and ran towards her mother, who was standing at the far side of the marketplace, baby strapped to her back, gesturing at her to hurry. Something about the girl seemed to grab the guard’s attention: he staggered towards her, waving the club, muttering something. Noi seemed to shrink while her eyes grew big with fright.
Already everyone was rushing from the marketplace. A drunk camp guard with a gun is enough to clear a town. A pile of metal cooking pots sat beside an abandoned stall. The guard swung around Noi, waving his gun, shouting; his back was momentarily to me. I ran to the pots and kicked them a passing blow. They crashed to the ground like cymbals but I was already sprinting to the cover of the teak trees. The guard jumped round, gun in hand, and saw only a heap of fallen pots. He shouted into thin air. I peered out from my hiding place. In the seconds that he’d switched his attention from her, Noi had run to her mother and the two of them had dissolved into one of the backstreets fanning out from the marketplace. The guard spat into the dust and wobbled away.
For days I didn’t go anywhere near the traders. But I spent some time in the workshop with some pieces of discarded wood. At home I was a fair carver and I managed to use our few blunted tools to fashion a doll for Noi. It took some time: my hands are so sore from the splinters and blisters. I even found some old tins of paint, used to mark the sleepers, and drew on a red mouth and black hair, eyes and nose, using a bamboo splint as a kind of quill pen. The poor doll was naked and I am no seamstress but I managed to cajole old Macgregor into helping out. You remember I said he’d been a tailor before the war. He said he’d made doll’s clothes for his own daughters. The finished doll wore a fine cotton dress, made from a shirt I’d discarded. When I saw Noi the following day I threw the doll behind my back and winked at her. I heard her quick, light steps and a chirp of joy, like a bird trilling, as she picked up the toy.
July 1943
Quite a break since I last wrote. Things have been happening. There are other radios in the camp now. What happened before has not put people off making them. It’s quite ingenious how they produce them from strips of wire and off-cuts of metals scrounged from the workshops. I pretend I haven’t noticed. What’s on my mind is quinine. I know there is some along this section of the river. But the guards are taking more of an interest in our dealings with the traders now. Often they’ll seize bags of rice from us or smash eggs on the ground. Sometimes I see Noi in the road but she looks away. Frightened. But I see the little doll I made her tucked into her belt.
Matthew and I both had a fever the same night. I thought we were at home again and kept shouting at him to come and have a dip in the brook now we’d finished haymaking. In between my bouts I don’t feel too bad, weak, but I can stand. Matthew is feeble. He can’t get up. The guards come and shout at him. I fear that hospital hut. I’ve heard the guards sometimes come in and finish off those they know won’t work again. It’s not looking good, Evie. I keep trying to stay on top of things, to keep my spirits up but I feel weighed down and helpless. The guards seem to be waiting for something. They laugh at us and their eyes are calculating.
I try to cling on to Robert Winter of Winter’s Copse in the county of Berkshire, but Robert Winter, prisoner, seems to have taken me over.
Evie
Autumn 1945
Evie woke knowing something had happened. It took seconds for her sleepy brain to work out that the change was to the light. The bedroom door was open and moonlight streamed in from the window halfway up the stairs. She glanced at her wristwatch. Midnight.
She lay back and tried to calm her mind. Sleep, she told herself. Just go to sleep. He’ll be better in the morning. She forced her eyelids down. A floorboard on the landing creaked.
A shadow passed back over the moonlight. ‘Don’t be scared,’ Robert whispered. ‘It’s the guards. They’ve come for us. But this time I’m ready for them. They won’t hurt you.’ He moved and she saw that he was carrying a stick.
‘The guards?’ Her voice was high. ‘What do you mean?’ The blood pulsed round her veins in icy waves. He moved again and she saw that the stick in his hand was a shotgun. Evie’s mouth opened in a soundless scream. She pushed herself out of bed.
‘Keep quite still and they won’t see you.’ Robert took another step into the room.
‘There’s nobody here but us.’ She made for the desk, back to the wall, keeping her eyes on the man. She could use the chair, if she had to.
‘Stay still,’ he hissed. ‘They’re here, in the trees.’ He raised the gun so that it pointed over her shoulder.
Using all her force she lifted the chair and pushed him with it. He grunted and stepped back, doubled over, onto the landing. Evie ran out of the room, skirting him. ‘No, no,’ he shouted. Charlie was asleep in the next room. It had a lock. She shoved open the door, slamming it behind her and turning the key. Charlie murmured something. She shook her brother by the shoulders. ‘Wake up.’ Terror made her rough. ‘He’s going to kill us.’ Charlie put his hands out like a supplicant to stop her.
She let him sit up.
‘Whatchermean?’
‘Robert. He wants to kill us.’ Her voice was high, panicked. ‘He’s got the shotgun.’
Charlie’s eyes went from her to the locked door. Robert pounded on the wood. ‘No!’
Charlie pulled back the covers and jumped out of bed. From the chest of drawers he pulled out two jumpers and threw one at her. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘I haven’t got any shoes on,’ she hissed. A silly thing to remember at a time like this.
‘Boots in the cowshed.’ He prised open the window sash.
Robert shook the locked door handle.
‘Evie! Let me in,’ He was half shouting and half pleading. ‘I need to help you.’
They’d climbed out of the window and down the drainpipe so many times for dares under the benign rule of Mr Edwards that they could escape without making a sound. Outside the night was moonlit, clear, the dew on the grass cold under Evie’s bare feet. In the cowshed she found boots, too big, but welcome. ‘We need to hide from him.’ She peered out of the door. ‘He’s mad tonight.’
Charlie looked out at the farmyard, bathed in creamy light. ‘He’ll find us easily anywhere out here.’
‘Where shall we go? To find the constable in the village?’
‘We wouldn’t get there before he did, not if Robert’s on his bike.’
The farmhouse door squeaked. ‘You kids out there? Don’t be scared. I think they’ve gone now.’ Footsteps crossed the far side of the farmyard. Evie and Charlie clutched one another, frozen like statues. The Norton’s engine rumbled into life.
He knew every inch of the village. There was nowhere down there they could hide. Evie felt her legs pin themselves to the ground at the same time as her heart pumped cold fear round her body. Charlie tapped her on the arm, pointing at the open window at the rear. They were up and out in seconds, running towards the field which ascended sharply towards the top of the down. Evie prayed the slope would be too much for the motorbike. To the left was the track leading to Martha’s blacked-out cottage. Charlie glanced at its shadowy square outline.
‘No!’ she hissed. ‘Not there. She . . .’ The gasp of air she needed to keep up with her brother swallowed the end of the thought.
‘The Ridgeway, then,’ he whispered. ‘I know a place along there we can hide.’
Thank God they were fit. Charlie was the fastest boy in his class; nobody could beat him. But she was falling behind. He slowed for a second and grabbed her arm. ‘Come on.’
Below them she heard the motorbike purr through the farmyard. The engine throbbed intensely and then there was silence. Had he stopped so he could listen out for their footsteps? Charlie surged forward, fear seeming to propel him up the incline. ‘We need to get up there before he works out where we’ve gone.’
But once on the white surface of the Ridgeway they’d be visible like black chess pieces on white squares. Evie could hear the motorbike again. He’d be cruising the lanes, stopping at each alley. Perhaps he’d think they were hiding out in a barn or shed; there were probably scores of them down there in gardens and allotments; it would take him all night to search them all. The moon passed behind a cloud and Evie uttered silent thanks.
Charlie was slowing, unable to maintain the pace now that the hill curved upwards into a convex. To their left was Dragon Hill, where the mythical beast was said to have been slain. Above them, somewhere, the strange chalk White Horse ran across the hillside, still camouflaged from the war. Evie was tired. They could conceal themselves in one of the hollows dotting the springy turf, like sheep in treacherous weather. But if he came up there he’d find them easily. Robert knew each bump in the ground up here and the moon still shone.
Her knees jarred with each step she took and each breath of cool autumn air felt as if it was bruising the insides of her lungs. She pulled at Charlie’s sleeve. ‘I can’t run any further.’ She doubled over.
‘We’ll walk for a moment.’ They were above the White Horse now. Charlie pointed out the stile beyond which the white ribbon of the Ridgeway curled east and west. ‘Here we go.’
‘Noi,’ she said when she’d drawn breath. ‘That’s what he was shouting to me back there. Not “No, no.” I wish I knew who Noi was.’
‘I couldn’t care less. Whoever she is she’s certainly made him go mental.’
She winced. The moon came out from behind a cloud and she could see her brother’s face, pale like a pearl. She looked down at her white and blue pyjama trousers. Robert would be able to spot them. He’d come up here on his motorcycle and he’d pursue them.
They were crossing a track running straight up the hill. Charlie glanced down it. Somewhere in the vale the motorbike engine purred, audible in the cloudless night. ‘It’s him. We need to run again.’
‘We could still take shelter somewhere in the village. The vicar—’
‘Robert Winter’s from an old village family. We’re incomers. Who’re they going to believe, Evie, him or us?’ Charlie sounded bitter as he pulled her into a run. He’d never felt at home in the village the same way she had. The local boys had fought him when they’d attended the village school and he’d been relieved to move on to grammar school in town.
‘Of course they’d believe us if we tell them he’s running around with a gun.’
‘It’s just under a mile now, Evie, you can do it. In the morning we’ll ask for help.’
She dropped her head and ran beside him. She’d never been this far west along the track before, preferring the grassy slopes above the village for walks. Beech trees each side of the track waved at her, their clumps containing shadowy pools. ‘Couldn’t we just hide here?’
Charlie raised a hand to silence her. She heard it too, the purr of the engine now much nearer, perhaps just a quarter of a mile behind them.
‘It’s not far now.’ Charlie was almost dragging her down the track. Her legs throbbed. They must have run nearly two miles already. He slowed for an instance and then shot right, pulling her through a gap in the beeches. ‘He’ll never come in here, never.’
Evie made out four pale shapes ahead of her. Ghosts. She shrank back.
‘They’re just the Sarsen stones, silly.’ Charlie sounded proud. ‘They guard the entrance.’
He pushed her towards a gap between the two middle Sarsens. ‘Climb up and then you’ll see the opening.’
They were standing outside what appeared to be a cave. Waves of panic rippled through her. ‘I can’t, not in there.’ She sounded shrill.
Charlie shook her. ‘He’s close now. Hurry.’ Evie closed her eyes and let her brother push her up into the entrance and through into a chamber behind. She could see nothing. The cave smelled of dead leaves and damp stone.
The motorbike engine purred outside. Then there was silence. ‘If he finds us in here there’s no way out,’ she whispered.
‘He won’t come in here.’
She remembered the conversation about spies hiding in here and what Robert had said.
Feet trampled through leaves and swished through long grass. Robert coughed once. She held her breath. The flicker of a torch beam shot across the chamber entrance.
‘Evie!’ he shouted. ‘Sweetheart, are you in there? You can’t stay in there all night. Not in a hole.’ His voice shook on the last word. ‘The guards have gone.’ His voice sounded thin and tired, somehow more frightening than it had done when he’d been shouting at them. ‘I promise I won’t let them hurt you.’
Her mouth felt bone-dry. She couldn’t have answered him even if she’d wanted.
‘Come out!’ he called again. ‘Please, Noi.’ Something calm and despairing in his tone now. She opened her mouth to respond but Charlie’s fist dug into her ribs and she said nothing. Seconds passed. Dead leaves crackled as he trudged back to the Norton. The engine fired and the bike hummed away. Evie’s heart quietened its pace. She squinted at the shadows.
‘What did they do in this place, Charlie?’ she whispered. ‘Was it something to do with horses?’
He was silent.
‘Tell me.’
‘You must have heard the rumours.’
‘Not really.’
He hesitated. ‘It’s a burial mound,’ he said at last.
She put a hand to her mouth. He held her back as she lurched towards the entrance. ‘We’re in a tomb?’ She lurched towards the entrance.
‘The bodies will be below us.’ He grabbed her arm and shook her. ‘Listen, Evie, there’s nothing to be scared of.’
‘I want to get out!’
‘It’s fine. I come here all the time.’
So this was where he disappeared to with his sandwiches. He was still holding her tight.
‘Robert Winter’s listened to too many old wives’ tales in the Packhorse. Or to Martha. She probably thinks that Wayland lives here with his apprentice.’
She remembered the old legend about the ghostly blacksmith, a Saxon god or something similar, who hurled boulders when angered.
‘Martha says the White Horse gallops over here from its hill once a century to be shod.’ Charlie snorted. ‘If it can escape from the camouflage, that is. And she believes that Wayland and his apprentice go drinking in the Packhorse once a century or so. She doesn’t know the difference between legend and real history.’
Evie stared at the shadows, which could contain anything.
‘It’s just an interesting historical site, that’s all. And Martha’s a peasant who talks rubbish,’ Charlie said. She closed her eyes so that the shadows wouldn’t worry her and leant back against the stone walls of the chamber. He explained about Neolithic people, their burial habits, about the later-coming Saxons and the blacksmith legends they’d learned from the Danes. To distract herself from what was outside, Evie let him talk on and on until her head bowed down to her chest.
In the morning she woke with a stiff neck. She winced as she straightened it. Charlie had fallen asleep with his head in her lap and stirred as she moved. He yawned, stretching out a hand to look at his watch. ‘Seven. The drink will have worn off by now. We should get back. But just in case . . .’ He put a hand into his pyjama pocket and pulled out a coin. ‘That’s lucky.’
‘What is?’
‘I’ve got a sixpence.’ Feeble light penetrated the chamber. Evie saw her brother push the coin against the stone wall and scoop earth over it. ‘That should keep him happy.’
‘Who?’
‘Wayland.’
‘The mythical blacksmith? The one you don’t believe in.’
‘It’s like church, Evie, you keep going just in case there’s something in it. And donating the coin is like Roman Catholics lighting candles for their intentions.’ He shifted position, grimacing. ‘I’ve got pins and needles.’ Then his brow creased. ‘Robert’s never been as bad as that before. He must have drunk a lot.’
‘He thinks we’re suffering.’
‘So he wants to put us out of our misery or something?’ He sounded scornful.
‘It was that camp. It did something to his head.’ In the chilly dawn it suddenly seemed impossible that Robert Winter would have tried to kill them. Hysteria. That was what Evie’s form teacher called it when the girls were overcome by extreme emotion. Had she and Charlie been hysterical last night? Perhaps Robert had just been badly drunk, ranting. But then she saw the image of the shotgun in his hand.
Charlie grimaced as he stood. ‘C’mon.’
She followed him out into the light. She saw that what they’d spent the night in appeared to be little more than a cave. ‘He could have come in here and dragged us out. He didn’t want to hurt us, you know.’
‘The poor devil,’ Charlie said, making for the track. She followed, looking out for the motorbike, ears straining for sounds of its engine.
‘Charlie . . .’
‘What?’
‘I think we’ve made it all worse. We should have talked to him.’
He halted. ‘You think you could reason with a man waving a loaded gun? What else did he have to do, Evie? Fire it?’
‘All the same . . .’
He gave an angry shrug and marched off. Evie followed him, wincing as the blood returned to her cold limbs.
They headed east, sunlight in their eyes. Still there was nothing. Charlie kept a brisk pace, almost a run, and in less than twenty minutes they were skimming the top of White Horse Hill. No sign of Robert. Sheep bleated in the fields beside them. They were within sight of the farm, spread out beneath them like a child’s toy, trees sheltering the house, horses in the paddock, pigs in one field, hovering round their food troughs. Evie looked for Carlo, who should be feeding the pigs by now, having already done the milking. She could hear the cows mooing. They shouldn’t be clustering round the gate like that. Foreboding gripped her.
They climbed the stile into the top field above the farmhouse. From here they could see the duck pond. Charlie sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell that?’
She picked out the burning aroma just as a horse neighed: a high-pitched, panicked sound. ‘It’s the barn.’
The barn was full of hay, tinder-box dry.
‘C’mon!’ And they were hurtling down the hill, risking ankles in rabbit holes and sending sheep flying from their path towards the smoke beginning to curl up from the roof of the barn.
Rachel
March 2003
On this clear early spring afternoon the Vale was almost flattened by the light, spread out below me in detail in shades of green and brown. I thought I could detect the faintest hint of the new season – an electric-green tint to the edges of branches, a softness to the contours of slopes. While I cursed myself for my soppiness I couldn’t prevent myself from admiring the lambs in the field, which belonged to Winter’s Copse and was rented out now. Once these would have been Evie’s lambs. How she’d loved this time of year. It had been a sadness to her when she’d had to admit that it made no sense for her to continue with the sheep and it would be better for her to rent out the grazing. She should be with me on this walk, showing me the fences she’d repaired, commenting on ewes, pointing out a pair of red kites riding the air currents.
The scene was one of fertile promise. How unlike me. I couldn’t resist a dry laugh. Despite my attempts to forget the vocabulary of the last years – follicles, ovaries, hormones, drugs – my dreams last night had been haunted by images of baskets left outside Evie’s kitchen door. I’d thought they would contain babies but when I looked inside I found they were empty. A powerful symbol to tell me my dreams of becoming a mother were dead.
Then the little lead knight in the Coronation mug climbed down from the dresser and took on full size and I saw that he was in fact King Arthur, but with long-dead Uncle Matthew’s features, locked into an expression of sorrow.
I shook these dreams – closer to nightmares – out of my mind. I noted that my toes ached and wondered whether Evie’s boots were too small for me. But they felt roomy enough. My head felt unusually heavy, too. I walked a few more paces and realized what the cause of these ailments was: I was hunched over, weight too far forward. Sit up straight, Rachel, I heard Evie call across the years. I was nine again, riding Jessamy’s pony, practising for the handy pony competition at the gymkhana held every year alongside the agricultural show. My depression had literally bowed me over. I swallowed hard and forced myself to walk with a straight back and head up, concentrating on the landscape ahead.
I could pick out every hedgerow, every copse, the silver ribbon of a road running east-west, cars and lorries moving silently along it. A train heading west to Wales slunk past. Along the pale blue sky the twisted branches of oaks and elms spelled out secret words. It was where I belonged. ‘I belong,’ I told Pilot. He pricked up his ears. ‘But I shouldn’t still be here. I should be back in London.’
It wouldn’t take me long to sort out my aunt’s affairs and rent out the house. Several letting agents had expressed interest. There was a shortage of good-sized family houses in this part of the world and, as crocuses and snowdrops and aconites flowered in its gardens, Winter’s Copse would certainly elicit plenty of interest. I could have finished all the business and returned to London within a day or two, but I found myself lingering over the task, needing to stay in this village, close to Evie.
The dog gave a gentle bark, as though trying to prevent me from maudlin sentiment. I did what I’d once done at boarding school on glum Sunday evenings: cast around for distraction. But my eyes lit on the faint, brown rectangle on the grass below where the old barn had stood before it burned down. Pilot decided that more direct methods were needed to propel me forward and barked once, politely.
‘Sorry.’ It was supposed to be his walk, after all. He was young and young creatures needed movement. Strange how I kept on differentiating myself from the young. ‘I’m thirty-five, not fifty-five, that’s young,’ I said crossly, out loud. ‘There’s still time for me . . .’ What? Time for what? Time to recover from the disappointment Luke and I had suffered?
The dog nudged my calf as though to tell me to get a grip. I laughed. ‘Let’s go.’ We walked briskly eastwards. The white track led uphill so that we left the White Horse behind us. Not that it resembled anything like a horse from any angle I could find. As a child I’d complained about this: ‘It’s more like a kangaroo than anything.’
Jessamy had narrowed her eyes at me. ‘Don’t come here and criticize our horse,’ she’d told me, reminding me that I was just a visitor and not a full-time inhabitant of Craven.
Martha had been with us. ‘It’s a very old symbol, Rachel,’ she’d told me, reproof darkening her eyes. ‘Older than Christ himself.’
I’d blushed. ‘The White Horse has all kinds of powers,’ she went on. ‘Some of the stories we used to hear when we were youngsters—’ She stopped abruptly as Evie came up towards us.
As we climbed we passed a couple of other walkers and their dogs or infants in buggies, making the best of the promising weather. They threw a quick greeting or nod our way. I tried not to look at the small children. Perhaps the next few years would be spent in avoiding them. Presumably, after a certain period, the worst of the longing would pass. I wondered if I had the words Unfulfilled Neurotic Woman stamped on my head but those we saw simply smiled or nodded a greeting. Pilot and I were part of the landscape. Ordinary.
That was a word that had sprung to mind each time I’d run through the events of that Jubilee party twenty-five years ago. Everything that afternoon had seemed so safe and . . . ordinary. If anyone had drawn up a list of places in the world where something as appalling as the abduction of a child were to occur, safe, quiet little Craven would have been bottom of the list.
Every time I replayed my memories of that day I came up with images of children running around and their parents eating and drinking and chatting. I couldn’t recall a single jarring scene at the party except for Jessamy being annoyed at me for dropping the baton in the relay.
As we walked down the lane to Winter’s Copse I groped again for any otherwise unnoteworthy detail that I had stored away mentally and couldn’t retrieve. Between making calls to the bank and solicitor and signing papers I racked my memory. But the harder I tried to focus on the details of the days before the Jubilee the more blurred the images became. ‘I know something,’ I told Pilot. ‘I just can’t pull it out of my mind.’ He gave a wag of his tail. It was comforting to have an animal around me again. Coming to the farm as a child and throwing myself into the routine of the cows and sheep and the pigs Evie had kept when I was younger had always been a thrill. I’d loved the hens, too. Hens. I was remembering something. Hens the fox had taken. And something else the same week, something more serious, something to do with the cows. They’d had some disease which had meant they’d had to be destroyed. TB. That had all happened just before the party. Evie must have been beside herself; she’d always worked so hard, and so successfully, to keep the farm going. Only the year before last there’d been the foot and mouth outbreak and I’d been so relieved Evie no longer kept livestock. But this had nothing to do with Jessamy vanishing.
Something moved behind me in the lane and I turned. Nothing. Just a deer or even a hare, dashing for the shelter of the hedge.
That night, about to drift into sleep, the image I had sought flashed back into my mind. I sat up and concentrated. Jessamy. On her way back to the house very early one morning. She never had told me where she’d been that morning. Even as I concentrated on her image with its bruised legs the details began to splinter.
