PREVIOUSLY in LARCHFIELD: Wystan takes the children to the cinema and enjoys a secret meeting with Gregory. Returning to Larchfield, Daphne has some bad news. In the present day, Dora has a disturbing encounter with social services.
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EPISODE TWELVE: In which Wystan and Dora spend a dreamy afternoon in the gardens of Larchfield, admiring Gregory as he works. In the present day, Dora is woken by screaming and fears it is her baby. Later, she makes a discovery, but realises no one will will believe her and decides to say nothing.
Chapter twenty-nine
Wystan and Dora
It was not easy to find a good open spot in the garden. Olive wandered round the sprawling rhododendrons, looking for a clearing, while Wystan paced the gravel in front of Larchfield, waiting for Gregory to appear. He was overdressed in a shirt, bow tie, fedora and jacket. Overdressed in the sense that it was warm, not in a smartness sense, for everything was worn or stained.
Olive called that she had found the right place. They were to have their picnic beneath the monkey puzzle tree, which cast a spiky, incomplete shade. Rhododendrons tumbled everywhere; how won- derful they must have been once. Gregory would have his work cut out for him, that was for sure. Dora craned round to see the new apprentice, not knowing quite what to expect.
The gardener, Hamish, hobbled over and exchanged a few words with Wystan. He was slight and wiry and, when he lifted one hand to swat a fly from his face, Dora saw he was missing two fingers.
She was distracted from wondering what had happened to Hamish by the frisson that accompanied the arrival of Gregory. Wystan quivered like a giddy young girl. The boy was quite ordinary, it seemed to Dora, but in that ordinariness she could see something of what Wystan saw. Gregory was a perfect example of the young, energetic unemployed one saw around the town, with a kind of rough charisma, burnished by his being out of his element. Down on Clyde Street, idling the day away with ha’penny toss and his friends, he would have seemed much less exciting.
The three of them stood talking for a few moments, though it was clear that the only one who really existed for Wystan was Gregory. Longing filled his expression; first, one hand came out to touch Greg- ory’s arm, then another. Wystan’s head bobbed this way and that so as not to lose eye contact with his friend, whose own gaze moved from the ground to the trees, hardly ever settling on Wystan. It was both exciting and pitiful to see the young poet so enslaved. The moment when Gregory responded, and, for a brief second, brushed Wystan’s fingers with his own, sent a shock through Dora as it did Wystan.
At last, the conversation having been stretched for as long as it could be, Hamish took his new worker off to start his duties and Wystan reluctantly left to collect Daphne from her room.
Daphne had grown very thin and had a stoop. A plait was untidily coiled on her head and wisps drifted round her long face. As the party reached the spread tablecloth, Wystan winked at Dora.
At their feet was a wicker basket with sandwiches, pickles, fruit and cake. There was some stout for Daphne, as it was meant to fortify her, and some lemonade for Wystan. Olive unpacked everything and laid it out, then left them to it. This whole venture was ostensibly for Daphne. For Wystan, it was an opportunity to be with Gregory in the garden whilst remaining above suspicion.
‘So, I’m chaperone,’ said Daphne, leaning back in her folding chair, exhaustion all over her face.
‘Indeed,’ sighed Wystan, combing the garden for a glimpse.
Bursting out from a group of weeds was a knotweed plant. Dora couldn’t believe she had not seen it before. It was huge, perhaps eight feet high and with a spread of nearly twice that. She noticed among their shoes the beginnings of new shoots. Knotweed propagates with shoots under the earth, and from broken stems. All the plants in Britain are female, and so the seeds are infertile – only this stopped knotweed from taking over completely.
Dora was about to point this out to Wystan when Gregory appeared, stripped to the waist and bearing some shears. Hamish pushed the wheelbarrow with more tools: a scythe, spade, some large garden knives. Beside the young man, Hamish seemed even older.
‘We’re over here, Gregory,’ Wystan said, pointing to the picnic gathering. ‘Would you like a sandwich?’
‘No, sir,’ said Gregory, his freckled shoulders pearly in the sun. ‘I have my piece in my bag.’
‘Right-ho,’ said Wystan, reluctantly. He turned to Daphne. ‘You know the story of Hamish’s hands?’
‘His fingers?’ asked Daphne.
‘Yes – he cut them off himself! He got rheumatism so badly that he decided the only ones he really needed were the thumb and the first two, so he just cut the others off. Just like that!’ Wystan made a chopping motion with his hands.
‘Good Lord! He should have told us; we’d have had Dr Boyce look him over.’
‘Said he didn’t see the point of a doctor charging to tell him what he already knew. They couldn’t be saved. Amazing, eh?’
