Sylvia lay awake listening to the mournful call of a morepork. Another noise, a soft shuffling, suddenly came from the hallway. A bush creature must have ventured in through an open window, she guessed, slipping out of bed and peering along the passage. Seeing nothing, she tiptoed into the front parlour, where Will’s open coffin rested on trestles. A lamp burned on the dresser. She drew back, her heart racing to see Libby standing by the coffin, scissors clutched in her hand.
‘What do you think you’re doing? Give me those!’ Sylvia reached for the scissors, shrieking and leaping back as Libby came at her. Sylvia fled into her bedroom and leaned her weight against the door, daring to open it only when she heard Jack and Arnold calling out.
‘What the devil’s going on?’ demanded Arnold, grasping Sylvia, stopping her knees from buckling. ‘I could hear you screaming from my room.’
‘I caught Libby defiling Will’s body. She came at me with the scissors.’
‘She never!’ Jack’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, Mother, look there!’ He pointed to the front door, where Libby sat huddled and trembling. The scissors lay on the floor beside her.
‘She’s mad!’ Arnold’s voice cracked with shock. He thrust Sylvia at Jack. ‘Look after your mother while I see to the girl.’
More frightened than she’d ever been in her life, Sylvia longed to let Arnold deal with Libby, but she was her child, her responsibility. She feared Arnold might unwittingly upset the girl even more.
‘No, Arnold, best leave her to me. She’s calm now. If you go near, it may very well set her going again.’
Sylvia walked shakily to Libby. ‘You’re a wicked, wicked girl! How could you even begin to think of defiling your father?’
Libby’s head jerked up. ‘N-nah!’ she stammered, opening her palm and thrusting it at Sylvia.
Instinctively, Sylvia ducked aside before realising what Libby was holding. ‘Oh, my saints, it’s a lock of hair.’
‘Fa-Fa—’ Libby touched the hair to her locket.
‘Will’s hair … she wants to put it in her locket.’ Partly from shame that she had thought her daughter capable of violating Will’s body, partly from relief that Libby’s actions had been purely innocent, Sylvia’s legs folded and she crumpled to her knees.
‘Get up, Mother, help me. Libby’s going into a fit,’ Jack pleaded, grasping his sister’s arms.
Sylvia gulped in a steadying breath and slid her hands under Libby’s head. ‘You mustn’t panic; she’ll be all right just so long as we keep her still.’
‘I’m sorry for alarming you so, Arnold, but she gave me such a turn,’ Sylvia explained. The seizure had passed and she’d changed Libby’s urine-soaked shift and settled her back into bed. ‘I truly feared she’d gone quite mad and was taking the scissors to Will.’
‘It was a natural mistake, Mrs Budd. You weren’t to know. Coming upon her like that would have given the stoutest of us a turn.’
Sylvia barely heard his words. How was she to cope with Libby now Will was dead? That fit had come so soon after the last one, and they’d both been far worse than any before. This one had been her own fault, she was sure of that. She’d frightened Libby — been far too quick to think ill of the girl, yet could she be blamed for thinking the worst, the way Libby carried on at times?
The day of the funeral, Sylvia took a last look at Will, a lifeless waxwork as he lay in his coffin in the front parlour. The accident and his death still seemed unreal — a foul nightmare from which she could not awake.
He appeared remarkably untouched for a man who’d met with a violent death, and she was grateful for that. She couldn’t have borne to look upon him if he’d been badly disfigured. The log had caught him across his chest, so Arnold had said. Even through her own sorrow, Sylvia felt badly for Arnold. He’d been distraught when he and Jack had brought Will home.
‘You could not have foreseen this,’ she’d said to him. ‘You did all you could, and for that I’m grateful. It was God’s will.’
Jack stood beside her now, Libby on the other side of the coffin, taking their last look at their father before the coffin was closed.
His face twisted with grief, Jack fought to contain his tears, but Libby looked on impassively, not a flicker of emotion on her face. Apart from taking a lock of Will’s hair as a keepsake, she had seemed not to care, Sylvia thought bitterly. Yet she had been Will’s favourite. She recalled Libby’s bizarre behaviour the day of the accident. The way she’d sat, watching and waiting for Will to return — and it seemed he had, except Libby had been the only one to see him. Sylvia shivered. Her gaze returned to Jack. ‘Say goodbye to your father.’
Jack blinked rapidly, fighting back his tears. He leaned down, touching his lips to Will’s forehead.
Libby hung back, her blue eyes vacant as if her soul had fled with her father’s. Sylvia was touched to see Arnold take her by the waist and lift her so she could see Will more easily, but Libby struggled from his grasp, dropped to the floor and launched at him like a wildcat, kicking and punching.
Sylvia darted around the other side of the coffin and grabbed Libby. The girl calmed immediately and, for an instant, Sylvia thought she’d imagined her daughter’s tantrum, but Arnold and Jack’s shocked faces assured her she hadn’t.
‘Libby, that was a vile thing to do. Sometimes I think the devil himself’s inside you.’
She looked at Arnold, shaking her head. ‘Words cannot express how sorry and ashamed I am. She’s clearly still unwell.’ Sylvia steered Libby to the sofa. Had they not been so close to leaving for the church, she would have taken the strop to the girl.
‘Now, stay there until it’s time for us to leave, else it’ll be the worse for you,’ she said in a voice vibrating with anger.
She turned to Arnold. ‘Come through to the kitchen. I’ll get you a drop of sherry.’ Sylvia led the chalk-faced man away.
‘It’s grief, you know. Grief and her illness,’ she explained lamely, handing him a glass of sherry which he drained in one rapid swallow. ‘She was close to Will, closer than Jack ever was … or even me.’ Her eyes burned and filled with tears. ‘This was bound to affect her badly.’
‘Don’t worry on my account, Mrs Budd. I’ve survived worse,’ Arnold said, the colour gradually returning to his face. ‘As you say, she’s unwell and pining for her father. I can understand that.’
Sylvia felt even worse at his forbearance. Ill or not, it was a terrible thing Libby had done. She dreaded what the girl might get up to at the funeral. Mai Bramwell, bless the woman’s good and kind heart, had offered to have her stay with them over the past few days. But Mai was with child again, she’d recently confided to Sylvia. What with that, working in the shop, and Wiremu and Don more than a little afraid of Libby, Sylvia had regretfully declined.
‘You mustn’t fret about this,’ Arnold continued. ‘I know she can’t help her fits and tantrums. It’s the way she is. She’s not in control of her reasoning and knows no better.’
Sylvia was torn between her need for sympathy, her shame at Libby’s actions, and the urge to snap at him for implying that her daughter was mad. She was certainly difficult, and often drove Sylvia to distraction, but she could be loving, even a joy on the odd occasion. No, Libby was far from normal, but she was not a lunatic.
People like the constable and the minister thought they were being helpful when they suggested putting Libby into a home for lunatics, but their misplaced advice only stirred up a cauldron of ill-feeling and bitterness.
The service passed in a blur of hymns, eulogies and murmured condolences, none of which Sylvia could fully recall later. After the service, the home she was so proud of and thought so large seemed almost as tiny as their shanty had been, with people crammed wall to wall.
Sylvia thought of Libby, so frightening and ill-behaved before the funeral, yet so apparently unmoved throughout the service. Rigid as a wooden doll, she’d turned away from the hushed words of sympathy. Such behaviour was certainly unnatural. She recalled the constable’s words about his cousin having been committed, and wondered.