Evie (19 page)

At one point, using the hayfork as a bayonet, Ferdie made a run at Norman who seized the shaft of the fork and, with frightening ease, flung both it and Ferdie aside. This gave Dave an opportunity to arm himself with the shovel, but it was becoming obvious that Norman’s anger and almost superhuman strength were superior to the combined efforts of Dave Crocker and Ferdie Vallance’s to overpower him.

While Norman and Dave were briefly locked together, Ferdie lurched into the barn and tried to reach the wall-mounted telephone. Norman misread his movement, and because he was so intent on discovering Evie’s whereabouts, concluded that it was somewhere inside the barn that he would find her. Shoving Dave aside, he plunged past him, jerked the telephone from Ferdie’s hand and hauled on the wires until they ripped free from the wall and trailed uselessly across the cobbled floor. Then he ran the length of the row of disused stalls, peering into each one and shouting Evie’s name.

‘I knows you’re in here!’ he bawled, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘I’ll find you wherever you are! Come out, Evie! Do as I tell you! I’m your husband! You gotta do as I
say, d’you hear me? Wherever you’re hiding you come out! Now, woman! Now!’

Dave and Ferdie stood gasping with exhaustion, watching Norman’s fruitless search.

Finding nothing, Norman reached the far end of the barn where one of two wall-mounted iron ladders ran up to a square hole in the loft and gave access to it. Summoning what was left of his strength, he hauled himself up, hand over hand and disappeared into the loft, still bellowing his wife’s name.

Ferdie and Dave could hear him moving about, searching the loft’s dark corners and the spaces behind the bales of straw which, in places, were piled as high as the rafters. The impact of his boots, despite being muffled by scattered straw, made the wooden structure creak and reverberate as his considerable weight ranged back and forth. After one significant thud, he cried out. This was followed by silence in which only the sound of the gale was audible. Dave and Ferdie stood, listening. Perhaps exhaustion had overtaken Clark? Or was he lurking, ready to surprise them? In fact, in the semi-darkness, he had struck his head on a beam, knocking himself almost senseless.

Against the sounds of the rising storm, Dave and Ferdie attempted to form some sort of plan of action. ‘Us needs to get ’im down and tie ’im up,’ Dave whispered. ‘We needs rope …’ Ferdie cast about him for a suitable length of anything strong enough. He finally twisted half a dozen yards of binding twine into a workable length and coiled it up. Dave looped it over his shoulder, lifted a warped and rusted sickle from a nail on the barn wall where it had hung for years, and flexing his fingers
round its worn handle, made his way to where a flight of stone steps ran up to the loft. Ferdie followed, his heart in his mouth and his hayfork in his hand.

There were four means of access to the loft. In addition to two, wall-mounted iron ladders and the flight of stone steps, a third iron ladder, attached to the exterior wall at the far end of the barn, ran thirty feet down to the yard below. This ladder was no longer in use since the fire had damaged the heavy wooden sill to which it was attached.

There was very little light in the loft and what there was lay at its extreme ends. At one, a patch of diffused daylight penetrated the glazed portion of the roof where Andreis had made his painting and at the other there was a tall, narrow aperture, open to the weather, through which bales of hay and nets of crops such as swedes and mangels could be winched up from the yard. This too, admitted a limited amount of daylight.

As silently as possible Dave and Ferdie climbed the stone steps, slowly raising their heads above the floor level of the loft and then stepping cautiously out onto the wide, rough-hewn planks that floored it. Here they paused, listening for any sound that might reveal the whereabouts of Norman Clark and preparing to devise a feasible course of action should they locate him.

Although they listened intently, the wind, moving through and round the barn, was causing the old structure to groan and creak, masking any slight sounds Norman Clark may have made. It was a stalemate.

It would take at least twenty minutes for either Dave or
Ferdie to drive the horse-drawn cart up to the higher farm to raise the alarm. Twenty minutes, during which, whoever remained behind, would be left to single-handedly protect Hester and Thurza, should Norman resume his search and possibly find and threaten them. Eventually it was decided that Ferdie would go for help, taking Hester and Thurza with him, while Dave did his best to avoid a confrontation with Norman until reinforcements arrived. Neither of them was confident that this plan was a good one but, with no telephone and both Hester and Thurza, as well as themselves, vulnerable to the violence of a man whom their combined efforts had failed to overpower, their options were limited.

