The Devil's Feather Read online

  Her condition deteriorated markedly over Christmas and the New Year. On four occasions in January she let herself in through unlocked back doors while householders were watching television in the evening, and tiptoed upstairs. She used their towels and toothbrushes to wash her face and hands and clean her teeth at their basins, then climbed, fully clothed, between their sheets and fell asleep. She reacted aggressively when she was discovered, but was quickly calmed by a cup of tea and a biscuit.

  Still claiming to be unaware that Lily was seriously ill-despite her dishevelled appearance and bizarre behaviour-the four householders drove her home each time and took it no further. They described her as rude and unpleasant, and said she insisted on being returned immediately to Barton House, claiming the only help she wanted was Jess Derbyshire’s or Dr. Peter Coleman’s. She dismissed her rescuers as soon she reached her back door.

  The incidents were discussed in the village, but the consensus appeared to be that it was better not to interfere. If they didn’t get the rough edge of Lily’s tongue, they’d certainly get the rough edge of Jess Derbyshire’s. Had Peter Coleman been around, they’d have raised the matter with him, but he was on holiday and wasn’t expected back till the end of January. A message was left on Madeleine’s answerphone, but she, too, was away, and no one felt confident about suggesting to Peter Coleman’s locum that Mrs. Wright was behaving oddly.

  Afterwards, the finger of blame was pointed firmly at Jess. How could Winterbourne Barton know that she hadn’t been near Lily since November? She’d fawned over the woman for years, knew better than anyone that Lily’s mental condition was fragile, then abandoned her without a word when the consequences of Alzheimer’s became too demanding. Why hadn’t she told anyone?

  Yet it was Jess who saved Lily’s life. At eleven o’clock at night on the third Friday in January, she found her barely alive and dressed only in a nightdress beside the Barton House fishpond. Not strong enough to carry Lily to the back door, and with no mobile signal to call for help, she reversed her Land Rover across the lawn, hoisted Lily into the back and drove her back to Barton Farm, where she phoned for a doctor.

  There were no plaudits, only more suspicion. What was Jess doing in Lily’s garden at that time of night? Why didn’t she use the landline in the house? Why had she driven Lily to Barton Farm instead of the hospital? Why call in social services so quickly? Why accuse everyone else of neglect when it was she who’d neglected Lily the most shamefully? Conspiracy theories abounded, particularly when it became clear that Lily had secretly reassigned enduring power of attorney from her daughter to her solicitor. Jess was assumed to have been behind the decision.

  In Madeleine’s absence, Lily was sectioned for her own safety and placed in care over the weekend while efforts were made to contact her solicitor. Madeleine rushed down the following week on her return from holiday, only to discover that her mother’s fate was out of her hands. Lily’s solicitor had wasted no time in moving her to an expensive nursing-home, nor of announcing his intention to sell Barton House and the family heirlooms to cover the fees.

  Depending on whom you believed, Madeleine was either a cold-hearted bitch who wanted her mother dead in order to inherit the house before it was sacrificed to Lily’s care, or she was so uninformed about her mother’s condition and precarious financial position that Lily’s catastrophic decline and subsequent revelations of poverty came as a terrible shock. Being cynical, I found such ignorance hard to accept, although Winterbourne Barton pointed to the weekly allowance that Lily had been paying her daughter since she turned eighteen. Why go on with it if she hadn’t wanted Madeleine to believe she was better off than she was?

  In Lily’s case, poverty was relative to the sale of Barton House. While it remained in her estate, her income was insufficient to meet her needs. Sold, it would realize upwards of £1.5 million. Not unreasonably, Madeleine resisted the sale. Her mother could die tomorrow or live for another twenty years, but to sell the family home on a gamble of twenty years was precipitate. A battle for control ensued between Madeleine and Lily’s solicitor. The solicitor offered a compromise. If the house was let, and all the income from the remaining stocks and shares was diverted to Lily’s care, then he would postpone the sale.

  Which was where I came in as Barton House’s first tenant. I knew nothing of its recent history as I stooped to wash my hands, and if I had I wouldn’t have stayed. It was a place of anguish…

  Extracts from notes, filed as “CB16-19/05/04”

  …I remember a woman in Freetown who roamed the street outside my compound and shouted at herself. I thought she was deaf as well as deranged until I was told that she’d hidden under her house when a band of rebels came to her village. The dozen fighters massacred everyone, including the woman’s husband and children, and only left when the smell of the rotting bodies became unbearable. The mother’s response was to berate herself publicly for being alive.

  …I often think of her. The length of time she lay under her house-motionless, terrified, silent-was about as long as I spent in the Baghdad cellar. Did she talk to herself to stay sane? And, if so, what about? Did she argue the merits of saving her own skin against leaving her children to perish? Is that when her loop of madness began?

  …There’s a scream inside my head that won’t go away. Perhaps it’s in everyone’s head. Perhaps it’s what made the woman in Freetown shout. Why does no one care about me?

  6

  THE HALL WAS dark and cool after the brilliant sunshine outside. Doors on either side opened into rooms that didn’t appear to lead anywhere, and a branching staircase rose in front of me. It was only when I heard a murmur of voices coming from somewhere to my right that I noticed a green baize door at the back. It was operated by a self-closing hinge and when I eased it open six inches, I could make out words.

