The Taken (19 page)

Alicia was lost once again in the keys, at one with the music, and picking up her cardigan and tying it around her waist, Mary snuck through to the hall and let herself quietly out the front door. The humidity hit her as soon as she stepped into the quiet village road, and as she walked downhill toward the pub and post office, the midges from the river formed an increasingly busy halo around her head. Walking faster, the sweat building on her scalp, her skin itching with the imagined attention of the flies, she didn’t see the figure that was running toward her, panting, eyes wide. The woman had called her name several times before Mary stopped cursing under her breath and looked up. It was Charlotte Keeler.

“Mary! Mary! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Her face was wild, shaking with emotion, and Mary held her arm.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“You have to come to the house. Something’s 187

happened to Ka y!” Her voice was choking. “She has burns. Burns!”

“What?” The air seemed like glue around her now, impeding her understanding.

“And there’s more.” Charlottes eyes almost shimmered. “For you, too” She froze, staring at Mary for a moment, before turning her head. “Come on. Everyone’s waiting at mine. You need to hear… you need to …”

Before Mary could ask a question, Charlotte’s ample figure was disappearing ahead of her, running back down the steep cobbled road to her own house. As Mary moved to catch up, her head was filled with her boy, her Paul, his stutter, his weight loss and the dead look in his eyes whenever she dared to ask him what was wrong.

The Keelers old stone house should have been pleasantly cool even on the hottest England summer’s day, but as in Alicia’s cottage, it seemed that this strange brewing storm had pervaded the thick centuries-old barriers of protection, filling the rooms with its unnatural damp heat. It didn’t stop the chill shiver that prickled across Mary’s back as she looked down at the small burns and bruises on Kay’s arms. Her mind still spun with the story that Kay had told the vicar, that he had told Charlotte, and who had now told her and the other mothers that had arrived during the past few minutes.

How could it be true? How could any of it be true? How could she believe that Paul would be so afraid and not tell her? She glanced behind her as she heard Ada Rose gasp, and then turned her attention back to Kay. The burns on the child’s limbs were crudely formed and they glared angrily at her, crushing her disbelief with their glowing presence.

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It had started with the cat, Kay had told the vicar, Joe Barnes’s cat. That’s when it had all really turned nasty with Melanie. Mary’s brow furrowed. Could a child really have done that to an animal? And why, for God’s sake?

Her stomach sickening, Mary turned away and sat on the arm of the sofa.

Ada joined her, speaking in a low whisper. “Thank God she’s had the good sense to tell. Thank God—”

Mary cut her off. “She didn’t tell out of common sense. She had to. Have you seen that burn on her right arm ? It’s infected. She probably kept it secret for as long as she could, but look at her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was running a bit of a fever.”

For a moment the two women said nothing, huddled together in what was becoming a crowded living room. Charlotte had stopped crying and was applying some ointment to her daughter’s arm, Enid Tucker helping her. The vicar sat back, awkwardly sipping tea, uncomfortable amongst the increasingly tense women. He was still a relatively young man, not much older than Mary herself, not yet of an age to be sexless, benign.

Ada chewed her bottom lip. “She said Melanie Parr did it, made them do it or whatever!” Her eyes were hollow. “Do you think … do you think that James or Paul… ?” The question hung unfinished.

Mary stared away from her friend. “Do you mean will our children have bruises and burns under their clothes?” The whisper was all she could manage. “Yes. Yes, I do.” All of Paul’s strange furtive behavior, the increased stutter, the dark rings under his wide eyes, it was all making sense. It all fitted together with the madness that Kay had spilled out to the vicar, the madness that he had brought to share with her mother, the

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madness that had been these children’s world for all those months. She looked again at the child sniffing in the chair in the far corner. She still looked so afraid, and that made Mary’s anger rise.

Didn’t Kay think they could sort it out? That these grownups could sort it out?

And if Kay was afraid, then how did James and her Paul feel? Kay was over a year older than them. They were all older than Melanie Parr, for Christ’s sake.

Mary leaned forward. “Where’s Melanie now, Kay dear?” Her voice was low, but strong, and she waited for Kay to wipe her eyes, hiding her impatience for the answer.

