Sorry for the Dead

by Nicola Upson

  “But you disagree?”

  “Not about the attachment, no. But I’d call it unfortunate rather than unhealthy, just like anything that’s one-sided. Which of us hasn’t been hopelessly infatuated with someone at an impressionable age? I know I was. Anyway, why do you ask?”

  “One more question before I explain. You’re sure that Vera’s attachment is to Miss H, and not to Harriet?”

  “Harriet? Good God, no. Why on earth would you think that?”

  Josephine repeated what she had heard by the shepherd’s huts. “They seemed very close, and it sounded to me as if the two of them were keeping a secret that Vera wanted George to know about and Harriet didn’t.”

  Jeannie thought about it but eventually shook her head. “I really can’t see that. Vera’s rave on George is a standing joke amongst the girls, and I think Harriet finds the whole thing mildly irritating, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  The emotions she had witnessed seemed to Josephine to run deeper than irritation, but she didn’t argue. “Does George encourage Vera?”

  “I’m not sure she’s even noticed. You saw what happened today. Does that seem like encouragement to you?”

  Josephine shook her head. “No, not at all. It just occurred to me that this might be what Miss Ingram meant by ‘unseemly.’ ” She didn’t say ‘harsh’ or ‘cruel’ or ‘bullying,’ and ‘unseemly’ is the kind of word that people use when they don’t know what else to call it.”

  “Tell me exactly what Vera said again,” Jeannie said, and then, when Josephine had finished, “So we don’t actually know that she was going to tell George something, because she didn’t mention any names. Perhaps she was threatening to tell Miss Ingham about George and the way that she’d been humiliated by her.”

  “But Miss Ingham isn’t responsible for Vera’s welfare. And anyway, why would Vera confide in Harriet about it first?”

  Jeannie had no answer to that, and they lapsed into silence. “Where have your brothers been sent?” Josephine asked.

  “Gallipoli. They sailed last week. From what I read in the papers, it’s got more than its fair share of casualties, so they’ll get the responsibilities they were hoping for.” There was a bitterness to her voice again, just as there had been the day before when she talked about the war, and Josephine sensed the fear that she must be living with—always there, no matter how much she tried to put it to one side; not for the first time, she was thankful to have only sisters. “They’ve got to go—I understand that, and if I were in their shoes, I’d want to do my bit too. But they’re just kids, Josephine—both younger than me, and Freddie’s only just had his sixteenth birthday. Occasionally, when I’m working here, I look round at the gardens, and it’s like catching someone out in a lie—all the peace and the order and the straight lines, as if we’re still in control, as if the world still makes sense. It’s such false comfort.”

  “Do you really think so? Or are you just feeling guilty because it does comfort you? There’s no shame in that, you know. Sometimes I think that’s the worst of this war—it makes everything that’s right and natural and beautiful look like the aberration.” She stopped, not wanting to preach to someone she liked but barely knew. “That’s easy for me to say, I suppose. No one I love is at risk—only a way of life.”

  “You’re right, though. I do feel guilty. I can’t look my mother in the eye at the moment—she’s literally sick with worry, although she has to hide it for the sake of the pub. We went into Eastbourne on my last day off. I thought it might cheer her up, but I could see what she was thinking every time we passed one of those blue uniforms—for every soldier who’s convalescing here, there are a hundred who won’t come back at all. It just made things worse, and it’s driving a wedge between my parents because my father encouraged them to go. I hate seeing my mother and father at odds.”

  “I don’t suppose having breakfast every morning with Peter Whittaker and his fear helps either,” Josephine said shrewdly. “Is that partly why you resent him so much? Because he reminds you of what your brothers will have to go through?”

  Jeannie didn’t admit it, but her smile told Josephine that she was right. “I can see I’m not going to get much past you,” she said. “You’re not ordinary company at all, are you? Anything but.” No one had ever studied her face quite that intently before, and Josephine felt herself blush. “It’s so nice to have someone to talk to, you know. Right now, a proper conversation about something other than soil temperatures and the Ministry of bloody Food is the answer to all my prayers. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it.”

  Josephine smiled. “You’re the second person to call me that in forty-eight hours.”

  “Who was the first?”

  “One of the soldiers at Summerdown yesterday—Jack, his name is. I met him while you were off looking for Lomax and Norwood, and we got talking. He was friendly, and he’s from Inverness, so we had people in common.”

  “You didn’t mention it. That was fast work.”

