Girl of Shadows (17 page)

Sarah wondered how long she’d been listening. Bloody
cow
.

‘If that’s what you’d prefer, Mrs Green,’ Bernard said impassively.

‘It is. And Sarah, I want every single thing of yours out of that room upstairs, do you understand? And leave your house keys.’

‘I’ll take everything that’s mine,’ Sarah said. ‘Except perhaps for Rachel. It’s
you
she’s so angry at, Esther, not me.’

Esther blanched but glared at her. ‘Just get packed and get out.’

It didn’t take Sarah long to gather her things, including her satchel containing her set of skeleton keys and safe-breaking tools, and the Charlotte fund hidden beneath the attic floorboards. She had her own canvas bag that held her clothes and Bernard found her a box for her cups, saucers and teapot. They left through the shop door, which Esther refrained from slamming after them; perhaps, Sarah thought, too conscious of the neighbours’ scrutiny.

‘We’ll walk to my house and collect my gig,’ Bernard said. Sarah’s beautiful cushions made by Harrie were jammed under one arm, a rug was rolled under the other and a pair of curtains printed with birds and flowers fluttered gaily from his shoulders. ‘Where did you say your friend lives?’

‘She’ll be at work by now, on Argyle Street. She’s at Elizabeth Hislop’s establishment.’

‘Bette Hislop! I’ve known Bette for years. Magnificent woman. And your friend …?’

‘Is a prostitute, yes.’

‘Well, we’ll collect the gig first. My poor legs won’t carry me as far as Argyle Street. Not carting all this.’

‘Bernie Cole, as I live and breathe!’ Elizabeth Hislop opened the door wider to let him in.

‘Hello, Bette, love. It’s been a few years, hasn’t it? You’re still a picture, though, I see.’

‘Oh, get away with you. And Sarah Morgan. Hello, dear.’ Elizabeth frowned at the odd pair standing in her foyer.

‘I’m on my way back to the Factory,’ Sarah explained. ‘It’s a bit sudden and I was wondering, could I speak with Friday, please?’

‘Actually, she’s with a customer at the moment.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Friday called from the stairs. ‘Just finished.’ Looking worried, she hurried down and gave Sarah a hug. ‘What are you doing here? What’s happened?’

‘Esther bloody Green’s sending me back to the Factory. Or Adam is, I’m not sure. Anyway, that’s where I’m going. Bernard’s taking me.’

‘The Factory? Right
now
?’

Sarah nodded grimly.

‘But … when did all this happen?’

‘About an hour ago.’

‘Bloody hell, Sarah. Did he finally wake up?’

Elizabeth and Bernard exchanged uneasy glances.

‘Don’t know and don’t give a bugger,’ Sarah snapped. ‘It was time to move on anyway. I’ve had a bloody gutsful of the pair of them.’

Friday knew that wasn’t true, not as far as Adam was concerned at least, but wisely kept her mouth shut.

Sarah turned to Elizabeth. ‘Do you mind if I speak with Friday in private for a few minutes, please?’

‘Not at all. Use my office.’

Friday led Sarah into Elizabeth’s private room and closed the door. ‘Fucking hell, Sarah, what’s all this about?’

Sarah sat in Elizabeth’s chair. ‘I
think
that bitch Esther forged Adam’s signature on the papers to send me back to the Factory. Either that or Adam really did sign them and left Bernard to tell me while he was away.’

Friday could see from Sarah’s pale, pinched face, stiff posture and repeated blinking that her contemplation of the latter possibility was hurting her very much.

‘But why?’

‘Wasn’t told a reason.’

‘But you were doing so well there. Adam said so. He said his profits had improved no end because of you, didn’t he?’

Sarah nodded. Then she shrugged.

‘Well, how do you feel about it?’ Friday asked.

‘Too bad. His loss.’

But Friday knew this for what it was.

‘Anyway,’ Sarah said, ‘you’ll have to look after the Charlotte fund. Well, what’s bloody well left of it. I can’t have it in the Factory. It’ll be nicked in five minutes.’

‘It’ll be nicked in five minutes here, too. I’ll ask Mrs H if I can keep it in the safe.’

‘There’s something else. If Esther
did
forge Adam’s signature, it could be because she suspects I’m behind the ghost business.’ Sarah looked Friday in the eye. ‘So, what if the haunting continues while I’m not there?’