Daphne shook her head. ‘Poor Hamish.’
‘Oh, he’s fine. What is he? Sixty?’
‘Seventy-five!’ said Daphne.
Hamish had an enormous pair of loppers and was trimming some tall branches overhanging the wall.
They all sat in admiration of Hamish’s wispy figure. Bees hummed around them, bumping into the blossoms. Dora dragged her attention back to the enormous invasive species she had just noticed.
‘That’s knotweed,’ she said to Wystan. ‘You’ve got to kill it or it will take over.’ Dora pointed to the plant.
‘Did you know that, Daphne?’ Wystan asked. ‘That’s Japanese knotweed – an invasive species. We should kill it, or it will take over.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said Daphne, sipping her stout. ‘That’s a very valu- able ornamental. The original owners of the house put it in about twenty years ago, I think. We need to prune it a bit, to show it off.’ She glanced hopefully at Gregory. ‘Same with the rhodies. They are the best type, but Mr Perkins has not been concerned about the garden.’
‘There’s only one way to kill it,’ Dora continued to Wystan. ‘You have to break open the stems and pour poison down them.’ Gregory approached the knotweed with his shears and began to cut savagely at the purple stems. He tossed them behind him on a growing pile of vegetation. Wystan could not take his eyes off him. And, actually, neither could Dora, for Gregory was, she realised now, beautiful. His paleness gave an air of vulnerability that con- trasted with the sheer lean muscle of him. His hair caught the light and glowed a deep red as he worked. As Dora sat demurely on the blanket, she could not stop staring. She glanced at Daphne, who, even though probably dying, was also transfixed by the young man moving among the stems.
Silence fell over the party as Gregory paused to wipe his brow and then take up the scythe. Turning to a thicket to cut the worst of the growth, he glanced up and saw that everyone was staring at him, their sandwiches untouched. He grinned uncertainly before carrying on.
Dora unbuttoned her coat and a soft summer dress drifted out across her knees. Her notebook slipped from her pocket on to the grass. It fell open, revealing pages and pages of notes and lines. It was almost full. Words and ideas had been tumbling out since Wystan had given it to her.
Gregory’s presence had unsettled something in Dora. Why did he have to come and disturb her feelings?
She must have said the words aloud, for Wystan turned to her and said, ‘I have asked myself the same question every day since I saw him.’
‘I see why you like him.’
Daphne took a fan out of her skirt and waved it gently in front of her face.
‘A clever plan of mine, don’t you think, Wystan?’
‘I’m pleased the plan has benefits for others beyond myself.’ Daphne sighed. ‘But we can only look, dear. You know, like a shop window.’
‘Stout?’ Wystan asked, and poured some out into Daphne’s cup. Dora took her notebook on to her lap, considering how she might encapsulate Gregory in it. This was the strange effect that the young man was having on Dora: his beauty was the sort that demanded to be expressed and distilled into words. Her eyes explored him minutely as she prepared in her imagination some kind of phrase that would bring him to life on the page. Dora was completely spellbound in this activity when she was brought back to the scene by a cough from Wystan.
‘What?’
‘You need to watch that tendency . . . writing instead of living.’ He was studying her.
‘But I want to get it down on paper. I am living. This is living.’ Wystan looked at her sadly. ‘No, it isn’t.’
The air was sweet and warm and she could hear birds in the sky.
Why was Wystan spoiling it all?
Wystan chatted with Daphne. Their voices tinkled through the shade.
‘Our heads are full of so much. And then it all gets swept away by the sight of a nice bit of flesh. Shop window, indeed! What am I to do with my feelings, if not act on them?’
Dora’s thoughts were fuzzy, perhaps from the heat. Boys were streaming out for their break and laughter filled the garden. There was clattering in the undergrowth and Jamie appeared, red-faced and panting.
‘Wasp, sir, miss; sorry, sir, miss – WASP!’ and he pointed at Daphne’s dress, on which a large wasp had settled. Wystan immediately removed his hat and thwacked it across Daphne’s dress, sending the insect sailing off into the undergrowth. Daphne squealed and clutched her bosom.
‘Jamie! Thank you! I mustn’t be stung by a wasp. Dr Boyce said it could make me very ill indeed. Wystan, what quick reactions! Thank you.’ She was quite breathless and Wystan topped up her cup with stout.
‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘And why didn’t you tell me about the wasp thing? Should we even be outside?’
‘Well, that’s just it! I never go out anywhere. I knew I wouldn’t even get to have a wee picnic in the garden, if I told you.’ She looked suddenly petulant, and Dora glimpsed the lovely, slightly spoilt young girl she must once have been.
