The Guardian of Secrets and Her Deathly Pact Read online

  Marie wagged her finger with an angry scowl. “I beg to differ. Anyway, the decision is Joseph’s, not yours.”

  Joseph squirmed in his chair and then opened his mouth as if to protest one last time.

  “But I absolutely insist,” Marie said. “You cannot turn down my offer. I’ll be very cross with you both if you do; it’s too late anyway. I took it upon myself to make the arrangements. Mrs Baxter has agreed to live here during the week and have Saturday afternoon and Sunday off, so that’s the end of it. I’ll also try to make more of an effort to come down at the weekends. I know you work hard, Joseph, but you’re very rarely here and Celia is very fragile at the moment. We must stick together for her sake. Joseph, I’m sure you agree, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I agree, Marie,” he told her.

  Joseph almost choked. He wanted to choke the old bag and Celia too, for that matter, he thought, with a head so painful it was pounding him into submission. Fragile! He’d like to get Celia’s fragile neck in his hands and crush the life out of her. If she hadn’t gone to London, Marie wouldn’t be sitting here now dictating terms like a fucking general. Who did she think she was, the queen of fucking Sheba? It was bad enough having to share the house with Celia, but to have that old gossip Baxter staying most of the time would mean that he’d be watched. He’d have to show up a bit more and be half-decent to Celia. He was tired of all this shit. He couldn’t wait to move on with his life. They were laughing at him. It was a fucking conspiracy; he could smell it. He hated Celia even more like this, all smug and pleased with herself, but she’d get it from him later.

  “I need to get some work done,” he said, standing up to leave.

  “Wait a minute, Joseph!” Marie said in a cold, stern voice. “I was just telling Celia that Mr Ayres is coming down to see you. He wants to discuss farm business with you.”

  “Is that right? Why, does he think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  “No, of course not. He just wants to see how things are going. It is his job, after all.”

  Joseph tried to smile again, but his lip quivered in rebellion. Things were getting increasingly worse. What next? he wondered. Would the old bag stick a policeman at the front door to stop him going to the pub for a game of fucking cards at night?

  Chapter 13

  By April, Celia had achieved some semblance of peace, just as her aunt had predicted. The winter months had been particularly harsh, and she’d very rarely ventured outside the house. She lived by a set of rules that were never broken. Dinner was always on the table for Joseph at mealtimes, although more often than not it would be thrown away or fed to the pigs when he didn’t appear. Every night, his clothes were neatly pressed and laid out in his room. She never sat in the parlour if he was at home, and she never asked him for money. She kept herself busy, sewing and knitting baby clothes. She read books, sending Mrs Baxter for more when she had finished them. She spent most of her nights in the kitchen by the fire, chatting to Mrs Baxter in mundane conversations, and when Mrs Baxter retired for the night, she did so too.

  Joseph was absent most of the time. Celia didn’t know where he went or what he did, and she didn’t care. However, when John Sweeny and Derek Pike appeared at the kitchen door one morning, Joseph’s disappearances became an even bigger mystery. Joseph, they told her, was not working and had not been seen anywhere near the farm for at least a couple of weeks. Their wages had not been paid, and they were now forced to leave for other jobs.

  The hop pickers began to arrive in a steady stream for the start of the season, but when they heard about Joseph’s reluctance to pay his workforce, and about the farm’s general decline, they decided to move on to another farm. April was the month when new growth appeared on the hop plants. The men usually went into the fields now to furnish the hill, which meant picking out the weaker shoots, known as pipey bines, leaving three or four of the healthiest to flourish. The crown could then give all its nutrients to the remaining bines, strengthening the plant and ensuring greater growth. This was a time-consuming job, and without daily attention, the established crop could not remain healthy.

  Celia walked to the hop gardens and rested her back against a tree. She closed her eyes and tried to banish the terrible thoughts gathering in her mind. The farm’s workforce was almost depleted, and the hop pickers who had come back had stayed for only a couple of days before leaving and promising never to come back. Celia’s hatred for Joseph grew as she watched entire families leave with disappointed children who had nothing but this country holiday to look forward to. Joseph was destroying everything he touched, but she wondered if maybe he’d got rid of the farm’s entire workforce on purpose because he didn’t want the expense. Was he planning the farm’s downfall? Was he going to take all its profits and run? No, she thought. That didn’t make sense; the farm wasn’t making any money.

