I cleared a space for my laptop on Lucy’s desk. I’d avoided her study up to that point, unable to face making sense of her paperwork. God only knows how she ever found anything. As
far as I could see, her filing system amounted to little more than throwing everything on the desk, which was covered with papers and books and bills. I had to push them into a tottering pile to
make room for my computer.
While I waited for it to boot up, I looked down at the back yards below. Sophie had gone back to her mother’s, I knew, and Drew was out. I’d knocked on his door as I passed on my way
home, to suggest a Friday-night drink, but there had been no answer. I wondered where he was.
Not that I cared. I was leaving soon anyway.
Drew’s garden was hidden by the extension, but I could see into the yard that matched Lucy’s on the other side. The neighbours there had evidently decided to make the most of the
unexpected warmth and were celebrating the weekend with a barbecue with friends. Someone was telling a funny story, but I couldn’t catch any details. There would be a great whoop of laughter
and, just when it was tailing off, the storyteller would say something else and they’d be off again, until they were breathless and gasping with it.
I smiled, but maybe I was feeling a little wistful. It felt like a long time since I had laughed like that, laughed until my stomach hurt. Nobody likes to admit that they’re lonely. There
seems to be something shameful about it, although I know that’s stupid. I’d always prided myself on my independence, but that evening, yes, I was lonely, and I thought about Hawise and
how much she had missed her friend Elizabeth.
The computer screen was glowing expectantly. Pushing Hawise from my head, I clicked to bring up a new document and typed
Past Continuous
. Then I stopped to twist up my hair and fasten
it with a clip. Down below, the laughter was getting more hysterical. It was starting to get on my nerves.
Setting my fingers back on the keyboard, I wrote:
Uses of the past continuous. 1: An ongoing action interrupted by a single event. E.g. What
were you doing
when you heard about . .
. ?
Disasters were good to practise that exercise: 9/11, earthquakes, Princess Di’s sudden death – any number of terrible events burnt into the collective memory.
I was walking back to the room when the tsunami struck.
I typed instead:
I was watching television when the telephone rang.
I couldn’t concentrate. There were no apples in sight, but the odour of a wet autumn orchard clung to the inside of my nostrils. In spite of the heat, the air was taut. I kept thinking of
a bow being drawn back, of gut and muscle quivering with strain. I looked over my shoulder. The room was empty.
Of course it was.
I forced my eyes to focus on the screen.
2: Action interrupted by specific time. E.g. This time last year I was working in Jakarta.
On Christmas Day I was digging on the beach with Lucas.
It was very close. I wiped the sweat from the back of my neck.
3: Parallel actions
, I typed.
Two actions in the past happening at the same time. E.g.
I stopped. I couldn’t think of a sensible example.
While I was holding onto the rail, Lucas was drowning.
I could feel the room crowding in behind me. I didn’t want to look round again. I knew there was nothing there, but still I found myself holding my breath.
Music thumped from an open window further along the street, and in the distance a siren whooped and wailed a warning.
‘
Bess
. . . ’
The name rippled out of nowhere, brushing against my cheek like a breath, and I sucked in a scream as I swung round, dislodging a file and sending a whole sheaf of papers cascading to the
floor.
Of course there was no one there.
My heart was knocking painfully against my ribs as I turned back to the table, and I nearly screamed again when I saw what had been lurking under the file I knocked aside.
An apple squatted there like a malign slug, fat and soggy and suppurating with mould. It was the kind of apple you find in the long grass under a tree, its crisp outline sagging as its skin
puckers and browns and it rots from within. I stared at it, my breath coming in staccato puffs, my mouth open to avoid breathing in its putrid stench. There was something malevolent about it, a
wrongness that made the air around it thicken and waver.
The apples I’d found around the house had been creepy, but this . . . this was something else. I couldn’t bear to pick it up. I had to find a dustpan and brush in order to carry it
down to the wheelie bin in the front garden. I didn’t know what else to do, and at least then it would be out of the house. Gagging with revulsion, I threw it in and let the lid smack back
into place.
