Chapter 41 #2
‘If you’re coming, Henry, I suggest you wear one of our coats rather than the prison officer one,’ Frank suggested. ‘You don’t want to draw undue attention if we happen to bump into anyone.’
Jane had heard the low toll of the prison bell again the previous day, though she hadn’t said, so they were still actively sending out a signal.
There was no point in making mention of it to Henry and causing him stress though.
When the train began moving again, he would have a lot on his plate to contend with.
And not the nice things he’d had on his plate since he had been with them.
Outside, the air was fresh but devoid of the biting bitterness that had been present the last time they’d been out in it.
Jane filled her lungs and felt another of her glimmer moments because it tasted clean and pure as spring water.
She glanced over to find Vincent doing the same, savouring it and on sensing her eyes on him, he said, ‘I get it, Jane.’
‘Parteeee ready,’ said Frank, sergeant-major style.
‘Yes, sir.’ Tim saluted him and everyone laughed.
The snow was soft underfoot, the surface hadn’t iced over. It was like treading over the top of a Christmas cake.
‘If you walk in our big footsteps, ladies, it might be easier for you,’ said Frank.
‘I’m quite enjoying making my own,’ said Jane.
It reminded her of being a child in the fierce winters they seemed to have.
The seasons were much more defined than they were now.
She remembered building a snowman with Susan and making him look like awful Mr Blenkinsop next door.
Dearest Susan who was so full of life and fun.
She married someone who sucked it all from her, someone who made David Carteret look like Mr Darcy.
They lost touch, as people do. She hoped she got out and had the sort of new start that she found with her dear Clifford.
‘I see a church and houses and… what’s that?
A pub?’ said Frank, shielding his eyes from the blinding sunshine.
He took his phone out of his pocket as he was walking and raised it in the air but there was still no signal.
He thought there would have been with cottages there, a row of them, tiny workmens’ dwellings by the look of them, old stone, prettily quaint with their snow-roof hats.
When they got to them, Vincent knocked on the first door, not really sure what he was going to say if anyone answered. But no one did. He risked censure staring through the window but it was too dark to see much and the windows had a long build-up of dirt and weather on them.
‘Holiday cottages?’ suggested Tim, working his way down them without finding anyone home.
They went over to the church; it was a strange building, short and squat with the large square tower they’d seen from the train when the fog cleared.
The tower was out of proportion to the rest of the structure, as were the double wooden doors which appeared to have been made for a church of twice its size.
But the whole effect was curiously charming – as kooky as the rest of this little place, too small to even call itself a hamlet.
‘Let’s try over there,’ said Vincent, pointing to what they could now clearly see was indeed a pub. There was a wooden sign over the three front windows but the name painted on it in what must once have been bold oxblood red was now too patchy to make out.
They had to cross a bridge to get to it, a bridge which spanned a stream that was bloated with thaw water, probably from further up because not much was thawing around here.
The door was locked. ‘There’s no one in here either, surprise surprise,’ said Tim, staring through each of the windows in turn.
He even knocked on the glass: single pane.
Blimey, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a commercial building without double glazing at least. The wallet in his pocket shuddered at the thought of all that heat loss.
‘It says The Fog… Figgy… Hollow… Inn,’ said Jane, standing back to view the sign from the optimum reading distance. Squinting at it helped to fill in the missing lettering.
‘Figgy Hollow,’ repeated Henry: there was something about the name, about this place, but as much as he chased it around in his brain, it wouldn’t be caught.
‘How sweet,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It looks idyllic. Maybe it’s just open in the summer months. It must be lovely here then.’
‘Sitting by that stream having a pint outside, sharing a platter of scampi and chips,’ Vince thought aloud.
He imagined being there with a woman, the sun on their faces, a clean, pale ice-cold lager hitting the back of his throat, the aroma of salt and lemon and fried food in the air.
He tried not to think of that woman as Elizabeth.
As if she’d be the sort who ate scampi and chips with her fingers!
Elizabeth visualised herself sitting in this very spot in the summer; a table for two, a glacial white wine in a frosty glass to wash down salty crunchy chips and lemon-sodden scampi, licking her fingers because it would all taste so much better without using cutlery.
She didn’t imagine being here with Gregory though, but someone like Vincent, who’d eat all the small pieces and leave her the juiciest breadcrumbed nuggets.
No, not someone like Vincent, but Vincent himself.
Grace appeared from around the back of the pub.
‘There’s a full log store but there’s definitely no one here. And no phone signal either.’
‘So we’re still no wiser what’s going on in the world then,’ said Frank, hands coming to his hips, his stance telling of frustration.
‘The walk was really nice though, I was ready for it,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Even if these big wellies make me look like a clown.’ Even the smallest pair were too big for her.
Vincent couldn’t think of anyone who looked less like a clown.
She was beautiful, even more so with the sunlight on her face as if she were a flower that the sun had sought out to shine on before anything else.
It was a good job there was a supposed thaw on and they’d soon be on their way because it wouldn’t have taken him long to fall hook, line and sinker for a woman like her, especially spending so much time together in a relatively confined luxurious and romantic space.
At least, at the very least, he should take from this that his ticker was still working perfectly and the right woman could easily increase its beat.
‘Well, back home we go then.’ Frank pointed across to the train. Its colours looked crisp and bright set against such a surfeit of white on the ground and ghost-grey sky above, as if an artist had painted it in his finest detail, leaving the background as a soft undetracting smudge.
‘I’ll follow you on,’ said Henry.
‘Me too,’ added Jane. ‘I’d like to take a look around here myself. I do like an old church.’
‘You okay there, love?’ asked Frank, turning to check on Grace.
He crooked his arm, risking the rejection he’d had the last few times he’d done as much.
I’m fine, thank you. But this time she took it, and he felt her close at his side, her familiar warm presence, like one of those glimmer moments Jane told them about, to be acknowledged for the bubble-burst of pleasure it brought.
He slowed his pace, there was nothing to rush for, everything to savour.
Behind them, Elizabeth stumbled and Vincent’s hands came out to catch her from falling if necessary.
‘My feet are sliding around in these wellies,’ she explained.
‘Let’s copy Frank and Grace.’ Vincent offered his arm and Elizabeth stalled for just the slightest time before taking it because it felt like too much of an intimate gesture for what it was.
It might not have been, had it been one of the others, but it wasn’t – it was Vincent.
She felt the hard bicep muscle underneath his coat.
It shouldn’t have had the effect on her that it did, it was tantamount to disloyalty, she should let go really.
She loosened her grasp and her hand dropped and Vincent caught it and held it.
‘What a beautiful church.’ Jane stood and admired it, her head tilted so she could take in the outsized stone tower that must have stood there for hundreds of years.
‘Not exactly Christopher Wren but I like it. Wonder where the name Figgy Hollow comes from. Can’t be anything to do with fruit figs surely. ’
Henry was deep in thought, still trying to find what was lost in his head, eluding all attempts to pin it down, like a savvy impish fly.
‘I don’t know how I know this, Jane, but I am thinking it might just be that. I must have read it in a book in the Rose Garden library.’
‘Rose Garden?’
Henry made a small noise of amusement. ‘The prison. That’s what someone clever renamed it. You’ll never see anything less like a rose garden in your life.’
Jane wondered if some well-intentioned government official had decided to improve its reputation, make it sound less austere and daunting and more positive for the inmates’ mental health.
The way an accident-prone nuclear power station in Cumbria had been rebranded in an attempt to revamp its public image.
‘I like history,’ Henry went on, ‘especially when it’s about the local area, but I’ve read so many books over the years.
Though… something is telling me there was a monastery here centuries ago and the monks made brandy out of the figs they grew.
Very successful they were at it too.’ He knocked hard on his head, hoping it would help him remember. ‘Come out, wherever you are.’
Jane turned a full circle while looking around.
‘I suppose it’s not outside the realms of possibility: shelter, plenty of water from the stream, maybe a fortunate micro-climate all of its own.
It happens; in Plockton in Scotland there are palm trees growing at the side of the sea.
I’m guessing then that if the monks made themselves rich, they might have been battered by your namesake. ’
Henry smiled and nodded. ‘Good old King Hal, eh?’
‘Is that a date on a lintel, Henry? I’m too short to see.’
Henry stood back, squinted. ‘Sixteen forty-one.’ St Stephen.
It didn’t say so but he knew it was the name of the church and it came with a flood of warmth, like a rogue summer breeze sweeping across him.
‘I remember now. The monastery was St Anthony the Blessed. Patron saint of the lost: lost things, lost people, lost faith.’ He raised his eyebrows at Jane, who chuckled.
‘Then I shall have to pray to him. Or maybe you can pray to him for me. He may not want to hear from a heathen.’
Henry placed his palm on the stone and closed his eyes.
He didn’t even know why, maybe to pull something from the fibres of the material, from the years.
He saw no visions, sensed no psychic revelations, merely a sensation of peace, calm, happiness, one of those transient moments Jane was so fond of.
When he opened his eyes again, Jane was beckoning him around the back.
‘Look, Henry, how exquisite. Like something out of a fairytale.’
A churchyard with impressively ornate headstones and crosses, magnificent angels and baby cherubs, the chiselled letters worn away by time and the elements, but the most recent of the names and dates just about visible: Walter Bellamy born sleeping.
At least her three babies had had as happy a life as she could have given them in the time allotted.
To carry a child and never hear its cry, never taste the soft blow of its breath was a worse torture, thought Jane.
Her sons had been beautiful, she wouldn’t have missed having them for anything.
But now, they lay under the ground, like baby Walter, a part of her heart in their graves with them.
‘Time to go,’ said Henry, putting his arm around her, sensing her sadness because moving as it was, tranquil as it was, it was too still and felt odd, as if they had strayed onto a different plane.