It's Raining Men Part 21

'Oh, yes. But spices made men rich so it was all worth it for them.' Raine putt the old bones of Albert down on the floor. 'My dear, would you put some food in Albert's dish for him? He likes the fish type best.'

'Of course,' said Clare, smiling as Albert made a stiff robotic walk into the kitchen and sat by his bowl. She ripped off the top of a pouch of trout-flavoured food and squeezed it out for him. He greedily dived head first into it.

'How do you cope up here, Raine? Wouldn't you be better in the village amongst people? How do you get into bed and onto the loo?'

'I cope,' said Raine. 'And I have all my memories here. I came to this cottage as a bride.' Her strange old face creased into a nostalgic smile. 'I have been very happy here.'

Clare turned her attention back to her cleaning as a sudden vision came to her and she saw herself as old as Raine. She would have no memories of a loved one who had gone. Only recollections of numbers she had worked on. She'd be rich and lonely and cold inside, however many crocheted blankets sat on her legs.

Chapter 43.

Gladys found Edwin asleep on the library sofa wrapped up in a blanket. He had never slept out of bed in all the years she had known him. There was a bathchair outside the front door, one which usually resided in the shed at the side of the cottage where Joan was staying. It wasn't hard to work out that she had wheeled him home. Why he hadn't walked was obvious when Gladys bent over him and smelled his breath. She comforted herself by thinking that at least he was here and she hadn't found him in Joan's bed.

She poked him with her finger to wake him and he groaned as if in pain. Joan had plied him with drink and Gladys could guess at why.

She strode out of the kitchen and down to the old cottage, then rapped hard on the door. She had to knock twice more before Joan opened it, hair bedraggled, no make-up on her face, wrapped in a bright-red dressing gown and s.h.i.+vering.

'h.e.l.lo, Gladys. I'm not feeling very well,' said Joan, her voice trembling. 'Is Lord Carlton okay? I wheeled him back home last night and thought the library sofa would be the most comfortable place for him. I made him some supper, you see, for being so kind to me, and I'm convinced the prawns were off. I haven't stopped throwing up.'

She really didn't look well at all, Gladys had to admit.

'He's hungover, that's what I think,' she said starchily. 'And he doesn't drink so how's that happened, then?'

'He had some sherry trifle,' said Joan, holding her hand to her mouth as she retched a little. 'I was quite heavy-handed with the sherry for the taste but he couldn't have got drunk on that. I know it was those prawns. I've a good mind to go back to Wellem market and have a word with that fishmonger.'

'Well.' Gladys swallowed, taken in completely. 'You'd better get back to bed and I'll look after Lord Carlton. Can I get you anything?'

'I just need to sleep,' replied Joan, sniffing hard.

'You do that, then.' Gladys spoke stiffly but not unkindly.

'Thank you, Gladys. Please pa.s.s on my apologies. I only wanted to say thank you to him for being so kind to me. I can't believe we're both so ill. It has to be those prawns.' And with that the door closed and Gladys took a much less charged walk back to attend to Edwin. She did not think to look in the bin outside the cottage that might have told her more of the truth than she had just been handed.

Chapter 44.

Clare scrubbed and dusted and fettled until the tiny cottage shone. She took down the curtains, washed them and pegged them outside, and in the sea breeze they were dry within half an hour. They were scented with salty air when Clare hung them back up above the crystal-clear windows. As she worked, Clare told Raine more about her friends: how long they had known each other, how they didn't see each other as much as they should. The old lady was so easy to talk to. Hours flew by as quickly as a finger-click.

Raine listened with interest to everything Clare said. Maybe this is why she is here, she thought. There had to be a reason why their paths had crossed. She could feel it in her old bones.

'Aren't you tired?' asked Raine, watching Clare polish the old cabinet at the back of the room. 'You haven't stopped.'

'I love doing this,' said Clare, the truth of it s.h.i.+ning in her eyes.

'More than your work with numbers?'

Clare laughed. 'Easily!' As her duster pa.s.sed over the last fingerprint on the wood she looked at the only picture standing in a frame on the cabinet, a pencil drawing of a man's profile. He had a thin face, a long nose and a full beard and yet his features fitted well together; he was not an unhandsome man. 'Is this your husband?'

'Yes, that is my Seymour.'

'I, er . . .' Clare began. She had to ask. 'I saw a gravestone the other day, with the name Seymour on it. In the churchyard.'

'That was him. There are no more Seymours lying there.'

'Why is his grave in a line of twelve?' Clare couldn't help wincing at how nosey that sounded. Raine merely nodded, though, without looking as if she had taken any offence.

'My husband was a fisherman, part of a crew of twelve men due to go out sailing one particular day but the sea was very rough. The lord of the manor at the time, Gilbert Carlton, put pressure on the captain to take him out in the boat with the men, to amuse him, and it sank. The men all managed to make it to sh.o.r.e all thirteen of them. Gilbert Carlton was buried in the church crypt with the rest of his family but the others shared a bond because of their experience and wanted to be united in death as they had been in life.'

'Why was . . .' Clare bit off the question.

