Now he stood and brought the circle of light across the floor and up the steps to her bed. The candle came close to her face. She squinted. Behind the glow was Victor, but, dazzled, she could not make out his expression. She felt the blanket being tugged away, and the light played for a little while on the folds of her nightgown over her breasts.
‘I gets it in mind you’re still that girl you used to be. You’ve let yourself go. All skin and bone. Used to be a pretty thing, you did. Back then. Before you run off.’ He stretched out on the mattress; she inched away, he inched into the space and put an arm around her. The arm was slim in the coat sleeve, but she knew the strength in it.
His breathing deepened and he began to snore. She was reprieved – for now, at least – but still she could not stop the racing in her chest.
Lily did not move. She lay awake in the dark, breathing as gently as she could for fear of waking him.
After a scant hour, the candle had burnt out and a faint light seeped into the room. He didn’t shift and stretch like most people did when they woke up. He didn’t move an inch, just opened his eyes and asked, ‘What money you got from that parson?’
‘Not a lot.’ She made her voice as meek as she could.
He reached for the purse she kept under her pillow and, standing, tipped the contents into his palm.
‘I had to get the cheese for you. And the ham,’ she explained. ‘Leave me something, will you? Just a bit?’
He grunted. ‘Don’t know what you do with your money. What is it – don’t you trust me?’
‘’Course I do.’
‘Good. This is for your own good, you know that.’
She nodded meekly.
‘All this,’ he gestured expansively, and she didn’t know whether he meant the cottage or the liquor in the woodshed or some other thing, bigger and less visible, behind it all and including it. ‘All this, it’s not for me, Lil.’
She watched him. You had to. You couldn’t afford to miss a thing, with Vic.
‘It’s for us. For the family. You wait. One day you won’t have to go skivvying for that old parson no more. You’ll live in a great, white house ten times finer than that. You and me and—’
He broke off sharply, but his thoughts didn’t. They carried him on, and she saw how his gaze softened as he gloated over the future he kept hugged to himself so privately.
‘Now this’ – and he waved his closed fist so she could hear the pennies rattling – ‘is an investment. You’ve heard me talk about my scheme, haven’t you?’
‘This last five years, yes.’ It’d been a recurring theme. Whether he was in a good mood or bad, whether the money was right or wrong, the scheme always lulled him. It made him quiet and it took the edge off the sharp look in his eyes. Sometimes when he mentioned it, his thin mouth twitched in a way that, if it were some other mouth, might have resulted in a smile. But he was as secretive about this scheme as about everything he did, and she was as ignorant of what it was as she had been when she first heard of it.
‘It’s a lot longer than five years.’ The nostalgia in his voice was almost musical. ‘That’s just when I told you about it. Twenty years ago, I reckon I started plotting it out. Longer than that, even, if you look at it one way!’ He twitched in self-congratulation. ‘And soon the time’ll be ripe. So don’t you worry about your pennies, Lil, they’re safe with me. It’s all’ – his mouth twisted – ‘all in the family!’
He slid a couple of coins back into her purse and dropped it on the bed, rose and descended the steps to the kitchen.
‘I’ve put a crate in the woodshed,’ he told her in a new tone of voice. ‘Someone’ll come and take it away. Same as always. And there’s a couple of barrels in the usual place. You didn’t see ’em come and you won’t see ’em go.’
‘Yes, Vic.’
Then, helping himself to her three new candles on the way, he opened the door and was gone.
She lay in bed, thinking about his scheme. Not work at the parsonage any more? Live in a great, white house with Vic? She frowned. This cottage was cold and damp, but at least she had her days at the parsonage and was often alone at night. And – who else would be there? The words sounded again in her head. You and me and—
And who?
Did he mean Ann? For the family, he’d said. He must mean Ann. After all, he was the one who had come to her in the night with instructions to cross the river to the Swan at first light to fetch back the child who’d died and lived again.
She thought of her sister with Mr and Mrs Vaughan, in her bedroom with red blankets and the log basket piled high, and pictures on the wall.
No, she decided. He must not have her.
Gone! Or, Mr Armstrong Goes to Bampton
‘WHAT CAN I do?’ Armstrong asked for the hundredth time, as he paced in front of the fireplace in his own drawing room. Bess sat knitting by the fire. For the hundredth time, she shook her head and admitted that she didn’t know.
‘I’ll go to Oxford. I’ll have it out with him.’
She sighed. ‘He won’t thank you for it. It’ll only make things worse.’
‘But I have to do something. There are the Vaughans, living with the girl and getting more attached to her with every day that passes, and Robin does nothing! Why doesn’t he make his mind up? What’s the cause of the delay?’
Bess looked up doubtfully from her work. ‘He won’t tell you anything until he’s ready. And even then, perhaps not.’
‘This is different. This is a child.’
She sighed. ‘Alice. Our first granddaughter.’ She looked wistful, but then shook her head. ‘If she is. It will end badly if you have it out with him. You know what he’s like.’
‘Then I shall go back to Bampton.’
She looked up. Her husband’s face was set, determined.
‘What will you do there?’
‘Find someone who knew Alice. Bring them to Buscot. Put them in front of the child, and find out once and for all who she is.’
Bess frowned. ‘And you think the Vaughans will allow that?’
Armstrong opened his mouth and closed it again. ‘You’re right,’ he admitted, with a gesture of helplessness. Yet he could not let the matter drop. ‘Still, at least if I go, I can find someone who would know, and once I’ve done that I can talk to Robin and see whether he wants to speak to the Vaughans, and – oh! I don’t know. The thing is, Bess, what else is there? I can’t do nothing.’
She looked at him fondly. ‘No. You were never any good at that.’
The lodging house in Bampton was no more respectable-looking than before, but it had a merrier air than the last time he had seen it. Through an open upper window he heard the tune of a fiddle and the arhythmic wooden tapping that you hear when inebriated people dance on bare floorboards, having rolled the carpets back. Bursts of female laughter were interspersed with clapping, and the noise was so boisterous that he had to ring twice before he was heard.
‘Come in, my duck!’ exclaimed the woman who answered the door, shoeless and red-faced with exertion or liquor, and without waiting she withdrew upstairs, beckoning him to follow. He climbed the stairs, and he remembered climbing them the last time, when the poor dead woman in the room at the top was still just a letter-writer to him, and Alice a mere name. The woman led him to the first floor, where a number of men and women were hopping about in country style while the fiddler tried to catch them out by playing faster and faster. She pressed a glass of crystal-clear liquor into his hand, and when he demurred, invited him to dance.