Chapter Twenty-Four
TWENTY-FOUR
Sitting around the table in the kitchen downstairs, all of us crammed together shoulder to shoulder like stuck pigs. There’s Oscar with a poinsettia in his lap, and Bert and his wife, Mary, who is wearing an oxygen mask over the lower half of her face, misted with condensation. Alice is opposite me and, when no one else is looking, she slowly and deliberately pokes her tongue out. It is blackened and bifurcated like a lizard’s. Here’s Paul, bringing a dish to the table, saying, Here’s your chicken, just how you like it , only when he puts the plate down the chicken is still alive, struggling. Everyone’s smiling and acting normal and Paul is sharpening the carving knife and Oscar squeezes my hand and when he smiles at me he says, I love you, Mina, so much, and the chicken’s claws are feebly scratching as Paul says, Leg or breast? and no one can hear me as I scream, It’s alive, look at it, it’s alive!
I wake with my legs twisted in the covers, choked with a soft, frightened whimper. I lie there for what feels like a long time but is probably only a few minutes, dry-mouthed and flushed with fright, the sweat cooling on my skin. By the time I’m heading downstairs, the dream is fading and I’m thinking about Mary next door again. Sam assured me last night that both Bert and Mary were fine, but the noises were so precise, so deliberate. Save Our Souls. Or not, as Oscar would remind me.
When I check the sitting room I’m surprised to find the sofa is empty, with Sam’s blankets rolled up neatly at one end. The room is foggy with smoke and the empty brandy bottle lists on its side next to a full, choking ashtray. The video camera, the one with PROPERTY OF THE WESTERN HERALD stamped on it, is sat in a nest of wires and cables, hooked up to the television. I wonder if Sam has slept at all or simply sat smoking and finishing the bottle until daylight slipped quietly between the curtains. In the kitchen there is only Alice, eating toast and listening to the radio with the volume up so loud the windows are rattling. I join her, and by the time I’ve washed the dishes I’ve persuaded her to join me in visiting Bert and Mary. I can’t help but notice that she’s lost that haggard, sleepless look and seems to be in better spirits. I even manage to convince her to leave her Walkman at home. We’re laughing at something as we walk out of the door into the humid, soupy air and it’s only as we’re opening the gate leading onto Bert’s pathway that Alice sees the writing there, the looping scrawl along the fence that had once read bE Not afrAId but now reads Burn The Witch. She stares at it a long time.
“Do they mean me?” she asks. She turns to me, her eyes wide and guileless. “Mina, are they talking about me? Am I the witch?”
“Don’t be silly.” I give her a big smile, but it’s empty. “It’s just graffiti. It’s meaningless.”
In one of her interviews Lisa told Sam that when the graffiti had first appeared she’d tried washing it away, but more would always appear the next morning. After a while she’d given up altogether. I remember Stevie’s hands again, dusted with chalk, but dismiss it almost immediately. Fern likes the Webbers. She said so herself. Still though, I wish Alice hadn’t seen this particular message. Her face looks pained as she steps cautiously around it.
“Bert says they never burned witches anyway. Not in real life. They tortured and hanged them or drowned them in the pond.”
I frown.
“That sounds gruesome. I’m not sure Bert should be talking about those things with you.”
“Nah. He says history should be taught by telling stories. When me and Tamsin were little, he told us all about his ancestors in the seventeenth century. He’d traced them all the way back to the Puritans in Suffolk. That’s why we have the Riddance with the costume and the bonfires. We have to keep all these old customs alive, he reckons.”
“Does he?” I say, thinking of the hagstones and Paul saying “They were left to bleed out like cattle.” “I’m afraid I disagree. Some old customs should be better left to die in obscurity.”
“Aw, don’t say that to Bert, Mina. He’d be gutted.”
Alice knocks on the door of Bert’s house, grinning. It strikes me in the moment before Bert opens the door and welcomes us inside that she looks bright and happy, almost beautiful. It’s the first time since I arrived that her face hasn’t been clouded in misery and suspicion. It makes me hopeful, in a way, that underneath it all there is still a normal girl.
Bert’s house is cool and clean and quiet. The hallway smells of polish and detergent and potpourri. I can hear the soft tick, tick of the clock on the mantelpiece, the gentle bubbling of a fish tank on a shelf near the television. It’s no wonder Alice liked coming here when she was younger. Compared with the chaos of her own home, this must have felt like a safe harbor. Alice sinks into the overstuffed floral armchair, kicking off her sandals. I study the framed newspaper clippings from The West Briton and The Morning News that hang over the sofa, all crediting Bert Roscow in the byline. I can hear him whistling in the kitchen. He seemed delighted to see us both and was insisting on making a jug of iced tea.
