Hannah looked at the thin back and the iron-grey hair pulled into a bun against the stringy neck. Believing what she did, she could make no reply to this that wouldn’t thrust Rose into worse anguish. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Wood.’
Rose turned to face her. ‘Things haven’t been right between me and Wilbur for years but I still find it hard to believe he could do something like this. But it’s his pride, you see. He’s always been a man who’s valued his good name and Silas was going to take that away.’ Suddenly plumping down at the table, she laid her head on her arms and began to cry.
Chapter 27
It was nine o’clock the same evening and it had stopped snowing. The world was clothed in startlingly white brilliance that glittered and twinkled like diamond dust. It wouldn’t last long, and when the inevitable thaw set in, the slush and mud would be knee high, but for now everything was new and sparkling clean.
Jake stepped out of the police station and walked a few feet before standing quite still. He lifted his face to the sky, taking lungfuls of frosty air before beginning to cough convulsively. The nicer of the constables in there had told him he didn’t look well. ‘Must be that cold you picked up, along with all the stress and strain you’ve been under the last weeks but you can go home and rest now.’ Rest? he’d felt like saying. When he’d been in hell for three weeks? A hell that kept you tight in a little box where you couldn’t breathe or think or feel beyond a desperate panic that was all-consuming. He forced his thoughts to slow down as he continued to breathe in and out. He was free. He wasn’t shut in any more. He couldn’t give way now.
The sweat was standing out on his forehead like drops of blood. I feel bad, he thought. Oh, I feel bad. His heart was thumping against his ribs demanding air, but breathing made him cough. He hadn’t been able to think in there. He had existed in a state of animal panic that had been shaming and degrading and without human dignity. Was he having a mental breakdown? That’s what the constable had thought, he’d read it in his face. He’d wanted to ask him why, thinking that, had they continued to keep him trapped in a tomb-like, ten-foot wide crypt. But he hadn’t. He’d just nodded and smiled, petrified that if he rocked the boat in any way they wouldn’t let him out.
He thought her voice was in his mind at first, part of the sickness. And then it came again and he opened his eyes to see Hannah standing in front of him.
‘Jake?’ Her smile was tentative and confirmed how ill he looked. ‘I’ve got a cab waiting.’
He glanced beyond her and saw the horse-drawn cab at the side of the road. He didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before. He also didn’t know how he was going to make the few yards to the cab without passing out. The shivering that had come on and off for the last few days along with the fever was stronger tonight, but he couldn’t collapse in front of her. That would be the final humiliation.
‘You’re not well.’
Her voice was soft, sympathetic, but the pity he fancied he heard worked on him like a shot of adrenaline and he covered the distance to the cab with her at his side.
Inside, she put her hand to his forehead. Her hand was cool. He wanted to grab it and hold on to it but his arms and legs felt leaden. ‘You’re burning up.’ He heard alarm now. ‘You need a doctor.’
No, he just needed to get home. He’d crawl on his hands and knees all the way to the farm if he had to. Once there he could rest and he would be all right. He tried to find breath to say this but the coughing was worse, knives twisting in his chest.
When she wrapped a blanket round him he didn’t protest. There were words on his tongue. He wanted to know how she was here. How she knew he was being released. But he couldn’t speak. Her name was like an intonation in his head, over and over, Hannah, Hannah.
He knew when they reached the farm. He was vaguely aware of Hannah calling Frank and Jack Osborne when his legs refused to hold him up. And then he found himself in his own bed but he couldn’t remember how he had got there or who had undressed him.
In the semi-darkness he heard Clara saying, ‘Don’t worry, lass. The doctor’ll be here soon. I think he’s got that influenza that’s taking ’em down right, left an’ centre in the town. The main thing is he’s here now, he’s home, and all thanks to you, hinny.’
He was home again and he wasn’t losing his mind. He felt so ill because he had the influenza. The relief was momentary. His head felt as if it was going to explode and the burning in his chest and back was unbearable. And then the level of pain in his body reached new proportions and he felt himself falling into a fiery darkness where flames were licking at his flesh. And then . . . nothing.
‘You’re looking better this morning.’
‘I should do. I’ve been in this bed four weeks.’ Jake smiled at Hannah as she bustled about opening the curtains and then straightening his eiderdown before placing a breakfast tray on his lap.
‘Double pneumonia on top of influenza is not something to mess about with,’ she said severely.
‘No, nurse. Sorry, nurse.’
‘Try and eat something today.’
‘I will.’ It would be a struggle but he’d try to force something down to please her. It was the least he could do considering he owed his life to her. At the time of his release he hadn’t questioned why they had suddenly decided to let him go. Strange, but then he hadn’t been thinking straight. The sickness in his mind and body had numbed everything else. It had been two weeks, two weeks of raving delirium and terrifying nightmares during which Hannah had barely left his side, before he had discovered the truth.
It had been his mother who had told him the day she and the rest of the family had come to live at the farmhouse and left the town and its gossips for good. Sitting quietly by his bedside, she had talked for a long time and he had been content to lie deep in his pillows and listen. At that stage he had barely been able to open his mouth without it exhausting him.
And yesterday, after a bill of indictment had brought the case to court without delay due to the interest it had generated far and wide,Wilbur and Adam had been convicted of murder. Wilbur had received the death sentence. Adam, life imprisonment, his life being spared due to his father’s insistence that his son had tried to prevent both the beating and the fatal blow that had killed Silas Fletcher.
