CHAPTER 44

THE LONG HAND

Sara was sitting quietly by the range, contemplating the soup bowl in front of her and even remembering to take a spoonful every now and then. Cook matched her silence, and though the atmosphere remained charged, a companionable quiet enfolded them as she prepared the crust for a large pie.

Sara was eating when it happened.

The spoon was halfway to her mouth when she flinched and cried out in shock. She dropped the spoon and half rose, slamming her hand onto the table to brace herself. The heel of the hand hit the lip of the bowl and it overturned, splashing hot soup into her lap.

She stood up on reflex, gasping again as the liquid burned her leg, the spoon clattering unheeded to the floor at her feet.

“My hand—!” she choked.

Cook had a wet dish-rag in her hand and was at her side in an instant, pulling the dress away from her leg and sponging the soup off it.

“Are you burned?” she said.

“My hand…” Sara repeated queasily, looking as if she might be sick at any moment. “Someone is holding it.”

The shutters to the caravan had been closed for privacy, the coal had been quietly moved, piece by piece, and the trapdoor opened. The box had been removed and opened, and Sara’s hand was indeed being held and examined by the light of a lantern.

“Now,” said the voice. “How do you work?”

Sara’s hand was put back in the box which was plunged back into shadow as the person redirected the bull’s-eye lens of the lantern to help as they rummaged in a drawer for something.

When the lantern was redirected onto the hand, the flash of light steel announced that they had found the sharp bodkin needle they had been looking for. The point of the needle was slowly pushed towards the hand, and then stopped an inch from the flesh as the hand itself moved.

“Hello,” breathed the person. “What’s this?”

The hand was moving. Not trying to escape this time, but doing something else entirely. Instead of crabbing blindly about the tight confines of the box and finding nothing but insurmountable sides, it was moving with a different but very obvious purpose.

Three fingers curled under the palm, leaving the index finger sticking straight forward like a pointer. The thumb stuck straight out at right angles to it like an outrigger, providing balance and a kind of lever to raise the hand enough for the index finger to have room to manoeuvre, which it began to do. It flexed and bent and the tip of the finger began to trace a repeating pattern on the floor of the box.

“What are you up to?” said the person, holding the light closer and bending low to examine the pattern. “What are you a-drawing?”

The finger repeated the pattern, slower and slower, as if trying to help the viewer.

“Letters,” said the viewer. “You can do letters, by God.”

The moving finger wrote and moved on.

“P… H… C… L… another P… H… C again… V or is that another L?… P… doesn’t make sense, no sense at all… that’s definitely H again… C, no it’s not a C!” the viewer gasped. “It’s an E!… L… P… H… E… L P… Help! By heavens you are spelling, aren’t you, my beauty?”

And they leant forward and patted the hand as if it were a dog or other small animal that had just successfully completed a trick.

“Well,” said the voice. “If we can’t make a bucket of money from you, we can’t make money from anything. You shall be The One and Only Hand of Glory, my friend, shan’t you just?”

Sara sat at the table, braced against it with her one hand as if the stump on the end of her other arm, which was stretched out in front of her, might at any moment try and hurl her to the floor. Her face was beyond pale, distinctly green around the edges, and sweat was dropping from her forehead onto the scrubbed white floor below.

Cook sat opposite her, crouched low and peering into her face with great concern.

“Sara, whatever you are doing…”

“I am writing,” said Sara from between clenched teeth.

“You are harming yourself.”

“I am doing what I can,” she panted. And then her face twitched and she gasped again in surprise, but this time the expression which flooded her eyes was one of relief. She breathed in and allowed half a smile to twitch the side of her mouth.

“What?” said Cook. “What happened?”

“Water,” said Sara, her mouth dry.

Cook spun to the sink, filled a glass and put it in front of her. Sara chugged it down in one draught and then looked up at her. Something like her old self kindled in her face.

“They patted my hand,” she said. “Someone patted my hand.”

“They patted your hand,” said Cook. “What does that mean?”

“It means they read my message. It means we can communicate!”

Before Cook could ask another question she took a deep breath and concentrated on her stump again. This time Cook could see it twitch and move in tiny increments as if Sara was sending nerve pulses out into the air.

“What are you writing?” she said.

“Don’t talk,” said Sara sharply. Then she smiled an apology. “This is hard. It feels like my hand is made of lead.”

She concentrated for a minute and then exhaled. “I’m asking who they are.”

“Who… are… you…?” whispered the voice. “Who am I indeed? And who are you?”

The index finger on the hand stopped writing and tapped on the bottom of the box, as if demanding attention. After a pause it did it again, more insistently.

“Ah,” breathed the voice. “Ah, no. I don’t think we can have that. I don’t think we can have that at all…”

With one hand they gently grasped the wrist of Sara’s hand, stilling it, and with the other they reached for the bodkin.

Sara inhaled sharply and bit off a yelp of pain.

“What?” cried Cook. “What, girl? What happened?”

“Hurt,” said Sara. Staring at her stump as if it had betrayed her. “Hurt.”

“Come to bed, child,” said Cook, reaching for her.

“I am not a child,” snapped Sara. “And you are not my bloody nurse-maid!”

Cook looked as if she’d been slapped. Indeed Sara had never in her life spoken to her in this sharp and unfeeling manner. She had certainly never heard her utter even the mildest swear-word, swear-words being as much Cook’s particular and distinctively delimited preserve as her kitchen was.

“Well,” she said. “Well. You are out of sorts. Sail your own course then.”

Sara would not meet her eyes, perhaps because she knew there would be something close to tears in them, perhaps because she was still angry.

After a long silence, Cook sniffed and Sara spoke down into the table, very quietly.

“They are writing on my hand. I must concentrate.”

Cook stared at the top of her head and saw Sara was quivering with the tension involved in focusing on what was happening to the absent hand.

Being a sensible if piratical Cook, she reached for the teapot and slid two cups on to the table between them. She poured them each a measure of tea and lightened it with some milk. Then she reached behind a crock of wooden spoons and spirtles and retrieved a black bottle out of which she glugged a large measure of whisky into each cup.

“Don’t tell Mr Sharp,” she grunted, and put the bottle back. When she turned and reached for her cup she was surprised to find Sara’s hand waiting to take her own.

Sara’s eyes were wide and apologetic, and in them Cook could see the heartbreaking shadow of the younger Sara, terrified by the Green Man she had found in her room almost a lifetime before.

“They wrote on my hand,” she said. “I wrote ‘who are you?’ and then they pricked me badly and then wrote ‘your master’.”

“Sara,” said Cook gruffly, squeezing the hand in hers.

Sara squeezed back and then let go in order to sit back and breathe deeply. She wiped something out of her eye and found a smile that was, in Cook’s heart, even more heartbreaking than the ghost of the young girl she’d just glimpsed again. Sara took the teacup and took a good swig.

“I had hoped to tell them my name and ask them to come. I had hoped to offer a reward,” she said. “But I do not think my hand is safe. I think it has fallen among evil people.”