Masters of the House (10 page)

“What?”

She had been going to say “What if
he
is still around?” but she managed to stop herself. “What if we dig on the edge of the field?” she said, “where it's not so dark.”

Matthew made a few experimental stabs with the fork and found the going very difficult.

“I think you're right,” he said, trying not to sound relieved. “There's nothing but tree roots here.”

When they had got through the trees and onto the edge of the field, there was just a little light from the streetlights. This was pasture for sheep, and when Matthew dug the fork into the ground it was much, much easier. Not long before, it had been cultivated land. He took off his duffel coat and began loosening up the ground.

“Keep the grassy bits separate,” suggested Annie, “so we can put them on top again.”

When he had loosened up a few feet, Matthew took up the spade and began digging. Annie fetched the fork and began work on a further patch. The woman,
she,
was all huddled up; and by now she would surely be stiff. They would have to bury her like that—best, anyway, not to put her in a hole the shape of a grave. They decided that something about three feet square would be fine. Matthew dug and dug till his arms were hanging loose from exhaustion. Annie took the spade from him and did her bit. After ten minutes he took it from her and did a second stint.

“I think that should be enough,” he said finally, standing back. “Don't you?”

It wasn't very deep. Annie did wonder if it was deep enough. But she knew he was near the end of his strength.

“Oh yes, I think so,” she said.

They stood silent in the darkness to summon nerve for the next stage. Across the field was home. Their street was in total darkness; but in the BP Garage just down the road from them, someone had left a light on in the back office. It seemed like a sort of lighthouse, a symbol of home and safety. Suddenly Annie saw two tiny lights glinting in the coppice. She jumped with a little squeal. Something scuttled off into the trees.

“A fox,” said Matthew. “It won't harm us.”

Annie whimpered again.

“Come on,” said Matthew, with a false briskness. “When we've got her in, the worst will be over.”

But before that, the worst had to be gone through. They crept warily through the coppice, the blackness making their every move uncertain. The last thing they could afford at this point was a sprained ankle or arm. They jumped carefully down
from the wall and walked to the car, reluctance in every step. Without a word Matthew put the key in the boot and opened up. The body lay there, a dark mass, like some threatening, misshapen creature from a horror film, barely related to humanity but threatening it.

Matthew peered into the dark recesses of the boot.

“See if we can get her out on the towel,” he said. “There's an end here and another there.”

They pulled experimentally. The towel which had covered her lower limbs was now mostly under her, but not entirely. They pulled her towards them, but it was clear they weren't going to be able to get her out without touching her. Annie's face was twisted into a grimace.

“Try to get her
up
,” said Matthew. “Keep your eyes closed.”

By tugging at the two ends of the towel they found they could raise her up a bit; but in the end, shuddering, Matthew had to insert his arm under the body, heave it up to the edge of the boot and then topple it over onto the car park tarmac. He had to steel himself by telling himself that it was an
it,
not a
her.
It was something he had to get rid of. The towel was still in the boot, and they laid it out beside her, then, using their feet only, they pushed the heavy, plastic-covered mass onto it.

“If only we still had the door,” said Matthew. “But it wouldn't have gone into the car.”

“I don't think it would have gone through the trees anyway,” said Annie. “Come on—get it up on the wall.”

They each took two corners of the towel and then, straining, lifted her up and edged her onto the wall.

“I hate that,” said Annie, “her being so close.”

They jumped up again onto the wall and took up their burden. The little wood seemed more impenetrable than ever, loaded with
this.
Matthew had to walk backwards and kept tripping
over roots and bumping into tree trunks. Once he started to sob with tiredness and discouragement, but Annie said “Come on—we're nearly there,” and he continued on until at last they came out onto the field a few yards from where they had dug the grave.

“Can we rest?” asked Annie.

“No—just a bit longer. Come on—if we put it down we'll only have to lift it up again. just a bit further . . . further still . . . and
into
the grave!”

They had reached the hole, and without ceremony they held the towel over it, then let go two of the ends. The body fell into its resting place with a thud.

“Are you sure it's deep enough?” asked Matthew.

“Yes. Let's have a minute or two rest, then we'll fill it in. . . . Do you think we should say something?”

Matthew thought.

“What is there to say?”

“Like ‘Rest in peace' or something?”

He realised that she was looking on him, being male, as the nearest thing to a priest. He composed himself somewhat selfconsciously in an attitude of prayer.

“Oh Lord, grant this woman peace,” he said. “Come on, let's fill it in.”

The filling in was wonderfully easy, and the sense of relief was palpable as the loose earth began to cover her. They had set the grassy top clumps aside, and finally they knelt down and fitted them roughly together.

“There's a sort of hump,” said Matthew, “but I suppose there would be.”

They stood surveying their handiwork, then they both got on top of the hump and tried to tread it down. After a minute or two Annie said, “Look! Light!”

It was hardly that: the faintest of glimmers in the east, but it decided them. They took up the spade and fork and the big bath towel and blundered through the trees to the car.

“I feel so tired,” said Matthew, putting the key in the ignition. “My arms ache so much they hurt.”

“You'll make it,” said Annie. “There's nothing on the roads.”

Matthew's legs ached, too, from the spadework; and the first start he made was another of those kangaroo ones that were so demoralising. The second just about passed muster, though; and they went in first gear to the entrance to the car park, then straight out into the road.

Concentrating hard, conscious now of something more like pain than exhaustion that had invaded his whole body, Matthew changed up into second, cruised around the roundabout and along the Ring Road towards home. As they approached the second roundabout they became aware of a car speeding up behind them, but as they turned into the Shipley Road it sped on. Only Annie registered that it had been a police car.

