"Keldale Abbey," Danny intoned and settled right in next to the fire for
a confi dential chat. "That"s where the cry of the baby comes from, not
from here."
St. James pulled the window closed, drew across the heavy curtains, and
led Deborah back to the fire. She curled up on the fl oor next to his
chair, warming herself, allowing the fire to tingle against her skin.
"A ghost baby, I take it?" she said to Danny.
"An absolute one that I heard myself. You"ll hear it as well. Wait and see."
"Ghosts always have legends attached," St. James noted.
Glad you asked, Danny"s posture replied as she wriggled back into her
chair. "As does this," she said solemnly. "Keldale was Royalist, you
know, during the war." She spoke as though the late seventeenth century
were only a week removed. "Loyal t" the last man of "em t" the King. The
village of Keldale, down the road a mile. You"ve seen it?"
St. James chuckled. "We should have, but I"m afraid we came in from a…different direction."
"The scenic route," Deborah added.
Danny chose to ignore the diversion. "Well," she went on, "was towards
the end of t" war. And old blackguard devil Cromwell"—obviously Danny
had learned her history at her auntie"s knee—"got word that the Lords o"
the North were planning an uprising. So he swept through the dales one
last, grand time, taking manor houses, ruining castles, destroying
Royalist villages. Keldale"s well hidden."
"So we discovered," St. James put in.
The girl nodded earnestly. "But days in advance the village got word
that the murd"rous Roundheads was coming. "Twasn"t the village that old
Cromwell wanted, but the villagers themselves, all o" them that was
loyal t" King Charlie."
"To kill them, of course," Deborah prompted as the girl paused in her story to catch her breath.
"T" kill every last one!" she declared. "When word came that Cromwell
was looking for the Kel, the village got a plan together. They"d move
every stick, every stitch, every soul t" the grounds o" the abbey. So
when the Round-heads arrived there"d be Keldale, all right, but not a
soul in her."
"Rather an ambitious plan," St. James remarked.
"An" it worked!" Danny replied proudly. Her pretty eyes danced above
rosy cheeks, but she lowered her voice. ""Cept for the baby!" She inched
forward in her chair; obviously they had reached the climax of the
tale. "The Roundheads arrived. "Twas just as the villagers hoped. "Twas
deserted, and silent with a heavy fog. And throughout all the village,
not a soul, not a stitch, not a living creature. And then"—Danny"s swift
glance made certain her audience was with her—"a baby began t" cry in
the abbey where all the villagers were. Ah God!" She clutched her lovely
bosom. "The terror! For they"d escaped Cromwell only t" be betrayed by a
babe! The mother hushed the baby by offering her breast. But "twas no
good. The wee baby cried and cried. They were desperate in terror that
the dogs from the village would begin t" howl with the noise and
Cromwell would find them. So they hushed the poor child. An" they
smothered it!"
"Good heavens!" Deborah murmured. She edged closer to her husband"s
chair. "Just the sort of story one longs to hear on a wedding night,
isn"t it?"
"Ah, but you must know." Danny"s expression was fervent. "For the sound
of the babe is terrible luck "less you know what t" do."
"Wear garlic?" St. James asked. "Sleep with a crucifix clutched in one"s hand?"
Deborah punched him lightly on the knee. "I want to know. I insist upon
knowing. Shall I have my life blighted because I"ve married a cynic?
Tell me what to do, Danny, should I hear the baby."
Gravely, Danny nodded. ""Tis always a" night when the baby cries from
the abbey grounds. You must sleep on your right side, your husband on
his left. An" you must hold on t" one another close till the wailing
stops."
"That"s interesting," St. James acknowledged. "Sort of an animated amulet. May we hope that this baby cries often?"
"Not terrible often. But I…" She swallowed, and suddenly they saw that
this was no amusing legend for lovestruck honeymooners, for to her the
fear and the story were real. "But I heard i" myself some three years
back! "Tis not something I"ll soon forget!" She got to her feet. "You"ll
remember what t" do? You"ll not forget?"
"We"ll not forget," Deborah reassured the girl as she vanished from the room.
They were quiet at her departure. Deborah rested her head against St.
James"s knee. His long, thin fingers moved gently through her hair,
smoothing the curly mass back from her face. She looked up at him.
"I"m afraid, Simon. I didn"t think I would be, not once this last year,
but I am." She saw in his eyes that he understood. Of course he did. Had
she ever truly doubted that he would?
"So am I," he replied. "Every moment today I felt just a little bit mad
with terror. I never wanted to lose myself, not to you, not to anyone in
fact. But there it is. It happened." He smiled. "You invaded my heart
with a little Cromwellian force of your own that I couldn"t resist,
Deborah, and I find now that rather than lose myself, the true terror is
that I might somehow lose you." He touched the pendant he"d given her
that morning, nestling in the hollow of her throat. It was a small gold
swan, so long between them a symbol of commitment: choosing once,
choosing for life. His eyes moved from it back to her own. "Don"t be
afraid," he whispered gently.