  “I still don’t understand why I had to park beside your filthy old jalopy,” said the man’s voice. “Don’t you think it’s a little over the top to steal her keys and block her exit?” He spoke in a light, bantering tone as if teasing this woman-child came naturally to him.

  Jess, by contrast, sounded irritated, as if his patronizing approach got on her nerves. “She might have had a spare set in the car.”

  “In which case she’d have left while you were phoning me from the farm,” he pointed out reasonably.

  “Then it’s a pity I can’t see into the future,” she snapped. “If I could, I wouldn’t have bothered you at all. I was afraid she’d invoke the dangerous dogs’ act if I didn’t make a pretence of caring.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know…she has keys to the house so I assume she’s a tenant. I thought it was the dogs that frightened her, which is why I drove them home.” She gave a brief account of what had happened.

  “Did you consider that she might be to allergic to fur?”

  “Of course, but I asked her if it was anything to do with the dogs, and she said no.”

  “OK.” He must have been sitting down because I heard the sound of chair legs scraping across the floor as he prepared to stand up. “I’ll go and talk to her.”

  “No!” said Jess sharply. “She needs to come in of her own accord.”

  Peter Coleman sounded amused. “What’s the point of my being here if you’ve already decided on the treatment?”

  “I’ve already told you. I didn’t want to be sued.”

  “Well, I can’t sit around all afternoon,” he said with a yawn. “I’m on the golf course in half an hour.”

  “There are other sorts of treatment besides pills, you know. You wouldn’t think twice about cancelling your golf if one of your old ladies wanted a chat. It might tarnish your halo.”

  Surprisingly, Peter laughed. “My God! Do you ever give up? It’s a shame no one’s invented a cure for grudge-bearing…I’d have put you on a drip and pumped you full of it twelve years ago. Just for the record-again-you hadn’t slept in five days and your heart was going like a hammer.” He
paused as if waiting for a response. “You know the sedatives worked, Jess. They gave you some respite, which was what your body needed.”

  “They turned me into a zombie.”

  “For all of a week, while your grandmother shouldered the burden. Don’t you think I’d have given you a paper bag myself if that was all you needed?”

  Jess didn’t answer.

  “So what’s your prescription for the woman out there?”

  “Slowlee, slowlee, catchee monkee.”

  “What about my golf? I do have a life outside medicine, you know.”

  But Jess wasn’t interested, and a silence fell between them. I suppose I should have announced myself but it was a situation that was doomed to embarrassment whatever I did. Half of me hoped they’d up stumps and leave if I delayed long enough; the other half recognized that the longer the delay the more difficult the explanations. What was I going to say, anyway? That I was leaving? That I wasn’t leaving? And what name was I going to use in front of the doctor? If he applied for Marianne Curran’s medical records, they would show me as sixty-three.

  I think it was standing in Lily’s hall during that long hiatus that persuaded me to stay. It was impossible to ignore the tattiness-in one place three feet of wallpaper near the ceiling had come away from the Blu-Tack blobs that had been holding it in place-but in an odd sort of way it appealed to me. Apart from my stint in Iraq I’d spent the last two years in a minimalist flat in a high-rise block in Singapore, where space was limited, cream was the predominant colour and none of the furniture reached above my knees. It was hideously impractical-red wine was a nightmare-and hideously uncomfortable-I couldn’t move without barking my shins-but everyone who saw it had commented on the designer’s flair.

  This was the opposite. Spacious, lofty and red-wine-friendly. The faded wallpaper in blues and greens, of Japanese pagodas, feathery willow fronds and exotic pheasant-style birds, was a good fifty years old, while the furniture, big and lumbering, was utilitarian Victorian. There was a battered chest of drawers under one branch of the stairs, a leather grandfather chair, sprouting horsehair from its seat, under the other, and an ugly oak table in the middle carrying a plastic pot plant. Perhaps the threadbare Axminster rug underneath it added a sense of recognition, because it reminded me of the one we’d had in Zimbabwe. My grandfather had imported it with great ceremony and then refused to allow anyone to walk on it.

  The doctor’s voice broke the silence. “Does it never occur to you that you might be wrong?”

  “About what?”

  “At the moment, that woman out there. You’re assuming she can pull herself together enough to come inside…but supposing she can’t?” He paused to let her answer, but went on when she didn’t. “Perhaps her fears are real, perhaps she’s frightened of something tangible? How much do you know about her?”

  “Nothing, except that she talks with a South African accent and knows the paper bag trick.”

  “Ah!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It explains why you think she’s going to come in. Paper bags are to you what leeches were to sixteenth-century quacks…the cure to everything.”

  “They’re a damn sight less harmful than Valium.”

  Peter gave a snort of derision. “It wasn’t paper bags that cured you, Jess, it was getting to grips with running the farm. You conquered a steep learning curve through sheer bloody guts and an above-average intelligence. Show me the paper bag that taught you how to shove your hand up a cow’s backside to help deliver a calf.” He paused.