“She’s up at the ravine. On her own up there.” She couldn’t meet Mary’s eyes, anybody’s eyes, but stared at the carpet, her voice expressionless.

“The others have gone back down to the river to play. Melanie likes to be on her own sometimes. Says she has things to do that we wouldn’t understand. Says her mother don’t mind her being on her own. Thinks it’s safe next to the city. She says she’s not a scaredycat like we are. She don’t believe in any Catcher Man.”

Kay nervously glanced at her mother.

Raising one hand, she covered her mouth, her fingers twisting the upper lip almost subconsciously. Mary’s heart sent a pang of emotional pain to her cramped stomach and it reverberated back as she looked at the nails on those young hands, bitten down until the edges were raw, strips of skin torn from each side.

Just like Paul’s. How was it that they all let it pass? How was it that they didn’t say something? To each other at least, if not to their precious children directly.

Looking at Ada, Mary saw her own guilt in the 190

woman’s face. And Charlotte’s as she nodded in their direction, signaling them into the adjacent dining room. Reverend Barker took the seat next to Kay and started talking softly to her. Leaving them behind, Mary noticed the flash of anger the girl gave him and she understood why. He had broken her confidence by telling her mother what she had shared with him, and she hated him for it. And behind that hate was fear. Gritting her teeth, she followed her friends into the room next door.

When Mary closed the heavy wood behind her, there was a moments pause and then the women let their anger hiss itself out in a whirlwind of whispers.

“I can’t believe this! I can’t believe it.”

“It’s not normal. How do you punish someone for that? How? God, I’d like to wring her little neck.”

“Where did Kay say she was? In the woods?”

“Up by the ravine. On her own.”

A flash of eyes passed around the occupants of the room.

“Do you think we should go up there? To the clearing?”

“I told Paul not to go up there—the banks are too steep and it’s too far from the village.”

“Stop it Mary, it doesn’t matter. We went up there as children for God’s sake, why did you think our kids would be any different?”

“So what should we do?”

Perhaps in another time or another place someone would have suggested they should go and talk to Melanie’s mother, but it didn’t enter their heads. Mrs.

Parr wasn’t one of them—she had city blood in her veins and now that blood was spoiling their country like a disease, making their peaceful haven unsafe.

“I know what I’d like to do. I’d like to go up there and 191

put the fear of God into her. I want to make her cry. I want to make her feel as bad as my baby.”

“Then why don’t we? Why don’t we go up there?”

Silence.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Let’s do it. Lets go up there and teach her a lesson she won’t forget. We never expect them home before tea-time. Maybe she won’t head back to the village for a while. We could get up there if we go now.”

“But what will we do ? We can’t hurt her. We can’t…”

“Calm down. I don’t mean hurt her. But scare her.”

“Her mother’ll go mad when she tells her. Wouldn’t you ? We won’t get away with it.”

“I don’t think Melanie will tell. What’s she going to say?”

A pause.

“And even if she does tell, we’ll deny it.”

“I just keep seeing those burns and bruises.”

“She has scars too. Didn’t you see?”

“And it won’t only be Kay.”

“We owe it to them to go. We owe it to our children to sort it out”

The air was filled with breathing, harsh and hot. No words were spoken as the agreement was made, and it was Charlotte that reached the door first. Mary stood behind her as she called into the doorway of the lounge, her voice tight.

“We’re going out. Can you stay here with Kay?”

The vicar was out of sight, but his muffled reply was still audible. “Where are you going?”

Charlotte’s fingers gripped tighter on the wood of the door. “To the ravine.”

There was no reply from the vicar, and Mary wasn’t surprised. What was it he’d said about Melanie when he’d

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finished telling Kay’s story? ‘The child is an abomination.’ No, he wouldn’t argue with what they were doing. He may have taken to the cloth, but he was a country boy at heart. He understood about taking care of your own.

Striding grimly back up the hill, it seemed to Mary that the grayness had sunk from the sky, sticking to her, the feeling unpleasant and unnatural like static prickling her head. It was only half an hour since she’d left Alicia’s cottage, but it seemed so much longer, and as she passed it again, the troop of women heading for the steep woods that started not far from the back of the small row of buildings, the soft strains of music escaped and wafted around her, breaking the spell in the air, allowing the first drops of heavy rain to fall.

