Beryl Fletcher

17

 

The doctor did not arrive at eight as arranged. They waited in the parlour where Lena had poured sherry into a glass decanter and placed it on a tray on the sideboard alongside a bottle of single malt whiskey and a plate of sponge fingers.

 

Juno had helped her to make them. She was responsible for joining the two halves of sponge together with whipped cream. Lena told Hannalore that she had made sure that the little one had scrubbed her hands before she allowed her into her kitchen. Poor child. But how could Hannalore stand it? The repeating of certain words over and over again, the outbursts, the constant demand for attention.

 

Mr Cooper had agreed that both Lena and Hannalore could sit in the parlour with him.  He did not see the necessity of this at first, but Lena had insisted. After all, both she and Hannalore had stakes in this game. They were taking the same risks as he was.  

 

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed nine. Mr Cooper placed another log on the fire. Lena complained that the room was becoming overheated and that the cream was beginning to ooze out of the sponge fingers. Juno had knocked on the door twice and Hannalore had to take her back to the windowless room at the back. The third time it happened, Mr Cooper, by now somewhat mellowed by three generous nips of whiskey, suggested that Hannalore stay with Juno until Doctor Graham arrived. And please make sure that she is clean and tidy and ready for his inspection.

 

Juno was in a state. She rocked backwards and forwards making noises half-way between a groan and a sob. Her speech was jumbled and repetitive and would not have made sense to anyone else but Hannalore. But a communication of sorts passed between them and Hannalore began to suspect that Juno knew more about what was happening to her body than she had otherwise thought.

 

Someone hammered on the back door. Juno clung to Hannalore. Something or someone was coming to take her away; a hand holding a big stick, a thing with no face…

 

It was Doctor Graham, fuming out loud about having to come to the back door like a thief in the night, with not even a lantern left burning to light his way. 

 

Hannalore heard Lena opening the door. She said that she was sorry. Mr Cooper told her that he left the front door of the shop ajar. She must have misheard him.

 

They moved down the hallway. The door to the parlour opened and there was a rumble of male voices and the clink of glasses. No one came to fetch her.

 

‘Now Juno,’ she said. ‘You must keep very quiet and do exactly what I tell you to do.’

 

Juno nodded. Hannalore laid her down on the narrow bed and tucked her in. She closed the door quietly and crept down the long hallway. She stayed outside the parlour door, ready with excuses if Lena suddenly appeared. She could hear Doctor Graham’s voice clearly. He apologised for being late but he had been tied up for hours with an old man with pneumonia. He was trying to die but his family would not let him go. Such a scene of resistance, it was like a Greek play. Yes another wee drop would go down well. Cursed fog is coming down again. Who’d be a country doctor?

 

Hannalore had trouble hearing Mr Cooper’s reply. He mumbled something about time moving on and the necessity for haste. She heard the settle creak and the shuffling of boots. She knocked on the door and Lena opened it.

 

‘Come in,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘Graham, this is my daughter Hannalore.’

 

‘My God,’ said the Doctor. ‘She is Eleanor reincarnated.’

 

‘Can we move on?’ asked Mr Cooper. ‘Hannalore, please fetch your sister.’

 

But when Hannalore opened her bedroom door she knew at once that Juno was not there in spite of her crude attempt to roll up the blanket to look like a sleeping body.

 

She ran back to the parlour and told them what she had found.

 

Mr Cooper said, damn and blast, then apologised for swearing in front of the ladies.

 

‘Someone must have frightened her off,’ said Lena.

 

‘Ah ha! Very interesting,’ said the Doctor. ‘She is behaving exactly to type.’

 

Lena said that she hoped that Hannalore had not told the poor child what was about to happen to her. 

 

Dr Graham held out his glass for another nip of whiskey. He had eaten two sponge fingers one after the other and his dark moustache was dusted with icing sugar. ‘Mental defectives relate to stress like an animal. She will burrow down somewhere like a fox on the run.’

 

Something broke within Hannalore. She tried to control it but it was too late. She began to sob. Tears ran down her cheeks.

 

There was an embarrassed silence. No one comforted her. After a minute, Dr Graham consulted his pocket watch and announced that as far as he was concerned, his working day was over. He must go now and attend to the welfare of his horse.   

 

Mr Cooper pleaded with him to wait a little longer. ‘The situation is urgent. Soon it will be too late to intervene.’

 

‘Thanks for the cakes Lena,’ said Doctor Graham. ‘Delicious as always.’

 

Hannalore managed to control her weeping. It helped to see how ridiculous the doctor looked with his whitened moustache imitating fake snow on a Christmas tree. If Juno were here she would come right out and say so.

 

Juno. Her unpredictable behaviour was always a problem but it belonged to her, it was a vital part of her. Hannalore could not imagine any other state of being. 

 

The doctor, a little unsteady on his feet from copious nips of whiskey took Hannalore’s hand in his and tried to bestow a kiss upon it.

 

Lena gasped. Hannalore pulled her hand away. Mr Cooper said steady on old boy, no need for that sort of thing.

 

Lena marched Hannalore out of the parlour and into the kitchen. She filled a basin with boiling water and threw in the supper plates. Hannalore stood there with a tea towel in her hand watching Lena take out her anger on the kitchen utensils. 

 

Lena told Hannalore to sort out the cutlery correctly. It was quite annoying to have to fish around in that dark drawer beneath the table when she was cooking.

 

Hannalore asked Lena if she had offended her in some way.

