The Influence (17 page)

The car coasted down into Gronant and halted in front of a small newish house like a sketch of a cottage, squeezed onto the corner of a lane. “I’ll just get the child into the house and then I’ll run you to the hotel,” Elspeth said.

“Don’t trouble, Elspeth, I need the walk. I’ll come in and see Rowan settled, and then I’ll be off.”

Elspeth frowned at her when she struggled out of the car, and seemed even more annoyed when Hermione bustled down the path of cobbles the size of eggs to the brass knocker. Gwen opened the door. Her face was at least as sharp as Elspeth’s, but seemed to soften as she let out the light to them. “Stay for a cup of something if you like, Hermione,” she said.

One room with polished pine walls took up most of the ground floor. The curvy wood of the sofa and chairs looked stuffed with flowered bags of the lavender that scented the air. Hermione darted to a bookcase that slanted across one corner of the room. “Here, show Gwen and Elspeth how well you can read.” When Rowan leafed through the collection of folk tales in search of one she might like, Hermione cried “Any one will do. She’ll read you the whole story, won’t you, Rowan? Just listen to her.”

Gwen sat down smiling, and Elspeth followed suit reluctantly on the opposite side of the room. The story was about two girls, one of whom was made of sticks, though in the illustration they looked like bones. As soon as the story was under way, Hermione made for the door. “I’ll see myself out. Rowan, you keep right on to the end.”

The front door slammed, and Rowan read on, too self-conscious to look up. She hardly knew what she was reading, though her voice was sure enough. When a dog barked behind the cottage Elspeth started to head for the kitchen window, but Gwen clucked her tongue softly at her. Rowan finished the story without knowing which of the girls in it was alive at the end. When she turned back to reread it, Elspeth protested “Whoa now, you’ve sung for your supper. Breakfast’s not until tomorrow.”

“That was excellent, young lady. How old are you? Only eight? You read like someone older.”

“That’s all very well, but can you read Welsh?”

“Some words, when they’re like English spelled wrong.”

“Like Welsh spelled right, you mean,” Elspeth snapped. “You won’t get far round here with that attitude.”

“Now, Ellie, she’s only visiting.”

“And why is that, may we ask? Where’s your aunt gone, Rowan?”

“I don’t know. Nobody told me.”

“She’s gone to see a friend who was taken ill at the hotel, hasn’t she?” Gwen said.

Elspeth gave her a furious look and stalked into the kitchen. The back door opened, the dog barked. After a while Elspeth came back, disgruntled with having found nothing. Rowan pored over the book so as not to draw her hostility. Gwen brought her a glass of milk, but she felt out of place, especially when the women began to talk Welsh. She didn’t know if they were talking about her, and that made her feel hardly there at all.

It must have been hours later, for she was halfway through the book even though she could recall nothing of it, when Elspeth spoke to her again. “Put that away now or we’ll have your aunt saying we let you ruin your eyes. Gwen wants to teach you something.”

“What?”

“Just listen for a change,” Elspeth said impatiently, and Gwen struck up a lilting song in Welsh. After a few bars Elspeth joined in. Rowan liked it, but felt they should have their arms around each other’s shoulders instead of singing from opposite sides of the room: was it her fault that they weren’t doing so? The song ended on a high sweet note. “What did you think of that, then?” Elspeth demanded.

“Lovely,” Rowan said, and since that apparently wasn’t enough “I liked it very much.”

“Let’s hear how much, then. You try.”

“Listen again,” Gwen said, taking pity on her, and repeated the first line. When Rowan attempted it, it made her tongue flutter like a bird in her mouth. They went through the first verse line by line, and then Rowan did her best to sing it through. She was quite proud of herself until she saw Elspeth scowling at her as though she’d inadvertently sung something rude in Welsh. How could she get the song right when she didn’t know what she was singing? She felt less present than ever, as though even her voice wasn’t her own any more, and desperate to talk to someone she knew. “Can I call home?” she blurted.

“No need for that, is there? Your aunt will be back soon, according to her.”

