Unhallowed Ground (37 page)

She can’t bear to look at the monster again. Despite its lethal injury it is probably still living because the bubbles round its mouth are sucked in and out in irregular rushes, flotsam on the edge of a wave. How very strange it is that she and this freak should have converged along their life-journeys to this meeting, to this terribly intimate moment, and that now they are parting again, she to live and it, most probably, to eventual death. Georgie leaves the knife where it is, plunged to its hilt in her victim’s throat, but unconsciously she has pulled down her sleeve to cover the pain in her sliced right hand. She stands up carefully, trusting to trembling rubber legs, and attempts to locate the voice, starts to stumble desperately towards it.

Georgie the conqueror falls many times as she drags her way up the slope of the field, mostly on hands and knees and sobbing like a beaten child. When the calling stops she stands and listens. She knows she was heading for the Horsefields’ house before she met her Goliath and the voice is coming from that direction. Perhaps Oliver, desperately anxious, left Dave alone to come after her, perhaps he went the front way and is now, in frantic despair, struggling back to find her.

‘I’m OK, Oliver, I’m OK,’ she sobs, her breath rasping in the badly bruised chest which took the brunt of the plunging knife. ‘She’s almost dead. She can’t hurt us now.’ In her confusion she calls out to Stephen. ‘You can come home now, Mummy’s gone.’

She slides her hand from her sleeve and stares at it when sheer exhaustion forces her to pause. She cradles it in her other arm as if it’s a wounded kitten, pathetic and sorry for itself. The slice is a neat one, although it cuts her lifeline in half, and the blood wells up through the wound in a vicious red line before flooding her hand in crimson waves.

She doesn’t bother to glance behind her, she doubts that the heinous thing on the ground is strong enough to follow her and, strangely, she has ceased to care. All she feels now is the animal need to find Oliver and the shelter of his arms. She wants to tell him what she’s discovered… what she has done… murder, she has murdered. She is afraid that he might not forgive her. Perhaps it is already too late.

She stops when she sees the figure calling beside the Horsefields’ back gate. Is that Horace standing there, staunch as a beacon against the storm, calling out into the gale? Seeing Georgie, the figure fights its way forward, and she rushes to meet it in a shambling run, heaving for breath and gasping her last, forcing a way through the damnable snow.

He catches her as she falls into his arms.

‘Good God, girl,
what has happened?
’

She holds out her hand as a child would, as if he might kiss it and make it better. As if this is all that is wrong.

It is Horace’s vast strength that gets Georgie the rest of the way as he half carries, half drags her through his back garden and into his perfect English rose kitchen. She collapses on the red floor tiles, conscious, but only just. Her legs give way beneath her and the closing door completes a silence that leaves only her own heartbeat. She huddles there in the corner beside the sink, curled up like a comma.

Nancy rushes in, her face a wrinkled mask of anxiety, there is not one smooth area of skin, not one unworried part of her face.

She springs round the room in useless concern while Horace fills a basin with water and disinfectant and rests Georgie’s hand in it. The water turns a brilliant red.

‘
I was coming to warn you…
’ Is this Georgie’s voice; this hollow echo that comes up from the floor, up from the very cellars of the house? She attempts to lick her lips, but her tongue is so swollen and dry it bulges, out of control.

‘What could she be doing outside in this, Horace? What could the girl be thinking of?’

‘But I had to come out because…’ The thick wad of gauze which Horace lays across her hand stings with a red-hot agony.

‘It’ll stop in a minute,’ the big man reassures her, bending in half to reach her on the floor. ‘You haven’t cut any tendons. It’s nasty, very nasty indeed, but superficial, luckily. We’ll have to get you to hospital as soon as this lessens a little and we can find a way out. You need a few stitches.’

The heat from the Horsefields’ Scandinavian woodburner is quickly dulling Georgie’s senses. Every bone aches as if she’s been under a steamroller and is now quite flat. Gradually she feels herself filling out.

‘Get her to the fire, Horace, and we must get something hot inside her.’

‘I must let Oliver know I’m safe.’

‘Oliver?’ Horace enquires, neatly applying a sensible bandage with quite surprising skill. His enormous hands are deft and gentle, but his eyes show a tortured sorrow when he stares into Georgie’s and asks, ‘How’s it feeling now?’

