Chapter Five #2
In the direction of the village, I spy the orange glow of the bonfire.
Can’t help but glance behind me, reflexive, to see the few twinkling lights of Harfold Manor.
They’re sorry and lifeless in comparison.
I feel suddenly sad at the idea of Arabella sitting up all alone – she may have insisted that she doesn’t mind, but surely she must feel a twinge of unease at being the only living soul in the house.
‘Will she be all right up there?’ I wonder out loud.
‘Her Ladyship, I mean. I wish she’d have come with us. ’
‘She wouldn’t want to, either way,’ says Mrs Allen. Disapproval in her voice, as if she thinks it inappropriate that I’d even suggest it. I hope that Arabella didn’t mention my invitation to her.
Tom gives a hunch-shouldered shrug. ‘They used to come down, mind, when they was children, with their governess. Remember her, Nora? Miss Yates.’
Mrs Allen makes an opaque noise in response.
‘She was a funny one,’ Tom goes on. ‘Lord Lascy ended up having to fire her since she was overly fond of cocaine tablets. Not that I’m one to judge – I took my fair share of Forced March during the war – but she got silly with it and ended up stealing some brooches to pay for the stuff.
Then when his Lordship searched the nursery, he found she’d put a false bottom in one of the cabinets to make a cubby-hole and hidden masses of pill bottles under there.
So that wasn’t on. What if the children had got into them? ’
Well, that’s quite the story. I’m not sure what to say in response.
We walk in silence for a bit, then Tom starts up again: ‘Anyway, Guy Fawkes Day is for the littluns really, isn’t it? Me and George used to get that excited about it.’
‘Who’s that, then?’ I ask. Not a name I remember hearing before.
‘George? My brother.’ The one who’d died.
A flicker of sadness on Tom’s face, but then he chuckles to himself.
‘One year, he was in disgrace for something or other, and Dad said he couldn’t go.
So I tried to sneak him out in a wheelbarrow, all covered up in weeds and whatnot.
We both thought it was a fine plan, till we got to the bonfire and old Mr Pearson said, “Great work, my lad, throw that on to burn, then.”’ He guffaws again, slapping his thigh.
‘George was out of there like a shot, I can tell you!’
I laugh along with him. ‘Are his wife and the family still in the village, then?’
‘Nah, they moved off to Somerset to stay with her parents.’
‘They were lovely children,’ says Mrs Allen, suddenly rejoining the conversation. ‘I keep saying to Tom we should move out that way to be near them.’ There’s a flash of tenderness in her voice – so she’s not all steel, then. This knowledge makes me like her a little more.
Tom rubs his nose with the back of his hand, sheepish, as if this is an ongoing point of disagreement. ‘Well, they’re all grown up now, aren’t they? They won’t want us old codgers hanging around.’
The smell of woodsmoke hits as we draw near to the village.
Harfold isn’t a large place – there can’t be more than thirty or so families who live here, and tonight, it seems like every one of them is gathered on the green.
Backlit by a roaring bonfire, people of all ages huddle in groups, talking, laughing, drinking from mismatched mugs.
The mouth-watering whiff of cocoa. True to Tom’s word, a number of children are running around underfoot, playing a chase game which Mutton joins immediately, his appearance met with squawks of shrill excitement.
Ignoring the canine chaos, Tom points out various notable people to me.
There’s the vicar, a tiny, unfortunate-looking man with thin, reddish hair and large ears.
Sue Barnes – dressed all in blue and carrying a baby on her hip – is a distant cousin of Tom’s.
Mr Wight the churchwarden. The tweeded Farmer Watts, who works the fields directly over the river at the east of Harfold’s grounds, though he doesn’t own the land himself; Mr Gerrish from Warminster way has that honour.
Next, Tom waves at an older man with a large, tufty beard. ‘There y’are, Bruce!’
When the man waves back, we go over to meet him. I assume this must be the former gardener.
‘Good to see you,’ says Mrs Allen, treating him to a broad smile. ‘How’s your sister?’
‘She’s around somewhere, Nora. She’s got a bit in her already, though, I warn you.’
‘Have you met Miss Morgan yet?’ asks Tom, ushering me forward.
Bruce leans in to squint – it’s a struggle to make anything out in the low light. ‘How d’you do,’ he says. His accent is thicker even than Tom’s, almost hard to understand for a newcomer like me. ‘That garden running you ragged yet?’
‘It’s a lovely spot,’ I reply.
‘I have to say, I couldn’t believe my ears when Tom here said they was getting a female in to replace me. I’ve never heard the like! Especially with so many lads in the village here who’d have been glad for the extra pay.’
