When she fell again, she couldn’t get up or even find the breath to call for help. Darkness wrapped itself around her, sucking her down into a big hole.
I’m dying
, she thought, and was too exhausted to care.
Rain beat against the windows and pounded down on the roof. Jacob sighed and looked at the clock. Half past eight. Time seemed to be dragging tonight. He tossed another lump of wood on the dying fire and picked up his book. But he was so tired he couldn’t settle to it, though normally he relished a good read in this last half-hour of the day. His little lass was asleep, but his son wasn’t home yet.
Luke had been to the Friday night choir practice at the village church and should have been back an hour ago. He couldn’t come to much harm when he left the other lads, because he only had to walk up the hill from the village, then along their lane, so the practice must have gone on for longer than usual. A boy his age shouldn’t have been out so late on a stormy night like this, but Mr Henty didn’t think of other people when it came to his beloved church choir.
As another squall made the window panes rattle and an icy draft whistle under the door, Jacob scowled round at the big room that was both kitchen and living area. Oh, it was tidy, he made sure of that, however tired he was. But it wasn’t home-like any more. Mrs Grey from the village hadn’t been able to come in and clean for the past week, because her husband was ill. Little Sarah had done her best to help him in the house, but there was only so much an eight-year-old child could manage and it was the busy time of year for him in the gardens.
The evenings could be very quiet after the kids went to bed. Recently one of his friends in the village had told him he should look around for another wife to be a mother to the children and look after his house, but Jacob had told him to mind his own damned business and that had been the end of that. If he ever married again, it’d be because he loved the woman and wanted to spend his life with her. His mother and father had been like that, loving and kind to one another. They’d had him late in life and he’d lost them before he was twenty, his mother simply fading away after his father died.
He’d spoken a bit sharply to his friend, maybe, but Ben hadn’t taken offence and most likely wouldn’t mention the matter again.
Jacob had been more than a bit sharp with the new curate, too, who had said the same thing to him last Sunday for the third time, probably at his wife’s urging. Mrs Henty liked to poke her nose in everyone’s affairs, but it was Ernest Henty’s job to see to the welfare of his flock. The suggestion that Jacob marry Essie Jupe from the village had been the final straw, though. She’d lost her husband six months ago and desperately needed a father for her three unruly sons, but it wasn’t going to be Jacob. He’d been at school with Essie, hadn’t liked her then and she’d not got any kinder over the years. He wasn’t having a shrew like her bringing up Luke and Sarah.
The door burst open and Luke nearly fell into the room. ‘Dad! Dad! Come quick! There’s a dead body in our lane!’
‘What?’ Jacob went to grasp his ten-year-old son’s shoulders and look him in the eye. ‘If you’re making this up—’
Luke gulped for breath. ‘I’m not! When I was running up the lane, I fell over something. I thought it was a pile of old rags, but it wasn’t! It was a body, a woman’s body. Dead! In our lane!’ He spoke with some relish.
‘You’re sure?’ Luke had a vivid imagination, which often got him into trouble.
‘Dad, there is a body!’
Sighing at the thought of going out into such a wild storm, Jacob reached for his oilskin jacket, which was hanging on the wooden pegs near the back door. He lit the old lantern, clicking his tongue in exasperation at the cracked glass panel he’d been meaning to replace for some time, then led the way outside. ‘Show me!’
Luke splashed through puddles beside him, seeming oblivious to the cold and rain. He was still talking excitedly, but the sense of his words was snatched away by the howling wind. Within seconds Jacob was shivering, but he hunched his shoulders and carried on. You couldn’t leave a body lying there. If it
was
a body.
‘Here, Dad.’
Jacob held the lantern up and blinked away raindrops from his eyes. To him, too, it looked like a bundle of wet rags. There was a smaller bundle beside it. Together father and son bent over, but as Jacob tried to check whether the woman was indeed dead, the wind at last succeeded in blowing out the lantern. Muttering in annoyance, he felt for her face, touching damp flesh. She didn’t move or respond to him in any way, but it seemed to him there was still some warmth in the cheeks, and when he felt carefully, he could feel a faint pulse in her throat.
