Touched Read online

  Rowena smiled at her, and the combination of Jennifer’s placidity and loveliness calmed her. Looking at her was like encountering a breathtaking countryside view; it soothed the soul. Rowena had never in her life seen such a beautiful child. How had she given birth to a girl who looked like an exquisitely wrought doll? She felt proud, though she knew that nature’s trickery was outside her hands. With the exception of poor Eva, the others were healthy and appealing, but not out of the ordinary. Jennifer Crale resembled a doctored photograph. She could be a young film star in Life magazine, with her rose-dusted cheeks, her row of pearly teeth with their endearing gap in the middle, her eyes so large and intensely blue it was almost difficult to land upon her gaze. Her lashes seemed to weigh her eyelids down, like the Victorian dolls that Eva treasured with their glaze of pink, their sooty slotted eyes and rosebud smiles.

  ‘What a pretty girl,’ the vicar’s wife had already said.

  ‘You insult her,’ said the verger. ‘The girl is quite beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rowena, who had heard it all before, but enjoyed it, always, anew, with the same sense of surprise and lack of entitlement. ‘Thank you.’

  Rowena now prodded the lamb and gagged slightly at the steam from the potatoes. She felt trapped in some stranger’s scullery, the stove an unsteady monster, old fly strips hanging just beyond her reach.

  ‘It’s too hot in here,’ she said to Jennifer. ‘Will you go and fetch the baby’s sunshade from her room?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jennifer. She hesitated. She picked up a spoon and stood there playing with it.

  ‘Don’t you like doing things for your baby sister?’ said Rowena. ‘You didn’t want to go up to fetch her from her nap earlier.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Jennifer. ‘Of course, Mummy. It’s just I get a bit lost on that side of the house. I – if I go upstairs.’

  ‘Darling! You’ve been there dozens of times when Granny lived there.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jennifer, then she gave her smile with its charming dimple, and went out into the garden and round on to the lane to enter number 3’s front door, the only way of accessing that side until the dividing wall was knocked down.

  It was ridiculous to cook a roast on a day like this, thought Rowena. They could have had a salad with ham or eggs, followed by a jelly, but Douglas expected his Sunday roast, even when the temperature must be in the nineties and she had only an oven that wobbled on its legs, rocking with each blow to the wall. She turned at a movement in the passage outside the kitchen, but it was merely the play of sun and shadow. The carrots were turning to mush, so she went to gather her children.

  The twins played in the garden with the baby, but her only son Bob was upstairs in number 3, the front cottage. She ran into that section and climbed the stairs, and felt momentarily sad at the top. She stood still. Bob was kneeling on the floor above the stubborn wall.

  He grinned up at her. His rusting golliwog bucket was half full of a crumbling brown substance. He was digging into the floor itself.

  ‘Bob!’ she cried. ‘Whatever are you doing?’ She snatched his beach spade. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Digging floor, Mummy! Look, I make a hole.’

  He spun round and kicked his heel against the hole, gouging up more rotting wood resembling earth.

  ‘Soon on the other side!’

  Rowena knelt down. ‘It’s revolting!’ she said to him. Tentatively, she pressed her finger where he had dug. It was soft and damp. The floorboards were decaying; the thumping below shook the whole building. A mildewed scent stuck to her finger, and as she rose, she again caught the perfume. It was familiar, but she couldn’t remember what it was. For the briefest flash of a moment, a face came to her, an old face crying, but it was her mind playing tricks, and she turned it off like a light switch.

  ‘I hear dem,’ said Bob conversationally. ‘I keeping worms in this!’ He was stirring the contents of his bucket with his spade. ‘I hear dem talk at sleep time,’ he said, almost chattering to himself. ‘Walk.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Bob?’ said Rowena mildly, but she wasn’t really concentrating; she leaned against a wall and closed her eyes as it juddered against her cheek. Where was Douglas? He had gone off to the pub for a half-pint – something he never did in London – with one of the new neighbours after church with some excuse about the village cricket team, and now he wouldn’t even be back to carve the joint. She pictured him striding in with his shirtsleeves rolled up as the joint congealed, wielding the carving knife as though he were caressing a woman. She felt sick.