I feel my smile grow thin. ‘That’s not how I heard it. Tom said they couldn’t get anyone local – didn’t you, Tom?’
‘You know what people think of her-up-there,’ Tom agrees, jerking his head back in the direction of the manor.
Bruce snorts. ‘Silly superstition, the lot of it. I never had any trouble with her, or with any of them, for that matter. You know me, I loved that post; I’d have kept going till I dropped if I’d had my way about it.’ He squints at me again. ‘Well I never …’
‘Miss Morgan is doing a good job.’ This praise, coming from Mrs Allen, is so surprising it distracts me for a moment from the curious talk of superstition. Is it possible I’ve made headway with her?
Chastened, Bruce lifts his hands in surrender. ‘I didn’t mean no offence, Miss Morgan.’
‘You should call in and see the garden,’ I say. ‘I’ve done a lot with it already. It just needed some hard work and attention.’
Before Bruce can register the implied insult, there’s a commotion from further up the green.
‘The Guy!’ shouts one of the children, and sure enough, a pair of adolescent boys emerges through the crowd, carrying a stuffed figure between them.
This Guy has been made with a certain attention to detail: he’s smartly dressed, with a lace collar and conical hat, and someone has taken the care to fashion his moustache and pointed beard out of what looks like wool.
‘Throw him on!’ shouts another child, and then all of them take it up as a chant: ‘Throw him on! Throw him on!’ The boys are clowning: swinging the doll back and forth, as if preparing to chuck it into the fire, then snatching it back at the last moment.
A collective groan of disappointment. ‘Get on with it!’ hollers an older boy – perhaps a brother or cousin, from the similar features.
At last, the Guy is released into the blaze.
The villagers cheer as licks of fire curl up its limbs, blackening the clothes, the carefully made lace collar.
A small girl starts to cry. Some of the other children laugh at her.
Looking around, I realize I’ve been pulled away by the spectacle and have lost Bruce and the Allens.
I wander for a bit, nodding greetings at anyone who looks my way.
Buy a cup of the cocoa. It’s sweet and thick, warming me through as I sip it.
Not as good as Mam’s recipe, though. A mournful pang in my chest as I remember winter evenings together with my parents, the three of us huddled by the stove with our steaming drinks, swapping the news of the day. I return the empty mug.
I’ve ended up near the little girl who was crying over the Guy. A woman of about my age is stroking the child’s hair, soothing.
‘Is she all right?’ I ask.
The woman glances up in surprise, eyes taking a moment to land on me as the source of the question. ‘Oh. Yes, she’ll be right as rain. Just a little sensitive, aren’t you, my love?’ She directs this last at the girl, chucking her on the chin, then looks back to me. ‘We haven’t met, have we?’
I stick out a hand. ‘Vee Morgan.’
‘Peggy Wight.’ She reaches out to shake, with a twinkle in her smile that would be hard not to like. ‘And this one here’s Ellen.’ They both have the same fair hair and round, ruddy faces. Sisters perhaps, or mother and daughter.
I crouch down to shake Ellen’s hand, saying a formal, ‘How d’you do?’ which delights her.
‘You’re the new one up at the big house?’ asks Peggy.
‘That’s right.’
‘Rather you than me.’
I think back to what Tom had said, about the villagers not wanting to work for Arabella. Bruce’s comment about superstitions. ‘Why do you say that, then?’
‘No one’s told you?’ asks Peggy. She leans a little closer, lowering her voice. ‘There’s something not quite right up there at the manor. All those deaths.’
‘What about them?’
Ellen tugs at my sleeve, barging into the conversation: ‘She’s a witch.’
‘What, Lady Lascy?’ I ask.
A nod. ‘She’s a witch, and she put a dark magic on her whole family so they’d die and leave her all the money and that.’
I look up at Peggy, ready to share a smile over the girl’s imagination.
But Peggy just widens her eyes. ‘I mean, it’s not natural, is it?
I’m not saying I believe about the witchcraft, but folks round here say the Lascys must’ve done something bad …
Sold their souls kind of bad. And now the Devil’s coming to collect them, one by one. ’
The genealogy. All of those Lascys already in the ground. A shiver runs over my skin.
But then Peggy and Ellen burst into sudden laughter, grave expressions melting away, and I realize I’m the butt of a joke.
‘Your face!’ wheezes Peggy, wagging a finger at me.
‘I bet you were thinking, “These countryside fuckers, they’ll believe anything!” We do have some learning out here, you know. ’