Village Secrets (29 page)

Venetia moaned, ‘Take me home, take me home.’

Peter was too distraught at the thought of Simone’s death to take Jeremy aside and explain. He had to leave that to Ralph.

Jeremy shuddered. ‘Simone? Oh no! Can’t we get her out? Surely we can.’

Jimbo told him hoarsely: ‘We can’t get in, it’s a wall of fire in there. Believe me, we’ve tried.’

They stood stricken as the flames roared. The huge wooden beams of the roof withstood the heat for a while but there was a sudden deafening roar and the roof began collapsing. Instinctively they retreated and helplessly watched Simone’s funeral pyre.

Peter caught Jeremy’s eye and looked questioningly at him, but the other man, shamefaced, avoided his eyes. Peter guessed he’d known all the time what Venetia was doing.

‘I’ll go and open the field gate for the engine,’ Peter said and sprinted across the field towards the gate which was further down Pipe and Nook Lane beyond the rectory. As he rushed past, he saw Caroline standing at the end of their garden. He waved and shouted, ‘Don’t worry, we’re all fine! Just opening the gate for the fire brigade.’ The gate was held shut by a complication of chains but thankfully no padlock. On his way back, Peter stopped to speak to her. ‘We can’t do anything – the fire engine’s going to be far too late. The roof’s already going. Can’t stop.’ He embraced her briefly.

‘Peter, for God’s sake be careful,’ she pleaded.

‘Of course!’

Five minutes afterwards the engine carefully negotiated the open gate and humped and bumped its way across the field, the large crowd which had gathered in the last few minutes separating to make way for it.

‘Heaven help us, whatever next!’

‘Thank God nobody’s inside!’

‘But Sir Ralph said …’

‘Simone? No!!’

‘Them poor kids!’

‘Oooh! They’ll be all on their own. Poor little devils!’

Peter was devastated. If they hadn’t interfered, Simone would be alive still, and some harmless tampering with the devil would have, in all likelihood, soon fizzled out. Jeremy had taken Venetia home. Valda and Thelma still stood in silent shock. Ellie was clinging to the sergeant’s arm and impeding his activities. Kate stood watching alone. He went across to speak with her.

It was difficult to talk. The noise of the fire-engine pump, the shouts of the men and the sound of the water pulsating onto the flames made conversation almost impossible. They’d put up the ladder from the engine now and were pumping water into the barn through one of the openings. Peter drew her to one side away from the noise and the ears of the crowd.

‘Kate!’ His reproachful tone brought tears to her eyes. She looked up at him, her face illuminated by the searchlight on the engine.

‘I came to ask her to stop, but somehow …’

‘Well, she’s gone now, God rest her soul, so it can all stop. For good.’

‘I’ve been punished for it, haven’t I?’

‘You have?’

‘Cat’s not come out.’

‘Ah! Cat.’ Peter rubbed his leg where Cat’s claws had struck. ‘I deeply regret what’s happened tonight, but it does put an end to Simone’s bizarre influence, doesn’t it? If the sergeant’s finished with you, I’ll see you home. I’ve already spoken with him. He’ll be taking proper statements in the morning when they’ve … you know.’

Kate’s face looked girm. ‘Found the body, you mean.’ Something occurred to her. ‘Peter! The children! She left them on their own when she came to the meetings.’

Before he could answer, Caroline was at his elbow. Startled to find her there, his immediate thought was for his own children. ‘The twins – what have you done with them?’ he asked brusquely.

‘Calm down, calm down, Sylvia’s with them. I just had to come. Kate, you OK?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

Caroline looked devastated. ‘Dreadful thing to have happened, really dreadful.’

Peter said, ‘Kate’s just reminded me of Simone’s children. She left them in the cottage on their own.’

‘I’ll go to little Derehams straight away and check on the poor things. I’ll just fetch the car.’