'Why was Seymour buried outside the church grounds?' Raine continued for her. 'At the time of his pa.s.sing, Reverend Unwin was in charge of the church. He was a horrid, sour man married to a snipey little wife and living a life of frustration. He was very envious of Seymour and myself, of our love and devotion to each other. He let him lie next to his friends but he refused to bury him on consecrated ground. He said Seymour had committed a sin against G.o.d that would not allow him to be interred on church land. This was reversed later when Unwin died and a kinder pastor took over a cousin of my husband. But at the time Unwin was immovable. The Unwins were always a strange family, full of bitterness and malcontent. Even though an Unwin was in the fis.h.i.+ng boat that sank and was saved.'

'Jeez,' said Clare. 'What a vile man. What on earth did Seymour do that could justify that sort of prejudice?'

'He married me.' Raine smiled.

'Jeez,' said Clare again, for the want of something better to say.

'I'm an offc.u.mden,' Raine clarified. 'Unwin didn't like me.'

'And yet he was jealous of you and Seymour, of your relations.h.i.+p?'

Raine nodded. 'He was a man of many contradictions, and I have no reservations about talking ill of him, dead as he is. He told Seymour before he died that he would never be buried on church land. Seymour laughed in his face, told him that I was worth his petty censure and he had no doubt that G.o.d would disapprove of Unwin's actions. He had a strong enough faith, thank goodness, not to be cowed by Unwin's threat. Unwin said that Seymour was cursed in marrying me, and the proof of that was that we couldn't have children. Ironically neither could he and Sarah, but that was "G.o.d's will".'

Clare whistled. 'Strong stuff. What happened to him?'

'He had a small pleasure boat,' answered Raine. 'He took it out in the bay one day with Sarah and the boat ran aground on the rocks. They both drowned. No one could understand it as the sea was as calm as a millpond on that day and Jeremiah Unwin was an excellent sailor.'

'Wow,' said Clare. She almost looked around for s...o...b.. Doo. Mystery piled on mystery. If she had dared to, she would have asked Raine hundreds more questions about the Unwins. They sounded not unlike the Borgias.

Instead she grinned and said, 'Where did you meet Seymour, then, if you were such a pariah?'

'I was visiting the area,' said Raine, looking wistfully past Clare to the drawing of Seymour. 'As soon as I saw him, I knew.'

'You must be very lonely without him.'

'I am. Too lonely and too old.'

Clare watched Raine's smile dropping by degrees. Well done, Clare, said a little voice inside her. Why not remind the lady a little bit more about her lonesome existence?

'I'll come back in a couple of days, if you like,' she said breezily, in an attempt to jolly up Raine.

'I would not want to interrupt your holiday,' said Raine. 'But I have so enjoyed your company and would welcome it again.'

'I've disturbed a lot of dust. It will settle and need s.h.i.+fting. It would be a pleasure, honestly.'

'Thank you,' said Raine. 'Then it will be an equal pleasure to see you again.'

'It's good exercise for burning off calories. I might even go home a couple of pounds lighter.'

'You're a beautiful girl as you are. You should have more confidence in yourself.'

'Everyone in my family is stick thin, except for me,' Clare moaned as she picked up her bag. 'And they all have cheekbones and normal-coloured eyes. I sometimes wonder if I'm a changeling.'

'My husband used to say that I had eyes like the jewelled waters of the sea.' Raine reached for Clare's hand and pulled her downwards so that she could kiss her cheek. 'And sometimes we find that our hearts belong in different places from where our heads would have them be.'

Clare patted Albert on the head, not that he noticed he was fast asleep and she closed the door behind her as she left. What a lovely old lady, she thought. And she couldn't shake off the feeling that Raine knew more of what was going on in her heart than anyone else did. Herself included.

Chapter 45.

As soon as Gladys had disappeared from sight, Joan cast off her pained expression and went into the bathroom to put on some make-up and tie up her hair. She was no more ill than Gladys was, although she wouldn't like to have had Edwin's head this morning his first hangover at seventy. What an experience. Nearly as bad an ordeal as having to go into Ren Dullem and endure the stares of all the odd-bods that lived in the village.

The manor house had felt very spooky last night, almost hostile. Joan had dumped Edwin in the first room she came to that had a sofa in it. She had only been in the library once before, on a snoop, but there was nothing there of interest. She had no liking for stuffy old books and the smell that came with them. It wasn't her favourite room in the house, drab as it was, and decorated in dull mustard colours and browns which looked even more shabby when lit by the low-wattage bulbs at night. She studied the room whilst she stood beside the snoring figure of Edwin for five minutes to make sure he was sleeping peacefully and not about to vomit and choke himself. There must have been a lot of money in all those old books, she decided. Another portrait of Gilbert Carlton in hunting pink looked down on her disdainfully. She moved her eyes away from him and onto an old tapestry hung high on a wall. It depicted the village's history: boats and the sea and fish and fields of lavender, markets all very boring. There was nothing of interest to her in the library.

