Water Gypsies (17 page)

‘Maryann – you came then.’ His voice hadn’t changed. Oh, heavens no, it hadn’t! Now it contained a humble, wheedling tone, but it was still the voice that had whispered to her through her bedroom door, had spat such vile words into her ear as he laid his weight on her, forcing, fouling her. In those seconds a flare of rage lit in her that had lain dormant all these years. She was suddenly possessed by it, shaking all over as if she was running a fever. Turning to Pastor Owen she lashed him with it.

‘What the hell d’you think you’re playing at bringing
him
here? How
dare
you deceive me into coming here to meet … this?’ She could only finish the sentence with a gesture of revolt, slapping her hands down on the table. ‘What d’you want from me? You’re mad! You’ve no idea what he’s like – what he’s done…’

Pastor James held his hands out as if he thought he was Jesus calming the storm.

‘Mrs Bartholomew – please. I beg you. Don’t reject this man. He knows he has done terrible things. He’s full of remorse for his past sins. He has told me of them and he needs to express his sorrow. To repent and begin afresh.’

‘Maryann – please.’ Norman Griffin’s voice came out brokenly, hoarse with contrition. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s been like all these years living with this.’ He pointed at himself, at his scarred face. ‘Like a leper – the sign of my guilt. I need to know forgiveness. To be able to live at peace with myself.’

Maryann looked from one to the other, having to grope for words. ‘To live at peace?’ In order to speak normally at all, instead of raging or screaming which her whole being felt tuned to do, she had to lower her voice to a snarl. ‘You don’t deserve to live at all. Yes, you’re guilty all right.’ Again she turned on Pastor Owen. ‘I suppose you think you know about him. I s’pose he’s told you some soft soap about a few little pinches and smacks, about his wicked, ungrateful stepchildren? You think a few smacks would drive a child to do
that?’
She pointed at Norman’s face. ‘D’you want to hear what he did? What he really did? You poor, stupid, little man – you really think you’re doing something grand, saving his soul, don’t you? Well, let me tell you – you’ve picked on the one person on this earth who doesn’t have one.’

‘Please – let me say I’m sorry. I want to make amends for what I’ve done.’ Norman Griffin started to move round the table and Maryann backed away from him.

‘Don’t come near me!’ she shrieked, losing control of herself. ‘You make my flesh creep. You’re vile and disgusting. Keep him away from me!’

To her surprise, Norman stopped, standing still, lowering his head. For a moment she was at a loss.

‘No deed is beyond our Saviour’s forgiveness,’ Pastor Owen pleaded, holding his hands out towards her. He seemed really distressed, his eyes like huge pebbles under the light. ‘Forgive for your own sake, Maryann. If you can’t forgive, your soul is trapped in darkness. Forgiveness is new life.’

A sound broke through the room, something so foreign and unknown that Maryann at first could not recognize it. It came to her that it was a sob, that it had come from Norman Griffin, from beneath the lowered brim of his hat.

‘He lives day by day in hell.’ Pastor Owen declared emotionally. ‘And you too will live in hell if you don’t forgive him.’ He went to Maryann and attempted to take her hand.

‘Don’t you touch me, you bloody nutcase!’ She backed away, tightly folding her arms. She’d had quite enough of Pastor James with his earnest Mancunian pleading. ‘What’s it to you? You don’t care about how I feel – you just want to be able to show off about how many souls you’ve “saved”.’

But she was deflated. The room felt very cold and she was suddenly full of doubt, seeing the scarred, broken figure with his head bowed, across the room. For those seconds, she was the one here who was made to seem cruel. But other pictures flashed into her mind, rescuing her: of Sal, her older sister, on the bed that day she’d found her lying in the dark, the blood still dripping from her wrists; of Margaret, dead-eyed in the asylum.

‘Can you find it in your heart to forgive him?’ Pastor James pressed her. ‘To free this troubled soul?’

Maryann looked across at the young man in his poor, sagging clothes and pitied him his naive ardour.

‘You’ve no idea, have you?’ She managed to speak more quietly now. ‘He can’t just change in one night. Not someone like him. It won’t just drop off him. If he lives in hell, it’s where he belongs. He put himself there – no one else did it.’

To Norman she said, ‘I don’t know what you want with me now. But whatever it is, you’re not getting it. I was the one who was never fooled by you, remember? I know you, and I know you don’t have a remorseful bone in your body.’