When Matthew turned into Calverley Row, the car died on him. He put it down into first, started it again, then kept going steadily until he turned into the drive and nosed it gently into the garage. They sat there in the darkness, too drained to speak.

“It's quiet in the house,” said Annie at last. “Jamie hasn't woken.”

Slowly they got out of the car and shut the doors as quietly as possible. Matthew felt a sudden spurt of something like love for the car. It had served them well, come up trumps after months of neglect. They shut the garage doors and crept round to the back door and into the house. When they switched on the kitchen light they both blinked at the strangeness of being able to see properly. It was wonderfully welcome.

“I should have a bath,” said Matthew, “but I'm too tired.”

“You might wake the kids,” said Annie. “You'd never be able to explain having a bath in the middle of the night. Have one in the morning.”

“One day we'll have to tell them about . . . this. When they're grown up.”

“No we won't. Why should we? Why burden them?”

Matthew thought and then nodded. He took off his duffel coat and cap and hung them in the hall. Then they switched off the kitchen light and crept upstairs. Matthew's limbs felt like iron bars hanging from him, and he could hardly pull his pyjamas on. When he lay down in the big double bed he felt at once more exhausted than he had ever been in his life yet quite unable to sleep. But within five minutes he was in the deepest of slumbers.

But as the light strengthened and the sun prepared to announce its arrival, his sleep was invaded by a dream. Carmen O'Keefe was standing over him, her big, firm breasts pointing at him threateningly through the yellow blouse, her red lips stretched in a smile that was no smile. She seemed about to begin an inquisition when suddenly the picture changed, and there was nothing but breasts and yellow blouse, and now they were disfigured by a bloody gash that seemed to swell and fade, enlarge and contract, then almost to shriek at him.

He screamed out, woke for a moment, then sank back into the sleep of exhaustion.

A
ND AFTER THAT—NOTHING
. A total blank. Nobody was talking about Carmen O'Keefe. Nobody was investigating her disappearance. That, at any rate, was how it seemed to Matthew and Annie.

The day after the burying of the body Matthew could not be woken. Annie got the breakfast and took the younger ones to school. She told Matthew's form master that Jamie had had a disturbed night and Matthew and his father had been up with him. The excuse was accepted without demur. All the teachers knew of the difficult situation in the Heenan family, or thought they did.

Matthew woke at midday, sore of limb and frowsty. He had a shower and put on clean clothes, then he went off to school to have the school dinner that they all got free. Very little got into his head of the afternoon classes because he was more or less asleep, but that had been quite frequently the case since his
mother's death. On the way home he dropped into a newsagent's and bought the
Yorkshire Evening Post.

There was nothing about Carmen O'Keefe. Nothing on the front page. Nothing—he ascertained this when he could sit down and go through it at home—anywhere in the paper. An event which had been the crisis, the watershed, of their lives didn't rate a mention in the Leeds daily newspaper. How could so
noticeable
a person disappear without arousing comment?

“Perhaps they print it too early,” Matthew said to Annie. “We'll watch the local news on television.”

So they watched the news from Yorkshire Television. Nothing, though they sat through the whole bulletin and magazine.

“What are you watching this for?” Greg demanded to know. “You never do usually. It's boring.”

“We've got to do an essay for English,” lied Matthew, “on an item of local news.”

“What's an essay?” asked Greg, easily distracted on to a side issue. After that he accepted that they watched the local news, though he often said it was boring. Nothing about Carmen O'Keefe ever appeared.

They kept a watch on the field, too. From the window of Annie's bedroom they could see across the field to the little wood and the supermarket. If the police descended on the grave, or anyone else began digging there, they could see it or, if they were at school, could see the results. No one ever did. No one ever went near the grave except sheep. As the days slipped by, everything became deceptively normal. They got up, dressed Jamie, had breakfast, went to school and covered up their real situation just as they had before. Apart from the fact that they could be less obsessive about locking doors, nothing had changed.

Many years later, when they were back in the house for a death, Matthew tried to put their feelings into words.

“It was as if you'd just had your first
you know,
and then the two of you had just got up and walked away like nothing had happened.”

“Don't talk like that,” said Annie, bending over her knitting. “You know I don't like it.”

At the time, of course, no such formulation would have been possible; and they confined themselves to talking, late at night, about
why
there had been no public fuss.

“Perhaps she was going away anyway,” said Matthew. “So they just assume she's gone where she said she was going.”

“Where could she have been on her way to, in our back garden?” asked Annie. “And she had no luggage or anything.”

Matthew had to concede this.

“Perhaps her husband had been half expecting her to do a bunk with one of her boyfriends,” he tried again. “And when she disappeared he just assumed that was what she had done. Or perhaps he told the police and they just decided she was the sort of woman who does just take herself off.”

“That's more likely,” admitted Annie. “But even more likely is that he did it, and now he's telling everybody that's what she's done.”

That, agreed Matthew, was more likely still. But the fact was they didn't know. Soon it became
eerie.
Matthew thought about it often, lying awake in bed at night. They had found a body, a murdered body, in their back garden, and they had buried it. Yet the woman's disappearance was apparently a matter of not the least concern to anyone. There was no newspaper publicity, no police investigation. It was as if the body had never been there at all. If it had not been for
the dirt on his duffel coat and shirt, a clump of earth clinging to the spade, the old door still against the garage wall, Matthew might have been tempted to regard it all as a dream. When, two weeks after the burial, they found a new but broken torch in a flower bed at the back, they were at first excited. It was a clue, Annie said. But after thinking about it, Matthew pointed out it could have been thrown over by a neighbour, or from the field which abutted the house. It was really nothing very much.