  ‘Please,’ she called down weakly. ‘Leave the wall. Just while we have luncheon. Perhaps – perhaps you could start on the windows?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Crale,’ called back Arthur Pollard.

  Evangeline lay in her bathtub, watching bubbles cling to her thighs like little river insects, and wringing more mud out of her hair. The warmth of her tears spread pleasingly into the cold of the bathwater. She lay her head under the surface and dreamed, planning to hide potatoes from lunch in her petticoat pockets. She was happier up here, close to where her grandmother had slept, in her air, in her love. She climbed out.

  Arthur Pollard suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ said Evangeline, blushing, and for a moment she was pinned by indecision and stood in front of him in just her underwear.

  ‘Was going to wash me hands. I’ll be out of your way.’ His fair hair was further lightened with dust.

  She tossed her layers of muddied clothes into the washing basket and scampered out of the room, then went to collect a fresh gored petticoat and a chemise from her grandmother’s trunk that she kept in the bedroom she shared with the baby, and slipped into the kitchen where she ate a portion of lamb that had been saved for her, hiding half a dozen cold potatoes to eat later.

  Douglas Crale dozed in his chair after lunch, his shirt buttons undone, while the twins helped their mother clear up. Eva rocked the crying baby, as she was best at that and her mother bothered her less if she helped with little Caroline. A railway set had been laid out for Bob. Eva held the baby against her chest, the cotton of her frock bearing the faint yellow lines of long folding, and she chattered at her, letting her pull strands of her hair and kissing her with the edges of her teeth. Soon she had her asleep, and she slipped upstairs, leaving the others to their afternoon. Her age-faded clothes dipped into the shadows of the stairwell, and no one noticed her leave, because they were used to her disappearances and her dresses were the hue of shadowed walls and her hair the dullness of a mouse back.

  At the top of the stairs sat Pollard. He smelled of the carbolic soap Rowena had put in the bathroom for his use, and he had a packet of sandwiches in wax paper on his lap.

  ‘Want one?’ he said.

  Eva nodded.

  She took a bite and then another. ‘These are much nicer than ours,’ she said in her slow, low voice. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Sandwich Spread,’ he said thickly through his chewing, and handed her another one. She paused, then put it in her petticoat pocket and giggled.

  ‘Secret supply,’ he said in level tones, winking at her. He had a face like a grown-up elf’s, strong but fine-featured, she thought.

  She laughed, but quietly, so her mother wouldn’t hear her, and then smiled at him.

  ‘Secret supply,’ he said, still chewing, and she laughed again.

  ‘Pollard,’ she said. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘What’s she called?’ he said in matter-of-fact tones.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who.’

  Eva’s expression froze. She tried to think of other names, other people, but only one would come to her.

  ‘Jennifer,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘You like her?’

  ‘She’s my sister,’ said Evangeline. ‘Of course I do.’

  He nodded. ‘I ain’t ever seen anyone . . .’ His eyes crink
led, and focused on the distance.

  ‘Prettier,’ she said, to help him out.

  ‘Yes, that.’

  Eva shrugged. ‘I’m going now,’ she said.

  Pollard took no notice. ‘What school you lot going to go to come new term?’

  ‘It’s called . . . It’s called Rag-something Place.’

  ‘Who? You?’ he said in a tone of surprise.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ragdell Place. You aren’t touched enough to go there. Ragamuffins go there. Ones that can’t speak. Hooooo-ligans.’ His face and eyes were bright with amusement. ‘And the other ones?’

  ‘Mummy wants, terribly much wants, Jennifer and Rosemary to go to St Bede’s,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if they will, though. She thinks Jennifer might if she works hard enough all summer. Bob’s going to the primary school.’

  He nodded. ‘Bede’s’s only for the brains,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said coldly.

  ‘You can come and see me and my wife at my place,’ Pollard said. He stood up. He was taller than she would have expected, with a slightness despite his strength. His blue-grey eyes seemed to look into distance, like a sailor’s, and were deep set, among small sun wrinkles.