I clawed at the fragments in desperation, trying to pull them back, but it was like trying to reassemble a kaleidoscope image. I banged my arms against the covers in frustration. Perhaps she’d just been seeing to her pony, as she’d said at the time. But then she’d muttered something at the Jubilee party about not knowing ‘what to think’ any more. Had she been meeting someone outside the house? Martha, perhaps? But Martha could have had no responsibility for what had happened to Jess. She’d been at the Jubilee party right until the very end. And she couldn’t drive so she’d have had no way of removing a child from the village in haste. I reminded myself that I still hadn’t managed to get up the hill to see Martha. It was something I needed to do before the funeral; she’d been such a constant presence in my childhood, standing beside me while I picked blackberries or fed calves, patient with me when I was clumsy, only ever cross if she thought I hadn’t shown a proper respect for local ways and customs. I’d been remiss in not paying her a visit.
I couldn’t stay in bed any longer. Pilot whimpered gently. I hadn’t meant him to follow me upstairs when I’d gone to bed but hadn’t had the heart to send him down. I stood by the window and looked out. The clear afternoon had preceded a frosty night, a sudden return to winter. Moonlight streamed across the meadows and over the hills above the village. The window was open an inch and I heard a rustle in the bushes bordering Evie’s garden. A fox slunk over the white lawn, bathed for an instant in silvery light. As a child I must have shared this room with my cousin. Did we talk much after lights out? I remembered midnight feasts. Evie must surely have known about them: she couldn’t have missed the Mars bar and Wotsit wrappers in the wastepaper bin the morning after. Once or twice she’d left a plateful of fairy cakes out on the kitchen table and not commented when they’d vanished overnight. But there’d been a time when Martha had brought up a fruit cake. ‘For the littl’uns.’ She gave her mirthless laugh. ‘I see their light on some nights. Very late.’
‘You’re always watching, Martha,’ Jessamy said, reaching for the cake.
‘Indeed,’ Evie had said drily. And Martha’s eyes had shone with that strange intensity.
‘Young girls need their sleep.’
What did we discuss at these midnight feasts? We were very young, I had still to turn ten at the time of Jessamy’s disappearance and she had only just passed this landmark; we weren’t even pre-pubescent. We talked, I seemed to remember, about ponies and pop stars, our friends at school, giggling when we discussed any boys we knew. I couldn’t remember her telling me anything which might have led me to believe she planned to run away. ‘Jessamy,’ I found myself whispering. ‘Where did you go? What happened to you?’
And for a moment I swear I felt her near me. I swung round, half expecting to see her standing beside me. Pilot, asleep by the wardrobe, whimpered briefly.
By the following afternoon there was little left for me to do at Winter’s Copse. The undertaker, vicar and crematorium had all been briefed. I’d invited just about everyone I could think of who needed inviting to the funeral in the church the following Monday and back to the farm for refreshments after. A caterer had been booked to provide sandwiches and cake. ‘I’ll be back either tomorrow or Sunday,’ I told Luke’s mobile answer phone. ‘I’ll let you know later on. We need to talk. I’ll cancel next week’s blood tests but I need to speak to you first. Hope you’re OK. And Luke . . .’ I felt an apology coming on but wasn’t even quite sure what I was sorry for. Sorry for not being a proper woman. ‘I’m really, really looking forward to seeing you.’ Suddenly I longed for my husband in a way I couldn’t remember having done for years, since before we’d been thinking about children.
I decided to take a look at the garden, washed in pale late-winter sunlight. Pilot shot past me as I opened the back door, tearing across the lawn. The snowdrops were past their dazzling whitest best but a fresh crop of narcissi seemed to have appeared overnight. I noticed that someone had cleared last year’s dead geraniums from Evie’s terracotta pots. The shrubs rustled and I called to the dog but he had already dashed off somewhere else. Probably sniffing around in the barns.
I couldn’t help but think of this garden in summer and how the colours graduated across the flowerbeds: reds and oranges by the kitchen door, cooling to blues and purples and from there to soft yellows, silvers and whites at the bottom by the hedge fringing the lane. Evie’d created a garden that looked as though it had designed itself but which anyone who knew anything about horticulture would recognize as the product of a talented mind. I hoped that whoever rented Winter’s Copse would be a gardener too. The thought of seeing the shrubs and flowerbeds covered in bindweed and dandelions made a lump form in my throat. I went inside, slipping off Evie’s wellington boots on the kitchen doorstep.
On the kitchen table sat the cardboard box I’d filled with the photo albums and scrapbooks. The photos drew me to them. Me, a small figure with a mop of curls riding a Shetland and sitting on the tractor with Matthew, grinning. Uncle Matthew, a man I barely remembered except for his slow smile, slight limp and quiet presence around the farm. I think my uncle must have been one of a breed of Englishman, gentle and strong, not quick tongued but deep thinking and feeling, who’ve gone out of fashion these days. A bit like Luke. I focused my attention on a picture of Jessamy dressed in a pinafore, face covered in cake batter, waving a whisk. Martha stood beside her in the bright oblong that was the open kitchen door. The woman’s face wore an expression of extreme concentration as she watched the child.
I picked up an older album, its leather edges starting to wear. It contained black and white pictures of Matthew and his brother as children, raking hay into triangular-shaped stooks, feeding lambs and holding up piglets with proud grins. Someone had had money for a camera to capture these informal moments. But the Winters had always been prosperous. I thought I could make out Jessamy’s cheekbones in both her father and uncle as small children. Matthew was always an inch or two taller and Robert’s eyes were often turned towards Matthew. He must have been fond of his big brother. Impossible to think of these healthy, glowing boys growing up to spend those years in prison camps.
From 1941 there were few photos. Both Winter brothers were away. But someone had photographed a teenage Evie and my father on top of a hay wagon smiling down at a man in an unfamiliar uniform. This must have been the Italian POW, Carlo, whom Evie had remembered with such affection. ‘Carlo was always smiling,’ she’d told me. ‘It was wonderful having him on the farm. He kept us going.’
What a contrast to Robert when he’d returned, so wrecked that he’d self-destructed, Evie said: spending time in the Pack-horse drinking whatever he could buy, talking about people who weren’t there as though he could see them in the house. Then he’d burned to death in the autumn of 1945, having consumed a quantity of alcohol and taken shelter in the barn. ‘He’d been in the Packhorse and he’d already scared us out of our wits that night,’ Evie had told me during one of our long conversations tidying up the garden back last autumn. ‘He must have gone to sleep it off in the barn. And lit a cigarette and dropped off before he noticed that it had set the straw alight.’
She paused. ‘I haven’t really talked much about that morning.’
‘It sounded traumatic’
She gave a shiver even though the afternoon was warm. ‘It was.’
Evie
1945
‘Ring for the fire engine!’ Charlie screamed as they ran towards the barn. His face was the colour of chalk-stone.
Her legs still ached from last night’s sprint and the smoke scorched her chest but Evie found new strength that sent her hurtling towards the house. Thank God Winter’s Copse had its own telephone and she hadn’t had to run into the village to summon the engine. By the time she’d given the details and was tearing out towards the barn, the smoke was thick. In the yard, Charlie was filling a bucket. ‘Find another one,’ he yelled. ‘Fill it and bring it to me.’ He pushed past her with the water.
Then someone was pulling the bucket away from him. ‘Let me, you find the hose.’ A man from the village, the father of a girl at school. There were other people in the farmyard now. Thank God. She helped Charlie locate the hose in the cowshed and pushed the end into the tap. The fire engine bell clanged as they turned on the water. Men jumped off and pulled their pump and thick hose off the engine. ‘Take it to the pond!’ one of them shouted. A lighter ringing of bells marked the arrival of the ambulance. ‘Stand back, kids, we’ll sort it from here.’ Evie and Charlie shrank against the cowshed wall and watched them race past. Evie’s legs shook and she let herself flop to the ground. Still the smoke rose from the barn.
She heard a shout and voices raised in response.
Then there was only the hissing of the firemen’s hose against the barn wall.
Evie felt the farmyard spinning round her. She let herself fly around. Perhaps she’d died, too. Her cheek felt the coolness of the cobbles underneath it seconds before her brain registered the fact that she’d fallen.
Charlie was shaking her. ‘Evie.’
He pulled her to her feet. She looked at him, rubbing straw from her face. ‘Was he in there? Was Robert in the barn?’
Charlie didn’t return her stare.
‘Charlie, tell me.’
He shook his head. ‘They found a body.’
Evie’s stomach heaved and she leant over. Nothing seemed to come up. Too long since her last meal.
Charlie’s shoulders were rising and falling. ‘Why did this happen? Why did he have to die?’
‘He wouldn’t have suffered,’ a woman said. The smoke lifted a little and Evie saw Martha was standing next to them. ‘The firemen think that the smoke would have made him pass out quickly.’ Martha spoke in gasps, as though she’d been running.
‘What will they do with him?’
Martha’s eyes suddenly gained focus. ‘What’ye mean?’
‘With his body?’
It was as if the full horror of what had happened had only now struck Martha. ‘I don’t know . . .’ she swallowed. ‘God’s sake, Evie, I don’t know. The ambulance is taking him away. I expect there’ll be a, what do they call it, a post-something?’
‘A post-mortem,’ Charlie said. ‘Or an inquest. But I’m not sure. It’s up to the coroner.’
‘Can I see him?’ Why was she saying this? She couldn’t quite believe Robert had gone.
‘Of course you can’t.’ Martha sounded furious. ‘Do you think he’d want that, Evie? Do you think he’d want that to be your last sight of him?’
Impossible to explain that what Evie imagined Robert’s appearance to be in his burned and ruined state would probably be far worse than the reality. She felt her stomach lurch again.
‘Take your sister inside, Charlie.’ Martha spoke more softly now. ‘Let them finish their work.’
As they walked across the yard towards the house the ambulance men were carrying out the stretcher. Something long lay beneath a blanket.
Martha stuffed a hand into her mouth. She looked at the children and removed the hand. ‘You played your part in this.’ The green lamp eyes were lit so they looked right through Evie.
‘We had to run away from him last night,’ Evie said. ‘He wasn’t . . . right.’
‘Not right.’ Martha gave a strange laugh. ‘It’s you, Evie, that isn’t right.’
‘Shut up!’ Charlie turned on her. ‘Leave us alone.’
‘Where’s Carlo?’ Evie looked back. ‘I wish he’d come in.’ She needed Carlo’s smile, his warmth.
‘I don’t know,’ Martha said. ‘Why do you want that lazy Eyetie at a time like this?’
‘Oh no.’ Evie put a fist to her mouth.
‘What?’ Martha was watching her. ‘What’s the matter, Evie?’ She looked wary. Or perhaps it was just grief, making her face close up.
‘Carlo’s run away. He was always talking about it and he’s chosen today of all days to make for Ireland.’ Her shoulders crumpled.
‘You may be right.’ Martha nodded. Evie had the feeling something she’d said had reassured the older girl. ‘Yes, I think you probably are. Carlo’s made a dash for one of the ports.’
Her expression suddenly altered. A fireman was coming towards them, wheeling Robert’s motorbike. ‘Found this in the lane leading up to the down.’ He looked at Martha. ‘You must have passed it on your way here?’
She shook her head. ‘I came through the field.’
Which was odd, as there’d been no sign of Martha up on the hillside when Evie and Charlie had spotted the fire. Not that they’d been paying attention to anything else apart from the smouldering barn.
‘Poor young fellow.’ The fireman shook his head over the bike. ‘All the time and attention he gave to this machine, if only he could have looked after himself like that.’
Rachel
2003
Despite my declarations that I was going to leave the past alone now I was still mesmerized by the photograph albums and diaries. I stared at a photo of Evie, Matthew and Jessamy, taken when Jess was a baby. They were sitting on bales in the farmyard and sunlight bathed their three smiling faces. Perhaps it had been a blessing for Matthew to die before his only daughter had vanished. A blessing for him; a further wound for Evie.
Matthew had been older than Evie. When Jessamy had been born he’d have been forty-six or so, quite old for a first-time father. Evie herself had been nearly thirty-seven, probably considered elderly back then in 1967. They must both have been ecstatic when the miracle finally occurred. But I was heading towards dangerous territory. Don’t think about pregnancies, I told myself. Move on. Just do the job: tidy up the loose ends, check the printers are going to send you proofs of the order of service today, as they promised. Then get the hell out. Fighting words. Words I wasn’t sure I could live up to.
In the garden below Pilot barked at something I couldn’t see. Probably another dog walking down the lane. He needed a walk. It was time to finish here for the day.
I went down and found his lead and we set off for the green again. I noticed that my feet didn’t hurt as much today and my neck felt less stiff. I checked my posture. Not too bad. I could see my aunt’s approving smile. ‘That’s right, Rachel, nice and straight.’ My mobile gave a trill. A text message from Luke. I read it. ‘R U sure about clinic?’ ‘Yes, luv R,’ I texted back.
‘Hello.’
I turned to see an elderly West Indian woman beaming at me. ‘Freya!’ I said with delight, and fell into her rib-crushing hug.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been up to the farm while you’ve been here. I’ve been in bed with a bug. But they told me in the shop that your lovely car had been spotted in the village.’ She pointed at the cluster of modern houses at the far side of the common. ‘I wondered whether you’d like a glass of wine.’ A pause. ‘Or a cup of tea if you think it’s too early for wine.’ The tone of her voice made it clear that she didn’t think this was the case. I’d become so used to avoiding alcohol that it took me a moment to remember that I could drink anything I wanted now.
‘I’d love that.’ But I wondered what to do about Pilot. ‘He can sit in the conservatory.’ Freya was following my gaze. ‘He’s used to it. Evie often used to bring him round.’
I could tell from the near smile on the dog’s face that he was only too pleased to visit Freya. So was I.
I sipped my Sauvignon and looked round at the photographs arranged on shelves and tables in the sitting room of Freya’s large brood of nephews and nieces.
‘It was a shock when Evie died,’ Freya said. ‘She always seemed so strong.’
‘I’m wondering whether she had some kind of virus she didn’t take seriously enough which weakened her heart muscles. But the doctor doesn’t have anything in her notes about it.’
‘I saw her the day before she died and she had just finished baking four Victoria sandwiches for a church fundraiser.’
We were both silent for a moment. ‘I know you always looked out for Evie,’ I said at last. ‘Thank you. Even the way you tied her scarf after she died – she’d have appreciated that.’
‘Her scarf?’ Freya’s brow wrinkled. ‘That wasn’t me. I came to the hospital when you rang me to tell me they’d brought her in. She was already wearing the scarf when I . . . saw her there.’
When Evie’s body was lying in the side room, she meant.
Strange. We lapsed once again into silence, companionable and comforting. ‘I’m glad she wasn’t bitterly unhappy,’ I said. ‘I tried to see her whenever I could. I tried to fill the gap. I . . .’ I shook my head, unable to express exactly what it was I’d attempted through the years of Jessamy’s absence.
Freya ran a hand across her eyes. ‘Thank God she still had you.’
‘I was just a niece, though. I could never be as close as her own daughter.’
‘Close enough.’ Freya nodded, as though remembering. ‘She talked about you a lot. She was proud of you, of your work. Sometimes we’d see one of your ads on the television and she’d point it out. “That’s one of Rachel’s,” she’d say.’
Before I’d turned myself into a freelance copywriter and general marketing oddjob person I’d worked as a creative for a West End ad agency. I’d given it up to adopt a more balanced lifestyle, one which would be compatible with bringing up children. Evie had nodded with approval when I’d explained the decision to her. ‘Sounds sensible. But make sure the work’s interesting and demanding enough for you, Rachel. It’s important to love what you do.’
My loss suddenly hit me again. I focused hard on the pewter coaster under my wine glass. While Evie was alive there’d always been someone who was delighted to hear from me, to know my news, to ruminate over career decisions, to commiserate with my failures and celebrate my successes. Of course there was still Luke, but that was different. Evie had loved me since my childhood.
‘I just don’t know why . . .’ I didn’t know how to phrase what was on my mind and toyed with my glass. ‘Why she died when she did. Her lifestyle was healthy: all that gardening and dog-walking. She didn’t drink much and she never smoked. It seems so strange that it happened out of the blue like that.’
She sighed. ‘I can’t come to terms with it, either. But I suppose Evie might have preferred it to cancer or Alzheimer’s or another disease which slowly strips you of your body or mind.’
Freya was probably right. Evie would have hated the gradual reduction of mobility and independence serious illness would have brought her.
‘I wish I’d been with her when she died.’ The words came blurting out. I sounded like a schoolgirl, me, the capable Rachel, the one who was good at managing.
Freya rested a hand on mine. ‘Sometimes it’s like that, honey.’
‘To die alone, with just medical staff, I would never have wanted that for her.’ I rested my head on my hands and blinked hard.
‘But she wasn’t alone when they took her into hospital.’
I frowned. ‘What?’
‘Someone was with her when she came to the hospital in the ambulance.’
‘Nobody told me this when I came in.’
‘The shifts may have changed by then. Amy Jackson told me.’
Amy Jackson. One of the traveller kids.
‘I don’t know how Amy knew, though,’ Freya continued. ‘Perhaps she saw the ambulance coming to the house.’
‘She didn’t have a name for this companion?’
‘No. Could it have been the cleaning lady?’
‘She comes in the afternoons.’
‘Martha?’
‘It would be unusual for her to come to the house,’ I said. ‘And she certainly wasn’t at the hospital when I arrived. But perhaps that’s who it was.’ Poor Martha. Perhaps that’s why she’d been staying away from me. It must have been a terrible thing for her to have witnessed Evie’s heart attack. ‘I haven’t seen Martha yet.’
‘She’ll be feeling Evie’s loss.’
‘They never seemed to get on.’ I could clearly remember the tension when they were together. Yet Evie never said a word against Martha.
‘No. But they worked on the farm together for more than half a century. They were part of one another’s lives. In some ways . . .’
‘In some ways, what?’
Freya seemed to consider her answer. ‘In some ways Martha was one of the family. At least, that’s how she saw herself. Now, after all those centuries of Winters and Stourtons working together with the stock, she’s the only one left on the hillside.’
From the conservatory Pilot gave a whine. ‘He’ll be expecting his supper.’ I put down my glass. ‘It’s taken him a few days to break me into the routine but now I know what’s expected.’
‘That’s a nice dog. I’d have taken him in myself but Lionel, my husband, has allergies.’
‘Oh, I’m going to take him back to London when I go.’ I blinked. Where had that plan come from? The thought of the large dog in the warehouse conversion was an interesting one. And I hadn’t asked Luke what he thought. I stood up.
Freya rose too. ‘Hang on a moment. I think I’ve got something you’d like to see. Now where did I put it?’ She pulled a newspaper from a pile on a dining-room chair. ‘Look, Evie giving out the prizes at the flower and produce show last autumn.’ She folded the sheet so that the picture was on top and placed it over my mobile. I stared down at my aunt, smiling a radiant smile as she handed a small boy a cup. Moisture blurred my vision. I knotted my scarf.
At the doorway Freya took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Will you sell the farm, Rachel?’
‘I’m only an executor.’ I could have clung to Freya’s hand all evening. ‘Along with Evie’s solicitor. If Jessamy doesn’t reappear within the next twenty-five years, I’m at liberty to sell. Or keep the house myself. Either way money has to be put into a trust for any of her children or grandchildren.’ It wasn’t like me to be so open about such private financial matters.
I forced myself to release her warm, soft hand. ‘Make sure you take care of yourself, Rachel.’
My eyes threatened to let me down. ‘I could never take the pain away.’ It had lurked in the depths like a shark in dark waters, ready to grab my aunt and pull her down. ‘I could never make up for Jessamy.’
‘Not completely. But think how much worse it would have been if she hadn’t had you.’ She looked over my shoulder at the trees blowing in the wind. ‘Will you be all right walking home in this?’
‘It’s only a five-minute dash.’ Pilot pricked up his ears, probably anticipating his supper.
‘Storms are forecast for later.’ Freya shivered. ‘I hope it doesn’t flood again – I’ve got my Pilates class in Faringdon.’
Pilot and I ran past the green and down the lane. The first drops of rain were starting to fall as we reached Winter’s Copse. I fed him and couldn’t think of anything else to do with myself. So I sat at the kitchen table with Evie’s scrapbook and the photograph albums. I felt most at home here by the solid metal range, sitting in Evie’s old chair. The faded gingham cushion she wedged between her and the wooden back was still in place and I took comfort from its saggy presence.
The first pages, those covering the years before Jessamy’s disappearance, seemed to relate to events long ago: maypole dancing on the green, agricultural shows, village fetes. I flicked through to the later cuttings: Jessamy on her pony winning the egg-and-spoon race at the West Berkshire hunt gymkhana in 1975. Jessamy’s school netball team winning a local tournament. Jessamy receiving a Parker fountain pen from the mayor of Wantage after she’d come second in a handwriting competition. Perfect, perfect Jessamy.
I found myself thinking about the shadow in the DVD film of Jessamy’s acrobatics on the lawn all those years ago. Who had cast that greyness over the grass? Again I thought of a shark in dark waters, restless, prowling, constantly watching for prey. Probably the shadow had merely been cast by a neighbour visiting the farm to borrow a tool or by the vicar’s wife coming with the flower-arranging rota. It might even have been my own shadow or that of my father, coming down here to drop me off for a weekend. He never stayed at Winter’s Copse himself. Nor did my mother. I couldn’t ever remember them setting foot inside the house. Yet they’d been happy enough to deposit me here while they went off to look at holiday apartments in the south of France or Majorca.
Evie and Dad had been close as children, cast off together during the war, finding a home here. They’d stayed on because their old family life in London had crumbled away, following the death of my grandmother in a bombing raid and of my grandfather during the Great Floods of 1947 in East Anglia. The twins had been through a lot together. My father had never said much about his time on the farm, intimating that he’d been relieved to grow up and carry out his National Service. I thought of the rectangular outline on the grass where the barn had once stood and wondered whether Robert Winter’s awful death had prompted Dad’s desire to leave the farm. Or perhaps he’d just had enough of the grinding hard work: up early in the mornings before school to help with the milking on days when the frost gripped the hillside like an iron hand.
I pulled a photo album towards me and found a picture of my father and Evie as small children in happier times, helping with the haymaking, each clasping a pitchfork and grinning at the camera. This must have been taken before Robert had gone off to fight.
No shadows fell on this idyllic scene; I could almost hear the creak of the wheels of the hay wagon and the thump of the horses’ hooves as they moved forward, could almost feel the dust tickling my nose. Nothing here, nothing at all to predict the tragedy of what happened to Robert and his brother in the war, and to Jessamy a generation later.