"Make love to me then."
"With great pleasure."
Jimmy Havers had little pig"s eyes that darted round the room when he
was nervous. He might feel as if he were putting on the bravura
performance of a lifetime, lying his way grandly out of everything from
an accusation of petty larceny to being caught in flagrante delicto, but
the reality was that his eyes betrayed him every time, as they were
doing now.
"Didn"t know if you"d be home in time to get your mum the Greece stuff,
so Jim went out himself, girl." It was his habit to speak of himself in
the third person. It allowed him to evade responsibility for virtually
any unpleasantness that cropped up in his life. Like this one now. No, I
didn"t go to the turf accountant.
Didn"t pick up snuff, either. If it was done at all, was Jimmy that done it, not me.
Barbara watched her father"s eyes dance their way round the sitting
room. God, what a grim little death pit it was: a ten-by-fi fteenfoot
room whose windows were permanently sealed shut by years of filth and
grime, crammed with that wonderful three-piece suite so essential to
delicate living, but this one a creation that had billed itself as
"artifi cial horsehair" thirty-five years ago when even real horsehair
was a hideous concept of comfort. The walls were papered with a
maddening design of interlocking rosebuds that simpered their way to the
ceiling. Racing magazines overflowed from tables onto the floor and
argued there with the fi fteen simulated leather albums that assiduously
documented every inch, every mile of her mother"s breakdown. And
through it all Tony smiled and smiled and smiled.
A corner of the room held his shrine. The last picture of him before his
illness—a distorted, unfocused little boy kicking a football into a
temporary goal net set up in a garden that had once leapt with fl
owers—was enlarged to beyond life-size proportions. On either side,
suitably framed in mock oak, hung every school report he had ever done,
every note of praise from every teacher he"d had, and—God have mercy on
us all—given pride of place, the certificate of his death. Beneath this,
an arrangement of plastic flowers did obeisance, a rather dusty
obeisance considering the state of the room itself.
The television blared, as it always did, from the opposite corner,
placed there "so Tony can watch it as well." His favourite shows still
played regularly to him, frozen in time, as if nothing had happened, as
if nothing had changed. While the windows and doors were closed and
locked, chained and barred to hold out the truth of that August
afternoon and the Uxbridge Road.
Barbara strode across the room and switched off the set.
"Hey, girl, Jim was watching that!" her father protested.
She faced him. My God, he was a pig. When was the last time he"d had a
bath? She could smell him from here—the sweat; the body oils that
collected in his hair, on his neck, behind the creases of his ears; the
unwashed clothing.
"Mr. Patel told me you were by," she said, sitting down on the horrible couch. It prickled against her skin.
The eyes flicked around. From the dead television to the plastic flowers
to the obscene roses scaling the wall. "Jim went to Patel"s, sure." He
nodded.
He grinned at his daughter. His teeth were badly stained, and along the
gumline Barbara saw the liquid building within his mouth. The coffee tin
was by his chair, inexpertly hidden by a racing form. She knew he
wanted her to look away for a moment so that he"d have time to do his
business without getting caught. She refused to play along.
"Spit it out, Dad," she said patiently. "There"s no use swallowing it
and making yourself sick, is there?" Barbara watched her father"s body
sag in relief as he reached for the tin and spat the snuff-induced brown
slime from his mouth.
He wiped himself off with a stained handkerchief, coughed into it
heavily, and adjusted the tubes that fed the oxygen into his nose.
Mournfully, he looked at his daughter for tenderness and found none. So
his eyes quickly shifted and began their slither round the room.
Barbara watched him thoughtfully. Why wouldn"t he die? she wondered.
He"d spent the last ten years decaying by degrees; why not one big jump
into black oblivion? He"d like that. No more gasping for breath, no more
emphysema. No more need for snuff to soothe his addiction. Just
emptiness, nothingness, nothing at all.
"You"ll get cancer, Dad," she said. "You know that, don"t you?"
""Ey, Jim"s okay, Barb. Don"t you worry, girl."
"Can"t you think of Mum? What would happen if you had to go into
hospital again?" Like Tony. It hung unspoken in the air. "Shall I speak
to Mr. Patel? I don"t want to have to do that, but I shall, you know, if
you persist in this business with snuff."
"Patel gave Jim the idea in the fi rst place," her father protested. His
voice was a whine. "After you told him to cut off Jim"s fags."
"You know I did that for your own good. You can"t smoke round an oxygen tank. The doctors told you that."
"But Patel said snuff was okay for Jim."
"Mr. Patel is not a doctor. Now, give me the snuff." She held out her hand for it.
"But Jim wants—"
"No argument, Dad. Give me the snuff."
