by Nicola Upson
Whether consciously or not, a single sentence had effectively marginalized Loppy from the conversation, and Josephine began to understand how difficult it must have been for the new Mrs. Keynes to break into her husband’s close-knit group of friends. No wonder she seemed to spend most of her time gossiping in the kitchen with Grace; they were natural allies—intimates and outsiders at the same time. “Yes, it’s been hard work to get everything together in a couple of weeks,” she said, “but we’re blessed with a very fine cast, and the theater itself is beautiful.”
“And we had a mutual friend in Cambridge too, I understand. Bridget Foley? What a terrible thing to happen.”
Josephine hesitated, caught off guard by the mention of Archie’s lover, who had died the year before. Her own relationship with Bridget had been fraught with complications, dogged by buried secrets and their respective attachments to Archie; she would never have described them as friends, but it seemed churlish to say so now. “Yes, although we didn’t have very long to get to know each other. I only met her when she and Archie grew close again.”
“She often used to come here with Carrington in the early days,” Vanessa said. “We’ve got one of her paintings upstairs, and I’ve always loved it. Her death was such a shock, but then last year was nothing but sadness.”
It was impossible to ask what she meant when they were obviously expected to know, and Josephine’s curiosity had to wait until Vanessa moved on to greet other guests. “Her son died in the Spanish war,” Loppy explained. “Grace says it is the only bad thing she has ever known to happen here. Nessa was devastated. There was nothing anyone could do to help, not even Virginia.”
“No one can touch you when you’ve lost a child,” Marta said, and Loppy looked at her, sensing the strength of feeling behind the comment, but too discreet to probe further.
“Was he Vanessa’s only son?” Josephine asked.
“No, there’s Quentin—he’s an artist—and she has a daughter with Duncan called Angelica. You must meet Duncan. He’s such a sweet boy, and Grace is devoted to him. He and Maynard were once so in love.”
The comment was made without any of the complications or resentment it implied, and Josephine looked at Marta, who simply shrugged. “You’ve got to give them credit for their understanding,” she said as they wandered out into the walled garden for some time to themselves. “I used to think our love life was complicated.”
“That’s because it was.” Josephine smiled and briefly took Marta’s hand. “Worth it, though. Shall we have a look round?”
They set off down the nearest path, lined with roses on both sides. It was still early afternoon, but the air had been quick to acquire the chill of an autumn day, and Josephine shivered, wishing she had thought to bring her coat in from the car. The old elm trees, which used to shield the garden on two sides from northerly winds, had either been felled or succumbed to disease, leaving the garden more exposed, and the extra light seemed to have drawn every ounce of drama from the soil in an explosion of color and growth. “This is stunning,” Marta said, admiring a blaze of dahlias and hollyhocks that jostled for position in the same patch of earth. “You can tell it’s been designed by an artist. It’s all about color and form, and very little to do with gardening.”
It did seem as if the decoration on the walls inside had forced its way out through the windows, and Josephine wondered what Miss H would have had to say about the beautiful disorder that now blurred her strict lines and carefully contained borders. She marveled at how little time it had taken to obliterate something that had once seemed so functional and productive. She left Marta in her element by the flower beds and headed for the wooden gate that led out through the crumbling redbrick wall to the paddocks beyond. The paint was the same pale gray color that it had always been, sun-scorched and peeling away from the wood, and as she pushed it open, she heard the familiar rising squeal of rusty hinges that no amount of oil had ever silenced; back then, it had been a useful way to monitor the girls’ comings and goings; she had always known how many were passing through by the time it took the gate to slam shut.
With a mixture of relief and disappointment, she saw instantly that there was nothing left of the old greenhouse. In its place was a compost heap, overrun with nettles and a few newly planted fruit trees with clusters of lords-and-ladies around the trunks. The potting shed was still there, filled with damaged garden furniture and things discarded from the house over several years. Josephine peered through the window at the miscellany of boxes, filled with broken crockery and colored glass, all presumably waiting to be made into mosaics like those she had seen dotted around the walled garden. Everything was covered by a silver labyrinth of spiders’ webs, miraculously strong enough to hold the past in place.
A path to her left took her the long way round to the front door, down by the side of the house and past the old dairy and kitchens. She paused by the gate that separated the gardens from the farm and looked back at what had once been the college office, very much Miss H’s domain. If her visit had been designed to bring those people back to life, it had not disappointed. Standing here, with the solid red brick at her back and the sound of voices through the open window, it was easy to conjure up an image of the girls at work in the gardens or to relive the conversations over supper. But that still didn’t answer any of Marta’s questions or satisfy her own niggling doubts about Dorothy Norwood’s death. Had the barely suppressed hostility in that community really ended in violence? Would two women—women she had liked and admired—stop at nothing to protect their reputation? Or was that simply a convenient smokescreen to hide a different motive altogether? There was only one way to find out, and she knew now that she would have to try to track them down and speak to them.
