Chapter Five #3
Now I’m embarrassed – not because they’ve caught me out in a prejudice, as they think, but because, for a moment there, their talk managed to unnerve me.
The only thing I can do to mask my discomfort is try to laugh along with them, join the joke.
‘As it happens,’ I say, crouching down again to Ellen’s level, ‘I’ve met Lady Lascy, and she’s definitely not a witch.
And she hasn’t lost her soul, either, so far as I can tell.
She’s a bit odd, mind you … but she seems a good sort to me. ’
Peggy snorts at this.
‘What?’
‘They might not have dark magic, but none of that lot are any good, if you ask me.’
I feel a sudden defensive urge at this. Arabella’s advances of friendship may have been bumbling, artless, but I’ve appreciated them all the same. I don’t like to hear someone insult her. Still, my curiosity pushes me to dig further. ‘The Lascys, you mean?’
‘All of them lords and ladies. You don’t get to be where they are without walking over a pile of bent backs, you know what I’m saying?
’ She shrugs. ‘They’re on their way out, I reckon.
Look what’s happening all round the world: I’ll bet by the end of this century, we won’t even have a king or queen. ’
I feel myself relax: this isn’t about Arabella personally, then. Besides, I’m warming to Peggy’s sparky optimism. It’s as if you could almost be convinced by her vision, if you listen to her long enough. Reminds me a little of Dad. His hopes for a better world.
‘It’s not just the lords and ladies,’ I say, thinking of the Reeses. There were plenty of bent backs behind their wealth, too.
Peggy hums in agreement. ‘The Allens are good people, all the same. Though they’ve had their fair share of trouble.
Not too far, Ellen!’ This last, shouted.
Bored of the politics talk, the little girl has wandered off a way, where she’s picking up damp leaves from the grass and weighing them against unknowable criteria, before either chucking them or gathering them in her skirts.
‘You mean with Mr Allen’s brother?’ I guess.
Peggy looks surprised. ‘He told you about that?’
‘Only that he died. Why, is there more to it?’
Glancing over her shoulder as if wary of being overheard, Peggy leans in closer. ‘Did he say how?’
I shake my head.
‘He was the churchwarden at St Anselm’s before my dad – I don’t know if Mr Allen already told you that?
Well, he let himself into the church one night and climbed all the way up the bell tower.
He fell right to the bottom of the stairs, neck broke clean in two.
His face was hardly recognizable when they found him – he must have hit all the beams on the way down.
Dad heard all this first-hand from the vicar, so you know it’s true. ’
A sudden image flashes into my head of the deer on the road, that first night I arrived.
Its neck snapped to a right angle. I can tell from the gleam in Peggy’s eye that she’s trying to impress me with these gory details, in the same way the girls used to tell horror stories in the laundry about stomach-sickening injuries – always claiming to know someone who had witnessed them first-hand, of course.
‘The police said it must’ve been an accident, but Dad always thought he did himself in – why else would he be there so late? Still, there’s no way of knowing, either way.’
I look for Tom in the crowd on the green but can’t catch sight of him. It must be awful not knowing the truth – to live with the possibility that his brother was that unhappy, and Tom didn’t notice in time to help him.
It’s grown even colder as we’ve been speaking, and I have to stick my hands in my armpits to keep them warm, wool gloves not doing enough to fight off the chill.
My fingertips are slowly losing sensation – a circulation problem I’ve had since childhood, all my winters spent in thick mittens, no feeling in my extremities.
‘Anyway, how come you took the job, then?’ asks Peggy, suddenly brightening.
George’s story is clearly just that to her – a ghastly tale to tell, no emotional weight to it.
‘You didn’t want to stay closer to home? ’
‘No, thank you!’ I aim to match her joking tone, but it doesn’t land.
Peggy’s eyebrows rise and she drops her voice low again. ‘Why? Were you fired from your last place? Go on, you can tell me.’ A mischievous grin. ‘What did you do?’
‘Excuse me?’ The words come out blunter than I mean them to.
Peggy raises her hands in surrender. ‘That’s what happened to my brother Daniel, is all.
He had a good job up near Marlborough, but they caught the bugger stealing, so what can you do?
He’s back home with us now, twiddling his thumbs all day.
’ She grimaces at me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. ’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. Clear my throat.
Something new is happening: a fresh ripple of excitement through the crowd around us.
‘I think that’s the fireworks,’ says Peggy. ‘Come on, Ellen, let’s find Daddy and see if he’ll put you on his shoulders.’ She throws a guilty smile back at me as she leaves.
Hunting around again, I finally find Tom.
He’s been reunited with Mutton, who’s lounging on the grass to enjoy a nice large stick, presumably saved from the pyre for his benefit.
Someone hushes the gathering, and then there’s a countdown from ten.
A shared thrill bubbling. At ‘zero’, the first rockets are lit.
Everyone cranes their necks back to follow the hissing path.
Then the bursting lights, the explosive boom.
Mutton jumps to his feet in an instant, a deep growl rumbling at the back of his throat.
‘It’s all right, Muttsy,’ says Tom. But another flash of light from above and the dog is off, racing down the green like his life depends on it.
Headed in the direction of the main road.
‘Mutton!’ Tom takes chase, me not far behind him.
‘Get back here!’ But Mutton won’t listen, fear more powerful than what has only ever been a tenuous obedience at the best of times.
Younger and faster than Tom, I pull ahead, but still can’t gain enough ground to catch Mutton.
He’s nearly at the road already. And worse: a glint of light through the trees further along. There’s a car approaching, at speed.
‘Stop!’ I scream, not sure if I’m speaking to the dog or the driver. Knowing that neither will hear me. I reach the hedgerow as Mutton disappears through it. No time to find a way around; I launch myself at the same gap, trying to force myself through.