Hannah had attended the two-day trial with Rose and Naomi while Clara had sat with Jake. She had told him beforehand of her suspicions regarding Adam, and it appeared the jury and Judge Grant had similar misgivings. Apparently Adam’s defence barrister had been eloquent in his plea it was only fair his client be declared guilty of manslaughter and not murder, but the jury had ignored this. Furthermore, the judge had expressed regret that Wilbur’s testimony on behalf of his son made it difficult for him to give the death sentence to both men. Rose had collapsed at the verdict, calling Adam’s name, and when Hannah and Naomi had brought her home she had retired to bed.
‘How’s my mother this morning?’
Hannah looked at him. ‘It will take time,’ she said quietly.
He nodded.Time.The supposed great healer that made everything easier. Everything except this feeling inside him that was both a curse and a blessing.A curse because it was doomed, it had always been doomed, but a blessing because to be able to look on her face, talk to her, have her near were small snatches of bitter-sweet heaven. ‘At least they’re both not for the drop. I don’t know how she would have taken that, Adam being hanged.’
‘But for him to be locked up for the rest of his life, Jake. And don’t forget Judge Grant recommended it should
mean
life. Adam’s so young.’
‘You’re sorry for him?’ He felt hurt and angry, slighted in some way. Adam had done his best to pin Silas’s murder on him. He’d known what he was saying when he had talked to the papers. And then he reminded himself that but for the slim young woman standing looking at him now he could well be in Wilbur’s shoes. Nevertheless his voice held a tinge of resentment when he repeated,‘You’re sorry he’s going to be locked away?’
‘No, not really. I think I might have been but for one thing.’ She paused and he waited for her to explain. Instead she said,‘But for a mother to see her son imprisoned for the rest of his life, that must be terrible, Jake. That’s what I meant.’
He looked down at the tray. It held a bowl of porridge, just the way he liked it, and he knew the covered plate next to the steaming mug of tea would contain eggs, sausage, bacon, black pudding. Without looking at her, he said, ‘What was the thing that prevented you? Feeling sorry for Adam, I mean.’
‘Don’t you know?’
Her voice was soft, gentle. His brow wrinkling, he raised his eyes. ‘No, I don’t.’ He supposed it was Adam’s betrayal with Lily but it wasn’t like Hannah to bear a grudge under such horrific circumstances.
She stared at him. ‘Think about it,’ she said at last before turning and walking out of the room.
Think about it? Irritably he pushed the tray onto the bedside cabinet and then reached for the mug of tea. While he sipped it he stared round the room as though it would provide an answer. He couldn’t be doing with any sort of double talk, he wasn’t well enough. Didn’t she know that? He still had a job to keep his eyes open for more than thirty minutes at a time; some days he slept near enough twenty out of twenty-four hours away.
Hark at you
. The voice in his head was scathing and his mouth curled in a wry grimace. He sounded like a petulant schoolboy. What was the matter with him, for crying out loud?
Was he still jealous of Adam and the hold he’d had - perhaps still had, deep in the hidden recesses of her heart - over Hannah?
You bet your sweet life he was
.
He finished the tea and lay back on the pillows. He ought to eat something but it’d choke him. How much longer was he going to feel so drained, so mentally and physically exhausted? Dr Stefford had said it would be months, not weeks, before he was fully fit. He wouldn’t be able to stand it. He felt so useless, so weak and emasculated. She must despise him. And when he thought of those first couple of weeks when she’d done everything for him . . . The sound in his throat was tortured. They had never discussed it but however good she was, however kind, it must have sickened her. A man wasn’t supposed to crumple like a woman. He knew he had come near to a nervous breakdown after being shut in for all those endless days and nights, the pneumonia brought on by severe influenza was the least of it. And she knew. He had heard his mother and Hannah talking one day when they’d thought he was asleep.A big strong man like him and he’d gone to pieces like a bit lass. Hell, couldn’t he at least have kept his pride in all of this? Was that too much to ask?
He glanced at Seamus’s commode which Hannah had had brought upstairs to his room once the delirium had finally passed. His nose wrinkled in distaste. It embodied everything his spirit was fighting against. Damn it, whatever Stefford said, he wasn’t going to lie in this bed being waited on hand and foot for one more day. He felt sick at what he’d been reduced to. At least before he’d had her respect; now . . . Again he groaned.
He had managed to reach the wardrobe when he heard her footsteps outside the room. He was hanging on to the wardrobe door with all his might, fighting the spinning faintness which threatened to take his legs from under him. He couldn’t move, he knew if he tried to he would either pass out or vomit and neither was an option. She must already look on him as the worst sort of weakling.
The door opened and he heard her exclamation of shock. Then her arms were round his waist, trying to support him as she scolded, ‘What on earth are you trying to do, Jake? You’re not fit enough to be out of bed, you know that. Come on, come and lie down.’
‘No.’
‘You must. Look at you. I can’t believe you’ve done this. You’ll make yourself ill again.’
He knew he needed her help but he didn’t want it. Still hanging on to the door, he said, ‘Leave me, I can do it.’
‘Whatever you’re trying to do, you can’t.’ Her voice was school-marmish, the sort of tone one used to a recalcitrant child. Likely that was how she saw him, not as a man at all.
Grinding his teeth he let her help him back into bed. It was either that or crawl because he didn’t have an ounce of strength left in his body.When he collapsed on the bed, he couldn’t move for a minute or two. His heart felt as if it was going to burst out of his chest and the drumming in his ears was deafening. Eventually he forced himself to swing his legs up and under the covers and again the slight effort involved was exhausting. He lay with his eyes shut for a few moments. When he opened them she was sitting by the head of the bed, a couple of feet away. If he hadn’t been feeling so bad he would have laughed at the expression on her face. ‘I know,’ he muttered weakly. ‘You’d like to tan me backside for being a naughty lad.’