The Night Following Page 13

  Hayfield people stood out at their doors, watching the procession go past. Evelyn couldn’t make out faces but she could tell by the shapes they made, standing tall with their arms folded, filling up their doorways and hardly moving, that they were wary of this invasion of their quiet village.

  Just then, somewhere ahead of them, there was a holdup. It was impossible to see what was causing it but the whole procession ground to a halt and then came sounds of a bit of commotion up ahead, snatches of shouting and even some singing. A few people round about them joined in the song. Paul said in a loud growl, glaring round, “Manchester riffraff, Jews and communists. Stirring up the apprentices from Mather & Platt and the other big factories. They’ve been at it for months.”

  “Well,” quipped Daphne, “what were you expecting? The Salvation Army?”

  This broke the tension and several people laughed along with them. Evelyn began to long to sit down. Policemen were going up and down at the edge of the procession, holding truncheons. But they were addressing the crowds with civility, instructing people to make their way without hurrying up the main street. At the end of the village and once over the river at Bowden Bridge, they were to go as far as the quarry and wait there. A policeman asked Evelyn if she was feeling all right, which she thought very nice of him and, encouraged, she asked if he had seen the Northwest Federation of Free Working Men because she was looking for her husband. The policeman shook his head. He told her there were six hundred people here and more arriving, God only knew where from.

  They got as far as the quarry only just in time to hear the tail end of the speeches and, as Paul called it, “that bloody daft political carry-on.” Most of the speakers and leaders had moved off already and the platform was being dismantled and two or three bands were packing up. Evelyn’s basket was already weighing very heavy on her arm and she didn’t feel much in the way of a walk, but after a breather they pressed on towards the reservoir, following the line of people already heading that way.

  The sun came out, and cheering though it was, Evelyn could have done without it. The combination of a cold breeze and the bright light made her eyes water so badly she hardly knew where she was going. But it was lovely being in the country, she told herself. The air smelled sweet and in the fields next to the road there were lambs bleating away and the big ewes were all bunched right up at the wall, watching the people troop past. The big daft things stood like soft grey boulders. Evelyn went up to one and it didn’t budge. As she stared at it, all the while the wind and sunlight were sweeping over it, changing the colours on its back from silver to mucky grey to nearly dark as soot, like a smudge in the middle of a picture. She must have been dawdling, because Daphne called out.

  “Come on, Evelyn! You ha’n’t got all day to waste chatting to your cousins!”

  Evelyn laughed and called back that Daphne was a cheeky so-and-so. They walked on amid more laughter. Daffodils were out and the wind blew straight down the lane off the hill and tipped the flowers right to the ground, turning their leaves inside out and parting the shiny new grass like a comb.

  Soon they left the road and struck out on a level track that led first between fields and then up into the hills. The track wound along beside a wide rushing stream, and as they went closer the hills loomed at them and seemed to close in. After a mile or so the stream and the track diverged. The track swerved deeply and suddenly they came across, around a long curve and nestling into the lower reaches of the hill, the last thing Evelyn had expected to see. It was a large house, built of red brick with a steep slate roof and a grand porch, with all manner of elaborate turrets and tall windows and high gables. A stunted windbreak of trees and clusters of thick evergreen shrubs surrounded it. Though it was too solid to be magical or even romantic, the house had a storybook quality, and though well maintained, it looked shut up and forlorn.

  “That’s Overdale,” Paul said a little grimly.“Overdale Lodge. Bloody eyesore.”

  “Who lives there?” Evelyn asked.

  “Nobody,”Paul said.“Not any more. It was just for shooting parties, for rich folks coming out from Manchester. All that’s long gone now so it’s shut up. It was them Braddocks as had it built, must be nigh on forty, fifty year ago. You know, the family as owns Braddock Mills.”

  “Seems a shame, a grand place like that and nobody stopping there no more,” Evelyn murmured.