Ferdie was just about to descend the steps when they both heard a small sound, something between a snore and a groan. This led them to Norman Clark. He lay on his back. On his forehead was evidence of a severe impact with a low beam that spanned the loft a few feet above him. He seemed semi-conscious; nevertheless, as they assessed the situation, they kept a safe distance between themselves and the sprawling man. Blood oozed from the abrasion on his head and there was already an increasing area of swelling. As they watched, he inhaled, moaned and appeared to be slowly coming to his senses.

From the door of her cottage Hester had watched the fight until the three men lurched into the interior of the barn and become lost in its shadows. At first she could hear Norman Clark shouting for his wife. Then silence had fallen. Baffled and increasingly anxious, Hester considered crossing the yard and attempting to use the telephone to call for help. But Dave had told her to stay inside her locked door. So
she waited. The cups of tea she had made for her menfolk growing slowly cold. Thurza sat solidly in her playpen, her thumb in her mouth, and watched her mother.

After five minutes of silence, Hester felt a sense of acute alarm hollowing her stomach. If Dave and Ferdie had succeeded in overpowering Norman, why hadn’t one or the other of them emerged from the barn to tell her so? If they had managed to use the telephone, why could she not hear the bell on the police car as it sped through the lanes towards the lower farm? What if both men were dead? Could Norman have taken Dave by surprise and impaled him on a hayfork? And then throttled Ferdie with his huge hands? And if so, where was he? Was he about to emerge from the barn and begin a systematic search of the lower farm buildings? A search that would inevitably lead him to her cottage, to herself and to Thurza? Should she approach the barn, and if there was no sign of the men, use the telephone to raise the alarm? Thurza, her arms around her golliwog, was nodding off, half asleep amongst her blankets. The wind had risen and the rain was now torrential, filling the yard puddles and clouding the rising water in the stream. Hester stepped into her rubber boots, thrust her arms into her muddy, waterproof coat, and pulling its hood up over her head, leant into the weather and covered the distance between her and the entrance to the barn at a fast, slithering run. She approached the telephone and saw at once the severed wires and the dangling mouthpiece. She stared around, her eyes adjusting slowly to the shadowy space where gloom became near darkness behind the high wooden structures of the
stalls. But where was Dave? Where was Ferdie? And where, in heaven’s name, was Norman Clark?

Above her and in concentrated silence, Dave and Ferdie were struggling to secure Norman, initially, by tying his feet together with the skein of binding twine. Fumbling in their haste, they were aware that he was regaining consciousness, moving his limbs, rolling his head and mumbling disconnected words. The twine was hard to control, slipping and unravelling as Ferdie tried to wind it round the huge man’s ankles. Dave found a piece of rope which would have proved to be too short even if Norman’s lids were not flickering and then, his eyes barely focusing, opening. He hauled himself into a sitting position and stared round in confusion. It could only be seconds before he became fully aware of his situation.

Below, at the entrance to the barn, Hester could hear nothing above the drumming and gurgling of the torrential rain and the gusts of wind which rattled everything that was hinged or latched or bolted, every loose slate or swinging gate or unsecured window or door. Hester’s instinct tempted her to climb the steps into the loft but her reason reminded her that all three men were somewhere in the barn, either amongst the stalls or in the loft overhead. If Norman Clark had managed to elude or overpower Ferdie and Dave, he could have climbed down from the loft and be hiding somewhere close to her. Possibly watching her. She dared not move further into the barn or climb the steps to the loft as this would cut off her only means of escape. If she became trapped, Thurza would be defenceless in the cottage.

She left the barn and in the teeth of the gale rounded it until she stood under the end wall, where the iron ladder ran up to the charred sill, thirty feet above her. She raised her head and shouted her husband’s name. But the wind snatched the sound and bore it away. Picking up a bent and discarded bucket, she slammed it against the ladder. The sound of metal on metal was significant even within the noise of the gale. She struck the ladder again and then again.