I’m just in time to see Mutton, caught in the headlights as he darts across the carriageway. The blare of a horn. The car swerves. Skids on the newly frosted surface. At the last minute, the wheels find purchase, and the car rights itself before it hits the ditch.
But Mutton is safe. As my eyes readjust to the darkness, I see his guilty face looking back at me from the other side of the road. Just a second slower and he would’ve been flattened.
Tom wheezes up behind me. ‘Is he …?’
‘He’s fine.’ However, before I can do anything to tempt the dog back over, he turns tail and continues.
‘Oh, bloody hell!’ Unable to get through the hedge fully, I reverse back out to where Tom’s waiting.
‘He’s just taken off again. Look here, we’re never going to catch him this way.
How about we head back to the green and rustle up a couple of helpers, get some torches, then we can go searching properly? ’
Tom, normally so chipper, is clearly at a loss, but he agrees to my plan, and we head back to where the celebrations continue.
I wouldn’t know who to start asking, but Tom manages to find a few recruits quickly – one of the lanky adolescents who’d been in charge of the Guy; two middle-aged men who I gather are related to Bruce; Farmer Watts; and, of course, a pinch-faced Mrs Allen.
We round up an assortment of electric torches and someone provides chunks of sausage for us to use as bait, the meat still hot and popping from the fire, its grease seeping into my gloves.
Then we strike out over the fields, fanning out in a loose line to cover the ground.
We start in the direction I last saw Mutton run – away from Harfold Manor.
Our voices call his name hoarsely into the night.
Artificial beams piercing the sleeping landscape.
Boots crunching over a layer of frost. It makes me think once more of that night I saw Arabella in the fields with her lantern.
Looking for her lucky hare. At my back, the tiny lights of Harfold twinkle, dwarfed by the fireworks that continue overhead.
Showers of yellow, red, blue, purple, green.
How much of them can Arabella see? I feel again a guilt at having left her behind.
After a futile half-hour, we bunch back together.
No Mutton, nor any trace. Either he’s outrun us or else circled back, slipped past us to hide somewhere familiar.
‘We’ll look for him again in the morning, Tom,’ says one of the men, patting him hard on the shoulder.
‘I’m sure he’ll turn up just as soon as he gets hungry. ’
The tears on Tom’s face make me think of his lost brother, George.
When did the family realize he was missing?
Did they go searching for him, before he was found at the bottom of the bell tower?
Perhaps even some of the same people – Bruce’s relatives, Mrs Allen.
How long before they realized they were too late?
Mutton hasn’t returned the next morning.
My early walk-around’s eerily quiet without his company, and every rustle of the garden has my ears pricked in expectation.
Around ten o’clock, I’m in the shed when I hear commotion up the drive.
Stick my head out. Heart lifting. It’s the woman I spoke to yesterday – Peggy – leading a thoroughly-sorry-for-himself Mutton on a bit of rope.
‘You found him!’ I call, jogging over to meet her by the yews.
‘He was dug into the manure heap,’ she tells me. ‘Absolutely filthy! We tried to get it all off him, but he didn’t make it easy for us.’
I kneel down to rub Mutton under the chin. ‘You gave us a proper fright, boy.’
We take the dog round to the rear entrance, where Tom’s left the door propped open all morning in hope. Before we can even untie the rope, Mutton is inside, dragging Peggy with him through to the kitchen. A shout of delight from Mrs Allen. Jubilant barking.
‘Mutton!’ Tom’s voice. ‘You bad dog! You bad, bad dog!’ But when I walk in, I find Tom with the largest grin I’ve ever seen, arms wrapped round Mutton’s neck.
‘You naughty bugger. I thought that was it. Oh, Christ.’ Mutton gives Tom a moist kiss on the chin.
Clearly not an inkling of what all the fuss is about.
Tom laughs, wiping his face. ‘What am I like, getting all worked up over a sorry mutt like you?’
Then chaos as Mutton jumps up on the kitchen table, rope still swinging from his collar.
‘Aw, let’s do him a bit of breakfast,’ says Mrs Allen, dabbing her eyes with a hanky, though I’m sure any other day she’d have skinned him alive for getting up there.
She nips into the larder to fetch bacon rashers, setting into a cheerful hum as she cooks – ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’, I think it is.
Then it’s tea and bacon rolls all round.
Mutton licking his chops in delighted disbelief when three whole rashers are placed in his bowl, enough finally to tempt him back to floor level.
After the first course, Mrs Allen brings out a plate of spiced teacakes. Offers one to me. Then a second. ‘That was good of you to help, last night. It meant a lot to Tom.’ Then she actually smiles at me! She’s got a heart in there really, I can see that now.
Once our feast is over, I accompany Peggy back out to the drive, since I’m headed in the same direction anyway. ‘You’ve made their day,’ I tell her.
‘It was my brother Daniel who found him really,’ she says, giving a shy smile, ‘but I wanted to bring him up. Actually, I wanted to apologize. About what I said last night. Sorry again if I offended you – I never think before I speak. Gosh, what must you think of me, spreading all that gossip and rattling on for ages about politics and that?’
‘No harm done,’ I reassure her. ‘And when the monarchy falls, drinks are on you, are they?’
She stares blankly at me, then catches up to the joke and laughs, swatting my upper arm. In the light of day, I can see the dimples in her cheeks. ‘All right, that’s a deal.’
I stand at the top of the drive for a minute, waving her off.
When I turn back round, I almost jump out of my skin.
There’s Arabella at the window. Watching our conversation.
I give her a smile. She doesn’t return it and I’m left with the sense that, somehow, in speaking to Peggy I’ve hurt her feelings.