Touched (17 page)

As he cooked, the wireless blaring, she pictured her grandmother, an old lady like a poor lost child almost fading away, blue-veined and withered among all the lace and eiderdowns on the shelf bunk they had made for her. She had to prop her up at times, lift her bird-like weight, feed her with a spoon, cradle her and stroke her, bathe her from a washstand with stolen warm water. The previous cat had died, but Meribell was there to keep her company, the clouds through the skylight their friends.

‘You know, Pollard,' Eva said, tripping over the speed of her words, ‘she is very
fine
. She reads
every
book that was ever written.
She
grew up in Kensington. She knows what is precious and worthy. She
can
make real lace! She is more precious to me than my own life, Mr Pollard, and I will always look after her. May I take her a lettuce today from the garden?'

Pollard nodded as he nodded at almost everything, accepting all. ‘Whenever you want. Them cats need feeding,' he said, jerking his head at a mewling pack outside the window. ‘We'll throw 'em some bacon bits.'

‘I love you, Pollard!'

‘That's as may be,' said Pollard phlegmatically.

Rowena and Gregory met almost daily. They had sex, they drank, they drove, weaving about the lanes. They went flying. Perhaps, Rowena thought, it was marvellous after all, this village where there was an aerodrome and a handsome man in a hat to take you along tree-lined lanes up to the skies, sozzled, while the wife was at home. Lana Dangerfield stayed inside her house, kept trim, baked, held Tupperware parties and visited old ladies. Sometimes, Rowena made love with Gregory in his shed, and once the Tuesday gardener came upon them as they entered it, but Lana saw nothing and Douglas appeared not to notice, even when Rowena put the children to bed early, drove herself to meet Greg for dinner and pretended she was at a yoga exercise class to keep herself slender. They would sit over candles and steak, and, practical and eternally optimistic, he would listen slightly more than most men ever did as she talked at him about Jennifer and cried against his shirtsleeve. Successful in subterfuge, they became more careless.

‘You've had others, haven't you?' she said to him one day.

He raised his eyebrow in enquiry.

‘Other girlfriends. Since you've been married.
Mistresses
.'

His mouth visibly tightened, despite the playfully arched brow. ‘Yes,' he said, tapping his finger on the table.

She gave a small smile. ‘At least you're honest. Many?'

‘What's many? No.'

‘So I am the latest. The newcomer to the village. The new toy.'

‘No, you're not,' he said.

She said nothing.

‘You know that,' he said.

They were silent.

He kissed her in full public view in the restaurant, igniting the head rush of desire, but then the face of Jennifer came to her once again, and beyond her, Mrs Crale. They bobbed, two faces, one in front of the other, and she gasped a little, fear reaching out to claw at her so his lips on hers were cold moving things, meaning nothing.

‘Jennifer,' she said abruptly, pulling apart from him. ‘Oh, Jennifer.' She tried to hide her face.

‘Your girl,' he said gently, and he placed his hand behind her back and pulled her to him. ‘She will come back. The other one did,' he said, pressing her shoulders, her neck, rubbing her vigorously as though she were a dog or one of his children, and she sat limply as he stroked her, and leaned her head against him.

‘Oh, Greg,' she said. ‘You are what I need. You know that, don't you?' She gazed into his eyes.

‘I hope so. And yet I'm not sure . . . that the world would agree with us, Lady Crale.'

‘I know, I know,' she said hastily. The faces melted, and she kissed him.

Jennifer Crale did not return all summer. The search flared up in the press, reaching a crescendo with the release of
Blush
, Lally Lyn finding herself quite unable not to offer up a comment. Douglas bellowed about the police, about the detective, about Rowena, about the press, about the county, about Evangeline, about anyone but himself, until Rowena was in tears, and as the light fell, she made her bedroom dark and gazed across the garden from her window at Gregory's house, hoping to catch a glimpse of him upstairs; but she so rarely did, and frequently she had to turn away at the sight of Lana tidying, watching.

Freddie was observing her just as Lana was, but he was talking and playing noiselessly, more fearful of her than she was of him. He was reflected in the other window when she turned from the Dangerfield house, a figure of a boy in shorts and shirt bending over, occupied with something in his hand. He was losing some of his timidity. She tried to summon him to her bed to hold him, a comfort to her even as she was trying to nurture him, but he stood back in the shadows where she could barely detect him and watched her.