  “Well, if you will leave me on my own in the middle of an army camp …” Jeannie didn’t laugh, obviously still preoccupied with her own worries, and Josephine played her encounter down. “He said he’d write, but I don’t expect he meant it. He’ll be off to the front soon, anyway, so what’s the point in getting to know someone when they’re only passing through?”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Jeannie said, and her mood seemed suddenly more despondent than ever. “What is the point?” She finished her drink and put the bottle back into the rucksack. “It’s getting late,” she said. “I suppose we’d better call it a night.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Josephine woke early, as had become her habit during the first couple of weeks at Charleston. She surprised herself by wanting to make the most of every day, sneaking down into the garden with Jeannie as dusk fell and talking long into the night, then rising with the first hint of sunlight through the willow tree outside her window. The only person to beat her to the morning was Vera, who was always at work in the garden when the dew was still heavy on the plants. Josephine watched her from the front lawn while she waited for her students to join her—putting soot on the crops before the sun’s rays grew too strong, moving from row to row of peas and stooping every now and then to pick up a mousetrap and reset it. There was no doubting her diligence or dedication, but it seemed to come from duty rather than love, almost as if she were doing penance for something, and Josephine couldn’t help but contrast it with the passion that George communicated so effortlessly for even the most mundane of tasks. She wondered what had made Vera answer that advertisement in the first place. Gardening was hard work if you didn’t love it, and there must be easier ways of earning a living. She glanced up toward the attic and saw George standing by the large window on the left-hand side of the house, looking down at the garden and watching Vera’s every move intently. She had been kinder toward her protégé recently, and there had been no repeat of the incident that had clouded Josephine’s first day. Perhaps Harriet had intervened on the girl’s behalf, or perhaps Vera had simply been more conscientious; either way, the threatened revelation had come to nothing, and Josephine was beginning to think that she had misconstrued the incident completely.

  Her class flew by, with everyone now knowing the routine, and she went back inside to change for breakfast. “Ah, Josephine—I’m glad I’ve caught you,” Harriet called from the dining room. “George and I have got to go into Eastbourne this morning. Gertrude Ingham wants to talk to us about something, and I’ve no idea how long it will take, so would you and Jeannie oversee lunch for the girls if we’re not back?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank you. I’ll leave it all ready, and Vera knows where everything is if you have any problems.”

  Josephine went upstairs and met Jeannie on the landing coming the other way. “Harriet and Miss H are off to Moira House this morning,” she whispered. “Harriet’s just told me. Do you know what it’s about?” />
  Jeannie shook her head. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it. Perhaps there’s been another complaint. Did she seem concerned about it?”

  “No, not particularly. Anyway, you and I are on lunch if they’re not back.”

  Lunch came and went, and there was still no sign of George and Harriet. “Perhaps they’ve gone into Eastbourne to shop,” Jeannie said as she and Josephine helped Vera take the dishes back to the kitchen. “If it was anything serious, surely they’d have come straight back to sort it out?”

  “It depends what it is, I suppose, but you’re probably right. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Josephine’s job for the afternoon was to prune back the spring-flowering shrubs in the ornamental garden, and she set about the forsythia when the washing up was done, trying to stick to what George had taught her the day before. She could hear music as she worked: a gramophone record played over and over again in a way that she found infuriating, and on a trip to the compost, with a barrow full of cuttings, she traced its source to one of the sheds next to the chicken run. Intrigued, she looked through the open doorway and saw that Peter Whittaker was using the space as a studio. The arrangement had obviously gone on for some time because the floor and parts of the wall were covered in drips and splashes of paint. There was a stack of canvases against the wall, next to the gramophone, and Whittaker was busy at an easel by the window. He beckoned her in when he noticed her, and she was about to refuse when curiosity got the better of her. “You obviously like this part of the opera,” she said, walking over to see what he was working on.

  “What? Oh, I see what you mean. To be honest, I haven’t really been taking much notice of it, but it’s easier to concentrate with something on in the background.”

  “I’m sure the composer would be thrilled to hear that.”

  He laughed, and she noticed how easily the humor reached his eyes. “By all means put the final act on if you want to,” he said, “but I doubt it ends happily. Opera never does.”

  Josephine looked at the canvas, and anything she was about to say died in her throat. For some reason, perhaps because she had mixed feelings about the artist, she hadn’t expected to admire the painting, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. It was the colors that struck her first—or rather the lack of them. The tone of the picture was set by heavy black and gray skies above a deadened landscape, in which everything—trees, earth, uniforms, flesh—looked harsh and monotone. Here and there, flashes of gold paint brought a welcome contrast to the overall starkness, but any relief was deceptive because the color only served to highlight things that had been fashioned to kill—the shaft of a bayonet, the barrel of a gun. There were three human figures in the painting—soldiers preparing for battle—but they were dominated by their surroundings, defeated even before the fighting began. Josephine stared at the painting, unable to look away or to imagine a more powerful depiction of the way in which war sapped the beauty from a landscape.

  “You’re interested in art?” Whittaker asked, sensing her reaction.

  “Yes, very much. I thought about going to art school, but in the end it wasn’t for me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it isn’t enough just to be able to draw well. I could sketch a face and you’d recognize it, but that’s all it would be—a copy. If I want to express myself and say something original, I choose words, not pictures. And any sort of art should add to the world, not just reflect it. Otherwise, there’s no point.” He looked approvingly at her, and she pointed to the stack of canvases. “Do you mind if I look at the others?”

  “Help yourself.”

  He carried on working while she took her time, and when the record came to an end, he didn’t put it on again; in the silence, she could hear the soft, rhythmic sound of his brush against the canvas. “What’s it like over there?” she asked, knowing how inadequate the question was, but unable to think of any other way to phrase it.