In the loft the sound seemed to rouse Norman Clark to full consciousness. He lurched to his feet and in one surge of power, seized a bolt of wood, caught Ferdie a glancing blow to the side of the head which sent him sprawling, and butted Dave in the face with his forehead, knocking him, briefly, off his feet.

Hester had stepped back and was several feet from the base of the barn wall and looking up towards the opening above her. The wind took the pale hair that escaped from the hood of her waterproof and whipped it across her eyes which were already half blinded by the stinging rain. Squinting upwards she saw the figure of a man clinging to the charred frame of the opening in the wall.

Dave, once more on his feet, blood streaming from his nose, saw that Ferdie still lay where he had fallen but was already stirring while Norman, having reached the aperture, was staring dizzily down at a figure far below him.

Through the rain and the blood which was seeping from his wounded forehead and eye, Norman saw the shape of the girl. The damp hair blowing, the smudged, white face, lifted, the lips moving soundlessly.

‘Dave!’ Hester shouted desperately. ‘Ferdie! Where you be to?’ The gale carried the words away.

Norman Clark could barely see. Objects were haloed. His vision doubled and there were two girls below him, looking up at him, shouting to him. Two girls, where there should have been only one. Then the two girls blurred together and he saw her. Evie! He dropped to his knees on the edge of the sill and leant precariously out into space. He shouted her name, his voice a hoarse whimper.

Hester looked up at the contorted face peering down at her. She saw the wild eyes, the blanched skin and the blood. Recognising Norman Clark and seeing no sign of either Dave or Ferdie Vallance, it seemed logical to Hester that both had been overpowered. That they were either dead or unable to defend themselves or her and that she was alone, facing a madman who believed she was his missing wife. Then she saw Dave. Standing behind the kneeling man, Dave stooped, got an arm round Norman’s thick neck, hauled him to his feet and away from the edge of the drop. For a moment and before Norman began to struggle, Dave caught sight of Hester.

‘Get away!’ he shouted to her. ‘Get home and bar the door!’ For a moment Hester hesitated but Norman was still bawling Evie’s, name, still convinced in his deranged and damaged mind, that it was Evie, thirty feet below him. Evie – her face half hidden by blowing hair and the hood of her mackintosh – who was staring up at him. She was about to turn and run when Norman, summoning all of his remaining strength, snatched up the bolt of timber he had used to strike Ferdie and was standing, confronting Dave, his
arm raised to strike, his back to the aperture. In the seconds it took for Dave to reel back, Norman had flung his weapon aside, stooped, grasped the highest rung of the iron ladder and swung his weight out, over the lip of the sill.

At that moment, with her hood blown back from her face, her hair plastered to her skull and Norman Clark’s voice calling her Evie and commanding her to stop, Hester began to run. Her boots slithered as she stumbled and splashed through the storm water that was flooding across the yard. A freak gust of wind caught Norman’s words and to Hester it seemed that he had reached the ground and was closing in on her. He was angry now. His voice an hysterical shriek, his abusive words threatening violence. Reaching the corner of the barn, she stopped, flattened herself against the streaming wall and looked back.

Norman was a yard from the top of the ladder. His fingers groping and slipping, his feet struggled for purchase on the worn rungs. Above him, braced against the edge of the aperture, Dave and Ferdie peered down.

If Norman did not know why they made no attempt to reach him or dislodge him, they knew. Hester too. She moved forward a few steps and stood, stock-still in the lashing wind and rain, watching, hypnotised, as Norman continued his slow, precarious descent.

Roger Bayliss checked his watch when, on the left-hand side of the road, the looming shapes of Stonehenge solidified in the murk. He had planned to reach the henge by eleven-thirty and was gratified that he had made it, almost precisely on time. He selected a place where the short grass that bordered the roadway was level with it, eased his onside wheels onto it and applied his handbrake.

‘Coffee?’ he suggested to Alice. Eileen had prepared two meals for this journey. Flapjacks, shortbread and a flask of coffee were designed to keep the travellers fed until lunchtime when a substantial hamper would be broached.

