Bleeding Heart Square

bird or reptile.

The ring had been looped over the head of the nail, and tied to it was a brown luggage label. Lydia touched the label gently with her finger. There was only one word on it and, as the nausea rose in her throat, she knew what it would be before she made out the letters: Serridge.

20

You notice that the entries near the end look different from those near the beginning. All the London ones are written in ink, as are the first few entries at Morthams Farm. And the very first ones are much more neatly written than those that come later. At the start, Philippa May Penhow is writing to impress an invisible posterity. Then she writes for herself, because she wants to. These last entries are in pencil and the handwriting wobbles all over the place. Those were the ones she wrote after she moved the diary from the house.

Finally, at the end, where in places the words are almost impossible to make out, she writes in a rapid, almost illegible scrawl because she has no one else to talk to, and she’s desperate.

Monday, 14 April 1930

Last night was a full moon amp; it kept me awake. Joseph didn’t come up. As the sun rose, I slept amp; did not wake till after nine o’clock. When I came downstairs Joseph had left the house. Rebecca said that he had told them to wait until I was down before clearing away the breakfast things. On the table was a bunch of daffodils in a vase, and on my plate a little envelope with my name on it in my darling’s hand. ‘My sweet love, forgive your little boysie for upsetting you. I tiptoed out of the house this morning so as not to wake you. Your loving Joey.’

Oh how could I have doubted him?

He came back for lunch with little Jacko at his heels amp; two dead rabbits. He had shot them himself this morning. Jacko was smelly and dirty after his morning’s fun, and I told him he could not come into the house until Amy had washed him under the tap in the scullery!

A bunch of daffodils and a snatch of baby talk — and she comes running back into his arms again. But not long now. You are counting the days.

‘Now look here, Byrne. What’s it to you?’

Mr Byrne, who had been sweeping sawdust, propped his broom against the wall of the Crozier and put his hands on his hips. He scowled at Serridge. ‘It’s next to my pub. That’s what it’s got to do with me.’

‘It’s not there now.’

‘But it was. And having that bloody disgusting thing hardly a yard from the door is hardly going to encourage trade, is it?’

Rory waited on the doorstep of number seven.

‘I shouldn’t think it would have much effect one way or the other,’ Serridge said coldly. ‘It’s not your pump. It belongs to the freeholders.’

‘I’m a ratepayer, aren’t I?’ Mr Byrne had leant forward, unmistakably hostile. His bald head was like a blunt instrument. ‘My old woman nearly had a fit when she saw what them birds were pecking at.’

‘Don’t see why. She hangs out bacon rind for the bloody blue tits.’

‘That’s not the same — anyone can see that. Look, someone round here is off his head. And the label had your name on it, Mr Serridge — you remember that.’

Serridge stood there, not giving an inch either literally or metaphorically. His overcoat was open and his hands were deep in his trouser pockets; he had a cigar in the corner of his mouth and his hat on the back of his head. He looked like a farmer confronting an irritable porker.

‘None of your bloody business,’ he said with an air of finality. ‘You’re just the brewery’s tenant.’

At the sound of Rory’s footsteps, the other men glanced towards him.

But the porker wasn’t so easily put off. ‘You’ve been having quite a little problem with these hearts, I’m told,’ Byrne said to Serridge, and as he spoke he came half a pace closer. ‘Parcels in the post from what I hear.’

‘Who told you that?’ Serridge snapped.

‘The Captain.’

‘And you believed him? I thought you had more sense.’

‘I believed him because he was telling the truth, Mr Serridge. And what interests me is why haven’t you been to the police about it? I mean, somebody’s making a nuisance of themselves. And maybe somebody’s trying to tell you something.’

‘Nonsense.’

Rory had reached the corner now and was skirting the two men by the pump. He was on his way to the Central Library, where they had a back file of Berkeley’s. Later, in the afternoon, he wanted to practise his shorthand skills. He wouldn’t have much time in the evening because he was meeting Dawlish for a drink.

‘Hey, there — Mr Wentwood. You know about these hearts, don’t you?’

‘Which hearts?’

‘The ones that Mr Serridge here has been getting in the post.’

Serridge turned towards Rory, towering over him, his face impassive. He didn’t need to say anything.

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr Byrne,’ Rory said. ‘I don’t look at Mr Serridge’s post. Only my own.’

‘Because he knows it’s none of his business,’ Serridge said, turning back to Byrne. ‘He’s not a fool, unlike some I could mention.’

There was a crack as the latch rose on the gate from Rosington Place. The wicket opened and Nipper scampered into Bleeding Heart Square, followed by Howlett.

‘Morning, gents. I thought I heard your voices.’

‘Mr Howlett,’ Byrne began. ‘It’s got to stop.’

‘What has?’

‘We’ve got someone with a nasty mind playing pranks around here. It’s not nice. If my little girl had seen what was left on the pump this morning, it would have given her nightmares.’

‘Good morning, Mr Howlett,’ Serridge said. ‘How do?’

Howlett touched his hat. ‘All right, sir.’

‘Suppose Byrne here tells you what’s on his mind. Once he’s got it off his chest, maybe he’ll feel better.’

‘Bloody disgusting,’ Byrne said. ‘That’s what it is. Jesus Mother of God, someone needs their head examined.’

Howlett listened gravely while the landlord explained what had been left on the pump and what Captain Ingleby-Lewis had told him about Serridge’s parcels. Nipper cocked his leg against the corner of the pump and squirted urine over the side of the stone basin. Rory tried to slip away but Serridge wrapped a hand around his arm. He squeezed it so firmly that Rory winced.

‘Mr Wentwood lives in my house, Howlett — if you want to ask him, he’ll soon tell you this business about parcels is nonsense.’

‘You let me know if it happens again, Mr Byrne,’ Howlett said at last when Byrne had finished. ‘And I’ll keep my eyes open, don’t you worry about that. If you ask me it’s some boy’s prank. If I catch him at it, I’ll take a strap to him and then I’ll hang him up there to rot instead.’

Sitting at her desk by the window, Lydia Langstone glanced down into Rosington Place and saw Rory Wentwood standing outside the chapel and looking up at the great east window. In the background, Miss Tuffley’s voice rose and fell, swooped and dived, just as it had done all afternoon and did every afternoon unless Mr Reynolds stopped her. She was talking about films at present, comparing Robert Donat in The Count of Monte Cristo with Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Miss Tuffley wasn’t stupid. She concentrated her romantic urges on men who could be trusted to remain safely two-dimensional.