Bone Whispers by Rosalind Brackenbury

Author:Rosalind Brackenbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Epicenter Press Inc.
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

In the shop, they were talking about the couple from the hotel. I could hear the muffled voices that adults put on when they gossip, their lips like ventriloquists’, their eyes stretched wide. I was there with Paddy later that day, having been sent down to buy potatoes before early closing. We lurked near the counter, where a couple of people from the village were talking to Mr. and Mrs. Higgins, the grocers. I liked coming to the shop, where it was always rather dark and the vegetables were kept in sacks on the floor and things like sugar came in blue paper bags. It smelt of earth and greens and floury baking from the back of the building where the Higgins lived, where Mrs. Higgins was usually making a pie.

Today, she was at the high counter, measuring out raisins into blue bags. Mr. Higgins, old and just as white-haired as his wife and only slightly taller, weighed vegetables on the brass scale and handed a brown paper bag to a customer.

I heard, “Yes, but they weren’t married. Of course, they put Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the records at the hotel, but then there were their ration books, with their real names. Sandra Dorwood saw them, working at the desk. Seems she was Polish. Came over here with a husband during the war. Mind you, they were good fighters, the Poles.”

“But what were they doing at the hotel? I heard they were the only customers. Seems the Colonel or Major or whatever he calls himself isn’t doing too well down there.”

“Well, he’s still giving them war-time rations in the restaurant, letting people go hungry, is what I heard. And the place is a mess, all cobwebs, hasn’t been cleaned in years. Why anyone would stay there is beyond me.”

I nudged Paddy and we sank back to the back of the queue, to hear more as we waited our turn.

“Seems that the young man was from around here. Wimborne, wasn’t it? Somebody said he’d been in the army. But what about her? Not a sign of her. No better than she should be, if you ask me. So what they were doing, well, they were having a dirty weekend, weren’t they? She a divorced woman and a foreigner too.”

“Ssh, there’s children here.”

Mrs. Pyle and Mrs. Gould turned round and looked at us, and the other woman, Mrs. Gimson from the farm, just in for a box of candles, thank-you May, and dropped their conversation to whispers.

“Still, it’s a shame. He was dead on arrival. We mustn’t judge, must we. What will be.”

“Maybe someone else judged him,” murmured Mrs. Pyle, “up there, looking down.”

May Higgins, her brown face, her cloud of white hair, her gnarly hands passing the box of candles—“That’ll be one and eleven, thank you”—only smiled, her wide friendly mouth over yellowing teeth. She was one of the friendliest adults I knew, and she was only the size of a child.

I stepped forward with my shilling held in my palm.

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