‘Know what that is, Evie?’ Roger asked when the coffee was poured and the food distributed.

‘Some rocks?’ Evie answered, biting into a piece of the shortbread and without much apparent interest in the majestic standing stones.

‘Yes. But they are very old rocks,’ Roger told her.

‘I thought all rocks were very old,’ Evie said.

Alice laughed.

‘But these are very, very old rocks, Evie,’ she said, ‘and very special ones. Don’t you think they look a bit special?’ When Evie agreed, Roger embarked on a short lecture expounding most of the known facts about the history of the henge. The words, ‘burial-mounds’, ‘rituals’, ‘Beaker folk’, ‘solstices’, ‘pagans’ and ‘druids’ were introduced, defined and hopefully became part of Evie’s vocabulary. To make the place come alive for the politely listening girl he described how Thomas Hardy had used the henge as the location of the arrest of Tess, the heroine of one of his most famous novels. But as Evie had not read the book or ever heard of Tess Durbeyfield, the connection between the unfamiliar place and the unread novel meant little to her. Although she nodded and smiled vaguely at Roger she was more interested in the road ahead as they pulled out onto it and resumed their journey. Roger Bayliss was disappointed by this. He smiled at Alice when she leant across and patted his knee as he changed gear, accelerated and gave the great, grey stones a last glance.

Their route through London avoided the well-known landmarks. Evie, who had been hoping to catch a glimpse of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, was disappointed. Roger became concerned that this part of the journey was taking them much longer than he had anticipated. It was decided that they would not stop for lunch until they arrived at Tilbury.

The gale that was lashing the West Country had veered
north, leaving London grey and cold as the December afternoon approached.

‘A good day to be leaving England,’ Alice said as they threaded their way into the docks where there was still plenty of evidence of wartime bomb damage. Rows of fragile warehouses stood, skeletal and precarious, amongst warped and twisted cranes and hoists. The scene was a monochrome of greys and sepias until they saw the ship.

The
Orontes
, in common with her sister ships, was painted a curious shade of muted, pinkish gold. Set in those murky surroundings, she glowed like a harvest moon at twilight, then, when a brief break in the cloud flooded the scene with wintery sunshine, blushed like an opal. Or a pumpkin in a pantomime.

‘Is that my ship?’ Evie breathed. ‘Is it? Is it mine?’

By now the vessel loomed over them, its gangways busy with people and porters pushing trolleys laden with luggage ranging from cabin trunks to hatboxes.

‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘It’s yours. There’s the name on the stern. You see?’ Evie had not imagined that her ship, indeed, any ship, could be so large. She stood, her face expressing her awe, astonishment and an underlying, overwhelming excitement. Probably because all these were feelings she associated with Giorgio, when she exclaimed ‘
Mama mia!
’ her Italian accent was perfect.

Two hours remained before Evie had to make herself known to the emigration officer. They parked the car, and although Eileen’s lunch was excellent, they barely noticed it, eating quickly and hungrily. After Evie’s papers had
been checked, her case labelled ‘wanted on the voyage’ and wheeled away, there was a delay before the boarding passes would be handed out.

There seemed to be nothing left to say. They smiled awkwardly and found a draughty cafe where Roger bought them mugs of tea.

‘What have you done to your wrist, Mrs Bayliss?’ Evie asked suddenly, taking Alice by surprise. From time to time on the journey, when they ate their lunch and now, as Alice sipped her tea, Evie had caught glimpses of the bruises and contused flesh just visible between the sleeve of her coat and her glove. Alice blushed, and pulling her cuff down over the injury, made a confused and unconvincing attempt to explain it. Evie shook her head.

‘Something happened this morning, didn’t it?’ she persisted. ‘Was it when you came to fetch me from Rose Crocker’s?’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Alice said, ‘Really it doesn’t, Evie. Let’s not spoil our last—’

‘It was Norman, wasn’t it? He came looking for me again! I knew it! I just knew he would!’

‘But he didn’t find you, Evie! And he never will! In a couple of hours you’ll be—’

‘Safe? Will I be? Will I ever be? And he hurt you, Mrs Bayliss! And what about the others?’