  She sat down and lifted her face to the spring’s crisp breeze. She was at a loss as to what to do. Without constant care, the crop would not survive and might even be completely lost to wilt, a disease that killed entire crops. She admitted that even if she were to work every day in the gardens, she knew in her heart that she would never be able to make up for the time or the labour that was being lost. She put her head in her hands, feeling more alone than ever. She wondered if her aunt and Mr Ayres knew any of this? The farm’s decline stared her in the face, its reputation in tatters, its profits sunk in whisky bottles. Joseph was raping her father’s land, and she didn’t have the means to stop him.

  Her father had always maintained that the only thing a man could be really proud of was his land, and Merrill Farm had been truly wonderful in its day. She gazed around her land as far as her eyes could see. The soft rolling hills encompassed the green pastures, which were always in disciplined order in the past, bearing fruitful produce through hard work and love. She also noted that the hop gardens to her left, now turning to dust in unruly disarray, bore no resemblance to the healthy and profitable gardens of old. She now asked herself what had happened to her father to make him want to leave this behind. Was Mary Shields the real reason or had Joseph talked him into it? Joseph had a smooth tongue – there was no doubt about that – but to hand all of this over to him …

  It was a particularly wet Saturday afternoon, typical for the time of year. Celia went through the library and picked out a novel, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. She had read it before, but it was one of her favourite books and she never tired of it. She made herself a cup of tea, buttered some scones, and went into the parlour. It was Mrs Baxter’s afternoon off, and she had left in a hurry to visit her sister, who was ill in hospital with a particularly bad strain of influenza. Her aunt Marie was detained in London with a function at the Savoy, and for the first time in weeks, Celia found herself alone in the house.

  Celia read for a while in the parlour and then fell asleep. The kitchen door slammed shut and she jumped, startled. She was then aware of Joseph’s presence in the room, but her eyes remained closed. Joseph poured himself a whisky and gulped it noisily down his throat.

  “Celia, wake up, you lazy bitch!”

  Celia opened her eyes slowly, as though stirring from sleep and sat up straight in the soft cushioned armchair. She smiled, attempting to soften him, and he glared at her in return. She apologised. “How stupid of me. I must have fallen asleep. I’m sorry, Joseph. I’ll leave you in peace now.”

  “Where’s the old woman?” Joseph asked her.

  “It’s her afternoon off.”

  He nodded. “And your aunt?”

  “She can’t make it this weekend. She has been invited to dine at the Savoy.”

  “Has she now? How awfully nice for her,” Joseph said sarcastically, with a plum in the mouth speech. “So you’re on your own, then?”

  Celia looked longingly at the door and calculated how much time it would take her to escape should things turn nasty. She closed her book, which she had nestled in her lap, and rose to her feet, keeping her eyes firmly on the
door as she walked quickly towards it.

  “Don’t move!” he shouted from behind her.

  “Joseph, please don’t. Please just let me go.”

  She heard him laugh. Surely, she thought, he wasn’t going to start anything now, not after all this time. She was pregnant, and it had all been so peaceful lately.

  Celia heard Joseph laugh again, and she turned to face him. He had removed his braces and was twisting them around his right hand. She stared, mesmerised. The room began to spin, and bile rose in her throat.

  “Please, no,” she whispered.

  He took another step toward her, and she closed her eyes. The leather struck her hard across the back of her shoulders, its silver buckle causing the most pain. She cried out before covering her face with her arms, which were taking the brunt of the beating. He moved away from the door and gestured to her to leave. She edged her way towards it, went through it, and reached the stairs – but he hadn’t finished with her. The braces struck again, and she screamed. The more she screamed, the harder he hit her. She half ran and half crawled up the stairs, and only when she’d reached the very top did he stop.

