Page 40 of The Women at Ocean's End

Heather knew Constance would love that, forcing cups of tea and brown bread on big working men who were only hoping to get their jobs done and be back on the mainland with the high tide.

‘Oh, Heather, if that’s all that was putting me off, I think I’d manage. I could even move into the little cottage, couldn’t I? If I won the lottery…’ Constance sighed then and it was good because anything was better than that feeling that all was lost.

‘I think, maybe, there’s a chance you could afford it,’ Heather said and then she steered Constance inside the house and towards the room that she rarely ever entered but where she had preserved her mother’s works as carefully as any museum might.

26

August 1957

Constance

Constance could sense it: a strange thing, this nervous sort of excitement between the women, calling into each other, whispering over garden fences. Of course, her mother had never been a woman to spend her time out scrubbing the front step or hanging clothes on the line, so to engage her in the latest drama, Lickey Gillespie’s mother had taken to dropping by for afternoon tea. She would sit at the kitchen table, demolishing whatever confectionery was available and drinking tea while trying to get Maggie to contribute to the gossip that currently swirled around the street in relation to the whereabouts of Mr Wren since his disappearance.

‘He’s done a runner, if you ask me,’ Mrs Gillespie said under her breath, as if Constance might not hear it just because she lowered her voice a fraction. ‘Always too smooth, that one. I always said, Norman Wren was too smooth for his own good. He’s the sort that could have a whole other life tucked away with a wife and family in some part of the country you’d least expect.’ She sniffed, because there was nothing surer than the fact that her own husband was far from smooth, the last person anyone would want to marry, aside from Mrs Gillespie, it seemed. ‘A grown man doesn’t just vanish, does he?’

‘No, I suppose not, but still, it’s going to be very hard on his wife and daughter.’

‘I supposeshe’llhave to get some sort of work now,’ Mrs Gillespie said as she popped a corner of shortbread into her mouth, making a job of licking her fingers of sugar.

‘Maybe I could ask her to do some ironing or…’ Constance’s mother looked around the house. As usual, it was a mess of books and odd items thrown about at random.

‘It’d be something, I suppose, but she’ll need more than pin money if they’re going to put a dinner on the table every day.’ Mrs Gillespie’s eyes narrowed slightly, perhaps gauging just how much had been earned in the big book deal that had been pushed to second place now that the gossips had Mr Wren’s disappearance to satisfy themselves with.

‘Of course, maybe I could ask her to do a little tidying too…’ Maggie murmured. Constance’s mother had never bothered too much about keeping house, even less so over the last week or two since she’d had word from her publishers that they had managed to sell her rights into America. ‘Still, I hate to think of them struggling.’

‘I don’t think they’re struggling yet, so maybe give it some time,’ Mrs Gillespie said, reaching for another square of shortbread. She stopped suddenly, as if struck by divine inspiration. ‘Good God, he wouldn’t have done what you did a few months ago, m’lady.’ She turned around in her chair and pointed an accusatory finger at Constance.

‘What’s that?’ But Constance knew exactly what she was saying.

‘That old well is still open, isn’t it? No-one ever got round to closing it after the floods. It might be worth shining a torch down there.’

‘Urgh, I hope not.’ Maggie shuddered.

‘I’ll get my Dan to have a look later,’ Mrs Gillespie said and Constance shivered. But in spite of the growing panic rising up in her, Constance made up her mind that she’d have to tag along behind Mr Gillespie, just to be sure of what he found.

It was light until well past bedtime these evenings but thankfully it was early evening when she heard the men gather in the garden next door after their dinners were eaten and the women were left to clear up the dishes and sort out the younger children for bed.

‘You shouldn’t be here at all.’ One of the older men tried to talk Constance out of tailing him down the yard. So she fell back a little, but stuck close enough to hear them speak.

‘Ah, now, girleen, go home, you don’t want to be down here with us now, do you?’ Mr Gillespie said when he spotted her skirting behind them.

‘I want to. I knew Mr Wren probably as well as any of you.’ That much was true, at least. ‘He bought us ice-cream, when the weather was warm.’

‘Oh, aye, he was a great man for the kiddies and the ice-cream.’ One of the men guffawed before stubbing out his cigarette with an undisclosed anger that didn’t really seem appropriate to the job. The man hardly looked at Constance, but he stomped ahead, probably hoping for a quick look and then to drag the door back over the old well again.

Constance delayed just as they got to the well. She had the strangest feeling that maybe Mr Wren wasn’t down there any more. Ridiculous, of course. She looked around, felt the bristle and sting of midges against her arm and neck. It was still bright. Guilt bruised something along her spine so she almost expected Mr Wren to appear with a condemning smile from behind the overgrown blackcurrant bush that grew up at the side of the well. What if hewasn’tthere any more? Suddenly, her heart began to race.Stop it.He was dead. But what if he wasn’t? What if he’dmanaged to grasp onto that rope that was too high for Constance to reach? What if he was somewhere in the garden, waiting to push her in if she stood too close?

She thought she might be sick, feeling a tightening stricture somewhere between her stomach and her throat as if she couldn’t breathe and yet there was too much air: cold, stabbing and accusatory. She had to fight the urge to run back to the safety of home, wrap herself up in the huge goose eiderdown on her mother’s bed and hide there until this was all over. Except, she couldn’t just run away. She couldn’t move. She was stuck, as if turned to stone, like that poor woman in the bible that Sister Consietta talked about. Or was that a pillar of salt? Salt would crumble on the spot, wouldn’t it? Constance wished she could crumble now, into a nice dense pile on the ground and then slip away unseen.

Nonsense, of course. Mr Wren was not going to appear from the dead – he was hardly Jesus and more than three days had passed anyway, she told herself. Still, she felt uneasy, so much so that she began to shiver, her heart racing, and then, as if struck from above, an epiphany: Constance was not afraid of finding Mr Wren. She was afraid of the questions that would be asked if theydidfind him.

Mr Gillespie’s voice made her jump.

‘I said, I can’t see a blessed thing down here, can you run back to the house and get me some sort of light?’

‘A candle?’

‘Anything at all will do.’ He was waving his lighter around the top of the well, but even from this distance, Constance could see pushing back the darkness with such a slim flame would be like holding out an egg cup to gather all the sand in the Sahara.

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