 

‘No,’ said Lena. ‘Not you.’

 

Hannalore did not ask any further questions. She dried the dishes as carefully as she could and hung the tea towel neatly on the rack in front of the range. Lena sat at the table and rolled up a smoke.

 

Hannalore looked out of the kitchen window and saw the fog wrapping a shroud around the trees and the outbuildings behind the shop. She decided to look for Juno there first. She could not bear the thought of Juno sleeping like a wild thing with only her night fears to keep her company.

 

‘Come here and sit beside me,’ said Lena.

 

Hannalore reluctantly obeyed.

 

‘Now listen carefully,’ said Lena. ‘I was against the baby at first but after hearing Doctor Graham carrying on I am having second thoughts.’ She drew a mouthful of smoke down into her lungs. She exhaled then lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I think I know where she might be.’

 

‘Where?’

 

‘Sshh, keep your voice down. If your father gets wind of my betrayal, I’m dead meat.’

 

She stubbed out her cigarette and gave Hannalore detailed instructions. ‘Go out the back door and around the side of the house. Make your way to the street and turn right. Walk for about five minutes, briskly. You will end up at the bake house. There will be a yeasty smell of bread rising to guide you. Next to the bake house is a narrow right-of-way. Follow the corrugated iron fence to the back of the bake house. You will see a run down building that houses a blacksmith. Wilfred Cattermole usually stables his horses there and sleeps in the bunk house provided for travellers.’

 

Hannalore did not ask Lena to repeat any of her instructions. She did not need to. Every word was burnt into her brain. Nor did she ask Lena how she knew that she might find Juno there.

 

‘Now that I have said my piece,’ said Lena, ‘I wash my hands of you. This conversation never happened.’

 

Hannalore pulled a warm jumper and a knitted hat out of her pikau and slipped out of the back door. She followed Lena’s instructions by singing them softly to herself like an ancient navigational chant; follow the smell of hot bread, follow the corrugations of the dark tunnel, follow the sounds of horses snickering and stamping their hooves as the stranger approaches. 

 

The fog made it difficult to find the tunnel but once she had discovered the entry to it, she ran her left index finger along the side to get her bearings. A memory came to her of running alongside iron fences as a child holding a stick to the corrugations to make a pitter pitter noise. Perhaps it was this very same fence where she had made this music.

 

She turned a corner still hugging the iron wall. The courtyard was illuminated by a single lantern hung on the outside of a horse stall. She could hear Juno weeping before she saw her. The girl was lying down on the hay cradling the head of a fallen horse in her arms. Mr Cattermole was leaning against the back wall of the stall. He saw Hannalore approach and shook his head.

 

Juno raised her wet face to Hannalore. ‘It’s a mistake, a mistake…’

 

Mr Cattermole said that’s all he could get out of her. He did not want to upset her further by asking her what she meant.

 

Hannalore asked how long Ruby had been down.

 

‘Not long,’ said Mr Cattermole. ‘But she won’t be able to get up again. She’s dog tucker and she knows it.’ He wiped moisture from his eyes with a grubby rag.

 

Hannalore crouched down and lifted Ruby’s head from Juno’s encircling arms. ‘Leave her now. She’s drifting away.’

 

‘They came for me,’ said Juno, ‘but Ruby got in the way.’

 

The horse gave one last sigh and expired. Hannalore helped Juno to her feet.

 

Mr Cattermole told Juno not to blame herself. If anyone had done anything to hasten Ruby’s life it was him. He had pushed a tired old horse beyond her limit.

 

Jacka the eye dog appeared from nowhere. Mr Cattermole said that the dog had kept away while Ruby was dying. Pack instinct. But Jacka will miss Ruby as much as I will.

 

Mr Cattermole lifted Juno up into his arms and she put her wet cheek against his shoulder. They walked back towards Mr Cooper’s shop. Hannalore wanted to know how Juno had found her way to the stables. Mr Cattermole said that he had found her galloping along the road like a cheetah on the run. She had fought him off at first but had soon calmed down.

 

They crept through the back door as quietly as they could. Mr Cattermole lit the candle stub. Hannalore brushed and re-plaited Juno’s long hair. Mr Cattermole tactfully turned his back so that the young girl could retain her modesty while Hannalore helped her into her night attire.

 

He waited until the exhausted Juno fell asleep before he bid Hannalore good night. He closed the door behind him leaving her alone with a guttering candle and an unspoken plea for help that she had been too afraid to initiate.

 

Money. That was the key to Juno’s salvation. According to Lena, her father had paid Mr Cattermole to steal Hannalore and Juno away from the closed community. If she could acquire enough money perhaps Mr Cattermole could be persuaded to take them away again, somewhere far from here. 

 

If her father had been able to provide them with the sanctuary that she craved, she and Juno could have stayed in his house, helped him in the shop, made a life for themselves. But all he wanted was to obliterate the shame of Juno and what had happened to her.

 

For a brief moment she toyed with the idea of returning to the community. Everything was structured there, predictable, safe. Or had been until recently. She dismissed this idea as soon as it entered her head. Conceiving a child outside marriage was considered to be a great sin. Juno would be severely punished.

 

Hot wax drowned the last flicker of candle light. Hannalore drifted into an uneasy sleep and dreamed of breathing life into the body of a tiny child, who smiled at her revealing a perfect row of teeth and a quivering pink tongue; only we know what really happened when you clamped your ruby lips to mine…