Hold My Hand (17 page)

She smiles as she speaks, with that glee with which people often greet the misfortunes of the high-ups.

The back door opens and Jago barrels through it. Stops dead and stares at the visitor. “Allo,” he says.

“Hello,” says Bridget.

“You're Yasmin's Mum, aren't you?”

“The very same.”

 “Cool!” he says.

“Jago,” says Mark, coming in in his wake, “Take off your boots before you go in the other room. Oh, hello, Bridget. How are you?”

“Good. Thanks,” says Bridget. He gives her a friendly, lopsided grin, bends down to pull his son's footwear off. “So I hear you had a bit of a do up at yours at New Year,” he says.

“Oh, don't,” says Bridget.

“She's just been telling me,” says Tina. “Quite a party.”

“Bet you've been having fun clearing up.”

“Well, actually,” says Bridget, “I did get my own back, a bit. In the morning. Couldn't stay awake after eight, so I went down to see what the damage was like.”

“Uh-huh?”

He's got a lock of hair got loose, flopped over one eye. She feels a sudden urge to reach out, brush it back. Blinks, gets hold of herself.

“Well, you can imagine. Broken glass, streamers, great puddles of spilled stuff, ashtrays all over the carpets.”

“Great.”

“And half a dozen dead bodies.”

“No!”

“Yeah,” says Tina, “you don't have to be so literal. They'd just passed out, dumbo. Drunk.”

He grins.

“So you know what I did?”

“No.”

“I got the Hoover out. Switched the electricity back on and started cleaning round them where they lay. Made sure I bumped into everything I went past.”

“Brilliant,” he says.

“They won't be coming back here in a hurry,” says Bridget.

“I shouldn't think they will.”

“Weird people, though. No, I mean, apart from that. You know what I found?”

“What?”

Jago, released, runs off into the interior of the house with the girls. Mark comes and sits with them at the table.

“Well, I went to clear the fireplace up and someone had taken all the ashes and spread them all over the hearthstone, and then they'd written a whole load of swearwords in them. Like, “fuck off” and “Bugger” and –” she lowers her voice “the c- word.”

“The c- word?” He raises his eyebrows and she suddenly realises that he's amused that she's suddenly turned to self-censorship when it comes to that word when she's said the first two without thought.

“No, but,” she says. “Don't you think that's weird? I mean, how bored do you have to be to have to do something like that to keep you entertained?”

“It wasn't me,” says Lily. “I didn't bloody do it.”

“You see?” says Felicity Blakemore. “Defiant. Defiant
and
a liar.”

Margaret Peachment holds her counsel. The tickets for Canada are practically burning a hole in her pocket. It'll be someone else's job in a few weeks, she thinks. Anything for a quiet life.

Behind her, Hugh Blakemore stands with his hands in the pockets of his grey wool shorts. Grins at Lily Rickett like an ape

“Well, who else is likely to have done it?” asks Mrs Blakemore. “Answer me that.”

Lily shrugs.

“What's
that
supposed to mean?”

His eye catches hers. Hugh raises a triumphal eyebrow, grins again. There is more, the smile says, where that came from. You'll never get away from me.

Lily touches the burgeoning bruise through her sleeve.  “I don't know,” she snarls. “But it wasn't bloody
me
.”

The women stare down at the shards on the floor, a poker clutched like a lance in Mrs Blakemore's right hand. Hugh put it there right after he popped his cricket ball into the window seat. Right before he grabbed her by the scruff, raised his voice and called for his mother.

“It's too much,” she repeats. “I cannot be expected to just – accept… look!”

She bends down and takes the head of a King Charles spaniel between thumb and forefinger, brandishes it in Mrs Peachment's face. “Staffordshire. Over a hundred years old. Not, I suppose, that one should expect a guttersnipe from the slums to be able to discern such a thing.”

“Oh dear,” says Margaret Peachment. “And are you sure it can't have been…”

“Worth five pounds each, some of 'em,” says Felicity, dropping the head back among the broken remains of WG Grace, of Gladstone and Wellington, of Queen Victoria as a young bride and a nameless flower-seller with pink and dimpled cheeks and a skirt full of posies. “But that's beside the point. They're
family
things.
Family
.”

