Thieving Fear Page 2

  As she recoiled the ground seemed to give beneath her. She was terrified that it was spilling into the hole until she realised her bare feet had lost their purchase on the grass. One skidded over the edge and met a bunch of cold objects that responded by writhing eagerly. She kicked out and flung herself away from the hole, almost sprawling on her back. She was thrusting her hands under the trapdoor to lever it up when the voice repeated her name.

  The thud of the trapdoor laid it to rest, but its clogged yet mocking tone suggested she hadn't escaped. The panic that she'd barely managed to suppress overwhelmed her, and she backed away so fast her ankles knocked together. She no longer knew where the trapdoor was. She had no idea where she was going except backwards until, with a swiftness that snatched all her breath, the common vanished together with the further landscape of fields and distant houses as if earth had closed over her eyes. She had backed off the edge of the cliff.

  Its side rushed up past her like a mass of smoke, and then her feet struck ground, too soon. She was on a ledge close to the top, which meant she had a long way to fall. She staggered against the cliff to rest her face and hands against the clay while she tried to be sure of her balance. The ledge was dismayingly narrow as well as slippery with sand. 'Can someone come?' she cried before she had time to wonder who might respond. 'Can anyone hear?'

  She could – a muffled restless sound, and then a louder and more purposeful version. She wasn't sure it was made by the flap of a tent until Ellen called somewhat sleepily 'Was that you, Charlotte? Where are you?'

  'Here,' Charlotte shouted and turned her shaky head to see. It wasn't a ledge, it was a path that led straight to the top. As she scrambled upwards, a shape loomed above her. 'What on earth are you doing down there?' Ellen said. 'Were you sleepwalking?'

  Charlotte didn't answer until her cousin took her hand and helped her over the edge. The common stretched as blank as innocence to the tents. She murmured her thanks and stayed close to Ellen while they padded across the grass. She could see no sign of a hidden trapdoor in the area where she remembered it to have been, and how could none of her cousins have been disturbed by a voice as loud as the one she'd seemed to hear? 'I must have been,' she decided and instantly felt better.

  This appeared to be Hugh's cue to call 'Where are they? Which way did they go?'

  'Listen to it,' Ellen said with an affectionate laugh. 'It's a good job we didn't have to rely on the boys, isn't it, Charlotte?'

  'What's wrong?' Rory demanded. 'We were asleep. I was down the house.'

  'Charlotte's been walking in her sleep.' Ellen led her into the tent and waited while she wriggled into her sleeping bag. 'Let's get you snug so you can't wander off again,' she said, zipping the bag up tight. For a moment, until she controlled herself, Charlotte found the tent and the bag and Ellen's concern almost as oppressive as the notion of climbing down into the dark.

  ONE

  'Shall we walk along the beach for some more exercise?' Ellen said.

  They were at the end of the road that led from Thurstaston to the cliff. Above the Welsh coast the sky was padded with white clouds that kept displaying and repacking the sun. As sunlight outdistanced a mass of shadow that raced across the common alongside the road, the grass seemed to breathe the light in. A child cried out beyond the thorny hedge that had just turned more luminously green, and it wasn't until a man shouted 'Shemp' that Charlotte realised the child had been startled by a dog. By then Hugh had told Ellen 'Good idea before we have to drive.'

  Ellen raised her almost invisible eyebrows and then narrowed her bluish eyes and pressed her full lips together as if searching for a way to render her round face less plump. 'You're supposed to say I don't need any exercise, Hugh.'

  His long face tried on an apologetic smile as he passed a hand over his cropped scalp before patting his prominent stomach. 'I meant I did. You need to keep fit in my job.'

  Rory shook his head, wagging his black ponytail. His face was even longer than his brother's and bonier as well, which emphasised his large sharp nose. His habitual wry but weary grin, so faint it was close to secretive, scarcely wavered as he said 'Say what you see or you'll never be a writer.'

  'I'm not one,' Hugh said as though he'd failed to grasp that Rory wasn't addressing him. 'You're the artistic lot. I'm Supermarket Man.'

  'That's art if you do it right,' Rory said. 'Everything is.'

