The Headland: Part 4

Alice walked up the humming street and thought about John. The greater the distance between them, the clearer he became. While she was in his company, she’d felt unbalanced, as if she was standing on the deck of a sailing ship adrift on a billowing ocean. In the spurious brilliance of the winter sunshine, she felt becalmed by a serene clarity. She could picture John so clearly as he stood in the shop. The raw, sensual bulk of him as he leaned against the cocktail cabinet with his sleeves rolled up. He had that slight allaying stoop that many tall men appear to acquire over time. As he listened to Alice speak, he had rubbed his hand back and forth across his beard which made a rasping sound. She had been drawn to him. They had been drawn to each other. That was obvious. And for Alice, that was so uncommon. She had constructed a life that was quiet and clear and utterly unburdened by love. It had been so long since she had felt those curious gossamer threads of attraction pulling her towards someone. Where did those feelings come from? When she’d looked at John, and he had looked at her, what was it that they saw reflected in the other’s face? His conversation had been spry and laconic and affectionately teasing. Yet his eyes, shadowed behind heavy brows, were dark and sombre, his gaze unwaveringly direct. There was a sadness to him. An elemental sadness that seemed soaked all the way to the marrow. Half way through their conversation, the reason for the sadness became clear and Alice was furious with herself for not realising who he was. Of course, his shop was the old ice cream parlour. She’d even been in it many years before. His were the twin girls who were abducted outside the church hall, never to be found. The Coxon girls. John Coxon. That was the name Bill Gibson had given her. She should have recognised that name. The family was on the front of every newspaper for months. And then, a few years ago, a book was published about the case of the missing girls. The writer had moved to the colliery for a while. He went around bothering people, Alice had heard, excavating misery and fear and lacing them with innuendo and insensitivity. Most local people loudly proclaimed they were boycotting the book. Old Miss Partridge at the library became something of a local celebrity when she put a large sign in the library window announcing; Please do not ask for Missing Angels. If you want trash, go to the tip with the other vermin. It would take a brave person indeed to disobey Miss Partridge, but Alice wondered how many copies of the book had been bought outside of the colliery and were guiltily hidden at the back of overflowing sideboards or drawers. She remembered flicking through a copy in W H Smith in Sunderland once. She’d been driven towards the display as if transported on a perverse yet invisible current. She’d scanned the store first, to check there was no one inside she recognised. She’d felt as tawdry and ashamed as a teenage boy looking at a top-shelf magazine. As she looked at the plates of photographs, she remembered Miss Partridge’s vociferous sign and she’d dropped the book back on the pile as if she had been burnt. Now she wished she had read it. At least she might have answers to some of the questions that were fizzing in her head. What happened to the rest of his family? Was he married still? He hadn’t looked married, she thought. He’d had the look of a soul resolutely alone, bruised yet defiant in his detachment. Maybe that is what they had recognised in each other. They were two solitary creatures, who had believed themselves to be the last of their species. Finally, in the dark wood where they had constructed an existence, they had met their like. Alice reeled when she remembered saying she would be at the headland on Christmas morning. Her heart raced like a stone skipping across the smooth surface of a lake. She must have sounded so forthright, pushy. He could be married. Plenty of married people looked lost and alone. She wished she could unsay those words, reel every single one back in. She wouldn’t go to the headland on Christmas morning now. In fact, she would not go again. Ever. The joyful feelings she’d had enjoyed leaving the shop had suddenly scattered like a startled murder of crows. She remembered her mother saying to her in the hospital, ‘Love is only worth the comfort it brings. The peace it brings. The joy it brings. If it brings this much pain, it is not love.’ Alice had found comfort and peace on her own. She was not sure she had found joy, but she had certainly avoided pain. That was an adequate reckoning of a life, she thought. It was certainly better than she’d had before.

She stopped outside of the butchers. There was a queue, but it was not as bad as she’d feared it would be. She tied Hetty’s lead to a lamp post. ‘Please don’t start howling. You can see me. I’m just in there. I’ll be five minutes.’ The dog allowed herself one woebegone whimper and then lay down with her head on her paws and watched as Alice entered the shop and joined the line. 

At the end of the queue stood a sour faced woman in a red headscarf and a fur coat that had long ago traded elegance for shabbiness. The woman turned and dissected Alice, coolly looking her up and down. A wobbly smear of frosted salmon lipstick had been applied in the general vicinity of her mouth. She was one of those redoubtable colliery grand dames capable of commanding a room with a censorious pursing of the lips or the scandalised raising of a thin, pencilled eyebrow. Alice knew her sort well. She was as imposing as the figurehead of a ship. The woman was accompanied by a quivering shrew-like companion, whose job it was to nod encouragingly and agree wholeheartedly with all of her friend’s imperious opinions. Red Headscarf had been vociferously retelling a story when Alice entered the shop, but had fallen silent when she had the temerity to join the queue. The woman turned around and inspected Alice again, presumably to determine whether her story could continue. Alice smiled placidly at her and nodded towards the glass display. ‘The sausages from here are lovely, don’t you think?’ she said. Red Headscarf nodded briskly and turned back to her companion and continued her tale. Alice had obviously passed the woman’s rigorous inspection. Two hundred years ago, your sort would be knitting at a public execution. Alice thought to herself wickedly. You’d probably even take a bag of toffees, just for the occasion. You’d elbow everyone else out of the way to get to the front. The queue inched forward as a woman left the shop, laden with bags.

