Devil's Day Read online

  Kat leaned closer, trying to imagine the photographs that would soon exist of her like that. The joy she would feel. The completeness.

  I had to remind myself sometimes how young Mam was when she had me. She would have been just nineteen, something that had always startled Kat. And it was planned? she’d asked me more than once. It was, of course. That’s how the Endlands had survived for so long, I told her. Planning. There were enough surprises in farming, we didn’t need to make any of our own.

  Mam might have been barely out of school, but in all the photographs she never looked as if she were new to adulthood. In the ones when I’d first been born, especially, there was a certainty in her happiness. This was her life and there would be nowhere else she would want to live and nothing else she would want to do, even though she had no farming in her blood. When Dadda met her, she was serving behind the bar in the pub by the auction market in Garstang. If she’d been able to settle here, then why not Kat? What was the difference? Grandma Alice was hardly what you’d call farm-bred, either. She’d been brought up in the village and worked in the weaving sheds at the mill for years before she married the Gaffer. Yet she became as inured to the Endlands as the rest of them and her former life was all but forgotten.

  It would be hard at first for Kat, no doubt, but the farm would eventually seem like home. And she’d appreciate the many helping hands when the baby came along.

  Laurel separated the last two pages, the cellophane crackling, and there was a picture of me and Mam when I was about three. Duffle-coated and wellied, I sat on her knee helping her bottle-feed a new-born runt lamb, as she grinned for the camera. Big eyes, smooth skin, clean teeth. She’d stayed so young, while Dadda and the rest of them had grown old.

  I felt Kat take hold of my hand under the table again. No matter how much she argued with her mother, she was still close to her, she still liked to lay her head on that blousy bosom, and it upset her to think that I’d never known Mam at all. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more affected by her absence. But it was hard to feel anything very much for someone I didn’t remember. I’d only just had my fourth birthday when she died and the things that little boy once felt have dispersed like steam.

  ‘Ah, now here he is,’ said Angela, propping up the album she had open so that everyone could see the photograph of the Gaffer.

  It had been taken during Lambing a couple of years before and had caught him studying the new-borns intently. The suit jacket that he wore around the farm—the one he’d been married in—was gone at the elbows, and on the back and shoulders it was so soiled with grease that it had an iridescent sheen to it, like a starling’s feathers.

  He had been a slight, bony-faced man, quite short too, with grey stubble like iron filings. His right ear was pierced with a thin hoop almost overgrown by the skin of his lobe. The closest he’d ever get to a halo, he always told me. Yet everything fell towards his eyes, which, even as he got older, stayed an almost unnatural intensity of blue. Something close to lapis lazuli.

  ‘Pretty owd bugger, weren’t he?’ said Angela.

  ‘Aye, and didn’t he know it?’ said Bill.

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Laurel.

  She was feigning innocence for Kat’s benefit—she didn’t want her to think ill of the man now that he was dead—but like the rest of us, like the whole valley, she’d heard the stories about the women who had fallen for those eyes of his when he was a young man.

  Even as a craggy old boozer, they still loved him. On Saturday nights at the Croppers’ Arms after he’d finished playing cards, the women from the abattoir would get him to sing all the Endlands songs and put money in the jukebox so that they could dance with him. He was their minstrel, their clown.

  ‘He were devoted to Alice,’ said Laurel. ‘They were married for thirty years.’

  ‘He were scared of her,’ said Bill. ‘That’s not the same thing.’

  ‘But they went through a lot together,’ said Laurel. ‘They both lost family in the Blizzard, you know, Katherine.’

  ‘Yes, so John told me,’ said Kat, giving me the slightest of glances. I’d told her that folk here had long memories and that yesterday was never quite detached from now. It might have come decades before, but the Blizzard still haunted the valley, especially down in the Endlands, especially at the Pentecosts’ farm.

