Andrew Hurley - The Loney

‘Hanny, I’m serious,’ I said, hitting him a little harder this time. ‘I won’t be able to stop them if they want to hurt you.’

He rubbed his chin and felt around in his coat pockets until he found the plastic dinosaur and handed it to me.

‘You don’t need to say sorry,’ I said. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid.’

He held my hand and we carried on. Not for the first time I wished that I’d brought the rifle. The mist had turned the sands an ashen colour and was so thick that all sense of space was lost. Oystercatchers and gulls would sound far off one moment and then suddenly loud as they flew by. And from time to time there was a steady rumble that I thought at first was thunder or an aeroplane but realised that it was the sea churning its way over the sands, drawing out to its limit, like a bowstring.

***

Leonard’s car was parked outside Thessaly when we got there. The place was Sabbath quiet. I knocked on the door, waited, and then when no one had come after a minute, I knocked again.

Hanny had wandered away to look at the bell tower.

I called him back, but he ignored me. I shouted a little louder, but he was too intent on opening the door and so I went over to try and lead him back to the house.

It was impossible to tell from the mainland, and even from Thessaly one could miss it, but it seemed that there had once been another building there — a chapel, perhaps, by the fragments of stone archways half hidden in the bracken. What had happened to it, I didn’t know. I’d never heard of any place of worship on Coldbarrow. Perhaps they had got it wrong, or the old stories had succumbed to Chinese whispers as old stories do. Perhaps the Devil hadn’t built the tower at all but knocked down the church around it. Perhaps he had built Thessaly from the remains. They were of the same stone after all.

Before I could stop him, Hanny put his shoulder to the door and it grated open enough for us to look inside. Water dripped and something fluttered up to the belfry where the wind murmured around the wooden scaffold that held the bell in place. I wondered if, long ago, they had crept in here to satisfy themselves that Alice Percy was really dead and had stood as quietly as we did now, looking up, watching her turning on the end of the rope, her bare soles curled in rigor mortis.

A stronger gust came in off the sea and swung the bell into a soft tolling. Hanny looked suddenly frightened and started to back away, almost running into Leonard, who had come out of the house and was standing in the door watching us.

‘I didn’t expect to see you two here again so soon,’ he said.

He was dressed down from the last time we’d been here. No jacket or aftershave, just shirt sleeves and corduroys. The kind of thing Farther put on when he was creosoting the fence or touching up the gloss work on the skirting boards.

But Leonard's arms were spattered with dried blood.

He saw me looking and rolled down his sleeves.

‘What do you want?’ he said.

I opened my coat and took out the envelope.

‘I’ve brought this back,’ I said.

Leonard took it from me and frowned.

‘Where did you get this?’ he said, opening the envelope and looking inside.

‘It was in the book your daughter gave Hanny to keep. I don’t think she knew it was in there.’

It was the lie that I thought the least damaging.

‘Daughter?’

‘Else.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘No, I dare say she didn’t know.’

‘It’s all there,’ I said.

‘How do you know that?’ Leonard smiled and looked inside the envelope. ‘Had a quick count of it, did you?’

Hanny was tugging at my sleeve and stroking his stomach.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ said Leonard.

‘He wants to see Else.’

‘Does he now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’

From somewhere inside Thessaly there came the sound of a baby crying. Hanny stopped what he was doing and looked at the window at the far end of the house. He smiled. Leonard followed Hanny’s gaze and then looked at me, considered something, and took out several notes from the envelope. He came closer to me, hobbling on his bad leg, and slipped them into the breast pocket of my parka. I went to remove the money but Leonard kept his hand on my chest.

‘Please, it’s the least I can do,’ he said. ‘Since you came all this way to bring it back.’

‘But I don’t want it.’

‘That’s us settled,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect there’s anything else you’ll need to come back for now, is there?’

‘No.’

‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘And those names on that list.’

‘What about them?’

‘Can you remember any of them?’

‘No.’

‘That’s the way,’ he said.

The baby cried again and Leonard nodded towards the lane.

‘On you go then.’

I pulled Hanny away and Leonard watched us go before he went back inside the house. Hanny insisted on walking backwards so that he could keep looking for Else. He kept on stumbling and fell over more than once, on the last occasion refusing point blank to get up. I went to pull him to his feet, but he wrestled out of my grip and kept his eyes fixed on the house.

‘You can’t see her, Hanny,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you hear what the man said?’

Suddenly he stood up and stared. A figure had appeared at the end window. It was Else. She waved at Hanny and after a moment Hanny raised his hand and waved back. They stood staring at each other until Else turned sharply as if called by someone and disappeared.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ said Miss Bunce. ‘It has been three months since my last confession.’

‘I see.’

‘It was with Father Wilfred, just before he passed away.’

Father Bernard sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Not that you have a multitude of sins to confess to, I’m sure, but it doesn’t seem like you to distance yourself from God for so long, Miss Bunce. It’s not me putting you off, I hope.’

Miss Bunce sniffed.

‘No, Father. It’s not you. I did try to come and speak to you, several times. I even made it to the door of the confessional once, but I went home again.’

‘Well, confession isn’t always easy.’

‘I thought that I might be able to forget about it, but I can’t. The more you try and forget the more you remember. Sin’s like that isn’t it? It haunts you. That’s what Father Wilfred used to say.’

Father Bernard paused. ‘Well, you’re here now, Miss Bunce,’ he said. ‘That’s all that matters. You take your time. I’m quite happy to sit here and wait until you’re ready. I’m not on the tight schedule of absolutions I usually am at Saint Jude’s.’

Miss Bunce laughed joylessly, sniffed again, mumbled a bunged up thank you and emptied her nose.

‘I don’t know how to begin, really,’ she said. ‘It was listening to Mrs Belderboss talking about that trip to Jerusalem that set me off again. I just feel so upset about Father Wilfred. It was me who found him, you know.’

‘So I believe,’ said Father Bernard. ‘It must have been a terrible shock.’

‘It was, Father. And we parted on such bad terms.’

‘Bad terms? Why what happened?’

‘Well, the last time I saw him before he died he was acting so strangely.’

‘In what way?’

‘He was worried about something.’

‘About what?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t like to ask.’

‘But you could tell he was worried?’

‘He was just so distracted, Father. Like there was something behind him all the time, you know?’

‘Aye, go on.’

‘Well, he asked me to go back to Jerusalem with him. For a longer trip. He said that was where he felt safe.’