Hold My Hand

Hold My Hand

Serena Mackesy

© Serena Mackesy, 2008

T
he right of Serena Mackesy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published by Constable, 2008 (UK) and Soho Press, 2008 (US)

A CIP catalogue record is available from the British Library

UK (print edition) ISBN:
978-1-84529-639-1

US (print edition) ISBN: 978-1-56947-533-1

US Library of Congress Number (print edition): 2008018861

Cover design: Matt Whyman

For Ant and Honor

Whoooooo! Scary!

Acknowledgements:

A million thanks to the Royal Literary Fund, without whose help this book would not exist.

My darling brother Will, ditto.

The Amazing Chris Manby, who is always being thanked by other authors, and with very good reason. And The Board, for wearing the paint off my F5 key and being the best bunch of authors on the planet.

Matt Whyman, for his generosity with his time and ’shopping skillz

Antonia Willis and Honor Jefferson for the idea, the setting and so much more.

Cathy, Mum and Dad for being... you know...

And the Usual Suspects (you know who you are) for ensuring that not all of my friends are imaginary.

I won’t go back. I won't. I hate them… hate them. She can look all she likes, bloody bitch. Bloody bitch Blakemore… I won’t do back. Won’t go, never…

For a while, rage and fright drive back the cold, warm her from within. But she's barefoot and the evening gown stolen from the attic trunk is made of moth-scarred chiffon. Now she's no longer holding it up, it drags in the snow, tripping her with its increasing weight and adding to the chill as meltings creep up her legs.

Bugger her. Buggery bitch Blakemore. Bugger Rospetroc and bugger all of them. I hate them. Hate them all. They’ll not see me again, I’d sooner die…

And now, for the first time, she is aware enough of her surroundings that she sees that the snow isn't only lying on the ground: it’s all around her, drifting deadsoft through frozen air, spirals in the wind.

Lily is not a child raised in the romantic tradition, but she is vaguely aware that it is beautiful. Deadly-beautiful, like a cobra. She looks up at the clouded sky, closes her eyes and feels the fall, knows herself tiny. Lily doesn’t know it, but her core body temperature has already dropped to 95 degrees. All she feels right now is an increasing shiver, an ache in her hands and feet: but she
would
feel discomfort, barefoot in the snow.

I shan’t go back. Bugger them. I shan’t go back.

Perhaps you should. It’s cold out here.

She glances back across the yard, through the stone gate-arch, and what she sees causes a tiny qualm in her cooling stomach. The front door is closed. It’s closed, and the house lights, obscured by blackout curtains, shed no illumination on black night.

Lily hesitates. No. They’re like that. They think they can scare me. They think they can break me. Make me come back and beg. I won’t go back. I’ll leave, tonight. No-one will ask about me if I go. I’ll go back to Portsmouth. I can live there. I don’t care. I can steal food…

But she knows she’ll not even get as far as Bodmin, dressed as she is. She needs to find a coat. Coat and boots. Maybe take some food to eat on the long walk. It was hours on the train, she remembers that, and the trips she has taken beyond the village have involved long treks through bleak moorland. She’s not even sure which station they came in to, just that they are a long, long way from it.

I’ll go back in, she thinks. She won’t hear me. Deaf old bitch.

Lily pads across the courtyard garden, dress swishing a trail like a broom through sand. The bushes – rosemary, privet, lavender – which line the path are white lumps in the snow, dark at their roots. They crouch in camouflage, ready to pounce. She’s not given to flights of imagination. A life full of conflict, of snatching and clawing for survival, doesn’t leave much space for make-believe. But her route zig-zags along the path as she skirts the borders of their capacity to leap.

She is not the sort of child who cries, nor apologises. But she is wondering, now. Though hate drives her forward.

In the dark porch, she listens for signs of life, hears nothing but the swoosh and flump as a branch of the yew, overloaded, lets go its burden on to the ground. She could be inside. Just inside the door, waiting
.

Yes, but what can I do? It's cold. So cold.

My hands are shaking.

She fails to steady them as she reaches out to the pendulous iron door-handle, turns it.

The door doesn’t move. It is bolted from the inside.

She has partly expected this. Mrs Blakemore is a punisher. She locks things. Children are routinely locked in bedrooms, in the cupboard in the four-poster room, in dark places where spiders lurk, in this household. Blakemore takes pride in it. “No child is spanked in my house,” she proclaims to admiring villagers. “I won’t hear of it”. But there are worse things, for a child dragged up in the Portsmouth docks, than a clout round the arse. Those dark places: Lily has seen a lot of them since she came here. Dark places and gnawing hunger.

She won’t have done it with
all
the doors. She’s just done it to teach me a lesson
.

They don’t lock doors in the country. Are boastful about it. A few people in the village have taken to locking up since the Italian prisoners of war arrived on the farms, but no-one really locks up.

Trudging through the drifts at the side of the west wing, she rubs briskly at her upper arms, is surprised to find herself dislodging a shower of snow as she does so. Where did that come from? I’ve not been out here that long, have I?

It's been twenty minutes since she ran out through the front door. But she doesn’t know it. As her body temperature drops – it is 93 now – she has started to experience minor fugues,
petits mals
. Emerging from the shelter of the porch into the vicious bite of the wind, she seized up altogether for a full minute; simply stood, statue-still, by the white-cloaked sundial as though touched by the gaze of the Medusa. Her legs emanate so little heat that the folds of the dress are beginning, quietly, to freeze against them.

Lily doesn’t know she is in such danger. Thinks that all the cold will give is discomfort. She is only nine years old, after all.