  “What would you know about it?” I heard a door crash open angrily. “I’m going out to see if she’s still in her car.”

  “Good idea.” There was another long silence.

  I looked towards the front door, expecting Jess to come in that way, but I heard her voice in the kitchen again. “She’s not there. She must be in the house.”

  “So what happens now?”

  For the first time she sounded unsure of herself. “Perhaps we should make a noise so she knows where we are. If we go to meet her she might take fright.”

  “All right,” he teased. “What do you want me to do? Sing? Tap dance? Bang some saucepans together?”

  “Don’t be an idiot.”

  His tone softened as if he was smiling at her. “If she’s made it to the front door, I think you can safely welcome her in. I’ll put the kettle on while you’re doing it. Let’s pray she’s brought some tea bags with her. If Madeleine left any of Lily’s behind they’ll have grown mould by now. Go on, do your stuff. You never know, she might surprise you.”

  It was only afterwards, when I found a mirror in the bathroom, that I realized how dreadful I looked. My T-shirt and long flimsy skirt did me no favours at all, clinging as they did to every angular bone and showing how skinny I was. My eyes had dark rings round them, my hair looked as if it had been doused in Brylcreem and my face was covered in blotches. I’d have taken myself for a depressed mental case, so it wasn’t surprising that Jess and Peter both showed concern when they saw me.

  I must have looked angry, too, because Jess’s first instinct was to apologize when she came through the baize door and found me beside the table in the hall. “I’m sorry,” she said after a small hesitation. “I just wanted to let you know that we’re in the kitchen.”

  “Right.”

  She nodded to the mobile, which I’d retrieved from the Mini’s bonnet and still held in my hand. “If you’re looking for a signal there isn’t one, I’m afraid. It’s the same in my house. I can get one in the attic but that’s about it. We’re too low down the valley.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “The landline works if that’s any help. I’ve checked it. There’s a cordless phone beside the fridge.”

  “Right.”

  My one-word answers seemed to disconcert her and she stared at the floor. Not knowing her, I assumed she expected gratitude for her intervention, and it was only later that I discovered how much she relied on other people to make conversation. Peter blamed her introverted nature, but I always felt there was a level of arrogance in it as well. She was above the common courtesy of small talk, and it was left to others to struggle with her silences.

  We were rescued by Peter, who appeared out of the corridor behind her and advanced on me with a smile on his face. “Hi, there,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I’m Peter Coleman. Welcome to Winterbourne Barton. I gather Jess’s dogs gave you a bit of a fright.”

  I tried to step back but his fingers had already swallowed mine. “Marianne Curran,” I said, eyes widening as my skin crawled under his.

  He released me immediately and stood aside to gesture me towards the corridor. “I can’t get it into Jess’s head that the average person doesn’t appreciate being slobbered over by those ugly great brutes. Their bark’s a lot worse than their bite, of course-rather like their mistress.” His eyes lit with ironic humour as he ignored Jess’s glare and shepherded me towards the kitchen. “How far have you driven? If you’ve come from London, you must be exhausted…”

  He sat me at the table and kept up an innocuous monologue until I relaxed enough to answer, although I was guarded in what I said, giving half truths rather than outright lies. I told him I’d been born and brought up on a farm in Zimbabwe, that I’d fled with my parents to London when our neighbour was murdered in a racist attack and that I’d rented Barton House for six months to write a book. I expected to be quizzed on details but Peter appeared entirely indifferent to what type of book I was planning or whether I’d written one before. Nor did he visit the reasons for my panic attack.

  Jess took no part in the conversation but stood by the door to the scullery, chewing at her bottom lip. She wouldn’t look at either of us and I did wonder if she had a soft spot for Peter and was angry that he was giving his attention to me. It made for an uncomfortable atmosphere and I wished the pair of them would go. I’d like to have told Jess she had nothing to worry about-a tactile doctor with perc
eptive eyes was of no interest to me at all-but I didn’t, of course.

  Instead, I searched for a form of dismissal that wouldn’t sound too rude when Peter said in a warning tone: “Don’t even think about leaving, Jess. You’re the only person here who knows how to light the Aga.”

  Her hand was on the doorknob. “I thought it’d be better if I came back later.”

  He was watching me as he spoke. “I’m the one who has to go,” he said, rising to his feet. “I have a surgery at four-thirty and I haven’t had anything to eat yet.” He took out his wallet and removed a card. “I’m part of a rural practice that covers a wide area,” he told me, placing the card on the table. “There are three practitioners and our main clinic’s about eight miles away. Jess can give you directions. But you’ll have to take out a temporary registration to use it”-he held my gaze for a moment-“and that means you’ll need an NHS number or some proof of identity.”

  I ran my tongue nervously across my lips.

  “The alternative is to call me on my private line”-he tapped the card-“this one. I live five minutes away at the western end of the village. If I’m at home, I’ll come out…if not the call will be diverted to the clinic. Just give your name and ask for me personally, and the receptionist will put you straight through.”

  Why was he making up excuses to go? It was only twenty minutes since he’d talked about playing golf. What had he guessed about me? What was he planning to do?