‘Father?’ When the long-suffering Mrs Clark, who kept house for the two priests and generally looked after them, popped her head round the study door she spoke in an undertone. ‘There’s a constable in the hall asking for you. He says the farmer’s wife at Tunstall Hills Farm sent him.’
‘Oh aye? You’d better show him in then, Mrs Clark.’
So saying, Father Hedley lowered his feet and stood up, but within moments of the constable opening his mouth the priest found he had to sit down again. ‘You’re saying Peggy Cook and the little lad are dead?’ Father Hedley’s face was screwed up, his brown eyes lost behind his narrowed lids.
‘Aye, I’m afraid so, Father.’ The constable shuffled his feet before he said, ‘Looks like the girl, Connie isn’t it? had a lucky escape by all accounts.’
A lucky escape. Father Hedley was staring at the policeman but not seeing him; at that moment he was capable only of visualising Connie and her face when she heard this terrible news. It would break her. Dear God, it would break her. Hadn’t the bairn stood enough in her short life? Why this, and why now?
The last thought prompted him to say, ‘Has she been told? Connie, has she been told yet?’
The constable shook his head. ‘They said at the farm that there’s no other relatives, not that they know of leastways, and that you’ve had a bit to do with the family over the years? I understand you were responsible for getting the lass the job at the workhouse?’
Father Hedley nodded.
‘I thought it might be better if you broke it to her, Father. They said she’s a nice little lass and thinks a bit of her granny and brother, and the mother’s only just died.’ The constable made an uneasy movement here; he had been surprised when he’d discovered the lass’s mother had been Sadie Bell. Not that she’d ever caused any trouble, Sadie, and she hadn’t been foul-mouthed or abusive to the police when they’d tried to do their job, but nevertheless a whore was a whore.
The priest nodded again. ‘How . . . how did it happen?’ he asked heavily.
‘Oil can got knocked over or dropped from what we can make out. Perhaps the lad was trying to fill the lamp, something along those lines, we can’t be sure. Anyway, they got trapped in the bedroom and once the fire got a hold . . .’ He drew his chin in, his voice soft as he said, ‘Bad business. Bad business.’
Father Hedley inhaled a sharp breath. It was a bad business all right. And then he surprised himself as he asked, ‘There was no jiggery-pokery then?’
‘Jiggery-pokery?’ There was a different note in the constable’s voice now and his eyes had narrowed. ‘Why? Do you know of any reason why that might be the case, Father?’
Did he? Father Hedley stared at the man and after a moment, during which he pulled in his lips and pressed down hard on them, he answered quietly, ‘No, I know of no reason, Constable. I was merely enquiring, that’s all.’
‘I see.’ The policeman kept his eyes on the priest as Father Hedley rose slowly to his feet. ‘You sure about that, Father?’
‘Quite sure.’
Quite sure. By, the constable thought, he’d like a shilling for every time he’d heard that one! And these priests, they were the worst of all. The power they wielded and the influence they had would be fine if it wasn’t used just to scare the wits out of people regarding their immortal souls. He knew of deep, dyed-in-the-wool villains who would go to mass and light a few candles and such like and emerge with a smile on their faces, convinced they were right with God and man after ten minutes in the confessional box with a bloke like this one. No matter they had half killed someone the night before – they had been given their penance and received absolution so all was well.
‘Well in that case, Father, we’d better make tracks if you’re ready?’
Father Hedley had never been less ready for anything in his life, but he inclined his head, drawing in a long hard breath before following the constable out of the room.
Connie was surprised to be summoned to the matron’s office and not a little alarmed. The head laundress was in a foul mood and had already ripped strips off all the officers that morning, and as she walked the corridors with the inmate who had been sent to fetch her Connie wondered if she was in trouble for some misdemeanour or other. Nevertheless, she wasn’t altogether sorry to escape her glass-screened comer of the laundry. Moments before she had been sent for, the stench had become overpowering when linen from the isolation ward – a ward which frequently treated those suffering from venereal diseases as well as infectious ones – had arrived covered with pus and discharge.
The smell was still in her nostrils when she reached the matron’s office and knocked once, her heart pounding, before opening the door. And then, as her eyes went to the two men standing to one side of the matron’s desk, that same heart seemed to want to jump out of her chest.
‘Come in, child.’
The matron’s voice was very soft and low as she rose to her feet, and as Connie’s eyes flashed to her face before returning to Father Hedley’s she felt as though her fear was strangling her. ‘Is it me granny?’ She stepped fully into the room as she spoke, and her voice became urgent and rapid. ‘Is it, Father? Something’s happened to me granny? Where is she?’
‘Sit down, lass.’
It was the constable who spoke, but Connie didn’t even acknowledge his presence as she reached out to Father Hedley, and he, taking her hands between his own, said, ‘Connie, you’ve got to be brave. Very brave, lass.’
Oh no, no. Not her granny. And where was Larry? He’d be frantic without her or her granny. She must go to him . . .
‘Connie? Look at me, lass.’
She hadn’t been aware that her eyes had been moving wildly round the room, but now, at the sound of Father Hedley’s gentle voice, she became still, her lips mouthing, ‘Oh, Father, Father,’ but without any sound.
As he began to speak, the priest saw his words register like blows in the large azure eyes now fixed on his, and never had he so desired to take another human being’s pain and make it his own. But that wasn’t possible and he knew it, and then he had said it all, and there followed a silence so profound not one of the adults felt able to break it.
Connie’s head was buzzing. She wanted to speak – poor Father Hedley was looking so sad and holding on to her hands so tightly; she ought to speak, to show him she understood what he had been saying, but she couldn’t. If she spoke, if she acknowledged it, it became real and it mustn’t be real.
