Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
I DID NOT drown.
I’m in a bed, its sheets crisp with age but clean, smelling sweetly of faint lavender.
A patchwork quilt is tucked round my legs – yellows, blues and pinks.
Late afternoon light washes through a window with a green-painted frame.
Not Harfold. I remember, now, deciding to go into the village for help. But when was that?
Under the bedsheets, I’m wearing a loose flannel nightgown, riding up short on my shins.
Whose clothes are these, and whose bed? That was good of someone to give it up to me.
I squeeze my eyes shut again, trying to recall exactly what happened after I hit the water, but my memories are confused, scattered like dandelion seeds in the breeze.
I have the sense that time has passed – a few days, perhaps.
My body is slick with sweat and feels like it’s been put through a wringer, but the worst is my head: as if a hot iron is being driven directly into it, right through the skull to the cringing brain matter.
Forcing my mind back in time, I’m rewarded with the moment I first surfaced to consciousness.
The sensation that another person had just left.
A face like Tom’s, but not Tom’s. George?
I tried to call out his name. Coughed up water instead, throat burning, limbs burning. ‘George?’ I tried again. No reply.
Then I woke again, later, and was able to turn my face this time, and see the riverbank mud all around me, a weeping willow above.
The daylight stabbed like drawing pins into my eyes.
I was alone, of course. Whatever I’d thought I saw had just been a hallucination.
I’d realized then that I was cold as the grave.
My clothes were soaked through, and the liquid ground beneath me was leaching what little warmth my body had left.
No feeling in my fingers, my feet. I knew I needed to move before I froze to death.
Bracing myself for the pain it was sure to bring, I experimented with moving first my arms, then my legs.
Nothing broken as far as I could tell. I managed to bend one leg and, so doing, rolled on to my side.
Then, not stopping to let myself feel it, I twisted again and pushed up on to hands and knees.
Fire shot through me and I battled down a sudden wave of nausea.
Blinked until I could see. Then ordered my body to crawl up the bank, to where a haze of green promised a softer surface to receive me.
There’s a gap after that, and then the next memory is of being in a meadow.
Buttercups, daisies, blue-flowered speedwell.
I could see the tower of St Anselm’s church.
I must have washed downriver past Harfold village, then by sheer luck caught on the bank.
I’m amazed that I’m alive. I think that I’m alive.
My clothes had dried somewhat by then, although the seams still chafed damp against my skin.
I’d lost a boot and sock, my foot taking on a curdled yellow colour where all the blood had fled.
I pressed my gloved palms to it, but they offered no help, not being much warmer.
Eventually, I found a hanky in my jacket pocket and used this to wrap my bare foot.
Limped my way in the direction of the village.
In my sorry state, I must have forgotten that the rules of the city don’t apply out here in the countryside.
In Cardiff, I could have spent hours prowling around the streets half dressed, dripping with river mud, and nobody would have looked twice at me.
This is not the case in Harfold village.
I was barely two steps into the lane when I was startled by a flat-capped lad yelling ‘Oi!’ at me.
He came up closer. ‘Oh, sorry Miss, I thought you were a man for a minute there.’ Even though he was right in front of me, I couldn’t make out his face properly.
It seemed he was swaying around, pulling his features in and out of focus like some kind of mischievous pixie.
His voice, too, had a strange distortion, so I struggled to understand.
‘Whatever’s happened to you?’ is what I think he said.
‘Do you need help?’ He bit his lip, looking down at my unbooted foot, where the hanky was already unravelling.
‘Ain’t you from up the manor? You don’t look fit to be walking around like that. ’
‘I’m all right,’ I told him, but then I tripped up somehow, though I’d been standing still. Stumbled into him. He managed to catch me before I fell. It seems that whacking my head then near drowning in a river had finally eroded my protective armour against men being chivalrous to me.
This must be the boy’s home. I don’t recall the journey to get here.
What I remember instead is being back at the Reeses’ townhouse.
I was in the garden with Dad, the pair of us pruning a rosebush.