  She lay on the floor outside her bedroom, sobbing with pain and humiliation. “I’m sorry, Joseph,” she whispered through her tears.

  “Good,” he told her. “That’s what I like to hear. This is for bringing Baxter back, for laughing at me with your aunt, and for thinking you could get the better of me. I’ve got a long memory, Celia. You must have known this was coming.”

  Celia lay in a tight ball, arms wrapped around her head and knees at her chin. She nodded in her cocooned position, and a loud sob escaped unwittingly from her mouth.

  “Now, don’t let me see you downstairs again. I need some bloody peace and quiet!” she heard him say. “And don’t go shooting your mouth off to that old witch! I’m warning you that you’ll come off worse if you do.”

  She crawled into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. She began removing her clothes, blinded by tears. She bit her lip, trying to ignore the hot stinging pain that came from her broken skin. Her dress fell to the floor, and she winced. Peeling the rough cotton undergarment from her body was agony. She looked down at the dress: a pale blue silk that her aunt had purchased only one week before. She sobbed even harder. It was ripped across the back, stained with blood, and fit for nothing but the dustbin. She wetted down the cotton shift and dabbed her back, shoulders, and arms as best she could. Her neck was fine; no one would ever know.

  After she’d bathed, she crawled under the sheets and lay perfectly still. She didn’t cry. She was too angry to shed tears, too humiliated; to cry would be even more pitiful. Only a few weeks left, she kept telling herself … just a few more weeks.

  Joseph’s hands were trembling. He drank from the whisky bottle, gulping down his favourite drink without pause. He stopped for breath and cursed his day. He’d sat on that train for hours on end, penniless and sick to his stomach with the shame of defeat; he’d been given a sure thing at the racecourse, a horse that couldn’t possibly lose, according to that stupid bastard at the racetrack . Well, it had and so had the four lame fucking donkeys he’d backed in the following races. They’d cleaned him out, and he’d just about made the fare home by the skin of his teeth. Things weren’t going well for him. Even poker, the game he’d mastered better than anyone he’d ever come across, wasn’t going his way lately. It wasn’t that he’d lost the knack; he just wasn’t being dealt any decent hands, and that wasn’t his fault. He was going through a bad run of luck, and that happened to the best of people.

  He drank some more whisky and sat down, putting his head in his hands and running his fingers through his hair. Things were bad, but they were going to get worse before they got better, he thought. The inevitable meeting with the bank manager would be a tricky one. He imagined how it would go. The banker would want his money back for the loan he’d given him. He’d have to say no, as he didn’t have it, and then all credit would be suspended, and he’d not be able to pay the two bastards from Chislehurst their three hundred pounds he owed them. He wouldn’t even have enough to get the bloody blacksmith off his back. Jesus Christ, what a mess! It wasn’t right. He didn’t deserve to have all this worry on his shoulders.

  He thought about Celia. This run of bad luck was all her fault; if she didn’t get him so uptight all the time, he’d be able to concentrate on more important things. Instead, every time he set foot in the door, she was there, reminding him of the burden that she was, the noose around his neck. He had wondered many times now how to get rid of her, but the same nagging answer always came back to him: he couldn’t. He needed her inheritance, and that meant she’d have to stay alive for him to collect it in just under two years now. She would give him the inheritance money to look after because that’s what he would tell her to do, and he would make sure she never saw it again … In less than two years, he’d be free of her; could he wait that long?

  The sun shone after the heavy rainfalls, burning away the clouds that had cloaked the colourless landscape for weeks. The air was scented with new grass and spring flowers, and for the first time in months, Celia heard the song of the house martins and swallows, home again after their long winter migration. The garden had been neglected, and weeds as tall as the wall that surrounded the front of the house overwhelmed shrubs and daffodils. The path that led down to the front gate was no longer a path. Now green with moss and sprinkled with green-headed shoots, it mingled with mud patches and unkempt rockeries.

