40

 

 

MARY SEEMED PREOCCUPIED Friday morning. She moved around the sitting room with a duster, her forehead creased deeply; there was no coffee laid out when Gwynn appeared downstairs. Wordlessly, Gwynn went into the kitchen and rooted around for the press, the coffee, a cup. From the other room she heard a small crash, then the sound of Mary swearing. Gwynn froze, hand on the press. She had never heard Mary curse; something was definitely wrong. She reached into the cupboard for a second cup, because Mary was obviously in need of one.

“No,” Mary said, as Gwynn brought the tray into the sitting room and lowered it onto the low table. “I can’t take the time. I’ve got to get done here and get over to Dad’s.”

There was something frightening in her tone. Gwynn straightened quickly, too quickly, and prayed Mary hadn’t noticed her gasp.

“What is it, Mary?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to bother you with this,” the housekeeper said stiffly. “It’s just a personal problem.”

“Mary. Tell me.”

At first it seemed she would not budge, but then worry got the best of her, and Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. The other day he seemed out of sorts when I took him down to the shops. Wasn’t interested. Not like himself at all.” She paused for a fraction of a moment in her dusting, lowering her head. “When we got back to the house, all he wanted was to put his pajamas on again and go to bed. No supper. Not even soup. He hardly touched anything yesterday, either.”

This, Gwynn understood, was the ultimate in tells for Mary. If someone didn’t want food, death might just be imminent. And her father was more than ninety, after all.

Gwynn bit her lip, stricken. Martin wasn’t supposed to be out unsupervised; she knew this. Yet she had encouraged him, because she had needed him. She had needed to share the burden of the knowledge of Gwynn’s violation, and who else to share it with but the man who loved her? Might still love her? Maybe it had been too much. Gwynn berated herself. He was an old man. He didn’t need to bear the weight of this oldest of heartbreaks, for a woman for whom he could do nothing. I can understand her. She heard his words again, and knew in her gut that letting him convince her to tell him what she had learned had been wrong. Selfish.

“I haven’t seen him like this since Mum passed,” Mary continued fretfully. “Sad. To the point of sickness.” She shook her head again and returned her attention to the dust. “I’ve got to get done here and go make sure he’s all right this morning. I might need to take him to the GP.”

Sad to the point of sickness. Gwynn knew what that meant. She felt it herself, deep within her chest. Deep within her womb. For the woman who had given up her life and her happiness for her younger sister, who had married and moved to the States. For the pregnancy that had ended—no children—for the child conceived in rape, and who had never been born.

That was just as well, Gwynn thought in agony as she sank onto the sofa and poured a cup of coffee for herself. A child of rape. Perhaps it had been a false pregnancy; perhaps her great-aunt’s system had been so shocked by the violation that she had only been that: late. Or perhaps there had been a miscarriage. Without a further glimpse, allowed to her by her great-aunt, Gwynn had no way of knowing. And perhaps that sort of ignorance was truly bliss.

 

THUS GWYNN WAS surprised, early Sunday morning, when the telephone awakened her and she answered it to find Martin Scott on the other end.

“I hope it’s not too early,” he said, without a greeting.

It was, and she yawned, but guilt kept her from saying so.

“I had to call before our Mary got to your house. I need to see you.”

“It’s Sunday,” she protested groggily, listening as the mantle clock rang the hour. Eight chimes. On a Sunday. She felt queasy, dizzy. “Mary is going to church. Doesn’t she take you with her?”

He snorted, but it was forced, the ghost of his accustomed good humor. “Not anymore. The beauties of old age. You put your foot down, and even your children have to listen to you.”

Gwynn knew he was trying, but his tone was thin, tired. “No, they don’t. And your Mary wouldn’t listen to you anyway, so don’t give me that.”

“All right,” he returned. “I just don’t want to go. And I tell her I’m old.”

The laughter was brittle, overlaying something else that moved like a dark river beneath it. They both knew they were skirting the real purpose of the call.

“Tell me,” Gwynn said at last. Simply.

“I need to come by,” Martin said.

“No,” she objected. “Let me come to you.”

“I need to come to Gull Cottage. And I might need your help.” He sounded uncomfortable, but determined.

“For what?”

“I can’t tell you over the telephone,” Martin hedged. “Can you be ready for me in about an hour?”

“But why?”

“Just be ready. Can you be?”

Gwynn didn’t like the sound of it. But, as guilty as she felt, she couldn’t turn him down. “In an hour,” she agreed reluctantly.

