exchanging jokes about what they would do when they had the monopoly of the river, or grinding their teeth at the Pitties and their tactics.
As he looked down on Jimmy’s fair head, he was suddenly brought forward with a jerk, for there, coming round the side of the building, was Ruth and his da and Lizzie. It wasn’t the fact that they’d all turned up together to visit him, it was the expression on their faces that was riveting his attention for both Lizzie and Ruth were crying, openly crying as they talked rapidly to Jimmy, and his da was now holding out a paper to Jimmy. He watched Jimmy reading it, shake his head, then put his hand to his brow before turning and looking up at the window. Then they were all looking up at the window.
He didn’t step back but stared down at them as they remained still, their postures seemingly frozen into a group of statuary. He noticed that Lizzie was wearing her old shawl, and old it was, green in parts. And Ruth too was in a shawl; she nearly always wore a bonnet. And they both still had their aprons on.
He moved from the window and went to the door and, having opened it, looked down the steps at them. They came towards him. It was his father who mounted first, and he said to him, ‘What’s up?’ But Paddy didn’t answer, he just walked into the room, followed by Ruth and Lizzie and, lastly, Jimmy.
Rory’s gaze travelled from one to the other, then came to rest on Jimmy who was gripping the paper with both hands and staring at him.
He did not repeat his question to Jimmy, but took the paper from him and began to read.
‘It is with deep regret that we hear of the terrible tragedy that has overtaken a Shields family on holiday on the coast of France. Mr Charles Buckham, his wife, three children, and their nursemaid Mrs Jane Connor, together with Mr Buckham’s brother, are feared lost, after their yacht was caught in a great storm. Mrs Buckham’s body and that of one child were washed ashore, together with pieces of wreckage from the boat. There is little hope of any survivors. Two other boats were wrecked at the same time, with a total loss of twenty-six lives. Mr Charles Buckham was a prominent member . . .’
Someone must have brought a chair forward for him to sit on because when next he looked at them they were standing in a half-circle before him and they were all crying, even his da. His own eyes were dry; his whole body was dry, he was being shrivelled up; his mind had stopped working except for a section which oozed pain and ran like a burning acid down into his heart, and there it was etching out her name: Janie. Janie.
‘Janie. Janie’ he said the name aloud and turned and saw Lizzie lift up her white apron and fling it over her head, and when she began to moan like a banshee he made no protest because the sound was finding an echo within himself. ‘Janie. Janie. Aw, Janie, don’t go, Janie. Don’t be dead, Janie. Come back to me, Janie. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. I’ll see about John George, honest to God I promise, now, right now. Oh, Janie.’
‘Give him a drop out of the bottle.’
Paddy put his hand into his inside pocket and drew out a flat flask of whisky and, picking up a cup, he almost half-filled it. Then handing it to Rory, he said, ‘Get it down you, lad. Get it down you. You need to be fortified. God knows you need to be fortified.’
When Lizzie suddenly cried, ‘Why does God bring disasters like this to us? What have we ever done to Him?’ Paddy turned on her, hissing, ‘Whist! woman. It’s questions like that that bring on disasters.’
Her wailing increased, and she cried, ‘It’s the third thing. I said there would be three, didn’t I? Didn’t I? An’ I told Andrews the polis when he brought the paper up, didn’t I, didn’t I?’
‘Oh Janie, Janie. Come back, Janie. Just let me look on you once more.’ It was sayings like that that brought disaster his da had just said. He was ignorant. They were all ignorant. That’s what he had said to Janie, they were all ignorant. And he had compared their talk, their ways, and their dwelling, the dwelling that he had known since birth, with Charlotte Kean and her fine house. Yet their ignorance was a warm ignorance, it was something you didn’t have to live up to; pretence fell through it like water through a sieve. Their ignorance was a solid foundation on which he could lean. He was leaning against it now, his head tucked against warm, thick flesh, nor when he realized it was Lizzie’s flesh, his mother’s flesh, did he push it away. In this moment he needed ignorance, he needed love, he needed warmth, he needed so many things to make up for the loss of Janie.
‘Aw, Janie, Janie. I’m sorry, Janie. I’m sorry, Janie.’
7
Charlotte Kean did not read the paper until late on the Saturday evening. She had returned from Hexham about seven o’clock feeling tired, irritable and lonely. After a meal she had gone into the office with the intention of doing some work on the mass of papers that always awaited her on the desk, but after sitting down she stared in front of her for a moment before closing her eyes and letting her body slump into the depths of the leather chair.
How much longer could she go on like this? She’d asked herself the same question numbers of times over the past weeks. There was a remedy, in fact two. But the cure offered by either Mr Henry Bolton or Mr George Pearson was worse, she imagined, than her present disease. Henry Bolton was forty-eight and a widower. George Pearson would never see fifty again. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that either of them had fallen in love with her. She would go as far as to say that they didn’t even like her, considering her ways too advanced by half, having heard her opinions from across a committee table. But since the death of both her father and her grandfather they had almost raced each other to the house.
She rose from the desk. She was a spinster and she’d remain a spinster. The wild fantastic dream she’d had was only that, a wild fantastic dream. She had humiliated herself because of her dream; she had been willing to be publicly humiliated because of her dream.
She went from the office and upstairs to her room, the room that until a few weeks ago had been her father’s. It was the largest bedroom in the house and faced the garden and shortly after he died she had it completely redecorated and had made it her own. She knew that the servants had been slightly shocked by such seeming lack of respect for the dead but she didn’t care what servants thought, or anyone else for that matter.
It was very odd, she mused, as she slowly took off her day clothes and got into a housegown, a new acquisition and another thing that had shocked the servants, for it wasn’t black or brown, or even grey, but a startling pink, and its material was velvet. Yes, it was very odd, but there was no one for whose opinion she cared one jot. And more sadly still, there was no one who cared one jot about what happened to her. She hadn’t a close relative left in the world, nor had she a close friend. There were those in the town who would claim her as a friend, more so now, but to her they were no more than acquaintances.
She sat before the mirror and unpinned her hair and the two dark, shining plaits fell down over her shoulders and almost to her waist. As her fingers undid each twist the hair seemed to spring into a life of its own and when, taking a brush, she stroked it from the crown down to its ends it covered her like a cloak.
The brush poised to the side of her face, she stared at herself in the mirror. It was a waste on her; it should have been doled out to some pretty woman and it would have made her beautiful, whereas on her head it only seemed to emphasize the plainness of her features. She leant forward and stared at her reflection. How was it that two eyes, a nose, and a mouth could transform one face into attractiveness while leaving another desolate of any appeal? She was not misshapen in any way, yet look at her. She dressed well, she had a taste for dress, she knew the right things to wear but the impression they afforded stopped at her neck. She had even resorted to the artifice of toilet powder, and in secret had applied rouge to her lips and cheeks with the result that she looked nothing better, she imagined, than a street woman.
She rose and glanced towards the bed. Were she to go to bed now she wouldn’t sleep. She couldn’t read in bed at all. This was the outcome, she supposed, of being taught to read while sitting in a straight-backed chair. Her father had enforced this rule and the teachers at the school to which her mother had sent her were of a like mind too. When she was young her idea of heaven had been to curl up on the rug before the fire and read a book, but when finally she had returned home from school she had found no pleasure in this form of relaxation.
She decided to go down to the drawing-room and play the piano for a while. This often had the power to soothe her nerves. Then she would take a bath, after which she might get to sleep without thinking.
It was as she was crossing the hall that she noticed the local paper neatly folded, together with a magazine, lying on a salver on the side table. She picked up both and went on into the drawing-room. But before laying them