“I’m so pleased you decided to drop by,” he tells us, putting coasters onto the coffee table. “And look what I found hiding behind the biscuit barrel!”
He holds out his hand to reveal tiny paper cocktail umbrellas. Alice accepts a tall glass choked with ice and amber liquid, grinning when Bert opens the paper umbrella and puts it behind his ear. The other he puts in her drink, beside the straw.
“No Bertinis?” she asks.
“I’m afraid not. If I’d known you were coming I could have had some prepared but we’re all out of tinned pineapple. This curfew is playing havoc with my shopping habits, I tell you.”
“I was just admiring your work, Bert,” I tell him, pointing to the framed clippings behind me. “I notice you wrote a piece on genealogy.”
“On what?” Alice asks.
“Lineage.” Bert smiles. “I spent a lot of time tracing my family tree. I even managed to do one for Mary. We discovered her ancestor had sailed on the Lady Penrhyn to the penal colonies in Australia. She’d been charged with assault and theft. It’s fascinating stuff.”
“Is Mary not around?” Alice asks hopefully. “I feel like I haven’t seen her in forever.”
“Ah, no. I’m afraid she’s still asleep.”
“Did she have a rough night?” I ask, putting my glass back on the table. The cold drink has made my teeth hurt but, God, it tasted good.
Bert frowns. His shirt is freshly pressed and his hair combed so neatly you can see the furrows in it.
“Not that I know of. On the contrary, this new pain medication is putting her to sleep more hours than she’s awake. Come eight o’clock she’s out like a light.”
“Is that her?” I’m pointing to a framed photograph on the table beside Bert’s armchair. It is a black-and-white wedding picture of a young couple dancing together; the bride in a floor-length gown, bridal train held in one of her hands, the groom in top hat and tails grinning at her. Bert reaches past the old record player and stacks of LPs to pick it up, smiling.
“That’s right. Our wedding day, July 14, 1953. We were dancing to Billie Holiday singing ‘Blue Moon.’”
“It’s a lovely photo.”
“She’s a lovely woman. We’ve been married for thirty-odd years. And they really have been ‘odd’ years hah!” He laughs, seemingly delighted with his joke, then his countenance softens as he leans toward Alice.
“Talking of odd—Alice love, I don’t know what to tell you about those people that have been gathering out there. Do you know what the word ‘tricoteuse’ means?”
She shakes her head.
“It’s French. It means ‘knitter.’ Historically, it was used to describe the women who would sit beside the guillotine and knit to keep their hands busy while heads rolled during the Revolution.”
“Urgh.” Alice pulls a face. “Why?”
“For many reasons, but mostly for sport. They would often sit so close they would get splattered with the blood of whichever unfortunate aristocrats had met the blade. That’s who they are, these gawkers. They’re like vultures, circling.”
I help myself to another iced tea as the conversation washes back and forth. I’m surprised to find myself close to tears—it’s that wedding photo, I think, the two of them brimming with hope and optimism, glad-eyed and joyful. The way Bert is looking at Mary in that picture, the way his face lights up. I don’t think Oscar has ever looked at me that way.
“Hey, Bert. Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” I say, hoping my voice stays steady.
“Top of the stairs. There’s a sign on the door if you’re not sure which one.”
Alice laughs again.
“‘If you sprinkle when you tinkle—’”
“‘—be a sweet and wipe the seat!’” Bert finishes and the two of them grin at each other.
Once upstairs I draw a few deep breaths with my back pressed against the bathroom door, hand clamped over my mouth to stop the tears spilling out of control. It’s hard to know if I’m upset because of Oscar’s affair or because I’m so afraid of what I will be once I have lost everything. I’ve barely known my adult life without him. There’s fear there, of course, but I also feel a guilty spark of excitement, at the thrill of rediscovering who I am, the things I like. After a few moments I inhale shakily and splash my face with cold water, patting the skin beneath my eyes with a folded tissue.
I find myself hesitating before heading back downstairs. Along the hallway are three doors, and if I’m calculating correctly the middle one will border Alice and Tamsin’s bedroom next door. That’s where it came from. SOS. It’s like an itch I can’t resist scratching.
Forget it.
I almost do. Instead, at the last moment, I walk very quietly to the second doorway and stand outside it, listening. Downstairs I can hear Bert and Alice talking animatedly, voices overlapping, laughter. Fern was right, this is good for her. I put my fingers around the doorknob and it turns so easily I am almost sure it was already open. I tell myself I will just check on Mary because it’s the responsible thing to do, and if she’s asleep, then no harm, no foul.