  Spring had come not a moment too soon for Celia. Her back and shoulders still ached, a constant reminder of Joseph’s beating the week before, but sitting outside in the sunshine with Mrs Baxter lifted her spirits and eased her pain. For a while, they spoke about the terrible disaster that had occurred on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. It was the first anniversary of the tragedy, and a memorial service was being held in the cathedrals of Westminster and Southampton to remember all those who had died. Celia knew about this because her aunt Marie had been invited to a dinner at the Dorchester. Lord and Lady Chapman, who had lost their only son and daughter-in-law in the disaster, were hosting it. Her aunt was very fond of Lady Chapman. They were firm friends, and Celia had met her on several occasions. Her aunt had told her only recently that Lady Chapman had never recovered from her loss and that she had become a changed woman and aged dreadfully.

  They sat in silence for a while, both thinking about the poor wretches who had drowned in the icy sea, but after tea, Mrs Baxter’s mood darkened even more.

  “Celia.”

  “Yes, Mrs Baxter?” Celia said, putting down her needlework.

  “I need to tell you something. Now, I know this is probably none of my business, because it’s about Joseph. I’ve not said a word about anything to anybody, just like you asked, but I’ve heard things in the village about him, and you have a right to know what’s being said. I just can’t keep this from you any longer.”

  Celia felt her body grow rigid and thought that whatever it was must be very bad for Mrs Baxter to hesitate. Her first impulse was to tell Mrs Baxter that she didn’t want to listen to tittle-tattle, and then she thought that maybe he had been boasting about hitting her with the belt. If he had, she’d never be able to show her face in the village again. Was it something to do with the farm’s business and the fact that it was going to pot? If so, she would be just as mortified.

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  “Well, it seems that Joseph has got himself into debt all over the county,” Mrs Baxter told her, unable to meet her eyes. “The credit notes he gave to the blacksmith, the suppliers, the bank, and the auction house for feed were all rejected. Everyone is talking about it. Apparently, he owes money to a couple of gents who run a gambling ring. You know, these men that play cards for a living … I don’t know much about them, of course, but I know they’re a bad lot. It’s serious and—”

  “I don’t understand,” Celia interrupted, cutting her off in mid-flow. “Wha
t do you mean by ‘serious’?”

  “All I can tell you is that it’s to do with a poker game that’s gone on. From what I was told from Mary Shields when I went down for the groceries this morning, huge amounts of money, more than I see in a year, are placed on the table even before anyone is allowed to sit down. These two gents who come from Chislehurst have been letting Joseph sign for credit because he told them he owned Merrill Farm. Mary Shields says he’s so deep in debt to them that they’ve demanded their money back, and they want it right now! They threatened him. There was a terrible to-do in the street last night. There was screaming and shouting, and Rose Mallory, who lives on Lynwood Road, said that she saw them hit Joseph. They were threatening to do terrible things to him if he didn’t pay up. They said they’d give him one more week, and then he’d have to pay one way or another. That’s the exact words.

  “I’m so worried for you. I mean, what will happen if he can’t pay? They might kill him! What if they come here to harm you? What would you do? Oh dear! I dread to think what’s going to happen, I really do!”

  Celia watched Mrs Baxter dab her eyes with a hanky and felt powerless to soothe her. She’d heard the odd rumour about Joseph’s gambling, but she had no idea that everybody knew. This explained the reason for his frequent disappearances for days on end, the hop pickers leaving before the season had even begun, and the pitiful amount of money he gave her each week. The more she thought about it, the more she understood. On her most recent trip to the village, she’d scolded herself for imagining pitying glances from people she’d known all her life. She’d put that down to her own paranoia. Then there was the snub she’d received from the blacksmith, a close friend of her father’s. Now she knew why he’d behaved that way towards her; the poor man was waiting for his overdue money and hadn’t wanted to say anything. Everyone probably knew more than she did, cocooned up here. They all knew about Joseph’s gambling debt, so it was no wonder they felt sorry for her or blamed her. Her father had been a well-loved and respected member of the community, and Merrill Farm had been one of the best-run estates in the whole county. For it to be left in the hands of a drunken gambler was a tragedy not only for her but also for the whole village. She would have to tell her aunt now.