Pack Up Your Troubles (44 page)
It wasn’t locked. Connie threw it open and jumped back, grabbing at her throat and stifling a scream of horror. The shock was immense. Even in the failing light she could see what it was straight away. A dull musty smell filled the air as Connie trembled uncontrollably. She was looking at the mummified remains of a man.
Kez was the only one who kept her cool. It was obvious that both Eugène and Roger were in love with Connie. ‘Pack it in you two,’ she snapped. ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’ The two men settled into an uneasy truce.
Isaac came back a few minutes later. ‘I’ve found a way to the roof and there is an attic all right.’
‘Is she there?’ Roger asked anxiously.
Isaac shrugged. ‘I’ll need something to open the window,’ he said.
Roger was feeling very uncomfortable. Breaking and entering wasn’t his style.
Connie heard the key turn in the lock and Stan tried to push the door open but the letter opener did its work. She heard him curse her through the wood. Connie looked around wildly. Where was the best place to be? If she was to get up the stairs without him seeing her, she had to be close enough to make a dash for it and yet hidden enough so that he wouldn’t spot her straight away.
He came back a few minutes later and took the wood axe to the door. Connie’s heart was in her mouth. This was it. This was the moment when she started to fight for her life. It didn’t take long to break the latch and the door flew open. Stan swung a torch around the cellar.
‘I’m coming to get you,’ he called as if he was playing a child’s game. Connie shuddered as he began walking down the stairs. ‘Ready or not, I’m coming.’
She waited until he had entered the cellar and was walking towards the desk then scrambling on all fours she came out from under the stairs, stood up and made her dash. She was halfway there when Stan roared in anger. Panic constricted Connie’s throat. The man of her childhood nightmares was right behind her and her legs couldn’t move fast enough.
Connie’s heart was thumping wildly and she could hardly breathe for the panic that seized her at that moment, but somehow she managed to reach the stairs and began the race for the top. Terror was making her whimper now. Her eyes were wide with fear, her head hurt and she had developed a discernible tic on her cheek. Her only thought was getting through the door, a mere eight steps away, and out of the house. She could almost feel Stan’s breath, cold on her neck but that was imagination because all at once something stopped her in her tracks and she couldn’t move her foot anymore. Connie looked down and realised Stan had reached through the open stair and grabbed her ankle.
Connie snatched at the rails and clung on for dear life as Stan’s fingers dug deep into her flesh. Then he shook her ankle like a dog. It was becoming impossible to stay on the stairs. She could feel her body titling towards the floor again and the rickety frame wobbled alarmingly. As the pair of them wrestled to gain mastery over her leg, Connie found her voice again and screamed. Stan uttered not a sound.
Try as she may, Connie couldn’t get away from him and she knew if she let go of the handrail there was every possibility she would be pulled off balance and catapulted over the side and onto the flagstone floor beneath. If the fall didn’t kill her the madman holding her heel most certainly would. Whatever happened, she couldn’t let Stan grab her other leg either.
Connie lay on the stair face down and tried to press Stan’s fingers against the wood. Her assailant had his mouth open and he had bared his teeth. The fear of being bitten gave Connie renewed strength. Her fingers found the umbrella and she poked it through the stairs, managing to jab him in the neck. It only took a second, but Stan let go of her foot and grabbed the umbrella.
Connie didn’t wait. She gathered herself together and made another dash for the top. Three rungs from the door she felt Stan’s weight on the bottom of the staircase. He was right behind her.
Connie burst into the kitchen and grabbed the cellar door. Splintered and broken as it was, she had to get it shut before Stan came into the room. She almost made it … almost … A black leather glove had grabbed the edge of the door and Connie couldn’t get it shut. She had all her weight against it but Stan was too strong for her. She could feel her foot slipping on the linoleum so she turned her body until she had her back to the door. That’s when Auntie Aggie laid into her with a broom.
‘You wicked, wicked girl. You hurt my boy with your wicked lies.’
‘No, no …’
‘You’re evil, Connie Dixon. Evil.’
It was hard for Connie to fight her off but somehow she managed to keep herself on the other side of the door and away from Stan.
‘Connie …’
Connie held her breath as she thought she heard someone in the distance calling her name. Auntie Aggie stopped hitting her and turned around.
‘Connie, are you there?’
