Read Online A Place Of Strangers by Geoffrey Seed - Free Book Online

in a corner seat with a book she could barely settle to read. Her
mind was taken up with McCall, the lost boy, Francis going senile, Bea –
clever, shrewd, wicked old Bea. Bea asked and never told. What a spy she would
have made. Only the vetters knew something of Evie’s background – and now this
old lady. How interesting. It was a question of trust, of unburdening oneself.
And feeling the better for it.
    The train came to an unscheduled halt between bare,
tractor-rutted fields and ditches of dirty melt water from the thawing snow.
    Evie shivered. She was reminded of home, of Rixton Moss and
the peaty, black earth that heaved and shifted and could swallow a house. Gales
would cut clean across the flat land from the Irish Sea, tearing the
sedge-fringed birch woods and forcing smoke back down their chimney.
    She would sit with Dad, still grime-eyed from his shift at
Astley Green but with nothing to get washed for anymore. She had gone back to
Dublin... his wife, her mother. Gone to whoring where she came from. Evie had
not understood. Not then.
    Mum had unruly red hair, too. Sometimes, father would look
at daughter and she could not be sure if he loved or hated what he saw. They
said bodies could rise from the peat, sacrificed centuries before with the fear
still set in the face. Evie would dream of this, of finding her mother floating
in one of the long, dark dykes on the Moss, her hair trailing behind like a
wake of blood.
    *
    McCall had his chest X-rayed at hospital and was told he was
still not fit to go back to work. That morning, he saw Mrs Craven who had
inherited the role of Garth’s cleaner and occasional cook from her mother,
Winnie Bishop. He asked after the old lady’s health.
    ‘Doing her best but showing her years like the rest of us.’
    ‘I could do with a walk. Maybe I’ll go and see her.’
    McCall’s affection for Mrs Bishop ran deep. It was to her he
looked during Bea’s long trips abroad with Francis. If Bea represented the
manorial, Mrs Bishop was the village. And Winnie had her own reasons to covet
McCall.
    Garth Woods were eerily still that morning, dripping damp
with fog. He crossed Pigs’ Brook and walked up the church field to the old
people’s bungalows which backed onto the cemetery. Mrs Bishop greeted him in a
clean white pinny, freshly ironed.
    ‘I’ve seen you look better, young Francis. Pneumonia isn’t
to be sneezed at so you take care not to do too much too soon.’
    Her kitchen table never lacked for cakes she had just baked.
As she went to boil a kettle for tea, so the mournful church bell rang. Through
the bungalow’s patio doors, McCall could just make out the black-caped vicar
and a string of stooping mourners on a slow march through the mist. Mrs Bishop
stood beside him.
    ‘There’s another one who’s got the secret.’
    She was full of folk sayings and bits of country lore –
could never abide knives left crossed on a plate, would not pass another person
on the stairs. Misfortune needed no encouragement for Winnie Bishop.
    Hers was slate and chalk wisdom. Book learning counted for
little but she knew right from wrong.
    Mrs Bishop fussed over McCall as she always had, making sure
his plate was full and he was warm before the gas fire, shelved with the Toby
jugs and pot dogs he remembered on her cottage mantelpiece above the cast iron
range where she had cooked and he had felt safe. She handed him a fold of
paper.
    ‘I’ve been clearing out. You have this... isn’t much.’
    It was a crudely printed coloured map of the world at war in
1916, draped with Union Jacks and patriotic servicemen.
    ‘Got this for knitting a jumper for Empire Day.’
    To Winnie Gwilt, who has helped to send comfort to
the brave Sailors and Soldiers of the British Empire who are fighting to uphold
Honour, Freedom and Justice.
    ‘It’s lovely, Mrs B, but wouldn’t your daughter want it?’
    ‘Doesn’t like history things, her. You have it, Francis.’
    Few people ever used his proper