Kenneth asked me to pick him a flower, so I snipped one off for him.
Carefully stripped the thorns. When I tried to hand it to him, however, he took my wrist in his small hand and pulled me down to his level, as if he wanted to whisper in my ear.
Opened his mouth. But instead of words, what came out was a froth of bloodied foam and he started to shake, eyes rolling back to show the whites.
I tried to pull away, but his grip on my wrist was tighter than it should have been possible for any child to hold.
Then I realized that I was the one shaking, my whole body overtaken by spasms, and it was my hand gripping a wrist – Peggy’s.
I was too muddled up to be surprised to see her.
‘Arabella,’ I gasped out.
‘You want me to fetch her?’
‘No! She can’t know I’m here.’
Peggy became a cloud of black dots, then reassembled. ‘I should—’
‘Promise!’
A pause. ‘All right, I promise.’
Whether from drinking too much river water, or thanks to the sore dent in my head, I continued burning through fevered dreams after that.
I think that they’ve passed now. My thoughts sound clear in my head.
No hallucinations – as far as I know, at least. And I realize that I’m thirsty, my throat parched as summer soil.
Cautiously, I slide my legs out of bed. There’s a shock of sharp pain as one of my heels touches the floor.
When I look down, I see that the foot is bandaged – I must have hurt it while walking around without a boot.
I shuffle over to the door, trying not to put weight on that leg.
Outside, I find a small landing and a set of stairs down, which I navigate by leaning heavily on the handrail.
When I reach the ground floor, I’m immediately face to face with Ellen, who gapes up at me, then – with the volume and pitch that only a small child can manage – she shouts, ‘Peg! Miss Morgan’s up. She looks horrible!’
‘Ellen!’ Footsteps approach fast from another room, then Peggy arrives in a doorway.
I can tell by the way she frowns at me that I do look horrible, but she doesn’t immediately force me back to bed, so that’s something.
The Wights’ home is lovely and cosy: small, but well decorated and whistle-clean.
The inverse of Harfold. ‘Come have a sit-down,’ Peggy says, guiding me through to the front room.
Here, there are family pictures on the walls, as well as a plate decorated with painted primroses and a countryside print that looks as if it’s been cut out of a book.
Assorted china is displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet, and the table has a high polish, topped with a white lace runner and a vase of dried grasses.
A basket of abandoned knitting takes up half the well-worn settee.
Peggy moves this, then, when I sit, pulls out a half-finished blanket to drape over my knees.
‘I’ll get you a bite to eat,’ she insists.
‘You’ve had nothing but broth for the past three days; you must be fucking starved. ’
While she disappears to fetch some much-welcome food and drink, I’m left under Ellen’s watch. She continues to gawp at me.
‘Whose nighty am I wearing?’ I ask eventually.
‘Peggy’s,’ says Ellen. ‘She had to take all your wet clothes off for you.’
‘Did she now?’
Ellen nods. ‘I’ve never seen you in a dress before.’
‘And you never will again, if I have my way.’ I give her a wink. ‘How’s that telegraphy of yours coming along, then?’
‘I’m not old enough to use a real telegraph, silly.’
‘Aren’t you? Funny; I could have sworn you were the eldest sister.’
This sends her into a fit of giggles, which is still ongoing when Peggy reappears with bread and warm milk. She sets these on a low stool, then moves it within my reach, saying, ‘Tuck in.’
I don’t need to be told twice. The bread is delicious – the best I’ve ever tasted.
The crust is firm enough to crack under my teeth, and the inside light as air, studded with fine-chopped seeds and nuts, and still slightly warm from the oven.
I tear into it with an animal ferocity. Swig the milk, rich and creamy, with its nostalgic smell of cowsheds.
‘Right,’ says Peggy, when I’m done, ‘are you going to tell me what happened, then?’
What do I tell her? I am still coming to terms with it all myself. If I give the truth, she’ll surely want to call the police, and I have no love for them. ‘I slipped,’ I tell her, ‘on the footbridge. Hit my head and fell in the water. Lucky I didn’t end up with worse.’