 

GWYNN TOOK A quick bath, pulled on her clothes, and was waiting with the tea at the ready when Martin appeared at the door. Again he wore the fedora pulled low over his brow, as though that would disguise him from any prying eyes. He entered the hall, and his glance took note of the dining room chair against the wall, but he said nothing about it. Instead he only moved past into the sitting room.

He had aged even more since she had seen him last, Monday afternoon on the waterfront. He seemed smaller, seemed to have shrunk—instead of a sprightly, spirited older gentleman, Gwynn found herself faced with a stooped old man who moved stiffly, gingerly, in fear of falls and broken bones. He had a stick today, blackthorn, and he leaned heavily on it as he lowered himself painfully onto the sofa.

Gwynn poured him a cup of tea, and turned the tray slightly to bring the milk jug and sugar tongs closer to his hand. Then she too sat, but on the sofa, not in her great-aunt’s wing-backed chair. She waited.

“Thank you,” he said formally, “for letting me come.”

Gwynn nodded in acknowledgment. The words hung between them, and she watched him pour a bit of milk into his coffee, then drop in a lump of sugar. She had done it wrong again. Probably always would. He appeared to take great pains with the stirring.

“I still don’t know why you’ve come. What is this about, Martin?”

He lifted the cup to his lips, but didn’t take a drink; his eyes skirted her to rest on the chair, moved back to its proper place. The marks it had made scraping uneasily over the carpet had been eradicated by Mary’s industrious hoovering, but Gwynn imagined she could still see them. Somehow, too, she could imagine the impression of her cousin’s body in the upholstery, claiming ownership of their great-aunt’s wing-back.

Suddenly she stood and went to the chair. She crossed her ankles and folded her hands in her lap, trying to channel the other Gwynn. It’s your chair, she thought, trying to make an impression on it, and on the atmosphere. It’s yours. I’m reclaiming it for you. But she only felt a confused fear and sadness, and was unable to tell whether it was her great-aunt’s, or her own.

She met Martin’s eyes. The blue seemed dull, glazed.

“What’s happened to you?” Her voice sounded shrill to her own hears. “Martin, what is it?”

He shook his head. Even his fluffy white hair was dull, flat.

“I can’t sleep, young Gwynn,” he said quietly. “I dream of her.”

Gwynn kept her eyes locked on his face. She licked her dry lips.

“I do, too,” she whispered.

But again he lowered his head. “No. You don’t understand. She comes to me. I hear her screaming. And then I hear her sobbing. And there’s nothing I can do.”

He was clenching his bony hands in his lap so tightly that his knuckles showed knobby and white.

Then in her mind’s eye she could see him as he had been then, a young freckled-faced man in uniform, home on leave, dancing with a beautiful red-haired girl in his arms. Dreaming of his future with her, of their life together, of their children. He had loved her. The handsome young face superimposed itself over the lined one before her, and she could read plainly the heartbreak there. No. He still loved her. Gwynn dropped to her knees on the carpet beside him, took his clenched hands in her own. The hands that had held her great-aunt all those years ago, the hands that had returned home that December and found themselves empty. Forsaken.

“Tommy Chelton was a monster,” she whispered, holding onto his hands as though to give him a lifeline. There was such hatred in her voice that Martin looked up sharply.

“Is that how you knew?” he asked.

She lowered her head and did not answer.

“Tell me, Gwynn,” he said, more urgently. “Does she come to you in dreams as well? Do you hear the screaming? Do you hear her sob?”

She shook her head, the tears starting again. She refused to look up.

“But why wouldn’t she tell me? Why wouldn’t she write to me?”

“She didn’t tell anyone. He raped her in the dovecote, and then he gaslighted her—he convinced her no one would believe her—she’d followed him up there of her own accord, so she must have known what would happen. That’s what everyone would think. They’d blame her.”

Martin was openly crying. They both were.

“And she was afraid of what you would have done.”

“I would have gone after the bastard. I would have killed him with my bare hands.”

Gwynn took a deep breath. “Part of her knew that. Then you’d have been in trouble, and she didn’t want that, either.” She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. “He shamed her. She couldn’t tell anyone. I don’t think she ever told her own mother.”

“But she married him, Gwynn. After what he did to her. She married him.”

Now Gwynn squeezed her eyes shut, willing the horror away—but it did not go. “She had no choice, Martin.” Her voice broke. “She had no choice.” Slowly she told him about Tommy Chelton’s threats, about the pregnancy which, in the end, was not.

For a long time the only sounds were the ticking of the mantle clock and the labored breathing of the old man on the sofa.

