Authors: Janette Jenkins
The others were shaking their heads. ‘No,’ said Ada. ‘It’s only his back. He can’t be dead.’
‘I’m not sitting here taking any chances.’
‘Can we have another go?’ said Mrs Riley.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Beatrice, jumping up. ‘I’ll see you’re all right.’
The wind was whipping down the lane, whistling through the trees, and pushing at their shoulders.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have left him,’ said Madge, dropping her door key and fumbling on the step.
It was quiet inside the cottage. The parlour was empty, so they went into the kitchen, where there was a bottle of milk on the table, and an open tin of grate polish.
‘Frank?’ Madge called. ‘Are you in bed? Frank?’
There was no one upstairs. By now, Madge was straining not to cry. ‘He must have gone outside. Where can he be? He’ll be lost in the dark.’
‘We’ll find him,’ said Beatrice. ‘He can’t have gone far.’
They were halfway down the stairs when they heard him. Madge paled. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh God, he’s at it again, and you’re here with me, to see it all.’
‘What do you mean? What is it?’
‘Frank isn’t dead,’ swallowed Madge. ‘He’s sitting under the stairs.’
They paused outside the door. Madge opened it. Frank was sitting
with
the coats and boots, he was wearing Madge’s Sunday coat, with the squirrel collar, and he was rocking, his eyes closed, singing a lullaby in French.
‘This is what he’s like,’ said Madge. ‘So now you know.’
Madge held out her hand. Frank took it. He looked up at her and smiled.
‘Come on out, love. You can’t be sitting in there all night, in the dark.’
Frank came out, wincing in the light. He had polish on his face, like streaks of dried mud. He was stroking the fur collar and singing in a light, soft voice, ‘
C’est la poulette blanche, qui pond dans les branches …
.’ Suddenly he stopped and looked at Beatrice. ‘Oh,’ he said, clapping his hands, ‘you’ve come back. I knew it. I knew you’d come back and I’ve been waiting and waiting. Where’s the other one? The one that can float right up to the heavens and fly?’
‘There’s only me,’ she said.
‘No there isn’t. There’s another one.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Beatrice, opening up her hands. ‘I’m really all there is.’
‘Just go,’ said Madge. ‘Go on.’
Mrs Barnes was sipping a glass of sweet sherry when Beatrice reappeared. The seance was over. The spirits had fled for the night.
‘How’s Frank?’ said Lizzie. ‘He wasn’t dead, was he?’
‘No,’ said Beatrice. ‘He was fine.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Ada. ‘How’s his back?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Beatrice. ‘He was sleeping.’
‘Sleeping’s good for the healing process,’ said Lizzie. ‘That’s what my granny always says.’
Lionel was busy with his leaflets. ‘I urge you all to take one, to peruse at your own leisure,’ he said. ‘Any questions, you know where to find me.’
‘Do you do private sittings?’ said Mrs Riley.
‘I can do,’ said Mrs Barnes, draining her sherry glass. ‘The cost is a little higher.’
‘How much higher?’
‘A guinea.’
Mrs Riley looked crestfallen. ‘A guinea,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can manage a guinea.’
‘I can take it in instalments,’ said Mrs Barnes. ‘But there are still no guarantees of my making a connection.’
‘You could come to the spiritualist church with me,’ said Lionel. ‘All they ask for is a small donation.’
‘Whatever would the Reverend McNally say? We had no body to bury, but he did a lovely service for Al.’
‘It’s cheaper than a private sitting,’ he said. ‘I always go once a month.’
‘And have you ever connected?’ said Beatrice.
‘No,’ he said. ‘But there are plenty there that do.’
Mrs Riley looked a little happier. ‘Let me know when you’re going,’ she said. ‘But don’t tell my Vince, or he’ll lock me in the house, he’ll be that mad at me.’
‘Mum’s the word,’ said Lionel.
Beatrice watched the stars blinking over the treetops. She was wearing her thickest nightdress, the one she’d bought from a store near Battery Park, and the familiar plain brushed fabric made her feel comfortable as she thought about Al Riley’s mother, making her way home in the dark. And Frank. Whatever had happened to Frank? Perhaps the stars were lost souls, she told herself, because their blinking looked forlorn, their persistent messages lost, unanswered, and the sky was supposed to go on forever, and who knew where it was we came from? She believed in Charles Darwin, but she supposed there must be more to it than that, or else why did she cry when she heard a particular piece of music, or ache when someone went away, or laugh at the comedian juggling eggs on the corner of Surf Avenue, his shoes like soft red boats, flapping on the sidewalk?
