The Skeleton in the Grass (7 page)

The atmosphere in the Willbury Village Hall was warm—indeed it was more than an atmosphere, closer to a smell: it seemed compounded of well-worn clothes, sweat, potato crisps, with a distinct tang of the stable. It was a smell Sarah recognized from her Derbyshire upbringing. The audience shouted to each other, exchanged news and banter, and above all expressed anticipation for the evening's entertainment. It was an anticipation Sarah shared, without condescension or detachment: she had seen Garbo only twice before, and never in a speaking part, and she had heard that Joan Crawford was a very powerful actress. They took their seats feeling rather like royalty at a gala.

The warm-up film was a Laurel and Hardy. Performers and audience were made for each other, and the hall rocked with an uncomplicated laughter. It was quite short, because
Grand Hotel
was longer than usual. There was a break between films, but Roland said they shouldn't go out.

“We'll get an ice-cream when it breaks down.”

“But it may not break down tonight.”

Roland winked at her and smiled. Of course it would break down, Sarah realized. It would because the audience preferred it to break down—liked to stretch their legs, discuss performances, speculate on the story line. And of course when it did the sweet shop and general store next door would find itself open, and do a good trade keeping the audience fed and happy for the second half. Sarah should have realized. She knew village life.

When it did break down, about half an hour into the film, when all the various characters and plot-strands converging on the Grand Hotel had been presented and intertwined, Sarah and Roland got up with a feeling of satisfaction and went out into the twilight along with the rest, or most of them—for some few of the very poorest stayed in their seats, their meagre resources having run out with the price of the ticket. The fresh air was nice, and Sarah had an ice-cream, and Roland had a cup of strange coffee—gritty, percolated with milk—which he said he liked. Everyone was very jolly, and very involved with the story. Sarah had realized during the first part of the film that she had read a few chapters of the book three or four years before, but that it had been called in by the local library, to be sent down an impatient waiting list. So she could join the rest in uninhibited speculation about motives and mysteries, involvements and fates.

“See you got a new girl, Roly.”

The voice was overloud, and Sarah turned, not best pleased. The speaker was a teenage boy. His thin body was clad in rather dirty work trousers and pullover, and his head was too big for it. The expression on his face seemed to combine vacancy with cunning. He was of the village type that was usually said to be “not all there,” though that expression of cunning and—what was it?—relish made Sarah think that appearances might be deceptive.

“That's right, Barry,” said Roland—calm, kindly.

“You be the new girl up at the big house, that right?” Barry asked, turning those large, distant eyes on Sarah. The least she could do, she felt, was be as kind as Roland.

“Yes. I look after the little girl, Chloe.”

“That right? . . . She be a pretty little thing, that one . . .” Barry thought, and then he fixed Sarah with a look that she found unnerving because the distant expression had now gone, and been replaced by a concentrated expression of enjoyment, of that relish she had noted. He said with a horrible chuckle: “I hear old man Hallam can't stand the sight o' blood, that right?”

“Here, what do you mean—‘Old man Hallam'?” said a woman's voice, from the back of the little knot of audience members. Sarah was glad of the intervention, because she had not been sure what to say. “You keep a civil tongue in your head, Barry, when you're speaking to the young lady.”

“That right, though?” persisted Barry.

“There's a lot of people can't stand the sight of blood,” said Sarah carefully. “It's very common.”

“Wouldn't be no good on a farm, though, would he? Wouldn't be able to shoot no rabbits. Not if he goes sick at the sight of a dead dog.”

“That's enough o' that,” said the woman's voice, and Sarah recognized Liz Battley, who now came up and put herself between them. “I don't want to hear no more about my owd dog, and I don't want to hear no more spite agin the Hallams.” She lowered her voice. “He don't mean no harm, miss, but he's only ten shillings in the pound, and he's got no respect at all.”

