The Woman in Black (15 page)

Candles had been lit and placed on any available surface. Everyone was shivering from the cold and the damp. The smell hadn’t lessened, but they had all became accustomed to it. They couldn’t sit anywhere central, so they had been forced to spread themselves out among the rows and racks, taking down the sturdiest of the boxes for seating, or perching on the edges of shelves.

‘My mum,’ said Ruby, ‘says that when you can hear the bombs you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s when it goes quiet that they’re going to drop on you.’

They all sat in silence, listening.

Harry sat on an upturned crate and, trying to ignore the sound of the bombs falling outside, glanced over at Eve. After she had finished helping Jean organise the children she had sat on her own, taking out the letter from Jennet Humfrye and rereading it over and over, her features intent.
Like she’s studying it
, he thought,
scrutinising it for some kind of hidden meaning or secret message.

Harry didn’t notice the boy sitting next to him.

‘You a pilot?’

Harry jumped. He hadn’t realised how nervous he felt. He turned to the boy. He was a pudgy child with curly hair, and his eyes were lit by both terror and excitement. Harry had seen plenty of people respond to war that way. Harry struggled to think.
Alby? Something like that. Alfie. That was the boy’s name.

‘Miss Parkins says you’re a pilot,’ Alfie continued.

Harry nodded, as a bomb fell outside. They were coming nearer. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

Alfie smiled. ‘I’m going to be a pilot.’

The cellar shook as another bomb landed nearby. Harry winced. ‘I’d wait until the war is over if I were you.’

The boy was gearing up to unleash all his questions, but Harry didn’t want to answer them. He excused himself and stood up, making his way over to Eve, who was sitting with her back to the rest of the group, still poring over the letter. He sat down next to her, noticing, for the first time, the tears in her eyes.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘come on …’ He put his arm round her.

‘Nobody,’ she said once she had her sobbing under control, ‘nobody deserves to suffer like she did.’

She spoke in a whisper so that the others wouldn’t hear her. Harry responded likewise.

‘It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?’ He studied her face. ‘More than just Jennet Humfrye and her son.’

Eve didn’t reply. Her hand went to the cherub necklace once more.

‘Tell me why this has got to you,’ he said.

She sighed, looking at him but not speaking. He took his arm away from her shoulder, held her hand. It felt cold, small.

‘Please.’

Eve sighed again, her eyes darting round the cellar, checking no one was listening. As she started to talk, Harry stopped noticing the falling bombs.

‘I … I had a child.’ Her voice sounded as small as her hand felt, but it was anything but cold. ‘A son. I wasn’t married. We were … I was too young. So I … I gave him up.’

Her voice wavered.

Harry didn’t know what to say. He stared at the light glinting off the necklace, at the smile of the shining, happy infant. Always there, always reminding her.

Eve held the letter out towards him. ‘Jennet fought for her son.’

Harry was out of his depth. If he couldn’t mend something with his bare hands he didn’t know what to do with it. But he wanted to help, wanted to say or do something that would give Eve some kind of peace.

‘I’m sure you did the right thing,’ he said, then castigated himself at the feebleness of his words.

Eve shook her head and continued. ‘It was selfish, what I did. I thought … I thought I couldn’t
cope …’ Her eyes glittered as she stared off into the past. ‘A nurse came and took him away from me. Straight away. I never saw him. Never even held him. They wouldn’t let me …’ Her voice trailed away.

Harry waited.

‘I tried to look for him, but they wouldn’t tell me where he was. Wouldn’t even tell me his name.’ She sighed. ‘So after a few years I … gave up. I gave up my own son. I let him go …’

Harry said nothing, just squeezed her hand.

‘You can’t let the past pull you under,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s easy to let that happen, to allow yourself to become a prisoner of it, but you have to keep moving forward, keep going.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is that … life is short and there’s too much to do now. People around you need you, and you have to … you have to be …’

Eve looked deep into his eyes and she wondered whether he had been talking about himself as much as about her. Whatever it was, his words made her recognise something in him that was also in her. She threw her arms round him, pulled him close. He responded.

And then one of the children screamed.

‘What have I told you? What?’

