Abigale Hall (9 page)

‘Pip Vlasto,' she whispered, then quickly shut her mouth as if surprised she had uttered the name aloud.

‘Who is Pip Vlasto, ma'am?'

Mrs Pollard regained her composure and straightened her spine. ‘Your predecessor. She must have stolen this from the reading room. She was always snooping about.' Her fingers traced the line of the blood on the pages' edges.

‘A weak child, Miss Vlasto was. Very sickly. Suffered horrible nosebleeds. I'll take care of this. Resume your duties, Miss Haverford.'

‘I can dispose of the book, Mrs Pollard. It's no trouble.'

‘I said resume your duties. I thought you told me you weren't deaf?' Mrs Pollard turned on her heel and marched down to the kitchen. Yet the lack of her presence did not lessen Eliza's fear as the memory of the blood imprinted itself on her memory.

*

The Spam salad – a dish barely edible at the best of times – turned Eliza's stomach before she even swallowed the first bite. She chewed slowly, tasting every bit of the limp lettuce and flavourless mash. They were supposed to have better food in the country. That was what she heard every day in London. And it had been true during the evacuation. Her first night at the Littletons', the dining table had been covered – a full roast with fresh carrots, peas and broccoli from the garden; sweet toffee pudding; thick custard made with real eggs from pet hens. Eliza ate her fill and then some, and still Mrs Littleton apologised for having so little to offer.

Mrs Pollard appeared to have opened a tin and plopped this gooey, pale pink chunk onto a bed of browned salad plucked from the compost pile. Still, Eliza ate every bite. One couldn't waste food, no matter how awful it tasted. Yet the food provided no distraction from her thoughts. After spending the day cleaning the useless library, the image of every empty shelf was ingrained in her memory, along with the sight of the brown blood.

‘Excuse me, ma'am,' she said, her throat so dry it ached to speak. ‘But I wanted to enquire about the books.'

‘Yes, what about them?' Mrs Pollard stood at the sink, again not eating with them.

‘Well, I was hoping I could get the chance to read them. You see . . .'

‘They're packed away.'

‘Yes, I understand. But earlier you mentioned a reading room, and I thought . . .'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘When I saw you in the hall, you said . . .'

Mrs Pollard dropped the washed knife onto the drying board. The plait draped over her shoulder quivered in warning, like a rattlesnake's tail. ‘How many times must you be told no? Mr Brownawell's collection isn't meant for your eyes. And you will never ask me about it again. Do you understand?'

Eliza finished her dinner in silence.

Now, as she sat on her bed dabbing Mendahol to a hole in her stockings, she felt the undigested lumps of salad threatening to escape her stomach. She considered going to bed, but the thought brought no comfort. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the book's black cover and Pip Vlasto's blood.

Father hadn't allowed them to read ghost stories. He said they were nonsense, but Mother would read them to her. They would stroll into St James's Park on a breezy, warm day and, while Rebecca chased the pigeons, Mother would read Eliza the tales of Poe and M.R. James and Bram Stoker. In her warm voice, they hardly seemed frightening at all. They were only stories, Mother would smile. Such stories never did any harm.

Where had Pip retrieved that book? And why had Mrs Pollard lied about the reading room? Despite the housekeeper's insults, Eliza could hear perfectly well. If only this Pip were here to question. What had happened to her? How long had she been employed? Had this, too, been her room? Then Eliza remembered the paper stuck in the floorboards beneath her bed. Like Poe's tell-tale heart, it began to call to her. Eliza set her stockings aside.

Wind blew against the window as another rainstorm passed through the valley. Eliza moved the bed and, with the tips of her fingernails, was able to pull the paper from the crack. It was a photograph. A group of women stood together in light dungarees and dark shirts, their hair pinned back or wrapped in headscarves, baskets hooked on their arms – the uniform of a Land Girl. In the back row was the auburn-haired girl from Plentynunig.

‘Liza!'

Rebecca knocked at the door. Her darning. Eliza had completely forgotten.

‘Eliza!'

She quickly returned the bed to its proper position.

‘Eliza!' Rebecca opened the door as Eliza stuffed the photograph into her pocket. ‘You said . . .'

‘Yes, I know. Look, here I come now.'

Rebecca had piled her clothes outside Eliza's door.

‘See? I put everything together for you.'

‘Well, good. Now go and fetch your sewing kit so you can help.'

‘I can't. I'm busy.'

‘Doing what, may I ask?'

‘Things. But I promise to help you later with the washing.'

‘Promise?'

‘Of course!'