“Why do you want to, dear?” Gwen said.

“I haven’t spoken to my mummy and daddy at all today. I want them to know where I am.”

“You’ll just be telling them you’re at my house until your aunt gets back, will you?”

“Our house,” Gwen said gently.

“Oh yes, our house, tell everyone,” Elspeth complained, and lapsed into Welsh. Rowan shrank into herself as they began to argue: half of it sounded like spitting. She couldn’t under-stand how she had caused all this by asking to phone her parents, but she was afraid to say anything further. She was wishing desperately that Hermione would return when someone knocked at the front door.

“I expect that’s your aunt,” Gwen said, and made for the hall. Elspeth eyed Rowan ominously until Gwen came back, looking puzzled. “Rowan, there’s someone here who says she’s a friend of yours.”

It felt like salvation. “Vicky!” Rowan cried.

“Oh, were you expecting her?” Gwen said reprovingly. “She wants you to go to her house.”

Gwen sounded dubious. She and Elspeth murmured in Welsh as Rowan grabbed her coat and darted into the hall. Vicky was waiting for her beyond the open door. Against the night, her white dress and long pale face looked even brighter than the hall. As she saw Rowan coming, her eyes seemed to deepen and fill with the light from the house. She turned away at once, and Rowan had followed as far as the gate when Elspeth demanded “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Just with me,” Vicky said from beyond the streetlamp. “She’ll be gone no longer than her aunt, I promise.”

Elspeth narrowed her eyes at the dark and frowned, then shrugged as if she weren’t grateful to be relieved of Rowan. “Be sure that you know what you’re doing,” she said, and closed the door.

The night was chill and restless. Beyond the island of light on which the streetlamp stood, the houses made no sound, but the trees took long irregular breaths and stooped out of the sky. Rowan stayed close to the lamp as Vicky glanced back. “How did you know where I was?”

“I saw you leaving in the car, and I knew where that woman lived.”

“You mean you’ve come all that way? How?”

“There are buses, you know—just not very often. I’m here, isn’t that enough? Or would you rather go back in there? “

Rowan didn’t want to antagonise her under all the circumstances. “You said we could go to your house.”

“Let me show you something first.” Vicky took another pace away from the lamp, and held up one hand. “You forgot these.”

They were the binoculars, their lenses glinting like black ice. Rowan stiffened. “Did you go in my aunt’s house?”

“Don’t you recall leaving them in the garden? Maybe you’d rather they were ruined after I gave them to you.”

“Of course I wouldn’t, don’t be daft. I didn’t mean to leave them,” Rowan said, unable to remember where she had. Vicky was already striding away, and so Rowan followed her, across the main road and up a flinty path between the gardens of two houses screened by trees. As the glow of the houses sank beneath the shaking leaves, it seemed to let the night wind reach Rowan, who clutched her coat tighter. Almost at once she could hardly feel the wind or the prickly path. Vicky led her up into the steep dark and waited for her on a flat ledge surrounded by grass that glistened as it threw itself flat beneath the wind. There she handed Rowan the binoculars and pointed across the bay. “See how strong they are at night,” she said.

Beyond the Wirral peninsula, a sleeping dragon chained with light, the lamps and windows of the far coast merged into threads, bright insects that trembled as if they were preparing to swarm into the air. The sight made Rowan unexpectedly wistful, and she felt more outcast than ever. “Use the glasses,” Vicky urged.

As soon as Rowan lifted them to her eyes, the night closed around her. That must be the eyepieces, but she felt as if she were riding the night towards the lights. The peninsula swam beneath her, and then she was across the bay. There were the docks, the radar tower surveying the dark, the dunes bunched like huge dim fruit, the rank of pastel nursing homes, all grey now. She seemed to glide along them, and there, where the mouth of the side street gaped darkly, was the house.