My hands were shaking as I made my way back to Lucy’s desk. In the garden below the funny story had finally come to an end, but the party was still going strong. Glasses were being
refilled, jokes told. I watched them for a while, longing to be able to join them. I could tell them how frightened I’d been by an apple, and we would all laugh together.
Beyond the back yards and rooftops the clouds were massing ominously, but the air was still warm with the scents of summer. They must have finished the barbecue, because all I could smell was
long grass, dusty tracks and the drowsy sweetness of newly mown hay.
Which was odd, because it was only May.
The computer was thrumming quietly on the edge of the desk. Its screensaver turned endlessly, serenely, mocking my jitters, but the air was still snapping and trembling about me, and when I
turned back to clear the papers, I saw the stain where the apple had sat on a sheet of scrawled notes and I shuddered.
Snatching up the paper, I scrumpled it up and was about to throw it in the wastepaper basket when something made me stop and unfold it slowly. I stared down at Lucy’s writing, black and
loopy and almost illegible. Between all the heavy underlinings and arrows and question marks, I made out a couple of dates – 1577 and 1583 – and a scribble that looked as if it might be
‘Bess’. But there was no mistaking one word. There, circled in the middle of the page, Lucy had printed in capitals: HAWISE.
Gnawing my thumb, I sat and stared at the name until it shimmered in front of my eyes.
I am waiting for Francis and nibbling at my thumb. I do this when I am nervous, even though Mistress Beckwith scolds me for it. Thinking of my mistress, I drop my hand. For
years she has been telling me not to fidget or laugh too loudly or ask too many questions. I must be quiet and modest and discreet, she tells me. I wish now that I had heeded her advice. Then I
wouldn’t be standing in this orchard, wondering what I am going to say to Francis.
Well, it is too late for that. I straighten my shoulders. I wasn’t modest and I wasn’t discreet, and now I must deal with the consequences. At least, I think, my betrothal is an
excuse not to meet Francis any more, but I need to tell him myself. I owe him that. He will hear about it in the street otherwise, and that would be unfair to him.
I don’t want to see him again, but I don’t want to hurt him. All he has done is not be the man I wanted him to be. That is not his fault – it is mine.
The long grass is wet after all the rain, and the guards on my skirt are already sodden. It is not actually raining now, but I am standing in the meagre shelter of the apple tree and the air is
so damp that moisture clings to my face.
‘Good day, my lady,’ Francis says when he arrives, and he bows with the flourish that so delighted me the first time I saw it. Now I can’t help thinking that it looks faintly
ridiculous. I am not a queen, after all. I am not even a lady. I am just a foolish maid who forgot everything her mistress taught her.
‘Good day to you, Francis.’ I smile nervously. He is so intense that he smothers what little lightness there is in the air, and when he seizes my hands I pull them away
instinctively.
He barely seems to notice. ‘I have bought you a gift, Hawise. Look!’ From his pocket he pulls a pair of silk gloves, embroidered with tiny flowers and bees. A lover’s gift.
I moisten my lips. ‘They are very fine, Francis, but I cannot accept them.’
‘Oh, why so shy?’ He smiles, pressing the gloves into my hand even as I push them back at him. ‘They are a token of my love for you.’
‘No, Francis. Stop!’
He doesn’t like that. His brow darkens. ‘I want you to have them,’ he says, sounding like a petulant child.
‘I can’t,’ I say, and something in his face makes me take a step back. ‘I only came today because there is something I must tell you.’ I draw a breath. ‘I am
betrothed.’
He laughs at that. ‘Impossible!’
‘It’s true. I’m sorry, Francis, I didn’t know . . . ’ I trail off at the expression in his eyes. ‘Last night was the first I’d heard of it.’
‘Why didn’t you say that you were promised to me?’ He is standing there, staring at me, while he twists the gloves tighter and tighter and tighter in his hands.
He had never even mentioned love. Two brief kisses . . . How could he even think of it? ‘I’m not. I never made you a promise, Francis. You know that.’
Francis tosses the poor mangled gloves aside and grabs my hands again. ‘Promise me now,’ he says, his voice throbbing with urgency.
‘Francis, I can’t.’ I thought it would be a courtesy to tell him about my betrothal, but now I am wishing I hadn’t come. With some difficulty I tug my fingers from his.
