We made our way up the sunlit side of the ruin. She bobbed along by my shoulder. ‘What it is, it’s the Exeat coming up, you see, Mrs Parr.’
‘The what?’
‘Exeat. That he she, it may go out. It’s Latin. We get two a term and they’re long weekends. One in October, one in November.’
Of course. They’d been returning to school when one such flood came.
‘Anyway,’ she went on. ‘Mummy’s in the Laurels. I never know when she’s going in, or when she’s coming out. Daddy says I’m not to worry, and so does Mrs Dennis. I’m not worried because it always does her good. Anyway, Mummy’s in the Laurels and Dad’s in Ulster, you see.’
We came to a stop. She was looking up at me, waiting, her hand shielding her eyes from the weak yellow sunlight. I searched for a way to go on.
‘I’m sure that’s right, Penny. There’s absolutely no cause to worry.’ We turned around and began to walk back up towards the gate. ‘Can’t you go away with a friend?’
‘I haven’t got any friends. Do you know what the girls do at the weekends? When everyone gets bored? They take turns imitating me coming into the house sitting room. They open the door really slowly, and then they put their nose round, then their eyes, then their whole head, and shoulders and so on, and by that time everyone’s screaming with laughter. I know I’m a bit shy, but I do not come into the sitting room like that.’
How shamelessly vile they were. How valiant she was, with her mackintosh belt so correctly fastened. Some girls loosened their belts, let them fall behind in nonchalant dangling. But hers was buckled neatly and tightly round her waist. They probably teased her for that, too. I stepped forward so that I didn’t have to look at her, and found myself on the verge of stepping into a shallow rectilinear trough, now filled with rainwater that reflected the sky. It was the floor of William’s shed. I stood motionless as the brick walls rose again, along with the stacks of clay flowerpots, greened and lichened and teetering. Pain flared in my lower back, as brief as summer lightning.
‘I’m so sorry about Mummy. But I can’t have you, Penny.’ I pushed out the words with enormous difficulty, as if I were trying to speak in a dream. ‘I’m afraid I’m busy.’
‘Oh.’
I turned to look at her. Her eyes were caught in the low sun, wet with tears.
‘It won’t be so bad, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I expect the meanest girls are going home. And Mrs Dennis looks after us. On Saturday afternoon she takes us to the cinema.’ She wiped her nose. ‘Somebody said we go for a Chinese takeaway afterwards. But I don’t know if that’s true.’
‘Well,’ I forced my hands into my pockets. ‘I hope it is. I expect you like Chinese food.’
‘Yes.’ She shifted her feet on the path. ‘Okay. Thanks for coming.’
I found no more words. In agony I struggled into motion, covered the short distance to the gate, grasped the handlebars of my bicycle.
‘Bye, Mrs Parr!’ she called, her voice high and trembling, and spurred by this final wound I struggled through the gate and broke into a lumbering trot. The back wheel of the bicycle bounced and the pedal struck my leg hard. I went faster, left the tennis courts behind, ploughed on over the gravel sweep in front of the Hall. There were no footsteps hurrying behind me.
I parked the bike by the door of William’s room in the old stable yard. The sun had gone down behind the roof and a lamp shone weakly on the cobbles. I knocked, and William opened up without a word. The light in his room was deep and dim, a sixty-watt bulb under a flared metal shade that cast the light wide but downward, leaving the ceiling and the upper walls in shadow.
My hand was in my pocket; it closed on the rock cake and mindlessly I took it out and handed it to him.
‘Come in, my dear. Did Deirdre make this? Good. I’m partial to them, on account of their not being too sweet. Esther gave me a doughnut last week with my tea.’ He pushed the kettle onto the hotplate of his little stove so that it burbled to a boil. ‘Sickly stuff. I couldn’t stomach it.’
‘You liked that egg custard.’ I tried to master my breathing. ‘It had a little bit of sugar and no more.’
‘Exactly.’ He nodded gravely. ‘I would call myself an egg custard man. Come. You’re flustered. Sit down in the armchair.’
I did as he said, smoothing my hand over my calf, the coming bruise where the pedal had struck it. My fingers shook. I lifted my eyes upward, over some copper pans of his own making that Althea gave him, which used to hang in the scullery of Upton Hall. Photographs at the top, women of the last century, high-necked in black, almost invisible above the shadowline. His medals, a paraffin lamp. A wooden box in the shape of a chest, with a barrel lid and a tiny key. ‘Do you still have your Art of Prowling, William?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Your Home Guard pamphlet.’
‘Oh. Not any more.’ He spooned tea-leaves into a battered metal pot, smiling. ‘I gave it to the school, along with all the others. So the children can do the war. What do you want with it?’
In my mind’s eye Pamela took the Art of Prowling from the box and dropped to the floor of William’s shed. Crept out though the doorway onto the stones of the path, there to be lost in sunlight.
‘God!’ I cried. ‘Why didn’t that woman bulldoze that kitchen garden to pieces! Leaving the remains there, in a sort of – half-life – it’s ghastly!’
‘Ah!’ He turned to look at me, gravely concerned. ‘What took you down there? It’s not a place you like to go. Do you know what the pupils call it? The humps—’
‘And bumps. Yes.’ Hot tears brimmed behind my eyelids. ‘I had to go to the kitchen garden. I didn’t have a choice.’ My voice echoed in the room, harsh and unsteady. ‘Penny wanted to meet me there. She asked me if she could stay with me and I said no, even though I’d promised her she could come back, after last time—’
‘No, no, Ellen. Listen. There are plenty of others to help her. All paid to deal with troublesome young people. It’s not your place—’
‘But I was so cruel!’
Silently he poured the tea into two deep mugs and set them down, seating himself on a wooden chair. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Cruelty isn’t in your nature.’
Oh, yes it was. Look at what I had done. I’d pulled a child off me as if she were a wretched scrap of a thing, as if she disgusted me. I’d shoved her into a car and shut the door. I’d pushed her legs in and shut the door and told my husband to drive on. The mirror swung, a pale moon gleamed in the glass.
‘Penny’s not troublesome, anyway,’ I whispered. ‘It was lovely having her.’
William leaned forward, put his good hand over mine. ‘You’re not her shepherd, my dear.’
I looked down at his hand. How beautiful it was, strong and square, the fingers lithe and unknotted by work or age. I thought of the gamut of creation he could have fashioned, the life he could have had. I gazed again at the shelves. What loss there was in the grain of all those things, their lights and gleams and shadows. It welled up in the gaps between them and also in their very fabric: the patina of the copper, the tin, the dull black of the ebony frames. I met his gaze, shook my head in wonderment.
‘Oh, William. You’ve always been so kind. Ever since you gave me your pie. And mended my bucket. You looked after us, me and Lucy and Daniel.’
He squeezed my hand and released it, sank his face in his mug.
‘That was an easy job,’ he said, after a moment.
‘Not to speak of my typing lessons. I’ve never given you anything! Or done anything for you! You’ve just stayed here, William. Looking after Lady Brock all those years. Never saying one word about that bloody ruin of a garden. How can you be so contented!’
‘So I should be contented!’ He gave a sudden, mighty laugh. ‘I’ve got everything I want! Thank you very much.’