‘Come here, Jamie, lad. Have some cake.’ And Wystan lifted the little boy on to his knee and hugged him with spontaneous joy. Jamie smiled shyly and wriggled into a comfortable position, from where he received a slice of cake and leant against the teacher’s shoulder while he ate.
Contentment softened Wystan’s features. He brought out his pocket watch and showed it to the boy, asked him the time and, when the boy got it right, made a big fuss of him. ‘You know, he draws the most wonderful pictures, Daphne. I’m thinking he can design the cover of the next copy of the Larchfieldian. What do you say, Jamie?’
The boy nodded, his legs swinging happily. How good the poet was with the boy, Dora thought. Such easy kindness. When he had finished his cake, Jamie slithered down and headed off to play. Sad- ness flickered across Wystan’s face, and his eyes, this time, followed not Gregory, but the little boy. And Dora felt it then, some great feeling in her gut that did not clamour to be written down, but simply revealed its existence: an emptiness, a nameless grief. She reached for Wystan’s hand, for she was suddenly terribly afraid. Had she, as she feared before, done something, lost something? Someone?
Jamie was playing some complicated jumping game with another child, who, when she looked now, was a girl. She was about his age, with long red hair. She was wearing a school uniform, with a kilt and a blazer, not unlike his. How could there be a girl here?
The thing was, the girl seemed to know her. She turned to face Dora and waved.
‘Wystan – who is that girl?’
But, when Dora looked again, Jamie was playing alone.
Chapter thirty
Dora
Screaming. Dizzy, girlish; it could have been a man shot, or a rabbit in a trap. It scraped Dora’s shoulder blades like a hook, yanking her from deep sleep.
A shriek beyond words; pure urgency.
Was it Dora herself?
Was it Beatrice?
Dora’s eyes broke open. The room was black and dazzling. Dora’s arm went out instinctively to Kit. His slumbering form was there, warm and still. The other hand went to her mouth, which was slammed shut.
Dora rolled out of bed, her head bearing the scream as if it were icy water. ‘Beatrice!’ she cried, bursting into the nursery. The cot lay in a pool of warm night-light. Dora fell towards it, in her blindness not realising that the screaming was not growing louder now; in fact, it was behind her. She had already seen, in her mind, the crib and her baby in it, screaming its last helpless defence, screaming for its mother, its useless mother, always asleep, always late . . .
Bea was a bump under the bedclothes, one chubby arm thrown back. A pink cheek rose above the blanket, then a fat, sleeping eye. Dora reached a trembling hand to the baby’s face. It was warm.
She’s asleep!
Dora sobbed in gratitude. Thank you . . . thank you, God . . . But the screaming had not stopped.
Fucking hell. Now Dora was stumbling through the house, pulling wellies on to her bare feet in the gloom of the hall, fumbling for a torch. Virgil agitated at her side.
‘What the hell is that noise?’ asked Kit. He stood, rubbing his eyes, in the hallway.
‘It’s coming from outside.’
‘Where’s Bea?’
‘Still asleep. I thought it was her, for a moment.’
Kit eased Virgil out of the way and pulled on his boots. ‘Sweetie, I should go. You stay here.’
‘No . . . I’m awake now.’
‘Virgil – you’re not coming!’ The dog whimpered in frustration and scrabbled at the door behind them. Now Dora had risen above bare instinct into fear. Was someone being murdered? Was an animal trapped? Was it some kind of domestic dispute in the house next door?
Carefully, they walked out of the house, crossing the forecourt towards the noise, the wobbly beam of the torch pushing through the cool night.
The sound was coming from beyond the tool shed. Dora wished she had stayed indoors and rung the police; the sound was so visceral that it signalled a situation beyond ordinary help. Why was no one else awake? Why were no lights on upstairs?
Now the scream had an undertone: an angry vibration, like a saw. Jesus. The torch wavered.
Behind the tool shed was Virgil’s favourite spot to pee and scruffle about. Kit reached round the doorframe and turned on the light. A weak bluish glow bathed the gravel and Dora dropped the torch.
It was Mo, twisting in the light, emitting an inhuman sound. The screams were coming from inside a pulsating black mass that was her head. Her arms were flailing beneath sleeves of – wasps? She could not see Dora, or Kit. She could not see anything.
More screams – Dora’s, this time.
‘Stay back here,’ said Kit. In his hand was his phone. ‘Call the ambulance, and shine the torch so I can see what I’m doing.’ He pulled his dressing gown hood as far as possible over his head and approached Mo’s stumbling figure.