She moved towards the door. ‘I wouldn’t tangle with the likes of him,’ she told the young man. ‘He’s beyond redemption.’

As she turned to leave there came a sudden movement and she found the door pushed shut by Norman Griffin’s hand. He was upon her suddenly, and so close to her that she could feel his breath on her cheek and she recoiled, but he moved closer, forcing the door shut.

‘Don’t go – not yet,’ he entreated. The voice was soft, caressing. She couldn’t look at him. She kept her eyes down, fixed on his black boots, her own brown ones. ‘It’s all right, Maryann. Don’t worry. I can wait.’ And then he let her open the door.

She fled out through the chapel, to the dark street. It was difficult to hurry outside, even though her whole being cried run, run! The night fog swirled round her, seemingly full of threat, of unknown presences.

‘Turn right, and right!’ She was muttering feverishly to herself. It was hard to see where she was going, to hurry. ‘It’s not far. Keep going…’

Every so often she stopped, but there was silence as soon as her own footsteps were stilled. She knew really that Norman Griffin would not come after her. If he had run out of the chapel behind her, Pastor Owen would surely have followed as well. And knowing Norman Griffin as she did, she knew he was a man who would bide his time. After all, if all he’d wanted was to jump out on her, why go through all this rigmarole of repentance in order to see her? But even so every nerve in her body seem to jangle, her breath sobbing in her lungs as she scurried through the dark streets. Oh God, she knew she had seen him on the wharf all those months ago – and then someone else had said he was asking for her? She knew she had not imagined it – he was after her. What did he want with her?

Most of all, what she could not get out of her head were his final words, speaking in that remorseful, patient tone for the benefit of the young missionary:
Don’t worry. I can wait
.

Seventeen

By the time she arrived back at the boats, Maryann was in such a state she could hardly get the hatches of the
Theodore
open. Once she had managed to, she almost fell inside and slammed the doors shut again, panting so hard that she was sobbing.

Joel’s face appeared round the bed curtain. He’d been lying down but was not asleep and the light was still burning.

‘What’s got into you?’ It took him a moment to realize she was seriously frightened.

‘
He
was there!’ She spoke in a hoarse whisper, trying not to wake Joley and the twins. ‘Norman Griffin! That preacher’s a right stupid bugger.’

Joel gave her a look which said, ‘Well, I could have told you that.’ With trembling legs, Maryann climbed over the sleeping toddlers in their nest on the floor, where Jenny the tortoiseshell cat was curled beside them, and went to sit by Joel, shivering. She turned to look at Joley on the bed behind them.

‘He’s been sick a little while back,’ Joel told her.

‘Poor lamb.’ Frowning, her own preoccupations calmed for a moment she stroked his head. Beside it lay his precious tobacco tin of cigarette cards. ‘He doesn’t feel feverish. Maybe that’ll be all for tonight.’ She snuggled close to Joel and he put his arm round her.

‘What’s up with you then?’ He squeezed her tight, trying to still her shaking.

She felt jarred with shock and anger. Now she could let it out and tell him what happened, tears came as well.

‘Seeing him again was
horrible
,’ she wept. ‘His face is such a mess and there he was, pretending to be all sorry, as if he’s changed and I know he hasn’t. He’s got that Pastor Owen wrapped round his little finger – I bet he told him to come and find me. Oh, Joel, what does he want? When I was leaving he told me he could wait – as if he’s going to keep coming after us.’

‘Eh, there.’ Joel wrapped his arms round her, rocking her, her head pressed against his chest.

‘What can he do to us? He’s an old ’un, must be nigh on seventy, ent he? And we’re hardly ever up here in Birnigum. Don’t you worry about him – we’ll be loaded up and gone in the morning and he won’t know where to find us then, will he?’

‘I know.’ She looked up at him, tearful like a child.‘But I thought we were safe after all this time.’

Maryann could see Joel was right about the facts of the situation, at least. They’d be gone. What could Norman Griffin do to hurt them? All Joel said to comfort her was right and reasonable. But Joel did not know about Norman Griffin. Not really. She had never told him, fully, what her stepfather had done to Sal and to her. She felt she couldn’t speak of it to anyone, had never wanted Joel to know, and Joel had never asked. He didn’t truly understand the horror that Norman Griffin could arouse in her, the thoughts of him like tentacles forcing her back into the shame and fear of her childhood. He might travel with her every mile of the way, even though he was not physically present. Though externally calmer, she was left feeling completely churned up inside and knew she’d have trouble getting any sleep.