‘A little easier. Not quite so stiff.’ She tries to move her fingers but they are still frozen. They seem to be gripped in a glove of ice.

‘Yes, we’ll move her to the fire, and why don’t you put the kettle on, Nancy?’ This is his way of calming his wife.

‘Shall I heat up some peanut brownies?’

Georgie appeals to Horace, finding it hard to find the words. ‘She’s out there.’

He stares at her intently, ‘
Who is out there?
’

‘I stabbed her. She was killing me so I stabbed her.’

‘And a nice little silver doily, I think, as it’s getting near to Christmas.’

‘
Who was killing you?
What are you saying?’ And Horace’s white unhappy fingers feel the stubble on his chin.

Georgie babbles, ‘The person who’s been stalking me, the watcher I told you about, the owner of the doll and the make-up case, the same one who came to my kitchen and covered my pallet with blood. She’s out there in the snow where I left her. There was a terrible accident—there’s a man at our house with his foot cut off, and we think he might die if he doesn’t get help.
She cut it off with an axe.
’

Georgie is crying properly now and her body shudders, quite out of control as she tries to explain the awfulness of it to someone who doesn’t yet know. To someone who can’t possibly imagine… He will think her quite insane. Driven mad by the snow. But it’s so essential that Horace believes her so she can get a message through to Oliver. He looks as if he does believe her, and a terrible knowledge crosses his eyes. Is he concerned for Nancy’s welfare? Nancy, who even now is balancing on some kitchen steps reaching for a cake tin?

No, Nancy’s not on his mind right now.

‘Where is she?’ asks Horace.

‘Halfway down the slope, where I left her, and my kitchen knife is in her throat because it wouldn’t go through the padding.’ Georgie tries to demonstrate how it happened with her hands, but the violence is too impossible. ‘She tried to kill me with an axe, but she fell on me and I had this knife… and I don’t know what we should do about her because she might still be alive…’

Where are his disbelieving questions? She is crying out these unspeakable things, and he is merely staring back with sadness in his troubled eyes when he ought to be shaking her to her senses.

At last the bandaging is finished. There’s a slight trembling of Horace’s hands as he clips the tiny safety pin, but that might be because of his concentration. He has done a professional job. A doctor would be proud of it. Georgie can bear to lift the hand now and inspect it properly, the wad of gauze must be thick because there is no blood seeping through.

‘Let’s get her into the sitting room, Nancy.’ And Horace steps behind her and helps Georgie up with all the gentleness in the world. ‘D’you think you can stand, or walk on your own?’

She can hardly speak through her tears, but she whispers, ‘I’ll try.’

She wobbles along unsteadily, leaning heavily on Horace’s arm like an invalid. Nancy puffs up the cushions of Horace’s over-large armchair, brand new, by the looks of it, the triangular label attached to the corner of the seat declares it to be flameproof.

‘Somebody has to go…’

‘I am going,’ says Horace, ‘just as soon as you’re comfortable.’

‘You’ll have to be terribly careful,’ Georgie insists. ‘She might have got up again. She might have crawled away.’

‘With your knife inside her?’ asks Horace sombrely.

‘Yes, it is possible, with my knife inside her.’

Throughout all this Nancy acts as if she is not remotely involved, or as though she’s unaware of the drama that’s going on around her. She is aware that Georgie needs help, that much is obvious, but she betrays no emotions, not horror, fear, or shock. She carries on in her familiar fashion, scuttling around her visitor, making her guest comfortable. She even fetches the hostess trolley, and Georgie lies back and hears that ridiculous article squeaking its way into the room and thinks how bizarre it is that she should be offered cake while all the time…

And still she can’t stop crying. Her hands shake and her head pounds. Every bone in her body is aching.

‘I’m off now.’ Horace brings good news. ‘The wind seems to be dying down and the snow has almost stopped.’

‘Oh, Horace, tell Oliver I’m OK. Tell him I’m coming back just as soon as I know it’s dead…’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell him.’

‘And you’ll take a look at Dave’s leg just in case there’s anything more…?’

‘I’ll look at his leg, but I’m sure you’ve done all that can be done.’

‘Now be sure to wrap up warmly, Horace, you know how easily you catch colds.’

