‘You need to toughen up, wee brother,’ he said. ‘If you cannae frame tae work at this, what’s left for you?’
‘It’s no’ that,’ Mattie said, speaking softly and aiming his words towards the floor.
‘It’s the murder,’ I said.
‘Murder?’ said Mattie’s mother. Grandad removed his pipe and sat with his mouth hanging open.
‘I assumed you would all know,’ I said. ‘Mr Balfour – the master – was murdered on Sunday night. I’m sorry. I naturally assumed that you would have heard by now.’
‘Heard how?’ said John. ‘We’ve had no paper since the
News
shut down.’
‘But surely it was on the wireless?’ I said. ‘It was so brutal. I can’t believe it wasn’t reported on the news.’ Of course, this was the water tap all over again. After I spoke, I looked around the kitchen for a wireless set at which to gesture, and took in the rough table and chairs, the makeshift curtains shutting off the box-bed in the corner, the tin bath hanging from a nail on the back door. Mrs MacGibney, with a transparency which tied a knot inside me, went to stand with one hand stretched up to rest on the chimneypiece above the range, where a walnut-wood clock, highly polished, sat between two china dogs facing one another from each end, the three precious objects together forming the only sign of luxury in the entire room.
Thankfully, Alec interrupted the silence before I was forced to think of what to say. He entered with three bottles of beer clutched in one arm and gave John MacGibney a broad wink.
‘Your father and the others insisted,’ he said. ‘These haven’t gone on the book at all and nobody’s complaining.’
‘Mattie’s too young for beer,’ said Mrs MacGibney.
‘Of course he is,’ said Alec. ‘The third one’s for me.’
14
My stock rose a little when, after the tea and beer had been drunk – and I did quiet penance by insisting that I took my tea without either milk or sugar and drinking the horrid stuff to the last drop without a shudder – I volunteered to go with Mattie on an expedition to pick gooseberries, which Grandad had been nagging his daughter about all week but for which Mrs MacGibney did not herself have time.
‘Aye, well, you’ve your washing to do, I’m thinking,’ the old man said, but his daughter stuck her chin out and shook her head at him.
‘I am not taking they work claes and washing them,’ she said. ‘They get washed every other week and they’ve only done one. It would be bad luck and I’ll not do it.’
John gave a mirthless laugh and explained it to me.
‘Ma and the other wifies think if they wash the black claes and put them away it’ll be like saying there’ll never be work again. So there they hang stinking the house out.’
‘Nothing wrang wi’ the smell of coal,’ said Grandad. ‘That stink brought your mammy up and it brought you up too.’
‘Oh aye,’ said John, flipping his empty trouser leg. ‘It did the world for me.’
‘Let’s go then, Mattie,’ I said, standing. ‘We can take the big baskets you brought with you. No harm in being hopeful.’
‘And I’m going back over to talk to the men,’ Alec said. ‘There might be another wee message I can run while I’ve got the car here today.’ I stared at him. I had known for some time that he paid more heed to his servants than was proper, and I knew that he found the Scots tongue more delightful than did I, but to hear him talk of running a wee message was a new departure again. None of the MacGibney clan, however, seemed to mind his patronage and the three of us – leaving Bunty and Millie behind with their new friend and his energetic caresses – exited together.
The gooseberries were to be found along the side of the railway line some three fields distant and so off we trudged, Mattie carrying both baskets, one over each shoulder so that they formed a shell across his back, as though they might be armour against me.
We passed a collection of shaggy little ponies which were being patted, fed tufts of grass and – in some cases – ridden upon by a troop of small children.
‘I don’t suppose they mind the sudden holiday,’ I said.
‘Except their food’s locked up down in the stables and we’ve no’ much money to buy more with,’ said Mattie. I gave up looking for a silver lining then.
‘Right then, young man,’ I began. ‘I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you don’t realise the import of what it is you know. You will not be punished for withholding it, I assure you, but you must tell me.’
‘I went to my bed and went to sleep and got up and the first I knew at all was when Eldry come doon the stair in the morning like a ghostie and tellt Mr Faulds to get the police,’ Mattie said.
