The Silk Factory (9 page)

She shoved the box into the hallway and set off with Tally away from the centre of the village past the old chapel schoolrooms and a row of modern houses, until the street became a lane leading uphill and bounded by hedges. Hereford cattle grazed over a field full of humps and bumps. Slow and sturdy, they turned to watch them pass with huge patient eyes.

‘Strip farming,’ Tally said, pointing to the broad undulations. ‘You got to farm a strip of the good land and a strip of the bad so everyone had a fair share.’

Rosie wondered at the signs of medieval toil still written on the landscape, clear as lines on ruled paper. They walked on and she let the regularity of their footfall soothe her. ‘Have you lived here long?’ she asked.

‘Oh no, only fifteen years – there are families here who go back generations. We’re definitely still incomers.’

Rosie remembered the solicitor saying that her grandparents had moved house within the village and that her great-grandparents had lived here too, maybe even ancestors before them. How odd to think of families staying in one place for generations when nowadays most people moved far from their childhood home and often many times in a lifetime, just as she and Josh had done.

If she had roots here, what did that make her? Did that mean she wasn’t an incomer? She said, ‘Fifteen years seems quite a long time to me. Josh and I never stayed anywhere more than a couple of years. We never had much cash – tried to put everything into bricks and mortar. We’d buy a flat and do it up to sell on. We never got a chance to finish the last one though; it was a mess. I had to sell it as it was, half-gutted.’ She sighed.

Tally was looking at her encouragingly, willing her to continue but Rosie fell silent. Maybe moving around was part of the problem; we never really settled, she thought sadly. We didn’t give ourselves a chance. Her nerves felt jangled after seeing Josh, her emotions churned into a mixture of bitterness and regret. How could something that had started out with such hope have come to this? She thought of the way he had looked at her, as if she had finally lost it. Perhaps he was right; she had been seeing and hearing some very strange things. She was about to open her mouth to tell Tally about seeing the girl in the garden again, but then hesitated. She couldn’t say she’d seen her disappear in a moment: that she was there and then gone. It was too odd. Besides, she had already asked her once about the child; Tally would think she was fixated. She closed her mouth and said nothing.

They carried on up the hill, towards the village of Farthingstone, the sun beating down on them, the quiet of mid-afternoon broken only by the crunch of grit, the click of the dog’s claws on the road and the chirruping of hedge sparrows. They gained the top of the slope and the road levelled out to pass along a ridge with open fields on either side. On their left, the fields were pieced in green, brown and yellow: pasture, ploughed fields seeded with winter wheat, and bright oilseed rape, stretching away across a valley to a further ridge beyond, where another village stood, its church tower white in the sunlight.

‘That’s Stowe Nine Churches,’ Tally said.

‘But it’s only got one,’ Rosie said, confused.

Tally laughed. ‘True, but it’s high so you can see nine from over there, looking back over the countryside. If you walk a mile or so further you come to even higher ground called Castle Dykes. It was an Iron Age hill fort and then later there was a medieval motte and bailey castle. It’s surrounded by woodland now but you can still see the earthworks. They must’ve chosen it so they could keep a good lookout for enemies.’

‘What about the other side?’ Rosie asked, walking across the road to look back across the valley towards the village. ‘Can you see our houses?’ They picked their way through thistles and leant on a five-bar gate that gave on to a vast field of standing corn, still green but growing heavy and ripe. Here, the swell of the ground in front of them blocked the view of the village and the water meadows in the valley so that they looked straight across to the huge military arsenal on the lower ridge opposite. Overshadowing the village, it stretched for half a mile. Eight enormous Georgian buildings were arranged in two rows facing them, many-windowed and solidly built in red brick and slate; each was the size of a modern factory. Massive and uniform, they dominated the landscape, their windows gleaming in the sun like ever-watchful eyes. Three hundred yards to the left ran a long row of windowless buildings with their gable ends face on, so that their pitched roofs made a zigzag pattern. The flat face of the perimeter wall bounded all, broken only by the occasional blob of green where a tree grew from a crack in the brickwork, and by the scrawl of graffiti: the chunky letters of some youth’s tag sprayed as high as a man but reduced to a pathetic squiggle on the vast acreage of the wall.

