The Silk Factory (35 page)

The curate was to come and fetch her, there being no kin to walk her down the aisle, and Effie watched anxiously for his appearance. She was grateful, of course, for Parson Hawkins’s sensitive suggestion, but could not help but be a little tearful when she imagined how proudly her father would have led her in, or with what solemn care Tobias, gangly in his Sunday best, would have discharged the duty. She did not know Parson Hawkins or the curate and, for all their kindness, neither did they know her. She was to be given away by a stranger.

She pushed the door open a little further and a shaft of light fell upon the stone flags. Jack and his elder brother took their places beneath the pulpit, backs stiff and straight, Jack’s red coat neat and spruce, belt and boots polished to a deep shine. Effie wished that he would turn round, if only for a moment. She longed for his reassuring look. He would not turn. It was not the custom. She must wait until the curate came and flute and viol started to play as they made their entrance, before she could look on his face.

Ann touched her arm gently. ‘Your veil … I fear it may be coming loose?’ she said shyly, for they were still new to each other, although they were to be sisters.

Effie’s hands flew to her head.

‘May I?’ Ann asked. She fastened the veil of net lace more firmly above the coil of Effie’s hair. Effie thought of Beulah and how much she would have loved to be her maid. She blinked hard.

The lychgate creaked open and they all turned to see what late guest was arriving. An old bent figure, dressed in a threadbare coat and waistcoat, and old-fashioned gaiters, made his way slowly up the path.

‘Why ’tis old Martin the shepherd – Mr Eben!’ Effie said. ‘However have you come all this way?’

‘An early start and Shanks’s pony, m’dear,’ Martin said, smiling broadly at the assembled company. ‘Ladies.’ He bowed, sweeping off his battered hat, and then clapped it on to the head of the smallest bridesmaid, making her laugh and wriggle.

‘I’m so glad to see you.’ Effie held out her hand and he enclosed it within his own, the knuckles red, the palms deeply seamed.

‘Well, it crossed my mind that you might need an arm to lean on, your father being gone. And though mine might not be the sturdiest, ’tis nonetheless willing, like, should you need it.’

Effie squeezed his hand tight and her thank you came out in a whisper.

‘Well, who’d miss such a chance? A wedding breakfast with much drinking-of-healths and speechifying! Why, ’tis only right to come along to touch glasses and wish you both luck.’

The curate arrived and, taking in the scene, smiled and shook hands with Martin. At a nod from Effie, Ann reached behind her, lifted the edge of her veil and brought it down over her face. Closed in, behind its gauzy folds, everything around her was softened, as if she looked through a fine mist. Martin held out his arm and she took it; then they were walking in procession behind the curate as flute and fiddle struck up and filled the high space with cheerful sound. Faces looked towards her, all of them smiling, and she, looking only for one face, one smile, saw Jack turn, his eyes soft and full of expectation.

The parson stood at the altar, beaming. He spoke of marriage being ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, and for the procreation of children, and then they made their vows.‘Who giveth this woman to be joined to this man?’ he asked and Martin spoke out and handed her forward. As her eyes met Jack’s, her heart filled with a joy louder than any music, higher than the lofty space around her, and she took her place at his side.

In the middle of January, Rosie received two letters that filled her with new hope and energy.

The first was from Mr Douglas, the solicitor, informing her that her case had been successful and that an increase to her maintenance payments had been awarded. Rosie, reading the letter in the hall, where she’d swooped on it as soon as she saw the solicitors’ logo on the envelope, let out a huge sigh of relief. The little bit extra each week would let her finish readying the house for sale. It struck her that once she would have felt fearful of Josh’s response, the snide comments and petty revenges he indulged in whenever he didn’t get his own way, but since their confrontation at Christmas she felt that something in their relationship had shifted. She thought he was now less likely to take her on, and, perhaps even more importantly, she felt less vulnerable to his criticism. She had stopped worrying what he thought about her;
she didn’t care
.

She hired a skip and Rob and Tally joined her to clear out the cellar. Together they hauled out all the rubbish and dumped it in the big yellow container in the road, turning the cellar into an empty echoey space. In daylight and fresh air, the bedstead, cupboard, boxes and mirror lay higgledy-piggledy in the bottom of the skip with the pitiful look of any unwanted, everyday objects.

‘Better?’ Tally said.

‘Much,’ Rosie replied.

Once the cellar was clear, Rob got a mate who was a builder to check the crack in the wall and confirm that the structure was sound and Rosie was extremely grateful to have no further reason to go down there. Feeling that a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, she pressed on and did most of the decorating and was ready to tackle the garden.

Her plan was to have the house ready for sale by the spring. They would stay until it sold, so that she could show prospective buyers around a house that seemed warm and lived-in. Then, in the longer term, once they were back in London, Sam would start school and she would find a nursery place for Cara. She would make an appointment at the teaching agency and say that she was keen to take on supply work again. She felt sure that once she could guarantee that she was reliably free she would pick up work easily; it was all about being around and available.