Eliza picked up a dress. A mutilated face stared back at her. She gasped, but a second glance showed her it was only a doll.

‘Rebecca, what is this?' she asked, picking it up. It seemed familiar, yet it wasn't any toy Rebecca had brought with her from London. The closest thing Rebecca had to a doll was her large plastic cat. This toy was much older and felt fragile in Eliza's hands. It was a bisque doll, made of hard porcelain, its face painted with rosy cheeks and red lips. The hair was dark brown and coarse, long and tangled after years of neglect. She wore a yellowed dress which Eliza imagined must once have been a brilliant white.

Eliza knew then why she recognised it – its hair and dress matched that of the woman in the paintings. But what truly unnerved Eliza was the empty space where its eyes should have been. They had been scraped out of its head. Deep scratches were laid into and around the empty eye sockets.

Rebecca wrapped her arms around Eliza's waist. ‘I was hoping you could fix her.'

‘Oh. Well . . .'

‘You always say we can't waste and you're so good at fixing things, you really are.'

Rebecca did have very few toys, Eliza thought, and there wasn't much wrong with the doll except for the eyes. Yet it was the eyes she couldn't ignore. They weren't simply missing, having fallen out due to age or accident. Someone had violently torn them from the innocent face. She handed it back to Rebecca.

‘I'll see what I can do, but I won't get to it tonight. You keep her for now.'

Rebecca hugged it tightly then disappeared into her room.

It was only a doll, Eliza told herself as she gathered the clothes. The sick feeling she had was due to the Spam and nothing more. Nothing more.

Leather-skinned spines stacked the solitary shelf that towered high into the storm clouds above. A book slipped into Eliza's hands like silk as the ground beneath her swayed with the tide and sand snuck into her shoes.

‘Rebecca, look.' Her voice drifted on the breeze. The beach was empty.

She opened the cover. A mouse scurried from the pages. The book curdled at her feet. Pages dissolving, cover blackening.

One,
two, three, four . . .

The pink sky dimmed. A second shelf appeared behind her and Eliza chose a rose-pink cover with a shimmering gold trim. Mice crawled up her arms. She brushed them away and the book fell into the sand, rotting as the tide carried in compost that rose to her ankles.

Five, six, seven, eight . . .

A third shelf brought her another book, soft and red. Mice burst through the cover. She clung to it as boils marred the leather, the pustules filling and bursting.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .

The mice counted, running figures of eight between her feet on the bare wooden floor as the clouds drew the ceiling lower with books now made of bone. Rats gnawed through the spines, yellow teeth crunching brittle tissue.

Thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen . . .

Across the library was a door, but the floor was filled with rodents as a waterfall of fur and fleshy tails poured from the shelves. The mice crunched underneath her wooden shoes. They squealed and bit her ankles and she could not walk.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . .

They came together and formed a wolfhound-shaped beast. Mice flowed from its mouth. It ate them with glee, swallowing bits that fell from its undulating stomach. It retched and the doll came forth from its snout and it held onto the hair while the little head turned towards Eliza and smiled.

‘Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one . . .'

Mice crawled over her arms, over her legs, into her hair.

‘Twenty-two, twenty-three.'

She felt them but saw nothing. She flipped back the covers, searched under the pillow. No mice. No rats. She was fine. It was fine. Everything was fine.

‘One, two, three, four . . .'

The butchered doll stared at her from across the room. Eliza hurried out of bed and turned it round to face the wall. The doll couldn't have moved on its own.

‘Five, six, seven, eight . . .'

Her sister's voice came from the hall. Rebecca must have slipped it into her room during the night.

‘Nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .'

Eliza climbed back into bed. Sunlight peeked through the tattered curtains. Morning. Sunday morning. There were no chores today. She could lay here and rest, doze through the quiet hours, find the dream-world where London lay beyond the curtains. No. She sat up. Sunday morning. It was time to dress. Today was her only chance to speak to the auburn-haired girl, the one who must be Pip. Eliza needed to know where the blood in the book had come from. Maybe then the nightmares would slip away.

When Eliza finally emerged, Rebecca was still in the hall, counting the flowers in the wallpaper. ‘Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Where are you going?'

Eliza buttoned up her coat. ‘Into the village. I have errands to run.'

‘But it's Sunday. Everything will be closed.'

‘Not for what I need.'

‘Can I come?' Rebecca followed her, her bare feet like the pitter-patter of mice. Eliza saw them running down the shelves.

‘I need you to do a job for me. Can you have a look round the manor and see if you can find any books? Anything that might be the reading room?'