Mo had long since abandoned any attempt to clear the wasps from herself. Kit dragged at the hissing treacle of them on her face. ‘Roll on the ground!’ he cried. ‘Like it’s a fire!’ He pulled her on to the lawn and began to roll her from side to side. The wasps transferred to Kit like smoke, flowing up his hands and into the sleeves of his dressing gown.
‘Which service do you require?’
‘Ambulance! Paradise, Helensburgh! My neighbour has been attacked by wasps. My husband is—’
‘What is your address, please?’
‘Please, hurry. Please!’
Mo howled. Dora grabbed the torch from the ground and shone it on her husband, bent over the writhing neighbour, vainly scooping insects from her and throwing them to the ground. Mo’s bare arm rose in the beam and was quickly submerged again.
Dora held the torch in two hands to keep the beam steady. Kit was crushing every insect his hands encountered, wiping them off like an oil slick and pressing their buzzing fury into the grass. Wasps seethed under his hood.
‘Keep the light on me!’ he cried hoarsely. The grass was glistening, a glistening that moved, for the wasps continued to drag themselves back to the swarm, even half dead. Mo had stopped moving now; only her guttural moans still indicated her suffering. Her eyes rolled white, like an animal’s. Wasps buzzed in and out of her mouth. Kit reached inside and pulled them out, one by one, popping their venomous bodies like fuchsia buds.
Dora tried to say something, but her lips were furred with insects and nothing came out. Time had become demented, as if each second were a furious wasp, darting this way and that way, unconnected with anything else.
Then blue light reared towards them, there were footsteps and voices, and people in neon jackets were gently moving Dora out of the way.
‘We’ve got it, love. Move back, move back.’
‘Mo!’ Terrence lumbered towards them, his pyjamas creased and flapping. ‘I’m her husband! What is happening?’
‘She’s in good hands, sir, just keep back a second.’ The paramedics knelt over Kit and Mo, doing something with sprays and blankets. Terrence craned over them, trying to see his wife. Mo was lifted on to a stretcher. She lolled helplessly, unresponsive to the man leaning in close to her, saying, ‘Can you hear me? Mo? Mo?’
Kit appeared beside Dora, wrapped in a blanket. In the pale dawn light, he was almost unrecognisable, his face puffed and covered in weals, as if he’d been whipped. Dora gently pulled him to her and pressed her face against his shoulder.
‘Virgil! How did you get out?’ Kit bent down to embrace the dog, who leapt and licked at him. ‘Bad boy,’ he mumbled into the dog’s ear.
‘He must have jumped on to the door handle; it’s not the first time. We’re going to have to lock every door now,’ Dora said.
‘You just can’t bear to be apart from us, can you, boy?’ The dog panted and sneezed in excitement.
Terrence stumbled up to Kit, in his pyjamas.
‘I didn’t have my hearing aid in. I didn’t hear a thing.’ He looked stricken. He reached for Kit’s arm. ‘Did you save her? I should have heard her!’
Kit flinched as Terrence made contact with his tender skin. ‘But what was she doing out here?’
‘She wanders sometimes . . . especially lately. She hasn’t been able to sleep.’
‘But in our garden? In her nightdress?’ Dora asked.
Terrence turned on her. ‘It’s you! She’s frightened of you—’
‘That’s enough, Terrence,’ interrupted Kit. ‘I know you’re upset, but—’
‘Damn right I’m upset! She’s allergic to wasp stings! Why have you got a wasp nest on your property?’ Terrence’s fury carried high in the early-morning air.
Kit sighed. ‘We didn’t have it installed especially, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Dora walked away from them both, too close to tears to listen. She noticed Virgil peeing languorously in his favourite spot beside the tool shed, pacing up and down, sniffing.
Suddenly, the dog stopped sniffing and began to gulp at something. He was a born scavenger and Dora or Kit was always hauling him away from dead and rotten scraps out on walks. Instinctively, Dora ran to him, gasping, ‘No!’ and yanked the thing out of the dog’s mouth. She was squeamish about all dead things, and appalled by the rotten dismembered corpses of gulls or fish or hedgehogs that her dog would gulp down with relish. As she lifted her hand to hurl it away, she saw in the poor light that it was a raw steak. A good one – not rotten – still bloody. Dora sniffed it. It smelled like a normal steak. She turned it over, and the other side had a blue-green tinge.
She tossed it into a hydrangea bush in the border and noticed, as she did so, that Terrence was observing her. His eyes followed the steak, then he turned back to his wife, bending over her face with its mask on, her curly hair, usually so neat, matted on the stretcher.
‘Come on, Virgil!’ Dora said to the dog and nudged him with her feet. He looked at her accusingly and then trotted back to Kit, who was talking to the paramedic.