  'You're just as important as the rest of us, Hugh.' Perhaps in a bid to heighten his tentative smile, Ellen added 'More than I can be just now.'

  'You've been crucial to people who needed it,' Charlotte assured her. 'So are we having our last walk on the beach?'

  Rory's shrug might have been intended to dislodge her wistfulness. He turned fast along the path that skirted a caravan park. An assortment of steps up which several large dogs and their less energetic owners were scrambling led to the beach, where the tide had pulled the river back from the cliffs. Halfway down Ellen glanced around at Charlotte, then hurried after the brothers, her slightly more than shoulder-length blonde hair swaying as if to deny she'd had a question for her cousin. They were all on the beach by the time she murmured 'I shouldn't think anyone's had time to look at my little novel.'

  'Not so little,' Hugh protested.

  'Not so novel either,' Rory said.

  'You've been reading it, then,' Ellen said like a gentle rebuke.

  'Some of it,' he said and glanced away from the unfurling of a swathe of windblown sand. 'I liked the bit where you had some old character muttering silently. Good trick if you can bring it off.'

  'I thought it was pretty original,' Hugh said. 'The whole book, I mean.'

  'You've never heard of anybody having nightmares that turned real before.'

  'Not old folk giving them to people who mistreat them.' Hugh bit his lip before asking Ellen 'It couldn't give you any problems if someone you didn't want to hear about it heard about it, could it?'

  'Gosh, that's a mouthful. Who would they be?'

  'They couldn't say at the industrial tribunal you'd been making stories up about old people being treated badly, could they?'

  'It would have to be published first, Hugh. I'm sure they'll see I was telling the truth.'

  'You haven't said what you thought of it yet,' Rory told Charlotte.

  She'd kept feeling that the conversation was about to converge on her. 'To be honest, Ellen –'

  'That's what I want you to be. I absolutely do.'

  'I think it needs some work.'

  'You're saying you can publish it if she works on it?' Hugh enthused. 'That's great news, isn't it, Ellen?'

  'I don't know if she's quite saying that,' Ellen said and gazed at an approaching rush of sunlight that snagged on clumps of sedge.

  'I'd have to see your revisions before I could be too definite. I'll email you when I'm back at my desk.'

  'That's still great news, isn't it?' Hugh insisted. 'You won't be paying her anything on account yet then, Charlotte.'

  'No contract for the first book till it's publishable, that's the directive that came round last month.'

  'Even for family?' Perhaps sensing that he'd gone too far, Hugh made haste to add 'I was only wondering if you were hard up, Ellen. You could have my thousand and pay me back whenever you can.'

  'You can have mine too by all means,' Charlotte said.

  'It wouldn't buy her much in London,' Rory seemed to feel he should reassure Ellen. 'Hardly worth getting the train for.'

  Charlotte thought that was a remark too far. 'I didn't come for the will,' she said, 'I came for the funeral.'

  'Then you're no better than the rest of us. You can stick my handout in the bank as well, Ellen. I'd rather still have Albert and Betty, and I don't need it for the stuff I'm playing at.'

  'You're all too generous. You treat yourselves and don't worry about me. I'll make do if I have to.'

  Charlotte refrained from pointing out to Rory that she'd spoken at the funeral – Albert's, who had died less than
four months after his wife. Some of his colleagues had reminisced about working with him at the library to which he'd donated his collection of old books, and a bearded guitarist rendered a twenty-first-century folk song about giving oneself back to the earth. Other librarians read favourite passages of Albert's from The Pickwick Papers and Three Men in a Boat, earning muted amusement that sounded dutiful, and then it had been Charlotte's turn. She'd kept panicking while she rehearsed the eulogy in the shower or on the roof terrace above her flat, but as she climbed into the pulpit she'd seen that she just needed to talk to her cousins. She reminded them of the word games their uncle had relished inventing, the one where you had to say an even longer sentence than the previous player, and the game of adding words to a sentence spoken backwards, and the conversations made up of words in reverse, when Betty had vacillated between tears of frustration and of helpless mirth . . . 'Rebmemer, rebmemer,' Charlotte had finished, prompting mostly puzzled looks and a few guarded smiles from her uncle's friends and token laughter from her cousins. The all-purpose priest had brought the proceedings to an end with a Cherokee homily, and as curtains closed off the exhibition of the coffin while speakers emitted one of Albert's favourite Beatles ditties, the congregation had vacated the unadorned chapel to accommodate the next shift of mourners. Charlotte and her cousins had to represent the family outside the crematorium, since their various parents were either abroad or estranged from Albert since he'd closed into himself after his wife's death. Charlotte had felt uncomfortably presumptuous, especially since the rest of the occasion was so lacking in ritual. 'We all came, that's what matters,' she belatedly said.