  ‘OK,’ said Eva, brightening.

  ‘Come tomorrow. After I’ve finished my morning work here. Wife’ll give you a big fat custard tart.’

  Eva grinned at him.

  She went back to her grandmother’s trunk. Evangeline Crale was written on it. She, among four girls, had been named after her grandmother, and her grandmother was her beloved. Her life blood. Her real mother. The kindest old woman in the world, and her parents had thought it fair to send her away so they could take over her cottage. So they could steal her only home, join it to the one next door they had already bought, laying their plans long ago. It was thieving. Terrible theft.

  ‘She is simply too old, darling,’ Rowena had said when the plan was first revealed. ‘She needs care now. She needs to be looked after, don’t you see?’

  ‘But not by a friend. She needs her family,’ said Eva, almost screaming. ‘Us.’

  ‘There’s not room. She will be—’

  ‘Not room in her own house?’ shrieked Eva.

  Rowena was quiet for a few seconds.

  ‘Granny needs looking after,’ she said patiently.

  ‘Grandmamma,’ snapped Evangeline.

  ‘Yes, yes, Granny, Grandmamma. Lois has offered her a home. Lois has no children, and she’s experienced with older people. She’s family, almost.’

  ‘Lois is her goddaughter,’ said Eva, this time in a hiss. She had a level, husky voice, her emphases oddly placed. ‘She runs a boarding house. She won’t look after her. It’s in Scotland. It’s too too far away. We’ll never never see her again.’ And she began crying, hysterically, her mouth and nose dripping over the top of the clothes her grandmother had given her.

  Eva now plunged her face in the depths of the trunk in her search for her grandmother’s youth, lifting just the corner of the bottom layers, which she would never take out, because then she would lose the smell of her beloved grandmother, squander it to the air, trample on her as her family had. The top layers were her clothes, her daily wear, but there were tightly folded items at the bottom she would never never sully.

  2

  POLLARD THE BUILDER was peering round the bend on the narrow staircase that led into the sitting room of number 2. Bob was making chugging noises with his cheeks puffed out as he pushed his toy train around its tracks, and there was Jennifer bending over him building a bridge. Even in the sun-deprived room of that stunted cottage shaded by ilexes, the blue of her eyes was steel-bright against her lashes and her curved dark brows. A dimple hovered on one cheek when she smiled; the gap in her teeth seemed to channel the beam of her delight, her features almost discomfitingly perfectly arranged. That small straight bridge of a nose, lightly freckle-strewn. The calmness of the rosebud mouth when closed. The complete tranquillity of her being that broke into bubbles of delight.

  ‘What are you doing, Mr Pollard?’ said Eva.

  ‘Watching ’em play,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it’s you I’ve invited to my house tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, Pollard. Can I invite Freddie? He’s my friend.’

  Pollard nodded in assent.

  ‘You can’t see him. Apparently he’s imaginary.’

  ‘That’s as may be. Come in my lunch break for that big fat pie the missus is going to make you, and I can toddle back over for half an hour as well. Brinden, the house is called. Out across fields behind the stream. Or you can go round Beeck Lane and through the spinney, top of the village.’

  She nodded. ‘I know my way round already.’

  Rowena stood in the kitchen when the dishes were cleared and sipped a sherry. A small figure flitted past the door and she looked up, expecting to see Bobby, but it was nothing, and she realised that the alcohol went to her head too quickly in the heat. Through the ilex, the rhododendron and laurel, she could catch a pale grey glimpse of the Big House, as she had heard it called.