“How can you know this?” he asked again, raggedly.

She couldn’t meet his eyes.

Martin freed one of his hands, then she felt his bony finger beneath her chin, tipping her head up.

“Does she come to you?”

She shook her head now, she could feel the tears splash against her skin. “No, Martin,” she said, her voice nearly inaudible, even to her own ears. “No, she doesn’t come to me.” She took a deep breath which tore at her insides, then opened her eyes to look straight into his face. “She is me.”

Martin looked down on her in horror. “You—are each other,” he whispered. “That’s how you know what happened to her? Because it happened—”

“To me,” she said.

“Oh, Gwynn,” he said after a moment, his voice strangled in his throat. He leaned forward until his wrinkled cheek rested against her head. “Oh, my Gwynn.”

 

“WE NEED A drink,” Gwynn said, at last.

“I’ll get it. Same place?” Martin leaned on his stick all the way out into the kitchen. He returned with the new bottle under his arm and two glasses in one hand. He sank back down onto the sofa and poured out two healthy fingers for each of them.

“To hell with the coffee,” he grunted, shoving one glass toward Gwynn, who had returned to the chair. “We both need this straight, and plenty of it.” He downed his shot in a single gulp, then leaned back and closed his eyes, his breathing labored.

Gwynn drank hers more slowly. If she had her way, this bottle would see some good use this morning. Drunk before noon—it didn’t seem like too bad an idea at all. Martin would help. It might even be worth the hangover.

“Does anyone else know about this?” Martin asked after a pause.

Gwynn took another sip before answering, letting the whisky burn its way down her throat and into her gullet. It was supposed to radiate warmth once drunk, had always done so for her, so she waited, half-hoping. Nothing, though, was getting through this chill.

“No,” she admitted at last. “I haven’t told anyone.”

“No one at all?”

She chose to ignore the implication which lay behind his words. “No one. Mary asked, the morning after it—happened—in the dream. But I couldn’t tell her. I knew it wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“Yet you came to me.”

Her glass was suddenly strangely empty, and she leaned forward to pour another two fingers into it. “She wanted me to tell you. My great-aunt.” Don’t ask anymore. Just don’t.

Martin nodded, and poured more whisky into his glass as well. “I see.” Then he shook his head, half angry, half confused. “No. I don’t see. She could have told me. Years ago. Back then.”

“Not while your wife was alive.”

Martin fell silent again.

The clock on the shelf rang the hour.

Gwynn roused herself, looking down into her glass, which was approaching empty once again. She had to stop, she told herself, because, while on the one hand she would welcome the obliviousness of drunkenness, on the other, she wouldn’t welcome the ensuing hangover, which would make everything a hundred times worse. She glanced at Martin, sunken and small on the sofa. He’d made pretty good headway on his own drink: he’d be drunk, too. Then he wouldn’t be able to get home, and Mary would find he’d been out, and there’d be hell to pay. Especially if she found out that Gwynn had been the whisky supplier.

“You wanted to come see me about something,” she said, trying to bring the bleak morning back into focus. She suddenly hoped he wasn’t going to ask for the scrapbook; she didn’t want to have to tell him where it was now. Nor how it had come to be there.

Martin leaned forward, elbows on knees, and set his glass down on the table. “It doesn’t matter now. I don’t think I should bother you with it.”

Gwynn too set her glass down. “You’d best just tell me. You said you would need my help. Tell me what it is you need.”

Still he evaded her eyes. “It’s not important now.”

The now hung between them like a live thing.

She cleared her throat. “It’s all important now.” She didn’t even know what she meant by that. “What did you come for, Martin?”

He pressed his thin lips together, and again clenched his hands between his knees. “I thought—I needed—” He stopped, coughed, drew out a carefully pressed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth before going on. “I needed to go up there.”

The morning had suddenly grown still, and dark.

“Where?” Gwynn asked, but it was only a stall. She knew.

“The dovecote,” he said, his voice low. Then he shrugged, and the effort seemed to pain him. “But it doesn’t matter now.”

Gwynn swallowed hard.

“You need me to take you up there?”

Martin grimaced, lifting a bony hand and letting it fall helplessly. “I thought I needed to go up there. To see if it would help.” He looked away, toward the window, where the roofline of The Stolen Child was visible. “I didn’t think I could make it up there by myself, not with this stick.” He blinked a few times, quickly. “But it really doesn’t matter. I don’t want to go up now. I don’t want you to have to go up there now.”