  “If you’ve looked at those and you still have to ask that, then I’ve failed.”

  Josephine flushed. “I didn’t mean …”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “No, I don’t think you do.” She stood her ground, and he waited for her to explain herself. “I look at these and they’re so immediate and so powerful, but they’re just moments. I still can’t begin to imagine how it must feel to live with it day in, day out—or how it must change you when you have.”

  “Why would you want to?” It was a genuine question, less aggressive than it sounded, and Josephine realized that she had no answer. “You’re right, though—there is something missing,” he said. “The twenty-second of April, to be precise.”

  “The gas attack?”

  Whittaker nodded. “It was a beautiful sunset, I remember that very clearly. As it began to get dark, you could see the flash of shrapnel to the north and the occasional flare from a rocket, but that was nothing special, nothing we hadn’t seen a hundred times before. Then a low cloud of yellow-gray smoke appeared, and that was new—we couldn’t explain it at all. We heard a murmuring in the distance, growing louder all the time, and then suddenly a load of horses came over the horizon toward us, frenzied and out of control, until the road was just a mass of dust. I remember thinking—really believing—that it was some kind of apocalypse, that the whole damned thing was going to end there and then. When the horses got closer, you could see that some of them were carrying two or three men, poor devils—and there were more chaps behind on foot, throwing off their guns and their tunics so they could run faster.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing, at first—we just watched. Then we noticed the smell—very faint to start with, a tickling in the throat and smarting eyes, like the beginnings of a cold, but it soon became pungent and nauseating. One of our officers pulled his revolver out and yelled at the cowards to turn back, but they’d reached the lines by then, and we could see what was happening—we could see them frothing at the mouth and writhing on the floor, and that’s when we ran too.” He took a sketchbook from the top of a pile and handed it to Josephine to look through. “As you can see, I’ve tried and tried to paint that day, but it never works. It might be just another moment, as you said, but that is what it’s like out there. It’s all there is—a series of horrific moments. The normal bits in between, the eating and the sleeping and the friendship—they don’t matter any more. In fact, they’re so out of kilter that they seem absurd.”

  The sentiment reminded Josephine of what she had said to Jeannie that night in the garden, and she was moved by it. She picked up another sketchbook, but he took it quickly from her hands. “Those aren’t finished yet,” he said. An envelope that had been tucked between the pages fell to the floor, and she realized what he had been trying to hide. “It came this morning,” he admitted, picking up the letter that had recalled him to the front. “I managed to intercept the post before Harriet saw it. I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell her. She’ll have to know next week, but I want to save her a few days of anxiety if I can. She’s got enough to worry about at the moment, and she doesn’t need me to make it worse when George does that so efficiently.”

  “Why do you dislike George so much?” Josephine asked bluntly, feeling sure now that whatever Harriet’s concerns were, they revolved around the visit to Moira House.

  “I don’t dislike George. I despise her. I hate the way that she treats Harriet like a servant. She’d be nowhere without my cousin, but she takes her for granted and has done from the moment they first met, as far as I can see.” He must have caught the look of surprise on Josephine’s face, because he added, “You probably think I’m being indiscreet in telling you this, but it’s nothing I wouldn’t say—haven’t said—to George’s face. I’ve never made any apologies for encouraging Harriet to go her own way and find a different life.” Harriet had never struck Josephine as someone who was remotely dissatisfied with her life, but she had no opportunity to say so. “She’s got more spirit and more kindne
ss than anyone else I know,” Whittaker continued, “but she’s changed. I can’t remember the last time I heard her laugh.” He took a tin of tobacco from his pocket and began to roll a cigarette. “Harriet has always given me a home whenever I’ve needed it—even when she had nothing, and even when George fought against it. I have to stand her corner because she’s her own worst enemy.” He threw the envelope angrily down on the floor again. “Except now I won’t be around to look out for her.”

  There were so many questions that Josephine wanted to ask, but she didn’t have time for any of them. The sound of an engine outside brought the conversation to an abrupt end, and she followed Whittaker round to the yard, noticing that Simon Cassidy was watching from the sitting room window, as if he had been waiting for the women to return. Harriet got out of the driver’s seat and hurried toward the house, and it was obvious to Josephine that she had been crying. George followed, her face pale from an emotion that might have been rage and might have been shock; whichever it was, it seemed unapproachable, and although Whittaker made a move to go after them, something in the women’s demeanor made him hesitate and turn back. A door slammed inside the house, and then there was silence.

  CHAPTER 6

  “It was good of Harriet to let us borrow the van,” Josephine said as Jeannie waited to turn left onto the narrow lane that would take them to Firle.

  “I think she just said yes to get me out of the kitchen. She and George were deep in conversation over the morning post.”

  “Not more bad news?”

  “You say that as if we knew what had happened already.” A horse and cart made its leisurely progress toward them, and the farmer waved his hand in thanks. “Let’s hope that’s all the traffic for a while,” Jeannie said, seizing her opportunity to take the road. “There’s no room to let anything pass down here, and reversing—as you know—isn’t my strong point.”