Sarah smiled her thanks, and nodded. She said she hoped Mrs. Battley had got a new dog, and Mrs. Battley said she'd wait and see what bitches produced. A bell rang inside the hall, and Roland took her arm to lead her back.

Behind her she could hear that overloud voice, with its note of gloating, saying: “He do throw up, just for a bit of blood.”

“What's his name?” whispered Sarah.

“Barry Noaks,” said Roland, in a low, troubled voice. “I don't think there's any harm in the lad.” Sarah kept a tactful silence.

When the film resumed she forgot about the incident, and immersed herself in the tangled drama. Films were still a treat and a novelty to her, and she had no difficulty involving herself on a surface level. Decades later, as an old woman, she saw the film on afternoon television, and the suffocating smell of the Willbury Village Hall came back to her. She thought then how like the film was to the soap operas to which she was devoted, and on which she meditated an article for
New Society.
At the time she saw it first there was no such thing as soap opera. She murmured to Roland: “It's rather like
South Riding
—all these different plots going in and out of each other.” But
South Riding
was still quite new—Sarah had pounced on the copy at Hallam—and Roland hadn't read it.

And then suddenly, when all the rest of the audience were silent, hushed by some moment of drama or pathos on the screen, something in Sarah's mind posed the question: “How did he know?”

How did Barry Noaks know that Dennis had retched helplessly at the sight of the dog's blood? She had told nobody. Chan certainly would not have told anybody, because he had less than no contact with the villagers. It wasn't something Oliver would have gossiped about, and she doubted whether the Hallams had even mentioned the fact to Sergeant South. Dennis had brought nothing up, so there had been nothing for Pinner or Mrs. Munday to clean up.

The inference was obvious. Somebody had been watching. Barry possibly, or more likely the boy who had hung
the dog on the door. Perhaps they were one and the same person. She could see Barry slaughtering the dog, but she couldn't imagine him as a member of Major Coffey's circle. The Major was interested in an altogether smarter sort of boy—and perhaps, she wondered, blushing, in a very much better-looking sort too?

But
somebody
had been watching, and had talked. By now that silly, insignificant fact was all round the village.

It unsettled her for the rest of the film show. If she had been asked how the film ended, she wouldn't have been able to tell. She came to consciousness as the music swelled and somebody put the lights on.

“That was lovely,” she said to Roland. He grinned.

“Marvellous tosh,” he said.

On the way home they talked about the film, and about the villagers' reactions to it. “So direct,” said Roland. “You'd never get anything so warm and spontaneous at Oxford.” Sarah was hesitant about bringing up what was really in her mind. Roland was somebody whom she trusted, but really hardly knew. Also, she had no wish to make an issue or a talking point out of such a silly little matter. Her instinct was to let it die. However, eventually, as they were approaching Hallam, she said:

“I wonder how Barry knew about Mr. Hallam being sick.”

Roland shrugged.

“It's common talk around the village. Only someone like Barry would make an issue of it. Most of the people with all their wits about them realize that Mr. Hallam is a bookish sort of man. They expect that type to be sensitive.”

“I just wonder how they
know.
There were just the four of us in the car.”

“I expect Mrs. Munday talked. She's a great gossip, you know, with the women who go up to Hallam to clean.”

Sarah let it go at that. They said goodbye at the gate,
very warmly, and Sarah promised to try to get another evening off soon. They did not kiss good night. Sarah never kissed her boyfriends (there had been two) on the first evening out. She believed only very fast girls did.

“Will you be all right up to the house?” asked Roland.

“Of course. It's only a couple of hundred yards. There's still some lights on, so there's still family up. I've got a key, anyway.”

“I'll wait here till you're safely in.”

That did give Sarah a feeling of extra security. She turned when she got to the door and waved. Once inside, she knocked on the door to the sitting-room and went in. It was Helen and Dennis who were still up, unusually late for them. Helen got up and went over to her.

“Sarah dear, there's a telegram arrived for you. From Derbyshire.”