She shivered again and went back to find Marta, half-wishing that she hadn’t come. A sadness had taken hold of her as soon as she crossed the threshold, partly because of memories that she would rather not revisit, partly because of the way the house felt now—grieving, in spite of its color and its laughter; talking constantly to keep the despair at bay. There was no sign of Marta in the garden, so she went back inside to look for her, but on her way through the downstairs rooms, curiosity about the rest of the house got the better of her. The steps to the first floor were steep and narrow, but she took them boldly, prepared to ask for the bathroom if anyone challenged her. As she had hoped, the bedrooms were quiet and obviously empty, so she followed the dimly lit landing round to the front, surprised to see that the ceramic number plates that had been above the doors when Charleston was a guesthouse were still there.
The door to her old room was closed, and her nerve stopped short of trying the handle, but Jeannie’s old bedroom—number five, a little further down—was more obliging. The hinges creaked as she pushed at the half-open door, and she guessed that the room must now be used for guests, because there was a suitcase on one of the twin beds, its contents strewn hurriedly across the bedspread. She looked round at the motley furnishings and walked over to the window, catching the scent from a pot of lavender that was drying on the sill. The view to the west was disappointing, but if the maze of outbuilding rooftops lacked beauty, they made up for it by offering an alternative means of entry and escape that she had often taken advantage of. Immediately below, the noises from the kitchen were familiar, and she remembered the early morning sound of Harriet Barker’s footsteps on the attic stairs, which ran immediately behind the bedroom wall, a warning that the household was about to come to life.
The curtains billowed in the breeze, bringing Josephine back to the present. She heard someone coming and hurried to the door, only to find herself face to face with a man on the landing. “Hello there,” he said, apparently unsurprised to see her. He probably assumed that she was staying the night in the guest room, so she returned the greeting as casually as possible and introduced herself. “Ah, you’re Loppy’s friend—the playwright? Very nice to meet you. I’m Duncan Grant.”
His words w
ere muffled a little by the cigarette hanging from his lips, but his voice was warm and surprisingly gentle. Josephine looked at Loppy’s “sweet boy” and knew exactly what she meant. Even as a middle-aged man, Grant was exceptionally attractive, with thick, dark hair parted at the side and piercing blue eyes; in his youth, he must have been beautiful. She was about to say something complimentary about the house, when she noticed a picture hanging on the landing wall opposite; she hadn’t seen it coming up in the gloom, but the light from the spare room behind her dispelled the shadows on the canvas, and she stared in surprise. Grant looked at her curiously. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I suddenly recognized that painting. I don’t know if Loppy told you, but I stayed here during the war, and the man who painted it was one of the other lodgers. I watched him working on it, but I’ve never seen it finished.”
“Then be my guest.” He threw open the other bedroom doors to allow more light onto the landing, then came to stand beside her. “Good, isn’t it?”
The image was certainly very powerful. A soldier stood in the foreground, looking gravely into the distance as he prepared to put on his gas mask. Behind him, other members of his platoon wrestled with their kit, helping one another with straps and buckles in a simple but touching gesture of friendship. The painting was a somber palette of browns and khaki, lifted here and there by a metal object picked out in gold metallic paint. In the darker shadows on the left hand side, a soldier stood apart from the rest, distant and impersonal, with his mask already on, and Josephine was struck by the picture’s quiet but eloquent statement on the dehumanizing effects of war. “Do you know Peter Whittaker?” she asked, wondering if the artist was now one of the many regular visitors to the house.
“No, we never met him. This was hanging in the hall downstairs when we moved in, and it seemed wrong to get rid of it. Nessa’s not so keen, but she’ll just about tolerate it up here in the dark.”
“So Whittaker was killed in the war?” Josephine asked, picking up on his use of the past tense. “He was convalescing when I knew him, and waiting to be recalled.”
“To be honest, I don’t know for certain, but I’ve always assumed he was killed. So many of them died, and with a talent like that, I think we would have heard about it if he were still painting.” He hitched his trousers up, and Josephine noticed that they were held up with a red tie rather than a belt. “We’ve got some sketches of his downstairs that might interest you. At least I think they’re his—they’re not signed, but the style is quite distinctive. We found them in an old portfolio when we were building the studio—they must have been lying around in that shed for years. Would you like to take a look if I can lay my hands on them?”
“Yes, I’d love to.”
“Come on then.”
He ran down the stairs like a boy on Christmas morning, and Josephine followed—through the old dairy, which was now a garden room, and into a light, open space whose high vaulted ceiling was completely in contrast to the proportions of the rest of the house. “This used to be the chicken run,” she said with a smile.
“Yes. We converted it about ten years ago, when the lease was extended, although I suppose you could say we’re still scratching around in it.” He grinned at her and began to rummage through a cupboard piled high with prints, sketchbooks, and gallery catalogues. “They’re here somewhere, but I haven’t had them out for years.”