‘If only you could have stayed at Winter’s Copse,’ I whispered to the young man who’d died in that fire all those years ago. ‘If only you’d never had to go away.’
Robert
Kanburi Camp, July 1943
Dear Evie,
Do you ever go into the chemist’s in Wantage? Do you breathe in that smell of eucalyptus, TCP and Dettol, so clean you can almost feel it killing the germs? Evie, I long for that scent, for doctors in white coats, and nurses to help us.
I must get hold of Noi. Matthew won’t survive another night like the one he’s just had: he shivered and sweated by turns and called out to Mum and to Dad, as well, even though Dad’s been dead for years. He didn’t recognize me. He was so strong before we came out here, we both were.
We need medicine. Quinine most urgently, but anything else Noi can find for us. Disinfectant. Aspirin. Surely those barges with their painted eyes must trade up and down the river? Anything can be bought, they say, if you have the money.
Evie, if you think of us, say a prayer for us now.
Rachel
2003
I woke next morning to the rattle of a window. Dimly I remembered Freya’s warnings about the weather changing. As I went to close the catch I saw how grey clouds were already bunching behind the medieval church tower.
I wanted to stay on another day. I felt ready to find Martha. Again I felt ashamed that I hadn’t already been to see her. Something had held me back. My relationship with Martha had never been quite the same after Jess’s disappearance. If I saw her it was by chance, coming across her leaning over a gate and gazing downhill. Sometimes she’d rise from a hollow as I walked up the hill, making me jump. Our conversation was limited to the barest basics: Martha would point to a ewe needing attention, or tell me to tell my aunt that there was a big dog fox hanging around the sheep.
Evie had sensed disapproval on Martha’s part. ‘She thinks I was careless with my child,’ she’d told me on one occasion when I was staying with her as a teenager in the early eighties. ‘Once she told me that I hadn’t looked after Jessamy properly. I don’t know why she said that, Rachel.’
Nor did I. ‘Why do you let her stay here?’ I’d asked. ‘That cottage of hers belongs to the farm, doesn’t it?’
‘Where would she go, dear? She’s known no other life than this and has no skills outside farming. Agricultural jobs are growing rarer and rarer.’
Remembering Martha’s comment still made me angry, even today. I remembered Evie’s vigilance. When she let us out to play she was careful to point out the limits of our freedom. ‘No further than the top of the hill . . . Don’t take the pony out of the field by yourselves, he’s still not good with cars. If you go to anyone’s house to play, you must ring me and tell me where you are . . .’ Her warning words rang through my ears and made me think of my husband. He needed to know I wouldn’t be coming back today. I went to pull out my mobile from my jeans pocket. It wasn’t there. I’d taken it out at Freya’s yesterday evening while we were talking. Then she’d laid the local newspaper on top of it to show me the story about Evie presenting prizes at the flower and produce show.
I plugged my laptop into the landline socket. ‘I’m staying on till tomorrow. More to sort out than I thought yesterday,’ I emailed him. ‘Lots of love.’ Again I felt like a guilty addict, denying a drink or drug problem. Then I grabbed my coat and went out.
As I climbed the lane to Martha’s cottage, Pilot at my heels, the wind caught my right cheek with a rasp. The sheep in the field were huddled in the hollows and there were no walkers out this morning. It would have been so easy to turn round and return to the dreamy warmth of the kitchen at Winter’s Copse. But I’d promised myself that I’d see Martha. And I would.
The curtains were half drawn over her front windows. I rapped on the door. No one in. Martha used to keep chickens, I remembered, so instead of letting myself escape I walked round to the back of the house. Someone was sitting on the rough garden bench beside the chicken run. She stood up. Amy Jackson. I felt the familiar mixture of awkwardness and guilt I’d felt ever since the Jacksons had been accused of taking Jess.
‘Er, hi.’ She brushed down her jeans, looking furtive. Presumably she was supposed to be at school, probably the big comprehensive in Wantage to where most of the children were bussed. Like most of the traveller kids, she’d probably given up going to school once she’d finished at the village primary school. It was said that the travellers didn’t like their children educated past the point of basic literacy.
Pilot tore over to her and rubbed his head against her jeans. ‘Hiya, boy!’ She patted his head. ‘I used to take him for walks if Mrs Winter was away for the day.’
‘Were you waiting for Martha, Amy?’
‘My mum wanted eggs.’ Amy shivered. ‘I hate coming up here. Martha’s out, anyway, and I can’t be bothered to wait any more. It’s cold.’ As though to confirm this, the wind rattled the corrugated roof over the chicken house.
‘Let’s walk down together.’
The breeze blew her hair over her face. ‘I miss Mrs Winter. She gave me jobs to do.’
‘You used to see my aunt fairly regularly then?’
‘I’d do a few odd jobs, take her letters to be posted, help her pick fruit in the summer or rake leaves in the autumn.’ She slowed. ‘Why did you want to see Martha?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Sorry, that was nosy. I hate it when people ask me questions like why aren’t I at school.’ She gave me a sharp look.
I blushed.
‘I’m a diabetic,’ she said simply, brushing the hair from her face. ‘I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in about an hour so it wasn’t worth going in to school first. Mum’ll drive me in later. She doesn’t like me missing lessons.’
We’d almost reached Winter’s Copse. I was still silent, sensing that the girl would talk, wanted to talk, but that too many questions would scare her off. I waited.
‘I looked in on Mrs Winter just before she died,’ she said as we reached the gate. ‘To see if I could take the dog out for her. I had another doctor’s appointment so I wasn’t at school.’ She gave a scowl, as though to emphasize that she didn’t expect any praise or thanks for her visit. ‘She had someone with her.’
‘Was it Martha?’
‘No. Dunno who it was.’ She gave me a sidelong glance and I sensed there was something she wasn’t sure she should reveal. ‘Mrs Winter was shouting.’
I stopped. ‘What?’
‘Shouting. I was almost . . .’
‘What?’
‘Almost scared.’ Amy spoke the words as though she couldn’t quite believe them. ‘I didn’t bother knocking. I just left.’
‘And you didn’t see who was with my aunt?’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t make out the voice.’
‘Was it a man or a woman?’
She shrugged. ‘Sorry. I was so surprised to hear Mrs Winter raise her voice I wasn’t really paying attention. I kind of felt I shouldn’t be there. So I ran past the house.’ We stood in silence for a moment. ‘Hope you find her, then.’ Amy started to walk on, suddenly halting, as she passed the drive and saw my convertible. She turned back. ‘By the way, nice car.’ There was a slightly mocking glint in her eyes. She was probably daring me to think the un-liberal and worry that one of her rougher cousins would creep up here at night and steal the hub caps.
‘Thanks.’ I went inside and sat in the kitchen alone, suddenly longing for company, wishing I’d thought to ask Amy in for a quick cup of tea. It seemed as though the past was very close this morning. I decided to drive into Wantage and restock the fridge and post the letters I’d written in my executor’s role. As I drove up to the main road which cut along the edge of the Downs I thought of Jessamy aged ten, getting into a car. A stranger’s car? Perhaps someone had told her something needed collecting for the Jubilee party; Jessamy was an obliging child when it suited her.
She’d have been anxious to get back to receive the longed-for Silver Jubilee mug and to watch the cake being cut. Oh, we’ll be back in ten minutes, don’t worry about that. How long was it before it dawned on her that she wasn’t going back to the party? Was she speeding away in the car by then; hurtling along the M4, still quite a new motorway back in 1977, having been opened just five years earlier? Where are we going? You said you’d take me back to the party. I pictured her rising panic and indignation as she realized that she’d been tricked and I shuddered. Let me go! I’ll scream until someone finds a policeman. How had he – I was certain it was a he – silenced her screams? I felt the old familiar terror grab me, so that it was almost as though I had been abducted, too. My skin felt damp and I took shallow breaths. This was the nightmare of my childhood. Night after night I woke, heart pounding, convinced that the kidnapper stood in my room.
Just remember, Evie had once told me, Jessamy only went through this once. You keep on reliving it again and again for her. You don’t need to punish yourself like this, Rachel, it won’t help Jessamy.
But in this savage mood I did indeed need to punish myself and I let the deep minor chord play over and over again in my imagination. I indulged all the fears I’d tried to keep bricked up over the years. Perhaps my cousin had been intrigued by the thought of a secret getaway, a big adventure for which she’d been singled out. Perhaps she was pleased to have been taken off somewhere where her cousin wouldn’t be. Can we really have steak and chips in a Berni Inn? And go to the pictures afterwards? Just me? Perhaps she resented my stays at the farm each holiday.
I reached the supermarket car park, the poison of these thoughts still burning through my veins. Perhaps this was what was meant by a haunting: an inability to rid yourself of the sadness and guilt of loss.
It was time to let it all go. Evie’s death should have drawn a line under the past. But my imagination was still grasping at small fragments of the past and trying to stick them together to form a narrative. ‘It’s too long ago.’ I must have spoken aloud because a startled elderly man in the supermarket’s fruit aisle widened his eyes at me.
I pulled apples, bananas, bacon, bread and juice off shelves and forced myself to concentrate on choosing a piece of fish for my supper. When I’d finished buying the food I felt quite peculiar: a strange taste in my mouth. Probably the taint of the past. I went into the chemist and had a word with the pharmacist. She told me that a stomach virus was doing the rounds. Just what I needed. I was still thinking about Evie and Martha, how they’d spent all those years working together in polite dislike. I wasn’t really paying attention to the pharmacist as she advised me to drink lots of fluids. I handed over my credit card and took the white paper bag. Then, as I was pushing the door open, I thought more clearly about my ailments, standing motionless in the shop doorway until someone coughed politely behind me. ‘Sorry.’ I let an old lady through the door. Then I turned and went back into the chemist’s again.
At the house I opened the fridge to put the supplies in. Evie’s white glistening shelves stared back at me. I should eat but couldn’t face more than a banana. As I ate it I read the white board on which Evie made shopping lists. Bonios, washing powder, vitamin tablets, library books, order Churchill biography. Death had come so unexpectedly that morning.
‘Don’t brood,’ I heard Evie tell me. ‘What about your work, dear? You should get back to London and get busy.’ She’d always encouraged my career. And the voice in my head was right: I had work to do. My clients would be wanting their finished copy. I had a VAT return to complete. At the very least I could answer some emails today and preserve the fine thread still binding me to my job, my security, my life. And Luke. I wanted to speak to Luke, hear his voice, get his maddeningly logical response to all that was going on here. Tomorrow I’d be on my way, with a large dog spilling out of the back seat of my convertible, to return just once more to Craven for the funeral and the light lunch afterwards I’d organized back at Winter’s Copse for Evie’s friends and neighbours. And then perhaps not again for some time. ‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ I told myself.
But now I could almost feel the past spilling out of the old farmhouse walls. I could almost hear the conversations of fifty years ago; whispered endearments and warnings; the voice of the long-lost Jessamy explaining how she left the Jubilee party. And there were other voices, too, whispering of jealousy and regret. It was impossible for me to wrench myself away from this house and back into the world of work and logic and emails. The stone walls and fields and trees and the lives of those who’d lived here had bound themselves to me.
The photo albums I’d placed on the kitchen table drew me back to them. I’d just have a quick look before I logged on to email. I felt the addict’s rush of adrenalin as I flicked through the pages: 1951 – Evie as a bride on Matthew’s arm. He wore an expression of pride on his face. She looked calm and serene. How long had she been in love with Matthew before she married him? Surely at first he must have regarded her as his little sister, or even a daughter, not a potential lover. ‘It took a while,’ Evie said once. ‘At first we were like polite strangers: Charlie, Matthew and I. We hardly knew Matthew, after all, we’d been children when he returned to the farm on that one occasion. When he came home from the hospital we thought he might want to send us away. Why would he want a pair of youngsters hanging around? But old Mrs Winter had grown fond of us, you see, even though she was hardly talking by that stage. She was in and out of the cottage hospital but when she was at Winter’s Copse she liked me to read the newspaper to her. And I’d go down to the shop and pick up all the village gossip and come up to her room and tell her. I think Matthew must have realized this.’
‘Was Matthew disturbed in the same way as Robert?’ She shook her head. ‘He’d seen bad things in the East but I don’t think he’d been through what his brother had. Matthew just slipped back into civilian life, although his foot injury must have caused him some problems. He didn’t say strange things like Robert did or see people in the house who weren’t there.’ A smile lit her face. ‘I can remember the afternoon he came home as though it was yesterday.’
Evie
December 1945
Mrs Winter had made it clear that she wanted to be downstairs when her older son came home. The district nurse and Evie helped her out of bed and into the woollen dress she hadn’t worn for years. Evie had brushed her hair and found a pot of powder and an ancient lipstick in the dressing-table drawer. The old lady smiled at her reflection in the mirror, her face serene. Hard to know if she even remembered that her younger son had died in the barn two months earlier.
When she’d returned to Winter’s Copse a week after the fire for the funeral Mrs Winter had sat silently through the service. Only when they were wheeling her out of the church had she spoken. ‘Robert was always careful with his cigarettes,’ she said, quite clearly. Martha, walking just ahead of her in the aisle, had made a choking sound. After that Mrs Winter had retreated into speechlessness again.
Martha had stayed away from the farmhouse, working outdoors without coming in for the usual cups of tea or to eat her sandwiches by the warmth of the range. Evie had cooked for herself and Charlie and tried to keep the house clean. The nurse had come in twice a day to tend to Mrs Winter. Two more POWs, Austrians this time, had been sent to help Martha, directed by a friendly neighbouring farmer as a temporary measure until Matthew was fit to come home.
Charlie and one of the Austrians carried her down in her chair. ‘Good thing these stairs are so wide and you are so light as a bird, Mrs Winter,’ the Austrian joked. They were going to carry her into the parlour but the old woman made an exclamation of distress and put out a wrinkled hand. They set her down. ‘What’s the matter?’ Charlie asked Mrs Winter.
‘The kitchen,’ Evie said. ‘She wants to be in the kitchen when he comes back.’ Perhaps she wanted to link herself with the woman she’d been in the past: the nurturer of growing boys, the provider of food.
‘No.’ Martha put out an arm to prevent them from turning round and making for the kitchen. ‘The parlour is where the Winters always receive their guests.’
‘I’m not a guest.’
The voice was deep and quiet but it made them all jump. A man stood in the passageway, duffel bag over his shoulder, crutches under each arm. His eyes seemed to stare at them across a wide, wide space. ‘Matthew,’ Evie breathed, suddenly shy. She’d only seen him once before, briefly, in 1941.
Mrs Winter struggled in her chair. ‘Hold on, Mother.’ He walked round so that she could see him. For seconds they gazed at one another. Then he slipped to his knees and buried his head in her lap. ‘Oh Mum,’ Evie heard him whisper. One of her gnarled old hands stroked his hair.
Evie looked at Charlie. They tiptoed away into the kitchen. ‘When did you get to the station, Matthew?’ Martha was saying. ‘Did you have a good trip? What would you like to eat?’
‘Why doesn’t she just leave them alone?’ Charlie snapped.
‘She’s part of the family, really.’ Evie filled the earthenware teapot from the kettle. ‘I suppose she’s like a sister to Matthew.’
‘Sister my foot.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She couldn’t get Robert so she’s set her cap at his brother now.’
‘Charlie!’ But then she remembered the night she’d caught Robert and Martha in the parlour and let in the dog to disturb them. Was this what Martha wanted from Robert’s brother too? The thought made something tighten inside her chest.
He sniffed. ‘Didn’t you notice how she’s stayed away until now? None of the Winter men to chase.’ He glowered. ‘Now Matthew’s back things will change round here, Evie.’ He straightened a teaspoon on a saucer. ‘He may not want us to stay on.’
‘I know.’ Where would they go? So much had hung on Robert, she realized. He’d been the one to choose them and bring them to live here. There was no reason for his brother to feel bound by the same obligations.
Matthew was coming into the kitchen. ‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said, putting his duffel bag down on the chair.
‘Thank us?’ Evie’s eyes widened.
‘For keeping things going through the war. And while Robert was so . . . ill. It must have been hard.’
Evie felt her eyes prickle. ‘We couldn’t save him,’ she whispered. ‘I think we made it worse for him. I think we – I – reminded him of something bad.’
He took a step towards her. ‘That wasn’t your fault,’ he said sternly. ‘They tortured him. His mind was gone by the time he came back here. He could never have settled to normal life again. While I was in hospital I talked to some men who’d come across him in the last months of the war. They were wrecks, too. We don’t know what happened to Robert, but it must have been bad.’
‘Matthew?’ Martha stood behind him. ‘Shall we have tea in the parlour now? Your mother’s waiting.’
‘We’ll bring her in here.’ Matthew grinned at Charlie. ‘Let’s ask that young Austrian fellow to help you move her again.’ He waved a crutch. ‘As you can see, I’m not much good at lifting at the moment.’
Martha stayed in the kitchen, watching Evie as she cut the fruit cake she’d made with precious sugar, dried fruit and butter. ‘I expect you’ll be moving on soon, won’t you, Evie?’
Evie stopped and looked up. ‘I haven’t finished school yet.’
‘You won’t want to intrude now Matthew’s back.’
The arrival of Mrs Winter in her chair stopped Evie from needing to reply.
‘Here we are.’ Matthew smiled at Evie. ‘You’d better be mother, Evie.’ He laid down his crutches and pulled out the chair at the head of the table for her.
She glanced at the older girl. Martha bit her lip.
‘I expect Martha’s got time for a quick cup of tea before she needs to go off to do the milking, haven’t you, Martha?’
Martha nodded, reaching across the table for the teapot.
‘Probably easier for Evie to do the pouring, isn’t it?’ Matthew said.
Martha’s hand scuttled back like a startled crab. Her eyes showed no emotion but Evie shivered.
Rachel
2003
The sun had made its last attempt to come out. I lifted my head from time to time to watch how the light altered the outline of the Downs above the village and tinted the fields and trees with a watery silver.
A window rattled and it was as though my conscience was reminding me that I still hadn’t done any work, still hadn’t even thought about my work or my clients, hadn’t checked my email. The photographs and press cuttings could wait until later. The breeze coming into the kitchen was colder now and the rain was falling. The view over the garden was of scowling skies, and the dog towel I had pegged to Evie’s washing line waved like a warning flag. I remembered the hints of storms. Well, I’d be cosy enough in this kitchen with its Aga and the warm mass of the dog lying on the floor at my feet. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I told Pilot. ‘I’ll just get on with these emails now.’ He pricked his ears and whined gently as though expressing polite uncertainty.
I flipped open the laptop and switched it on. The screen flickered into life for a second before dying. The battery needed charging. I dug around in the laptop bag and found the mains cable, which I plugged into a socket underneath the kitchen table. Nothing. ‘A power cut,’ I told Pilot. ‘A little inconvenient, but never mind.’ I seemed to have fallen into a state of catatonia. All I wanted to do was sit in the dark and look at the old photographs. But I could hardly see them now.
How black the countryside was when there was no sun and no electricity. It must have been like this for generations until fairly recently. They’d all have to come indoors when the weather turned bad. Oil lamps wouldn’t have been much use outdoors in winds like this. Perhaps there were candles somewhere in this kitchen; almost bound to be, knowing my efficient aunt. In a moment, before it was completely dark, I’d get up from this chair and look for them. I felt as though the chair had grown straps and bound me to itself. The thought of moving seemed too much of an effort to contemplate.
There must be something useful I could do, something which would . . .
I thought I heard a noise above my head, but before I could be sure the wind crashed against the windows again. This was going to be quite a storm. I was still staring at Matthew’s photograph, the one showing him examining his tractor. For all his apparently easeful appearance in the photographs I wondered whether the stress of his captivity had taken a physical toll on him. He’d died of lung cancer though, having, like most men, smoked in those days. So perhaps his captivity hadn’t made any difference to his longevity.
My subconscious was wittering on, trying to distract me from something that was happening above me, something I could no longer ignore.
Upstairs something was still creaking. The wind was shaking this old house, releasing all the old memories, the old joys and sorrows. I could hear the movement even above the howling of the wind and dashing of rain against brick and shingles. Pilot whined gently. I stooped to pat him. ‘If you weren’t here, I might feel just a bit nervous now.’ Nervous didn’t begin to express it. I was almost starting to worry that all my rummaging around in old scrapbooks and photo albums had somehow conjured up ghosts. Or unhinged me so that I could even believe in them.
No more creaks from upstairs but the rain whipped the walls and windows as though it were trying to wash all the old sins out of the village. ‘Leave us clean and bright again,’ I muttered to myself. Where had that thought come from? This place was starting to prey on my nerves. It had a seductive power to pull you back into the past and make you brood. To snap myself out of this, I forced myself to think. I might not have a laptop or electricity but I still had my mobile. I could ring people. Check text messages. Explain about my lack of internet connectivity. Enquire about my projects, make it seem as though I were still thinking about work, still keen to return, still the busy, successful marketing consultant they’d all wanted writing their adverts and brochure copy. This would take my mind off the groaning of the old house and the lashing of the rain against the windows. And the rest of it.
I reached for my jeans pocket and again felt the rectangular-shaped absence. Damn. If any of my clients had tried to call me this morning my name would be mud. No point in trying to retrieve the mobile now; I’d be soaked before I even reached the lane. Luke would assume I just didn’t want to talk to him. And I did. Suddenly I wanted him badly.
‘I’ll just have to find those candles,’ I told Pilot, trying to shake myself out of my longing. ‘Where do you think your mistress kept them? In a drawer? Or out in the utility room?’ He let out a sigh and dropped his head so that it rested on my foot, a welcome warmth. In a moment I’d make myself go upstairs and shut the window I must have failed to close properly this morning so that the wind couldn’t keep blowing it back and forth, each movement resulting in a deep creak. Curious how reluctant I felt to leave the kitchen with its stove and friendly dog. Perhaps I could persuade Pilot to come upstairs with me, but it wasn’t really fair if I was trying to train him not to come up at night with me. Consistency was important where dogs were concerned . . . I was wittering again. I could ring Luke on the landline.
But, of course, the telephone line always came down in bad storms. This recollection made me want to curl up on the floor beside the dog.
Why aren’t you here now, Evie, I raged silently at her. Why did you leave me? I don’t even know where the candles are kept. See how utterly hopeless I am? Why did I never make a note of where you kept them?