  You see, because the Devil had disguised himself among the sheep, the Gaffer told me, we were the first to notice that there was anything wrong. The lambs that had grown strong and weighty on mosscrop over the summer began to die for no reason. The dogs went blind and their eyes teemed with white worms. The mushrooms that the farming families always collected from the Wood in autumn now brought on seizures and the Gaffer’s newly-wed sister, Emily, who had laughed the loudest when her father had spilled his port-wine, fell down in convulsions and swallowed her own tongue.

  Hers had been the first body the young priest was shown when he came rattling up to the Endlands on his bicycle, his accoutrements in the basket on the handlebars.

  He put on his stole and read the last rites and humoured the family’s talk about the Devil, though it came as no surprise to him that in a place like this the explanation for these occurrences was one of superstition rather than rationality. Yet, it was easy enough to see what had happened. The lambs had simply picked up some disease from the moors and passed it on to the dogs. And the mushrooms, well, these people had obviously mistaken one species for another—it was easily done, he understood—and fried up a pan of toxic gills and stalks by accident.

  But then the family’s hay barn caught fire and burned even as the rain poured. And he saw the bottles of blackberry wine drained overnight. And he saw how the meat in the larder was taken down to the bone before his eyes and the bones notched with teeth marks like those of a dog. For days, the priest was always a step behind as the Devil sprang from one thing to the next. When he was splashing the Dyers’ drooling bullock with holy water, the Owd Feller was already studding the Pentecosts’ ram with tumours; when he pressed his crucifix to the ram’s brow, the Devil had gone off to turn the milk that the Curwens’ infant son was suckling into blood.

  When the child died, the priest’s courage failed, and he left on his creaking Triumph as the Blizzard came sweeping into the village. The looms in the mill were silenced and the doors were closed, and the workers sent home early to their cottages. The upper floors of the terraces soon became too cold to use and so the families huddled in their front rooms instead. But the fires that they lit devoured the wood too quickly, as though the heat were being sucked up the chimney by something on the roof, and before long they were burning whatever they could lay their hands on. Grandma Alice, the Gaffer told me, had watched her father and her brothers breaking up every piece of furniture they owned, even the bed in which her mother had died, coughing up blood clots on to her pillow.

  Once the photograph albums had been put away, Kat seemed as though she was going to finally make the announcement about the imminent Pentecost baby. But the opportunity was lost when Laurel set down the bag she’d brought with her on the table and rustled open the paper.

  ‘You go first, Tom,’ she said. ‘I think that’s right, isn’t it? It’s been a while since we had soul’s cake. Not since poor Jim.’

  She smiled sympathetically at Angela and Dadda took out the square of sponge and put it on a plate. It was plain and slightly burned and smelled strongly of eggs. He broke off a piece and passed the plate to Angela, who did the same and handed it on to Grace. She let go of the locket and pulled a corner away, cupping her hand to catch the crumbs. There was enough for each of us, including Kat, who copied what the others had done and looked uncertainly around the table.

  ‘Do you want to say owt, Tom?’ said Bill, as he took the last piece and tipped the scraps into his palm.

  ‘I don’t think there is owt much to say, is there?’ said Dadda, and Laurel reached over and touched his hand and then everyone ate their cake in silence.<
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  I nodded to Kat and she put the piece she’d taken into her mouth, her eyes narrowing as she tried to chew it as politely as she could. I’d warned her it would be dry. It always was. We weren’t supposed to enjoy it as such. It was a confection of solemnity.

  The Gaffer once told me how it was when he was a child and someone died in the Endlands. The relatives of the deceased would blacken one of their mules from tail to lips with wet peat and send it wandering down the valley to let the other families know that death had paid a visit. When the mule was found, it was washed in the river and taken back to where it belonged. And with them they’d bring bread and meat and soul’s cake. In those days, the Gaffer said, the body was not considered unclean or frightening and before it went to the undertaker’s the loved one was laid out in the front room for touch and kisses. Yuck, says Adam. But think of it like this, I say: Death would have plenty of time with them. The least we could do was let them stay in the house with their family for a little while longer.