Josephine looked round in fascination as he began to throw more and more paper down onto the floor. Despite its inevitable clutter, the studio was a peaceful room, filled with a cool, still light that was fading now as the afternoon went on. The gunpowder walls were hung with canvases that she assumed were Duncan’s and Vanessa’s, and everything that had contributed to their creation was scattered like shrapnel about the room: easels and paint boxes; brushes in jam jars and bottles of linseed oil; palettes and tubes of paint; plaster busts, photographs, and a collection of curious objets d’art that lived in unlikely harmony on the mantelpiece. Ashtrays overflowed on every surface, and the air was heavy with the smell of tobacco mixed with turpentine. A vase of flowers and a gramophone struck a more homely note, the latter decorated with a painted nymph, and an armchair stood on either side of a large black stove. The easels too stood in companionable proximity, and Josephine tried to imagine herself and Marta working together like that and sharing a table to write. It would be a battleground, she realized: arguments over music or silence, with Marta constantly irritated by the noise of a typewriter and she by the scratching of a pen or the fug of cigarette smoke. Neither their careers nor their relationship would last the month, and she began to understand the respect and tolerance that must exist between the two artists. “When exactly were you here?” Duncan called over his shoulder as the pile of sorted papers began to dwarf what was left in the cupboard.
“The summer of 1915. It was a horticultural college for girls, part of the war effort.”
“Ah, that explains why the grounds were nothing but a sea of mud and potatoes. It took us ages to get the garden round, but thinking about it, we should have left it as it was. We’ll all be growing our own food again soon.”
“Was it really that bad when you arrived?”
“Yes, although that wasn’t until the autumn of the following year, and I think there must have been other tenants in between. They’d kept animals in all the downstairs rooms, and that doesn’t sound like a ladies’ college.” He smiled again and scratched his head, ruffling hair that was already unruly. “The place was going to wrack and ruin, with damp everywhere and the most awful wallpaper you’ve ever seen. Just as well it was falling off the walls, and we certainly helped it on its way.”
“How did you find the house? Were you living round here already?”
“No, but Nessa’s sister was. She and Leonard were down at Asheham, and she saw Charleston one day when she was out walking. We were in Suffolk at the time, but Bunny and I were conscientious objectors, and growing raspberries in Wissett wasn’t arduous enough to constitute essential work, so we took farm work here instead and rented the house. It was that or prison.” Josephine had no idea who Bunny was, but there was a triumphant cry from the cupboard before she could ask. “Here it is. I knew I’d kept them.”
He took the old leather portfolio over to a table and without ceremony dumped a sheaf of his own sketches onto the floor. The first drawings that he pulled out were single studies, some for the painting on the landing and others for work she didn’t recognize. Duncan passed them over to her, occasionally commenting on some small quirk or detail, and she noticed how the pictures came to life in his hand. He possessed that unself-conscious charm of someone who had always known what he wanted to do in life and now had the luxury of doing it, and Josephine could easily understand why people fell so easily under his spell. “These are so different,” she observed suddenly, shocked by the next series of sketchbooks that came out of the folder. “They’re so …”
“Accurate?” Duncan suggested wryly as she searched for the right word.
“Yes, I suppose that’s exactly it.” She turned the pages slowly, trying to come to terms with their anger. All the violence that had been so carefully suppressed in the finished painting upstairs was here given a free rein, and she stared down at images of dead bodies on the battlefield and war-torn landscapes, of men’s faces filled with hate. Somehow, the carefully controlled beauty of the draftsmanship only served to emphasize the horror. She looked at Duncan, but he was staring fixedly down, his jaw set, and she wondered if the drawings were a rebuke to his conscience for the safety of his own war or simply a confirmation that he had been right all along. “You never know what people are feeling, do you?” she said quietly, remembering the young man who had sat across the breakfast table from her, white-faced whenever a letter was delivered that might recall him to the front, but stoically accepting its inevitability. Occasionally, there had been outbursts of temper that she had put down to fear or frustration, but nothing to suggest the darkness tha
t had found its outlet on these pages.
“They shouldn’t be hidden away,” Duncan said, taking a small sketch of a gas victim and pinning it to the mantelshelf, where it sat incongruously next to postcards, invitations, and children’s drawings. “Not ever, but especially not now. Something’s got to show these bloody idiots what we’re heading for.”
“You really think that would make a difference?” Josephine asked cynically, putting the sketchbook down. “I can’t help but remember the last time I was in Germany. It was a beautiful warm night, and someone was playing a violin in the darkness under the trees—all very sweet and nostalgic except for the Nazi rally in the background. Long after I went to bed, I could hear the marching and the chanting, and if I could have seen what was coming …” She gave a bitter laugh, surprised by her own strength of feeling. “We’ve had plenty of warning if we wanted to listen, and no matter how many times you remind yourself that more people are killed on the roads each year than in Spain, you can’t rationalize war. It’s an idiot’s delight.”
There was a noise behind her, and she turned to see Vanessa standing in the doorway. “Desmond is here, Duncan,” she said. “He wants to speak to you.” She smiled at Josephine, but there was no warmth in it, and Josephine wondered how long she had been there.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as Vanessa went back to the party. “That was tactless of me.”
He accepted her apology without judgment. “She couldn’t even paint after it happened,” he said, as if that was the most telling sign of Vanessa’s grief, a secondary casualty of her son’s death. “I suppose what happened to Julian disabused us all of the notion that by doing no harm to anyone, we could avoid the suffering.” He shook his head at his own naivety, absentmindedly straightening the drawings as he asked, “Did you lose someone in the war?”