‘The others?’

‘The others in the valley! Hester and Dave and their Thurza! And Ferdie and Edward John! Mrs Crocker and everyone else who helped me!’

‘That’s all been taken care of, Evie.’ Roger spoke calmly and with more confidence than he felt. ‘Everybody was warned. The police were called. Norman Clark has no idea where you are or where you are going and no one who does know will tell him. He has broken his bail and will be in custody by now. Drink your tea and let’s get you aboard.’

Evie found a place on the rail and waved and blew kisses until her face and their faces blurred into unrecognisable shapes.

‘She’s got a point, you know,’ Roger said, allowing himself to relax the forced smile he had kept in place for the past hour. ‘I think we should get home, Alice.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes. If you feel up to it. I’m a bit concerned about our people. There’s probably nothing to worry about and they’re all absolutely fine, but … What do you think?’

‘I think we should go.’

The pumpkin ship was by now a diminishing blob of colour as daylight faded over the grey Thames. If Evie was still waving, they could not distinguish her from the other figures leaning on the rail. While Roger bought petrol Alice telephoned Ruth and cancelled the arrangements they had made for that evening.

‘Oh … But—’ Ruth protested. She was a woman unused to having her plans cancelled.

‘No “buts”, Ruth,’ Alice told her, firmly. ‘I do apologise, my dear. Can’t explain now. I’ll write. Byeeee.’

It was after midnight when they arrived home. There had been drifts of leaves and even fallen branches in the lanes after they left the main road but the air was still when
they pulled into the yard of the higher farm. As Roger extinguished the headlights the total, familiar darkness of the countryside enveloped them. No lights showed in the farmhouse windows or in the cottage occupied by Ferdie and Mabel and their family. As their night vision began to reveal the familiar shapes of the yard they looked down into the valley where the lower farmhouse was, as usual, in darkness. Nor were any lights showing in the windows of the Crocker cottage. The distant stream was in spate. In the near silence they could hear it making its noisy way along the valley floor. The owls in the woods that rose up behind the farmhouse towards The Tops sounded drowsy. Roger heaved a sigh, part relief, part exhaustion.

‘Long day,’ he said, putting an arm around Alice.

They were both suddenly desperately tired. In silence they went indoors, carried mugs of hot milk upstairs and were in their bed within half an hour.

Roger woke early and as Alice made her way sleepily to the bathroom, he dressed hurriedly in his farming clothes. In the yard he encountered Ferdie who had just delivered the dairy cows to Mabel for the early morning milking.

‘Everything alright here?’ Roger asked.

‘Yessuh. Why wouldn’t it be? Wasn’t expectin’ you home this early though, sir. Young Evie get on her way okay, did she?’

‘What? Oh, yes. She did. It all went according to plan.’

‘That’s good, sir. Oh, there was one thing, sir.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Daphne, sir.’

‘Who?’

‘The cow my Mabel calls Daphne. The one with the crushed horn?’

‘Oh. Yes. Calls her Daphne, does she …’

‘She do, sir, yes. You knows what my Mabel’s like when it comes to cows.’

‘Well? What about … Daphne?’

‘She started calvin’ late yesterday. Don’t seem to be doin’ too well. May be nothin’ but we reckons you should take a peek at ’er.’

‘Yes. I will. Thanks, Ferdie.’

‘Pleasure sir.’

‘Um, Ferdie …?’

‘Sir?’

‘No sign of Corporal Clark?’

‘No, sir, no. Dave got your message about ’im bein’ seen hereabouts, and later on Edwin Lucas phoned the lower farm to say as he’d bin ’angin round ’is place and ’e’d told ’im to push off and that ’e was calling the police.’

‘No sign of him at the lower farm, then?’

‘No. No sign of ’im there.’

Roger re-entered the farmhouse where he encountered Eileen.

‘Wasn’t expectin’ you ’ome for hours,’ she announced testily. ‘Thought we’d got burglars, I did, when I ’eard madam moving about upstairs. And I haven’t even started on your breakfasts, not knowing as you’d be wantin’ any!’

‘Sorry, Eileen. Very sorry. Thoughtless of us …’

He left her, pink with righteous indignation and joined his wife in their bedroom.