Helen knew, and Sarah knew, that telegrams did not arrive from home without there being bad news inside them. When she took the little brown envelope her hands were trembling, but she tore it open.

The message read baldly:
MOTHER DIED THIS MORNING
.

Sarah turned to Helen and sobbed on her breast, as she had never, since a little child, sobbed on the breast of the dead woman.

O
liver drove Sarah to the station next morning. They were both very quiet, but as they drew up at the ugly little building, Oliver said rather awkwardly, but in a touchingly grown-up voice:

“Whatever you decide, Sarah, remember that you have a home here too.”

Her father, when much later she arrived at the vicarage in Stetford, also said very little. As he kissed her he told her the time of the funeral next morning. Later in the evening, as they were sitting silent in the dark front room of the vicarage, he said: “It's very inconvenient her dying just now—.” Sarah was convinced that he had intended to add: “just before harvest festival,” but had thought better of it.

The funeral was conducted by a clergyman from a neighbouring parish. So that her father could hide his own lack of emotion, Sarah thought. Then she chided herself for a cheap jibe: her father felt his wife's death as deeply as he was capable of feeling anything of an emotional nature. A slight by the Bishop, however, would have hurt him more.

He sat throughout the service icy and remote, apparently contemplating arctic vistas. After the sad spectacle at the graveside he received attempts at comfort and commiseration in the same tight-lipped manner with which, at
Christmastime, he was accustomed to receiving compliments of the season.

Back at the vicarage some attempt had been made to provide fare for the principal mourners. It seemed to Sarah that such food and drink as there was had been provided, unasked, by Mrs. Wilcox and Mrs. Spencer, wives of churchwardens. Her father had played no part in the provision of it, and played next to no part in the dispensing of it. Nobody knew whether they were meant to go back to the vicarage, and nobody who went could decide how long they ought to stay. They ate to hide their embarrassment, and escaped as soon as was decent.

The women of the church—who in fact kept the congregation together, since the Reverend Causeley's ministry seemed to concern itself solely with forms, tithes, and marks of respect that should be paid to him personally—were a comfort to Sarah. Her mother had done all the things a vicar's wife was expected to do, and had done them as well as anybody of her shy, dispirited nature could be expected to do them. A vicar's family did after all occupy (and the Reverend Causeley was extremely forward in asserting it) some position in rural society—lower than the local gentry, certainly, but at least as high as the doctor. The big house in the area was seldom occupied, since the gentleman of the house was busy retrieving the family's fortunes in the City of London. Indeed, local rumour had it that he was not so much retrieving the family's fortunes as quite simply making a lot of money for himself—that he would gladly have got rid of the house if he could have found anybody foolhardy or vainglorious enough to have bought it. Thus a considerable burden had fallen on Sarah's mother, and the ladies of the parish were warm—perhaps over-warm—in their praise of her manner of carrying it.

When they had all gratefully ducked off, there seemed
nothing to do, nothing to say. Sarah took herself off for a walk, on a hill path where she could be quite certain she would be alone. The late afternoon sunlight restored her spirits. When she got home her father was in his study, no doubt “writing a sermon”—one of those dry discourses, like the financial statement of a company chairman, which showed little sign of the literary pains that were apparently bestowed on them. Whatever he was doing, he would certainly be happier on his own. Sarah found a book—it was
Angel Pavement,
which her mother had had out from the library. She would have to take it back in the morning. Meanwhile it would help to take her mind off the clock ticking.

Her father emerged from the study as the time approached for his little bit of supper. Sarah asked if he would like anything, and he murmured that he thought he could just manage a piece or two of toasted cheese. Sarah made several slices, some for herself, and they sat around the fire eating them. There was no intimacy. They said nothing. Only when her father had finished, and he sat wiping his fingers, did he say:

“How much notice do you think the Hallams will expect you to give?”

Unconsciously she had been expecting that question in one form or another. Perhaps it was Oliver who had prepared her mind for it. She had not planned an answer, but it came without hesitation: