The Revenant #3
I slumped down on the chair, the photograph bringing it all back.
The whispers, the pointed fingers, the speculation.
Remembering when the police had gone, hearing Mum and my stepfather arguing in whispers, so the neighbours wouldn’t hear through the walls.
She took Harry’s side, of course. Tried to defend him.
Said they were talking to every man over sixteen, nothing sinister about it.
Bound to be one of the soldiers billeted at Oakwood or Goodwood.
Besides, what respectable girl would go on her own, to a place like that? Asking for trouble.
I put the newspaper back in the box and the box back in the stacks, then turned off the light.
I waved to Bert on the way out and held up my bag, proof that I’d found what I was looking for, then I went out into the fading afternoon.
Cold, dark, ice underfoot. Proper December weather.
Back up Mill Lane, over the road to the row of terraced cottages where we lived.
The back door was unlocked. I took off my boots and hung my coat, inside out, on the back of the door, before calling out.
‘It’s only me,’ I said, going through to the hall. ‘Sorry I’m late. I got held up.’
Mrs Sadler was dressed for outside, hat and gloves on, hands folded in front of her. She glanced pointedly at the clock on the window sill by the sink.
‘How’s he been?’
‘Same as usual,’ she said in a tight, clipped voice.
‘Has he had his tea?’
‘At four. He’s asleep now.’ Her voice was begrudging, hard done by. ‘He’s been agitated all afternoon, mind you. Talking about some girl. Your brother Harry, too, though it’s hard to know what he’s saying. The language.’
‘I’m sorry if he’s offended you, Mrs Sadler,’ I said, more sharply than I intended. ‘Thanks for staying on. I’ll see you Monday, as usual?’
A sly look crossed her broad face. ‘I don’t know. Mr Sadler doesn’t like me coming here, you know. He’s not one for talk.’
I was tempted to say, no I didn’t know, to make her come out with it.
Admit that she’d heard the rumours about my stepfather, about our family.
At least then I could say something in our defence.
But I was more shaken up than I cared to admit and, besides, who else would come in and sit with him?
So I just suggested we should perhaps come to a new financial arrangement, to compensate for any inconvenience.
I got a note out and put it on the table.
Would that help matters indoors? I could see her thinking about it, totting up the extra few bob.
She held out a moment longer, then reached and pocketed the ten shillings.
‘See you Monday,’ she said.
After she’d left, I locked the back door and since there was no one about to see, stepped out of my skirt and sponged the mud as best I could.
While it dried, I put on my old gardening skirt that was hanging over the back of the chair where I’d been mending it earlier.
I looked at the clock. Five o’clock and it was pitch black.
The idea of the long evening ahead was almost more than I could bear, but I knew I’d get on with it just the same. Just as I always did.
I leaned over the sink and pulled on the curtains to shut out the dark.
The wire was old and the fabric too heavy, so they stuck halfway, as they usually did, leaving a slat of silver coming in from the light in the alley that ran along the back of the cottages.
I knew I should go in to the front room and see how he was, but I couldn’t face it.
I was still turning the events of the afternoon over in my mind.
Taking a tin of soup from the larder, I put a saucepan on the stove, cut a couple of slices of bread and buttered them, then put two pieces of cheddar on the side of our plates.
All the time, turning over what had happened in my mind.
I didn’t come to any firm conclusion either way – had I seen someone at all or just imagined it?
– only that I would steer clear of the marshes for the time being.
We ate our meal in silence. The hours crept by.
I put on the wireless to keep him company and picked up the novel I’d been reading, Marjorie Morningstar.
Set in 1930s America, about a girl who wants to be an actress, I’d liked the sound of it so much I’d bought a copy, rather than waiting for the library to get it in, but tonight it didn’t hold my attention.
My stepfather was restless, talking as he drifted in and out of sleep.
As I glanced over at his ruined face, I wondered at how I’d once been so scared of him.
He’d been a big man in his day, working at the Anglesey Arms in Halnaker after we’d moved from Fishbourne, until that job, like all the others, fell through.
Every time, he called them ‘misunderstandings’, said everyone was out to get him, but the plain truth was he was a drunk.
After that last dismissal, he never worked again.
He just sat about the house with a bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other, picking fights with any of us stupid enough to get in his way.
Now, he hardly knew who he was. Thin as a rake, hardly able to speak or see, too frail to stand unaided.
Only me left now. Only him and me.
At nine o’clock, I began the business of getting him to bed. He slept down here now, to save him the stairs, but it still took a good half-hour to undress him, put him in his pyjamas, get him settled.
Once he was sorted out, I went back to the front room to get things straight for the morning, as if it mattered.
Nobody but Mrs Sadler and the vicar ever visited.
I turned off the table lamp, then walked through to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Except for the corridor of light coming in through the gap in the curtains, the room was dark.
The cold tap spluttered, the pipes complaining, so I let it run a moment.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move in the yard.
A shadow, or reflection, I couldn’t say.
My stomach lurched. I put down the glass on the draining board, the water slopping over the side, and peered out.
Nothing. Not a cat, not a soul about, nothing.
I knew I’d locked the back door earlier, but I checked again, just to be sure.
The key, which I always left in the lock, was gone.