It was Roger. Thank God. Thank God … Roger …
‘Roger,’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Oh Roger, help me. I’m in the kitchen, help me …’
‘We’re coming, Connie, we’re coming.’ That was Kez and she heard them banging on the front door. A wave of relief flooded over her but from behind the door, Stan found new strength. He had become Samson. Connie slid a little further forward. Whatever she did she couldn’t let Stan win now. If he got into the kitchen, Connie knew she’d be dead long before Roger and Kez managed to get to her.
‘Mum,’ Stan shouted. ‘Stop her. Stop her.’
But Aunt Aggie had dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and was sobbing.
Far away down the hall, Connie could hear thumping and banging and the sound of splintering wood. It was becoming harder to stay upright. If Connie’s feet went any further forward, she would land on her bottom, and yet if she relaxed her grip so that she could reposition herself, Stan would come in. Connie could hear Stan’s laboured breathing right behind her ear.
‘Roger!’ She was almost hysterical now but then she heard a noise coming from upstairs.
‘Connie!’ It was Eugène. Connie almost lost it then. She was sobbing and her panicking heart was pounding so hard in her chest she thought she would die anyway.
‘Help me … I can’t,’ she choked, ‘I can’t …’
Someone was thundering down the stairs. For a split second, Stan stopped pushing and Connie snatched at a heavy saucepan right by her hand on the shelf. She missed and the lid clattered to the floor.
‘Mum!’ cried Stan.
Out of the corner of her eye, Connie saw Aunt Aggie jump to her feet and with a primeval scream, swing the broom one more time. Behind the door Stan used all his strength to push it open and Connie’s feet began sliding at an alarming rate across the floor. At the last second, Connie ducked and the emerging broom hit Stan full in the face. There was a sickening crunch and Stan roared. At the same time, Connie was jolted onto her bottom as the remains of the cellar door slammed shut again. Eugène and Isaac burst into the kitchen just as on the other side of the door, Stan let out one last frantic cry as he overbalanced and then they heard a series of loud cracks as the stairs came away from the wall. The pounding at the front door stopped and Connie heard more footsteps coming towards them. Roger and Kez stumbled into the kitchen but by then Connie was already in Eugène’s arms.
‘Oh God, what have I done?’ Aggie dropped the broom and ran to the cellar door. She opened it and Roger only just grabbed her in time to stop her falling headlong on top of her son. ‘Stan,’ she shrieked. ‘Stan. Can you hear me, son?’
But Stan didn’t answer.
Connie leaned back in the passenger seat of the car and smoothed her bump. It was the summer of 1951 and she was expecting her first baby. Hot and swamped under the yards of material in her maternity dress, the novelty of being pregnant was beginning to wear off. She was excited about being a mother and couldn’t wait to meet the first of her husband’s promised fourteen kids. The nursery had been decorated, the cot was in place and the pram would arrive as soon as the baby was born. Any sooner and everybody deemed it bad luck.
Eva climbed into the driver’s seat. She and Connie had just had tea with Sally Burndell and her husband Terry. Their friend stood in the doorway of their sweet and tobacconist shop to wave goodbye.
‘She’s bigger than you,’ Eva remarked out of the corner of her mouth.
‘She’s only got a couple of weeks to go,’ Connie reminded her.
‘Well, all I can say,’ Eva smiled, ‘is that it’s a good job you’re not driving, Connie Étienne. I don’t think you’d get your arms up to the steering wheel.’
Connie waved to Sally and then stuck her tongue out at Eva.
They were on their way to the church at Patching with the hope that this trip would clear up the rift between their two families once and for all.
The past few years had been momentous to say the least. Aunt Aggie and Stan were put on trial for concealing the body of Leslie Saul, their husband and father, and for Connie’s false imprisonment. At first Connie and the family were upset that the pair were not tried for Leslie Saul’s murder, but the pathologist couldn’t find an actual cause of death. The body had obviously been in the cellar for some time and the dry cold and free movement of air meant that rather than decompose, Leslie had been preserved in a mummified state. Stan had broken his back in the fall from the stairs and would be confined to his bed for the rest of his life. At least Connie, Kez and Gwen had the satisfaction of knowing he no longer posed a threat to children and Mandy had been spared a police interrogation. Over time, Connie and Kez compared notes and found a great deal of help and consolation in talking to each other about their experiences.