Thrusting the useless lamp into his son’s hands, he bent to pick up the body and felt a shiver rack her. Definitely alive, then. But whether she’d stay alive was anyone’s guess. How long had she been lying here unconscious? ‘You bring that bundle, Luke. It must belong to her.’
By the time they reached the house, Jacob had lost his cap, was as wet as his burden and almost as cold. He kicked the rag rug away from the floor in front of the big kitchen range and set the body in its sodden clothes down gently on the
stone-paved
floor, gesturing to his son. ‘What are you standin’ gawpin’ for, Luke? Shut that door quick, then light the other lamp!’
He had to smooth the tangle of hair back from the woman’s face before he could see what she looked like. The intimacy of this action made him feel strangely tender towards her. He unwound the shawl from her head and shoulders. It was so wet it made a flopping sound as he dropped it on the floor. What was a woman doing out on her own on a night like this? She was a stranger in the district, to add to the mystery. He knew everyone in the village of Shallerton Bassett, because he’d lived there all his life, knew their relatives too.
As he sat back on his heels, wondering what to do next, a sigh escaped the blue-tinged lips.
‘She’s alive.’ Luke’s voice was flat with disappointment.
Jacob would have smiled if the matter hadn’t been so serious. To a lad of that age, finding a dead body was much more exciting than finding a live one, something to boast about to one’s friends. ‘I wonder who she is. Never seen her before.’
Another sigh, then the young woman’s teeth began to chatter and she moved her head from side to side with a moan.
‘We’d better get her out of them wet clothes. Go an’ throw down a towel, Luke, then pull the blankets off my bed and throw them down the stairs. Change out of those wet things into your pyjamas and don’t come down till I call. This poor creature won’t want a lad of your age gawpin’ at her.’
She wouldn’t want a strange man gawping at her, either, but Jacob had no choice. He had to get her out of the sodden garments if he was to save her life. They were beginning to steam gently at the side nearer the fire and were so wet, tiny runnels of moisture were still escaping from them.
When he began to investigate the mysteries of her clothing, he found she was wearing several layers. To keep her dry? Well, they hadn’t succeeded, had they? Or perhaps they were all she owned.
As his work-roughened fingers fumbled with the tiny buttons of her final blouse, he couldn’t help noticing that she had a trim, gently curved body. He turned her over and paused, frowning. The white skin of her back was marred by some old scars. He’d seen the like before on the back of a lad he’d played with many years ago, scars left by a belt buckle. Someone must have given her a vicious leathering when she was younger, poor thing, to mark her like that.
Within minutes he had her dried and wrapped in a blanket. Holding her body in his arms again, he kicked the rug back into position close to the fire and laid her gently down on it. The only thing he could do now was keep her warm and hope she survived the night.
‘Who is she, Dad? Luke says he found her lyin’ in the lane.’
He swung round to see Sarah standing in the doorway, in nightdress and bare feet, long blonde hair streaming over her shoulders. ‘We don’t know. She’s a stranger.’
‘She’s caught a chill, poor thing. Look at her shiver!’
‘And you’ll catch a chill if you don’t put something else on. Just a minute.’ The pitiful state of the stranger and his own embarrassment at her nudity forced Jacob to a momentous decision. ‘Go up and put a shawl round yourself, then …’ he had to take a deep breath to nerve himself to utter the next words ‘… fetch me one of your mum’s nightdresses from the bottom drawer in my bedroom.’
Sarah stared at him open-mouthed and he knew why. No one except himself had been allowed to touch Alice’s things since she died. He still remembered how Poll Titcombe had come and asked him what he was going to do with Alice’s clothes. The day after he buried his wife! He’d been still on crutches from the accident. He’d slammed the door on his neighbour and then cried like a baby, leaning his head against the wall. He pushed that memory away.
‘While you’re upstairs, Sarah, tell our Luke to get himself off to bed. There’s nothing more he can do down here.’
Within two minutes, Sarah was back, proffering the faded nightdress. ‘It smells of mothballs.’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
‘This poor soul’s in no state to worry about how it smells.’ Jacob forced himself to ignore the memories the nightdress roused. It was only a piece of flannel, that was all, he told himself firmly. And Alice would be the last to begrudge the loan of it to someone in such dire need. ‘Right then, Sarah. I’ll hold her up an’ you slip the nightdress over her head.’