So there’d been no real messages from beyond. No words from Al Riley, or from Ada’s baby girl. She didn’t believe, so why did she feel let down? And who had she wanted to hear from anyway? Her mother? Father? Jonathan’s parents? Should those departed souls have found Mrs Barnes, giving their approval through her dry and mumbling lips? ‘You are all we could have asked for in a daughter-in-law.’ She wouldn’t have believed it. Not in a million years.
Poor Frank.
She looked across the bookcases.
Saunterings in Florence. Riviera Walks. Alpine Adventures
. She found Jonathan’s guide to northern France, and pulled out the map with its black veins cutting through
Calais
, then on to Lille and Mons. She read about Arras. The Hôtel de Ville in the Petite Place was built in the sixteenth century by Jacques Caron. The fine museum includes a gallery of paintings and the public are admitted every Sunday, from April to September, and on the first Sunday of the month during the rest of the year when, she supposed, the people could sniff and sigh, pausing to gaze at
Portrait of a Woman
,
Tobias and the Angel
, or
Misery and Despair
by Jules Breton.
The wind was beginning to ease. The whistling and banging had stopped. Shivering, Beatrice closed the curtains, as the light from the moon cracked across the eiderdown in thin silver branches.
A postcard arrived, a painting of a soldier saying farewell to his sweetheart. There was no date or postmark, just a smudged blue stamp from the censor.
I will write again soon. Jx
. She worried about it. Why had he used a pencil? It looked rushed, the letters were wobbly, and Jonathan was usually so careful. Was he ill? Was he just about to charge over the top?
‘You’re lucky to hear anything at all,’ said Madge. ‘You’re lucky he had a pencil, never mind a postcard.’
Beatrice had put the card on the mantelpiece, next to the photograph of Morecambe, but then she had changed her mind, sliding it into the drawer with his other letter, and his old red scarf that still had something of his scent about it, the lime cologne he’d bought in New York, and was mercilessly teased about by the men at the office, who said that he smelled like a girl.
Madge had appeared that morning. She’d lost weight and her hair could have done with a wash. The thin grey circles that sat around her eyes made her face look dusty.
‘It’s Frank,’ she said. ‘They’re talking of sending him back. A doctor came, all the way from Scotland. Some kind of head doctor. I didn’t like him; the man looked very cold and hard, and I wasn’t allowed inside the room while he talked to Frank, but I kept my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear everything, but he was asking all these questions.’
‘He can’t go back,’ Beatrice assured her. ‘Really. They’ll see he isn’t well enough.’
‘The man seems to think that he is. “Complete rest and relaxation is all this soldier needs.” I told him everything. I had to. About the singing in French, and the cupboard, and all sorts of other things that you wouldn’t like to know about.’
‘Nerves?’ said Beatrice.
‘He called it battle stress, and he’s supposed to be an expert on these matters. He said he has to go back.’ Madge blinked back her tears.
‘Is there no one else you can talk to about it?’
‘The man said his decision was final. He signed some papers. He was very curt.’
‘What did Frank say?’
‘He said “yes, sir”, to everything.’
‘I suppose that didn’t help.’
‘We could always run away,’ said Madge, rubbing the back of her neck. ‘I have an aunt in Kendal. It’s a lovely quiet place. I don’t think they’d find us.’
‘But then you’d always be running.’
Madge looked defeated. ‘Perhaps the doctor’s right,’ she said, almost brightly. ‘He might be better after a few more days’ rest. He slept like a baby last night.’
Beatrice gave half a shrug. She was picturing him under the stairs in Madge’s fur-collared coat singing in the dark.
‘You’ll still say nothing?’ said Madge. ‘To the others, I mean?’
‘Of course not, if that’s what you want?’
Madge nodded. ‘It’s my boys I’m thinking of,’ she said. ‘If this gets out, people can be very cruel.’
‘They won’t hear anything from me,’ Beatrice told her. ‘I promise.’
‘Then I haven’t any choice,’ she said, chewing the skin around her fingernails. ‘I’ll just have to trust you.’
‘Are you still working on the farm?’ Mary asked.
Beatrice nodded. ‘I often glance up at your window when I’m mucking out the pigs and wonder how you’re doing.’