‘I would lose the goodwill of my family and friends.’
‘Do they mean more to you than I do?’
He asks it almost jovially, as if confident that I will say no. I stare at him uneasily. It is as if he has been in a different orchard, a different world, those times we met. Doesn’t he
remember the stiffness of the conversation, the awkwardness of our kisses? There were no promises, no words of love.
His green eyes glitter with delusion and I am afraid. He is not rational.
‘My master and mistress have been good to me,’ I say carefully.
Francis brushes that aside. ‘They love you. They would forgive you.’
‘It would shame them.’ I pause, wondering how to make him understand. ‘Mr Hilliard is a wealthy merchant, a member of the guild. The match reflects well on the Beckwiths. I
would not have such an opportunity if it were not for them. They are well pleased, as is my father.’
As well he might be, I reflect with some bitterness. It seems that Ned Hilliard is prepared to take me even without a portion, and my father is rubbing his hands in the expectation of having all
his debts paid so that he can gamble some more. Everyone is delighted at the betrothal.
Everyone except me. But nobody asks me what I want. Nobody thinks what it is like for me to find myself betrothed to a man almost twice my age.
It seems I have explained too well. Francis’s expression has turned ugly. ‘A wealthy merchant!’ He spits out the words. ‘I see. So I am not good enough for you in
fact?’
‘Francis . . . ’ I feel helpless. ‘This is the way of the world. You, of all people, must know how things are.’
He pounces on that. ‘I, of all people? What do you mean by that?’
‘You told me that you have to make your own way in the world. You are dependent on pleasing your master. You said that you have little money.’
‘Now I have none, but it won’t always be that way, Hawise. My master is sick.’ Francis’s face lights up with an eagerness that makes me recoil. ‘I have completed my
apprenticeship. He has promised me his house and his goods when he dies, and it cannot be long. I will see to it. Will I be good enough for you then?’
I will see to it
.
I am horrified. More than ever I think there is something wrong about Francis’s eyes. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference,’ I manage through numb lips.
‘It would be enough. And the Beckwiths are kind to you.’ Francis is pacing through the long grass. ‘Everyone says you are their pet. You will inherit everything from them. We
will have plenty of money then.’
‘I, inherit?’ My horror turns to astonishment. ‘Who told you that? The Beckwiths have married daughters of their own. They have grandchildren. There will be no money for me,
and nor should there be. Already I owe them more than I can say. No, Francis,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I have nothing save a father burdened with debts. I cannot whistle a wealthy
merchant down the wind,’ I add bitterly. ‘I had no choice, Francis. I had to agree.’
It was done. I had made my promise in front of witnesses, and when Ned Hilliard touched his mouth to mine, his lips were cool and firm. It cannot be undone now.
‘But you love
me
!’ Francis swings round aggressively, and his words beat at me like staves, but I stand firm. I am shaking inside, but I lift my chin and look him straight
in the eyes.
‘No, Francis, I don’t.’
‘You kissed me,’ he reminds me, advancing on me, and I back away until I am pressed right up against the apple tree. I can feel the roughness of the bark, the dampness of the
green-grey lichen, the squelchiness of the rotting apple I stepped in. The smell of it fills my nostrils, mingling with the odour of wet grass and the high, rank nettles that clog the orchard. I
remember how eagerly I once hurried to this place, and I marvel at myself.
‘I . . . I’m sorry,’ I stutter.
‘You kissed me,’ Francis says again, his eyes blank and green. ‘You led me on. You little whore!’
‘Francis!’ I am so shocked I don’t know what to say.
He keeps on coming, and I can see the spittle at the corners of his red mouth. ‘You thought to make a fool of me, did you?’
‘No!’
‘You were just amusing yourself with me before you got married to your fat merchant, hmm?’
‘I didn’t know about Ned until yesterday,’ I protest, but that only inflames Francis further.
‘Oh, it’s Ned now, is it? It was Mr Hilliard before, but perhaps you have remembered now that he has rutted with you? What did it cost him? More than the price of a pair of gloves, I
warrant!’