There was no room to move round the cabin, so she and Joel took it in turns to undress, standing in the tiny space, which was enough to put two feet down at the edge of the bed.

‘I’ll move Joley over now,’ Joel whispered.

Joley stirred as Joel set him down on the side bench, a coat bundled under his head. Maryann passed over the tin of cigarette cards. Spots, the other cat, had been asleep at the end and got up, rather disgruntled, then settled back at Joley’s feet.

‘Mom?’

‘I’m here, pet.’ Maryann peered round the curtain at him. ‘You awright Joley?’

‘I been sick,’ he murmured sleepily.

‘I know. Your dad said. How d’you feel now?’

‘Bit sick…’ But he was almost asleep again.

Maryann got out to let Joel settle on the far side of the bed, and kissed Joley’s cheek. She put the bucket in the corner by his head and made sure the torch was handy.

‘Sleep well, son.’ She blew out the light and climbed in beside Joel. ‘Maybe he’ll be all right by the morning.’

‘Hope so.’ Joel was almost asleep. It had been a long day. He kept himself awake long enough to wrap his arm round her, and his beard prickled her face with a kiss.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she just heard him say, before he was lost to sleep.

Maryann lay curled under Joel’s arm, her body bent to his shape. Usually, tucked in this warm proximity she fell asleep almost instantly, but tonight her mind was jangled, darting from one harsh thought to another. For once she didn’t mind if the children woke up, since she didn’t seem likely to get to sleep anyway. The scene in the chapel ran vividly in her mind’s eye. Pastor Owen’s pleading, rock-pool eyes. What a silly fool the man was! How he’d been taken in, thinking he could deal in forgiveness as easily as that. His naive ignorance, the glibness of his thinking, made her feel violently angry. But worst of all was the thought of that voice, Norman Griffin’s terrible face, his ruckled skin, the cold gaze of that one eye boring into her.
I can wait
. The words came whispering through her mind, over and over.

All she managed, for a short time, was a restless doze. She jerked awake later at the sound of a high, seagull wail and realized it was Ada. She didn’t need the light on to see the child, knowing her cry and where to find her, and she leaned over and brought her up into bed to suckle her. She still fed them herself from time to time, more for comfort than anything as they had long since eaten other food. She sat up, holding Ada’s slight form until she was sleeping again, then tucked her back in bed.

She had no idea how much later it was when Joley woke. Once again she was washing back and forth along the shoreline of sleep when his voice, a frantic ‘Mom!’ came out of the darkness.

‘You getting sick, Joley?’ With a pang she heard herself say ‘getting sick’ the way Nancy used to. Nance was always popping up, never far from her thoughts.

‘Yes!’ Joley wailed.

She was just in time with torch and bucket and Joley heaved until no more would come. Maryann perched on the bench beside him, wiping his forehead.

‘Don’t like it,’ he said miserably.

No – I know. Here – have a drink of water.’

She climbed to the door and let herself out quickly to empty the bucket. Joley lay limply down again.

‘Will I be sick more?’

‘Don’t know, bab. You might. Look, I’ll turn this light off and sit here with you for a bit, awright? Till you’re settled.’

Shivering, she reached for her cardigan at the end of the bed and pulled it round her. She already had socks on. The nights were very cold on the cut now once the heat from the range had died out. She sat in the dark, fiddling with the ends of her hair, enjoying the peace and quiet. She could hear Spots purring at Joley’s feet, Joel’s breathing, the light snuffles of the twins. Every so often she caught the lapping sound of the water against the wharf outside. Her hand gently stroked her son’s thick curly hair.
He’s such a little boy still, really
, she thought. As the oldest, and a boy, he spent a lot of time with Joel and was given the most responsibility. Joel was determined he was going to be an expert boatman. After all, there was Ezra coming up too, but now they knew there would be no more sons … She knew Joel tried to hide his grief over this. Touching Joley’s cheek, she thought about the hospital, how much she had ached for this cosiness – warm bodies to kiss and stroke, the breathing of loved ones around her at night. She must make the best of all they had now, she thought. She had six children to bring up, after all.