‘I’m all right.’ Mary shrugged into the sheets. There was a small blue bottle on the bedside cabinet. Earlier in the day, Dr Burke had brought more envelopes of powdery-looking tablets and bottles of bitter medicine.
‘Why do you come here?’ Mary asked, rubbing her grazed knuckles. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you here, it’s just that it must be awfully tedious for you. You didn’t know me when I was well. Why would you want to sit in this room, drink my mother’s awful tea and make conversation?’
‘I like you,’ said Beatrice. ‘I like talking.’
‘Joanna Brown and Cormac?’ she said. ‘Was that true? Did you really live in a house with all those dead birds?’
Beatrice rolled her eyes in mock horror. ‘
Tell me about it
.’
Mary bit her lip. She looked at her knees, two small bumps, poking through the eiderdown. ‘When my father ran off with … that girl,’ she said. ‘I told all sorts of fancy stories. First I had him away on business, though where a factory foreman would actually go on business, I’ve no idea.’
‘Other factories?’ said Beatrice.
‘I suppose so. And then he was out. Just out. People would say, “Your dad not at home tonight?” and I’d have him in the pub playing cards, or fixing my grandmother’s back gate, or he’d have gone into town to get his watch mended, anything but the real reason. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say the words, “he isn’t coming back”.’
‘I understand,’ said Beatrice.
‘You do?’
Beatrice nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘My father left almost fourteen years ago. On 6 August 1901. The girl’s name was Eloise, a lovely exotic-sounding name, don’t you think? My mother said she was a snivelling little tart. She actually said those words. I was nine years old, and I wanted to believe her. I thought she must be right, because the girl worked serving beer and wiping tables at the Black Bull Inn, and what kind of employment was that, for a nice sort of a girl? But then I saw her. The day my father came back to say goodbye to me, and to give me those bright coloured stamps with their pictures of fruit and birds, she was standing outside, trying to keep hidden. When I ran upstairs, throwing the stamps behind me, I caught sight of her and she was beautiful, she looked kind, and for a second, I really didn’t blame him. My mother has always been difficult. I knew that even then. He painted the door. It was the wrong shade of black. The wrong shade of black! The scent he’d saved up for and bought for her birthday gave her headaches. Small things. They all add up.’
‘Is your mother still difficult?’ Beatrice whispered, looking towards the door as Mary grimaced and the floorboards began to creak across the landing.
She shook her head, quickly changing the tone of her voice. ‘Have you heard from Jonathan?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps you should start reading proper books now that you’re alone? You can escape inside a
good
thick book. You can forget the real world and its horrors for a while.’
Beatrice nodded. ‘Good idea. What would you recommend?’
‘
Pride and Prejudice
. You can’t go wrong with that. You can borrow my copy, you’ll find it on the landing. First shelf down, a red paper cover. It’s all alphabetical.’
‘What?’
‘A,’ she said. ‘For Austen.’
From the window at the top of the stairs, if she stretched her neck a little, Beatrice could just about see the front of Madge’s cottage door. Dr Burke was still inside. He’d been in there for almost an hour with his black Gladstone bag, and small gold-rimmed glasses that sat on the end of his long Roman nose like a fussy kind of ornament. As soon as he’d gone, his overcoat flapping, Beatrice pulled on her own coat, washed her hands again (the pigs were sticking), and headed over there, making sure that no one had seen her. Madge eventually opened the door, running a tea towel through her fingers, still in her best Sunday clothes, the only clothes she’d let a doctor see her in.
‘My last hope,’ she said, her shoulders bent, defeated.
‘What did he say?’ Beatrice asked.
‘Physically fit.’
‘But what about the other thing?’
‘Frank was more or less himself,’ she said. ‘He was trembling a bit. He kept saying, “Is it time?” over and over again, but it was as if the doctor couldn’t hear him.’
‘So he has to go back?’
Madge nodded. ‘And what chance has he?’ she said. ‘Of taking good care of himself, never mind fighting a war?’
‘The others will see he’s all right.’
‘The others will have their own selves to think about.’
‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Beatrice. ‘That’s what we’ll do; we’ll all have a nice cup of tea.’
They sat at the table looking out of the kitchen window. Frank couldn’t keep his eyes off Beatrice. He looked happy.
‘Is it time yet?’ he asked.
Outside, a couple of blue tits were swooping around in circles. ‘I never would have thought it,’ said Madge, almost managing a smile. ‘You, the foreign American, making us all a nice pot of tea.’