The second letter came a few days later and was postmarked Oxford. As she eased the sheet of paper from the brown envelope, she saw the letterhead of a small indie publisher to whom she’d sent print samples. She expected the same polite rejection that she’d received from others at intervals over the past few months. Her eyes scanned the letter:
We are pleased to tell you … impressed by your portfolio … unique style … a children’s book …
She let out a yelp of surprise and delight. If she was agreeable in principle, they would like to send her the full manuscript and then fix a date to discuss her ideas with the art director. She sat on the bottom step of the stairs and read the synopsis that was attached; it was a story set in Tibet about a boy called Tashi and his adventures in the mountains. At once she was picturing spinning prayer wheels, cross-legged statues of Buddha and horned yak with woven woollen saddles. She wrote back that evening to say that she agreed and would love to meet up. The payment offered was modest and the publisher small but it could be the start of something that might grow. For a moment she dreamt of being able to make a living as an illustrator – what bliss to be free to work away in the quiet, light-filled room upstairs on projects that would fill her with enthusiasm and ignite her imagination! If only she could get regular commissions they could afford to stay here, amongst friends, instead of going back to the poky flat. The rent agreement was due for renewal in February. What if she didn’t renew, tried to sell her own work instead of going back to teaching, moved up here wholesale? It was an idea, and sometimes you had to make a leap of faith … She reined herself in. The thought of going entirely freelance scared her. She hadn’t got the nerve to take the risk.

Still, the letter was wonderful news. She hadn’t touched pen and ink for months, hadn’t even felt the urge to sketch. This would make her pick up a pen again and she was thrilled to have the chance of a proper commission.

There was one last snowfall that remained for a week and then a thaw that left the world rinsed clean and returned to colour once again. In the garden, beneath a cold, clear sky, the red stems of dogwood glowed against the fence and yellow algae painted the bark of the trees.

While Cara was at playgroup one afternoon, Rosie and Sam, wrapped up round and fat in layers of clothing, wearing scarves, gloves and beanie hats, had come outside and were making a start on clearing the undergrowth. Rosie was chopping with secateurs through the woody stems of brambles and dragging them out. Some were yards long and she made Sam laugh when she pulled them and the undergrowth twitched and shivered at the very end of the garden; they had bets on which would prove to be the longest.

Each time she cleared a patch, pulling out nettles and docks once the briars were out, Sam’s job was to fill up his little blue wheelbarrow with the old bricks and bits of mortar beneath and trundle them over to the sacks which Rosie planned to add to the skip. He was in his element, doing the job of a loader for real, and Rosie felt quietly companionable as they worked alongside each other, Sam puffing back and forth with cheeks pinched pink by the cold air.

Rosie paused to stretch her back and Sam parked his wheelbarrow beside her. ‘It’ll look so much better when we get rid of all this mess,’ Rosie said, thinking aloud. ‘It’ll double the useable space and we’ll get the path back again, maybe even open the door up at the bottom so we can get out the back way.’

‘Can we have grass? For football?’ Sam said.

‘Mmm, it’s a thought. Maybe I’ll turf it to make it look tidy to help sell the house.’

‘Can I have goal posts?’

‘Well, I’m not sure it’ll be worth it. There’s no garden to put them in back at the flat, is there?’

Sam looked grumpy. He picked up the handlebars of the empty barrow and began running it at the pile of weeds and rubble, banging it against it with a clang.

‘Don’t do that, Sam. You’ll chip the paint off it and then it’ll get rusty.’

Sam carried on.

‘Sam!’

He stopped.

‘Maybe when we’re back in London we can find a football scheme for you to join. Would you like that?’

Sam shrugged, picked up a stick and dropped it into the barrow.

‘Or when we move back and you start school in September, perhaps they’ll play football in the games lessons. That would be good, wouldn’t it?’

‘I don’t want to go to school,’ Sam muttered.

Rosie squatted beside him, getting down to his level. They had had this conversation before.

‘Why not?’

He clamped his mouth shut, pushing forward his lower lip.

‘You’ll have to go to school sometime this year, love. You’ll soon be five. Everyone has to go before they’re five, you know.’

Silence. She put her hand, huge in its leather gardening glove, on his arm.

‘Do you feel a bit nervous about it? Everybody feels nervous on the first day but they soon make friends.’

‘I’m not going there.’ Sam pulled away. He tipped the barrow so that it lay face down on the pile. ‘I’m going in to watch telly.’ He mooched off and Rosie left him to himself. He would feel better when he’d warmed up indoors and forget all about his mood once he was engrossed in a programme. She would leave tackling the question of school for the moment.

