The Dark Clue (31 page)

‘Tifting?' I said.

She pushed her tongue out, and took two or three rapid breaths, before going on: ‘And ‘e were roarin', and pawin” – here she made her hands into claws, and scraped some imaginary surface – ‘and jumpin' at ‘is chain, so's tha could ‘eear it twangin'.'

‘How near?' I asked.

‘Reet there,' she said, pointing towards the door. ‘No more'n ten paces.'

‘And did you see him?'

She shook her head. ‘We was too flayed to look. We just ran, tumblin' an' bangin' all t'way down; but there were no bones brak, thank the Lord, tho' we was tha' clarty an' moithered comin' ‘ome the mester a'most died o'freet to see us.'

I nodded. A dog, presumably – perhaps an escaped mastiff; but if I said so I should indubitably offend her. She seemed to guess my thoughts, however, for she went on:

‘Course, all tha doctors and druggists and ranters says t'were nowt – we fancied it, or t'were nobbut a dog, or a doddy, or a sheep, or some sich – but there were summat there, reet enough, an' I nivver ‘eeard mortal beast make sich a noise, not afore or sin.'

‘It must have been very frightening for you,' I murmured, thinking that a show of sympathy might be enough to reassure
her that I took her story seriously, and so deter her from asking whether I actually believed it.

She appeared not to have heard me, however; for she was quiet for a moment, and suddenly laughed and said:

‘One of them Methodies says, “Oh, Mrs. Swinton, I'm sure it was just a pow-cat.” “A pow-cat!” I says to ‘er; “no-one's ivver seed a pow-cat as could ‘oiler like tha', but there's plenty of fowks seed the Barguest – so which does tha' think is likelier I ‘eeard?” ‘Er says, all reasonable-like, “There b'ain't no sich thing as a Barguest, Mrs. Swinton.” “What,” I says, “and no boggards, neither, I suppose?” “Nay,” she says – jus' like she's preachin' a sermon – “Truth is, there's too mich darkness in the world, Mrs. Swinton; and too mich in our een; and tha's why we ‘ave streetlights and schools, so's fowks can see wha's there, and wha' b'ain't. Has tha' ‘eeard tell as anyan seed a boggard sin the gas were put in?” So -'

‘A boggard', I said, ‘is what? A spirit of some kind?'

She nodded. ‘I says to her, “Course they won't come when there's mickle light, or mickle gabble.”' She sat back in her chair and scrutinized me through shrewdly narrowed eyes, trying to decide – I supposed – whether she could trust me with some still greater confidence. I held her gaze, and consciously relaxed the muscles of my face. At length, she leant towards me again.

‘Oft-times, at neet,' she said, so softly I could barely hear her, ‘I see the mester, a-sittin' in tha chair as tha's in now. An' I nivver leets a cannle, then, for I knows I'd only freeten him off, an' I like the company.'

I shivered – I could not help myself – my damp clothes felt suddenly as close and clammy as a shroud, and I longed to shake them off. It was all I could do not to turn, and see if the mester was standing at my shoulder, waiting to claim his place. I forced myself to breathe normally; and resolved to change the subject.

‘Mr. Hart says you grew up at Farnley,' I said, my dry tongue sticking and clicking against the roof of my mouth.

She nodded.

‘Do you by any chance remember Mr. Turner, the painter?'

‘Ay, I remember ‘im,' she said gruffly, not meeting my eyes. She
took up the poker and busied herself with the fire. I waited for her to go on.

“E knew,' she muttered at last.

‘Knew what?'

‘Awlus about, a' sorts o'weather, he were,' she said, as if this answered my question. ‘Muckier t'better. Up t'Chevin. Out on t'moors in t'rain.' She jabbed a finger towards the shuttered window. “E were ‘ere now, tha's where tha'd find ‘im.'

‘I imagine he was drawing, or painting-' I began.

‘Ay, tha's wha' ‘e said.'

‘He loved stormy effects -'

She stopped me with a vigorous shake of the head.

‘Why,' I said, ‘what do you think he was doing?'

“E could make it come to ‘im, an' do ‘is biddin',' she said.

‘What?' I said. I could not conceive what she was talking about. The Barguest? The
weather?

She was silent for a few seconds; and then she said:

‘Tek ‘em bellowses, and give t'cowls a bit o' puff.'

I knelt before the fire. As the first shower of sparks erupted, she gave a murmur of satisfaction, as involuntary as the purr of a cat. Then she cleared her throat; and speaking in a slow, gentle voice said:

‘I knew a lass once, Mary Gallimore. More like a sister to me, she were, ‘an a friend; for we lived anent each other as bairns, an' was awlus lakin' together. She were nivver quite reet – a bit gaumless, tha know, cuddy-wifted, an' couldn't climm a set o' keekers wi'out she'd get ankled up at t'top, and fall down ‘em again. But t'kindest body tha's ivver met. Wouldn't ‘urt nee-a-body or nowt, would Mary.'

She paused. I turned to look at her. She was shaking her head, and exhaling in a kind of sad noiseless whistle that was oddly affecting. She caught my eye, and continued:

‘Once, I seed ‘er tek th'ole mornin' tryin' to get a tom-tellalegs from out the ass-nook, for fear it'd be burned when her mother mek t'fire. Th'other bairns laughed at ‘er, but she wouldn't let it bide. Tha's the way she awlus were.'

I replaced the bellows, and sat down again. Perhaps there was some impatience in my manner; for she said:

‘Ay, I've no' forgot tha' Mr. Turner.'

‘No, no,' I said. ‘Please. What happened to her?'

‘Well, owd Mr. Fawkes, ‘e were a gradely man, after ‘is fashion – ‘e tek a interest in ‘er. ‘E knows she won't nivver be like rest o' us young roisters; so he says to ‘er mother: “Tha send ‘er to the ‘all when she's thirteen, and we'll find a place for ‘er there.” So tha's wha' she does; an' Mary fetches up as under-'ousemaid, tekkin' out slops an' sich-like a' t'big ‘ouse.'

There was an odd stirring of dread and excitement in my stomach.

‘Ay,' she said. ‘Yon's where she met ‘im. Back-end o' th'year, it were -'

‘Which year?' I said, taking out my notebook – and silently congratulating myself for having had the foresight to wrap it in oil-cloth.

‘Oh, ‘eleven, I should say, or ‘twelve, mayhap. November, any road; for t'last time I seed ‘er we was out chumpin' for Bunfire Neet, my brother an' me, down by t'river.

The
last
time! Dear God! Where is this leading?

‘I'll nivver forget – we come on ‘er all sudden-like, reet anent t'bank, atween a pair o' willows. We mun've freeted ‘er; for she jumped an' bloddered when she ‘eeard us, and a'most fell i' t'water; and when she turn' round, she were a' spew-faced – save her een, which was red fro' cryin'. “Lor', Mary,” I says, “wha'ever is t'ma'er wi' tha?”; but she can' say nowt reet off, but just shaks ‘er yed. So I puts my arms round ‘er; an' after a minute or two she tells me.'

She paused, and fiddled with the fire again, even though it was burning brightly now, and had no need of her attentions. For a moment I felt a flush of anger: she was deliberately tormenting me by making me wait, for no good reason other than that it pleased her to do so. And then I reflected how rare this experience must be for her – to have another person hanging on her every word, and to read in his face the dramatic effect of a story that no-one else, perhaps, had ever accounted of any interest – and realized that her enjoyment was innocent and understandable enough, and that it would be churlish to begrudge it.

‘There now,' she said, sitting back. ‘Well, first thing she says is, “Am I a bad lass, Doll?” “No, doy,” I says, “course tha b'ain't – whyivver should tha be askin' tha'?” “I's yon Mr. Turner,” she
says, “as is stoppin' a' th'ouse. I goes in ‘is room this mornin,' an' ‘e were tha” – she couldn't barely speak – ‘“e were tha' maungy to me.” “Why?” I says, “whativver'd ‘e do?” She just sniffles an' shaks ‘er yed; but I coaxes her, like, and ends up she says: ‘“E called me names – said I were a beltikite, and a buffle-yedded greek, an' sich.”'

Whatever the truth of the rest of it, I could not believe this – for if Turner had been moved to speak at all (and he was, of course, famously taciturn with strangers), he would surely not have resorted to local terms such as ‘beltikite' and ‘buffle-head', which must have been as unfamiliar to him as they were to me. Again, Mrs. Swinton seemed to guess what I was thinking; for she said:

‘I don' reckon tha's reet – I reckon as tha were summat else, but she were tha' ashamed she couldn' bring ‘ersel' to say it.'

‘You mean you think he behaved improperly towards her?'

She shrugged. ‘What does tha think? ‘Im an' a thirteen-year-old lass, in a sleepin'-room?'