‘It’s Georgian,’ Tally said. ‘George the Third had it built as an armoury and as a retreat in case Napoleon invaded – or at least, that’s how the story goes.’

‘It’s amazing when you see the whole thing,’ Rosie said. ‘From down in the village you’re only really aware of the wall and the gatehouse.’

Tally pointed to the larger buildings. ‘Those were the storehouses. They stowed twenty-five thousand muskets in there. And you see those big arched doors at the bottom? The blue ones? They were so they could roll the cannons in and out. And there were barracks, a hospital, officers’ houses, everything.’

‘Why here?’

‘We’re supposed to be the dead centre of the country, so the furthest point from any coast, I suppose.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Apparently even a king needs a bolthole.’

‘What about the buildings with no windows?’

‘They were the gunpowder stores and blasthouses. Every second one was packed with earth in case of explosion, otherwise I suppose they could’ve all gone down like dominoes. You can’t see it from here but there’s a spur off the canal that runs between the storehouses. Thousands of barrels of gunpowder were brought in by boat. Nice and smooth by water – I don’t suppose anyone would’ve wanted to bring it in by cart!’

Rosie gazed at the scene before her, imagining it busy with red-coated soldiers unpacking and storing the barrels and guns, the shouts of men and the whinnying of horses on the parade ground, sentries patrolling the boundaries of the huge arsenal. On this summer Saturday the whole place was still and quiet, the only movement the shimmer of a heat haze above the metalled roads.

‘What’s the place used for now?’ she asked.

‘Warehousing mainly, some businesses; some of it just stands empty.’

‘Like the statue of Ozymandias, King of Kings, all shattered in the desert,’ Rosie said dreamily.

Tally smiled. ‘Mmm. Lo how the mighty are fallen.’

Above them a lark poured out its full-throated song and they both looked up to find it, a dark speck in the blue. They watched until it dropped down to its nest, a cup of dead grass somewhere amongst the wheat in the field below.

Rosie sighed. ‘It’s beautiful up here – so peaceful.’ She could feel her shoulders easing, the stress falling away.

Tally said, ‘Down by the river’s another good place to walk. We could take the kids sometime.’

‘Thanks, that would be nice.’

Tally suggested that they make their walk a circular one and they made their way further along the ridge, chatting about the children and Tally’s work, until they reached Gayton Lane, a single track road that cut back to the upper end of the village. As they descended the steep hill between high-banked hedges laced with cow parsley, they met a woman coming uphill with a terrier in tow. Polly pulled on her lead and when the two dogs met they sniffed each other, cocking their ears and wagging their tails. The woman, a country type with neatly cut grey hair, a checked seersucker shirt, shorts and proper walking sandals, said with a smile, ‘You’ve got some company today then?’

‘Yes, I’ve been giving Rosie here a bit of a guided tour about the history of the place – our illustrious past.’ She introduced them: ‘Tricia – Rosie. Helena Milford’s daughter,’ she added in explanation.

Rosie saw a flash of recognition cross the woman’s face followed by a look of sympathy as her brow furrowed. She braced herself to receive condolences but instead Tricia asked solicitously, ‘How is your mum? I heard she’d moved back here to look after May. I’ve been meaning to look her up.’

Rosie, confused, looked helplessly at Tally, and then said, ‘I’m afraid she’s recently passed away …’ She stumbled over her words, ‘It was very sudden – a heart attack …’

Tricia put her hand to her throat. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea! How awful for you.’ She shook her head as if unable to take in the news. ‘I can’t believe it; I knew her from when she was a girl. We were at school together.’

The sound of a vehicle reached them, grinding through its gears as it tackled the hill, and a mud-smothered Land-Rover approached. They stepped apart, retreating to the tangled verges to let it through, and it disappeared in a haze of exhaust fumes, a panting sheepdog looking over the tailgate, tongue lolling.

‘See you soon,’ Tally said, taking the opportunity to close the awkward encounter. ‘Enjoy the rest of your walk,’ and she led the way on down the hill.

Rosie followed her, raising a hand in farewell. When they were out of earshot she said, ‘Do you know Tricia well?’