Eyes screwed up with concentration, breathing deeply, Sarah managed the difficult feat of dressing a grown woman who was as helpless as the Titcombes’ new baby. As they laid the sick woman down again, she moaned, as if in pain, then jerked her head from side to side.
‘Mustn’t let him catch me,’ she said in a hoarse voice.
That explained why she was trudging across the countryside on such a stormy night dressed in several layers of clothes, in spite of being ill. Who was she running away from? Jacob wondered. A husband? He glanced quickly down at her left hand. No sign of a wedding ring, nor was the skin on that finger marked to show a ring had ever been there.
She groaned again and muttered, ‘Mustn’t stop … walking. Mustn’t … stop!’
He guessed she’d forced herself on till she dropped and had likely come from Swindon way, a tiring journey on foot in a storm like that.
‘Dad! Dad!’
He realised Sarah was shaking him.
‘You need to get out of your wet clothes, too.’
‘I never catch cold.’
‘Me an’ Luke have to change when we get wet. An’ you’ll need these clothes dryin’ out for tomorrow.’
‘All right, then, my little love.’ He hugged his daughter. ‘I’ll nip upstairs and change into my old things. You keep an eye on her. I won’t be long.’
Sarah sat and stared at the stranger. Mum’s nightdress was far too big for her, and now that her hair was drying out, you could see it was a lightish red in colour, not brown.
When Jacob came down again and knelt to check the stranger, she opened her eyes and stared round in panic, trying to raise herself and failing. ‘Who are you? Where am I?’
‘My son found you lyin’ in the lane unconscious, so I carried you back to our house.’
The stranger searched his face and something she saw there seemed to reassure her. ‘Thank you!’
A cough racked her, going on and on. He held her upright until she’d stopped spluttering, but he could still hear the rattling in her chest.
‘Can’t … breathe properly.’
‘I reckon you’ve got a touch of lung congestion. You’ll feel better if you stay warm.’ He remembered how worried she’d been so added, ‘And don’t worry, we’ll keep you safe.’
‘Safe?’
Her eyes lingered for a moment on Sarah’s face, then she looked at Jacob, stretching out one hand to touch him, as if to reassure herself he really was there. He took hold of the hand, warming the slender fingers between his own.
‘You won’t tell anyone … I’m here?’
She looked so desperate he said, ‘I promise I won’t.’
‘Thank you.’ Another sigh and her eyes closed. But her breath was still rasping and rattling, and he was afraid she had more than a bad chill. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d got the dreaded pneumonia that killed so many people, rich and poor alike, because there was nothing anyone, even doctors, could do to make it better.
Sarah spoke in a whisper.
‘She’s asleep again, Dad. And she didn’t tell us her name.’
‘We can ask her in the morning. It won’t have changed by then.’ He looked round. ‘I’m going to light a fire in the parlour. She can lie on the sofa there. It’s as good as a bed and there are fewer draughts in there. Fetch my winter sheets, love. The flannel will be warmer than cotton. Quick as you can.’
When the stranger was settled, he sent Sarah back to bed but stayed up to keep an eye on the sick woman. And it was a good thing he had done. He spent the night alternately pulling the blankets off as she grew hot and feverish, then piling them back on when she began to shiver.
Morning took him by surprise. He looked out of the window and saw the nearby fields clearly in the misty grey light. It was still raining, but more gently now. The force had gone out of the storm.
There were sounds from upstairs and a short time later the two children peered into the room.
‘Is she still alive?’ Luke asked.
‘Yes, but she’s not well. I fear she’s got pneumonia.’
‘Like old Mr Benness?’
‘Yes.’
‘He died.’
‘She’s much younger. She’s got a better chance.’ Jacob looked at the clock and yawned. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, but the work on his market garden waited for no man. ‘You keep an eye on her while I feed the hens.’ He sold eggs to a couple of the neighbours, or swapped them for things, and they made good quick meals for his children, though he had fewer hens these days than when he’d had Alice to look after them.
‘Shall I go and fetch Mrs Henty?’ Luke asked. ‘She helps sometimes when folk are sick.’