‘Did you get your turkey, Rene?’ Red Headscarf brayed, as the woman passed. ‘Lovely! Happy Christmas. Anyway Joyce, as I was saying,’ the woman threw another penetrating glance over her shoulder at Alice, who was artfully fishing in her handbag for her purse, ‘. . . as I was saying. She’s been back two weeks. When I saw her she looked a mess, like she hadn’t brushed her hair or changed her clothes for a month. Her poor father doesn’t know what to do with himself.’

‘London, wasn’t it?’ The Shrew asked.

‘Yes, I must say, she did well to get in, but her grades were excellent. Why she wanted to do drama is beyond me. Bill always wanted her to go into teaching, like her poor mother. You simply can’t tell that girl anything. She’s always been simply wayward.’

‘You’ve always tried with her, Rose. I know you have done your best.’

Red Headscarf bristled at the lacklustre nature of the compliment payed by her friend. Alice noticed the woman straighten her back and jut out her chin, ‘I’ve been like a mother to her, Joyce. Like a mother.’ Her tone was so sulphurously disdainful. The Shrew recognised her failure instantly. ‘Better than a mother, Rose. No one could have done more.’

Red Headscarf’s shoulders relaxed. She nodded brusquely. That was more like it. Alice found whole conversation enthralling. Like many quiet people, she was a great observer of life. She loved listening to the conversations of others, the cadence and music of the spoken words and the murky undercurrents of the words left unsaid. 

Red Headscarf continued, ‘She was such a pretty thing. Utterly spoilt by her mother of course. All her dresses made for her. Rooms full of books. What would Winnie think to see her now? Hair dyed hair, all backcombed like a bird’s nest, black clothes, clumpy man’s boots. Black eyeliner. Dark red lipstick.’

The queue inched forward again. 

‘Why did she do it? Do you know?’ The Shrew whispered tremulously. Alice noted a fluttering of excitement in the woman as she asked the question. Like a cat about to make her final pounce, she quivered with anticipation. 

‘Attention. That’s why. Attention. I bet she found college in London was a little too much like hard work. So she’s come back with her tail between her legs. Her father’s worried sick.’ She lowered her voice, but Alice could still hear the next chilling sentence. 

‘He’s had to make sure there are no tablets in the house, in case she tries again.’ 

‘It’s terrible. And at Christmas too. Is she going back to college?’

‘No. She says she doesn’t want to but won’t say why. Esther’s always been trouble. Always hard work. I know she lost her mother when she was young, but not everyone goes off the rails like that. Such a lonely child. Ah, here we go. About time.’ The queue moved again and Red Headscarf and her companion were now at the front. ‘Now young man, give me two lean pork chops and two chicken breasts. Nice plump ones.’

Esther, Alice thought. Esther. It is often said that adults never forget the teachers who showed them particular kindness or inspired them to find discover their true talents and passions. What is not spoken of as frequently, are the ways in which certain children can linger in the consciousness of a teacher. Some children would stay with Alice forever, she knew. They had touched her life delicately, tenderly, as if with hands clothed in soft white gloves, but the imprints they left were deep and enduring. Esther was one of those children that Alice would never forget. She could picture the little girl so vividly. She felt as if her heart was splintering to hear of how she must now be suffering. Red Headscarf and her companion were packing their purchases into shopping bags. Alice glared at them as they fussed, bitches, she thought, cruel bitches.

Red Headscarf stopped and looked up. ‘My goodness, what is that awful racket. Is someone strangling a badger somewhere?’

Hetty had started to howl.

‘Sounds like the Hound of the bloody Baskervilles out there,’ the butcher said brightly. 

Alice looked out of the door. Hetty was standing up now. Her long, elegant nose was pointed to the sky and she was baying wretchedly. She was, thankfully, still attached to the lamp post. ‘Oh dear, she’s with me. I’d better be quick. A chicken, please. A pound of streaky bacon and 6 pork and leek sausages. Thank you so much.’

‘Would you like a couple of bones for the dog, love. No charge. Might shut her up for a bit.’

‘Lovely, thank you.’

Alice hurried out of the shop with her purchases and untied the baleful looking hound. ‘Five minutes, that was all. Honestly. Get your nose out of that bag. You can have your bone when we get home. Let’s walk back, Hetty.’ She put her shopping bag over her shoulder and set off up the street. She could feel the biting coldness of the air flushing her cheeks. It was a two mile walk from the bottom of the colliery to her cottage in the village. She enjoyed walking, especially with Hetty by her side. Walking helped her think, and Alice wanted to think about Esther. She wanted to remember it all.