‘Well, how can it, if you’re out at Parramatta stuck in the Factory? Oh.’

Esther sat at her dressing table applying Gowland’s Lotion to her face with hands that would not stop shaking. At six shillings a quart the lotion was very pricey and one had to pay the cost of importing it on top of that, but her complexion lately had been so dreadful — lifeless and with tiny pimples erupting across her chin and nose — it was definitely worth the expense.

She had checked the locks on her bedroom door, and the shop and back doors twice, and been around to every window to ensure that they, too, were all firmly closed, despite the warmth of the night. There were lamps burning downstairs with enough oil to
last until morning, another on the landing outside, and two here in her chamber. Sarah Morgan had been gone five nights now, and although she didn’t miss the sly bitch at all during the day, she did wish there was someone with her in the house after dark. Someone … alive.

The first two nights that Sarah was gone had been heaven. She’d not heard a sound. There had been no ominous footsteps on the stairs, no chilling dragging noises from the parlour, no foul stenches straight from the grave, and she’d ventured downstairs in the mornings to find everything exactly as she’d it left the previous evening, which reinforced a private suspicion she’d harboured for several weeks. What if the ghost hadn’t been real? What if someone had been trying to drive her insane? Adam, perhaps, so he could lock her away in the lunatic asylum and have his way with Sarah Morgan, or even Sarah herself?

But, oh God, the night before last, it had all started up again, and her fear and the extent of her dismay had rendered her physically sick. It was real, all of it — the spirit of the dead girl Rachel was back from the grave and in this house.

First had been the
tack, tack, tack
of something hitting her bedroom window. She’d opened it and leant out, but the moonlit yard had been still and empty. It had gone on all night accompanied by the sound of a girl sobbing — first outside, then seemingly from within the house, a low muffled sound that had risen to a desperate, high keening, which had tapered away just when Esther had thought her nerves couldn’t bear it a moment longer. Then it had begun its torturing ascent all over again.

Last night the tapping had begun in her very bedroom, making its way across the floor, then, an hour or so later, across the ceiling where it had turned into aggressive thumping, knocking off little flakes of plaster and dislodging a large spider that had dropped onto her bedclothes. She’d squashed it, then pulled the blanket over her head and lay there quivering with terror to await sunrise.
The dragging sounds had also started up once more in the parlour, and when she’d gone down this morning the furniture had all been jammed into the hallway.
All
of it. Bernard Cole, when he’d arrived for work just before nine o’clock, had been amazed, and far too entertained by the spectacle for Esther’s liking.

But he’d waddled off and returned with someone to help put all her pieces of furniture back where they belonged, and had also offered to have his wife spend the night in the house with Esther if she so wished. No, she did not wish; she would rather be dragged by the hair through the gates of hell than spend a night under the same roof as Ruthie Cole, the common baggage.

Surely Adam would be home in a few days. She really did not know how much longer she could tolerate this. They would have to sell the lease to the shop and house and move to other premises immediately: there was no other thing to be done. Adam would just have to work harder to compensate for any drop in their income.

She took the pins from her hair and began to brush it, listening as she always did these days — these
nights
— for strange and untoward sounds. But it wasn’t just noises, she could
feel
the dead girl’s spirit, a cold hollowness that drifted through the house, lowering the temperature in doorways and in the hall and on the stairs. Twice she thought she’d even caught glimpses of her floating up near the ceiling, her vindictive and accusing face surrounded by a tangle of wafting hair, her ghostly presence rendering the lamplight a bilious green colour, the pattern on the expensive new wallpaper visible through her grave-thin limbs and wasted body.

But no spirit would dare appear tonight, not in here. She’d taken all the crosses and amulets and mezuzah from downstairs and arranged them around her bedroom, bar one large cross she’d nailed to the outside of her bedroom door, and filled eight preserving jars with rosemary cuttings and set them on the floor against the walls. As further insurance, she’d sprinkled around and over the bed a
vial of holy water a Catholic acquaintance had obtained for her, just in case the girl Rachel had been a Catholic.

Esther finished brushing then quickly plaited her hair. She checked yet again that her bedroom door was locked — not that a lock would stop a spirit, she knew that — and at last climbed into bed, leaving the two lamps burning. She pulled the sheet and blanket up to her chin and lay sweating in the night’s heat, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the house as it creaked and ticked. Somewhere not far away a couple of dogs exploded into savage barking, the sound echoing up the gully forged by Tank Stream.

