The Woman in Black (9 page)

Jean drained her cup, stood up. ‘Goodnight, Eve.’

Eve’s mouth fell open. That was the first time her headmistress had called her by her first name.

She was so startled, she could barely say goodnight in reply.

Edward couldn’t sleep. He had closed his eyes tight, and lay as unmoving as he could in his bed, but it was no good. He was still awake, his thumb firmly in his mouth, Mr Punch clutched close to his chest. He knew the rest of the children were talking about him, and while it didn’t help, that wasn’t the only thing keeping him awake.

He heard Tom tell Fraser that he thought Edward had seen a ghost when he was locked in the nursery. This excited Fraser, who was so full of questions and wild speculation that Edward, listening to it, knew he would never get any sleep tonight.

He sat up, put his glasses on and looked round the dormitory. A few candles were still burning, the only illumination in the room. Tom and Fraser were lying in their adjacent beds, whispering to each
other. They saw Edward was awake. Fraser stared at him, open-mouthed. Tom just looked straight at him.

‘Didn’t you?’ Tom said, knowing Edward had heard everything they had said. ‘You saw a ghost, didn’t you, Edward?’

Edward made no reply.

‘Was it your mummy?’ asked Fraser, and Flora, listening in, winced at the small boy’s insensitivity.

‘Leave him alone,’ she said.

Tom turned on her. ‘Say what I like. He’s not your boyfriend, is he?’

‘Be quiet.’ Joyce spoke in her usual schoolteacher-in-training voice. ‘I shall tell Mrs Hogg about this. About all of you.’

Alfie pulled the blankets over his head, and curled himself up. ‘I just want to go to sleep,’ he said, his voice muffled and tired.

Edward turned away from all of them and put his hands over his ears. He had to block them out. Block everything out.

He stared at the wall.

And a hideous face appeared right in front of him.

Edward jerked back, panicked and fell out of bed. He risked looking up at the grotesque face, flinching, hiding his eyes with his fingers in case it
was going to scare him again. He saw it for what it really was. Tom wearing his gas mask.

‘Got you,’ the boy said, taking it off and throwing it aside. Laughing, he walked back to his bed.

Edward pulled himself slowly up off the floor and, ashamed and embarrassed, climbed back into bed. He clutched Mr Punch even tighter.

Tom was clearly enjoying the anguish he had caused Edward, but it wasn’t enough. He knew that the rest of the children’s sympathies didn’t lie with him, but he was still determined to provoke more of a reaction.

Tom held up Edward’s drawing and waved it at him. Then he made a show of folding it up, putting it in his pyjama pocket, patting it. Edward felt distressed beyond words.

‘Give it back.’

The whole group sat up to see what was happening. James was standing at the foot of Tom’s bed, hands on hips.

‘I said, give it back to Edward.’

Tom stared at him in amazement. This was the first time James had stood up to him. The first time anyone in the group had done so. And from the look on James’s face, he wasn’t going to back down. Not without a fight.

Tom threw back his bedclothes and squared up
to him. But the fight didn’t get started, because at that moment, outside the window, they heard a rumbling drone. They knew immediately what it was. Months of air raids on London had told them that.

The fight forgotten, they all got out of their beds and rushed over to the windows, jostling each other for the clearest view, cupping their eyes to see better.

In the distance, out in the winter sky above the sea, was a squadron of Halifax bombers making its way home.

‘It’s a raid!’ screamed Fraser.

‘They’re English, idiot,’ said Alfie.

The little boy looked round, embarrassed. ‘I knew that,’ he said.

Joyce shushed them, pointed. ‘Look.’

One of the bombers was on fire. It started to fall away from the rest of the group. The children all stared, enrapt, whispering prayers, words of encouragement, willing it to stay aloft.

None of them noticed as, behind the candles’ pale and flickering light, one shadow detached itself from the rest and moved towards the children. Dressed in black, her face bleached-bone white, she came and stood behind them. While they looked at the plane, she looked at them, her coal-black eyes
dancing with undisguised malevolence. Looking along the line, choosing …

‘What on earth is going on here?’