I rose and walked towards the telephone, just to check it really was dead. When I picked up the receiver the emptiness on the line came as no surprise. I flopped back down at the table, trying to work out what I should do. Check all the windows were closed, for starters. Which would mean going upstairs. I didn’t want to go upstairs.
Pilot whined and stared up at the ceiling.
An even louder creak made me sit bolt upright in my chair. It wasn’t the wind. Someone was moving up there: it sounded as though they were walking out of one of the bedrooms. The cleaner. It would be her cleaning upstairs. But I knew full well that today wasn’t one of her afternoons. Now I could hear footsteps. Pilot rose and padded over to the kitchen door. He stood there looking upstairs, whining gently, tail wagging. I eyed the back door. The sensible course was to pull on my boots and the waxed jacket and run for the village shop, assuming it was still open in this downpour.
Stop blathering on and get out of here. But I couldn’t. My feet seemed to take root in the stone flags. Whoever was upstairs I would meet in this kitchen, with its creamy-yellow walls and gingham curtains. Courage seemed to reach me at last and I pulled a knife out of the wooden block on the worktop. ‘Who are you?’ I called.
A long shadow reached down the stairs. Pilot gave a single bark and now his tail was a windmill. ‘Steady, boy,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘I’m coming down now. No need to be frightened, I’m not a burglar and I won’t hurt you.’
A strong, confident voice with an Australian accent. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I shouted.
Now she was coming into view. A slight, slim woman of about my age with dark hair and grey eyes that met mine without a blink. Her skin was clear but there were lines around the eyes, as though she’d lived in a warm climate.
I knew this face.
I was going to collapse. My hands flailed around and caught the edge of the table. I clung to the oak, feeling my mouth opening on unspoken words, heart in spasm. Still I stared at her, half expecting that she would dissolve. I must be imagining this. Thunder crashed overhead; the storm was very close now. I looked down at the table, staring at the grain to reassure myself that what was happening was real. Then I looked up again. Still she stood in front of me. I was not dreaming this: Jessamy was here.
‘Rachel . . .?’ She sounded scared. ‘Is it really you?’
I nodded my head, incapable of speaking.
‘I’m Jessamy. I’ve come back.’ She was trembling.
The woman who’d gone with Evie in the ambulance. The terracotta pots which someone had tidied. The neatly arranged scarf. All falling into place. Evie, my aunt, my bereaved and stoic aunt, you died knowing she was still alive. I slumped into a chair, my own weight suddenly too much for me.
She came towards me and I almost shrank from her, part of my subconscious still screaming at me that she must be a phantom. The electric light flashed back on and I heard the reassuring hum of the refrigerator. ‘You look as though you’re in shock,’ she said. ‘And so am I.’ The light showed me that her arms were thin and beneath the T-shirt her skin was goose-pimpled. She’d been slight as a girl. That hadn’t changed. She carried a small leather rucksack in one hand.
‘How long have you been here?’ In my disturbed state I could almost imagine that she’d been lying upstairs for the last twenty-five years like the Sleeping Beauty.
‘An hour or so. The car was gone and I thought you’d left. But the door wasn’t locked.’ Old habits. Evie had never locked it so I hadn’t either when I’d gone shopping.
‘I couldn’t resist coming in to take a look at the house.’
Why shouldn’t she? It was hers now, after all. She was the last of the Winters.
‘I went upstairs to look at my old bedroom again. Sat on the bed in my old room just looking at it, remembering how it had been when I was a child. I must have fallen asleep.’ She gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I woke up when it thundered. Heard you down here. Wasn’t sure what to do.’ The clipped words made me think that Jessamy, too, was frightened: of me. The lights flickered off and on once more, showing me Jessamy’s face in illumination, her skin slightly weathered, her eyes sharp.
She took another step towards me and I found myself shrinking from her again. She must have noticed because she came to a halt. ‘This must be a huge shock for you, I’m sorry.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment.’ I took another deep breath and forced control onto myself. ‘Jessamy, won’t you sit down?’
Bit presumptuous, really, as the house belonged to her.
She perched on a chair diagonally opposite me as though she expected me to interrogate her. But all the questions I had built up inside myself for the last quarter-century seemed to muddle themselves up into something so huge it couldn’t be expressed. ‘It is really you, Jess, isn’t it?’ I said at last. ‘I’m not dreaming this?’ I blinked several times.
She nodded. ‘I didn’t know you were still here when I came back this afternoon. I would never have done this to you. Oh God, Rachel, I didn’t want to frighten you.’ She dropped her head in a gesture of despair which I certainly didn’t remember in the bold girl she’d once been.
I got up and filled the already full kettle and put it on the range not because I had any desire for a hot drink but because I had to do something with my hands. ‘I kept feeling there was someone around,’ I said.
‘I was staying at a B&B in the next village but I kept coming back here. Couldn’t keep away. I let myself into the garden a few days ago and tidied up some of the terracotta pots in the garden.’ A note of apology in her voice. ‘I’m a plantswoman by trade, run a nursery just outside Sydney.’
Her love of plants would have been inherited from her mother.
I was taking my time about finding mugs and teaspoons and milk, in part because I was so distracted and in part deliberately. I needed to keep my hands busy. For years I’d dreamed she’d come back. Now here she was. And I couldn’t talk to her. I found the teapot and Evie’s tea caddy but when I went to spoon the leaves into the pot my hand shook so much they spilled all over the worktop. I abandoned my efforts and sat down again. She was still there, my cousin. I stared at her, tracing the child’s features in the woman’s face. She was still dark-haired and her eyes were the same shade. Her skin was slightly wrinkled. ‘Oh, Jess.’ My eyes filled. ‘Oh, Jess. I . . .’ I shook my head, not even sure what I wanted to say.
‘Are you all right?’ Her eyes swept my face anxiously.
‘I’m fine.’ I rubbed my hand over my eyes and smiled at her. ‘It’s just the surprise. You must think I’m behaving really oddly.’ I put out my hand and touched hers. She felt warm. She clutched at my fingers. Excitement started to fizz through me. My cousin was back. Jessamy was back.
‘Where did you go?’ The question burst from my lips. ‘We looked everywhere for you, all over the village. ‘Who took you, Jess? And why? Why?’ Tears started to pour from my eyes. ‘Did they hurt you? What happened?’
I bit my lip to prevent more questions rushing out. I didn’t even know which one I needed to her to answer first. I was worried I’d scare her off.
‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything. But first – ’ she stroked my fingers – ‘I need to know that you’re really all right, that you’ve recovered from the shock. That I haven’t . . . hurt you by reappearing so suddenly.’
At first I wasn’t sure what she meant. But then it hit me with the force of a train. I moved my hand. ‘You were here with Evie that morning when her heart gave up, weren’t you?’
She nodded. ‘I killed my own mother, Rachel.’
Jessamy
A week earlier, 2003
Jessamy drove into Craven and everything started to come into focus. She thought she might actually throw up. She remembered the village shop where surely she’d once bought lollies – sweets they were called in England, she corrected herself.
Instinct abandoned her. She had no idea which way to drive so headed towards the church tower ahead of her. The church and the school looked tiny, as though they’d shrunk in the intervening years, but were still recognizable. She’d played British bulldog with the boys in the playground and hide-and-seek among the gravestones in the churchyard.
She felt suddenly panicky again and had to resist turning the car and driving back to London. Anxiety had made her slow down. Two women walking along the pavement glanced her way. Suppose she wound down the window and told them who she was? Would they even remember Jessamy Winter so long gone?
She tried not to let herself think too much about the exact location of the house. Her instinct would guide her. All she had to do was trust. But the village seemed altered from what she remembered from childhood, not quite real; a film-set version of what she’d built up in her memory.
Her first attempt to find the house drew her up a deadend. She turned the car. Surely she should just go into the shop and say who she was and ask for help? That would be the reasonable thing to do? Damn it. How stupid it was not to know where her own home was. She glanced at the speedometer and saw that she was now breaking the speed limit and took her foot off the accelerator.
Yet again she asked herself what she was doing here. Her mother must surely have believed her dead by now. Otherwise she’d have tracked her down to the ends of the earth. Wasn’t that what a parent would do? Wasn’t that what she herself would do if one of her own children went missing? Misery had made Jessamy blind to the route she had chosen up a gently climbing lane. Something thumped in her chest. A large chestnut tree, a garden gate to her right. A tall house built of creamy stone, with soft red bricks picking out the door frames and windows.
Winter’s Copse. Jessamy clutched at the steering wheel for support, concentrating on the pale walls of the house, then moving her gaze to the garden, to the apple tree in the corner, which she’d climbed as a child.
She wished she could take the Jubilee mug out of her rucksack and hold it up like a talisman in front of her.
She parked the car on the verge, reminding herself that today’s excursion was for reconnaissance purposes only. But her hand stole towards the door handle and she found herself getting out of the car and walking to the garden gate. Just a quick look at the house; she wouldn’t knock on the door. As she pushed open the gate a huge black dog ran to meet her, tail wagging. She prayed he wouldn’t bark. He reminded her of the dog they’d had at the time of her disappearance. He let her come up the garden path to the front door.
Home. She touched the wood. Time to go back to the car and drive away. Find somewhere quiet to park up and phone her mother and try to break the news gently. Or, even more sensibly, write a letter to her or attempt to find an email address or something. But her finger stole towards the bell. Nobody came. Jessamy’s legs screamed at her to leave. She thought she might actually be sick. Yet something made her push the door open, curiosity perhaps. They’d never locked the doors in her childhood. Usually people went round to the back door, though. Interesting that she’d chosen to come to the front like a stranger instead of making her way round to the back door opening into the farmyard. Still nobody came.
Even if her mother wasn’t in the house, she could at least have a look at her old home. She was standing inside the hallway before she could stop herself. It seemed smaller than she remembered but otherwise unchanged. Possibly Evie had painted the walls a darker shade of green, but that might just have been her memory.
‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice came from the kitchen and Jessamy stiffened. ‘Is someone there?’ the voice asked, more sharply. Jessamy opened and closed her mouth, her leg muscles trying to force her into flight, her heart too stunned to allow this to happen.
A shadow fell on the parquet floor. Too late to run away now. Jessamy was trembling. ‘Who is it?’ The woman was speaking more softly now. She came into view, carrying a basket of laundry. She must have been taking it in from the washing line. In her early seventies. Evie had always favoured fresh air for drying clothes, even at the end of winter. She stood very straight, her figure still slender. Her face was wrinkled, the face of a countrywoman, but there was no mistaking those still beautiful features: that straight nose, those well-shaped lips.
‘Mum?’ Jessamy said. ‘It’s . . .’ And the words rose in her throat and choked her. ‘I . . .’
‘Jessamy?’ Jessamy could hardly hear her. The woman seemed to shrink back against the banisters, looking suddenly smaller and frailer. The laundry basket fell from her arms.
Jessamy found herself stooping to retrieve blouses and towels. She tried to pick up a drying-up cloth and it fell out of her fingers so she stood up. ‘I’m not normally like this,’ she burbled. ‘I’m not clumsy.’ As though it mattered. The blood was rushing to her head now and for a second she thought she might fall over. She screwed up her fists, holding on to an invisible wire to support herself. Now the woman was coming forward, taking her by the arm. ‘My Jessamy?’ She still sounded doubtful.
‘It is me.’ Jessamy thought of the childhood nightmare she’d had many times in Australia: that she’d somehow managed to return to the mother who was dead only for Evie to doubt her, to send her away. You are not my daughter. ‘It’s me,’ she said again, feeling the hysteria rising inside her. ‘I went off at the party. I’m back now.’ She laughed, a harsh sound. It was so funny to say it like that: as though she’d merely ambled off for an hour or so. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she went on, still in her ten-year-old persona. ‘For everything. I . . .’ Her throat had tightened, making further speech impossible.
The woman – Evie, her mother – was holding her by the shoulders, eyes boring into her face as though the secrets of the missing years were written on it. Then she removed a hand and put a finger on Jessamy’s cheek, as though to reassure herself that what she saw was flesh and blood.
‘Jessamy!’ It came out like a scream, as though seeing her again was painful. Jessamy grabbed at her as she started to shake. ‘Kitchen,’ her mother mumbled. ‘Need to sit down.’ Jessamy led her into the back of the house, a reversal of all those times she’d fallen off her pony as a child or hurt herself playing a game with Rachel, and her mother had brought her into the kitchen to patch her up. The kitchen. Scrubbed oak table. Ancient cream-coloured range. The dresser with the Coronation mugs arranged on it. Still there, all of it.
Evie seemed to recover her strength and staggered towards a chair. Jessamy stood over her. Evie’s eyes were still like two lasers probing Jessamy’s soul. ‘I’m so sorry!’ Jessamy cried. ‘I’d have come back years ago but I thought you were dead.’
‘Dead? Me?’ Her mother’s face had already blanched at the sight of Jessamy but now it seemed to take on a shade even paler than white, as though all the blood had seeped out of her, as though she was becoming a ghost. Perhaps Evie was really a ghost after all, perhaps all this was something Jessamy’s imagination was weaving out of old memories and hopes. ‘Why? Why did you think I was dead? Who told you that?’
Jessamy put a hand to her throat, trying to let out the words. She flopped on a chair and let out a wild cry, like an animal trapped and desperate. The black dog, who’d followed them in, whimpered and ran to Evie, placing his head on her lap and giving half-wags of his tail, trying to steady his mistress.
‘Every day,’ Evie whispered. ‘Every day I missed you. First thing in the morning and last thing at night. And during the day, too. If I saw someone you’d been at school with my heart would give a jolt. Whenever I passed your bedroom door. Every time Rachel came to stay, I’d half expect her to run in and say she’d found you somewhere out on the farm, it had just been a joke, one of your pranks, and you were coming inside now.’ She paused, as though letting herself recover from what she was recalling. ‘Every time the telephone rang I thought it might be the police saying they found you. We came back from the Jubilee party and there in the field was the new chestnut pony I’d bought for you. A surprise. Standing there, with his head over the gate, waiting for you. And you never came back.’ She was half sobbing, half shouting now.
‘Did you look for me?’ Jessamy flushed. She’d never intended to let that one out, that nasty little suspicion that her mother hadn’t tried hard enough to find her. That she hadn’t been missed. That Rachel had filled the gap. For God’s sake, she was an adult, a mother herself. Grow up, Jess.
‘I gave TV and radio interviews. I put out ads in the press. And in France and Holland too. Every night the dog and I would go out with a . . .’
With a long stick, Jessamy guessed. To poke around for a child’s body in a ditch.
‘Every time the police told me they’d found a child’s body my heart stopped. Then, when they said it wasn’t you, I would – ’ she swallowed – ‘I’d feel a wild joy. Then I’d think of the child’s poor parents. And I’d understand that I’d have to go on living with it, every day, every week, every month.’ Her voice was rising. ‘Stretching on ahead of me, for the rest of my life. Sometimes I prayed that I could die and not have to feel it every day. Charlie used to send Rachel to me. I think he did it because he knew I wouldn’t kill myself if the child was here. Oh God, Jessamy.’
Her hand was stealing across the wooden table now, in search of Jessamy’s. They held one another in a grip so tight white marks formed on their hands. Her mother’s hands showed the wrinkles and spots exposure to all kinds of weather had caused. But they felt delicate, too. ‘I used to go to the graveyard and stand by your father’s grave and tell him how sorry I was that I hadn’t taken proper care of you. I always thought that you wouldn’t have vanished if he’d still be alive.’
‘You did take care of me.’ And now Jessamy left her chair. She collapsed on the floor in front of her mother and buried her head in Evie’s soft wool jumper. The dog sprang out of the way, continuing to whine. And for all her slenderness Evie’s embrace was as fierce and strong as it had been when Jessamy’s father had died and her mother had hugged her after the funeral, telling her, wordlessly, that she would be all right.
‘Who?’ Evie said. ‘Who took you, my darling? Who did this to us?’
Jessamy said nothing but raised her eyes so she could look at her mother.
‘I have to know!’ Evie’s eyes were shining but her face was grey. Perspiration beaded her forehead and Jessamy could hear her breath, quick and shallow. ‘For decades I’ve lived this moment, I’ve planned how it would be and it was always perfect. But it feels . . .’
‘What’s wrong, Mum?’
‘I feel so strange.’ She put a hand to her upper chest. Jessamy moved back, still watching her all the time. ‘As if I’m breaking up inside. I need to know what happened, Jessamy.’
Jessamy sprang up. ‘You don’t look very good.’ She rummaged through cupboards looking for glasses and pulled out a tumbler and filled it with water. ‘Here.’
‘Tell . . . me . . .’ her mother panted. ‘Who . . .?’
‘Just drink this first. You’ve had a shock. Take some breaths. When you’re feeling better I’ll tell you everything.’
Her fault. She’d done exactly what she’d told herself not to do: turned up unannounced. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’ she muttered. ‘I should have written to you first. I’m just so bad with writing things. And I hate the phone.’
‘Not stupid,’ her mother gasped. She made a movement for the glass, missed it and slumped forward in the chair. ‘My chest . . . Can’t breathe . . .’
‘Mum!’
‘My heart . . .’
Jessamy ran towards the phone. How the hell did you dial for an ambulance in England? Was it still 999?
‘Don’t . . . leave me . . . again.’
‘I’ll never leave you again.’
‘Who . . .?’ her mother was still trying to ask the questions that needed asking. ‘Who, Jessamy . . .’
‘Which emergency service do you require?’ the voice on the telephone asked.
Rachel
2003
‘But she had already lost consciousness before I could tell her,’ Jessamy said. ‘The ambulance arrived and I went with her. They asked if I lived with her and I just said no, without thinking. I just couldn’t tell them who I was, I felt too . . .’
I could imagine her terror and confusion.
‘When we got to the hospital I sat outside while they tried to revive her. They asked me if they should ring anyone and I said you. I didn’t know your number so I went through Evie’s mobile – I’d thought to take it with me – and gave them yours. Then they came out of the room one last time and I knew it was because . . .’ She dropped her head. ‘Because she was dead. My fault. I killed her. Should have written first.’
The shock. The terrible and wonderful shock. Evie was a strong, fit woman, but years of suffering the loss of her child must have weakened her. And then that child had reappeared, without warning. Dreams come true can be deadly.
‘And when she died I just . . . panicked. I went and hid in the ladies. I’d sprung my surprise visit on her after all those years and she’d had this attack.’ She put a hand to her mouth then continued. ‘It felt like my worst nightmare, only even more terrible. And I’d imagined quite a few appalling scenarios, I can tell you. They took her into a side room and I stole in to see her. Nobody noticed me, there’d been a big pile-up on the M4 and they were bringing in lots of casualties. I kissed her and took out my brush to do her hair.’
‘You put her scarf back round her neck, just as she liked it.’
‘Yes.’ Jessamy swallowed. ‘I’d always remembered how particular she was. Then I said goodbye and left the hospital. I must have wandered around in the car park for about an hour. I don’t remember much about it at all.’
‘You were in shock.’
‘Must have been. After a while I found myself sitting outside A&E. I went inside and rang for a taxi to take me back to the B&B. I think I felt . . .’ She seemed to struggle for the right words. ‘That if I went away quietly I might just wake up and find it had all been a bad dream, I’d never seen her, never made her heart give up.’
‘And you didn’t want to speak to me yourself?’
She bowed her head. ‘I was just beside myself. Didn’t know what I was doing. But I couldn’t face ringing you and telling you I’d killed her. What would you have said to me then?’
‘You weren’t to know she’d respond like this.’
‘I was terrified by then that you’d see me. I went back to the B&B and hid out for the next two days, told them I had a bug.’ She drew a breath.
‘And then I wondered exactly what good telling you I was here would achieve. I assumed that Mum would have left you the house so it just seemed best to fade back to Australia and out of your way. Cowardly, I know. But then – ’ she took a breath – ‘I went to buy a few bits in the shop in the next village for the flight home and heard them talking about Mum’s funeral. My mother was being buried in Craven churchyard. I had to be there at the service. He wasn’t going to take that from me, too. I started feeling bolder and came back here. I was just in the garden then. And the farmyard. And then I came back again this afternoon.’
‘Who’s the “he”, Jess?’ I asked. ‘Who took you? You still haven’t said.’
She looked at me as though I was mad. ‘Robert Winter, of course.’
Jessamy
A few days before the Silver Jubilee party, 1977
‘I haven’t been back here since I left in 1945, Jessamy,’ Robert said.
‘So why are you back now?’
He looked past her, down the hill towards the village. ‘It’s the Jubilee coming up. It’s reminded me of home, of the way things are done here: the party, the bunting, the cakes and mugs.’ For a moment he looked younger than he had done at first, as though he was a boy reliving it all. ‘I missed it all so much all the time I was away. But you won’t tell your mother I’m here, will you?’ His eyes held hers, refusing to let her doubt the seriousness of what he said. They were sitting with Martha in a hollow on the hillside very early in the morning, sheltered from the wind and from anyone who might wish them ill.
‘Why not?’
A film seemed to pass over Robert’s eyes. ‘It’s just better for her not to know.’
She wanted to ask why this was but she didn’t. He was her Uncle Robert, after all. She’d seen the photographs of him. Mum had always told her that it had been Uncle Robert who’d brought her and her brother to live on the farm.
‘Mum thinks you died in the barn when it burned down.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Never mind that now,’ said Martha.
Jessamy decided to ignore the old woman. ‘Mum gets really sad every time she talks about you, Uncle Robert. She told me how you chose her and Uncle Charlie to come and live on the farm.’
A snort from Martha.
‘You really care about your mother, don’t you?’ His eyes were soft.
She nodded.
‘Even if she’s angry with you sometimes?’
‘She doesn’t get that angry.’
‘Angry enough.’ Martha stared at the bruise on Jessamy’s eye. ‘You need to know what’s been going on here,’ she told Robert. ‘I mentioned the cows—’
‘You should get back now, Jessamy.’ Robert spoke gently. ‘I’ll see you again soon. I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. I’ve heard a lot about you.’ He and Martha exchanged another glance.
She rose. ‘I’m glad I’ve met you at last,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen your photos in the house. It wasn’t you they found in the barn when it burned down, so who was it?’
He started to answer but Martha cut through. ‘We don’t know, child. Might have been that Eyetie – Italian.’
‘Carlo.’ Jessamy remembered the name. ‘Mum liked him too. She used to give him apples.’
Martha’s face grew more set.
