Cath Staincliffe - Go Not Gently

‘What happened, before you rang me, when he came to your house?’

She told me how he’d barged in. He’d insisted Agnes ring me. She’d protested it was late but he was emphatic about it. ‘I sensed then that it all wasn’t as it should be – the atmosphere more than what he actually said. Then he took me through to the phone. I hoped he’d calm down once I’d made the call but he was so jumpy. He took some of those pills. I asked him to leave and he went completely barmy. Shouting and swearing, he pulled down the old creel, pulled off the rope…’

‘Tied you up.’ I stretched, the paper rustled, I started on the other ankle. ‘It must have been so frightening.’

‘And when he pulled the phone out.’ She tutted. ‘But do you know what went through my mind after fearing for my life? I thought, it’s going to cost ever such a lot of money to be reconnected.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Isn’t that ridiculous?’

I smiled, began writing the alphabet with my foot. ‘If we’d only got the results sooner, got on to them sooner…’

‘Then maybe Lily wouldn’t have died. But we don’t know that. You did your best, Sal.’

‘But it wasn’t enough,’ I complained.

‘We didn’t save Lily but we have found out what’s going on. Once we get out of here they’ll be stopped, they won’t be able to do it to anyone else. They’ll be punished.’

‘I suppose so. But I am sorry, about Lily.’

Once we get out of here, she’d said. If we get out of here. How would he try to kill us? Another injection? Did he really think he could get away with it if Agnes disappeared and I did too? There were several people who knew of our recent involvement with him: Moira, for a start, and the police she’d talked to; Matthew Simcock who’d been appalled by Goulden’s violence – he’d come forward, surely. Where was Goulden now? On his way back here? He said he’d hide our bodies. How? Bury them? Burn them? Chop them up?

There was silence for a while. The thick walls let little sound in from the outside world. I let my thoughts ramble. People at home would be worried about me. I’d left Agnes’ number but no address. How long would they wait until they called the police? And once they did, if they established the address they’d find an empty house and my abandoned car. No indication of where we might be.

How long till morning? Was Maddie fast asleep now or unsettled by the atmosphere as the grown-ups made excuses for my sudden absence?

‘You have a daughter?’ Agnes asked. Had I been talking aloud?

‘Yes, she’s five.’

‘And you’re by yourself?’

‘Yes, well, I’m not married. I’m a single parent but we live in a shared house.’

‘And the child, she’s happy?’

‘Yes, I think so. She’s never known anything else. She knows families come in lots of different combinations.’

‘Times change,’ she said, ‘and sometimes for the better.’

I waited.

‘My sister, Nora, she had a baby. She wasn’t married and in those days it was a terrible thing. You were shunned, completely ostracised. There was no mercy.’ She smoothed the paper across her knees, running her thumb over creases as she talked.

‘Was that before she went to Kingsfield?’ I asked.

‘That was why she went to Kingsfield. Morally inadequate, they called it. Pregnant and unmarried so they locked her up.’

‘Oh God. But your parents…’

‘Signed the forms. There was little hesitation. There were many girls like Nora. Young girls. She was only sixteen, little more than a child herself. She had the baby, a little girl, taken from her at birth, taken to be adopted.’

Agnes’ niece.

‘You never saw the baby?’

‘Oh, no. I visited Nora secretly. My mother thought it best to stay away.’

‘So Nora stayed there after she’d had the baby?’

‘Yes. I don’t think they ever said exactly how long she was expected to be there. It was a punishment, you see, rather than treatment. She’d broken the rules. There was no compassion.’ She tore a little strip off the edge of her paper sheet and began to roll it into a cylinder in her fingers. ‘Nora had been seduced by an older man, a business connection of my father’s. He continued to do well.’

‘So, they didn’t find him guilty of moral inadequacy.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said ruefully. ‘It was cold, very cold, the last time I visited her. There was no snow but one of those easterly winds that cuts right through you. I’d brought her cakes and a ribbon. It was a harsh regime. Most of the girls worked in the laundry, Nora worked in the kitchens.’

Her hand stole to the brooch on her lapel, kneaded at it through the paper, then returned to work at the frills of paper on her lap.

‘I arrived just after lunch. They’d finished clearing up. Someone suggested I try the dormitory. She had a bed by the window – huge great windows they had, covered in bars. If she wasn’t there I’d put the cakes under her pillow and hope no one stole them. It was quiet up there. The place was deserted.’ She cleared her throat.

‘Nora was there. She was hanging from the curtain rail. She’d torn her apron into strips and her dress. She just had her shift on. A thin cotton shift. I remember thinking she must be so cold up there, with her poor bare arms, so cold.’

I shivered. I thought of all the mother’s daughters. Nora, whose mother had agreed to her incarceration; Nora’s girl child, who would never know the circumstances of her birth; Olive, who had died in infancy and who Lily had called for in her last waking moments; Tina, whose death had been sudden and brutal. And now in the depth of the night there’d be mothers bearing daughters and daughters mourning mothers, and those railing at each other’s shortcomings, and I wanted to be home and warm with my own daughter close by while we still had the chance.

We talked a lot that night. Agnes told me most of her life story; we made ourselves hungrier fantasising about food. We talked about families, holidays, Manchester, politics, and tentatively about relationships.

‘I do get lonely,’ I said, ‘now and then. I wonder whether I’ll ever meet anyone. Wonder if this is it. If it’ll feel different the longer I’m on my own.’

‘I’ve been very happy,’ she said, ‘but then I had Lily.’

I turned to look at her. Her dark eyes were soft, faraway.

I heard the car first. My stomach lurched and I staggered to my feet. ‘He’s coming.’ I wriggled out of the paper that rustled around me and took my position by the door, the fire extinguisher between my feet ready to be lifted. Agnes divested herself of paper and settled the dummy body across her knees. I saw her take a steadying breath. She smiled at me. I swallowed. I could hear the shutter door being unrolled. What if it wasn’t Goulden? Perhaps it was the caretaker opening up. Maybe it was morning. My heart leapt with hope. We’d be safe. We could go home.

Footsteps across the concrete floor. My ears were buzzing with the strain of concentration. The scrape of a key in the lock. I could feel my pulse in the roof of my mouth. I prayed, a wordless, soundless plea for help.

The door swung open. Stopped a couple of inches from hitting me. My knees bent, my hands grasped the black handle at the top of the cylinder.

‘Get up,’ he said quietly.

Come into the room, step forward.

‘I can’t,’ said Agnes, her voice thin and reedy. ‘It’s Sal, I can’t wake her. She’s collapsed. I don’t know what’s wrong.’ Her words were laced with panic. I was convinced. But Goulden?

‘Christ!’ he swore.

‘I’m sorry,’ Agnes went on, ‘I can’t lift her. She’s too heavy for me. I don’t have the strength.’