Jean stood in the doorway, about to admonish the children further, but when she saw what they were looking at, came to join them.

Unseen, the dark figure with the bleached-bone face receded into the shadows.

In the sky, the plane could no longer keep up. The fire had spread all along its fuselage and consumed one wing. It began to fall, flames enveloping it even further. They all watched as it spiralled down into the sea. When it hit the surface of the water, it was so far away it barely made a sound.

The rest of the squadron passed over and the night was quiet again. The sea calm now, as if nothing had ever disturbed its surface. But they were all still staring, looking at the empty sky, trying to take in what they had just seen. Even Jean.

In her room, Eve had also watched it happen. But she had closed her eyes before the plane hit the water. She clutched the cherub pendant tight to her throat.

‘Please let it not be Harry …’

His mother was smiling and she was wearing her best coat. The black one. She was calling to him, and Edward, his heart bursting with joy to see her again, was running as fast as he could towards her.

Everything had been a dream, he thought as he ran. The air raid, the explosion, the house, the nursery … everything. This was real. This was happening.

He kept running, almost reaching her, almost there. But every time he came close to her, she seemed to move further away. Always distant, always out of touch, calling to him but knowing he could never reach her. Then at last he began to make some headway. He could have cried out in joy, laughed aloud. He was going to hold his mother again. Soon. Now.

Only it wasn’t his mother any more. She had changed. She was still wearing black but it wasn’t his mother’s good coat. Her clothes were old, shabby. And she wore something over her face – a veil? It didn’t hide the face beneath. He could see her white skin stretched tight so it looked like dead, weathered bone; her eyes, black and hard, glittering with spite and malice. And he was running towards her.

He tried to make himself stop, force his feet to slow down, but his pace only increased, his legs pumping faster. He shook his head, tried to cry out, but his voice wouldn’t work.
This is the dream
, he thought.
Not before. Please let me wake up, please
 …

Edward sat bolt upright, his chest bursting from dream-exertion, sweat on his brow. He opened his eyes. The room was in darkness, the candles having long burned down. Everything was a blur as he hadn’t yet put his glasses on, but he could see enough to know that the others were sound asleep.

He reached for his glasses on the bedside table but in doing so knocked them to the floor. Leaning out of bed, he groped around but couldn’t seem to reach them. Behind him he heard the sound of something cracking, shifting. Crumbling.

He sat up, looked round. The only thing behind him was the wall. Was the wall cracking? He
squinted, tried to see. All he could make out were vague shapes moving against the shadows.

Then one of the shadows began to make its way towards him. As it did so, the sound of cracking was replaced by another sound. Slithering, susurrating. The shadow was moving fast, becoming bigger and bigger, looming towards him. There was an awful stench of decay and rot. It made him feel instantly nauseous.

Terrified, he pulled the blankets over his head and lay down as quickly as he could. Mr Punch was under the covers with him, and he pulled the puppet against his chest, felt his hard, wooden nose and cheek push into him.

He held tight to the blanket, not daring to move, barely breathing, willing himself to be weightless and invisible. Tried to do what his mother used to tell him, think good thoughts to drive the bad dreams away. Hoped that it would work on whatever or whoever was there.

Then something tried to pull the blanket off him.

Edward gripped it, as hard as he could, but the presence fought back. Determined not to give in, Edward used all of his strength just to hold on.

The blanket went slack in Edward’s hands. He heard the slithering and rustling noise again, retreating this time. The awful smell began to
dissipate. He stayed still, listening. Eventually, he heard nothing but his own breathing.

Edward trembled, forced back his cries in case the shadow heard him. He kept his eyes tight shut, willed himself to fall asleep once more, go back to his dream. The good part, with his mother. One hand clutched Mr Punch to his chest; the fingers of the other were stuffed in his mouth to stifle any screams.

He lay like that for the rest of the night

The woman with the bleached-bone face turned away from the foetal Edward and scanned the dormitory, settling her attention on Tom. As she did so, the atmosphere in the room changed, crackling now with a palpable malice.