‘I’m glad I’ve seen you, too, Noi.’ Robert stood and placed his arms around her shoulders.
She wanted to ask him why he called her that but Martha got up as well. ‘I’ll walk part of the way with you, Jess.’ They left Robert crouching in the hollow on the hillside and descended the steep track back to the farm.
‘Robert Winter is a good man.’ Martha’s voice shook slightly. ‘He is your father’s brother and your father would have wanted you to do as Robert said.’
‘What does he want me to do?’
‘You’ll find out.’ Martha stopped. ‘Do as he tells you, Jess. And be ready. Trust me. I always make things nice for you, don’t I?’
She nodded.
‘Remember our little trip to Oxford?’ They’d gone for the afternoon, had tea. Martha had taken her to a photographer’s and had her portrait taken for a surprise. Jessamy hadn’t seen the photo yet. Perhaps it was to be a present for Evie because Martha had told her not to tell her mother. Seemed unlikely though.
‘Why don’t you like my mother?’ The question popped out of her mouth.
Martha’s mouth opened and closed. ‘I never said I didn’t like her,’ she said at last. ‘But there are some things that aren’t right.’ She glanced at Jessamy. ‘Sometimes you have to be born in a place to really belong, Jess. To know how to deal with the beasts: the sheep and the cows and their ailments. You need to be born to it.’
‘Like me.’
‘Like you.’ Martha put out a hand and gave her a gentle push. ‘You hurry along now before she wonders where you’ve been.’
Be ready. The moment came when she wasn’t expecting it. At the Jubilee party on the green. Martha came to stand beside her as she admired the mugs in their cardboard box again. ‘Where’s your mother and Rachel?’
‘Outside getting orange squash for Rachel, I think. Why?’
‘Never mind. We’ve got something for you, Robert and me. Follow me.’
It seemed a strange game to play.
‘Oh, and we’ll take this ahead of time.’ Martha pulled a mug off the top of the box. As they walked out of the tent Evie and Rachel were standing with their backs to them. Rachel would still be feeling bad about that dropped relay baton. It hadn’t been her fault but Jessamy couldn’t bring herself to tell her this yet. ‘Come on.’ Martha gave her a little nudge towards the fence. She squeezed herself through the planks, nimble as someone half her age. Jessamy followed.
‘Where are we going? I don’t want to miss the cake.’
Martha pointed to a grey car in the lane, one she didn’t recognize. ‘It’s your uncle. He’s got a surprise for you.’
Of course, the surprise.
‘Hello, Uncle Robert.’ She opened the door. ‘What’s the surprise? Mum was talking about it.’
‘Was she?’ For a second he looked flustered. Then he recovered. ‘It’s a trip to Australia.’ He held out a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Here’s your ticket.’
‘What about a passport?’ Jessamy was on her mother’s passport, obtained last summer so they could both go on holiday to Spain with Rachel and her parents.
‘You won’t need it.’
‘Oh. I thought—’
‘We got you a brand-new one.’ Martha smiled. ‘Remember that lovely photo we took of you?’
‘That trip to Oxford, the backstreet photographer’s studio . . .’
‘You need to hurry, child,’ Martha said.
‘Where are we going? Australia?’ He’d already told her about Australia, about the animals and hot sun, the long beaches. ‘I’m going to Australia? Really?’ Nobody she knew had been to Australia. She’d be the first in the school.
‘Yup.’
‘What about Mum? And Rachel?’
‘Your mother knows. But she didn’t want to make a fuss about it in front of your cousin. It wouldn’t have been fair. I can’t take Rachel with us. It’s just you. You can see how much your mother’s got on her plate. This will give her a bit of time for herself.’
Mum always was very fussy about being fair. She’d been pleased when Jessamy had dropped out of that race so that Rachel would have a chance of winning. She never liked Jess to go on about successes in front of Rachel in case she hurt her feelings. It seemed strange that Mum hadn’t packed her stuff, though.
‘What about my clothes?’
‘We’ll get new ones.’ He held up the teddy bear she always slept with. ‘Got this for you, though.’ She got into the car.
‘Bye, Jessamy, be good for your Uncle Robert.’ Martha handed her the Jubilee mug and shut the car door. Jessamy still wasn’t certain, but this was Martha telling her to go with him. Martha, who’d made clothes for her doll, taken her to look at the new lambs, shown her the right herbs to give to her pony so his coat would shine. Martha, who’d always time to listen to Jessamy, who was never too busy or tired or flustered for her. Martha, who’d watched over her, so she’d told Jessamy, from the day she was born.
‘How long will it take to get to the airport?’ She’d enjoyed the airport last year when she’d flown to Palma.
‘An hour and a half.’ He started the engine.
She waved to Martha as they moved off. ‘And Mum will know where I’ve gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will she be OK?’ Jessamy bit her lip. ‘Can’t she come with us now?’
‘Not yet, sweetheart. She needs some time.’ He turned the key in the ignition. ‘You’ve got to be a brave girl, Noi.’
Rachel
2003
Robert Winter. I still couldn’t get my mind round it. More questions needed answering. They burned a hole in my tongue but still I managed to hold on to them. Even as a child you could never get much from Jessamy by questioning. You had to let the information drop out of her at her own pace; even if it was just something as simple as the location of a robin’s nest or the first strawberries. And I felt physically weary.
‘Perhaps I should leave you for now,’ she said, reading my mind. ‘It’s been a lot for us both to take in, hasn’t it? You’ll need time to catch up on all of this.’
I nodded. Then felt terrible. ‘This is your home, Jess. You don’t have to leave it.’ I looked at the window, blind still open, revealing the grey, stormy evening. ‘You’ll get soaked. How did you get here, anyway?’
‘I walked. It’s only about two miles. But I won’t walk back. I’ll call a taxi.’ She pulled a mobile out of her pocket.
‘No.’ I put up a hand. ‘Stay here.’
She shook her head. ‘We need some space, Rache.’ I saw how white her face was. She looked as though she needed to crash out. So did I.
‘I’ll drive you. If we go now we can probably get through.’
The water in the lane seemed only a foot deep. To get to Jessamy’s guest house I’d need to negotiate the dip under the railway bridge: a flood blackspot. As we drove through the village I could hear, above the beating of the windscreen wipers, the gurgling of water through drains. ‘Reminds me of floods we had in Queensland,’ Jessamy told me. ‘At least here you don’t have to watch out for snakes being sucked up into the inside of the car as you drive through the water.’
I shuddered. She grinned and for a second my ten-year-old cousin sat beside me, trying to wind me up. ‘I won’t tell you about the crocodile we found in the garden one morning.’
‘Nice surprise.’ It was a relief to talk like this. But the mention of a surprise had brought my mind back to the method Robert and Martha had used to lure Jessamy away. ‘You thought taking you off on a trip to Australia was the same surprise Evie had mentioned earlier that Silver Jubilee day?’
She nodded. ‘Mum told me it was actually a new pony.’
‘She thought we’d have more fun riding with two ponies.’
Her head drooped and I wished I hadn’t told her that. She was probably picturing the two of us riding up on the Ridge-way, picnics in rucksacks. ‘And Robert Winter whisked you straight to Australia?’ I went on, to change the subject.
‘Sydney first.’
‘With a new passport?’
She wrinkled her brow. ‘I don’t know how he managed that. But there was no trouble at the airport.’
I pulled the car up onto the bank as a large four-by-four approached. The driver gave me a thumbs-down. Looked like the road under the railway bridge wasn’t going to be passable.
‘I think we should turn round.’
Jess nodded.
‘We’ll be fine together back at the farm.’ I laid a hand on her arm. ‘Anyway, I may need you if this rain carries on.’
‘The roof,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it leaks. And you have to make sure the drainage ditch in the lane doesn’t get blocked.’ She smiled. ‘I remember, you see.’
I turned the car round and headed back towards the village. ‘Tell me more,’ I said. ‘If you want to, that is.’
It felt safe in the car. I kept my eyes on the road and couldn’t see her face. Somehow it was less emotional that way.
‘Whatever he’d done with my passport it worked. No computer records and electronic passport reading devices at airports back then, I suppose. And he relaxed once we’d got on the plane. I remember that bit. Once we were in Australia we took another flight in a small plane up to Queensland. Right into the outback, miles from everywhere, I couldn’t even show you where it was on the map, that’s how remote it was. That was the first year.’ Words tumbled out of her now.
A question was on my mind but it was one that even the warm security of the car’s interior couldn’t prompt me to ask.
‘I know you’re wondering why I didn’t try and escape from him.’
For a moment I was looking at her mother, sitting silent and white-faced by the stove, her dog beside her.
‘You’re thinking that I couldn’t have missed my mother and my home very much if I didn’t try and get back.’ She sounded angry.
‘No, I’m not—’
‘How could I not miss Mum? I couldn’t work out why she hadn’t written. I was worried that there might have been more cases of TB in the cows. It seemed like such a strange holiday for me: a dustbowl in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Jessamy, I know you must have wanted to come home, I—’
But she wasn’t going to let me complete my sentence.
‘I kept asking when I’d be going home again, when I’d hear from you and Mum. “Not yet,” he kept saying. “It’s so wonderful for me to have you here, Jess.” But I kept asking when I’d come back to Craven. So then he told me . . .’ She sounded choked up.
‘What?’
For a second or so Jessamy couldn’t speak. I lifted my foot from the accelerator and changed down a gear so that we were moving forward through the murky waters very, very slowly.
Jessamy
Queensland, July 1977
Evie was sick. It was the only reason why her mother would not have written to her. By the third week away from home Jessamy knew this as a certainty. Her mother was unwell, bed bound or in hospital. This was the only reason she’d let Jessamy go off without her. Could humans catch TB from cattle? She glanced over the breakfast table to Uncle Robert.
‘Is my mother ill?’
The colour seemed to drain from his face. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘She hasn’t written. She hasn’t even tried to telephone.’
‘It’s hard to ring Australia from England,’ he said, quickly. She couldn’t seem to get his eyes to stay on hers.
‘Is it very serious?’ She clenched her hands together so hard it hurt.
He swallowed. ‘Yes.’ He put down his cup of tea. ‘It was very bad, Jess. In fact . . .’ he paused. ‘You need to prepare yourself for bad news, sweetheart. I’m afraid she died. I only got the telegram after you’d gone to bed.’ His face was set, rigid. ‘I was going to tell you after breakfast. I’m sorry, Jess.’
Her brain refused to accept what he’d said at first. Then the information started to percolate through the cells of her body, reaching the inside of her, her heart. She dropped her head to her hands. ‘She can’t have died.’ The sobs were starting now, coming up from somewhere deep inside her. ‘She was fine when we left.’
‘It was an accident. On the farm. She slipped in the field and one of the heifers kicked her in the head. They must have been frightened. Perhaps a dog had got into the field.’
Hadn’t Mum always warned them about the heifers and dogs? ‘She can’t be dead.’ Her crying shook her as though a giant was shaking her by the shoulders.
‘She never wrote to me.’
His hand reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘The letters may have got lost. And you’re fine with me, aren’t you, sweetheart? We get along, don’t we?’ He sounded upset himself.
‘Will we go back now?’ She looked up at him. The tears were flowing so fast now she could hardly make him out. ‘I want to go back to the farm.’
‘Listen, Jess, there’s no family left there.’
‘There’s Rachel.’
He paused for a second. ‘Her father’s taken her abroad. The farm’s going to be sold. There’s nobody to run it now. It’s really just you and me, Jess.’
No, she wanted to scream. She’d never have died without me knowing she’d gone. She wouldn’t let that happen.
‘I want to go to her funeral and see the grave.’ The tears were pouring so thickly now her shirt felt wet. ‘I want to see Rachel.’
The hand tightened round her. ‘The funeral’s been and gone and one day I’ll take you back to see the grave. But not now. I’m going to look after you. I’m all the family you’ve got left now and I’m going to take such good care of you, Noi.’
Rachel
2003
Sickly yellow light bathed us. A car drove through the village towards us. ‘Robert was a bastard.’ I spat the words out. ‘What an utterly cruel thing to say.’
‘And yet he wasn’t a cruel man. Not intentionally.’
The wake from the oncoming car left a wave which rocked us. I clutched the wheel, suddenly on the edge of feeling nauseous, of wanting to pull over and open the door and abandon the car. And Jessamy. This realization shamed me. But it wasn’t my cousin I found overwhelming. It was the revelations she brought with her, the emotions which churned like the dirty water under the wheels.
‘I know, I know, it’s a crazy thing to say about the person who ruined my life. But he didn’t mean it cruelly.’ She tapped her fingers on her head. ‘Up here he was all broken.’
‘What happened then?’
‘We carried on at the cattle station for a while longer.’ She shuddered. ‘I hated that place so much. There was nobody my age to play with and it was such an arid, dusty place, you couldn’t even go to school, it was all done by radio.’ She paused. ‘At night I’d cry and he’d come in and stroke my head and tell me he’d look after me. I believed him. He was so . . . tender.’ She made a quick movement with her hand over her eyes.
‘That’s it for today,’ the teacher said over the radio. ‘Complete exercise five on page twenty-eight and exercises six and seven and send them in. Well done, children, you’ve all worked hard.’
Jessamy said goodbye, switched off the radio and hung up her earphones. At home in Craven they’d have spilled out into the playground at the end of school, asking one another home to play, or running down to the shop to buy sweets. Here she just had the dog to play with when she finished lessons. The small terrier gave a wag of his tail.
‘It’s too hot. We’ll go out later.’ She could read, she supposed. A box of new books had arrived this morning. Robert liked her reading. But the pad of writing paper she kept on her desk drew her to it. She’d write another letter.
‘If it’s cool we can go riding later on,’ she told Rachel. Rachel never wrote back but Jessamy liked to keep sending the letters. Perhaps her cousin had moved house again. Robert took the letters off every week when he went to the post office. She’d asked if she could come with him and he’d promised she could, now she was feeling better about her mother. Now she was getting used to her new life.
‘And we’ll be moving on, too,’ he told her. ‘It’s too hot for you out here. I’m trying to find something nearer the coast. You’d like the beaches, Jess.’
The thought of the sea was almost enough to lift her out of the flatness she’d felt since he’d told her about her mother. ‘Can we take Drake?’ The terrier pricked his ears as she mentioned his name.
‘Of course.’ And Robert gave her a gentle smile. ‘And we might be able to sort out a school for you, too.’ Her heart gave another slight lift at the thought of being with other children. ‘If we can find somewhere safe,’ he went on.
‘I would like to go to a proper school again,’ she wrote to her cousin. ‘It’s not the same doing it over the radio. You can’t play with the children at break time. I wish I had my pony here. Do you know what happened to him, Rachel? And all the other animals? There are cattle here but the dogs live outdoors and they growl if I go up to them. Except for Drake, my terrier. He’s a nice dog.’
There was something she really needed to ask Rachel. ‘Did my mum miss me when I left? She didn’t write. Was she really, really busy on the farm? It was so strange to go off on holiday without saying goodbye to her and you. But Uncle Robert thought it was for the best. And Mum had told us there’d be a surprise after the party, hadn’t she? So she must have known I was going to be all right. It’s lucky I’ve got Uncle Robert to look after me now that Mum’s dead. He’s very kind, even if he does sometimes forget my name. Sometimes he says weird things and it’s a bit frightening. But then he seems to go back to normal.’
Even driving this slowly we’d reached Winter’s Copse at last. The sight of its pale walls filled me with relief. Home again. Thank God the drive rose up steeply from the lane. The car would be safe from the floodwater overnight. Jess and I dashed for the door.
We flopped by the range. I thought of the bottle of whisky Evie kept on her drinks tray but the thought of alcohol made my stomach remember that it felt unusually delicate.
Before I could even suggest Jess might like a drink she started to talk again, words again seeming to flood from her like the rain from the skies.
Jessamy
Cardew sugar cane plantation, near Cairns, Queensland, January 1979
He’d lost more weight since she’d been away at school. It had only been twelve weeks since she’d seen him but he looked much thinner. His hand shook as he poured the tea. She suspected long nights in the hotel with his mates. ‘You’ll have to show me that report of yours, Jess.’
‘You’ll be impressed.’ She worked hard, always had done, ever since she’d started at the new school in Brisbane. The teachers had told her she was behind, she, Jessamy Winter, always top of the class back in Craven. She’d been so cross she’d put her head down and worked. The other girls had thought she was a swot until they’d seen her play netball. Then she’d won the sprint and the hurdles in a schools’ championship and found herself a bit of a hero among her year. Strange, really, as she didn’t give a damn about any of them.
‘This house looks smaller.’ It had been a shock, coming back to the plantation. The girls’ school in Brisbane was an old Victorian building, with high ceilings and marbled floors.
‘Places always do when you come back to them. Tell me about school.’ And he asked her scores of questions. Did she have the right clothes and sports equipment? Were they kind to her? She’d reassured him that she was fitting in well, crossing her fingers behind her back.
‘How’s the cane doing?’
‘Should be a good year. It’s nearly all in now.’
She noticed the shadows under his eyes and the grey tint to his skin, even under the tanned skin. The cutting was dusty and noisy. Every year someone got injured or bitten by one of the snakes curling around the canes. ‘I’ll be out in the fields with the men all day for the rest of the week, I’m afraid.’
He looked exhausted. The climate didn’t suit him, the doctor said. Robert had told the doctor that he knew all about the tropical jungle, thank you.
He came in at six and she cooked him some tea: chops and a pudding made with a locally grown pineapple, and sponge, which Mary, Robert’s half-aboriginal housekeeper, had taught her to make before she’d gone off to school. Back in England pineapples were a treat: you got them once or twice a year, perhaps at Christmas. Up here they ate them whenever they wanted.
After they’d eaten they sat on the veranda, looking out over the trees to the west of the cane fields. The fields still to be cut were lined with the canes, now far taller than she was. Behind the bluey-green mountains rose up, steep and lined with forest. The landscape should have been beautiful, it was populated with birds and exotic-looking animals which still took her breath away. But things were only really beautiful if you felt them inside you. This lush landscape meant nothing to her. Sometimes Robert took her for walks in the forest. Once the trees had covered these fields and the house, too, before they’d cut them back.
What on earth was she to do with herself up here? Robert had designed a garden that flowered all year round. He’d redecorated her bedroom while she’d been away, buying her new blinds and a rug. There were flowers in a vase by her bed. He said he’d borrow a pony so she could ride.
There were few girls her age to play with. In the township a half-mile away there was a hotel, a bar, really, where the men drank, and a general stores. There was nothing else except for the elementary school. The nearest library was miles and miles away in Cairns.
It was past eight now but still the heat pushed down like a steam iron. All those weeks in Brisbane she’d longed to leave school and come back here. Now she was here the thought of the long Christmas holiday stretching out seemed to crush her like a python. Perhaps she’d catch the bus down to the town, to the beach. She’d have to go swimming just to keep cool, but not in the local pool with all those children who stared at her because she didn’t fit in here. And not in one of the apparently inviting creeks. Only last year a child had been pulled from the bank by a croc. Jessamy shuddered, remembering. They’d found one of her hands on a muddy shore half a mile upstream.
Sometimes there were people to talk to in the town: hippies in their VWs peddling herbal soaps and flower oils. Robert had an almost animal aversion to their patchouli-oil-scented presence and would try to hurry her past the camps where they grew vegetables and plaited strips of leather with beads to make belts and necklaces to sell in the market. Sometimes boats went out from the town to look at the Great Barrier Reef. If Robert wasn’t with her she could chat to the visitors. Some of them came from England. Robert wasn’t keen on people from England. He wasn’t keen on lots of people. ‘Best to be safe rather than sorry,’ he said whenever someone new appeared in the township. ‘You get odd sorts up here. Drifters.’
Something rustled behind a clump of vivid blue agapanthus. ‘There he is again.’ Robert nodded and Jessamy saw the stubby-legged brown bandicoot with its long nose. ‘Sniffing around.’ They watched the creature, like a cross between a badger and a possum, Jessamy thought, but without the striped nose, or perhaps a badger and a rat, but more appealing. He scuffled around below them, before vanishing under the veranda. When they’d first moved here Robert had taken her out into the garden and clasped Jessamy’s arm so tightly it had hurt. ‘Never ever go under that veranda.’ He pointed at the space beneath the stilts. ‘Even if you lose your best ball, even if Drake goes under there and you can’t get him to budge. Just wait for me to sort it for you.’
She already knew enough about this country to know there’d be snakes and spiders under the veranda.
Robert was good at sorting stuff for her. He was good around the bungalow, too. He’d already emptied her trunk of clothes and washed them all for her. Every morning she found her sandals outside her bedroom door, dusted and polished.
Nobody could have taken better care of her but at nights strange images swarmed in her mind. The space under the veranda had become a space in her head, populated by dark thoughts rather than snakes and centipedes and other creatures that bit or stung. Once or twice she dreamed that Martha had taken up residence under the veranda, but when she called to the woman, she turned into a lizard and scuttled away.
Drake growled at the bandicoot. ‘Stay here, boy.’ Robert put a hand on the dog’s collar. ‘You’ll get yourself into all kinds of trouble if you go chasing him.’
Robert sniffed.
‘What is it?’
‘That jasmine smell.’ He sounded disgusted. ‘I’m going to have to pull that bush out.’
Why? She added the question to all the other unspoken questions she’d accumulated over the last year and a half. ‘I like the smell.’
‘It’s too sweet.’ Perspiration ran down his head. ‘Sickly. Think I’m going to have to get myself a beer at the hotel. Would you mind, love?’
‘No.’ It would be a relief not to have him here for a while.
It was late when his friend dropped him back. ‘Come in!’ Robert shouted. ‘Make yourself at home. Jess will have turned in. I’ll make some coffee.’
She turned in bed and tried to find a cool spot. She must have fallen back to sleep because for a while she was back at home, at Winter’s Copse and it was cool and grey and her mother was telling her to hurry and get up because she was late for school.
Robert was talking loudly. ‘You try and save them, you do your best but then it all ends up bad. And you know it’s your fault, that everyone blames you.’
‘You’ve done a grand job with the girl, mate.’ Another male voice. A local.
‘I wasn’t going to let anything happen to Jess, that’s for sure. Not after I’d seen what they did to Noi.’ A pause. ‘It looked just like a ruby, you know. Pretty almost.’
‘What looked like a ruby, mate?’ the friend asked.
‘The mark on Noi.’