‘I was dead lucky to find a man like Simeon,’ said Kez. ‘I told him what happened and he still wanted to marry me. Any other gypsy girl in my position would have been mullered.’
Largely through Eva’s efforts, and a campaign in the local paper, Connie had been vindicated. Of course, Matron never apologised for believing the letters she’d received nor for judging Connie so harshly but it was enough that Connie was allowed to continue her nursing. Several other people came forward as victims of Aggie’s poison pen but because she was already in prison on a much greater charge, no case was brought against her. Connie and Eva had passed their exams at the end of 1949 under the umbrella of the new National Health Service but Connie didn’t stay long at her post. She had married in the summer of 1950. Eva had to wait another year until her fiancé would be a fully qualified doctor and then they could marry, but at last her wedding plans were underway.
Connie continued to visit Kez and the family and it was during a meal with them that Peninnah began her family discourse again. Connie had heard it many times before but this time something resonated with her. ‘Little Mac took the tattooed lady’s mare,’ Pen recited, ‘and Abe gave Little Mac a piece of bread and a quart of ale but there was none for ’e, so he died …’
‘Can you say that again?’ said Connie. Pen went back a further couple of generations and returned to the same sentence. Connie could hardly breathe. Didn’t Cissy Maxwell once tell her something about a Little Mac in her family? How did the same name belong in both stories? Or was it only one story? As far as she knew, Cissy and the gypsies weren’t related and yet this incident had apparently had a big influence on them both. But who was the tattooed lady? And more to the point, who was Little Mac? She and Eva had gone back to Cissy who had filled in some of the blanks. She had explained to them that Little Mac was Tobias Maxwell who had lived in the last century. A small, vain and greedy man, he had been ostracised by his community but even though they’d probed her with questions, Cissy didn’t know why. Cissy had dug out some old photographs and Connie and Eva were surprised to see that in quite a few of them, both of their families were together. They found pictures of the Maxwells and the Dixons on picnics, on an outing somewhere in a large farm cart together and as part of a country dancing troupe.
‘They were all friends back then,’ said Eva. ‘So what happened?’
Cissy shrugged. ‘I was only a little girl,’ she said, ‘but I think it was something to do with Tobias and money.’
‘Do you know any more?’ Connie wanted to know.
Cissy shook her head. ‘Abraham Dixon was a stonemason. It could have been something to do with that.’
Intrigued, Connie and Eva agreed to spend an afternoon in Patching looking for any trace of her ancestor. His cottage was still standing but his workshop was long gone. The lady who lived there had never even heard of Abraham.
‘You should find Ernie Sinclair,’ she said. ‘He’s lived in this village for nigh on sixty years. He usually sits on the bench outside the pub.’
‘You mean Mr Sinclair the road sweeper?’ asked Connie. She remembered him from her childhood when he’d walked through the streets with a wheelbarrow, a long-handled brush and a spade. The streets of Patching were spotless.
Eventually they came across him and were pleased to find he remembered Connie and her family.
‘I remember you when you were knee high to a grasshopper,’ he smiled. His gums glistened in the sunshine. ‘And now you’re having one of your own?’
Connie told him about being a nurse and about her marriage to the most wonderful man in the world.
‘I’m glad,’ said Mr Sinclair. ‘Your father would have been very proud of you. He was a good man, Jim Dixon.’
‘We wanted to ask you about our families,’ said Connie.
Ernie Sinclair remembered the story well. So well that as he told them, he could hardly contain his amusement. ‘Abe agreed to carve old Mrs Maxwell’s headstone,’ he said.
‘That would be Tobias Maxwell’s mother?’
The old man nodded.
‘So was it a case of taking the money but not doing the work?’ asked Connie.
‘Oh no,’ chuckled the old man. ‘He done the work all right. It still be up the church yard. Caused a right stink I tell ye. I remembers my granfer telling me, nobody spoke to him after that.’
The two women found their way to the church and spent the afternoon walking around looking at the inscriptions on the headstones. Some of them were almost impossible to read but as far as they could see, Maude Maxwell’s stone wasn’t there. Just as they were about to leave, they came across the grave-digger. ‘The old Maxwell stone? It’s up by the yew tree,’ he said. ‘They turned it round so no one could see.’