Eve turned quickly, Harry’s arms falling from her, and made her way across the cellar, the sloshing water round her ankles impeding her progress, drying her tears with the backs of her hands as she went. She found Fraser looking shamefaced, Jean before him.

‘What did I tell you?’ Jean continued. She pointed at a circular contraption on a shelf. ‘Leave things alone.’

‘Sorry, Miss,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to look through it …’

Fraser was holding an old zoetrope. Spin it round fast enough and the drawn figures inside it start to move. He had looked through it and seen
an angry face staring back at him from the other side. Jean’s.

‘Please replace it on the shelf, Miss Parkins.’

Eve took it from Fraser and returned it to the shelf. As she did so, she noticed a pile of old photographs next to it and picked them up. She undid the perished ribbon tying them together and, looking for something to take her mind off her earlier admission to Harry, began to look through them.

They depicted men and women dressed in what she assumed must have been their finest clothes, standing in formal, rigid poses, their features so unsmiling as to be almost angry. Under other circumstances she might have found them amusing. Eel Marsh House looked resplendent in all of them, solid and imposing, not the crumbling ruin it now was.

Then, in among them, folded up, she found another photograph. She opened it and felt a shiver of apprehension. It showed a mother and son standing in front of Eel Marsh House. The mother had her hand on the boy’s shoulder, and the boy’s hands were clasped together holding something.

The mother’s eyes had been scratched out.

But that wasn’t the only thing she found disturbing about the photograph. There was something familiar. Studying it further, she realised what it was. She had seen the picture before.

‘Harry …’

He came over to her. ‘What is it?’

She showed him the photograph. ‘Look familiar? I’ve seen this before …’

‘Where?’ he whispered.

Eve nodded her head slightly in Edward’s direction. He was sitting among the other children, but his stillness was holding him apart. His head was down, his attention focused on the picture in his lap.

‘There,’ she said, her voice as low as Harry’s. ‘Edward. The drawing he did, the one he won’t let go of. I thought it was of him and his mother, but it’s not.’

‘Edward and …’ He looked at her, shook his head. ‘Not … Jennet?’

They both looked over at Edward. The boy slowly raised his head. His eyes, dark and hooded, found hers. Eve felt a chill once more. Then a look of fear crossed over Edward’s face and he screwed his eyes tightly closed as if preparing for a painful blow.

‘Edward …’

A sharp, cold breeze rushed through the cellar, blowing out all the candles. In the sudden darkness, the children screamed.

‘It’s all right, children,’ said Jean, ‘no need to panic. It’s just a draught, that’s all.’

Eve felt Harry next to her. He was moving, fumbling for his lighter.

‘Remember where the matches are,’ came Jean’s voice. ‘Remember … remember which shelf you put them on.’

Eve heard the sounds of splashing water as the children moved around, accompanied by whimpering as they struggled to hold down their mounting hysteria. She heard hands scrabbling as they searched for the matches.

She thought of Jacob, the blind hermit from the village.
At least they’re safe
, she thought.
For now. At least she can’t get them if they can’t see her.

‘Miss,’ shouted Ruby. ‘I found some matches.’

Eve’s heart skipped a beat.

Ruby’s face was illuminated for a second, her shadow thrown against the back wall, as the match was struck, then quickly went out.

‘I’ll try again …’

Another ignition. This time, Eve saw Flora and Fraser standing next to her, their faces equally fearful, their three shadows cast against the wall. The match went out.

She tried again.

Edward
, thought Eve, and hurried towards him, Harry at her side.

‘Done it,’ shouted Flora, lighting a candle from the match.

‘Are we all here?’ asked Jean. ‘Good.’

They were all there. No one noticed the extra
shadow, peeling away from the furthest corner of the cellar, moving towards them.

The light went out again.

‘Ruby …’ Jean’s voice was fraught with tension. ‘Come on …’

Ruby managed to get her candle relit. Once established, Jean took it from her and moved round the room, relighting the others. The tension in the room dropped. Some of the children laughed nervously.

‘Stay close to us,’ Eve said to Edward, smiling and putting her arm round him.

But Edward just shrugged her off.