  “Well, times has changed,” Paul grunted.“Built in Braddock Senior’s day, before the War. Godfrey Braddock the son, he owns Braddock Mills now. He’s still rolling in money, I daresay.”

  “Eh, it’s grand enough. All right for some,” Daphne said. “Mind you, I wouldn’t fancy it. Bet it’s freezing, imagine trying to heat a place that size!”

  “Aye, and it’s a flaming long way to fetch in t’coal!” Evelyn said, laughing.

  On they went, up Kinder Bank. The going was steadily uphill and Evelyn got more and more winded. She couldn’t find the breath for walking as well as chatting with her companions, and it was single file in places, anyway. She fell behind and began to feel lonely, walking with her eyes on the fuzzy outlines of their backs, not hearing what they were talking about and too tired to call for them to wait. Most people, including her, stayed on the path, though some were fanning out across the slope, Paul among them. It must have been tougher going up there, off the path. People were using their sticks and trudging along slantwise, bending into the hillside.

  There were streams to cross, or the same one several times; several little channels of water ran through the tussocks of moor grass and over the path. Evelyn managed it fine to begin with. She had on her stout shoes, not long resoled, and also, acting on Paul’s advice, she had put on a thick pair of socks. But there was a lot of wet and mud to be gone through, and Evelyn had a sudden memory of her Big Day and her green mock-croc shoes, which she had not thought about for weeks. They were still like new in a box under the bed, as she hadn’t had them on again. They wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in this!

  She struggled on, her feet damp but not soaked through. She was far too hot now, what with the walking and carrying the basket, never mind Daphne’s extra cardigan. Sweat was running all down her body and her eyes and nose were pouring, too. She must look a sight, she was sure, so in a way she was pleased the others had gone ahead. She wished she had slacks on, like some of the real walking girls. They had proper boots, too. Expensive they looked, the slacks, and flattering; the girls looked very comfortable in them. Best of all, they didn’t have the worry of the wind blowing their skirts up, because Evelyn had that to manage on top of all her other woes, keeping one hand free to hold her skirt firmly against her legs, for modesty’s sake. But then, she thought, even if she had had the money for them, there wouldn’t be a pair of slacks she could get into, not at the stage she was at now.

  Now and then when she stopped for a rest the wind felt colder, and it was lovely for a moment, feeling the sweat dry off on her skin, but after a few minutes the wind would start to bite. If she didn’t keep moving she got chilled to the bone, and she was getting so tired. The wind was cutting right through her jerkin and freezing her legs. The others were too far ahead for her to shout and tell them she was heading back down and she didn’t want to make a fuss by having them fret that she had got lost. Anyway, she was carrying half the picnic. She gave herself a talking-to and moved on.

  She caught up with the others by the sheep gate at the top of the dam. There was shelter out of the wind if you tucked in under White Brow, with the reservoir stretching away to your right, so that was a blessing. Daphne, Paul, and Evelyn found themselves a spot not far off the path with some flat stones for them to sit on and one on which they could set up the stove. Paul got it lit after several attempts. Evelyn was heartily glad to stop. After a while she could breathe more easily and she could even say, by the time she had a hot brew warming her hands and was munching on a sandwich, that she was enjoying herself again.

  They ate and drank gratefully. Someti
mes the sun came out strong and warm on their faces and raised the flat, reedy smell of grass and rocks. Evelyn could hear birds, miles above them it seemed. The other two were going on and on about the view and passing the binoculars between them, but she was more interested in the sky, lying back on the blanket and sensing the vastness of it above her and all that lovely emptiness. The wind was high and gusting, and though she didn’t feel it in the shelter of the Brow she could hear it, a high-up rushing like a faraway waterfall, washing and washing the air clean, sweeping grey and white plumes of cloud over the sun as if it was chasing swirls of dust out of the corners of the sky.

  Maybe it was because of the baby and all the extra weight, or maybe it was simple fatigue, but when they were packed up and ready to move off Evelyn had stiffened up so much she could hardly stand straight.