“Mrs. Roscow?” I whisper. “Mary? Is everything all right?”
Silence.
“Mrs. Roscow?”
Inside the bedroom the light is bright and clean and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the glare. I take in the primrose-yellow walls, the soft watercolor paintings, and the rounded, velvet headboard. They are in stark contrast to the commode chair in the corner and the nebuliser on the bedside table, the crisp smell of sanitation. In Eddie’s last days the smell of his room was like this—clinical, disinfectant and bleach, the dry heat of the oxygen pump, rubber bed sheets, latex gloves.
“Mrs. Roscow?”
The figure in the bed is turned away from me, facing the window. I can hear the rasp of her breathing, how wet and painful it sounds. One pale hand lies on top of the covers.
“Mary?”
She must be asleep because she isn’t reacting to the sound of my voice. I am about to slip silently back out the door when something draws my attention. I edge slowly around the bed, discomfort tightening like a metal band around my ribs. The net curtains flutter slightly as I brush past. I’m no longer looking at the sleeping figure in the bed. I’m staring at the wall above the bedside table where the nebuliser sits with its bulb of yellowing rubber the color of nicotine.
Black smudges on the paintwork in crescent moon shapes, a few inches long. Scuff marks. As if made with an object, perhaps a walking stick or the heel of a shoe. Someone has been hitting the wall. Tapping out a message, maybe. That discomfort pulls in another notch. I look down at Mary and that’s when the floor seems to fall away from me, fear squeezing my throat so tightly I see stars.
She is looking right at me, pinprick pupils floating on irises the pale gray of snow clouds. There is no surprise on her face, no nervousness or fear. Just a simple weariness, mouth unhinged and hanging open, showing stubs of yellowing teeth. Her skin is very pale and creased as crumpled linen.
“Mary! I didn’t mean to wake you. Are you okay? Do you want me to get Bert?”
Nothing. I step closer, pointing to the marks beside the headboard.
“I heard tapping last night. On the wall. Was that you?”
The slightest movement, a nod. The starched pillow rustles beneath her.
“Do you need help? Do you need me to call someone?”
She watches me with those arctic eyes, mouth working. She is trying to speak. Her chest heaves with the effort.
“Bill—” she drawls, her voice gluey. “Bill—”
“Billy?”
She nods, eyes close, open. She is so weak, trembling with the effort.
“Billy? What about him? Is he in trouble?”
“Billy,” she whispers, then her voice disappears completely and she just mouths the word at me. Her eyes seek me out like searchlights, pleading with me to understand. Bill. Eee.
Mary’s eyes close, her hand lifts. She is so pale and bloodless, like a vampire. Her jaw works uselessly, her breathing too fast, too labored. Her teeth are long and rooted, discolored in her pale gums.
“Mary, don’t exert yourself. And don’t worry about Billy, don’t worry about anything. He’s with his grandparents, him and Tamsin both. They’re safe.”
Her eyes are half-open, revealing narrow slits of white. The nightdress hangs on her bones as she lifts her hand and reaches it toward me. I don’t want to take it. I’m too scared, too cowardly. What if it feels cold like Eddie’s had? What if it feels like ice?
SOS. I lean a little closer to Mary, close enough that I can see the rich blue veins that run beneath her thin skin. I keep my voice low.
“Mary, are you in trouble?”
Her eyes slide to the doorway and her breathing begins to hitch wetly, spittle building in the corners of her mouth. I turn and see Bert standing there, looking from me to Mary and back again.
“What’s going on?” His brow is deeply furrowed. “I thought I told you, Mina, she needs her rest.”
I’m caught. I pin a smile to my face, keep my voice bright.
“I heard something. I thought she might need help.”
“Mary, love. It’s me. It’s all right.”
He leans over the bed and the concern that tightens his features makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed, caught sneaking around like a kid. Mary’s eyes roll back toward me and Bert strokes her hair back from her forehead with a touch borne out of infinite tenderness.
“Bert, I’m sorry. I just—”
He waves me away.
“It’s her suffering, Mina. I can’t bear it. I just want it to end. Do you understand how that feels?”
He lifts his gaze then and his eyes meet mine and there’s a moment when I feel utterly weightless. I have to reach out a hand to steady myself on the dressing table behind me.
“You’d better go downstairs.” He turns back to Mary, waving me away. “Alice will be wondering where you are.”
I do as he asks without another word, closing the door gently behind me. The binding in my chest is a constrictor, a deep and sinuous flex that tightens, tightens.