“I do appreciate that,” says Margaret Peachment. “I feel the same about…”

“Yes, well,” snaps the lady of the Great House, “I'm sure
your
heirlooms go back
several
generations.”

Little spots of pink appear on Mrs Peachment's cheeks. Mrs Blakemore fails to notice. They do, actually, she thinks. Some of my things came down from my great-great-grandmother, not that someone like
you
would care. That's the trouble with this country. Old families… it will be better once this war is over. Things will be different then.

“I do sympathise,” she says, in a voice of saccharine. She needs to emanate as much sympathy as she can at this moment without actually giving ground, because it is she who will have to pick up the pieces if this arrangement falls apart. For the time being.

“You would have thought,” says Mrs Blakemore, “she would be grateful, but oh, no. I feel,” she continues, “as though she's brought the entire bally war into my house with her.”

Felicity sees a brief flash of the events six months ago, the Channel awash with young men's blood, the brave little fishing boats that never returned, and holds her peace.

“I'm sure she didn't mean it. You know how children are. Thoughtless…”

“Yeah, but,” says Lily, “I didn't bloody
do
it.”

Felicity snaps round to glare at her. The pinched, defiant glare, the skin that looks dirty however much carbolic you waste on her. I hate her, she thinks suddenly. Hate her. I can't help it. A cuckoo in my nest, taking over, with her dirty mouth, teaching the others her vile vocabulary, no control, no discipline. If Patrick were here, he'd know what to do. Damn this war. Damn Hitler and Chamberlain, scattering slummies through our countryside, taking my husband away.

“Be quiet,” she orders. “You're in enough trouble already.”

“Yes, but I didn't bloody
do
it!”

Felicity Blakemore loses her temper. Advances on the child, fist clenched, teeth bared. “Get out! Get
out
! I'll – I'll…”

“Felicity!” cries Mrs Peachment.

She catches herself. It doesn't do to show temper in front of the village.

“Yes, well,” she says, after five ragged breaths. “You can't expect something like this to go unpunished.”

“Of course not!” says Mrs Peachment. “Naturally not!”

“She is defiant, Margaret, and it cannot be tolerated.”

Lily's eyes fill with tears, but no-one notices. Except Hugh. And when he sees it, he grins again. Does the boo-hoo gesture with his clenched fists
behind
the women’s backs.
I was so happy,
thinks Lily.
I was so stupid. More fool me, to think that anything that good could last
.

“It wasn't me,” she says one more time, hopelessly.

“I'm too angry at the moment,” says Felicity Blakemore. “I can't cope with it just now.”

“Yes,” says Mrs Peachment. “Let her stew on what she's done for a bit.”

“Yes,” agrees Mrs Blakemore. “We'll shut her up and let her think about what she's done.”

“Good,” says Mrs Peachment. “Good thinking.”

She is thinking of a bedroom, of course. Thinking about how she would send Julia and Terence to their rooms to await punishment. “You can deal with her when you've calmed down,” she says encouragingly, then, quickly, to extricate herself before she gets embroiled again: “well, I must dash, Felicity. I have to get down to the Home Farm. Some trouble with the Land Girls, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, yes,” says Mrs Blakemore, and Mrs Peachment catches the edge to the comment. “Mustn't keep the
Land Girls
waiting.”

“No,” she says. “Well, bye bye.”

“
Good
bye, Mrs Peachment,” says Mrs Blakemore, pointedly. “I'll let you let yourself out.”

It's a slight, and she knows it. Flusters her way out of the room. Finds her hat and her gloves on the hall table and scurries out of the house without putting them on.

She really is the giddy limit, that woman, she thinks as she walks to her bicycle.
Such
a snob. I'm so glad I'm getting away from here.

She has to wheel the bicycle up the track; it's too rutted to get up the speed to make the hill. The heat of the day combines with her embarrassment and turns her face scarlet as she walks.