  Special candles, thick as leeks, were placed at the head and the feet, and the floor was strewn with salt and rosemary. And then the soul’s cake would be laid on the chest over the heart and the living would each take their share. Not a speck could be left, not hidden under shirt buttons or between the fingers of folded hands. It was the privilege of the dead to pass on with all their sins eaten away. The burden now rested with the living.

  Everyone began to reach across the table to Dadda and he smiled and thanked them and the conversation resumed.

  ‘Well, it’ll be good to have another singing voice tomorrow,’ Laurel said to Kat. ‘You’ll know the hymns, won’t you, being a vicar’s lass?’

  Kat tried to answer her and swallow at the same time but ended up choking.

  Laurel rubbed her back, then patted it more forcefully and after edging her chair away from the table Kat coughed up the sludge of the cake into her hands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Here,’ said Angela and handed her a tissue.

  Liz poured her some water from the jug on the table and held it out for her to take.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kat. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  Laurel smiled and rubbed her back again. ‘It’s all right, love,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about it. Did you feel sick or something?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Kat.

  ‘Perhaps it were what you had on the train?’ said Bill.

  ‘Perhaps you just need a few decent meals inside you,’ said Angela.

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Grace, opening and closing the locket.

  Everyone turned to her. It was the first time she’d spoken in an hour.

  ‘What then?’ said Liz.

  ‘It’s because she’s going to have a baby,’ said Grace.

  ∾

  ‘How did she know?’ said Kat, when everyone had gone and Dadda was back outside with the ram. ‘I thought you said you hadn’t told anybody?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you must have done,’ said Kat.

  ‘Perhaps Grace was just guessing,’ I said. ‘Because you were sick.’

  ‘I wasn’t sick,’ said Kat. ‘I was being polite. The cake was just so dry, I couldn’t swallow it. And it didn’t seem like she was guessing to me.’

  ‘I didn’t tell her,’ I said, when Kat scrutinised me again. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it? They were all happy for us.’

  ‘It just would have been nice if we’d been the ones to tell them though,’ said Kat.

  ‘I’m sure Grace didn’t mean to upset you,’ I said.

  ‘I know she didn’t,’ said Kat. ‘I just don’t understand how she knew.’

  ‘You said she wanted you to have a baby,’ I said. ‘Maybe it was just wishful thinking and she got it right?’

  ‘No,’ said Kat. ‘She knew.’

  ‘I thought you women were supposed to be intuitive?’ I said.

  Kat gave me a sarcastic look and drank the rest of her tea.

  ‘Still, she didn’t seem all that excited, did she?’ she said. ‘I can’t believe how different she is from the wedding.’

  ‘I think you caught her at her best that day,’ I said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She can be a bit of a handful,’ I said.

  ‘But I’m sure she doesn’t normally go around smashing things with a hammer, John.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I’m just saying that Liz struggles with her.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Kat. ‘I mean, look at her home life. It’s hardly very stable, is it? And she must be ever so lonely. Didn’t they ever want any more children, Liz and Jeff?’

  The intention had always been that Grace would grow up with a farmful of brothers and sisters but after she’d been born nothing would grow in Liz beyond the first trimester, apart from a little boy who’d come out with half a heart and lived no longer than a mayfly.

  Grace had only been eighteen months old at the time and so they’d never told her, of course. She didn’t need to know about any of that. But it meant that she’d grown up thinking that her parents had deliberately chosen for her to be unallied, unable to conspire with siblings, even in fun.

  ‘I think they tried,’ I said and Kat nodded and looked down at her stomach.

  ‘I don’t want him to be an only child,’ she said, smoothing her hand over her dress.

  ‘Kat,’ I said. ‘I thought we’d talked about that.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About calling it a him,’ I said. ‘We don’t know that yet.’

  ‘He is a living thing, John,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you were so superstitious.’