‘We’ll come too. You mustn’t go by yourself – heaven alone knows what you might find. Come on, Kate. Sergeant! We’re going to see to Simone’s children. Will you take Ms Pascoe’s statement tomorrow?’

‘Certainly, sir. We can do no more here tonight.’

Peter drove the car to Little Derehams, Caroline beside him, Kate in the back. He caught the occasional sound of her weeping but he didn’t comment. She had more than enough to weep about, and he blamed her for a lot of what had happened. His leg was stinging and he’d be glad to get a chance to look at it. But first things first.

The back door was shut but unlocked. Kate went in first and her fingers searched the wall for the light switch. When she pressed it, no light came on.

‘The electricity’s been cut off!’

Caroline went back to the car for a torch. The beam showed them the utter chaos of the cottage. Caroline was speechless. She shone the torch along the walls to find another switch and picked her way carefully towards it. But nothing happened when she turned it on. ‘You’re right, there’s no power. How could they do it when there’s five small children in the house? It’s unbelievable.’

At this moment Dickon piped up: ‘Simone? Simone?’

Kate said ‘It’s all right, Dickon, it’s only me. Ms Pascoe from the school.’

He stood up on the sofa cushions, his blanket in his hand. Tonight he didn’t even have a vest to wear.

Kate went towards him. ‘Where’s the light, Dickon? We can’t see.’

‘Oil-lamp. Got no matches.’

Caroline ran her fingers despairingly through her hair. ‘Dear Lord. What are we going to do?’

As they stood motionless trying to take in the deprivations the children had been forced to tolerate, they heard a hesitant fumbling on the staircase. Caroline turned the beam of the torch towards the sound.

Florentina, Valentine and Hansel were creeping quietly down. They were dressed in an odd assortment of clothes – not quite nightclothes and not quite day-clothes. The moment Valentine saw them he began screaming. He struggled down the last three steps, stumbled his way over to Dickon and, pulling him down from the sofa, flung his arms around him and howled.

Florentina, rubbing her eyes, said, ‘Go away.’

‘The baby. Where’s the baby?’

She nodded her head in the direction of the bedroom. Caroline found the baby sound asleep in a large drawer on the floor; it smelt as though its nappy hadn’t been changed all day. The bedroom stank of unwashed bodies, of bed-wetting and sheer neglect. Caroline retched.

‘They’ve found her body. She and Cat were together. We think she stayed behind to rescue Cat and then—’

‘Peter,
please
! I can’t bear it. We’re all to blame – us, the school, social services. Every manjack of us.’

‘We weren’t to blame for this witchcraft business. That was her decision entirely. That’s when everything began to go wrong.’

‘They never appeared desperately neglected before all this, did they? They
used
to be clean and reasonably well fed, but as Kate said, this last few months Dickon and Florentina were useless where school was concerned. Too tired, too hungry, never there. Where are they now?’

‘A temporary foster home has been found for them all in Culworth. At least they’ll be clean and well-fed and cared for there.’

‘And Kate – what was her explanation for being at the bam?’

‘She’d gone to ask Simone to stop, and then kind of couldn’t resist her influence.’

‘I shouldn’t say this, but we’re well rid of her
and
that bloody cat.’

‘Caroline!’

‘It’s true. Not even you could have brought her to her senses.’

Peter drew back the curtains and looked out at the fading light. ‘What a night! What a day!’

‘It was hell this morning in the surgery. I don’t mind telling you, if I made a correct diagnosis it was only by sheer chance. I
felt
and I’m told
looked
dreadful.’

‘You were brave to go. I’ve had a dreadful day too, full of recrimination and despair.’

He was totally drained, his inner resources leached from him by the flood of people seeking his comfort and reassurance wherever he went.

His early-morning prayers in church had been interrupted by a remorseful Venetia. She had come in and knelt beside him in the war memorial chapel and wept bitter tears. ‘Can I come to confession? Do you do that sort of thing?’

‘No. You have a direct line to God, Venetia. You don’t need me like some kind of holy telephone exchange.’