‘All well and good,’ I replied. ‘I believe that. But it’s these nights when master was out – the nights you told me of, if you remember – something about them is puzzling me.’ I waited but Mattie said nothing. We had reached the edge of the first field and were taken up with clambering over a post-fence for a moment or two. ‘How did you get out?’
‘Eh?’ Mattie said, in that infuriating way that children do.
‘After master returned and you locked up behind him, did you knock up one of the girls or get Mr Faulds to open up? And lock up again behind you?’
‘Eh?’ he said again. ‘The girls did nothing.’
‘Well, someone must have locked and bolted the kitchen door or the door in the sub-basement,’ I pointed out to him. ‘Surely, you didn’t leave the house open all night?’
Mattie was looking at me with an expression of apparently genuine puzzlement on his face.
‘That would be daft,’ he said.
‘So . . . ?’ He simply shook his head and then returned his gaze to the ground where the going was rough and needed a little attention. ‘And how did you get into the carriage house?’ I asked him. ‘Did you have a key? Isn’t that door bolted too?’
‘There’s a key in it,’ he replied. ‘Or – well – hanging up beside it in the passageway.’
‘But how did that help?’ I asked him. ‘How did you get in if the key was on the other side?’
‘I can’t remember,’ Mattie said, almost as infuriatingly as just saying ‘eh’. ‘I’m confused. You’re tying me up in knots, miss, and I d’ae want to say the wrong thing and get anybody into trouble.’
‘Yes, you are in a tangle, aren’t you?’ I replied. ‘Perhaps this question will be easier for you.’ Mattie’s eyes were wide but he kept his head up, even if he did have the appearance of someone waiting for an axe-blow. ‘How did master ever find out that you were scared of the dark, Mattie?’
‘He—’ The look of puzzlement came back into his eyes. ‘I d’ae ken,’ he said. ‘That’s daft too, miss, eh no? That cannae be right.’ We had stopped walking now and were standing in the middle of the field like a pair of statues. ‘Or you know what it is,’ Mattie said at last. ‘It’s just different there. It’s all . . . different. And here it’s hame and it’s all fields and that and things are no’ the same so’s you cannae remember what it’s like when it’s . . .’ I was nodding, because although his stuttering attempt to explain was far from eloquent I recognised it as kin to the feeling I had had with Alec the previous afternoon when I had wanted to get up into the air, where I could see things, like Mattie was suddenly seeing things, out here in the field, in the open.
Not too far off from us was the unmistakable ridge of a railway siding, a few children dotted about its slopes with sacks in their hands, busily picking at the bushes growing there.
‘Let’s get the berries for your mother,’ I said, ‘and come back to all of this on the way home.’
Mattie’s eyes, I was astonished to see, filled up with tears until they were brimming and he shook his head roughly to scatter them before they could roll down his face.
‘You’re being dead nice to me,’ he said. ‘And I hate having to be no’ nice back, but I cannae tell on . . . anybody that’s been just as nice and let them down. I never wanted to let anybody down, ever.’
I had to tread very carefully now.
‘Your mother and grandfather,’ I said, ‘and your brother too, even if they are not always . . . nice, as you call it, even if they are not always kind, they do care for you. And just because someone else is kind, Mattie, that person does not necessarily care any more deeply. Certainly no one who
truly
cares for you would ask you to keep secrets for them which weigh so heavily upon you.’
‘They don’t,’ he said. ‘They’re no’ heavy secrets, miss, honest injuns they’re no’. It’s me keeping my mouth shut that’s making you think they are.’
Inwardly, I was cheering, but on the outside I remained calm and kept the kindly look on my face. Being nice to Mattie was what would swing all this in my favour, I knew. I turned and walked to the edge of the field where a chestnut tree most obligingly provided both shade from the sunshine and some canker-swollen roots for us to sit upon. Mattie followed me like a gosling, shrugged off the baskets and sat down.
‘I really, really, really hate being all on my own in the dark, miss,’ he said. I nodded and even put a hand out to squeeze his arm. ‘And I really, really, really love playing the piano. Only I never get the chance to practise it. Cos if anybody’s in the mood for a sing-song, Mr Faulds knows more tunes than me, from when he used to hear them in his music-hall days, and if nobody’s in the mood for music then they’re no’ in the mood for hearing me practising either, are they?’