Minutes passed. Next door the neighbour’s cat started its nightly yowling. If Esther could operate a gun she would have shot it by now.

But there was no tapping, and there were no footsteps.

Sweat trickled down her temples and pasted her nightgown to her chest; unable to bear it, she threw off the blanket.

An hour passed.

Her eyelids were so heavy. Nothing had happened. Perhaps, tonight, it wouldn’t. Perhaps the amulets were working.

She drifted off to sleep.

Two hours later she jerked awake.

What was that? It came again; something bumping against the underside of the bed. And a dreadful, low, demonic growling. She leapt up onto her knees and stared down at the mattress.

For a moment everything was silent and still, then came a barrage of such violent thumping and banging the bed itself shifted across the floor.

She shrieked, scrambled off it and lunged for the door, which wouldn’t open. Remembering she’d locked it, she fumbled wildly with the bolt until it shot back, and ran out and down the stairs. Screaming her head off, she hurtled through the shop, wrestled with the front door and burst out into the street.

Upstairs, Friday rolled out from beneath Esther’s bed, barely recognisable in a shirt and trousers, the seat stretched rather tightly across her backside, with burnt cork rubbed all over her face and cobwebs festooning her tied-back hair. Giggling madly, Jimmy Johnson appeared on the other side looking equally dishevelled.

Friday urged, ‘Hurry up, we’ll only have a minute!’

They pelted down the stairs, Friday still favouring her healing leg, and escaped the house through the back door, stopping for a moment to retrieve Sarah’s skeleton keys from their hiding place behind a bush.

‘This is a flaming nice set of screws,’ Jimmy remarked, his teeth flashing in the moonlight. ‘Do you think she’ll notice if we don’t give them back?’

‘Yes, I bloody do,’ Friday replied. ‘Now hurry up and get over that fence.’

There was no time to open the gate; Friday gave Jimmy such an energetic leg up he landed flat on his back on the other side. It didn’t stop him giggling, though; he hadn’t had such a lark since his London days.

When Adam arrived back in Sydney, it was to a household in complete disarray.

He was sorry that Esther had relocated to a ladies’ lodging house, and concerned for her wellbeing, but profoundly angered by her dismissal of Sarah.

‘So you didn’t sign the papers?’ Bernard asked.

‘No, I did not. It’s never once crossed my mind.’

‘Well, that lass has an idea you did. If you want my advice, if you want her back you’d better get out to Parramatta fairly smartly.’

‘Christ.’ Adam ran his hand through his hair. He was tired from travelling, and hadn’t had a decent wash in days. ‘What on earth possessed her to do it?’

‘Your esteemed good woman?’ Bernard gave an eloquent shrug: who knew why women did the things they did? ‘You can probably answer that better than I can.’

But Adam wasn’t really listening. He looked at his watch. ‘If I hired a mount and left now I could get there by early evening.’

‘I’m surprised to hear myself saying this,’ Bernard said, sounding it, ‘but hadn’t you better attend to Esther first? She’s in the most terrible state, particularly after being alone here at night.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Adam said, biting off the words one by one. ‘If she hadn’t sent Sarah back to the Factory she wouldn’t have
been
alone, would she?’

‘Go and see her, Adam. Get that sorted out first.’

‘No. At least, not until tonight. I have to think first. This time she has absolutely gone too far.’

Adam and Esther walked back from the lodging house on upper Castlereagh Street in frosty silence, their discussion having petered out by the time they’d reached Market Street. Esther had complained bitterly about the terrifying experiences that had driven her out of her own home, and the dreadful conditions she’d had to endure in the lodging house; the cheap, mismatched furniture and hideous rag rugs and the like. And the women there! She wouldn’t be surprised to learn they were all on the town. She hadn’t needed too much persuading to return to George Street, despite its unearthly intruder, now that Adam was back. They would only be there a day or two anyway, she informed him, because he was to set about finding new premises immediately. She would not live in that house a moment longer than she had to.

Adam had lit all the lamps before he’d gone to fetch her; he was extremely annoyed and disappointed with Esther, but there was no sense in frightening her unnecessarily. He deposited her travelling case in the hall, then sat her down at the dining-room table.