Gwynn hadn’t been up there in weeks, save in the dreams. The thought of the dovecote made her cold, dizzy, nauseated. How could her great-aunt have lived in its shadow for the rest of her life? But then, the place where she was didn’t affect Gwynn Chelton’s feeling shackled to Tommy; in her mind, Gwynn knew, her great-aunt would always have been shackled to Tommy Chelton. Him, or his memory. She would have always lived in the shadow of what he had done to her, that late summer afternoon.

Again she closed her eyes, listened with her entire body, trying to feel any message that her great-aunt might be sending. Martin had had to be told; but did he need to be taken up there? The raw note in his voice made plain that he had made up his mind that the journey was a necessary one; what if he attempted it alone? What if he fell, was injured, was alone?

“I’ll go with you,” she rasped out.

“No, Gwynn,” he said.

“I’ll go with you,” she repeated, without looking at him. She picked up her tumbler and tossed back the remains of the whisky, feeling the shock in her throat, wishing for the false courage that was supposed to come with it. “Let’s go now. I’ve got a flashlight in the kitchen.” She didn’t wait for his further objections, but pushed away from the chair and went to the kitchen door. “It’ll be dark in the dovecote.”

 

GWYNN REMEMBERED THE dimness so thick it was tangible. She felt it again on her skin, and her resolution faltered. But she took a deep breath and opened the cupboard for the flashlight, heavy and sturdy in her hand. She could hear Martin coming behind her. Though she knew they were brand new, she tested the batteries, and, satisfied, opened the back door.

The brambles still clung to everything, still spread their way across the path she and Colin had cut and uprooted. They clawed at her jeans, at her shirt, at her skin. Gwynn slowed, pushing them aside as best she could for Martin. Behind her, he stopped every few feet and swung his walking stick, attempting to beat his way through. The sky lowered over them, dark and sullen. As they neared the gate, she could see through the opening, that last distance between wood and wall where it refused to be closed. If anything, the world beyond the gate and wall looked darker and more menacing than the day itself.

“Be careful,” she said over her shoulder.

Martin only grunted, whacking with his blackthorn. Then he stopped, lifting his head to listen. “Doves,” he said, wonder in his voice.

Gwynn paused with her hand on the rusted and broken latch and tilted her own head. The rustling and cooing grew stronger.

“There are still doves?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then how?”

“I don’t know.”

She dragged the gate across the scarred ground until the opening was wide enough for them to pass through. “Watch your head.” She ducked under, and Martin followed, his wizened face a play in confusion.

Outside the wall, the air seemed thicker. A miasma. Again Gwynn fought back the urge to flee, back into the house, back to relative safety. Martin needs this, she thought, steeling her spine. Martin needs me. She bit her lip and pushed on into the trees with their glistening boles, where the sky was scarred by dark branches crisscrossing overhead.

Gwynn needed her. And had needed Martin, had been unable to reach out to him.

It was getting harder to breathe. She slowed, half-turning to wait for Martin. He was laboring along the vague path through the trees, jamming his stick into the ground and pulling himself along with its help. He reached her and stopped, his chest heaving.

“Are you sure?” she whispered, close to his ear, almost afraid someone would overhear. Who? They were alone in the wood, along with the cooing of doves, which no longer existed.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.” His jaw, unevenly shaven, was hard, his Adam’s apple working as he strained to take a full breath. “Take me up there. If you can.”

Gwynn took his arm now, and they walked together through the trees along the faint path, which shone oddly in the dimness. It led them to the clearing, and Martin paused again, looking on the wreck of a building, tiles missing from the roof, the piece of burlap flapping loosely in the window beside the sagging door. She saw it through his eyes: the crooked lines, the wood sinking slowly into the earth. Soon it would fall in of its own accord, and that, she knew, would be a good thing. It couldn’t happen soon enough. For even as she saw it as Martin was seeing it, it transformed in her sight into the building from which Tommy Chelton had emerged that afternoon all those years ago and stood waiting, for the words he had been expecting from her great-aunt.

“What’s happening, Gwynn?” Martin whispered. “Tell me what’s happening.”

But she couldn’t.

There was no sound. The doves were gone. They had always been gone. She looked down, half-expecting to see the single dead bird at her feet.

There was a single dead bird, its red-rimmed eye staring sightlessly up at her.

Gwynn caught her breath sharply, stopping so abruptly that Martin stumbled against her, and it was all she could do to retain her balance and hold him upright.

“Whoa, there, Gwynn. Easy, now. What’s the matter?” Then he peered at her closely, licking his lips. His Adam’s apple worked in his throat. “Which Gwynn are you?”

