never knew in this business. She made a note to ring New Brooms when she got back to the office.
¦
“Hi, Lois, what’re you doing here?” Bridie Reading had just returned from her job at the vicarage, and was making a cup of tea in the kitchen. “Got time for one?” she said.
Lois nodded. “Yep, that’d be good. Make it strong and sweet. Just had a bit of a shock.” She was smiling, but still felt a bit shaky after that encounter in the trees by the mill.
“There’s a woman looking over Bell’s Farm,” she said conversationally.
“What was shocking about that?” said Bridie, putting a large mug of tea in front of Lois.
“Nothing,” said Lois. “No, it wasn’t her. But I was just telling you that in case you hear anything about it being sold. Could be a new client for us. I put in a word to her, and gave her a pen.” She paused, and Bridie waited.
Finally, she said, “And the shock? What was that?”
Lois shook her head. “It wasn’t nothing, really. Just that I nearly ran into a bloke who stepped out into the road in front of me. In that tunnel of trees by Cathanger. And a dog, too. Shakes you up, doesn’t it?”
“Who was it, then?” said Bridie. She knew Lois so well. There was more to come.
“Not sure,” said Lois casually. “The dog looked like that brute of Abraham’s. I don’t think the man was old Abraham. I’ve seen him in the shop once or twice. Anyway, this bloke was younger. Only caught a quick flash of his face…he looked a bit like Enid. You know, Enid who’s coming to work for us.”
Bridie’s face had darkened. “Oh my God,” she said. “I thought he’d gone for good. It’d be Edward, I reckon.”
“Does he look like Enid? I thought he was a lot older?”
“Oh no, Lois. There is a strong resemblance, as you would expect. They’re twins,” said Bridie.
? Weeping on Wednesday ?
Ten
In the semi-darkened room where her mother passed strange, lonely days, Enid Abraham moved about quietly, cleaning and folding her mother’s cast-off clothes. In a bizarre routine, each morning Mother would get out of the divan bed against the wall and take all her clothes from the cupboard which Father, on her instructions, had moved from the bedroom upstairs. From the untidy pile on the bed, she would take one dress, or skirt and jumper, and one pair of shoes, and after slowly putting them on, she would stand for a couple of minutes, and then begin taking them off again, ready to pass on to the next outfit. In this way, she would go through all her clothes every morning, and the process would last until it was time for Enid to come in, tidy up and give her a cup of hot chocolate, which, unless it was exactly the right consistency and temperature, would be dumped unceremoniously on the floor.
“What do you mean, Enid?” said Mother now, watching her daughter’s every movement like an old parrot. “What d’you mean, you will leave my chocolate in a flask? Where do you think you are going? You are needed here, my girl. This is your place, make no mistake about that!”
“I shall be out most mornings, I expect,” said Enid mildly. “I’ve got a job. Helping out where people need it.” She dare not say cleaning. That would be totally out of the question. No daughter of Mrs Abraham went out cleaning other people’s houses.
The hot chocolate hit the wall behind Enid’s head. She was used to ducking at the right time, and quickly picked up the empty cup, fetched a bucket and cloth and cleaned up the mess, and then – closing her ears to the invective hurled at her – went calmly out of the room and shut the door. It was some time before the house was quiet, but when she was sure her mother had settled down, Enid put on her coat and wellies, tied a scarf around her head against the cold wind, and went out across the yard to a stone barn where the chickens awaited their usual feed.
“That’s the worst bit done,” she confided to a noisy mob of hens, scattering grain in smooth arcs so that all should get their share. “Now Mother knows, she’ll accept it. She’ll punish me in her time-honoured fashion, no doubt, but I’m used to that.”
She went to collect the eggs from nest boxes in the corner, and found yet another broken open and the yolk spilled. Her face set, she looked around the milling chickens. She knew which one she was looking for. It had a damaged wing that dragged along the ground. Reaching down, she took it by the neck, ignored its one flapping wing, and neatly pulled the head sharply away from the body. The flapping continued for a few seconds, and its legs pounded away in an automatic effort to escape. Then it was still, and Enid pushed it into the empty grain bucket.
“That sorts out supper for tonight,” she said, this time addressing her Father, who had come into the barn and seen the whole thing.
“Good girl,” he said approvingly. “Well done. If you get an egg-eater, there’s nothing else to be done. Give it here. I’ll see to it.”
Enid handed over the bucket and rubbed her hands together. “I must get off now,” she said. “Library day. Anything you want, Father?”
He shook his head. “Don’t be too long,” he said, with an anxious look back at the house.
¦
Just up the road, in the empty farmhouse, Lois was putting on rubber gloves and collecting cleaning materials together for a major assault on the dust and dirt. Hazel was already there when she arrived, and the pair of them set to work.
“Better tidy up first, don’t you think, Mrs M?” said Hazel, pulling out a roll of black rubbish bags.
Lois nodded. “You start upstairs,” she said, “and I’ll be down here. Give us a shout if there’s a problem.”
Hazel picked her way upstairs, noticing that the stairs still had threadbare carpet, but seemed in good repair. The whole house was solid, reassuring, and, unlike some much cleaner but chillier jobs Hazel had been sent to, it had a pleasant, friendly atmosphere. The low sun shining through dusty windows warmed up the rooms, and Hazel set to work with a will. She picked up old newspapers, books with no covers, empty bottles of patent medicines that had never seen a sell-by date, some showing vestiges of dark brown liquid clinging to the sides. She opened one of these, and sniffed. “Ugh!” she exclaimed. “Yuk! No wonder they all snuffed it!”
Lois came upstairs. “What’s up?” she said.
“Nothin’,” said Hazel, “it’s just these old bottles – here, take a sniff.”
“Ipikek,” said Lois flatly. “I remember it from my nan. Used to give it us if we had coughs. Kill or cure, I reckon.”
She turned to go back downstairs, and her eye was caught by a pile of curtains in the corner of the room. “We’d better make a bonfire, Hazel,” she said. “There’s too much rubbish here for us to take away…or for the bin men.” She walked over to pick up the curtains, and stopped. There was something organized about them. It looked like a roughly-made bed, with an old cushion where a pillow might be.
“Hey look, Hazel,” she said. “What d’you think?”
“Down-and-out,” said Hazel with a shiver. “One of our ever-present homeless,” she added. Hazel knew the homeless scene pretty well, but in Tresham, not out here in the country.
“But how did he get in?” asked Lois, looking round nervously.
“Or she,” said Hazel. She shook her head. “God knows,” she said, “but when you’re desperate, you’ll find a way. Probably a broken window somewhere. Anyway, we’d better dump it all, hadn’t we?”
“Yep,” said Lois. “We got a job to do. I want this place clean and smellin’ of roses by the time we’ve finished.” She bent down and gathered up the curtains and the cushion, and shoved them into a black bag. “Probably moved on to somewhere else now, anyway,” she said. “Now the agents are bringin’ people round, nobody’ll hide out here.”
It took the pair of them hours to get the house into a state that satisfied Lois, and then they piled up the rubbish in the back garden and hunted about for matches. A couple of heavy raindrops hit Lois on the back of the neck. “Damn!” she said. “It’s goin’ to rain again! We’ll never get this fire going today. Better find somethin’ to cover the heap and come back when it stops.”
They found a large plastic sheet, neatly folded, in a disused washhouse at the back of the yard, and stretched
