The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [63]
It seemed her husband had returned, or someone like him, stronger even and more determined. He would stand and watch her relieve herself in her chamber pot before he started.
Sometimes there were two of them.
Days grew light then dark against her window. It was the dark that brought him. She prayed. She prayed with every waking thought, her whole being a shout that was not heard, brought no release. They had her in that room. At night, not every night, but unpredictably, they came.
Hannah had observed him for long enough now to know his habits, had watched through a narrow vivid strip in her drawn bedroom curtains. They were usefully regular and today she deployed herself to cross his path. She waited at her chosen place. The day was fine. Her hair would look well in the autumnal sunlight that lit branches and moss, formed soft gold pools between the trees. Nearby a rattling holly bush shone with berries. There was a distant sweet aroma from the charcoal burners: they must have opened a pile and were now scooping it into sacks. Beside the path, blackberries hung from long, straying loops of thorn. She picked one and put it in her mouth. It dissolved in a smear of flavour, sharp, thin, alert.
And then he was approaching, as planned, hat in hand, along the path. But what was she doing there? He must have seen her standing there doing nothing. How could she not have thought of this? But it was immediately obvious what to do. She started picking more berries, crushing them as she plucked with nervous, indelicate fingers. She had been looking at him when she saw him and he had most likely seen her. Now she was looking away as though she hadn’t seen him. What would he think of that? And she had nothing to put the berries in, no receptacle, except her other hand. She laid them, dented and leaking, in her left palm.
‘Good day,’ he called, waving his hat.
She turned, attempted but overemphasised and made unconvincing the appearance of having seen him for the first time. ‘Mr Seymour, good day to you,’ she answered and made a shallow curtsy.
‘Picking blackberries?’
‘Yes, I was walking and saw them and thought . . .’
‘Do excuse me,’ he said. She felt his fingertips on her skin as he took one from her hand and ate it. ‘But you don’t have anything to carry them in.’
‘Yes, I do. I mean to say, I’ll only gather a few.’
‘Here.’ He offered her his hat.
‘But they’ll stain.’
‘The inside. And, anyway, what’s a hat?’
Hannah, trying to respond to the question, found herself suddenly philosophically stumped, her mind full of abstract hat.
‘Or, wait. Here,’ he said, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and spreading it inside his hat.
‘Oh, thank you.’ She dropped her handful in.
‘I like this path,’ he said.
‘Do you?’
‘Hmm. It’s one of the more attractive ways, don’t you think? Can be dreary here. And I like to get away from Alfred.’
She panicked at the name. ‘From whom?’
‘My man, my valet. I can’t have him looming behind me all day; it is tiresome. Careful. Stand aside.’
He spread his arms as though shooing geese, keeping her to the edge of the path. Hannah hadn’t heard the pony approaching behind her. It passed: stocky, skew-bald, with shaggy fetlocks, without a saddle, and with a young boy on its back. The boy wore loose, lace-less boots. He touched his hat. Charles Seymour did not acknowledge the gypsy’s greeting. A few yards on the boy turned the pony from the path and began vanishing and appearing between the trees.
‘Gypsy,’ Charles Seymour said. His soft fair hair was beautifully lit by the sun. ‘Good thing I was here.’
‘Do you hunt?’ Hannah asked.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I simply thought, well, it must be very thrilling, and perhaps you miss it.’
‘Speaking truly, it is not the first thing that I am missing.’
Her heart thumped. Unable to think of anything else to say and unable to picture her list for a change of subject, a way out of the moment, she said, ‘Sentimental attachments?’
He raised his eyebrows.