Noi. When he’d first taken her on holiday he’d sometimes called her Noi by mistake. She’d asked him who Noi was but he’d stared at her with blank eyes and she hadn’t liked to ask again. She fell back asleep and this time she dreamed of a child, a girl who lived under the veranda and came out at night to haunt them.
It took some weeks before she could persuade Robert to take her into Cairns so she could shop. Perhaps visit the library too. By now the school holidays were almost over. She dared not plead too much. He’d have to think it was his idea. Fortunately nature provided her with another growth spurt and her clothes became unwearable.
He loathed the town, hated it, abhorred it. ‘You don’t need to take me.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘I can go by myself on the bus.’
‘By yourself?’ His eyes widened. ‘I’m not sure I’m keen on that idea, sweetheart.’
‘Mary could come with me. She likes looking at the shops and she can visit her niece.’ Mary had a European niece who workd in the hotel kitchen. Jessamy examined Robert. His head was lowered. One of his feet kicked against the kitchen table. Don’t push it, she told herself. Don’t drive him into a corner or he’ll start talking about stuff you don’t understand, weird stuff.
Jessamy rose and feigned a yawn. ‘Not sure I can really be bothered. I like my skirt short. Some of the girls say it’s a bit daggy, though.’
A bit risky; he hated her looking different from the others and the worry that she didn’t look quite proper might send him into another black period. ‘You’ll buy a new skirt. And shoes. I don’t want you looking like, like . . . that.’
‘OK.’
He handed her some notes. ‘Get whatever you need, honey.’ She could see that he was trying hard to calm himself. ‘Don’t mind me, I just worry about you. There are people in this world you just wouldn’t believe, Jess.’
In the library she found the shelf of books about foreign countries. There were lots on England. Probably because so many Australians came from there. Most of them just had dull black and white photographs. But there was one that had coloured plates: A walk through the Berkshire Downs. She flicked through it. Above the downland villages the Ridgeway crests the green wave of the hills. There were photos of the White Horse taken from the air. Not at all like a kangaroo, Rachel. She flicked over and found a view looking north across the vale. Jessamy squinted at the villages, trying to work out which one might be Craven. She thought she could identify it by the square tower of the church, but couldn’t be sure. If it was, her mother would be buried in the shadow of this very tower. She wanted this book but wasn’t a member of the library.
Perhaps she could join. The librarian at the information desk assured her that she could. ‘We normally ask for a parent’s signature on the application.’
‘Both my parents are dead.’
The woman flushed. ‘Sorry, dear.’ Her eyes went to the book Jessamy had chosen. ‘Are you from those parts? My husband grew up in England.’
‘I lived there once.’ Something made Jessamy guard her tongue. ‘But I live here now.’
‘There are some more books you might like, then.’ She led Jessamy across the parquet floor to the geography section. ‘These are slightly less accessible but there’s one about the geology of the Downs. You might find it interesting because there are some good photos.’ She reached over Jess’s head. ‘Oh, and here’s a good map of the area.’
‘Thanks.’ Jess’s legs wanted to sprint to a desk so she could pull open the book covers but she made herself shuffle across the library parquet as though the heat had rendered her listless.
She opened the map. Wantage had been the nearest town to Winter’s Copse. Jessamy remembered a market: boxes of cauliflowers and leeks, tangerines wrapped in bright tissue paper, the stallholders shouting greetings to her mother, their cheeks red in the frost. There was a statue of a king in that marketplace, crown on his head, holding something in his hand . . . Which monarch?
King Alfred.
But even looking at these books and the map made her feel guilty, as though she’d forgotten what she owed Robert, who’d looked after her with such care. She didn’t understand why this should be. Why shouldn’t she look at pictures of these places?
Something was knotting up in her head, pulling it tight. She mumbled a farewell to the librarian.
‘Don’t you want your books?’ she called out after her.
Jessamy shook her head and ran for the door. The pain in her head pressed against her. She felt chilled and her legs shook.
Rachel
2003
‘I came down with something,’ Jessamy said. ‘It was bad. Still not sure what it was. Medical care wasn’t exactly extensive out in that little township. I had some kind of weird fever, pains in my muscles, a rash. For days and days my temperature stayed up at 104. Robert didn’t move from my side. He just let the men get on with the cane harvest. He sponged me down, changed my sheets and helped me to the bathroom.’ She nodded to herself, as though reliving the illness. ‘I had bad dreams, terrible nightmares.’
‘About being taken from here?’
She shook her head. ‘About monsters coming out from underneath the veranda and pulling me down there with them. They were snakes, swollen to six times their normal size. And the kookaburras flying in the sky were like pterodactyls.’ She grimaced. ‘I begged him not to leave me. He sat there every night holding my hand until I fell asleep. By the time I was better Robert Winter had become my protector. While he was with me nothing terrible could happen to me. If he even went out of the room to fetch me a drink I shouted at him to come back. I was so weak I couldn’t go back to school for days after the holidays ended. I have to tell you, Rachel, I felt I owed him after that.’
‘You owed him nothing!’ I spat. ‘OK, he’d mopped your brow when you were ill and made sure you had a decent education, but so what?’
‘I loved Robert,’ she said in a low tone. ‘I couldn’t let myself think badly of him. I was – ’ she seemed to hunt for the right words – ‘in torment, really. Whatever I did, someone would get hurt. And then Robert got sick again himself while I was back home for Easter, another bout of malaria – that seemed to be happening more and more frequently. And he was disturbed in his mind, going on about the jungle and the Thais he’d bartered with while they were out there. Something about the Thai trader’s daughter—’
‘The girl in the jungle.’
She nodded. ‘The one he called Noi. Something had happened to her. I didn’t understand what he was on about. All I wanted was to go back to school. Life was boring there but it felt safe and ordered and I had time to think.’
I could imagine how reassuringly normal school must have seemed.
‘Seeing me off to school on the plane to Brisbane was tough for him. He had his friends, men he drank with in the hotel. Many of them had been POWs in the East.’
‘Do you think he told them about what had happened to him? Perhaps it would have helped to talk to people who really understood what he’d been through.’
She snorted. ‘They’d have understood all right. But they wouldn’t necessarily have thanked him for bringing the subject up. Men of that generation, Australian ones, anyway, just kept it all buried.’ She settled back in her chair. ‘Today we think that’s unhealthy, it all needs to come out. But Robert and his friends probably worried that once it started leaking out, the punishments, the executions, the hunger, it would take them over.’
‘Keeping quiet about what happened to him stopped Robert getting help for his nervous disorder, though,’ I pointed out. ‘Proper treatment might have stopped him believing you needed “saving” from something terrible that was supposedly happening here.’ I sounded acid.
‘Back in the seventies nobody’d heard of post-traumatic stress disorder.’ Jessamy flopped into a chair, pushing back her dark hair, looking suddenly as though whatever had been charging her batteries had abandoned her. For the first time she looked her age: thirty-five, like me.
‘You felt responsible for Robert, didn’t you?’ I saw it all, the teenage girl alone in the tropics with the sick man.
‘Yes.’
‘But what about the farm? And me?’
‘He’d told me you’d moved abroad with your father. He didn’t know the address. And the farm’d been sold.’
And, of course, she’d had no way of finding out this was untrue. No internet back then, no easy way of checking things out.
‘To be honest, I wasn’t even sure you’d want to hear from me after some years had passed. I thought you’d just forgotten about me, moved on.’
I opened my mouth to protest but didn’t say anything. She couldn’t have known any different, isolated as she was from reality.
‘Perhaps you did readjust to my absence,’ Jessamy continued. ‘Perhaps you were perfectly happy.’
There was a tiny nugget of truth in what she’d said. Hadn’t I started to enjoy those holidays I’d spent here following Jessamy’s disappearance? Sometimes I’d hardly wanted to return to my parents at the end of the visits. ‘Aren’t you pleased to be home, darling?’ my mother would ask, thrusting beautifully wrapped clothes from Riviera boutiques at me. ‘See what we bought you.’ And as I tried on another perfectly tailored dress in yet another gleaming executive home in Weybridge or an apartment in some Mediterranean resort, and said thank you, my heart would be back in Evie’s kitchen. The two of us dressed in our oldest clothes making hot chocolate after a night out in the lambing shed.
A whole year had passed before I’d lost the habit of mentally recording events to replay to Jess in the holidays. Did I tell you that we all had detention because someone blocked the loos . . .? You’ll never guess what happened in French . . . Mummy wrote and told me she found a lizard in her slipper and she won’t wear them ever again now. Sometimes when I was riding one of the ponies in the field behind the barn I’d expect to see her running towards us. ‘Try the jumps, Rachel! You can do it.’ When I’d stayed at Winter’s Copse I’d continued to sleep in the second twin bed in her room. Sometimes I’d sit on Jessamy’s bed, holding one of her soft toys or flicking through the pages of one of her books and longing for her so strongly it made my insides ache. After two or three years had passed Evie had covered her bed with a blue candlewick cover and moved the toys into the cupboard.
And yet . . . My eyes lit on the laptop on the kitchen table, top of the range and new. Out in the drive, mercifully now clear of the floods, stood my equally shiny convertible. I’d made something of my life. With Jessamy gone perhaps parts of my personality had flourished. If she’d stayed at Winter’s Copse I’d have retained my position as the natural second, the quieter one. I’d never have done all I’d achieved. But, a little voice whispered, perhaps I’d have chosen a less demanding and rewarding career. Married younger and had children by now, instead of leaving it until I was in my thirties to start trying. ‘If I’d seen you four years ago we’d have had a better chance,’ the consultant had told me.
Perhaps my long silence had worried Jessamy. She uncrossed an arm and reached across the expanse of oak table to pat my hand. I sensed that the gesture had cost her quite a bit so I forced myself to clear the thoughts from my mind. ‘I know you weren’t really glad I was out of the way, Rachel.’
‘Tell me what happened after you went off to boarding school.’
‘My life went on, I did well at school, even though it was an old-fashioned kind of place. When I left I managed to get a scholarship to a college in the US. It was fun but I fell apart a bit out there, couldn’t deal with all the freedom. Robert had kept me so sheltered. I got into drugs.’
I looked at her.
‘Fairly badly. They made it easier to deal with this.’ She pointed to her chest. ‘All the emptiness inside me. Then I got out of drugs. Married the first guy who looked decent and kind.’
‘Are you still together?’ I couldn’t see a ring on her hand.
‘Nope. But we’re still friends. Have to be to manage custody of our kids.’
‘Tell me about the children.’ Even now, even at this moment, I felt a pang.
She nodded. ‘Twins of eight, one of each. They’re in the States at the moment, with their father and his parents. I miss them.’ Her face fell. ‘We’re civilized about it but it’s complicated because I’m in Sydney and he’s in Spain most of the time.’ She gave a dismissive wave. ‘But don’t let me work myself up about it.’ Then her face crumpled. ‘My mother will never see Marcus and Sophie. They ask me about my family and I’ve never been able to tell them very much.’ I reached out for her hand.’ I can’t believe I saw her for just that little time, Rachel. And now she’s gone. It’s so cruel.’ We sat listening to the kitchen clock ticking while her tears fell onto the wooden table. There was nothing I could say to console her; I could only hope that just sitting with her gave her some comfort.
‘Tell me how you found out the truth, Jess,’ I said at last.
‘It was only weeks ago. He’d been sick. Skin cancer to start with. All those years in the tropical heat in Thailand. Then sugar cane farming. It would have been surprising if he hadn’t developed melanomas. I kept telling him to go to the doctor. But he didn’t and the cancer spread and it was obvious he was dying. I went up to be with him.’
Her voice dropped to a whisper and I guessed that she was no longer in the kitchen at Winter’s Copse with me: she was back in tropical Queensland, sitting with the man who’d brought her up and looked after her, who’d stolen her and lied to her.
‘There was one afternoon when he was resting. It was too hot to go out. I managed to get a reasonable dial-up connection on the laptop I’d brought with me. Something, some crazy whim, made me think of searching on Craven, on the farm’s name, just to see who still lived there. I had no idea . . .’ She choked on the last words.
Jessamy
February 2003
She closed her eyes and opened them again. But it was still there on the screen. Pictured here, children from Craven Primary School enjoy newborn lambs at Winter’s Copse farm. And there was the woman, standing almost out of the frame, smiling at the children, a scarf wrapped round her neck. Jessamy focused so hard on the face that it fragmented into a collection of coloured pixels, nothingness. Was she wrong? Her imagination was willing her mother to be there. She forced her eyes to look at the blinds on the windows and then switched them back to stare at the screen. Her mother was still there.
The dial-up internet service up here was so slow that she hardly dared to carry out an internet search on her mother’s name in an attempt to find more information about her, in case she lost this picture for good and couldn’t reopen the file. ‘Jess . . .’ came the voice from the lounge.
She stood so abruptly that the chair fell over. Trying to compose herself she walked to him. Years of experience had taught her how to hide emotion from him. Even now she was able to push this into the recesses of her mind.
It had been a better day; he could sit up, which helped his lungs. ‘Do you need more water?’ She filled his glass again, amazed at how she could still communicate normally, as though the certainties governing her world hadn’t collapsed. ‘Nearly time for the drugs.’
He watched her, eyes buried deep in the yellowing, papery skin. ‘What’ve you been doing?’ There must have been something about her that he’d picked out. Her hands must be shaking. God, her mouth felt dry, too. Robert was sensitive to mood, even when cancer was sweeping his body.
‘Just looking at some old newspapers on the internet.’ She was surprised she could actually speak.
‘They have newspapers on the net?’ He laughed. ‘I haven’t ever looked. Haven’t really got to grips with the thing yet. It seems to take for ever.’
‘I’ve heard they’re laying cables up here. It’ll be quicker then.’ She felt hot blood pulsing in her head. Calm down. Think. There had to be a mistake; she’d been hallucinating. The kookaburras outside seemed to shriek mockery at her.
‘Too quick for me.’ He gave his rasping cough. ‘You can find out anything on the internet, I’ve heard.’
‘So they say.’ Suddenly her heart was thumping and she thought she might retch. She longed to dash from the room, which seemed to spin in front of her.
‘Jess.’ He was struggling to straighten himself in the chair. ‘There’s something you need to know.’ The words were spoken quickly, like beads dropping from a necklace. ‘I should have told you last time you came up here but you had the kids with you and everything.’
She’d left the children with a friend in Sydney this time, not wanting them to see their Uncle Robert like this.
‘I need to tell you now while I can see things straight. Sometimes I just can’t, you know. Sometimes it all blurs together.’
He’d explain. There’d be a reason for all this. She sat down on the sofa opposite him. She could see him still struggling to sit more upright and got up again to rearrange the cushions behind his back. ‘Thanks.’ His eyes were suddenly less glazed; he looked more alert. Probably because he was due more morphine. Over the years she’d noticed how the alcohol had kept him in his strange world. Now the painkilling drugs seemed to fulfil the same purpose. He’d be in pain now. ‘I’m not stupid, I know that I’m not going to be around much longer . . .’ He coughed. ‘I also know that I should be seeing a priest or minister. Or a police officer. Because of what I’ve done. But I’ll take my chances with my maker. The person I need to be honest with is you, Jess.’
‘She’s not dead, is she?’ She almost looked around to see who’d spoken the words; it didn’t seem possible that she could have uttered them. She forced herself to concentrate on a loose thread on the sofa arm, to make its frayed cream colour her focus. If she let go of the thread she’d be falling.
‘No.’
Again she concentrated on the cream thread, holding on to it for dear life, afraid of what would happen if she moved her eyes from it. Her mouth wanted to form itself into a scream.
‘Why?’
‘Why did I take you? Why did I lie to you?’ He gave the rasping laugh again. ‘God, Jess, you must want to kill me. I wish you would, in fact. Then we’d be even. Perhaps this – ’ he pointed to the oxygen cylinder and mask in the corner of the room – ‘is punishment enough.’ He seemed to slump. ‘But you want answers. Of course.’
‘Of course I bloody want answers.’ The rage was starting to build now. She stood. ‘Why?’ Her mother: baking her cakes, reading her stories, taking her into her own bed in the night when she’d had bad dreams to stroke her hair and talk gently to her, her mother, stolen from her. The farm. Rachel. The games in the farmyard. All taken away. Replaced with the year in the dusty outback with the growling farm dogs. The remains of her childhood spent in this humid, distant township and a stuffy boarding school.
‘What were you thinking?’ Her hands were clenched into fists. She could have smashed them into his face. The blood was steaming inside her head now. He didn’t flinch.
‘I don’t know. I saw things. Perhaps they weren’t there. I thought you were in danger.’
‘Who from?’
‘Your mother.’
She tried to speak and choked.
‘I can’t explain, Jess. It’s as though I was possessed. And Martha told me you were in danger.’
She was shaking now. ‘You thought my mother would harm me? Why in God’s name did you believe that bitch?’
‘It’s a funny thing, Jess, but the pain clears my head. It’s like a probe which forces me to see what’s true. I can see now that I was deranged. Insane. I haven’t known what was real and what wasn’t since they stood me in the blazing sun for all those days. You think I’m making excuses? Of course you do. You hate me.’
‘Yes, I hate you.’
‘You want to kill me. I don’t blame you.’
‘I’m not going to bloody kill you. I’m not going to make this easy for you. Even if you’re about to die, you can face what you’ve done. You can face it and you can give me answers. And then I’m going to consider whether I ring the police.’ She heard herself and gave a bitter laugh. What would be the point? What could the law do to him that illness wouldn’t accomplish within the next day or so?
‘Your mother wasn’t harming you, was she?’ He sounded sad. ‘Poor little Evie. How could I imagine she’d hurt a fly? Always such a gentle child, good with the animals, too. Yet Martha told me your mother couldn’t manage the animals, that they were getting sick and she was finding it hard to look after you alongside everything else. Martha said you were suffering. I had to trust her. She’s always been part of my life. She’s known me from the day I was born.’
That wrinkled face with its staring eyes, always coming upon them while they were playing, talking of the old days, when Robert and Matthew helped their father and Martha was such an important part of their lives. It’s not for me to say but I know that old Mr Winter depended on me for the sheep . . . During the war I was there to keep an eye on things . . . I never liked to leave the farm after your father died, Jess. I know he’d have wanted me to stay . . .
‘The evil old cow.’ Jessamy struck out with her foot, catching the oxygen cylinder and sending it towards the wall. The mask would be out of his reach now. ‘You listened to her and let her persuade you to do this.’ A group of rosellas outside shrieked a kweet-kweet of panic.
‘In the camp we’d hear birds make a noise like that when something was going to happen. Sometimes I wonder why I ended up back in the tropics.’ He sounded far away now. ‘Sometimes I’m still there, Jessamy. I’m in those forests and I’m trying to run away with Noi but they’re catching up with us.’
‘What’s still happening?’
‘The little girl, Noi. I didn’t look after her properly. But then she had a bad fever and I stayed by her. I think she got well again but I’m not sure. That might have been Evie.’ He peered at her through his yellow eyes. ‘Or was that you, Jess?’
‘It was me, I had the fever.’ But Jessamy’s thoughts were all with Evie, still thinking her daughter was dead. ‘I could ring her.’ She glanced at the phone. ‘I could pick up that receiver and find out her telephone number and ring her. Right now.’
‘I wanted to protect you, Noi.’
‘My name is Jessamy,’ she screamed. ‘And you stole me from my mother.’ Her heart was going to burst right out of her chest. ‘How the hell could you have ever thought you were protecting me by taking me from my mother?’
He shook his head and let it slump to one shoulder. ‘Tell her . . .’
‘I could tell her that I’m in the same room as my abductor and that he was my own uncle. I could tell her that all the pain she’s felt over the last twenty-five years was caused by her own brother-in-law.’ Jessamy thought of her twins, how she felt when they spent holidays without her with their father. But to imagine them gone, dead, vanished, to wait for years without a definite answer . . . She thought she might actually vomit. ‘How could you do this?’ She watched him. ‘Robert . . .?’ He gave no sign of having heard. His breathing was harsh and there were pauses between each breath. She waited for a minute before going over to him and touching his shoulder. No response. She turned away before her hand could pick up a cushion and hold it over his face until his lungs gave out. Or perhaps she could just leave the room and let him die: alone, untended, like a wild animal. Would he realize he’d been abandoned? Serve him right. He was nothing to her, nothing at all. He moaned and muttered something. ‘Noi? Read . . . letters in drawer. Please . . . read.’
‘What letters?’
‘Drawer . . . by bed . . . please read . . .’
She shook her head, picked up her car keys and walked out of the room, letting herself out of the house. She sat in her car and switched on the engine.
Then she switched off the engine, picked up her cell phone and called for an ambulance.
Rachel
2003
‘I was still so angry I didn’t want to read them,’ Jessamy said. ‘I waited a day or so after his death. He’d addressed them to my mother. It felt . . . weird. As though there was some kind of relationship between them.’
‘Perhaps there was.’
‘She was just a kid back in the war.’ She reached into her rucksack. ‘Here. Want to read them?’ She pulled out a small bundle, held together with a couple of rubber bands.
The offer was made almost offhandedly. But I sensed my cousin wanted me to look at the letters. I took them from her and undid the bands. The letters were arranged in date order, starting in 1942.
‘You can save some time by going straight to November 1943,’ Jessamy said. ‘That’s when things really started falling apart for Robert. The seeds were already sown but he might have come back to England a sane man if it hadn’t been for . . .’ She nodded at the pile. ‘Well, you’ll see for yourself.’
Kanburi Camp, 14 November 1943
Dear Evie,
Today. It must be today. There’s word they’ll move us further up into the mountains in another forced march. Matthew will not survive. The malaria has left him so weak and the ulcer on his leg has poisoned the skin so that the bone is now visible. We need medicines and there are none.
I have saved a large amount of baht. ‘It’s not worth it, Bobby,’ Matthew told me. ‘Don’t take the risk. I expect I’ll do just fine without quinine and iodine and all those things.’
He didn’t mention the leg. He must know that the stench of the ulcer hits us before we’ve even entered the hut.
‘You’re mad if you chance it, Winter,’ said Macgregor from his mat, where he sat counting his snails in their biscuit tin. Macgregor has been farming snails for their nutritional value. He does quite good trade. ‘Word is the Japs have paid the guards extra to hunt out spies. Spy being anyone they don’t like the look of.’
‘It might be dangerous for the girl, too,’ said Matthew.
‘Don’t worry about the Thai,’ said Macgregor. ‘Worry more for your own skin. And ours.’ He gave an apologetic cough. ‘If they search this hut and find your letters it’s the Kempeitai for you.’
