(1990) Sweet Heart (19 page)

A buckshot volley of rain struck the windows. Wind yowled down the inglenook and something scuffled about inside it, rapping against the chimney breast.
Twigs of a bird’s nest dislodged, she thought, breathing out a little as whatever it was fell and rattled against the sides. The wind moaned like breath against a bottle top.

Ben pattered along the passageway unconcerned, his collar jingling. She heaved the heavy table upright and examined its sturdy legs. They were fine. It hadn’t fallen over of its own accord, and no one could have knocked it over without noticing.

She heard a scrape upstairs, and froze. She looked up the dark stairwell, listening. Ben drank from his bowl with a loud slurping. There was another volley of rain. A clank.

Kerwumph
.

Just the new boiler. Water flowing through the pipes. The plumber wanted to leave it on for a few days, to check the system. It must be on low because there was a damp chill in the house. She replaced the mail on the table, another wodge of redirected letters from London, bills, circulars, a handwritten enveloped which she opened; it was a belated thank you from the Orpens.

She carried the groceries through into the kitchen and put them on the table. It was warm in here from the Aga. The red light on the answering machine was static; no messages. The goldfish drifted around in its bowl. She fed Ben, then boiled some water and took out the mug Tom had given her a few years back with ‘Happy Xmas Charley’ printed on it. She heaped in a larger spoon of coffee than usual to try to stop herself yawning, poured in the water, then put the steaming mug down on the table and emptied the scallops out of the white plastic bag into the sink.

Ben let out a low, rumbling growl.

‘What is it, boy?’

A blast of cold air, colder than a midwinter draught, engulfed her.

Ben barked at the ceiling, back at her, then at the ceiling again. The drying rack swayed. The chill passed as suddenly as it had come, leaving her hugging her arms around her body.

‘Shh, boy!’ she hissed, trying to keep her voice low, like a child keeping its eyes tightly shut in the dark. Her hand went to her mouth and she bit at the skin on her thumb, staring at the ceiling, at the drying rack, at the pulleys, listening, listening. She could hear nothing.

She picked up the mug, sipped, and jerked it away from her mouth with a start: the coffee was stone cold. It was the right mug — Happy Xmas Charley.

Ben sniffed the floor and the skirting board, making a whining sound. She touched the side of the kettle. It was hot. She lifted the lid and steam rose out. She dipped her finger in the mug to make sure she was not mistaken, but it was cold, so icy cold she could not leave it there. Nuts. Going nuts. Must have filled it from the cold tap. She frowned, tried to think clearly, but her mind felt fogged. Poured from the kettle. Surely she had. Surely —?

Ben growled. He was staring down the passageway, the hackles rising down his back. She felt the hairs on her own body rising too. He padded out of the kitchen and she followed. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, glared up and growled again.

‘Tom?’ she called out, knowing he wasn’t there. ‘Hello?’ Her voice had risen an octave.

Ben’s gums slid back, his ears lifted. She switched on the light and the stairs became brighter.

Kerwumph
.

The boiler again. She picked up her carrier bag and climbed the stairs, trying not to move too slowly, not to seem scared, but slow enough so she could hear if —
if
?

If anything was there?

She reached the landing. The bulbs in the sconces threw their shadowy light along the walls. The floorboards creaked and the beams seemed to creak too, like an old timber ship sailing through a storm.

The doors were all shut and she went into each room in turn. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Each time she turned the light off and shut the door with a defiant slam. She checked the attic too, quickly, attics always spooked her, then went down into their bedroom.

She thought vaguely that something seemed to be missing; it seemed tidier than usual. She checked the en suite bathroom, then lifted the black silk negligee out of the carrier, went to the dressing table and held it up to her neck.

As she did so she noticed the envelope lying flat on the table weighted down by her hairbrush. It had not been there this morning. It was marked simply ‘Charley’, in Tom’s neat handwriting.

She picked it up, and it fell from her trembling fingers back on to the table with a slap. She tore it open with her index finger.

Darling,

I love you very dearly, but it doesn’t seem to be working out too well down here.

I need a few days on my own. I’m sorry I haven’t been brave enough to say it to you face to face. You’ve got a cheque book and credit cards and there’s money in the account, and £500 cash in the drawer under my socks. I’ll give you a call.

Sorry if this letter seems clumsy, but you know I’ve never been very good at expressing how I feel. I need to think about my life and what I really want.

I know it’s going to hurt you. It hurts me too,
more than I can write and you don’t deserve to be hurt. I’ve taken a few things I need.

Love you,

Sunlight streamed in the window, as Mr Budley had solemnly told them it would, and she felt good for a moment, for a brief moment, smelling the sweet air and listening to the early morning chit-chit-chit of the birds before the memory lying asleep inside her began to stir.

There was a smell of burnt paper in the room.

She sat up, disoriented and drenched in sweat. Tom’s pillows beside her were still plumped, undented, his side of the bed undisturbed. A swell of gloom rolled through her.

Darling, I love you very dearly
.

She had dreamed it. It was a bad dream. Everything was fine. Tom was in the bathroom shaving, brushing his teeth.

‘Tom?’ she called out. There was no answer. Her hands were stinging and she pulled them from under the sheets and looked at them. Her eyes widened.

They were caked with mud and covered in lacerations.

A cut ran right the way down one finger and there was muddy, congealed blood around it. The skin was scraped off the top of three of her knuckles. More cuts criss-crossed the backs of her hands. They were hurting like hell. She turned them over. More cuts on the palms. Tension pulled her scalp. Ben? Had Ben attacked her? Never. A dream. Just dreaming. Just —

She swung her legs out of bed, put them on the wooden floor and then blinked in astonishment as she noticed her feet. A squall of undefined fear blew through her veins. Her feet were caked in mud, dried mud packed between her toes, spattered up her legs. She leaned over, touched them. The mud was damp; some came away on her finger. Her nightdress was filthy too, mud-spattered, sodden and streaked with blood.

She tried to think, think back to last night. Sitting at the dressing table; she had been sitting at the dressing table. Then — nothing. Blank.

A muscle twitched inside her throat. She stared hopelessly around the room as if somewhere in it she might find an answer. Dressing table. Hours. Crying. Maybe she had broken something, a mirror, a glass, was that why —? She shook her head. The mud, where had the mud —? Her hands and feet so sore, painful.

She looked at the dressing table, and it was then she noticed the small muddy object next to her hairbrush.

She staggered over. Rusty tin showed through the mud. She put her hand out slowly, hesitating, as if she were reaching out to a poisonous insect, and picked it up.

Something inside it rattled, slithered, clanked. She scraped away the mud with her raw fingers, ignoring the pain, until she could see enough to know what it was, to be certain what it was.

She waited, afraid, numb, then she pressed her thumbs up against the lid of the tin. It came off with a quiet pop, and there was the heart-shaped locket nestling inside. The same locket she had dug up then reburied at the Wishing Rocks.

Ben came over and stood beside her. The locket rattled as her hands shook. She put the tin down, knelt and patted the dog, squeezed him, put her arms around and hugged him, needing to feel something real, alive.

His coat was wet. His paws were wet too; wet and muddy. He wagged his tail. ‘Good boy.’ she said absently. ‘Good boy.’ She stood up. Her head was muzzy; the locket was muzzy too, a blurr. She lifted it out of the tin and the tarnished chain slithered down her wrist. She pressed the clasp, and prised the heart open.

A trail of fine black powder fell out. At first she thought it was earth, finely ground earth; then slivers of blackened paper floated out, zigzagged to the floor.

Dear Rock, I love him. Please bring him back. Barbara
.

Someone had burnt the note.

The TCP stung her hands. The paint stung her eyes. She dunked the roller in the flat tray of paint, pressed it against the wall, ran it up, down, covering a little more of the lining paper on the panels between the oak beams with cream paint. Because she needed to do something. Anything.

‘You oughter do the ceiling first.’

Laura. Bitch Laura.

She’d rung Laura, got her answering machine at her flat, got her answering machine at the boutique, rung Tom’s private line which had not answered, rung his main number then hung up as the telephonist answered. Was he in Paris with bitch Laura?

‘Otherwise it goin’ run down the walls, innit?’

Bernie the builder stood in the doorway in his grubby overalls and his single gold earring, grinning cheekily.

‘Ceiling? Yes — I — I should, I suppose.’

Bernie ran his hands over the lining paper. ‘Not bad. You could turn professional. We’ll give you a job any time.’

She forced a smile.

‘Yeh, s’orl right it is, for an amateur!’ He rubbed his finger on the crack between two joins. ‘Got an overlap,
want to avoid overlaps. Makes the paint bumpy.’

‘I don’t think it matters on these walls.’ Her voice sounded weak. She squeezed her hands together, trying to stop the pain.

‘Christ, wot yer done to yer hands?’

‘Glass. I broke — some glass.’

He glanced at the beams. ‘There’s some good stuff you can put on those, bring their natural colour right back. Can’t remember the name. I’ll ask Pete.’ He tugged his earring. ‘’Bout your table.’ He jerked a finger towards the hall. ‘The one what you said was knocked over. I remember the second post come, and I stacked it neat on the table.’

‘Who was here after you left?’

‘There wasn’t no one. I locked the dog in the kitchen like you said.’

‘The plumber wasn’t still here?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘He went early.’

‘Did you see my husband when he came?’

‘Yeah, ’bout three. Going off on a business trip. Orl right for some, innit? Where’s he gone? Somewhere exotic? Leaving you to do the work, that’s typical men, that is.’

There was a rap on the knocker. Ben barked. Charley wiped her hands on a rag and went to the front door.

Gideon stood there, well back, looking edgy. He touched his cap. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be coming any more, Mrs Witney.’ He handed her a grubby envelope. ‘That’s me hours for the last week.’

She took it, surprised. ‘It’s not because of the hens, is it? We don’t blame you for the hens, Gideon. It’s not your fault. You did a good job with the fencing.’

He shrugged and avoided her eyes. ‘I thought it would be different with ’er gone, but it’s not.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mechanically she opened the envelope.

‘I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.’

‘I’d rather you did say.’

His edginess increased. ‘You won’t have no problem finding anyone,’ he said as she took the handwritten sheet out. ‘Eight and a half hours last week.’

‘Have you been offered more money somewhere else? I’m sure we could perhaps give you a raise.’

He shook his head, and gazed at his boots. ‘No, that don’t come into it.’

‘I don’t understand. What’s the problem?’

‘I’ve made up me mind. I really don’t want to say.’

‘I’ll get my purse,’ she said, bewildered and angry.

She stood by the hall table and sifted through the morning post. There was a formal buff envelope addressed to herself and she opened it. Inside was a short letter, a leaflet entitled ‘Access to Birth Records — Information for adopted people’, and a form. She read through the leaflet, glanced at the form, then folded it back into the envelope, a thin stream of excitement, of hope, trickling through her gloom.

The electrician came down the stairs, a short chalky man with a goatee beard.

‘’Scuse me, Mrs Witney. Are you usin’ any unusual electrical apparatus in the house?’

‘Unusual? In what way unusual?’

‘Something not domestic. Very high powered.’

‘The man who came to read the meter said too much power was being used. He thought there was a short circuit somewhere. Didn’t my husband tell you?’

‘We haven’t found no short anywhere. We’ve rewired and tested it all.’ He tapped the small screwdriver clipped to his shirt pocket as if to underline what he had said, then tried to work a splinter out of his finger.
‘There’s somethin’ being used here that’s too powerful. Some of the new wiring we’ve put in is starting to melt.’

‘
Melt?
’

He tugged a bit of the splinter out with his teeth. ‘I’ve checked your appliances. They’re fine. I’m goin’ to have to replace some of the new wirin’ I put in.’ He shook his head. ‘Something’s funny. I’ll give the Electricity Board a bell, make sure there’s no underground cables round here.’

‘Is there anything else that could be causing it?’

‘Like what, do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Damp, heavy rain.’

‘Electricity can be affected by a lot of things. I’ll keep looking.’

‘Thank you.’ She went into the kitchen, put the kettle on, sat down at the table and studied the application form for her birth records. She picked up a biro.

The form blurred; her mind blurred. She began to write, to fill it in, determined, oh yes, determined. She wrote in big letters, huge letters; twice the biro scored the paper, and she had to stop and press it back down around the punctured hole.