Alice was sitting at the dressing table wrapped in a white towelling bathrobe and brushing her hair. She met his eyes via the mirror.

‘Absolutely had to have a bath,’ she smiled. ‘Essential, after yesterday.’ The bruises on her wrist were still livid. ‘Now, tell me. Is everyone alright? Did anything happen?’ Roger sat heavily in the small upholstered chair that his first wife had used when she did her sewing, a fact which Roger had long since forgotten – and looked appreciatively at Alice.

‘Absolutely nothing, as far as I can make out!’

‘Really? But—’

‘What, exactly, did you say to Clark in the lane yesterday?’

‘Heavens! I don’t know! Everything I could think of as far as I can remember. All the foul language I learnt from my girls! And then some of my own! I don’t know, Roger! Why d’you ask? Has someone complained?’ Roger smiled, the anxieties of the recent days, beginning to ease.

‘Apparently not, and whatever it was it seems to have done the trick!’

‘What “trick”?’ Alice asked. ‘I did say I’d call the police but considering the state he was in I doubt if that would have discouraged him. Did it?’

‘Not completely, it seems. Ferdie says he went up to the Lucas farm, assuming Giorgio was still working there, I suppose. Edwin put him right on that, gave him his marching orders and said he was calling the police and …’

‘And?’

‘And that, according to Ferdie Vallance, was the last anyone saw of him. When I’ve had some breakfast I’ll go
down to the lower farm and have a word with Dave Crocker. The weather was pretty wild here yesterday. No one got much work done and there’s been some storm damage, apparently.’

The damage Ferdie Vallance had referred to had not been caused directly by the storm, which had no more than slightly worsened the condition of the charred sill to which the iron ladder had been fixed. The reason the metal attachments had pulled free, causing the ladder to hesitate, tip backwards and then crash down onto the derelict cattle pens underneath it, had been the sudden weight of Norman Clark as he lowered himself over the sill and, half blinded by rain and the blood flowing from his injured head, began to descend it.

Hester, fearing that when he reached the ground and still under the illusion that she was his wife, Norman would pursue her, had fled and then stopped in her tracks when she grasped the situation and, just as Ferdie and Dave had done, foresaw what was about to happen. All three of them watched speechlessly, Dave and Ferdie crouching, leaning out, through the aperture in the barn wall and Hester from across the yard, as the ladder, bearing Norman Clark’s huge weight, came slowly away from the wall, pieces of splintered wood falling past him as he clung helplessly to it. Then, as it swayed outwards, the lower attachments had pulled out of the ancient mortar and it swung back, further and faster from the wall as the force of gravity took it. Peering down at the falling man, his fingers white on the rungs of the ladder, Ferdie and Dave saw the look of terror on his face and heard him cry out as he groped with one hand towards them. Then
came the sound none of the watchers would ever forget, as Norman Clark’s skull made noisy contact with the edge of a granite water trough.

The three of them had gathered round, oblivious of the wind and rain, staring at what was left of Norman Clark. He lay, spreadeagled on his back, like an over-stuffed rag doll. His head, draining of blood, had cracked open like a raw egg on impact with the edge of the trough. Hester turned away and retched.

‘Go to Thurza,’ Dave told her but she shook her head.

‘What’ll us do?’ she said. And then louder and more desperately, ‘What’ll us do, Dave?’

The prospect of the situation falling into the hands of the judiciary was not an option for these three, whose experience of life had taught them that ‘the law’ was something to be avoided at all costs. It was the law that threatened you if you trespassed, poached game or pilfered apples. It dragged people off with their hands behind their backs and threw them into cells, flogged them, hanged them or sent them to the colonies. During their years at the village school, each class had been addressed by a senior police officer from Exeter, and although he had removed his helmet, smiled at them and even attempted a joke or two, he had gravely lectured them on the absolute necessity of avoiding a life of crime – with all its inevitable unpleasantness – and had vividly described the misery of being sentenced to life behind bars. Witness boxes, warrants, oaths, juries, prison officers, policemen, executioners and especially judges were all ‘the law’.