With Jennifer gone, the Crales huddled, muted, in the number 2 side of the house with its breakfast bar, its brave swirls of red and orange, while the number 3 side belched and sagged, screws on joists pressing through the plaster, a beam rotting, paint soft with spores.

On dull mornings when Rowena wandered through the house, she was aware that Freddie was showing his presence more in ways she could barely fathom, only a certainty that she was seen and sometimes followed informing her. He came to her more as the summer wore on, like a wild creature shaking off its shyness, the effect of his presence cumulative. At times, he was a glimmer on the lens, waiting in the shadows, lurking beneath the bed, brooding in the darkness. Once she almost felt his kiss.

For the first time, she acknowledged that he was more than the invention of poor crazed Evangeline. This boy was real. But she hadn't wanted him. She hadn't wanted him, and her body had made him die. His name was . . .? He hadn't even had a name.

Words, mannerisms, memories would rush into that damp room with its perfume and mould: the faces of creatures who were her punishment. They all crowded around her when she was alone, when she wasn't embracing or soaking Gregory Dangerfield with tears. Jennifer was a constant awareness in the form of a two-dimensional picture, a physical being who was vital but not there. It was the other two, the young and old, who followed her, one courting her, the other spiting her. They shuffled around her. They followed, then silently scurried away when she looked, figures caught at the side of her eye. She smelled her mother-in-law, almost heard her, a babble, a croak absorbed by the damp of the ceiling. Just how hungry had she been? How thin? How determined?

And the boy appeared. Sometimes he smelled of stream water and she longed to towel him down, but his shape eluded her grasp; at times she smelled orange ice lollies; on other days, he had grubby hair, or he had been playing with sulphurous caps from a toy gun. He was cheerful and self-contained, but at times of sadness she smelled his tears, the scent of salty grief wetting hot cheeks, and she felt hollow with the longing to hold him. He was the missing child, the one who had never had a chance of life. She had seen him, tiny, frozen and dead, and now she saw him again.

IT WAS ALMOST
the end of the summer holidays, the hay was gathered, and Evangeline was at Brinden in a floral dress of her grandmother's that hadn't previously fitted, unevenly tightened at the bodice seams.

She was visiting Pollard, who was painting Jennifer as he had all summer, and she handed him his palette. Jennifer's hair was pinned to the top of her head in Tyrolean plaits; she wore a dirndl that Mrs Pollard had run up and, as ever, fine cotton gloves. Mrs Pollard was making new outfits almost daily on her old machine on a table in the garden shelter, calling out to the babies in her cream-puff voice. Rigid in her frock, Eva cut her eye from Jennifer as she soaked brushes in turpentine, arranged colours at Pollard's request, and found him the brushes he tucked behind his ear or held in his mouth, while he issued instructions to Jennifer on how to pose. Ginger the cat thumped open the shed door with her sizeable weight and wound around Jennifer's legs, which was tolerated only if she stood still, but at times Jennifer's eyes glistened as though the sun had caught the surface of the blue lakes that Pollard persistently attempted to capture.

While he was still painting, the police made one of their regular visits. He carried on working for a few minutes, humming to Herb Alpert while Mrs Pollard greeted the officers in a friendly fashion and invited them in for her seed cake.

‘Into me art cupboard, Jenn'fer,' said Pollard comfortingly, and placed his portrait of her beneath another canvas, starting to work on a different painting without a pause.

Eva sat on his pile of newspapers on a chair, smoking and kicking out one leg beneath her lacy layers. She wore her red flannel petticoat even though it was summer, because it was a favourite.

‘Now we can talk,' she said.

‘I'll fry us up a bacon platter,' he said. ‘Save some for the other one for when the busybodies have cleared off my land.'

Eva giggled.

‘They brought in a dog last time, but the mutt went wild with all the cats here,' he said, winking, then frowning at a tree he was painting. He lit them both another cigarette and placed a chunk of lard in his pan. ‘Lovely fresh tomatoes from the missus's garden too. Put that ciggie out for the minute, Eva.

