I wonder at myself that Dell could see this at once, when all this time I couldn’t. But how could I when no one in the village does?
Then Dell frowned again. ‘You put your own words in your book,’ she said. ‘So why didn’t my mother write her own words to me?’
I saw then how impossible it would be for Dell to understand all the ways of the Hall, and it came to me with a sharp pang that I have travelled further than I ever meant to and left behind everything that was once precious to me.
I don’t know when I shall see the village again. The cottage where Walt and Janet raised me comes to me sometimes in dreams. More often I dream of the Hall, its dark places, and I must walk endlessly to find what’s lost, the passageways tilting so I crawl and cling to keep from tumbling backwards. And my neighbours turn away from me, cold and indifferent. I think often of cousin Annie who would have been my friend if I’d let her, and of Roland and Megan who will be an old married couple by now, but I haven’t yet dreamt of them. I dream the stern face of the Mistress. I dream of Brendan falling from the banisters into trees that sprout to meet him from the tiled floor. And one time I dreamt of Sarah, shedding light from one end of the top corridor to where I stood desolate at the other, and I woke weightless with joy, until I remembered where I was and what my life had come to.
I love Dell and Trevor, but I fear for myself out here among the scroungers. And I fear for my child. Meanwhile I gather wood for the fire and help Dell with the cooking. And I teach her the letters and the sounds they make, which she is quick to learn, being eager to understand this oddness of wild words found in patterns of ink, and longing to read for herself her mother’s only message.
Later I will teach her writing, which she has her own reason to learn. That torn page she said was her mother’s way of passing her the word. And I see now that for the scroungers a word isn’t a shape made of letters but something left at the O to be passed on to someone else – that this one has gone east, that one south, that another might be found hunting cattle in such a place or won’t be back before the first stirrings of spring – all these words to be stowed in Trevor’s head. With writing she can help him. Is this wrong? I am so far from the schoolroom and the study, and so accustomed to this strange book of mine, that my qualms slide away.
But not my fears. I fear that Brendan is dead. I fear that he is still alive and Sarah takes my place in the red room. I fear I shall be found and punished for his killing, that Sarah regrets putting herself in danger for my sake, that she hasn’t forgiven me, that she will never forgive me, trapped at the Hall to be maddened by the muttered longings and resentments of the village. I fear that Roland, when he remembers me, thinks only how glad he is that I am gone and he has Megan to love and comfort him.
I write too much about fear, and think about it uselessly. I mean anyway to write less, so that there might be ink when I have urgent need of it.
I’ve helped Sarah make ink and could do it myself if I were at the Hall. Here in the forest, I’ve taken Dell to search for the purple galls that swell sometimes on oak twigs and we’ve left our findings in a lidded pot to seep and grow mouldy. Among the ruins we’ve found shards of iron small enough to stir into the mix when it’s time. I’ve put aside a piece of cloth that may be fine enough for straining. There’s no lack of water. Sarah adds sloe juice, but says water alone will do. But what of the indigo that grows in the windowed shed beside the Hall and deepens the ink’s colour? And where will I find an acacia bush like the one that spreads its purple leaves against the south wall beside the study window and spills thick sap under the knife. I’m afraid my ink will come faint and watery from the nib, and fade to nothing, and my writing wasted, and my thoughts forgotten.
And besides, now that I have Dell as a friend, now that Dell knows about the book, now that the book is not my only friend, perhaps I can put it by and maybe not think about it so often and so fiercely. I will try at least.
Jason
Is it October yet? There’s no way of knowing. The day’s colour faded long ago from the sky, but it’s warm still, almost sultry. I’m tired, but too restless for bed. I sit on the front steps of the house and rest against a pillar. I push my hands against the stone and its texture speaks like Braille. I was here before you were born, the house says, and I’ll be here after you’re dead. And when I’m old I’ll shelter your offspring. Your descendants too will be nurtured here, will sit where you sit and see the cottages standing among trees across the empty road, the church tower breaking the skyline to the east where the woodland thickens, a drift of haze softening the edges of the moon.
I’m distracted by human voices. Below in the orchard Aleksy has said something to make Deirdre laugh. So that’s where they disappeared to after our spin in the Merc. I see them now. Their outlines shift and mingle in the shadows and their soft laughter joins the other noises – the bird cries and fox barks, the scurrying of badgers, the wingbeats of roosting pheasants.
How close you seem to me right now, Caro, Caroline, though forever out of reach.
The Merc is where we left it, down there tilting into the ditch among the weeds. That’s the last of our old life. Somewhere up in the house the monkey is bickering with Django’s clarinet, bubbles of noise floating from the high windows. There are footsteps behind me in the hallway and a rushing sound like wind blowing through the grass, but there is no wind.
Abigail speaks to me. ‘I brought you a jumper, look.’
‘I’m not cold.’
‘But you might be later.’
I turn and look up at her and see there’s a duvet over her shoulder, dragging on the flagstones.
‘Maud’s gone to bed. I don’t want to sleep in the house. Not tonight.’
She puts her hand out and helps me up. Then without letting go she draws me down the steps and towards the High Wood.
‘It’s Django’s stew,’ I say.
‘Yes, it’s Django’s stew, so we don’t have to think of another reason.’
‘Did you know he’d spiked the food?’
‘Spiked – is that what you call it? Because of those sharp-capped mushrooms? I should have known not to eat them. I was so eager for everything to be all right.’
‘What are we going to do about Django?’
‘He can’t hurt us if we don’t let him.’
‘He could have poisoned us.’
‘I’ll keep him out of the kitchen.’
‘He burnt my books.’
‘So that’s one thing he can never do to you again.’
‘I’m not sure that makes sense.’
‘Maybe it doesn’t. Ask me in the morning.’ She looks at me closely, her eyes fixed on mine, and starts to smile and looks away, because looking and smiling aren’t allowed at the same time.
I let her lead me in silence across the lawn and in among the trees until the house is obscured. Her headscarf snags on a twig and for a moment she’s tangled. I help her pull her hair free. Then she unhooks the scarf from the branch and pockets it. Where the trees are most ancient and the ground opens up, she throws the duvet down on a bank of leaves and we sit watching bright slivers of sky between trunks of beech and elder.
‘I want to tell you about Caroline.’
‘Tell me then.’
‘We were married for five years and we were going to have a child, a little girl. She was great, Caroline was, really great. She was always full of ideas. She lived in her head. It drove me up the wall sometimes. She’d lose something and not notice for days. It never bothered her. She was much cleverer than me, except about practical things. She didn’t tell me much about her childhood, only that she was lonely and read for company. I should have asked her more. But asking questions was more her thing than mine. She was an anthropologist. Do you know what that is?’