She reaches door of  the west kitchen, lifts the latch. Again, no give. Again, no light shows around it, or through the window beside it. Even if the lights were on, the blackout would block any trace of their warmth from leaking into the night. The windows are up high in the wall, way out of her reach. And besides, her fingers are now so numb, so stiff, that she would be unable to grip to climb. Everywhere, silence: cloaked, muffled, but also a self-conscious silence, the silence of obedience.

Bugger her. Bitch Blakemore. Bugger them all. They can hear me out here,  tucked up out of the cold, listening to what happens to bad little girls who won’t do what they’re told. Yes, Mrs Blakemore. Thank you Mrs Blakemore. Please don’t punish me, Mrs Blakemore. All right for them. All right for the others. Their mummies and daddies came back for them. Nobody even knows who my daddy was…

She sets off for the eastern scullery. In the walled garden, facing north, the wind cuts through the air like a scimitar. Snow has piled up against the house so deep she has no alternative but to take herself away from the lee of the wall, foray out into the middle of the lawn, where it feels as though some animal is tearing at her clothes with icy claws. Feet numb, now, she stumbles once, twice, then falls altogether, lies still in white comfort, allows the crystals around her to leach the heat from her back.

Stars. There are stars.

The snow drifts down.

Lily is beginning to get sleepy. Forgetful. She struggles to remember what it is she's been so intent on doing. After two minutes, three, memory returns and she rolls onto her knees, pushes herself up. The effort makes her, briefly, giddy. Her breathing has become shallow as her blood has thickened, and her brain is already failing from lack of oxygen.

I really, really need to wee, she thinks. Maybe I should just do it here, on bitch Blakemore’s precious lawn.

Supercilious windows gaze blank on her struggling form. Somewhere in there, Mrs Blakemore sits shrouded by blackout curtains, feet up on the fender. Though rationing bites through the rest of the house, there is always a fire in Blakemore's study. Lily can see it now, glowing warm through the panels of the east kitchen door. I’ll say sorry, she thinks. I don’t care. I’ll say sorry and she’ll let me sit by it. No good going tonight. Tomorrow I’ll leave.

The door is locked.

She huddles against it, holds herself up with a wrist draped through the handle. Raises the other hand to knock. The rap sounds feebly through the scullery beyond, doesn’t penetrate the main body of the house at all.

“Let me in!” she calls. Her voice sounds small, far away. “I’m sorry! Let me in!”

Rospetroc turns its shoulder, turns away.

“I’m sorry!” she cries again, scratches the faded turquoise paint. “I’ll be good! Let me in!”

And finally it dawns on her: she is not to be allowed back. She is shut out for good. She can no longer feel her hands or feet, but someone is stabbing her, over and over, with a skewer.

I must get under cover.

She casts around. The sheds are locked. They never unlock them, except when they’re punishing people. Pearl was put in the old laundry for two hours once; came out screaming.

I must. I must. I must get under cover.

Across the lawn, on the edge of the pond, the boathouse. She went in there once. It’s cold and rotten, and hasn’t been used in decades, but it has a roof, and walls.

Better than nothing. Better than out here, in the wind.

The going is heavy across the lawn, new snow lying on old. Her feet break through the crust below the surface, jar to knee-depth. Each laboured step is harder than the last. When she gets there, the door, heavy and loose on its hinges, needs a lift and a hard shoulder before it gives. But she’s in, and it’s black. Around her, nameless forms, hard and crouching; the soft drip of water on water. Above her, a low ceiling. Yes, she thinks, logic slipping away with body heat, a hay-loft. There will be hay up there. I can wrap myself in the hay and get warm.

At least I’m not shivering any more.

One hand on the ladder, no grip. She winds a forearm around the upright, puts a foot on a rung. It feels like standing on burning glass. Lily almost screams, but hasn't the energy. Up. Up. I must go up
.
Her progress is slow, excruciating. She has to stop after each lift of her body, lean her head against the cross-struts and breathe, five, ten, fifteen times as she waits for her heart to slow. Come on, come
on.

The top. Arm, then arm, flat against rough planks, then body, thighs, burning feet. A sluggish tear slides from one eye, drops onto the floor.

The loft is empty. The fantasy of pile on pile of caressing hay bursts, like bubbles. There is nothing here: just a couple of old jute sacks and a length of rope.

She would cry now: even loveless Lily would cry, but there is nothing left to come. She crawls – drags dead limbs – across the floor, struggles to get beneath the sacks. Doesn’t even really remember how she got here; just that she is tired, so, so tired, and wants to sleep. Curls up, a bundle of skin and hair, beneath the sacks, notices that the floor seems warm to her body.

Lies.

Lies.

Lies.

There. I’m warming up.

The floor beneath her seems to be heated. How lucky. There’s heat coming from the floor. So strong it’s almost uncomfortable.

Let it work. Let it warm me.

Oh my God. It’s burning. It’s boiling.

Eighty-four degrees. She sits, suddenly, bolt upright. I’m burning. She holds her hand out in front of her and sees it, clear as daylight. It’s burning. Burning green. And there's something –
something –
on her clothes.
They’ve come while I’ve been sleeping and they’ve poured boiling water on me. Where are they? Why can’t I see them? Oh my God, it hurts! It hurts! It’s burning my skin!

And she claws. At herself, at her sodden clothing. At the very skin that has turned on her. What is it?
What is it? Get it off me! Get it off!

A small gutter child in a deserted loft on Bodmin moor. In the dark, pulling: tearing away her feeble coverings, throwing them across the room to land in corners, she screams, and screams, and no noise comes out.
Get it off! Get it off!

And then she knows. She knows clearly, no fog, no escape: there is no heat. There are no people. There is only me. There has always been only me. And I am dying.

Lily crawls with the last of her strength back into the corner, curls up on her side like an unborn child. Face slack, she lies and stares at unbroken darkness.