The Outcast Dead (15 page)

The playground, in the shadow of the castle, is a pleasant grassy space. Approaching through the trees, Judy has plenty of time to observe, and she has to admit that Debbie is doing a good job of supervising Michael in the sandpit while still keeping an eye on the boys on the swings.

‘Careful, Mikey,’ she is saying, ‘not in your mouth.’

Judy suppresses a perfectly irrational urge to say that Michael can eat sand if he wants to. Also to scream, ‘Don’t call him Mikey.’ She never shortens her son’s name, though Darren often refers to him as ‘Mike’.

‘Hi, Debbie.’

‘Hi, Judy. You took me by surprise. Look Mikey, it’s Mummy.’

Michael looks at her solemnly. He’s a silent child, not like Ruth’s Kate, who was practically talking in sentences at a year old. Michael has a few favourite words, but mostly he prefers to observe. Like his dad, Judy can’t help thinking. Now he raises his arms to Judy and she lifts him up, burying her face in his dark hair. He smells gorgeous – sand and grass and crayons.

‘I’ll take him home now,’ she says. ‘Have you got his stuff?’

Like most children in day care, Michael travels with more equipment than a travelling circus: nappies, spare clothes, comfort blanket, toys. Debbie hands Judy his bag and says cheerfully that she’ll see her tomorrow.

‘Bye Judy. Bye Mikey.’

‘Goodbye,’ says Judy. As she turns away she can hear Debbie singing as she pushes the boys on the swings. Does she like them more than Michael?

Judy’s love for her son has taken her by surprise. When he was born, a lovely midwife called Linda told her, ‘You’ll never know love like it.’ And she was right. Judy has always distrusted strong emotion. When she studied
Wuthering Heights
at school she found it cringe-making. ‘I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’ It was all so embarrassing and unnecessary. She has never felt like that about Darren. She loves him, of course she does, but it’s a calm and adult affair. They have been together since they were sixteen, they know each other inside out, so much so that often they find themselves with nothing to talk about, unless they fall back on discussing the wonders of Michael.

Cathbad was different. Judy has never felt that she knew him at all, but when she thinks back to that first night they spent together – stranded in a snow-bound cottage – her whole body feels as if it is on fire. He was Heathcliff, if you like. The outsider, the figure from the darkness. And you don’t plan a future with Heathcliff. Not if you’ve got any sense, you don’t.

Judy and Darren live in a small modern house on the
outskirts of the village. Darren has worked hard on the garden and this summer his hanging baskets are a joy to behold. But Judy, taking Michael out of his car seat, thinks that they too are somehow embarrassing. All that red and pink and cascading foliage. These days she prefers grey and blue, cool colours, the accents of winter. She remembers Cathbad appearing out of the snow, cloaked and mysterious. There’s no point dwelling on the past, she tells herself, opening the newly painted front door; this is the present, this is reality. And, as happens so often these days, she realises that she is crying.

*

Ruth has also collected her child from the childminder and she, too, is home. But unlike Judy, Ruth feels pure satisfaction at being in her own space, alone apart from Kate and Flint who don’t count. Feeling slightly guilty (it’s a lovely afternoon, they should be on the beach), Ruth puts on children’s TV and settles down by the window to read Jemima Green’s diaries.

Ruth glances across at Kate, wide-eyed in front of
Dora the Explorer
. What would it be like to have one warm room
in the house, no television, none of the unnecessary but necessary adjuncts of modern life? Jemima Green’s diary seems almost to have been written in code. Ruth assumes that the little birds were the children, unless Jemima has a particularly tame flock of sparrows. But wrapping up a child in paper? What’s that all about? Ruth reads on.

But, if Doctor H was consulted, it was in vain.

‘The Book’ must be The Book of Dead Babies, currently lying on the sofa between Flint and Kate. Ruth doesn’t feel strong enough for The Book right now. Instead, she turns to the page marked by Frank. It is two years after
the death of R and now J preoccupies Jemima’s thoughts. Ruth assumes that J is Joshua Barnet.

Ruth is starting to dislike Mr G with his handouts and religious truisms. Is he just a philanthropist (she imagines him in the Victorian tradition with tall hat and pained expression) or something more sinister?

Ruth reads this with mixed feelings. The first of November is Kate’s birthday, which makes it worse. Jemima does seem to love the child but Ruth finds herself identifying strongly with Joshua’s mother. There have been a few occasions – not many, but seared upon Ruth’s heart – when Kate has not wanted to leave Sandra. Ruth remembers how, seeing Kate clinging to the childminder, a corrosive anger rose within her. She’s stealing my child’s affections, she had thought, ignoring the obvious fact that it was good that Kate liked Sandra and wanted to spend time with her. But she should like Ruth
more
. Jemima Green called Joshua her angel, but he’s not her angel, he’s his mother’s angel.

On November 18 is the following entry:

Today my angel left this life. He had seemed perfectly contented in the morning. His nose had bled a little but this is not unusual. I staunched it with a wet cloth. Then, just after luncheon, his eyes began fluttering. I thought he was having one of his absent moments and I went to hold him, as this often helps. But oh so suddenly his little body went rigid in my arms. I called for Martha but by the time she arrived he was gone, his face so angelic in its stillness. I was heart-broken, it was some hours before
Martha could wrest the child from me. But as we laid him out I came to a decision. Mr G shall not have him. She shall not have him. I shall lay him with Emily and Susannah, where Rowan will stand guard. Then I will always know where he is. Saint Michael will protect my angel child
.