We see the Japanese security police, the Kempeitai, as Europeans do the Gestapo.
‘Mightn’t be a bad idea to move the letters, old man,’ said Matthew.
I know a tree stump by the cesspit, a place nobody sane would insert their fingers for fear of kraits.
15 November 1943
Something is happening here. The guards are restless. They search us each time we leave the camp, looking for something. Radios? Three more British officers were dragged out of their huts today.
Two days later
Still no quinine because there’s no sign of Noi. The traders keep themselves to themselves at the moment. Apparently the Nips are convinced that a spy ring is operating here. They think POWs use the traders to pass information God knows where. But I look at my brother and I know he will never again see the farm if we can’t get the quinine and something for the ulcer. He is the eldest Winter, the heir. Dad wanted him to have Winter’s Copse. I’ve always known that and accepted it, too.
Just thinking of the cool, clean, green of the Downs is cruel as I sit writing this on my fetid mat, my skin a mass of sores and insect bites, constantly dripping with sweat. Mum would hang out the sheets on a breezy day and tell us the wind shooting up from the west, from the Bristol Channel and the Atlantic itself would act as a natural disinfectant. ‘Clean air keeps people healthy,’ she said. This tropical air is like a germ-ridden damp cloth round the body.
I saw Noi this morning with some other children by a stall in the town. The guards were using their bayonets to flick up the cloths covering the stalls. I had to take a chance. Noi gave me a half-smile and looked away. I called her. She gave a slight shake of the head and vanished behind the stall. I cursed, I’d scared her. She was just a kid, for God’s sake, same age as Evie when Evie first came to the farm. Unfair to rely on her like this. But then I thought of my brother, shivering on his mat, too sick to come out on the working party. Any day the Japs might take him out and shoot him, ‘in mercy’ as they put it. The thought steeled me. I looked around for another Thai trader. Noi had been trustworthy, wouldn’t someone else be?
A middle-aged man arranging mangoes in a basket made eye contact as I walked past. ‘You want something, mistah?’
I shook my head.
‘You need eggs? Soap?’ I walked on.
‘Medicine?’ He almost threw the line away as though he’d given up the attempt to sell to me.
‘Quinine,’ I said. The word just fell out of my mouth.
‘You pay how much?’
I took most of the baht out of my pocket, keeping some back. He nodded, looking satisfied.
‘On way back to camp tomorrow.’ His eyes dropped down to the mangoes.
18 November
I think the God I prayed to in the cool church back in Craven with the pools of light dripping from the stained glass has left me.
And I deserve to be abandoned. I deserve the broken wrist of my left hand, which I’ve tried to bind with my shirt so that it doesn’t hang loose, and which was the parting present of the guards before they locked me in this cell. I’ll write what happened.
The day after I spoke to the trader we were working on the line as usual. The sleepers are nearly all laid now and we were sent on ahead about a quarter of a mile to cut down trees. This work tears the hands. Each cut, each splinter, becomes septic in the tropical heat. Suddenly, from behind one of the carts we use for transporting spoil came Noi, running to me, her face pale. ‘No buy quinine.’ She glanced over her shoulder and I saw she was scared. ‘Japanese look.’
‘I need quinine, Noi. My brother . . .’
I don’t know if she understood the word, she stared at me blankly.
I touched my heart. ‘Brother ill.’ I placed my hand on my brow and pretended to wipe it. ‘Quinine good.’
‘No!’ She shook her head again. ‘No go for quinine.’ Then she ran off again.
We finished our shift and walked back to the town along the railway. The stallholders had gone. I looked for the man who’d offered me the quinine. No sign of him. As we reached the teak trees someone stood out from the shadows and pulled my sleeve. ‘Mistah.’ The mango seller. The guards had gone on ahead, hidden by a curve in the path. ‘Quinine in here, is safer.’ I followed him into the shade. He was right, we were almost completely hidden from the path, I could buy the quinine unobserved.
He led me on through the undergrowth. ‘Very good iodine. And I have also disinfectant as well as iodine.’
I could stock up, be prepared for the next infectious illness.
‘Not far.’
‘Where are we going?’ I was growing nervous, too much time was passing, if the guards turned round and counted the prisoners on the track they’d soon spot I’d gone.
‘I have other things, too. You like aspirin?’
My temptation must have flickered over my face because he increased his pace so that I was almost running to keep up with him. The macaques in the branches overhead gave warning chatters and swung away from us.
Then she was running towards me. Noi. Hand held out to stop me, she was shaking her head, ‘Man bad!’
That chattering in the jungle ahead of me wasn’t gibbons any more. It was the guards. Even the birds seemed to have grown silent.
Noi pulled me by the hand, dragging me along. ‘Back to track.’ Behind us boots pounded. Above us a shot cracked. I pushed Noi towards the trees. Another gun fired. We crouched in the undergrowth. I could make out the caps of the guards above the bushes. A centipede wriggled on a branch just above Noi’s head and I longed to swipe it away.
The hand on my shoulder sent me flying face-first into the bush. Thorns pierced my skin. When I stood I saw they had Noi and were dragging her off, a tiny figure, face grey and rigid. ‘Let her go,’ I shouted. ‘She’s done nothing.’
‘You spy too,’ the guard shouted.
‘Child, just ten.’ I held up my fingers to show them. ‘Not spy.’ His answer was to swing the butt of his rifle into my solar plexus. When I could rise to my feet again I was winded.
Noi seemed to have turned to marble in their grasp. Now I understand what being petrified means. More men came towards us. The mango seller and more guards. He nodded towards me and muttered something. ‘Tell them,’ I pointed at Noi, ‘tell them she’s not involved.’
He mumbled at the guards. One of them laughed. In a movement so casual it might almost have been accidental he aimed the gun at the trader and pulled the trigger while the man was still finishing his sentence. For a second the trader stayed on his feet, looking no more than mildly surprised, before he crumpled to the ground. Noi screamed. The guard holding her gave her a push towards the body on the ground, just as it gave a final twitch.
I saw something small and bright fall from her pocket. The wooden doll I had made for her. Above our heads the frightened gibbons were still screeching a protest and I could hear the urgent flaps of hornbill wings. My lips were still moving in pleas. Noi was looking towards me in appeal, lips opening as she begged me to help her. I was seeing her as I’d first seen her on that barge and also seeing you, Evie, as I’d first set eyes on you, standing in that village hall, a small frightened evacuee, gas mask round her neck. Still Noi called to me and now her voice was yours. But the guards held me tight. I don’t think I even heard the shot: my mind was so full of images and memories. Her body was so light there’d have been no sound as she dropped to the ground.
I pulled myself from my captors and ran to her where she lay on the forest floor. The red mark on her chest was like a single ruby. It didn’t seem enough to have done its terrible work. Her eyes were still open and for a second they shone with the last of her life. ‘Noi.’ I held her in my arms. But already the eyes had lost their brightness. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that I’d never meant this, that I should have looked away from her that day I first clapped eyes on her on that painted barge.
The gibbons stopped their screaming and I could hear the insects again, very loud now, as though someone had turned up the volume. Even as they were dragging me off I wanted to put my hands over my ears to block out the sound.
The last thing I saw was the doll, lying among the ferns and mosses. Still with its perfect little smile.
Later
They haven’t searched me yet and I am writing this quickly before they do. I am waiting now, waiting for them to come for me. First will come the forty-eight hours standing out in the sun, perhaps extended to three days if they feel like it. Then perhaps I’ll be removed to the town for the Kempeitai to work on me. But more will follow: it is never just the one punishment. And it could end with a bullet to my neck, I know that.
I didn’t take care of that little girl. I let her down. I can never make up for that.
Evie, I shouldn’t tell you all this, you’re just a kid, just thirteen. You’ll almost certainly never get this scribble, anyway. If I ever do make it home I’m going to take such good care of you and your brother. And Matthew. I can tell you what I’m frightened of. Evie, I’m afraid I’m losing my sense of what’s real. Sometimes you seem to stand in front of me, in this cell. You’re holding Noi’s doll but I know that’s all wrong. I want to hit my head against the floor so that I force myself back into reality. This cell stinks. I do, too. I can’t write any more, I’m tired.
God bless you all. Watch over the farm for us. And Fly. He’s such a good dog.
I will push this letter through the slats of the . . .
I finished reading. I didn’t know what to say. The picture I’d been building up of Robert Winter as some kind of monster was starting to dissolve. And I saw what? A sad, almost pathetic man who’d tried hard to cling on to his humanity and optimism. ‘Poor Robert.’ I spoke so softly Jessamy could hardly have heard me but she nodded.
‘He must have known the letters were important. He kept them all. I don’t know if he ever reread them, though. I wish he had, it might have helped. Might have stopped it spilling into the rest of his life.’
Spilling into her life.
She picked up one of the rubber bands and started twisting it in her fingers. ‘Even if he’d shown the letters to Mum in 1945 it might have made a difference.’
‘Didn’t Matthew read them before he gave them back to Robert?’
She shook her head. ‘They were addressed to Mum.’
Reliable, honourable Matthew: not one to read another person’s letters. But perhaps it would have been better if he had done. At least the family would have had some insight into the disturbed man who’d come back home. Would it have made any difference to the way events unfolded? I couldn’t be sure.
‘Did reading the letters change the way you thought about Robert?’ I asked as gently as I could. I sensed my cousin had almost reached the limits of her ability to discuss her past.
‘Yes.’ She blinked. ‘And I feel disloyal to Mum just saying that. But it did. That little girl in the jungle, I think what happened to her haunted him. They broke his mind in jail and he could never come back, not properly.’ She’d twisted the band as far as she could and now she let one end go and it spun in her fingers.
‘She was about nine or ten, same age as you were when you disappeared.’ I felt a headache coming on and pressed my fingers against my temples, trying to push it away.
‘Robert regained consciousness just before he died. He was actually quite lucid for about an hour. He told me about Noi. After he’d written that letter they took him outside again and made him stand outside the officers’ mess in the heat for two days and nights. He wasn’t allowed to sit or lie. He was given no water. And all the time he was grieving for the little girl, for Noi. And worrying about his brother. He thought the letters would be safe in the hollow but perhaps it had been risky to tell Matthew where they were.’
She shifted her position on the hard kitchen chair. ‘Lucky for both of them that the Japanese didn’t find that last letter he wrote, either. When the two days and nights were up they took him off to the town, to the headquarters of the Japanese security police. They put him in a hutch, that’s literally what it was, a hutch, for another day. Still no water or food. Then they started torturing him: half drowning him in a bath. Beating the soles of his feet. They were convinced he was part of a spy ring but obviously he could tell them nothing about it. Finally they gave up and they sent him all the way back to Singapore Island, to a jail so awful that Changi was a holiday camp by comparison. There was more forced labour: breaking boulders, and more torture, and some attempt at a show trial in front of a Japanese judge. But he was so sick they had to let him go to Changi for hospital treatment and he managed to string out his stay there until the atomic bombs fell on Japan and the war ended.’
‘And he came back here to the farm.’ And found that life was impossible.
‘He couldn’t shake off the memories. At night he had bad dreams. Things would set it off . . .’ Her voice trailed away. ‘There was this awful time in Brisbane when he came to take me out of school for the weekend. We were walking along the street. I had an ice cream, a Blue Ribbon Heart, my favourite. There were lots of Japanese businessmen in that part of the world and two of them came out of a hotel. They’d probably been drinking in the bar but they didn’t mean to bump into me. The ice cream fell onto my shirt. It was chocolate and the shirt was white. I was upset. They started to giggle. They were just drunk and embarrassed, that was all. Harmless. But Robert . . .’ She put her knuckles to her mouth.
‘What?’
‘He knocked them both down and wouldn’t stop kicking them. They were screaming at him to stop and I was trying to pull them off. “Don’t you touch Noi!” he was screaming. “Don’t you touch her!” Someone called the police and they wanted to take him down to the station and charge him. But the Japanese men were really decent about it and said they wanted to let it go. I was crying by them and trying to explain that it wasn’t them, it was something that had happened in the war, in Thailand. One of the men told me his brother had been killed in some battle near the Burmese border. He’d travelled along that damn railway that Robert had helped build. “I hate railway,” he said. Then he was patting Robert on the back and telling him again and again how sorry he was. And Robert was just standing there, completely baffled, as if he didn’t know where he was. “You dropped your doll,” he told me. “I don’t have a doll,” I said.’
She retreated into herself, not speaking for a while.
‘It must have been so hard for you,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘Not knowing what would act as a trigger. Your life must have been so . . . difficult.’
She forced a smile. ‘I grew up,’ she said, her voice shaking slightly. ‘I had a decent education and I was able to go off to college in America and meet my future husband. That marriage was good for quite a long while and it gave me my kids. My business has gone well, too, and that’s kept me sane.’
I studied her face, still watchful and closed, and wondered. But perhaps it had only been the events of the last month which had forged that expression. Her eyes still sparked in a way that reminded me of her younger self. But that was perhaps the only sign of Evie in her. In maturity Jessamy had grown to look less like her mother and more like her father: the Winter genes had asserted themselves.
‘But in all that time before you knew the truth you were never tempted to do what all Australians do and come to England to see the old country and hunt out family? Or visit your mother’s grave at least?’
‘I thought of the farm, of the village, but I knew that if I came here I’d distress Robert. I wondered about contacting Martha, but something . . .’ She wound her fingers together. ‘Something stopped me. Robert hardly mentioned her. I wondered whether she’d died, too. Then I married and had the kids and it all started to fall apart. We had to work hard to keep our house going and the nursery business solvent. There was never time to plan a trip apart from to far north Queensland to visit Robert once or twice a year.’
‘You must have been fond of him.’ I was starting to understand more of the complexities binding the two of them together.
She sighed. ‘I can’t explain the relationship between us. We’d spent so much time together that we were very close, probably closer than most fathers and daughters.’ She must have caught the look of something on my face. ‘Not close like that, there was never any . . . It wasn’t sexual, Rache.’
I bowed my head. I hadn’t had Robert Winter down as a paedophile but in our erotically obsessed times it was hard not to see sex in every relationship.
‘He was always just like an uncle to me. But we meant everything to one another, God damn him.’ She came to a halt again and put her hands over her face. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms but didn’t dare do it, not yet. She was like a frightened deer and I was scared too much show of emotion would scare her off.
‘There was another letter, Rachel.’ She took her hands away and reached into her rucksack again, pulling out a white envelope. ‘Written to Mum and dated just weeks before I went up to see him for the last time. Never posted.’
Cardew Plantation, 1 February 2003
Dear Evie,
I see you and I don’t see you and sometimes it’s you who’s here with me and sometimes it’s Noi. And sometimes it’s Jessamy, too. I think I know which one of you it is, but I don’t. And then the drug starts to wear off a little and I remember that you’ve all grown up and left me and I’m in this bungalow with just the carer. But Jessamy will visit me soon, staying until the end, probably. She’s been so good to me.
When I came back from the war you didn’t look like the little girl I’d written to. You’d become a young woman. I didn’t expect that. Stupid, really. I think I melded your image onto Noi’s and made one child I wanted to save. I scared you so badly, didn’t I, that night up on the Ridgeway when you hid among the old Sarsens? I scared myself, too. That’s why I left so abruptly. I sound sane to myself when I write these things down. Perhaps I should have carried on writing after I left Thailand. Perhaps it would have helped to clear my head.
In 1977 Martha told me that the farm was having problems. She said you were under strain and you were taking it out on the child, Matthew’s only child, and that I should come and get her. ‘She’s the last of the Winters,’ Martha said. The last of the Winters. All those centuries of grinding hard work to build up the farm, all culminating in little Jess. And Matthew wasn’t there to protect the girl and look after Winter’s Copse, his beloved farm.
How could I believe that you would harm your own daughter, you will ask? How, knowing you as I did, could I possibly think that was true? Hadn’t I seen you looking after the animals on the farm, never once losing your temper?
I don’t know. Psychotic episodes. That’s what I have self-diagnosed by reading. I always was a highly strung lad, I think I told you that in one of my letters. Imprisonment by cruel guards was always going to be particularly hard for me. Not that I’m making excuses. I believe my problems really started in the jungle in Thailand when I saw them shoot Noi. It was as though all the threads in my mind undid themselves and I couldn’t retie them again. A stronger man would have been able to pull them back into place.
I sound so logical as I read what I have written here but that is because the pain is pulling me back into reality. I won’t take the next dose until I’ve finished this.
I watched you from the down in those weeks before the Jubilee. I watched you with the child and I couldn’t see any problems. But always there was Martha telling me I was wrong, telling me to look at the bruises on Jess’s legs, telling me the child herself had said that you’d done that to her. And who was I to trust myself? I had been so, so wrong about Noi.
Martha seemed like the only person who’d stayed the same. When I came back she was just as I remembered her. I didn’t treat her well, Evie. But she was always loyal to me, no matter how I spurned her. She helped hide me when the barn burned down. We forgot about my motorbike, though. I’d left it in the lane. If the police had taken more of an interest in the fire they might have asked Martha some searching questions at the inquest. Be that as it may, Martha helped me get away to Holyhead, where I caught the boat to Ireland.
Perhaps I felt guilty about having turned away from her before, back in the war. That’s why I kept in touch with her, writing occasional letters to her from Australia. And I came back to Craven at the time of the Coronation in 1953. You didn’t see me, though. I watched you and Matthew. You were happy together. Martha wasn’t very happy.
My guilt about her might have been the reason why I paid attention when Martha told me to take the child. ‘Just for a while,’ she said. ‘Do it for Matthew. Let poor Evie pull herself together and take care of things at Winter’s Copse. It’s hard being a widow and managing it all. Give it six months or a year and then we can see about sending Jess back to the farm.’
Just a year, I thought. But then when Jessamy was with me I couldn’t let her go. She was all I had: the only thing that wasn’t spoiled. When she was with me the voices in my head seemed to die down.
The worst thing I did was tell Jess you were dead.
Thing is, Evie, I am no longer sure whether you’re alive or not. Perhaps you did die. I can’t always tell which of you is here. I pulled that jasmine plant out of this garden because the smell reminded me of Thailand. But sometimes I still think I’m there.
I know I’m dying. I don’t know how to finish this.
I never stopped loving you. You won’t believe it, but it’s true.
I don’t know what else to say to you.
Robert
‘Psychotic episodes,’ I said when Jessamy had finished telling me the contents of the last letter. ‘He means he was off his rocker.’ The sympathy I felt for Robert Winter seemed to ebb and flow. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive him for what he’d done to my aunt. And to Jessamy.
‘But the delusions took the same pattern: he was always trying to look after a little girl.’
She put a hand to her mouth and yawned. I sensed that my own weariness had settled like cement into my bones. I could hardly bear the thought of hoisting myself upstairs to bed.
‘Where would you like to sleep?’ I asked Jessamy. ‘You can have your old room if you don’t mind my sheets. Or . . .’ I hesitated, thinking of Evie’s bed, which I’d stripped but could be quickly made up. ‘There’s your mother’s, if . . .’
Her eyes filled again. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I’d like that. It would make me feel close to her again. When I was little and had nightmares I used to go into her at night.’
I forced myself to stand. ‘That’s where you’ll sleep then.’
We found sheets and quilt covers in the airing cupboard and with two of us it took only minutes to prepare the bed.
‘There’s something silly that’s been on my mind.’ She straightened a pillowcase. ‘I let you think that it was you who dropped that baton in the relay. It was actually me.’
I had to think hard to work out what she was talking about. Then I remembered. The races at the Silver Jubilee party, just before Jessamy left.
‘I wasn’t a very good loser.’
‘I forgot about that relay almost immediately.’
‘You were always generous, Rachel.’
I laid a folded towel on the end of the bed. ‘Do you need anything else?’
‘Everything I need is here.’ Jessamy laid a hand on one of the pillows and stared at it as though she could see her mother’s face. The lump in my throat threatened to prevent me from breathing.
‘Night then.’ I kissed her cold cheek and wondered how she’d sleep in that bed. ‘I’m just next door if you need anything. Just call.’
‘Rachel.’ She caught my sleeve. ‘You’ve been so kind. Thank you.’
I shook my head, unable to say more. But as I undressed I knew I’d simply managed to keep some of the doubts and mixed emotions I’d felt under cover.
I fell into immediate sleep, deep and dreamless. I woke with cautious daylight slipping under the blind. Seven-thirty, my watch said. I wondered whether Jess wanted an early morning cup of tea. Last time I’d been in this house with her, twenty-five years ago, she’d woken before me and I’d met her in the farmyard coming back from a walk somewhere. Where had she been? I sat up in bed, trying to remember if she’d told me.
Of course. She’d been up on the hill talking to Martha. Because that’s where Martha always was: up on the hill, looking down at us. My heart filled with a cold dread. I dressed quickly and ran downstairs. Jessamy was in the kitchen, pulling on a pair of rubber boots.
‘There’s one person I do blame even more than him, one person who generated all this misery.’ She stood.
‘Where are you going?’ But of course I knew. ‘To find Martha.’
‘I have to have it out with her.’
The wind was still battering the house, seeming to want to force its way inside. The rain belted against the window-panes. ‘At least put on a decent coat, that light jacket won’t keep out the wet.’ I sounded like Evie. But Jessamy put on the waterproof when I handed it to her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked as I pulled on my own coat.
‘Coming with you.’
I thought she’d object but for a moment the hard expression on her face slipped. ‘C’mon then.’
As we opened the kitchen door the wind seemed to grab it from us, flinging it open so that wet air gushed through the kitchen, rattling the cupboard doors and sending the papers pinned to Evie’s fridge with magnets rustling to the floor.
With difficulty I shoved the door shut and followed my cousin into the lane, wind hitting us from the right, roaring in from the Atlantic and funnelling down the gap between the Downs, the Chilterns and the Cotswolds. I gasped as it hit me. It felt as though I was pushing myself back through the years, through history, almost, to a time when people had lived up on the Downs for months at a stretch, minding the sheep, cut off from the village by the weather and the nature of the work. I remembered Jess telling me unemotionally about Martha’s mad Welsh drover forebear and wished I hadn’t let that thought slip into my head. I recalled Martha’s own stories about the White Horse leaping out of its chalk imprint and galloping over the down to have its hooves shod, and the ghostly drovers driving cattle along the Ridgeway. It was daylight but still these images chilled me. I glanced at my cousin and wondered whether she remembered any of these things.