She turned back to the task in hand, pulling out handfuls of sticky weed before starting once more to cut back brambles and shift the rubble beneath to a pile behind her, beside the fence. She had cleared a good area this afternoon and had reached as far as the mulberry tree. She hesitated and stood back, considering it. Its boughs drooped to the ground in places, its knuckles in the earth like a gigantic malformed hand. The wintry sun hung low in the sky and the gnarled growth threw long twisted shadows across the undergrowth within its cage.

Steeling herself, she began to work her way in between two branches. She pulled out and cut the tough brambles, tightly wound with crisp, dry twists of old bindweed. Then she chopped nettles back with shears and dragged out the soggy mops of old bluebell plants beneath, their leaves pale yellow and slimy. Clearing the mound of plants from under one of the branches, bowed low to the ground by its own ancient weight, she found a rusty iron stake supporting it.

It reminded her of the old iron stove flue in the cellar and she shuddered. It’s only a piece of metal, she told herself: a gardener’s prop. She must get a hold of herself before she started letting in black thoughts. Yet as she moved past it, stooping to enter the cave of branches, the cold seemed to seep into her, rising from the very earth.

In here, Rosie! Quick! Get under!

Maria’s voice called to her as the years fled away, drawing her into the hiding place under the boughs and gathering her and Lily close, so close that she could smell sherbert on Lily’s breath and feel the warmth of her against her side. She remembered, clear and strong, her mother’s voice,
Coming … ready or not …
and the delicious terror of being found, the fearful anticipation, their hearts beating fast together, she and Lily pressed against each other tight as pigeons in a basket. The sense of loss was a physical ache, in her chest, in her belly. Oh, where were they now – Lily, Mum? There was no one to find her, however much she longed to be found. She leant against a branch for a moment, feeling empty and desolate.

Around the trunk of the tree, thick as mistletoe, ivy grew in a great tangled mess, choking it. She bent over it, cutting as low as she could and pulling lengths of trailing growth away, the shadow of the branches above casting their own tangled bars across her back. These bleak thoughts were dangerous. She tried to shut them out, concentrate only on what needed to be done, drown out her feelings through physical movement, but still her sadness deepened, as if in cutting her way to the centre of this neglected ground she had disturbed something that brooded there, the deep melancholy that she had sensed before answering her own.

Gradually, as she worked, she became aware of faint sounds behind her. In her ear was a child’s fast breath, panting, gasping with effort, and then, stronger, a strange, repeated scrape and slide that seemed to echo above it.

Rosie’s fingers stilled. She stood with her hands hovering above glossy ivy leaves, the tough stems a mat surrounding the trunk, squeezing the life out of it. She wanted to clear space and to let in the light but she had begun to tire. It was impossible, the task too big, her will too weak; she was clearing not just stems and shoots but something else, something strong that reached out with grasping tendrils, entwining, covering, burying.
I won’t let her come, I won’t let her come,
she repeated to herself. This time she wouldn’t be cowed and she would not run. She worked on, ignoring the sounds behind her, labouring breaths with a sob caught in the throat, the scraping sound faster and more desperate. Rosie grasped the roots and pulled upwards, stripping the tough ivy shoots from the bark. They came away, leaving a network of smaller threads and tiny suckers, pale brown needles prickling from the wood. She tore at it with both hands and didn’t stop until she’d pulled the last tangle away and the tree was free of its girdle of green. Sweating and exhausted, she leant her head on her hands against the trunk’s grey bark. Behind her, there was a sound of something heavy thrown down and then nothing more.

Heart hammering, she forced herself to look back over her shoulder. There was nothing but the tangled mass of briar and rubble surrounding her and her own small path cutting through it: no pale face with its expression of appeal, no crouched body barring her way, just silence now and a sense of sadness so intense that it almost overwhelmed her.

Bent double, she came out from under the branches and stood back, panting and drained. She’d had enough. The tree’s broad girth stood naked and open to the air but it still stood knee-deep in weeds on three sides. Still the sadness hung there, dark and chill, like the exhalation from an old vault that has seen no sun for centuries when a slab is pulled away. She picked up her tools and trudged back to the house.

That evening, after she’d put Cara to bed, Rosie went to tuck Sam in. She sat down beside him and read him a chapter of
Moominland Midwinter.
‘I’m glad we don’t have to hibernate when it snows, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘It would be very boring with no one to play with.’

‘I s’pose,’ Sam said, still turning the pages and looking ahead at the pictures.

‘The thing is,’ Rosie ventured, ‘I think that now you’re getting such a big boy, you need plenty of friends to play with, and when everyone else goes off to school you would get bored at home.’

‘I don’t want to stay at home,’ Sam said, scowling.

‘But you told me you don’t want to go to school either?’

‘I don’t want to go to
that
school.’