‘Have the run of the place,' said Pollard as the police arrived at the door. ‘The girl's sister is here. Been mighty upset. But she's learning flower making.'

Plastic petals softened on Pollard's workbench. A few minutes later, Evangeline and Jennifer downed an afternoon fried breakfast while the police spent several hours searching the house once more, noting the presence of baby Caroline Crale and spending a further hour at Mrs Pollard's table with her largest teapot and most of a seed cake.

‘Have your fill, my dears. Jennifer always did like Battenberg best,' she said sadly.

Mrs Pollard had provided Jennifer with her own fashionable wicker swing chair which she erected in the shelter in the garden beside a pile of modern girls' magazines, and after feeding her a large lunch with a glass of milk, she read to her and rocked her to sleep as the babies napped. In the afternoons, she set up the hairdressing salon and arranged Jennifer's hair however Mr Pollard most liked it for his paintings.

‘I thought I was your
favourite
, Pollard,' Evangeline hissed.

‘Course you are, chickabiddy,' said Pollard with his usual ease.

‘Well, why don't you paint me more?'

‘I'm doing a series of young Jenn'fer,' he said, and there was no argument.

Eva assisted with the props and the outfits that Mrs Pollard's hairstyles completed, and Jennifer stood there gazing like a shop dummy.

Eventually, Jennifer left to go inside the house, carrying flowers to take to Mrs Pollard.

It had been easy for Mr Pollard to hide Jennifer at Brinden with all its rooms and turns and hidden dark places, yet he barely needed to use those odd levels, those coal holes and weed-grown caravans, which were more obvious. When the police searched, he merely moved Jennifer from room to room with an almost casual ease; at times, she, Eva and Pollard would be chatting in quiet voices, winking and stifling giggles, and the police would be two rooms away. The house was scattered with her old fingerprints alongside Eva's and Rosemary's, but she kept her cotton gloves on like an obedient child even on those blazing August days. Pollard painted her many times, presenting each precious portrait to his wife with pride, and Jennifer would weep for her mother until she was told it was more
fun
at Brinden, Jennifer; and then the tears – the tears in the blue eyes that Pollard would quickly sketch – would dry, and she would play with the babies and treat Brinden as the adventure playground it was.

‘Beautiful, Jenn'fer, beautiful,' Mr Pollard would say encouragingly as he painted her, and Eva scowled as she helped or went back with an extra meal wrapped up in her pockets.

Now Eva leaned against Pollard, her lace collar picking up paint from his shirt, but he didn't move. He laughed at her. ‘You're my little odd one,' he said.

She smiled. ‘You always wanted her here,' she said.

‘That's right.'

‘Do I look like Jennifer?' she said after a while.

‘Now, why would you be asking me that? You know you don't.'

‘What do I
look
like?'

‘Like a grey little cat with shark-creature's eyes. Like a funny little missy.'

‘And what does Jennifer look like?'

‘Like God's own work.'

Eva flinched as though she had been slapped.

‘But he forgot her mind while he was making her,' said Pollard.

 

That night, Rowena was sleepless again even through the thick blanket of her pills. She remembered Jennifer at Brinden in happier days, and Jennifer's reticence after her sighting of Eva there, and however many times the police had searched, she was still suspicious of the place and its owners. But when she had informed the police of the partially complete girl's room and attempted to show them where it was, she had again found nothing but a wall, this time with shelves attached to it, and the pair of officers had reacted in a polite manner that seemed to imply they were humouring an unstable mother through her fantasy.

She shivered, glanced at Douglas who was sleeping deeply, murmured to Freddie in case he was in the shadows, dressed, and walked the long way, round starlit lanes, their cottages hunched, towards Brinden, which lay as a long indistinct spread of buildings across fields. Two windows were lit upstairs; the rest of the house sat in darkness. Instead of taking the path past the caravan to the back door that the Pollards used, Rowena approached from the side, making her way towards the garden, cats immediately winding themselves around her legs and following her. She passed darkened windows, her heart speeding in case she was seen by the Pollards or shot at like a dog. She rounded a corner of the garden and there, several feet from her, was a lamplit window alcove, and behind the glass in the depths of the room glowed the face of Jennifer, composed in all her beauty.