‘Mrs Pollard said there isn't a reading room and that you can't have them.'

‘Mrs Pollard says a great deal of things. Just like Aunt Bess. And we didn't always listen to her now, did we?' The paintings blurred in the corner of her eye as she passed them.

‘But Mrs Pollard is different. The way she looks at me and grabs my arm and what she whispers to me when I'm sleeping . . .'

‘No one whispers to you when you're sleeping. Dreams aren't real, remember? Besides, Mrs Pollard is at church all day. Now, I'll only be gone a few hours . . .'

‘But . . .'

Eliza stopped. There was no time for this. She cupped Rebecca's cheeks in her hands. ‘I need you to do this for me, dearie. We need to work together. As soon as I come back, you can tell me what you found while I work on your . . . your doll. How does that sound?'

‘Promise?'

‘Promise.' Eliza kissed the top of Rebecca's head then continued on alone. If the woman in the paintings were to turn, would she, too, be blinded? Eliza suppressed a shudder. She had no intention of ever touching that doll again, except to throw it away.

A misting rain fell as she stepped onto the gravel drive. Fog hovered over the ground, curling round her ankles as she passed through Thornecroft's stone and iron gates. The cold prickled her skin. She kept her hands warm in her pockets, rubbing her fingers over the smooth photograph.

No one else walked the road, human or animal. She listened for an engine. She had yet to see a motor since leaving London. Perhaps in Wales such a thing did not exist. A horse, then, or carriage, but there was nought save her wooden soles hitting the hard ground, their staccato rhythm echoing through the dead air like nails into a coffin. Eliza sang to fill the silence.

‘
You always hurt the one you love . . .
'

She had first heard that song while wrapped in her old blue coat with Rebecca's hand squeezing hers, her nose itching from the smell of coal smoke and chip grease.

‘
The one you shouldn't hurt at all . . .
'

Wrapped up like a present with a luggage label pinned through her top buttonhole, Mother's hands holding fast to hers until the train whistled.

‘
You always take the sweetest rose . . .
'

Loaded on the carriage, special delivery, the last glimpse she had of Mother a flash of yellow coat being swallowed by the crowd.

‘
And crush it till the petals fall
.
'

The same song crackled through the wireless when Eliza heard of Mother's death. When Father drank, he told how he watched her body burn, said he could still hear her screaming. Eliza could still hear that song.

She stopped singing.

The walk to Plentynunig took over an hour. The exertion caused her hands to swell, and she rubbed them together as she turned onto the main road, hoping to ease the pain. From the other end of the village, tuneless church bells chimed. Was the service beginning or ending? Would she pass Mrs Pollard and Mr Brownawell in the road? Eliza kept her head down, although Mrs Pollard would surely recognise her faded mauve coat, so vulgar amongst all these greys and browns.

She hurried to the house where the auburn-haired girl had stood, and knocked. Though she could hear someone moving inside, the old brown door remained closed. When she raised her hand again, the door swung open.

The old drunk smiled, baring his rotten teeth. His breath stank of yeast. ‘Hullo, English rose. Hullo, hullo. You find Brownawell? Tell him Kyffin says hullo, he says. Hullo to all the roses.'

‘Enough, Berwin.'

The drunk shuffled into a shadowed room, muttering to himself as the auburn-haired girl took his place, arms crossed over her chest.

‘He's not well,' she said, her accent Irish. Though not many years older than Eliza, she bore the marks of one who suffered a hard life. Her pinned-back hair revealed a deep worry line across her forehead and there were already crow's feet at the corners of her eyes. A scar graced her chin and there was a small bump in her nose, as if it had once been broken. A decade ago, she would have been beautiful.

‘Can I help you?' she asked, blocking the doorway.

‘Pip Vlasto?' Eliza held out the photograph.

The wrinkles grew more severe as she frowned. Eliza thought the door would shut in her face. Instead, the girl stepped aside.

‘Did you walk all that way? I'll fix us some tea.'

Her tidy dress belied the condition of the house. Papers were scattered everywhere, some tied in bundles and stacked on the stairs, others spread loose through the sitting room, where a plethora of sewing supplies – stacks of fabric, a pedal-operated sewing machine, baskets of bobbins – mingled with the newspapers, journals, magazines. Most were old and damp, yellowed and green from age and mildew. A glance at the titles and headlines revealed many to be medical texts. Their sheer number filled the house with a fusty odour that made Eliza sneeze.

In the kitchen, the warmth of the fire did little to dry out the damp, yet there were no papers here, only near-bare shelves and curtains gone grey from coal dust. A clay vase bearing white flowers like those in the fields around Thornecroft sat in the centre of the table, surrounded by the bread crusts and soiled dishes of a finished breakfast for two. One open text sat on the table – a copy of
Gray'
s Anatomy
. The girl dropped the photograph by the vase then filled an old iron kettle and hung it from a rod above the fire.

‘Milk?' she asked. ‘We're out of sugar. Probably won't see any till it comes off the ration, 'less we start growing that ourselves, too.'

‘Yes, please. I'm sorry for coming unannounced.'

‘We don't get many visitors here. Makes for a nice change.' She fussed about the kitchen, moving flannels, brushing away crumbs. Her hands were never still – playing with the pins in her hair, wringing themselves together, untying and retying her apron. Eliza sensed she didn't appreciate the change at all.

‘The tea will be lovely, thank you. You like to read?' She pointed at the book.

‘Not much else to do around here.'

‘Do you know du Maurier?'

‘We don't have a cinema.'

‘She's an author.'

‘Oh.' Pip plopped a mug on the table.

Eliza spotted the drunk wandering round the back garden. ‘Is he your father?'

‘A friend. This house is too big to go without company. Though you'll know all about that. Living at Thornecroft.'

‘So you know who I am.'

Pip paused. ‘Everyone knows the new housemaids.' She pulled an already clean dish from the drying rack and began washing it. ‘You found that photograph on the estate?'

‘In my room.' Eliza waited for some reply. None came. ‘You were a Land Girl?'

‘For most of the war.'

‘And when it ended, you went to work at Thornecroft?'

She left the plate in the sink. ‘I think the kettle's ready.' It had not yet whistled.

‘How long were you employed there?' Eliza asked. ‘Did you ever find the reading room?'

‘Why does it matter?'

‘I don't mean to pry, but––'

‘Then don't!' With a heavy thud, she dropped the still-cool kettle on an iron trivet. ‘What's your name, girl?'

‘Eliza Haverford.'

Pip gripped the counter's edge as if it were the only thing keeping her upright. ‘Well, Miss Eliza, if you want any advice about Thornecroft, all I can say is keep your head down, stay out of Pollard's way and ask yourself what horrible thing it is you've done to be there.' She took a flannel and wiped where the kettle's water had spilled. ‘It was a mistake to let you in.'

Eliza looked away. Aunt Bess had said the same once. Their first of many rows.

She rose. ‘Then I had better go. Thank you for the offer of tea.'

Eliza waited, but Pip remained silent.

‘Whatever happened to you, I'm sorry for it. I hope your nosebleeds are much improved.'

At this, Pip reached a hand to her face, covering her mouth as if to keep herself from crying.

‘Good afternoon.' Eliza saw herself out. The heat of the kitchen fire was stifling compared with the fresh, cold air outside.

The fog thickened as she returned to Thornecroft, matching her increasingly heavy mood and making the road invisible. It was not the yellow, putrid kind of London, but a pure, thick cloud cocooning her from the Welsh countryside. She felt the dirt road beneath her feet and inched her way forwards. Now and then she would veer off course onto the soft grass. The journey was slow, and she doubted she would reach Thornecroft by dinnertime. She should never have made the trip. How could she explain her absence to Mrs Pollard? Would Rebecca give her away? She hadn't told her this should remain secret. How could she forget something so important? Her mind was full of so many things. Too many things. She felt she needed to drill a hole in the side of her skull and allow some of the thoughts to drip out. Maybe then the headaches would stop.

A soft glow emerged from the fog – a small ball of light floating ahead of her, too small for a lantern, too large for a candle. Its colour and size matched the light she glimpsed in Abigale Hall. She stepped towards it.

A horse whinnied.

Eliza turned from the light but saw no sign of any animal.

‘Hello?' She listened. No reply came.

When she turned back, the light had moved further away. Secure in the feeling of gravel beneath her feet, she inched closer. The light remained static. She closed her eyes, cleared her head and looked again. No movement. It had never moved at all. It must be Thornecroft, she thought. The gravel meant she reached the main drive. With greater confidence, she quickened her pace. Her foot met only air.

Her body pitched forward, unable to stop its momentum.

Something yanked her back. She collapsed onto her side, patting the firm ground, ensuring it was real.

‘What're you doing all the way out here?' Mr Drewry appeared from the fog, the grey mare behind him.

Eliza panicked. He would tell Mrs Pollard she had gone, and she would be punished, Rebecca too.

‘I'm sorry . . .'

‘It's a thousand-foot drop to the bottom of that quarry!'