‘Not really, we just bump into each other sometimes with the dogs.’

‘You don’t know her second name or where she lives then?’

‘No. Sorry. Why?’

‘Nothing. I just wondered. I thought I could ask her about Mum at school,’ Rosie said, not sure how to explain what she had seen in the woman’s face when they had been introduced. Tricia’s look of sympathy had come before she had learnt of her mother’s death. It must, then, have been directed at her, as if there were some reason to feel sorry for her or for her family. She felt both curious and unsettled. Why should this stranger pity her? She looked back over her shoulder but Tricia and her little dog had already rounded the bend and the lane was now empty save for a few sparrows flitting between the lacy heads of the cow parsley and the dusty ruts of the road.

She caught up with Tally and they followed the lane back into the village, Tally pointing out other features: Fern Hollow Farm with its medieval stonework, a triangular village green with an oak tree and a fingerpost and, further on, a picturesque house with mullioned windows that was once a priory. They walked through an estate of modern houses and old folks’ bungalows and as they turned back into their own street, Rosie asked, ‘Do you know anything about our houses? They were workshops of some kind, weren’t they?’

‘It was all one originally, before it was partitioned off into houses – a silk factory,’ Tally said. ‘That’s about all I know.’

‘Ah, that makes sense. The marks on the floors must be where the looms were, then. Have you got those on your floors? And worn patches where the weavers must’ve stood?’

Tally nodded. ‘You can see the polished paths where people walked too. I bet if you looked either side of the walls the paths would join up. They probably ran the whole length of each floor.’

Rosie gave a little shiver. ‘Bit strange to think of that: people passing up and down.’

They arrived home and Rosie suggested tea but Tally had relatives coming for supper and said she’d better get on. Rosie said goodbye and let herself in. The house was quiet except for the sound of a tap dripping in the kitchen; too quiet, Rosie thought. It felt empty without the children, empty and purposeless. Instead of going to make herself a drink and tackle the paperwork, she knelt down beside the box in the hall, peeled back the parcel tape and began to unpack the things she’d asked Josh to gather for her from the flat. There were books and extra toys for the children, her coloured inks, pens and brushes, a good supply of sketchpads and watercolour paper stretched on to boards. At the bottom was her ‘treasure chest’: an old lacquered jewellery box in which she kept tiny objects she’d collected for their colour or shape.

She put the toys away in Sam’s bedroom and took her art materials up to the studio room on the top floor, where she sat down at the dressmaker’s table and laid them out before her. She opened a creamy pad of paper and flipped forward through pages of watercolour sketches. Her last proper painting had been done on a rare excursion out of London when Mum had looked after the kids so that she could attend an examiners’ meeting. Mum had encouraged her to take a break and stay over for a couple of nights in a country hotel and she’d painted a series of views of the house and grounds rendered in soft spring shades. The colours were lovely: golden Cotswold stone and lavender-shadowed wisteria, the sparkle of a fountain against a yew hedge, a walled garden walk bright with foxgloves. She looked at them with pleasure.

She carried on through the pages of rudimentary drawings and notes for lesson plans that followed. The job and the demands of two small children had meant she’d been unable to get any time for serious work of her own. Doodles in the corners of the pages revealed her boredom with the repetitive curriculum that had given no scope for her own imagination.

She stared at the last image, a sketch of boxes of varied shapes surrounded by notes on perspective, and then very deliberately tore the paper from the pad. Its perforations came away from the metal spine with a satisfying popping sound. Taking several pages together she tugged hard, ripped them out and dropped them on the floor, working her way back in time until only the hotel images and clean pages remained. Tiny scraps of paper were left inside the spiral binding; she leant forward and blew them away. They sprinkled the surface of the table like flakes of ash.

She smoothed her hand across the paper. Her mind mirrored its blankness. Nothing. What if nothing would come? She would make marks – any marks. She picked up an ink pen and drew the squat shapes of the ink bottles before her, and then doodled faces on them: a grumpy expression for the Indian ink, with thunderous black clouds emerging from its top, a fat, comic face with rosy cheeks for vermilion – Sam would like these – and a Green Man’s face for viridian, tendrils spilling from the pot and twining around each other like mad hair.