I've half a mind, she thinks, to do something to make sure she can't get rid of that girl. She thinks she can tell everyone what to do just because she's lady Muck. And the fumes coming off her, at this time of day. She'll run out of Floris soon and then she won't be able to cover up her habits by drenching herself.

It would serve her right, it really would.

And then she smiles.

Why not? It's not like anyone will be coming after me, she thinks. They're far too busy to go chasing off to British Columbia in search of administrative errors.

And suddenly, the hill seems far less steep.

No-one speaks for a minute after she leaves. Lily, tempted to bolt for the door, sees that Hugh has walked across and blocked it off.

Mrs Blakemore looks down at the floor, stirs the pieces of the figurines with an elegant toe. Takes a breath and looks up.

“Well,” she says.

Lily is ready to spring. Feels like a trapped animal. Wants to cry.

“Hugh, would you mind?” says Mrs Blakemore. “The cupboard.”

“Yes, Mummy,” says Hugh. Steps across and takes Lily by the arm.

The cupboard. Nonononono! I'm scared! Shut in! Don't! Don't! My Mum shuts me in, under the stairs… Don't!

Lily struggles. But Hugh has grown since he went away. He seems even larger than he was at half-term. He's got her by both arms, now, and simply lifts her off the floor and carries her toward the stairs.

“Please!” shrieks Lily. “Please… don't! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”

“Sorry?”

“I'm sorry! I didn't do it! It wasn't me!”

“Well, what are you sorry for, then?”

“It wasn't…
please!
”

"Make your mind up," says her jailor. "You didn't do it, or you're sorry?"

Lily slumps in his grip. Hopes that the dead weight will be too much. Hugh, enjoying himself and strengthened by adrenalin, arrives at the stairs, humps her onto the first step. Takes pleasure in inflicting punishment for his own crime.

Felicity Blakemore turns away and walks off through the drawing room toward her study. There's a decanter of whisky in there. She feels she deserves one, after this dreadful start to the afternoon.

They both wait until she has gone. Both know the ante will be upped the minute they're alone.

Lily starts to swear. “You bastard,” she says. “You fucking bastard. I'll get you. I'll fucking get you, you bastard.”

Hugh laughs. Shows her how much bigger he is than she is. He gets his hands into her armpits, pokes hard digits into tender flesh. Hauls her to the top of the stairs and, once they're in the corridor, digs his fingers into her sketchy scalp and begins to drag her, flailing like a fish on a hook, up the corridor. She is screaming, now. With the pain and with the fear. “You fuckingfuckingfucking…”

She manages to twist her head around, bite him on the wrist.

“Christ!”

And now he's kicking her. Slapping her about the head. No-one here to see. No-one here to hear. And he gets her by the hair again and drags her into the four-poster room. Daddy's room. What must have been, he thinks, the room where he was conceived, though his mother moved down to the facing bedroom in the far wing so long ago he barely remembers them using it as a couple. No-one has slept here at all since his father went off to serve King and Country.

Hugh grabs Lily round the waist and throws her onto the heavy family bed, flings himself on top, pins her down. Enjoys the feeling of her body bucking beneath him. Gets her by the wrists and waits.

“Please,” she begs again.

“Please what?”

He smiles. Feels her breathe. Smiles wider. Presses his body down on hers. There's been a lot of that, in this room, over the centuries. Ancestors taming the peasantry by whatever means they had to hand. Lily looks appalled. Looks sick. tries to kick.

“Oh you – you fucking…”

Now he's got her by the wrists. Grins the victor's grin. She subsides. Fight and you make it worse. Isn't that what she's always learned? Fight, and you just make them more aggressive.

He leans forward, whispers into her ear.

“I can always come back, you know,” he says.

She turns her head away from him and finds herself looking at the cupboard. It's built into a deep recess in the wall, windowless and soundproof.

“Please,” she says. “Don't make me go in there.”

“Too late,” says Hugh. “Got to do what Mummy says.”

“Please…” she says. “I can't…”

And he moves against her. He is heavy for his age, despite the privations of rationing. Heavy and strong. She can smell the smell of him. He is Papal Scarlet.