‘But I’ve seen you practise making no sound at all,’ I said. Mattie grinned at me.
‘I learned how to do that in the night-time,’ he said. ‘They let me in, and I go to the servants’ hall where it’s still nice and warm and sometimes I read the song sheets and sometimes I practise, and I don’t make any noise.’
‘Who lets you in?’ I said. His face clouded again. ‘I promise that you won’t get anyone into trouble,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers behind my back.
‘Clara,’ he said, with a spasm of the pain it caused him flashing across his face. ‘Or Phyllis. One of the two.’
‘And how do they do it without Mr Faulds or Mrs Hepburn hearing them?’ I said. Mattie gave another grin at this, fainter but full of glee.
‘When Mr Faulds is locking up at night,’ he said, ‘he always does the kitchen door first, and one of the girls always stays up there and when he turns the key in the sub-basement they know he’s just about to shoot the bolts there and when he does, they shoot the bolts back again in the door upstairs.’
Instantly, I was back in my little bed in Miss Rossiter’s cosy bedroom, listening to the resounding clang of the bolts at night and the mysteriously less resounding clang of the bolts in the morning.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘My God, Mattie. You know what this means, don’t you? The house was open all night – lying open, all night, every night, including the night of the murder.’ Mattie was shaking his head so hard that his flaxen hair flew out around it like ribbons from a maypole.
‘No, it’s still locked,’ he said. ‘It’s just the bolts they open for me. But there’s a key, hidden in a wee hidey-hole in the bricks, away up high, and I can get in and then I can lock up again when it’s safe to leave, see?’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘Not quite so bad then. But doesn’t Mrs Hepburn hear you?’
‘She—’ Mattie bit his lip. ‘She’s another one that’s been dead, dead kind,’ he said. ‘That’s why I always stayed. All the girls and Mrs Hepburn were that good to me even if the boys werenae. She said the girls were her business and the boys were up to Mr Faulds to keep in line and since it was me she knew there was no hanky-panky. And that’s the truth, miss, because Harry and John and Stanley never knew about that key and they still don’t and Phyllis and Clara told me straight if they ever found out that would be the end of it, because I’m a good boy and like their wee brother but they others are
men
.’
‘So the other three lads know nothing about it?’ I said. ‘They couldn’t have got in without someone knowing.’
‘I d’ae think so,’ Mattie said.
‘And they don’t even know that you sneak out?’ I asked, thinking that the three of them had to be extraordinarily sound sleepers.
‘No,’ said Mattie, without meeting my eyes. He was still hiding something; I was sure of it.
‘So, the night master died. What did you see? Or hear?’
‘I wasnae there that night,’ Mattie replied. ‘I stayed in the carriage house and never went nowhere.’
It was very hard to settle for this; almost impossible to face that I had cracked Mattie’s great secret only for it to lead precisely nowhere. I supposed it was something to suggest to Mr Hardy that he find this key in its hidey-hole in the brick and test it for fingerprints. Further than that, I was at a dead-end again and it was with a clod of disappointment inside me as heavy as a sandbag that I trailed off to the gooseberries at last.
I had quite forgotten what a torturous thing a gooseberry bush is and since the little girls with the flour sacks had done the sensible thing and stripped the fattest and easiest-reached fruits before we arrived, Mattie and I were left to stretch deep into the thorny interiors to snag the little green pellets which remained. My grey serge, by the end of an hour, sported a great many loops of thread and puckered grazes which I am sure Miss Rossiter would have known how to remedy but which I simply rubbed at feebly as though the coat, like the arm underneath, might simply heal itself given time.
When I could stand it no longer, I began to extricate myself.
‘Come on,’ I said to Mattie, going over to where he was picking. ‘We’ve got a good lot and you’ve got roses in your cheeks already before you’ve even eaten a single one.’
His smile faltered. He really was the most sensitive child, whom even a bracing reference to his health struck as some kind of fault-finding. Then there was the fear of the dark struggling against his love of the piano. He had what would be called, if he were more gently born, an artistic temperament. And there was some kind of courage in his putting the art above the fear, I supposed; at least, my mother would have thought so. Picking my words very carefully to avoid hurting him again, I tried to tell him so but he only put his head down as low as ever and I could see a flush spreading over him.