It was possible – I had only to remember the girl at Petworth to realize that. But surely it was at least equally likely that she had merely disturbed him while he was working; and that her description of the response this had provoked – an outburst of (to her) quite unaccountable anger – was accurate enough, even if she had translated the actual words Turner had used into her own dialect?

‘Ahsumiver,' Mrs. Swinton went on, ‘I couldn' get nowt more from ‘er; so I kisses ‘er, an' I says: “If tha's fashed about owt, doan' keep it to thasel', else it'll go bad on tha – what tha's to do is tell Mr. Fawkes, for ‘e's a fair mester, an' a good man. Will tha promise?” An' she does; an' at-after she's a bit bruffer, an' ivven shows us a lahtle smile when we bahn.'

Her voice wavered suddenly, and her breathing became jerky, as if the need for air and the urge to sob were struggling for mastery of her. She steadied herself by bunching a corner of her apron in her hand, and continued:

‘Nex' morn, I sees tha Mr. Turner, walkin' till t'Chevin in ‘is long black coat, no' lookin' to left nor reet of ‘im, an' goin' tha' quick tha'd think Jack Lob were after ‘im. Soon after, it comes on to rain; an' then it's teemin', jus' like toneet, so thick tha can't see tha nose afooar tha; an' a' the talk's o' floods, an't'farmers start
movin' t'beeas fro' the cloises by t'river.' Her lips trembled, and she drew them between her teeth for a moment, and clenched her fist again.

‘Tha' neet, we ‘eeard as ‘ow Mary were missin'; an' t'men ou' in t'storm wi' lanterns, lookin' for ‘er. They foun' ‘er in the mornin', no' far fro' wheear we seed ‘er. All ankled up in t'weeds an' willows, she were, drownded.'

‘Dear God!' I said. ‘What a terrible thing.'

‘They carried ‘er to a byre, and set ‘er i' t'fodderem. And tha Mr. Turner, so I ‘eeard, went there after, and drawed ‘er liggin' there.'

Yet again,
I thought.
Why?

‘I'm very sorry,' I said.

She said nothing, but watched me unflinchingly, as if waiting for me to draw some obvious conclusion from the evidence she had laid before me. A fearful idea suddenly struck me.

‘Surely', I said, ‘you don't think he was somehow
responsible
for her death? It was clearly a tragic accident – you said yourself she was clumsy, and it's all too easy to see how such a girl…' My voice trailed off in face of her implacable stare.

‘When I were a lass,' she said slowly, ‘there were an ol' woman a' Pool as could put th'evil eye on a pig, and make t'rain come.'

‘Are you . . .? You're not suggesting – that Turner could – that he would …?'

She smiled, and I hesitated, wondering if she were laughing at me. But it was not, I decided, that kind of smile – rather the martyred, resigned grimace of a woman who sees what others are blind to, and is accustomed to being mocked for it.

‘I'm sorry,' I said – knowing that in that instant I was joining the ranks of doctors and druggists and Methodists, and feeling a spasm of guilt for it – ‘but I cannot believe that.'

And I couldn't. Yet as I went on to make polite small-talk for ten minutes (conscious, all the time, of her sullen coldness, and knowing that I had caused it, and that nothing I could say now would mend matters); and then at length rose and thanked her and left, and blundered back through the rain to the Black Bull, I could not get what she had told me from my thoughts.

Was it just the fact of the drowned girl, with its echoes of Hargreaves' story, and of Mrs. Booth's account of Turner's last days?

Or was it the idea of Turner as a wizard, which strangely recalled Davenant's description of his behaviour on Varnishing Days:

If a savage had seen it, he'd have sworn it was magic
.

I remember a young Scotch fellow watching it once, and muttering something about sorcery
.

I don't know.

I must go to bed.

XXX

From the journal of Walter Hartright, 13th October, 185-

God! What a night!

I dreamed I was by a lake. It was black, and unnaturally still, but fringed by half-submerged trees, from which I knew it had but lately flooded. As I watched, the moon came up, and I saw that there was something white stirring beneath the surface. At first I thought it was a great shoal of fish; but then I noticed that it did not move, but merely seemed to ripple in some invisible current. And then, all at once, I knew: these were bodies – hundreds, thousands of them – broken from their graves by the deluge.

In the same moment, I became aware that a man was standing next to me. He was short, and wore a long black coat and a black hat. It seems obvious, now, that he was Turner; but in my dream, although he appeared faintly familiar, I thought he was an undertaker. I sensed he was burdened with some great sadness, some terrible apprehension. At length, he let out a dreadful sigh, as if he could no longer put off the fatal moment, and began to whistle.