The top floor was lit. It looked like a crown or a beacon, but it didn’t feel as if either was meant for her. Her gaze strayed downwards to the lit front room. The curtains were drawn, but not entirely. If she peered through the gap she might see her parents. For a moment she yearned to see them, as if she’d been away for months, and then she remembered what she’d overheard. They might be talking about her now, and she didn’t want to see. She let her hands fall.

At first she thought the strap of the binoculars had snagged, because the view of the house didn’t shrink. It must be an after-image, and it felt plastered to her eyes. She squeezed them shut and opened them. The nighttime landscape reassembled itself blurrily around her, the glow of the houses streaming mistily up through the swaying trees, but everything looked flattened as the fans of light. “Why did you stop?” Vicky hissed in her ear. “You were there.”

The threat of her impatience was almost enough to force Rowan to lift the binoculars, but not quite. “I don’t want to any more. You said I could see where you live.”

The wind flapped over the hills and slithered through the grass. Trees nodding over the lights below sent darkness sweeping uphill. Rowan felt suddenly even lonelier and more vulnerable. “No, I don’t want to,” she stammered as if that might fend off whatever was making her uneasy. “I’d rather see where my Aunt Hermione is.”

Vicky was silent until Rowan glanced at her. The gleam in her eyes seemed deeper. She began to smile, lips pressed tight, as she turned to lead the way downhill. “All right, you shall,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-One

As soon as Hermione was outside the house she dug her knuckles into her forehead. She should have loitered out of sight nearby until they were all inside, she shouldn’t have gone in. She was sure they’d all seen how nervous she was growing; she had almost panicked in case Elspeth insisted on driving her to the hotel. But she was out now, and the women were listening to Rowan—surely they still were, though Hermione couldn’t hear her. She hurried down the cobbled path, wiping her slippery hands on her coat, and made as much noise as she could in closing the gate; then she tiptoed back and dodged around the side of the house.

The path there looked as if it might be composed of loose slate. It was crazy paving, she told herself, and took a step, so tentative that she swayed against the house. She supported herself against the whitewashed wall as she crept to the back garden. The floodlight on the next house doused the garden with the shadow of the hedge, but she could make out the shed on the far side of the lawn. It was the only place in Gronant she knew there was a spade: Elspeth often talked about digging the garden. She stepped onto the small neat lawn, and a dog barked.

Hermione recoiled against the wall of the house. The dog was under the floodlight, beside a pair of French windows. If anyone parted those curtains they would see her flattened against the house like a moth. Gwen or Elspeth might lean out of the kitchen window beside her, and what would she say then? She shook all over and crammed her fists against her mouth before she could burst into hysterical laughter. The dog had settled itself. As soon as she had gulped down her mirth she padded across the grass.

The flashlight in her pocket bumped her thigh all the way to the shed. She unbolted the door with fingers that felt swollen and rigid. The hinges were so thoroughly oiled that the door came towards her faster than she was expecting. The dog made a sound in its throat. She leaned forward and peered into the dark. In the far left-hand corner, caged by a rake and a fork, was a spade.

When she stepped on the floor of the shed, the tools stirred. If they fell they would start the dog barking in earnest. She lunged across the plank floor and grabbed all three handles. She was close to hysteria again, because at first she couldn’t distinguish which handle belonged to the spade. She groped downwards until she felt the edge of the head, which was trapped behind the others. She set about disentangling the fork and the rake, forcing herself to take her time, and then she froze. She was being watched.

She made herself glance toward the house. The kitchen window was unlit, and she was sure the curtains hadn’t moved. She was being watched from somewhere closer in the dark, because she had realised the danger to Rowan. She slipped the spade from behind the other tools, almost thumping the handle against the roof, then she tiptoed over the creaking planks, closed the door, inched the bolt shakily into its socket, dodged across the lawn and hid beside the house, out of reach of the floodlight, while she debated how to hide the spade.

There wasn’t room under her coat. She pressed the cold head against her chest and crossed her hands over it, and found she was able to walk, though not as fast as she would have liked. She stole along the path and out of the gate. She gave the house a last nervous glance and willed Rowan to be reading, then she embraced the spade and hurried onto the main road.