  'It's like we've never been away,' Hugh said. 'Nothing's changed along here except us.'

  'What are you using for eyes?' Rory was amused to ask. 'Everything has. Not a single grain of sand's the same.'

  'I shouldn't reckon even you can see them all.'

  'I'm saying there's not a solitary bloody thing that hasn't moved or grown or died or come or gone.'

  Charlotte had a sudden notion that neither of the brothers was entirely right. 'Depends on . . .' she almost began and wondered why the phrase should feel unwelcome. She gazed along the miles of cliff that stretched to the mouth of the river. Spiky tufts of grass turned towards her in a breeze as if sensing her interest, while the cliff face that sprouted them appeared to stir, acknowledging her concentration. A flood of shadow lent a darker substance to the cliff, and she was trying to decide why its presence had grown oppressive when Rory said 'Have we walked enough of us off yet?'

  'Up to Ellen,' said Hugh.

  As she responded with a gentle frown Rory said 'I've had tramping through sand, that's all. Bungs my senses up.'

  Charlotte didn't notice the path, a series of zigzags lying low in the grass on the cliff face, until he turned towards it, and then she remembered falling onto it out of her teenage dream. 'Beat you to it,' she declared and strode upwards.

  The cliff crowded into one side of her vision and then the other as the path, which was only inches wider than her waist, changed direction. Tufts of grass caught her feet or emitted whispers of restless sand. The cliff top would be safer, and only the low wadded sky made her feel as if she were under a lid. She remembered lying in the tent that night, unable to stay asleep for the thought of closing a trapdoor on herself and utter darkness. She tried to leave the memory behind as she climbed onto the open common.

  A gorse bush scraped its thorns together as a wind dissipated through the grass. The clump of about a dozen bushes was the only vegetation other than the green expanse that stretched more than a quarter of a mile to a hedge, and Charlotte was wondering why the view should contain even the hint of a threat when Hugh stepped up behind her. 'This reminds me of the last time we camped out,' he said.

  'It should. It's where we were.'

  He tramped past her and gazed about before rubbing his scalp as if that might electrify his brain. 'I don't think I know where I am.'

  Rory joined them and shook his head at his brother. 'How could you get lost up here?'

  'Charlotte did last time.' Less defensively Hugh asked her 'Have you sleptwalked since?'

  'Has she what again, Hugh?' Ellen clambered onto the common and tucked her dishevelled blouse into her jeans. 'Don't all look at me,' she begged.

  'Sleptwalked, sleepwalked, I don't know. Does it matter that much?'

  'Not enough to have an argument about,' Charlotte said. 'I was the one who did it, after all, just that once.'

  'I'd have expected you of all people to care about words.' With no lessening of reproachfulness Ellen said 'I was the one who looked after you. Shall we walk?'

  Charlotte couldn't help peering at the grass as she followed Ellen. She recalled how a slab of it had risen in her dream, and felt as if the memory wouldn't go away until she identified the spot. Of course she was on edge only because of the funeral, and at first she was glad to be distracted when Hugh spoke. 'We had a bad night too.'

  'He means we kept waking each other up. We were asleep when you girls were on the wander, though.'

  'Good gracious,' Ellen said as their aunt used to. 'What were you boys up to in your bags?'

  'Just dreaming,' said Hugh.

  'Nothing to blush about, then.'

  'It wasn't,' he said, though her question had mottled his cheeks. 'Just I couldn't find my way somewhere.'

  'I couldn't see where I'd got trapped somehow,' Rory offered. 'Might have been a house with no lights in.'