Eve tried again. ‘Please …’ Edward did the same thing. He didn’t want her to touch him. Eve shook her head in exasperation and stepped back from him.

All of the children were now returned to the light.

Except one.

Joyce, unseen by the others, stood apart from the group. She had been hurt by Mrs Hogg’s behaviour towards her, and even the sudden darkness hadn’t managed to dispel that. Now she turned her head, looked into a corner where the shadows had gathered. She kept staring at that corner, unmoving. She did not scream or cry out. Something undulating and slimy writhed round her ankles.
Her head was cocked on one side, as if she was listening. After a moment, hearing something no one else in the room could, she inclined her head in agreement. Slowly. Just once. Then she turned and, making as little noise as possible, as if whatever had been slithering round her ankles was now guiding her steps and cushioning her feet, walked towards the stairwell. She reached the foot of it, looked up.

Silhouetted against the doorway stood Jennet Humfrye.

She turned, walked away into the house.

Joyce, her features expressionless, her gait slow and measured, followed.

The noise of the planes overhead was deafening, the house shaking from the close proximity of the dropping bombs. But Joyce didn’t notice, didn’t even flinch. She walked into the children’s dormitory and over to her bed.

Jennet Humfrye stood in the corner behind Tom’s stripped bed, the tendrils of black mould on the walls behind her rippling and grasping. Her posture erect, a black veil obscuring her bone-white features, the creases like long black tears streaking her face. Her eyes black coals, lit by a malevolent, dancing fire.

On the bed opposite Joyce was the Mr Punch doll. Propped up against the pillow, it leered at her with its broken-toothed grin and scabbed, pustule-covered features.

Joyce paid no attention to either of them. She stopped by her bed and took her gas mask out of its case. Slowly, she unscrewed the filter and folded her wash cloth, pushing it inside, blocking the air passages.

She studied it, nodded. Pleased with her own handiwork.

Then pulled the mask over her head.

‘Where’s Joyce?’

Eve’s voice echoed round the cellar.

Harry looked anxious. Eve saw something start to bend and snap behind Jean’s eyes.

‘Come on, everyone, search the cellar.’

The walls shook, dislodged dust and rot which floated down from the ceiling, but no one paid it any mind. They were intent on finding Joyce. They looked all through the cellar, down the gaps between shelves, into crevices, round corners. The girl was nowhere.

‘She must have gone upstairs,’ said Jean, looking up at the ceiling, anger building in her voice.

The walls shook as a bomb landed close by.

‘We can’t let her do that,’ said Ruby, ‘we have to find her …’

Eve tried to work out where Joyce had been. Over by the wall, near the staircase, that was it. She crossed over to the exact spot. The wall behind
where Joyce had been standing was cracked, blackened. Eve’s heart skipped a beat. She looked round at Harry.

‘Jennet’s taken her …’

Ruby frowned. ‘Who’s Jennet?’

Eve started to run up the stairs, Harry behind her.

Down below, the children began to panic.

‘Everybody, stay where they are,’ said Jean in her most authoritative voice. ‘Everything is under control …’

But even she didn’t believe her own words.

Joyce was trying to breathe but there wasn’t enough air to fill her lungs.

She stood completely still, arms at her sides, breath rasping behind the gas mask’s rubber, sucking it tighter to her face with each breath she attempted to pull in. She took another breath, tried again. But it was no good. There just wasn’t enough air.

Joyce began to feel light-headed. As the bombs fell and exploded outside, she could see stars in front of her eyes. Her legs began to feel wobbly.

The eyeholes in the mask were becoming misty with her breathing. It was like her own personal fog. But through them she could just
about glimpse the darkly dressed woman standing before her, the leering Mr Punch on the bed. She felt them both egging her on, encouraging her, and she wanted to please them both, especially the woman. She had strict rules, Joyce could sense it. And Joyce knew it was very important to stick to these rules. To do what the woman told her. To be a good girl.

She tried, and failed, to breathe once more.

The noise was deafening. The walls were shaking, the bombs falling. Eve shouted for Joyce, but she knew the girl wouldn’t be able to hear her. She could barely hear herself.