Nancy reaches on tiptoe and fiddles with his scarf. Colds?
Colds for God’s sake?
But it’s good that Nancy is unaware; she is lucky her illness provides this protection. Perhaps Georgie used the same device when she refused to see the devil as a woman, when she refused to accept Gail Hopkins’s guilt—yes, of course, Gail killed Angela—but for the first time she can see it all clearly, she never dreamed Gail would kill her own daughter. There truly was nothing Georgie could do… hindsight and guilt can be so confusing.

Georgie tries to concentrate on controlling her shaking. Please make Horace come back soon, this waiting is unendurable. The poor man won’t be prepared for such a terrible bloody find. Nancy removes the cup from her patient’s uselessly shaking hands and lifts it to Georgie’s lips, but her hands tremble more than Georgie’s, so the exercise is hopeless. Somehow it must be possible to relax this body of hers, there are classes where you can learn to do it. Georgie allows her eyes to close, she cradles her burning hand. Nancy’s small talk is comforting. It rocks her brain like rippling water. Now the monster is wounded, now the storm has abated, they’ll have a chance to get Dave to hospital…

You hate to think that the monsters could possibly be women like you, because women are gentle and caring.

If they give you a key to your own room they are cunning enough to keep one for themselves, and you can always hear them coming, crawling along brown landings at night with curses on their breaths and boozy, unfocused eyes. You can hear your door being unlocked, and it doesn’t matter how deeply you snuggle down under your covers. They come in, these women, just the same.

The eyes of every dwarf on her bedside light were different, Dopey, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, they bordered Snow White in her blue dress, all marvellously indifferent. Georgie would watch the dwarfs’ eyes and wonder which ones Mummy would be wearing. Oh yes, she had seven sets of eyes.

Mummy would snip on the light and Georgie would know that all the dwarfs were lit up and staring. She would sit on the chair beside Georgie’s bed, Georgie could smell her, she could hear her tugging her hanky. Ripping and grasping her hanky. She had to get the venom out, it had gone inside her with the drink and Daddy wouldn’t let her do it to him, although she used to try, yes she did. So when all the screaming downstairs was over Mummy would come up, pulling herself by the fat brown banisters and then along the landing slippery with brown rugs.

Oh, Georgie has always craved safety. If she is safe she is loved.

Mummy hissed like a snake, ‘Don’t you damn well make out you’re asleep. Sly bitch. Crafty cow! Just like your bloody father.’

And Georgie would breathe in deeply in a heavily sleeping way.

‘Oh no, you don’t fool me, you fucking little tart.’

It was like being stabbed with a knife.

‘You! Get out of that bleeding bed!’

And Georgie, shivering, would obey. They rarely put the heating on, especially at night, and in winter the ice made patterns on the windows just like it did in Wooton-Coney, and their light switches were brown and round. ‘Don’t you move a fucking inch! Stand right there where I can see you! Oh yes, Georgina, I know your dirty tricks.’

She would stand there and stare at the brown patterned carpet while Mummy looked straight into her head. She tried not to see which eyes she wore. She knew Mummy’s face would be twisted, twisted like her handkerchief hands, and Mummy would twist Georgie, too, until she turned into small threads that could be hoovered away.

‘Get under that bed and stay there! Don’t you dare come out!’

Georgie’s small face touched the carpet, it felt damp and stale under her bed and it smelled of dust and crumbs. There were bits of carpet where the threads were worn, and she played with these with her fingers, twanging on them like strings. Sometimes Mummy would keep guard all night and Georgie guessed she had gone to sleep. But, oh no, she never protested, she had been too young when it started and she didn’t know how to protest. She grew up believing that this was normal. It could be happening to all little girls. But she knew she could never invite her friends home and thought Mummy wicked to even suggest it.

But in the daytime the let’s pretend was that such events never happened. Daddy played the same game, too. So when the dawn of childhood was over and Georgie reached the daytime of life, she still pretended it had never happened. That women did not do it. That mothers did not do it.

That Gail Hopkins did not do it. While all the time, deep down, she suspected the violence was hers. While Ray Hopkins, just like Daddy, pretended to be a protector of women, protecting his violent wife even now as he languished in his prison cell. A hopeless, despairing kind of love, like that of the white knights of old, who would disappear for years at a time never knowing what went on at home.