‘Hola!’ calls Dora from the screen. ‘Hola!’ shouts Kate. Even Flint looks as if he might conceivably say something in Spanish. Ruth looks back at the diary, at the faded copperplate hand. It occurs to her that Jemima Green wrote very well for someone who had little formal schooling. What did Frank say about her early years? She’ll have to ask him again. She turns to Frank’s note.

‘Think J may have been suffering from epilepsy,’ he has written, ‘Symptoms of petit mal include gazing vacantly into space, fluttering eyes and involuntary movements of the lips. Interestingly these fits are sometimes called absence seizures and Jemima calls them ‘absent moments’. It sounds as if J may have had a more serious fit and died, perhaps as a result of choking. The way she describes his body going rigid is typical of grand mal.’

So Joshua may have died of natural causes but Ruth can’t help feeling that there are still a great number of unanswered questions. Who is Mr G? Why does Jemima say ‘Mr G shall not have him’? It sounds as if Jemima kept Joshua’s body from his mother (Ruth has her own feelings about this) but where did she bury him? Who are Emily and Susannah? Where is the rowan tree that will stand
guard? She looks out of the window, across the miles of grey-green grass. She could ring Frank and discuss the diaries (she still has his number from the accident) but something stops her. Frank obviously wants to recruit her to Jemima Green’s cause but Ruth still feels reluctant to excavate this particular site. Mother Hook may be innocent but the truth is that Ruth is still afraid of her. She doesn’t like the talk of little birds and angel children. Her skin crawls at the thought of ‘laying out’ children, combing their ringletted hair and preparing them for death. She knows that Victorians often commissioned portraits of their dead children and this knowledge makes her heartily glad that she was born in 1968. And as for The Book of Dead Babies … Ruth wants to throw the dreadful thing into the North Sea.

‘Clap Mum!’ shouts Kate. ‘Clap to find Dora’s hat.’

Ruth claps loudly, hoping to drown out the past.

The evening is sticky from the first. Ruth finds herself sitting between Corinna, resplendent in sequinned black, and Dani, wearing her usual jeans and T-shirt. Judy is opposite and Frank, much to Ruth’s irritation, is at the far end of the table. Phil manages to make it clear both that he is the host and that he’s not paying. Ruth knows from previous experience that when the bill comes he’ll take out a calculator and work out exactly how much each person’s meal cost. He does buy a bottle of Prosecco, though, and presents Ruth with the first glass.

‘Happy birthday Ruth!’

To Ruth’s embarrassment, some people have even brought presents. Dani gives her a scarf and Corinna a signed photo of herself. Frank gives her a book, ‘open it later’. Shona and Judy both give her perfume and Phil says, ‘We don’t do presents, do we Ruth?’ You don’t, thinks Ruth, but she’s all too happy not to have a gift from her Head of Department. That really would be embarrassing.

Things perk up when the first courses come. The
food is lovely and Ruth’s starter, scallops in chilli sauce, is so good that she has to stop herself wolfing it in one mouthful. A low marine diet, she thinks. Typical for this part of Norfolk. Corinna picks at her tricolore salad. ‘You have to be so careful on television,’ she says. ‘If you put on a pound people start sending you abusive tweets.’

‘I can’t be bothered with twitter,’ says Dani, who, despite her tiny size, is demolishing a plate of antipasti. ‘All those idiots telling each other what they had for supper. It’s death by a hundred and forty characters.’

‘I’ve got over a thousand followers,’ says Corinna frostily. ‘I owe them something.’

‘Lady Gaga has thirty million followers,’ says Dani.

‘Do you prefer acting or presenting?’ Ruth asks Corinna. ‘Are they very different?’

She meant to flatter Corinna by alluding to her previous experience but it seems that she has said the wrong thing.

‘I’m a serious actress,’ she says. ‘I’ve played Hedda and Lady Macbeth. This is just a sideline.’

‘What have you been in lately?’ says Aslan from across the table. Ruth looks at him quickly but his handsome face shows only innocent enquiry. Corinna’s eyes flash.

‘It may interest you to know,’ she says, ‘that I took a career break to have children. I didn’t want to farm them out to a nanny or a childminder, I wanted them to have a proper old-fashioned childhood. I wanted to have the full experience of motherhood.’

As opposed to the rest of us, thinks Ruth, who are just
playing at being parents. She catches Judy’s eye across the table.

‘I’ve got a childminder,’ Ruth says. ‘She’s very good. Kate loves her.’

‘But does the childminder love her back?’ asks Corinna. ‘It’s just a job to her, remember.’

Ruth thinks of Jemima Green, who certainly seems to have loved her charges. Does Sandra love Kate? Does Ruth even want her to love Kate? On the whole she thinks it’s more important that Sandra keeps her safe. Love can be a dangerous business.

‘Lots of childminders really care for the kids they look after,’ says Dani. ‘I’ve got a lot of sympathy with them. I remember babysitting as a teenager.’

‘Michael seems to like Debbie, his childminder,’ says Judy. ‘She looks after two other children so it’s good experience in socialising.’

‘My children socialise brilliantly,’ says Corinna. ‘Everyone loves them.’

‘How old are they?’ asks Ruth.

‘Mungo’s fourteen and Alicia’s twelve. They’re both very talented. Mungo plays three instruments and Alicia’s already been in several commercials.’

Ruth notes that Corinna’s old-fashioned mothering does not preclude her from getting her children in front of a camera.

‘I was a nanny once,’ cuts in Dex the cameraman. ‘A manny.’ He laughs. ‘The thing that got me was the weird names posh people give their children.’

‘Yes,’ says Judy. ‘My boss told me about this family who’ve got three children with really bizarre names, Bailey, Scooter and Poppy, I think. They’ve got a nanny. Apparently the parents hardly see their children.’