Gwynn swallowed again, her fingers digging into his sleeve. “Both,” she said, and realized that it was true.

For a moment Martin stiffened in surprise, but then he covered her hand with his own. “Let’s go back.”

She looked into his face, and he returned her gaze steadily. “You need this.” She dropped her eyes to the dead bird on the leaves before her, expecting it to be gone. There was nothing there. She prodded the ground gently with the toe of her shoe.

“But you don’t.” Martin cleared his throat. “You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it. You’ve been it. You don’t need to go through this again.”

“She wants me to take you up here.” The words both made sense to her and didn’t. There was no time to worry about that now. Keeping her hand on Martin’s arm, Gwynn took a step forward, around the dead bird which wasn’t there, toward the sagging door.

It opened surprisingly easily under her touch.

Inside it was cool and dim, much as she remembered. The smell was of earth and decay, the floor covered in rotted straw, which deadened their footfalls. As her eyes adjusted, Gwynn saw the thick rafter beams overhead, and the empty boxes that lined the walls. No rope. No feet. No circular tracings in the dirt. The ghosts of the birds were silent now, but she could still hear them in her head, imagine their hushed conversation as the other Gwynn stepped forward into the long barn. She didn’t want to go too far down into that memory, into that dream; she clutched at Martin’s sleeve now with a shaking hand, trying to remain grounded, trying to remain in the present.

The dovecote, she told herself fiercely, was empty, abandoned, the violator and the violated both dead, the birds gone, the time past. It was over, she told herself. Over. Still she held on to Martin’s arm, the tweed of his jacket a welcome roughness to her touch.

“Tell me what to do, Gwynn,” Martin whispered suddenly.

She sought his face again in the dimness, but he was not looking at her; his words were addressed to the air around them. They did not echo under the beams, but instead swelled to fill the dark space.

They waited.

Then Gwynn felt the faint stir of the air that told her they were not alone. She tightened her grip on Martin’s arm, her eyes darting about toward the dark corners, the dim overhead. She could see no one, but her neck prickled, the hair lifting. Slowly she turned back toward the door, where the sliver of dull light fell inside from the narrow opening: no one stood there. No one she could see.

He had come up behind her, Tommy Chelton had. He had touched her in that ugly possessive way, running his fingers down the inside of her arm. Gwynn glanced down now, feeling the burning, expecting to see a hand, a furious red scar from the touch—but there was nothing save the pale glow of her arm below her sleeve.

“Who’s there?” Martin called out sharply. “Who is it? Gwynn, is it you?” He jerked away from her hand, turning almost drunkenly with the aid of his stick, his eyes wild in his face. “Gwynn, I want to help you. Tell me what to do!” He staggered away, calling frantically into the darkness. “Gwynn, I’m sorry—I’m sorry! Tell me how to help you!”

She didn’t feel Gwynn near her, nor in her. The movement on the air was not her great-aunt, but something dark, pulsing. Something angry and evil.

“Martin!” she cried.

He wheeled, and his eyes traveled beyond her, to something over her shoulder. She turned but could see nothing.

“Gwynn,” he gasped, and then, dropping his blackthorn stick, he folded to the ground, in slow-motion, his legs giving way and his body sinking without grace, without a sound.

With a strangled cry, she tore herself away from the thickened air which mired her, throwing herself to her knees next to Martin’s crumpled form.

 

HE WAS BREATHING. Under her hand his chest rose and fell, shallow, but steady. She looked around helplessly, desperately. There was no help up here—of course there was no help. She dashed to the door, wrenched it open further, and looked down through the trees toward the cottage, but she could see nothing, no one.

“Hello?” she shouted. “Help! Someone!”

Nothing. She looked back over her shoulder at Martin, where he lay in the straw, his arm thrown out awkwardly, his stick under one leg. She shouted again, even while recognizing its futility. Then she ran back to drop to her knees at Martin’s side. Her hand found his chest again, and she leaned over his mouth, trying to feel the movement of air on her cheek. His eyelids fluttered, opened, closed again.

“Martin?” she called to him, her voice thick with panic and tears. “Martin? Can you hear me?” She lowered her forehead to his chest and let out a sob. “Martin. Don’t die, Martin, please don’t die.”

She felt the weak movement of his hand against her hair.

“Gwynn,” he said again, his voice barely audible. Then, more strongly, “I’m here.”

She grasped his fingers. “Martin. I need to get you help. Can you hear me? I need to run down to the cottage. Can you hang on?”

His knobby fingers moved in hers.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Get help.”

Gwynn struggled to her feet and ran.