Despite the increasing weight of the falling water, the ground was still solid enough for the women to climb the steep slope without sliding backward at each step. Mary felt her breath roaring inside her, her lungs burning like they were cracking with flame as they stretched with the unexpected exertion she was placing on them, but her legs were strong and she kept up the pace easily. You didn ‘tgrow up around farms without being a little bit hardy. Even delicate Alicia had strength in those slim limbs of hers. Maybe it was something in the air.

Above them thunder growled to life, and despite the anger and hate that filled her, Mary hoped that wherever Paul was, he’d head home now. In the woods the sky seemed almost black, the early afternoon becoming twilight around them. This was shaping up to be a bad storm, malevolent and vicious.

The four of them had spread out as they climbed, and it was Charlotte, looking absurdly out of place in her housedress and flat sandals, the clothes sticking to her form

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underneath in the onslaught of the rain, who stopped first. She smiled, pushing the lank wet curls out of her face.

“Hello Melanie, we’ve come to see you.” Her voice dripped with honey and acid, enough to send a shiver down Mary’s spine as she looked up to the top of the bank, only a few feet away.

The small blonde child must have decided that being in the woods in the middle of a thunderstorm wasn’t the best idea and had started her journey home. Not so keen to be in danger herself, then. Sitting where the ground became level, she had been putting on her shoes and socks. One shoe on, she stood up and looked down at the women. Mary watched the change of expression on that perfectly beautiful face—at first a sweet smile, then twisting into puzzled concern.

Maybe she could smell their anger; maybe even at ten she knew there was something wrong about four grown women coming out in a storm without even a coat, out to the children’s territories, to places they had probably forgotten about twenty years ago. Still though, she didn’t move. Not yet. Her confusion was still waiting to turn to fear.

Mary felt animal blood rushing through her veins, exciting her, making her heart throb in her chest. Looking at the flush faces of her friends, their shining eyes and parted lips, she knew they could feel it too. They were a pack. A pack of wild animals protecting their young. At first she felt like a lioness, growling and proud. She followed Charlotte’s lead and picked up a fallen branch, watching Melanie take her first hesitant step back into the clearing, dropping her forgotten shoe, which tumbled past them down the slope, the women starting to circle the small pretty girl, who was rapidly losing her smug expression.

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Mary wondered if they were more like hyenas, bitter and cruel, snapping and snarling at their weaker prey.

She pushed the thought down as she smiled at the child backing away from her.

Well, so what if they were? They weren’t going to do any real harm. Just scare her a little. Well, maybe scare her a lot. And she deserved it.

She raised the stick and swatted at the girl’s legs, forcing her to jump backward to avoid being stung by the branch.

“What’s the matter Melanie? Don’t you want to play? We thought you liked a bit of danger!” She lifted the thin branch again, and across the clearing, Ada Rose cawed, high and victorious.

“Jesus Christ. What happened?”

Dave Carter’s voice broke into Mary’s train of thought, bringing her roughly back to the present. As an ache ran up her arm, she realized how tightly she’d been gripping the arm of the chair. Telling it all, however, wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it might be. Relaxing her fingers, she felt her age settling back into her bones, no animal blood rushing through her veins any longer.

She wished the fire would warm her more, down in the core where she needed it.

Still, no matter. Not much longer now. Looking down, the gnarled sinews on the back of her hands and arms reminded her of the woods. The damp smell still lingered in her nostrils after all these years, especially tonight, brought back to vivid life.

She sighed. “What happened? It’s so difficult to tell. We became like men. You know, how they behave in a gang, at a football match, in a crowd, where terrible 195

things happen. We became a collective mind almost. No individual thought. Not in those few minutes, at least. Not when it got out of hand.” She paused, brow furrowed, trying to think. “Not that there was really time for things to get out of hand. It all happened so fast. I think these things tend to.” Smiling, she looked at the frozen faces around her. “Cliche, but true.”