As we climbed I almost expected to see myself and Jessamy as little girls running down the lane towards us, carrying the pots of honey or cakes which Martha’d given us. Rain ran into my eyes and down the back of my coat. We could wait until the weather calmed before making this visit: Martha would always be up here. We could go back and have breakfast by the range. The sky had taken on a dirty yellow tint. Evie had taught me what that meant at this time of year: snow. But Jess’s set jaw told me she had no intention of postponing the encounter.
Something brushed my legs and I jumped. Pilot. Once my heart had stopped racing I was glad to see the dog. ‘Come here, boy.’ He walked beside me and I rested my right hand on his wet back.
Martha’s cottage ought to have been pretty; it was built of the same Sarsen and chalk stone as Winter’s Copse and the chocolate-box cottages in the village, with the same muted orange brickwork picking out the outlines of its windows. But green damp patches flecked the walls and the roof lacked several tiles. The gate hung off a single hinge and creaked in the breeze. I forced myself to follow my cousin up the path. She rapped on the door. No answer. Martha had probably risen early to carry out her usual patrol of the hillside. Pilot barked, obviously believing us to be insane to stand here in the wet.
‘Let’s go back,’ I said, shivering as the rain ran into my eyes and plastered my hair to my cheeks. But Jessamy’s answer was to turn the door handle. It wasn’t locked.
The cottage felt damp and probably would have done so even if the sun had blazed outside. ‘Hello!’ Jess called. ‘Anyone home?’ She stood, hands on hips, lips pursed, ready to demand answers. But I noticed how her lip trembled.
Nothing.
She walked inside and I followed. ‘Stay here,’ I told the dog, pointing to the front door mat.
Martha’s walls sported no pictures. There were no vases or photographs on the few pieces of old, dark furniture in the rooms. ‘Where is she?’ Jessamy scowled. ‘You’d think she’d come inside from this rain.’ But Martha and her ancestors had spent their lives up on the hill in all weathers; she’d be impervious to rain. I followed Jessamy through the house and into the kitchen, scrubbed but spartan, with a green lino floor and old Formica kitchen cabinets. An old television set sat on the dresser. I couldn’t remember ever coming in here. One of the shrubs in the overgrown garden swayed backwards and forwards in the wind, tapping the windowpane. The kitchen overlooked the down, where the Winters’ sheep had grazed for centuries. A perfect vantage spot for one who’d seen herself as the family’s sentry, always on duty. The thought made me shiver. I tugged at Jessamy’s sleeve. ‘Let’s go. We shouldn’t—’ I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Someone moved behind me. An old woman, all in black, clutching a shepherd’s crook, stood in the doorway, her eyes like two searchlights.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’ One of the old woman’s black-clad arms reached out and her hand touched Jessamy’s sleeve. It reminded me of a crow’s talon. ‘I’ve just been out checking the lambs.’
Lambs which didn’t belong to the Winters any longer; animals for which Martha had no responsibility. Something in her genes refused to let her adapt to the changed circumstances of life in the early twenty-first century.
‘Jessamy, my love,’ she said, staring at her. Jessamy was silent.
‘Hello, Martha,’ I said, to break the spell. ‘I haven’t seen you for a long time. Though I suppose you’ll come to the funeral next week.’ I was speaking slowly, quietly, because Martha scared me. I think she’d probably always scared me, in a way I hadn’t noticed because she was always so good to us. Tonight she seemed to be one of Macbeth’s Weird Sisters. She could only be four or five years older than Evie, but a hard outdoor life had weathered her skin. Her eyes were still the same strange, almost greeny-blue colour but filmed and milky now. Her gaze seemed unfocused, as though she was looking beyond the kitchen to something we couldn’t see.
‘I saw you,’ she told Jessamy. ‘You were at the house that day. You went to the hospital when Evie was dying. You spoke to her before she passed?’
Jessamy nodded.
‘She knew where you’d been?’
‘I didn’t have time to tell her.’ I could see a vein stand up in Jessamy’s arm as Martha gripped it. ‘Her heart gave out before I could finish.’
The look she gave Martha was penetrating. ‘I didn’t have time to tell her the woman she employed on her farm had conspired to have me kidnapped.’ She shook herself free.
‘Robert wanted the child with him. It seemed for the best.’ Martha spoke matter-of-factly. ‘He was family. I knew Jess’d be safe out there.’
‘You wanted to separate me from my mother?’ Jessamy’s voice rose. ‘Why?’
‘You’d be better off away from her, my dear. That’s what Martha thought.’ She nodded. ‘And seems I was right. Look at the woman you’ve become.’ She smiled at Jessamy. ‘Robert did a grand job with you.’
‘Why? What the hell possessed you?’ I asked. ‘You must have known you were doing something completely evil.’
‘Evie was no fit mother for you, Jess,’ she said, ignoring me. ‘And she wasn’t coping well with the farm.’
Jessamy and I looked at one another in confusion.
‘The cows had TB. Robert and Matthew’s precious herd. Built up by their father before them.’
‘A single case of TB!’ Jessamy spat. ‘Three reactors. So unusual that I remember it after all this time.’
‘There were other things.’ Martha folded her arms.
‘Don’t tell me. She lost an occasional ewe. The fox got into the chicken shed. Things that happen on every farm in this parish.’
‘Farming is a hard business. Evie found it hard to look after a child and mind the farm.’ Martha still spoke in the same calm tone.
Jessamy’s lips were pursed together. She seemed to be finding it hard to speak.
‘Evie was struggling,’ Martha went on. ‘That’s what I told the police when they came up here to ask me those questions after the Silver Jubilee party.’
‘What?’ I took a step towards her. She eyed me without showing any anxiety. ‘What did you say to the police?’
‘I said there was always trouble at Winter’s Copse and had been from the moment Evie arrived in 1940.I said young Jess had probably run away because her mother wasn’t able to give her enough care.’
Jessamy shook her arm free. ‘Why did you tell those lies?’
‘I was meant for Robert Winter, not her.’ The old woman spoke with utter conviction.
‘You?’ I couldn’t help the incredulity in my voice. I was comparing my aunt with this dishevelled woman with her staring eyes.
‘He and I were in love before he went off to fight. There was an understanding between us.’
I wondered whether Robert had allowed himself a last fling with Martha in preparation for the years ahead of him in the army. He wouldn’t have been the first young man to take advantage of a willing girl. I felt a kernel of pity for her. Had she waited and waited for him to come back to her, building what had happened between them into a declaration of intent?
‘When we were children Matthew, Robert and I played in the farmyard together, jumping off the bales in the barn. I showed them where the adders lie out on the chalk on hot afternoons. I taught them how to save a lamb that was dead to the touch.’ Jess started to say something but Martha held up a hand. ‘We went to school together. When they were older they took me out rabbiting in the copse at night. We went to all the country fairs together and Matthew and Robert bought me rides on the merry-go-round. The Winters and the Stourtons belonged together. If I couldn’t have Robert I should have had Matthew.’ Her voice rose on the last words.
‘Robert loved my mother,’ Jessamy said evenly. ‘So did Matthew. Both of them loved Evie.’
‘They were taken in by her with her pretty way of doing things and her trim little figure. When I told Robert how things were he saw clearly again.’
I glared at Martha, the kernel of pity inside me fragmenting. I could have twisted every bone in her old body.
‘I told him that this farm was going to pieces,’ she went on. ‘And his niece needed taking care of, Matthew’s girl, his own flesh and blood.’
‘Why?’ asked Jessamy, dangerously quiet now. ‘What was Mum supposed to have done to me?’
‘She’d been beating you.’
I looked at Jessamy. ‘Beating you?’ I couldn’t even remember Evie as much as slapping the backs of Jess’s legs or tapping her on the hand.
She looked puzzled too. ‘Mum never hit me. Not once. Not even a slap.’ She moved closer to Martha. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I found you with bruises on your legs and black eyes and you said it was your mother.’
‘Jess would have been joking,’ I shouted. ‘You know, a joke, when you say something you don’t mean? Children do it all the time.’
‘You knew I didn’t mean it, Martha.’ Jessamy’s face was white. ‘You knew Robert was sick in his mind and he’d believe your stories.’
She shuffled. ‘Maybe he wasn’t himself.’
‘Maybe? He was probably psychotic’ She looked at me blankly. ‘He should have been having psychiatric treatment,’ I went on, ‘not running off with a ten-year-old child.’
‘I would have done anything to make him happy.’ This I could well believe. ‘He was so lonely, living in foreign parts by himself. I thought that having a youngster with him for a visit would pull him out of his troubles.’ Even now she sounded so sure of herself. ‘I knew Robert would look after you and it would only be for six months or a year. By then Evie would have gone.’
‘Gone?’
She looked at me. ‘I didn’t think she’d carry on after Jess left. I thought she’d give up the farm and go back to the city.’
My mouth opened to ask her what she thought would have happened when Evie’s daughter had returned. Surely she knew that the police would have been called. She and Robert would have gone to prison.
But on Planet Martha Evie would have returned to a city she hadn’t lived in for decades, leaving Martha and Robert in the farmhouse together. Perhaps with Jessamy living with them. My mouth opened.
‘It was jealousy, plain and simple. You did this to spite Evie.’
‘I thought he’d bring the child back. I didn’t think he’d keep her all those years. It was just to show—’
‘Just to show my mother that she couldn’t have it all: the farm, the status, the child.’ Jessamy folded her arms in front of her chest. Her eyes were like shards of glass.
‘Did you summon Robert over here in 1977 specifically to take Jess?’ I asked.
Martha’s lantern-eyes gazed at me as though I were speaking in a foreign language. ‘Robert wanted to come back for the Silver Jubilee anyway. He always liked the traditions and he’d been home for the Coronation, though he didn’t show himself to anyone. Just me and old Mrs Winter.’ Her expression was smug. ‘He stayed here with me. But then he went away again. But I wrote to him from time to time. And when he heard what I had to say about Evie he thought the child should go with him. He wanted her to be safe. I told him I’d help him get a passport for her so he could take her away with him.’
She’d stolen Jessamy’s birth certificate from the house, I guessed. And used it to apply for the passport.
‘You preyed on his disturbed state,’ Jessamy said. ‘You exploited his broken mind with your lies. You were an accessory. More than that. An accomplice.’
‘An accessory to the abduction of a child,’ I said. ‘That’s a very serious crime. Even though you’re old now you’ll go to court.’ She was old but I hated her, hated her so much I could have spat at her. ‘You did a terrible thing. You’re responsible for Evie’s death. Her heart stopped working when she saw her daughter again after all those years, it couldn’t take the strain. You deserve to die in prison.’
She nodded, seeming to shrink into herself, suddenly meek. ‘I see that now. I’m sorry.’
Just that one word, sorry. I thought of my aunt, of her years of waiting to hear what had befallen her daughter, wishing herself in a coma until Jessamy reappeared. I saw her watching the TV news each time a child’s body was discovered, shaking, wide-eyed. I replayed the telephone conversations I’d had with her each time the police had called her to tell her the body didn’t belong to her Jessamy. I recalled the mixture of relief and horror and guilt I’d heard in her voice each time that had happened. ‘Some other mother’s child,’ she’d whisper. ‘And I was on my knees, Rachel, thanking God. But now I feel sick with myself because some other mother has lost all hope now. But then a little part of me even wishes it was Jessamy they’d found so at least I’d know.’
I thought of Jessamy, fed lies about her mother, uncertain what or who to believe, robbed of home, friends, her pony and dog, the morning walk down the lane to the village school. And I thought of Robert, poor Robert, who’d been damaged beyond repair. I shuddered at the malign conjunction which had placed such a damaged man within Martha’s orbit.
I knew Martha was old, probably senile, but I could have struck her with my fists until she bled in front of me and wept for mercy. What mercy had she shown Evie? The police inquiries, Evie’s newspaper appeals, all ignored, dismissed because of that corrosive jealousy.
Sorry. Just that, for all she’d done, for the quarter-century of pain.
‘I can’t stand here looking at you any longer.’ I got up and walked out of the cottage. Pilot was waiting on the doorstep and followed me into the lane, his ears pricked into courteous enquiry. I walked so quickly I was almost jogging, mindless of puddles and potholes, the dog’s paws splashing behind me. My fury drove out any lingering fears I might have possessed about phantom drovers and their flocks. I saw the white walls of Winter’s Copse in front of me and broke into a run until I reached the gate. For a moment I stood there, the sleety rain falling gently on me, letting it wash me. I felt calmer just standing in front of the old house. I opened the gate and walked to the kitchen door, heart rate slowing. When I went inside I stood for a second letting the warmth of the place ooze into my cells, as though it was flushing out the madness I’d witnessed in the cottage.
I stood at the window, staring out towards the front garden where the film of the child Jessamy had once been taken. Bushes swayed in the still-lively breeze. I clenched my fists hard then forced myself to let out all my breath.
It’s over. I almost looked round to see if Evie was really standing there in the kitchen with us; her voice seemed as clear as the church bell.
Are you at peace now? I asked her, wordlessly.
I heard nothing, but there was something in the quality of the silence and the deep tock of the clock on the wall which made me believe she was. All is well, my aunt seemed to tell me. Be at peace too, Rachel.
And I answered her wordlessly. It will continue, what you and Matthew wanted: your child will live in this house again with her children, maybe even get the farm going again. Jessamy hadn’t said this to me but how could I doubt it? Jessamy’s ease in Winter’s Copse had proved that although she’d been away for twenty-five years she belonged here completely in a way I never could. Why couldn’t she run a plant nursery here?
This recognition might once have made me feel resentful or sad but not now. My life was elsewhere. Something was pulling me towards the future: unknown and slightly scary, but exciting, too. I put a hand on my abdomen, just below my navel and remembered the package from the chemist’s. It was still in my handbag.
I plucked the bag from the kitchen chair and went upstairs to the bathroom. When I’d taken the test and it had shown me the result I went to sit at the top of the stairs for a few minutes, just as I’d once done with Jessamy when we were children. I sat motionless while the disordered atoms of my world rearranged themselves into something new.
It felt as though I’d been up there for hours and hours but it was probably only about fifteen minutes later that I came downstairs again. Through the white noise of my own preoccupations I heard the garden gate click open. Jessamy was back. She came inside. I tried to read the look of concentration on her face, to work out what had happened.
‘Have you rung the police?’ I asked carefully.
She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ She looked so pale I rushed to her and steered her to a chair.
‘I shouldn’t have left you alone up there with her.’
‘She’s no danger to me, not any more. Not to anyone.’ She sounded strange.
‘What do you mean, Jess?’
‘Martha’s gone back up the hill. Without a coat. With that old shepherd’s crook of hers, that old crook she used when we went blackberrying.’
I remembered the blackberrying.
‘The rain’s turning to sleet now and the temperature’s dropping.’ She spoke as though she were reading from an autocue. ‘Martha’s tough but she’s old now. You could ring for an ambulance, Rachel. It would probably take at least half an hour to get here and we don’t know exactly where Martha is. She could be anywhere up on the down.’
‘Why’s she done this?’
‘She said she wanted to do one last check on everything, to make sure that all was well. She said goodbye to me and apologized for all the sorrow she’d caused.’
She held out her mobile phone. ‘Go on, ring for help, if you want. Or tell me we should go up on that hillside and find her. Tell me that, Rachel. I’ll do it if you say we have to.’ Her expression was reflective, neither angry nor anxious.
My hand was reaching for the phone but I pulled away. Let Martha take her chances. I thought of the old woman up there, lashed by the wind and sleet from the west, her eyes gazing down the hill towards the farmhouse, watching over Jessamy, watching over the last of the Winters, finally back where she belonged. I thought of Martha turning her face towards the icy downpour, untroubled by the chill, standing there on watch, always on watch.
The picture moved me but not as much as I might have expected. I was starting to feel distanced from it all. Other things mattered almost as much. I hardly dared tell myself what was happening to me.
I took the mobile. ‘I do need to make a call, actually,’ I said. ‘I left my phone at a neighbour’s the day before yesterday and the landline’s disconnected. Do you mind if I ring my husband Luke?’
‘Be my guest.’ She stood. ‘I’m going to have a shower, if that’s all right. Then I’ll ring my kids and you and I can sit down and talk and you can tell me all about your husband.’
‘Luke . . .’ Thank God it wasn’t his voicemail I reached.
‘Rachel. I’ve been worried sick, you haven’t been answering my calls to your mobile.’ He sounded frantic. ‘I thought . . . well, I didn’t know what to think, actually. Are you all right? The weather sounds dreadful there. The forecast says you’re in for snow.’
‘It is dreadful but some very exciting things have been happening.’ I hesitated, not knowing how to start. ‘Are you sitting down? You won’t believe this.’
He didn’t. Not for about ten minutes. ‘Jessamy’s come back?’ he kept saying. ‘She was alive all this time? Where did she go? Why did it take her so long to come back? I don’t under-stand. Tell me who Robert Winter was, again.’ Finally I managed to persuade him to stop asking questions long enough for me to paste the facts together into some kind of recognizable narrative. ‘Pyschiatrists would have a field day with this,’ he said when I finished. ‘That sad and crazy man. And that jealous woman. What an appalling thing to do: take revenge on your love rival by helping to abduct their kid.’
But something else was on my mind now.
‘Martha’s gone up on the hillside,’ I said. ‘It’s snowing here now. She’s over eighty. What should we do?’
There was silence. ‘She’s a shepherd?’
I could almost hear his logical mind working on it.
‘Her family have lived in Craven for centuries, she knows what conditions are like up there.’ I heard his out-breath. ‘Let her go, Rachel.’
‘I think she’s a bit senile. She may not be mentally switched-on enough to know what she’s doing.’
‘Do you know her well?’ he asked sharply.
‘Not really.’
‘Well then, it’s not for you to decide on her frame of mind. Let her stay up there,’ he said. ‘For all you know she might already be back home by now.’
But I knew she wouldn’t be, she’d still be up there with all the ghosts, talking to people who’d died years ago, inhabiting the weird world she’d created from her broken mind. Dragging her off that hill, taking her to hospital and subjecting her to police questioning, a trial, perhaps, would be a just consequence of what she’d done to Jessamy. Just, but harsher.
‘The person I’d be more concerned about is Jessamy,’ he went on.
‘I just hope she can stop punishing herself for giving her mother such a shock.’ I relayed what had happened when Evie had seen her daughter again.
‘Probably inevitable that Evie would react violently, no matter how Jessamy’d broken the news. Perhaps she really did have something wrong with her that wasn’t picked up.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Jess’ll have to see lawyers, of course. Probably the police too. They’ll want her to make statements.’
Somewhere in a filing system there’d be an open file on Jessamy’s disappearance that would need to be taken out, dusted off. And closed.
‘You must feel wrecked, darling,’ Luke went on.
‘I am tired. But apparently that’s not unusual.’
A silence.
‘What are you talking about? It sounds highly unusual to have your long-lost cousin come back—’
‘Luke, I just did a test. It’s a very thin line but . . .’ It was there, as pale a blue as a spring sky. ‘I’m . . . pregnant.’ Finally I let myself say the word. I was expecting a child. If all went well, I’d hold Evie’s great-niece or nephew in my arms in about nine months. When? How? I let the questions buzz between Luke and me, unspoken, unanswered, because neither of us knew. Perhaps that last despairing night with the takeaway curry and the bottle of Rioja when we’d behaved like a pair of teenagers. For the first time in months and months I felt myself produce a sound that could only be described as a giggle.
Again there was a silence.
‘You know, I think I must have guessed.’ His voice quivered. ‘I must have worked it out subconsciously. Perhaps that’s why I needed to speak to you so urgently. I just can’t believe it.’
‘Nor can I.’ I let my heart give a little skip. The excitement felt delicious. I hardly dared to enjoy it after all the years of disappointment. ‘But I don’t understand how it happened. The dates . . .’ I shrugged.
‘Bugger the dates,’ said Luke. ‘For the last year all we’ve done is worry about dates, the right date for this injection or that blood test or this new fertility drug. And now – this. You star, Rachel.’
The lump in my throat threatened to render me dumb, something that had never before happened in the seven years of our marriage. We exchanged a few more words, half choked by emotion, and finished the call.
Jessamy came downstairs, her hair still damp from the shower. She’d borrowed my towelling dressing gown. When we were children we’d swapped clothes all the time: my smartly labelled French skirts and cardigan for her Marks and Spencer trousers and hand-knitted jumpers.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I wanted to ask if I could put this on while my clothes dry but you were on the phone. Do you mind, Rachel?’
My answer was to pull her into my arms and hug her. ‘I have missed you so much,’ I whispered. ‘You can have no idea.’
‘Yes I can.’ She shook her head, relaxing in my grip. ‘Every single day I thought of you.’
It was what I had needed her to tell me.
‘Every time I came down here to stay I’d lie up in that room of yours and think it must be a game, that you were hiding in the cupboard or under the bed.’ I shuddered, remembering. ‘It felt . . .’ I couldn’t tell her what it had felt like but the image that came into my mind was of a three-legged stool, missing one of its legs and never balancing properly again.
‘You’re going to crush me,’ Jessamy protested, between laughs. But we stayed, arms round one another, for minutes. Then we let one another go. She watched me preparing the food and picked up the kettle. ‘Let’s use the famous Winter Jubilee mugs and brew up more tea.’ She pointed to her rucksack. ‘I’ve got mine in my bag.’
Almost as a reflex I was going to remind her that the mugs were only ever brought out on high days and holidays, Coronations and Jubilees, for example. But what could be more of a celebration than today?
Not for the first time I would like to thank Becky Motew, Jill Morrow, Barbara Derbyshire, Kristina Riggle and all the members of the Newplace writing group. My thanks also to Jane Cooper and Johnnie Graham.
My gratitude goes as well to the Vale and Downland Museum in Wantage, especially to Howard Fuller for showing me the photo archive, and to the inhabitants of Kingston Lisle and Uffington for being so generous with information about rural life now and in the past.
Two books were particularly useful to me in researching the story of the POWs working on the Burma-Siam railway: The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, and Secret Letters from the Railway: The Remarkable Record of Charles Steel, a Japanese POW, edited by Brian Best.
Eliza Graham lives in the Vale of the White Horse in Oxfordshire, with her husband, children and dogs.
Also by Eliza Graham
Playing with the Moon
Restitution
For Lauri and Jeanette Day
First published 2010 by Pan Books
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Copyright © Eliza Graham 2010
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