Tom sat up in bed and blinked. Once. Twice. His eyes were open but his expression was blank. He threw the covers back, got out of bed. Still in his pyjamas and with bare feet, he made his way out of the room.

He reached the front door, waited. The door swung slowly open for him.

Outside, the snow was still falling. The wind blew flurries through the door, the cold flakes hitting Tom’s face like icy needles. He didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink, but turned away from the snow, ready to move back inside the house.

The woman stood behind him, preventing his return. He paused and looked at her, nodded. He understood. Then, barefoot, he stepped out into the freezing cold night.

The door gently closing behind him.

Edward was exhausted. He didn’t feel like he had been asleep, but he had, and judging from all the activity in the room around him, he was the last one awake.

He found his glasses on the floor, put them on. His two teachers were moving round the room, checking under beds, in cupboards, turning to each other and shaking their heads. He could sense their tension. The rest of the children were up and moving about too, their expressions grim. Realising that something serious was going on, Edward decided he had better get up and join them.

As he did so, he noticed something poking out from underneath his pillow. He pulled it out. It was the drawing Tom had stolen from him. The woman and the boy. He looked round, hoping to see who
had put it there. James, probably, or Joyce. But no one acknowledged him finding it. No one acknowledged him at all.

He looked round again. Where was Tom?

In the hallway, Jean walked towards the front door and turned the handle. It opened.

She gave an accusatory stare at Eve, who was standing behind her. Eve’s eyes widened in shock.

‘But I locked it …’

She hurried over to join Jean at the door. Around the handle and the lock the wood was dark and discoloured, rot and decay setting in. She was aware that all the children had left the dormitory and were watching them. ‘Everybody, please stay inside,’ she said as she and Jean went to get their coats.

They still wore their nightgowns underneath, and Eve felt the cold on her legs and hands. The ground was covered in icy, slushy snow.

Eve began searching in front of the house. She could see the causeway stretching across to the mainland, the water becalmed for now. She looked down at the ground and saw footprints leading away from the front door. They led to the barbed wire on the edge of the island.

She ran towards it. Saw something tangled up in it. Tom.

His body was twisted, caught at an unnatural
angle, as if he had been determined to push himself through and escape, but the razor-sharp coils had caught him and held him back. His lips were blue. The blood from the barbed-wire cuts and slashes had formed on his body as ruby-red teardrops of ice.

He had frozen to death.

Eve looked at the seven small faces staring up at her, their features full of shock and sadness. They wanted answers, explanations and reassurance, but Eve had none to give.
Explaining the war is easy compared to this
, she thought,
because I don’t understand myself what’s happened.

Jean and Eve had gathered the children in their dormitory. Jean had started talking to them, trying to explain what had happened to Tom. It was a long, rambling speech, with very little of her usual clipped, no-nonsense tones. Eve thought she seemed to be struggling to find answers herself and that if she kept talking long enough, those answers would come to her.

‘I know you’ve all … all lost someone or know of someone who has lost someone in the Blitz …’ She struggled to keep her attention away from
Edward, not to single the boy out. ‘And … and … you get used to it. But you shouldn’t have to … you shouldn’t have to, it’s …’ She turned away from them, took a few seconds, composed herself. ‘This, this is different. Here, in this house, on this island, is different, but just as dangerous.’ Another deep breath. She cleared her throat, smoothed down the front of her unwrinkled blouse. ‘Last night was a … a terrible accident. Terrible … And you must understand that, that … out in the countryside, here, there is still danger.’

Out of the corner of her eye Eve noticed a patch of mould on the wall behind Tom’s bed. It seemed to be moving, pulsating. Growing. She looked at it full on. No, it wasn’t moving, but she was certain it hadn’t been there before.

Jean was still talking. ‘You must … must obey the rules. Yes. Obey the rules. That’s … that’s how we survive. That’s how we … get through things. Yes. Obey the rules. I … I cannot stress that enough.’

There was an abrupt clatter from the hallway. The children, jumpy now, all turned to see what it was. The front door had been thrown back and Jim Rhodes was carrying Tom’s blanket-wrapped body through the house, ready to take him off the island.