Larry couldn’t be dead
. Her grandmother she could have understood, her granny was old and frail and in pain all the time. But Larry? The screen of her mind was filled with their parting, the way her brother had clung to her, his arms tight around her neck. He had such baby hands still, dimples instead of knuckles . . .
‘Connie? Connie, sit down, dear.’ It was the matron, and Connie wasn’t to know that Matron Banks had just broken her cast-iron rule by addressing one of her officers by their Christian name. ‘This dreadful accident must be a terrible shock for you, and coming so soon after your mother’s demise . . .’
Her voice continued but Connie couldn’t hear it. The buzzing was steadily becoming a hammering that was filling her head. Larry was dead. And her granny.
Burnt, they had been burnt.
And she hadn’t been there; she had been lying in her bed, safe and secure in the officers’ quarters, while they had been dying. How could they have been dying and she hadn’t sensed something? She should have known . . .
‘Listen to me, lass.’ Connie found she was sitting on a chair although she had no recollection of seating herself, and Father Hedley was now kneeling in front of her, still with her hands clasped in his. ‘You’ll come through this. It might not seem like it now, but you will come through this.’
Connie blinked at him, and the priest found it difficult not to avert his eyes from the agony in her strained white face. She attempted to speak several times before she said, her voice very low, ‘They. . . they burnt, Father?’
‘No, no.’ He swallowed hard. ‘The smoke would have overcome them, I’m sure of it. They wouldn’t have known anything, Connie.’
She wanted to believe him. More than anything in the world she wanted to believe they had simply gone to sleep and not woken up, the alternative was too horrific to contemplate. ‘Are you sure, Father?’ she asked pitifully.
Father Hedley took a deep breath and lied like he hadn’t done since he was a wee bairn and in for a pasting from his father for stealing taffy from old Ma Blackett who ran the village shop. ‘Absolutely sure,’ he said firmly.
Connie slowly straightened her body, staring for some moments more into his worried face before she cast her eyes on the matron and the policeman, and then back to the priest. ‘Thank you, Father.’ She didn’t question whether she believed him or not, at the moment it was impossible for her to think clearly, but in the deepest recess of her mind there was a gnawing sense of futility for all their struggles over the last months and years, and that was adding to the bitterness of her grief.
Why couldn’t she cry? The thought sprang into her mind and challenged her dry eyes. They would think it odd, unfeeling that she didn’t cry. They would assume she didn’t care.
The priest and the other two occupants of the room did not think it odd, neither did they think the white, shocked young girl in front of them didn’t care, but each in their own way wished that the safety valve of weeping could be released. They continued to speak soothing words of comfort for some minutes more until, in the middle of a kind but weighty discourse from the constable, Connie rose abruptly to her feet. ‘I. . . I’d better get back.’
Her voice had been jerky and tight, and now it was the matron who said, very softly, ‘Why don’t you go and rest a while, dear? At least until lunchtime.’
‘No.’
And then more quietly, ‘No thank you, Matron Banks. Goodbye, Father,’ and with a nod at the constable, ‘Goodbye.’
It was for all the world as though Connie were the adult and the three watching her the children, and each grown-up was aware of this but at a loss to know what to do or say.
Once in the dismal, deserted corridor outside the matron’s office Connie realised she was shaking as if with a fit of the ague, but she took several deep breaths, her hands clenched fists at her sides, as she told herself she mustn’t think. It would be all right if she didn’t think. She would go back to the laundry and work, that’s what she’d do.
Once back behind the glass screen the smell that had been so obnoxious and overpowering earlier now barely registered on her consciousness. She went about her work automatically and her helpers, frightened by her white face and stiffness, said not a word, even to each other.
At twelve o’clock she sent the two inmates for their meal but continued working at her desk, and at ten past Mary walked round the partition and simply took her in her arms, but even then Connie didn’t cry. She simply stared at the other girl wordlessly as Mary murmured, over and over again, ‘Oh, lass, oh lass,’ before saying, ‘Come on, you’re comin’ for a bit of a lie down, lass. Old Banksy herself suggested it.’
It wasn’t until they reached Connie’s room and she saw, there on the bed where she had lovingly placed it that morning, Larry’s precious piece of rag, that her eyes sprang wide and she let out a long shuddering moan that rose and rose into a shrill cry.
It frightened Mary half to death but she didn’t show it, and when the storm of weeping came she held Connie close until the front of her uniform was soaked with tears. Mary herself couldn’t speak because of the enormous lump clogging her throat, but she made little noises, deep and soft, that needed no explanation.
It seemed aeons later when Connie spoke, and then the words were dragged out of her. ‘How am I going to bear it? Me mam, an’ now me gran an’ Larry. He . . . he was only seven years old, Mary. How can that be fair? He hadn’t done anything to anybody, an’ me gran was a grand woman.’
‘Aye, I know, lass.’
‘We were happy, we were so happy before they came. Why couldn’t they have let us alone?’
Mary didn’t have the faintest idea what Connie was talking about but she nodded anyway. It was better if Connie talked. That’s what her own mam had said to her after – A door slammed in Mary’s mind. But you couldn’t always talk, not always, however much you wanted to. She, of all people, knew that. But Connie was talking now and that was good; the lass’d looked so bad when she’d first seen her.
‘I hate them, Mary.’
‘Who, lass?’
‘The. . . the Stewarts. The Stewart family, them that live in Ryhope Road.’
It wasn’t the time to ask the whys and the wherefores, but Mary made a mental note of the name before she said, ‘You think you could manage somethin’ to eat, lass?’
‘No, no, I don’t want anything.’ Connie gulped deep in her throat as she fought the flood of tears that was rising again. ‘I’d better get back to the laundry.’