‘Well, will you listen and sort me out? Please, Peter?’

‘Of course.’ And he had. And he’d listened sadly to her promises to come to church every Sunday, now she had reformed. And he’d wished he could believe her, and had pretended he did.

His regular Monday visit to Penny Fawcett had been delayed an hour by Valda and Thelma Senior begging forgiveness and wanting to take communion, something they hadn’t done in years. He’d put them off, said they needed to think some more before they did that. Ralph and Jimbo had both come to see him, to seek assurance in their own way. Ralph had said he was sorry about Simone, but Peter knew full well that underneath Ralph was glad the whole matter had been resolved and if it took a death to do it, so what? The village had been saved from destruction and that was what counted. Peter had visited Kate in school to check on how she was coping, and of course the children were eager to embellish the story of the fire, and request his version of it.

Brian wanted to know where had Mrs Paradise stabbed him?

Flick asked about Cat and had she gone to heaven like her poor old Orlando? Stacey had said, ‘My dad says good riddance to bad rubbish.’

A comment Peter felt compelled to explore for his own sake as much as hers.

Altogether he felt trampled. It wasn’t just Simone’s death, it was the ramifications of it which he found so difficult. And those children. Fatherless all their lives and now motherless. At least the baby, Opal, was too young to know the pain of grief.

He felt Caroline beside him. She put her hand in his and said, ‘You’ve got to hold on in there. You’ve so much to achieve, so much waiting to be done which can only be done by you. If it’s any help, you are my best beloved. I adore you, and I adore your children; they’re like my own flesh and blood. They
are
mine, I think, sometimes.’

Peter gripped her hand tightly. ‘Thank you. Two such inadequate words, but believe me they are from my heart. Without you I couldn’t carry on.’

Kate had gone to bed early the night after Simone’s death. She’d hoped to sleep for hours, she was so exhausted. Up all night and then school all day with the children hyped-up by the night’s events, her nerves and her body were strung to breaking point, but she couldn’t get to sleep. Kate half-remembered that line from
Macbeth
: ‘
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care
.’ If only!

She got up and went to the window. The sky was clear, the village at rest. The moon came out from behind a cloud and lit the houses with a caressing silvery light. English nights weren’t like African nights. English nights were gentle and comforting. African nights, dramatic and challenging; there were times when the blood ran cold at the triumphant howl of an animal or the death screams of tortured prey. Turnham Malpas nights were mild, reassuring, and tranquil by comparison. Kate shook herself.
Tranquil?
Anything but, of late.

She should have gone in herself to rescue Simone, but the heat! The flames – and Cat! Simone … Jacob … Africa! All in ashes. Her head spun. Well, she’d have to allow the flames to cleanse her of everything evil. She’d been possessed. Absolutely possessed! She’d have to go to Peter soon and tell him how she felt and what she was going to do, now it was all over. What
was
she going to do?

Her fingers trailed a pattern on the windowsill. Around the carving of a black child, around a ceremonial knife, around a carved wooden necklace Jacob had given her. Part of the cleansing would be getting rid of anything and everything which reminded her of Africa. Cat had gone – she paused for a moment and grieved – now all the things which hitherto had been such precious mementos must go, too.

Kate resolutely swept the carvings from the windowsill, then rushed to that awkward corner under the eaves and swung angrily at the crystal ball and the candles. The ball fell with an enormous crash, the candles rolled silently across the carpet. She put her slippers on and stamped on the candles, breaking them into a hundred pieces and grinding them into the carpet. She dragged the picture from the wall above the altar and tore it to shreds.

From her wardrobe she took every item of black clothing she could find and stuffed them all into binbags. What she’d wear tomorrow for school she didn’t know, but they had to go.

In the kitchen she took her cook’s scissors and chopped great lengths from her hair. Then she ran a bath and scrubbed herself, every inch of her body until her flesh stung.

At two o’clock she fell into bed and slept.