‘Are you all right? I can give you a shot, in case you have an allergic reaction,’ the man was saying.
‘No, I’m fine,’ said Kit. ‘I think I just need to rest.’
The paramedic’s face was almost entirely made up of smile and glasses. ‘Here –’ he handed Kit a shiny packet – ‘some serious pain relief.’ He rested his hand on Kit’s shoulder. ‘Well done!’ he said. ‘Times like this, you need your neighbours!’
‘What do you think of that, Terrence?’ said Kit, looking round for the old man. ‘Did you ever think the Fieldings would be saving the day?’
Terrence emerged from the border. He cleared his throat and thrust his hands into the pockets of his pyjamas. Dora was certain she saw him slip something into his right-hand pocket as he did so.
Her neighbour shook his head and climbed into the ambulance beside his wife. The vehicle started up, the blue light circling. For a moment, before the doors were pulled shut, Dora could see Terrence hunched over the stretcher, clutching his wife’s hand.
‘You’re welcome!’ cried Dora as the ambulance moved off.
Kit leant heavily on his wife and she led him back into the house. He winced as Virgil leapt and whined. ‘Down, boy,’ he said feebly. ‘We’re getting you to bed.’ Dora led him to the bedroom and helped him off with his clothes. Wasps dropped from the folds of the dressing gown, some still sizzling with rage. Her husband reeked of insecticide. As he climbed carefully into bed, she went to get soothing cream from the nursery.
She paused at the cot and looked down on her sleeping child. It was little short of a miracle that Beatrice would never know anything about this. As she watched her baby’s little chest rise and fall in peaceful sleep, she thought about Mo. Terrence had said she was allergic to the stings. Perhaps she had died, right there before their eyes. Dora had never seen anyone die before. It was a horrible, magnetic thought.
She returned to Kit with the cream and, as the painkillers took effect, he began to drift off to sleep. She dabbed cream on to the worst bites. Dora rubbed some cream on her own wounds, but had no hope of sleeping. She made herself a cup of coffee and pulled her dressing gown around her, and slipped back out into the garden, with Virgil padding behind her.
Light was brimming at the horizon and it was, after all the chaos, very quiet. She shivered as she approached the spot beside the tool shed. The dog sniffed about, shying away from the few remaining wasps that were half alive. Dora sank down to the ground, holding Virgil to her.
‘I thought . . . I thought it was Beatrice. I thought something had happened to my baby.’ Dora began to cry, tears stinging her face. Virgil pressed his warm muzzle to her, briefly, but then pulled away and trotted, sniffing, across to the bush where she had thrown the steak.
Dora followed him. Though the dog could clearly still smell it, it was definitely not there.
So . . . Terrence watching her . . . then hiding the steak in his pocket . . . That was what she had seen!
She remembered the oddness of there being a fresh steak in Vir- gil’s favourite spot. She remembered its strange tinge on one side.
At this, all the peace drained from the garden.
Her instinct was to go straight inside and wake Kit from his slumber. ‘This is why Mo was in our garden! She came to lay poisoned bait for the dog. She knows that’s his favourite spot. And Terrence knew – I saw him hide it.’
But she remained unmoving by the bush as the scene unfolded in her mind.
Kit, always considerate, always reasonable, would drag himself awake, still half delirious from the venom coursing through his veins, and he would try to pay attention as she pressed on him her garbled explanation.
‘So . . . there is no steak now?’ Kit would murmur.
‘No – like I said, Terrence took it.’
‘And the dog didn’t eat any of it?’
‘No! I grabbed it from him! Kit – Mo was trying to poison our dog!’
And he would sigh, turn over, defeated, and collide back into sleep.
Or perhaps he would agree that, yes, that sounded really terrible . . . but, in the end, hadn’t Mo come off worse? Got her punishment? And if the dog was all right . . . ?
And she would summon up, once more, the energy to protest, but it would do no good at all, because Kit had saved Mo’s life and that was all that mattered. Dora had not contributed in any significant way to this heroic act and, therefore, anything she had done, any life she might have saved, any cruelty she now knew to be true, was eclipsed. Dora, now, was nothing and Kit was everything, and any truth that affected that balance no longer belonged here with them.
Dora called the dog and went back in the house and, in the kitchen, she scoured and scrubbed her hands until they were sore and bleeding. When she had finished, they were the roughened hands of a maid below stairs, who observes important events and is unable to change any of them, whose life is invisible to others, no matter how painfully real it may be, and who, above all, has learnt that survival depends on keeping her lips pressed shut.
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And Finally…
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