  ‘I just don’t want you to be upset if things don’t work out as you want them to,’ I said.

  ‘If we have a girl, you mean?’ she said.

  ‘No, you know what I mean, Kat,’ I said.

  ‘You shouldn’t say things like that,’ she said.

  ‘Now who’s being superstitious?’ I said.

  ‘He’s meant to be born,’ said Kat and pressed my hand to her belly. ‘We deserve him, John.’

  ‘I know,’ I said and she kissed me and asked me to take her to bed.

  The stairs went up from the corner of the kitchen, steep and narrow and brightly lit by the bulb that dangled from the landing.

  Dadda’s bedroom looked over the yard and the Gaffer had had a view across the bye-field and down to the lane. His door had been propped open to let in the air and I could see that Dadda had already stripped the bed and removed the mattress. He had probably dumped it behind the hay barn with the old tyres, out of sight and mind. The waste would have sat uncomfortably with him, but I suppose there was something more objectionable about keeping a dead man’s bed in the house.

  Eventually, everything the Gaffer had once owned would have to be sorted, thing by thing. Decisions made without sentiment about what was junk and what was useful. Packing away a life is a slow, fragmented affair. Everyone is outlived by objects, everyone bequeaths an uncurated museum to the living. It must have been the same when Mam died (where did that Fair Isle sweater go? That hat?) but I don’t remember.

  ‘Will you miss him?’ said Kat, resting her head on my shoulder.

  She knew how it had been between us, even if she didn’t really understand why he’d been so cold with me. But I’d told her: in the Gaffer’s mind, if you turned your back on the Endlands then it was better that it stayed turned. He hadn’t disowned me as such—perhaps that would have been easier—he’d just become indifferent about my life. He hadn’t called me Johnny lad since I’d left to go to university almost ten years earlier. If he answered when I phoned, he’d put me straight on to Dadda, and whenever I came back to the farm to help, he treated me like a novice. I got in his way. I exasperated him.

  We’d invited him to the wedding, but I’d told Kat not to expect him to come. Of course, as it turned out, I was wrong, and she’d had her o
ptimism vindicated when he appeared with the rest of them. But even so, he’d sat with his arms folded all the way through the ceremony and afterwards lingered on the peripheries smoking while the photographer (Kat’s short-tempered Uncle Neil) waved folk in and out of shot. As the day wore on, however, and his fourth pint was down to its last two inches, he seemed to thaw a little, especially when Kat waved him over to where she and I were standing at the other end of the bar. Like all women, she couldn’t help but laugh at his jokes and stare at his eyes. And the Gaffer had enjoyed her attention, the way she touched his arm as she spoke, the way she admired his suit and ran the back of her hand down his tie. When she moved off to talk to the Colchester cousins, he watched her all the way across the room.

  Blowing out smoke, he nudged me and said something, but the band had taken to the stage and so I couldn’t hear what he was saying until he put his beer breath closer to my ear.

  ‘I said you’re a lucky bastard, John,’ he said. ‘Don’t fuck it up.’

  And then he polished off his pint and went to side-step to an Elvis song with some of Kat’s aunties. They’d all loved him, of course.

  ∾

  The attic room had been given over to storage when I left the valley and the pair of z-beds were surrounded by boxes of my childhood books that wouldn’t fit on the shelves. A run of well-thumbed Beano annuals from 1966 to 1973. Ladybird books on flags and Vikings and What to Look for in the Country.

  Books were always my department. They were what I’d spend my pocket money on at Wigton’s. They were what I asked for at birthdays and Christmas. And now and then the Gaffer would come home with a box of second-hand paperbacks that he’d bought off someone in the Croppers’ Arms. Not all of them suitable for an impressionable twelve-year-old, I have to say.

  As she got undressed, Kat cocked her head to one side and looked at the books on the shelf that sat under the skylight. Stories about giants and bears and adventurous dogs.

  ‘We should take some of these back home,’ she said. ‘For when the baby comes.’