  Douglas’s snuffles and sleepy starts sounded from the sitting room to a backdrop of canary chatter, and the baby had begun to cry from the path outside. Looking vaguely round for Evangeline, Rowena ignored the clamour, just for a quarter of an hour more, mentally blocking it out. She could barely believe that this house was hers, with all its low-ceilinged prettiness, its curving plaster, its nooks and cupboards and little passages. It was as though she would now be a proper woman, a grown-up wife and mistress of a lovely house at last, and not the play-acting imposter she sometimes felt herself to be. Numbers 2 and 3 The Farings were postcard cottages, age-softened and settled, with their deep-set windows and boxes of geraniums, their uneven floors and cool pantries, their small gardens tangles of mature flowers and shrubbery. The modern house in London had contained no soul, and little opportunity for her decorating dreams; The Farings, by contrast, possessed so much character, she found it hard to believe there weren’t other people there. That was why she was faintly nervy, she realised, imagining movement in other rooms, because it simply didn’t seem as though it was theirs yet.

  She stood up straight and looked out at the garden. She was still sore from Caroline’s birth; she bled all these weeks later, and she was using ingenuity to avoid Douglas, who was clearly becoming restless. She must, must lose the pregnancy weight by the end of the summer to be as trim as she had been previously despite all those babies. (‘Body of a maiden,’ her mother-in-law had commented after Bob’s birth. It was Caroline who had tipped her.) She crept into the sitting room to avoid the grizzling, and braced herself for what she might see.

  Pollard had left, finally, but the wall still seemed hunched like some wounded animal that was catching its breath. On the side where the old Mrs Crale had lived, it was covered in wallpaper, and the stains over there showed more clearly than on the paint and plaster of this side, where yellow maps with furring brown borders spread over the corner between wall and ceiling. The craters that Pollard and his men had made showed live white patches of spores or mildew clinging to brick. Horsehair hung in patches over the wallpaper with its twining trellis and bird design, birds’ heads and tails cut off, as though shot, where the builders had gone through to the brick. Others were caught mid-flight by hammer blows, their poor wings blasted, cuffs and ruffs of broken paper round their necks.

  Rowena held her breath. The smell: was it cat? Rat? Worse? Animal urine seemed to merge with mould. The children had all complained. Douglas had sworn he would work Pollard harder. Rowena, in her hormonal state, her breasts still full of milk, gagged. She was feeding this one herself, as she never had the others, and she felt like a nauseated cow. Even cigarettes tasted off.

  More disturbingly, as she breathed through her mouth, there was a drift of perfume over the mould, that same taste of women’s scent settling on her tongue. It nagged at her. She almost knew what it was. The cryi
ng wrinkled features flashed at her. A whiff of rot or animal hit her in the back of the throat and she forgot about it, rushing to the kitchen for water.

  She had such plans for this house, she thought, as she steadied herself at the sink. She had spent weeks and weeks in London, first pregnant, then cow-feeding the baby, looking at Homemaker and Modern Woman and books from the library containing designs she could never previously have afforded but just might be able to copy with the move out of London. It had felt like an obsession. Except for the wall between the cottages, number 2 was in a reasonable state to do up, but she wondered whether number 3 was rotting. It gave her a pang of worry that she dismissed by fetching elderflower cordial for the family.

  Fronting the green, right in the centre of the small village, stood the most desirable cottages, number 3 The Farings at the end of a small row. Evangeline slipped from the cottage across the lane and on to the grass, and neighbours watched her. She had a small-chinned face that widened at the cheeks and brow like a blunt cat’s, and eyes in which hazel muddied grey, their distance lending her a dreaming, abstracted look. Front doors were left open in the heat; men leaned against fences and smoked pipes; women rocked babies in gardens. Some of them stared openly at the sepia flickering of this strange girl in the glare; a few made disparaging comments; the wife of the milkman crossed herself.

  ‘Freddie, Freddie,’ Eva murmured, looking down, as though to a small child.

  ‘She’s talking to herself. How does her mother allow that child to look such a sight?’ said Lana Dangerfield, descending from her husband Gregory’s MGB, the magnificent little sports car that had been his present to himself when he had been made manager of the power station.

  Gregory barked with laughter. ‘Good for her,’ he said, and he glanced at the windows of number 3 The Farings, but there were only dark small panes, the house seeming silent and sunken. Rowena Crale was absent, but voices wound down the path from number 2.

  Lana Dangerfield stiffened. ‘I don’t find it amusing,’ she said. ‘The girl looks half crazed.’