  'It's not like you to be so unobservant.'

  'He said I was asleep,' Rory retorted, though Ellen's comment had been affectionate. 'Your turn.'

  'I was saving Charlotte, if you remember.'

  As Charlotte thought the answer had been too quick and glib, a mass of blackness seeped out of the earth all around them. Although it was the shadow of a cloud, it made her feel shut in. 'We're heading back, yes?' she said and set out for the gate through the distant hedge. Even when sunlight washed away the shadow, she could have fancied that darkness was pacing her and her cousins under the earth.

  TWO

  'You may call your witness, Miss Lomax.'

  Just one, Ellen thought as she pushed back her chair – just one former inmate of the Seabreeze Home had agreed to testify on her behalf. She didn't blame the others for refusing. They'd been through enough, and so many were living on little but memories that she didn't want to make them recollect the bad ones. At least they weren't speaking up for the Cremornes as Peggy appeared to have promised she would, if she wasn't playing one of her wily games. As Ellen opened the door of the committee room she was eager to read her face.

  Six straight chairs kept company in the corridor, beneath an interbellum photograph of Southport Pier, but only two were occupied, by Muriel Stiles and a nurse. 'Thanks so much for coming, Muriel,' Ellen said.

  The old woman took some moments to tilt her head up, which failed to unwrinkle her neck. Her wide loose faded face was so preoccupied that Ellen had the fleeting fancy that the crowded photograph of sedate revellers, an image of enjoyment curbed by moderation and flanked by wars, could be a childhood memory that Muriel was reliving. It reminded Ellen of a flashback inset in a panel of a comic. She would have scribbled down the image if she'd had a notebook, but Muriel was giving her a shaky smile. 'Don't worry, Muriel,' she said. 'I won't let anyone upset you. Just say what you remember.'

  She held the door open as the nurse ushered Muriel into the room. The tribunal was seated at the far end of the long table, on the left side of which the Cremornes guarded their lawyer. To Ellen's and quite possibly to Muriel's dismay, the nurse steered his charge in that direction. 'This side,' Ellen told him in less of a murmur than she would have preferred.

  Virginia Cremorne interlaced her fingers and sat forwards with a prayerful expression on her small sharp face as Muriel sank onto the chair opposite. 'How are you keeping, Muriel? You're looking as fit as ever.'

  Jack Cremorne pinched his shiny brown moustache
between finger and thumb as if he meant to remove a disguise from his large perpetually suffused face, then fell to gripping his chin as he said 'Nice to see you again, Muriel. A pity you felt you had to leave us, but we hope you're managing to settle in where you are now.'

  Surely they shouldn't be allowed to speak to her that way. When Ellen sent the tribunal a glance that was rather more than enquiring, the chairman said 'Is Miss Stiles ready to proceed?'

  Ellen turned further towards Muriel. 'Can I just ask you –'

  Both women on the committee parted their lips – like a ventriloquists' contest, Ellen might have noted – but it was the chairman who said 'Miss Stiles will need to take the oath.'

  'You'd think someone didn't want people telling the truth,' Jack Cremorne suggested to his wife.

  Ellen would have expected the chairman to issue a rebuke, but he only held a Bible out to her. She handed the diminutive book to Muriel, who extracted the card that bore the oath and performed it with such force that Ellen was reminded how she'd often told tales of her days in amateur dramatics. Muriel carried on pressing the Bible to her bosom until the chairman had to ask for the book. 'By all means proceed,' he said.

  'I'm just going to ask you a few questions about things Mr and Mrs Cremorne have been saying about me, Muriel. Did –'

  'We aren't the only ones that say them,' Virginia Cremorne said.

  'They were said to us,' her husband amplified.

  'That will be addressed,' said their lawyer.

  'May I speak now?' When the chairman delivered a weighty nod of his saturnine squarish head, Ellen asked Muriel 'Did you ever see me steal from any of the residents?'

  'I certainly never did.'

  'Did any of the other residents?'

  'Objection,' the lawyer said. 'Hearsay.'

  'Now, Mr Bentley, you know that isn't how it's done,' the heavier and more plainly dressed of the committeewomen said. 'You'll have your turn.'