  “Oh, wait, let’s not go yet!” she said, rubbing her back, trying to make light of it.

  Daphne understood. “Oh, all right, let’s have another ciggie,” she said, passing round her packet while Evelyn sank back onto the ground.

  “I should’ve brought a hip flask,” Paul said, clicking his tongue. “A nip in you would do the trick.”

  Evelyn immediately thought of Stan. Was he up here on the hill, too, taking nips from a flask? Would he be content with just nips?

  Now, down below them on the path, folk were filing through the sheep gate and on up to William Clough. It was boggy either side of the path, so everybody slowed up and went through single file, and Evelyn thought to herself that even though it was too far away for her to make out faces, she would know Stan if she saw him. He always had on his red scarf these days and he was a big, tall devil. What with that and his way of stooping so his head poked forward, she’d know him even from that distance.

  She explained to Daphne and Paul that she would only hold them up if she went any further. They were content enough to go on without her once she had reassured them that she would be fine on her own. All she knew, she told them, was that she couldn’t go back into that wind stinging her eyes the way it did. She would stop here and mind the picnic things. They would get on faster with nothing to carry, and if Paul left her enough matches she would have tea waiting for them when they got back.

  Dusting, because it was the quietest, became my favourite task. While the floor was creaking softly above me I would sweep a cloth over surfaces, lifting and setting down Ruth’s things, reaching behind objects and into crevices. I drew my hand across the veneers and ornaments and slipcovers of her life, and by their contours learned her ways. At 27 Cardigan Avenue she was both visionary and manager: Capability Ruth, the romantic yet practical arranger of all the miniature landscapes of her house. I could hear her scolding Arthur, telling him how upset she was about the mess everywhere. She imposed a kind of foursquare, insistent balance; she liked a vista of furniture receding into well-angled, decorous forms against warm-hued walls, she liked to frame windows in drapes tied back like garlands. Her taste veered towards the chintzy: nature improved upon and improbably floral so as to invoke stasis and order. Her cushions lay on the sofa as plump and peaceful as solid little cherubs from a pastorale, asleep on a bank. Her floors were predominantly green and gold, somewhat bleached and shady in the light of the moon. I imagined she liked carpets to remind her of moss and sand.

  When I cleaned the composed and satisfied arrangements of Ruth’s downstairs rooms I moved carefully and quickly among the lamps and vases and dishes on side tables. Their settled roundness seemed slightly to reproach me for my angular, darting manner. And when my work was accomplished I took my leave like a verger, turning at the threshold for a last look, to watch emptiness flow back into the space I had disturbed. Knowing I had done all I could, I was content to leave the room to guard its own frail shadows, as though my parting gift were to stop the clocks and arrest Ruth’s hazy idyll in the dark where it could rest undisturbed. No new stark encounter on a deserted road under windblown trees could violate it now; I was keeping it safe from any further brash and irreverent tests of its flimsiness.

  And oh, the repetition! Arthur would undo all my work in minutes and not even notice. Whenever I put a room to rights after one of his foraging raids on cupboards or drawers or shelves, I knew that I would probably find it all upside down again the next night. Sometimes I would stifle a sigh when I came across the kitchen or bathroom filthy again, but I didn’t really mind. The endless round of these tasks released me into a ritual both seemly and devotional, and as elevating as meditation.

  I think that my grandmother found a similar, steadying comfort in housework and the mild tyranny of its routines. Perhaps housekeeping, for her, was a mundane anchoring force in a life made unstable by my mother’s erratic ways, though my grandmother herself would never have expressed it like that. All she might have said, with a sigh and a smile, was that she didn’t suppose the floor was going to wash itself.