There was a path from the cottage that cut through a small copse and led out onto the road which went left to Hathersage Farm and straight on down to the harbour. She wouldn't have to pa.s.s the front of the manor house if she went that way. She left a note on the door, should nosey Gladys come back, to say that she had gone for some fresh air, then she picked up her camera, notepad and handbag and set off for the village. She didn't know what she was looking for, but she was going to find something to work on before she came back to the cottage. Joan could sniff the opportunity to make money as surely as a shark could sniff blood.

She looked up into the sky to see a puff of grey cloud, far too low to be 'real' cloud, and remembered its presence the last time she had been to this G.o.dforsaken hole. Clouds, rain it was rain that saved them. Was there a connection? How the h.e.l.l could rain save anyone or anything?

At the bottom of the hill Dullem was bustling, as much as it could 'bustle' anyway. There was a market in the cobbled square. Stalls were set up around the perimeter selling fresh cheeses, bread, cakes, jams, fish and things made with lavender. There was a stall selling hot pork sandwiches with apple sauce and stuffing next to the kiosk that had once shut very rudely in her face when she had approached it to buy a coffee like she'd be offering them any more of her money. There was a flower stall beside a man selling bric-a-brac. In fact it was all men that were running the stalls and, apart from a couple of older ladies, the customers were mainly men too. Last night she'd forgotten to get 'Mary' to ask why there were no women in the community. Maybe they were all chopped up and made into the local butcher's pies and that was the real secret of Ren Dullem. Joan giggled to herself, but anything was possible in this inbred little s.h.i.+thole. She wondered what would happen to Carlton Hall when Edwin died. Who would inherit it? It might be worth having a look at his will if she could find it; he was bound to have a copy in the house somewhere.

She endured the stares of a man as she approached the church. He had fairish hair in unruly waves, a slick smile and very green eyes. He was handsome, if you liked the full-of-himself male who talked a good talk. That type were usually full of hot air, and rubbish in bed. She had her sights on richer pickings than men who had empty pockets and sparkling eyes, though. She recognized in the green-eyed man the male equivalent of herself: predatory, manipulative, calculating, sybaratic. Every smile was an attempt at putting a key into the lock of a heart. She had no use for him, not even as an amusing toy to outwit, and she walked on.

She took the path that snaked around the back of the church and into the graveyard. A good place to start, she thought. She began at the bottom corner by the gate: a ridiculous pet's cemetery. Beloved pets called Corky, Jess, Bill, La.s.sie, some dates going back to before the war. Nothing of interest. The key date she was seeking was 1928. That was when all whatever it was started.

She walked over dead mothers and sons, the same names being repeated: Hathersage, Hathersage, Bird, Bird, Bird, Unwin, Coffey the old stalwarts of the village, with dates from as far back as the 1700s to as recent as three months ago. By far the grandest grave was a huge stone effigy of a praying man, his hands pressed together, his head looking dutifully upwards. This was the grave of Reverend Jeremiah Unwin and his wife, Sarah, who both died on the same day. Merely from looking at the elaborate design of the grave, she imagined that Jeremiah Unwin would have been a man right up himself whilst pretending to be humble and G.o.d-serving.

She was just about to give up when, in the top left corner, at the furthest point from the church, she found a small overgrown path. She had to part the hedges at either side to take it. It wended left then right before opening up into a circle affording a grand view of the tiny harbour with its small outlet to the sea. A small version of Cleopatra's Needle stood there, a carved stone obelisk bearing the lettering: FRATRES A MARE.

GILBERT CARLTON.

SEYMOUR ELIAS ACASTER.

JOSEPH BIRD.

GERALD COFFEY.

PETER JOHN d.i.c.kINSON.

FREDERICK ARTHUR HATHERSAGE.

WILLIAM WARD HUBBARD.

ALBERT SHAW LANDERS.

HARRISON ROBERT MOODY.

BERNARD ANDREW SHAW.

HAROLD ALFRED WILLIAM SMITH.

JACK UNWIN.

JOHN GEORGE WARD.

1928.

Thirteen names. Including Gilbert and that interesting date 1928. But what the h.e.l.l did it mean? Joan needed to cross-reference the names with the ledger now.

She scribbled the names down and returned to the main churchyard to find the relevant graves and see if they yielded any more information. Eleven of the graves were together in a long straight line. Gilbert's grave was not in the churchyard because obviously he would be in the family vault. Strangely, at the end, outside the original boundary of the land, was the grave bearing the twelfth name: Seymour Elias Acaster: born 1909, died 1969. Joan took the camera out of her handbag and started snapping, especially at Seymour's stone and the fence now around it. With not much else to go on, Joan wondered if the positioning was significant. Roll on Gladys b.u.g.g.e.ring off home so Joan could take a long hard look at those ledgers again.

Chapter 46.

'Well, if it isn't the witch. And where have you been with your big bag of spells?'

At the lip of the woods, Clare was arrested by the familiar voice.

'Val. How are you today?'

'h.o.r.n.y.' He smiled. 'How about you?'

'Tired,' said Clare, unable to stop a grin from pus.h.i.+ng up the corners of her lips. He was very naughty.

'You didn't answer my question.'

'Nor do I have any intention of doing so. I've been for a walk.'