  She rolled her two main responsibilities-housekeeping and me- into one, setting about chores with her face tipped up smiling and her hands going like feelers around her, chivvying me along in the role of little helper. By touch and with great care she washed and rinsed and wrung laundry through the mangle; she hung out, folded, smoothed, and ironed our clothes and linen, and sorted it into piles for me to put away. She scrubbed floors and sinks, she dusted and polished. She timed an egg by singing four verses of “Abide With Me” while I, sometimes singing along, watched the trickle of coloured sand slip through the neck of the timer; she was never off by more than a few seconds. The rising gurgle of boiling water going into the teapot told her when she had filled it to its limit. She kept her white stick by the top of the stairs leading down to the shop; indoors she measured the distances between obstacles in counted steps.

  By the scent and slant of the wind on Mondays she could judge how long to leave the washing to hang out in the back yard, and if I was good and quick and pegged up the handkerchiefs for her before I left for school, she might play our wet ghosts game, tiptoeing invisibly along on the other side of the line and keeping me guessing which of the vast, obscuring sheets she was hiding behind. No matter how I gazed I was never able to tell if this one or that twitched from a touch of the breeze, from a flick of her hand, or from the breathy sigh of a ghost. I hardly dared peep underneath for a glimpse of her splayed feet in the black shoes, for what if they were elsewhere and not planted behind the sheet that at any moment would suddenly balloon out at me? And what did it mean, the thrill and horror of the sheet’s absolute stillness; had she, like my great-uncle, gone with the ghosts at last, and become one herself? She kept me waiting, and waiting. And when I would be almost faint with dread, a wail would float from the other side of the sheet and one whole wet square would swell with the dome of her head and flap forward against her outstretched arms. Then I would lunge at her, squealing to be caught in a damp cottony hug.

  One Monday she didn’t put the washing out at all. When I got home from school she told me there was grit in the wind that day. The wind was blowing from the wrong direction, carrying smoke and dust from the railway and bringing soot down the chimney. She said this as if she didn’t care. The weather, it seemed, had blown away all her briskness and left her dreamy and vague, or perhaps it was rather that the wind had brought something else to her attention. She closed the windows and told me to find the tin of polish and a duster and give the sitting room an extra going-round while she washed the kitchen floor.

  I heard her sighing as she reached for a bucket and ran the tap. The wind had made me contrary, too, in the way that the wrong weather upsets young animals; suddenly I was full of a skittish, supple anger. I dug my thumb into the tin, climbed on a stool, and smeared a lump of polish along the top of the picture rail. When I got down I waved the duster a few times, then I wandered away, past the room where my mother was spending a second day in bed with a stash of bottles under the covers, up to the dull quiet of my room in the attic. I sat on my bed until I felt blank. When I came down my grandmoth
er was smiling but her eyes were as cold as pearls. The spell of dreaminess brought on by the weather was broken. Whatever the wind had brought, she had washed it along and out of the day.

  “I gave you a job to do.”

  Anger gusted inside me again. “I did it.”

  “It’s still dusty in here.”

  “How do you know?” She didn’t reply. The lavender and beeswax air lay over us like a coat. “You can smell I’ve done it!”

  She moved across to her chair and sat down. “I can see you didn’t.”

  “No, you can’t! How can you?”

  She was still smiling. “Aye, well, miss. I see what I see.”

  “But you can’t see!”

  “Even so. There are colours. Everything’s got its colour.”

  “But you can’t see them,” I told her. “You can’t see anything.”

  “Maybe, aye. Maybe not things. Not as such. But I get the colours for things. They go roaming about,” she said, drawing her palm across the side of her head, “in here.”

  “How you can see the colours of things but not the things? That’s daft!”

  “Don’t you be cheeky. Colours for things, I said, not of things. There are colours for things. And you did not dust this room.”

  “All right then, what’s the colour for dust? There isn’t one!” I took a deep, brave breath and announced, “You’re just talking daft!”

  “Maybe there isn’t,” she said matter-of-factly, “but there’s a colour for big fibs.” She fished with one hand for the bag of knitting on the floor under her chair and pulled it onto her lap. “Yes, and there’s a colour for a girl who cheeks her grandma. Now be a good girl and get us a cup of tea. And don’t bang the kettle.”