Sorry for the Dead

by Nicola Upson

  “It’s not just that,” Josephine admitted, although her mind was having trouble contemplating such an unlikely union. “There’s no gentle way to say this, but I thought you were dead. Charity Lomax said you’d been killed toward the end of the war.”

  “I think we both know she’s not the most reliable source of information, but in this particular case I have to take some of the blame. God knows why, but Charity seemed to think that there was some sort of understanding between us. In the end, it was easier to let her believe that I was no longer here. As you can see, though, I’m very much alive.”

  Perhaps it was childish of her, but Josephine took great satisfaction in knowing that someone who was as skilled in telling lies as Charity could also be fooled by one. “I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Alive and happy—that’s very obvious.”

  “Yes. I never thought family life would suit me, but it does.”

  “Is Vera at home?”

  “No, she’s working. She and our eldest daughter have taken over the horticultural business from Harry, and they’re fanatical about it. Some things never change. I expected them back by now, but they must have been held up.”

  “How many children have you got?”

  “Four. Two of each. Tom’s the youngest, and Rose will be nineteen in December.” So the marriage had been a long one, Josephine thought; she would never have believed that someone who had despised George so much could live in harmony with someone who obviously adored her, but perhaps emotions had softened over the years, and in any case, she had never known Peter to allow his hatred for George to come between him and Harriet. She remembered what Joyce had told her about Harriet and the children, and was pleased to think that the bond was even stronger than she had realized.

  He seemed to guess a little of what she was thinking, because he said, “Sometimes you miss what’s right in front of you, don’t you? It took me a long time even to notice Vera, and then suddenly I couldn’t imagine life without her.” Could that explain what she had heard that day by the shepherds’ huts, Josephine wondered? If Vera and Peter were already involved, Harriet could easily have been discouraging Vera from making the relationship public in case George disapproved. And that might also explain why Peter had seemed to be stirring things up. “All this—our family and our marriage, being close to Harry and finding some peace—I never thought I’d have that. Actually, there were times when I thought it had gone from the world forever, but you know that. You saw my paintings, although you probably don’t remember them.”

  There was no false modesty in the comment, just a simple recognition of how much time had passed. “Of course I remember,” Josephine said. “In fact, I was admiring one of them again recently.” She told him about her visit to Charleston and how much it had changed. “You’ve got some ardent admirers in Bloomsbury. Duncan Grant told me how sorry he was never to have met you or exhibited with you. Now I think about it, a lot of people assume that you’re dead.”

  The smile transformed his face, just as it used to, and she remembered how dismissive Jeannie had been of his charm, and how readily Joyce had succumbed to it; he had always been someone who attracted extremes of opinion. “As far as galleries are concerned, I might as well be dead,” he said. “I don’t paint any more. I’m happy, so why would I need to?”

  Josephine couldn’t decide if that was a positive or negative reflection on art, but there was certainly no denying that the inspiration for Peter Whittaker’s painting had been violence and pain. “I have a confession to make,” she admitted. “I stole two of your sketchbooks from the portfolio while I was there.”

  Peter laughed. “I’m flattered to have driven you to something so underhand.”

  “I wasn’t sure that you’d want anyone to see them, bearing in mind what’s been happening in the newspapers recently.”

  “Why?”

  “The drawings of Dorothy Norwood …”

  “Oh, that. Yes, of course—I drew her in the greenhouse, didn’t I? I’d completely forgotten. It’s kind of you to consider it, but if you look at that sketch in the context of everything else I was doing at the time, it’s not so very shocking. I was more than used to drawing dead bodies, even if they were never recognized in any of the official war art.”

  “But what about the others?”

  “What others? I only remember that one.” He shrugged, and Josephine genuinely believed that he had no idea what she was talking about. “You’re welcome to do what you like with my sketchbooks. Keep them or destroy them. I’ve got no more use for any of that stuff.” There was a wail from the house, followed by some shouting, and he looked apologetic. “A ceasefire only lasts for so long at that age, I’m afraid. Will you excuse me? Harry’s out walking on the cliff. She said to point you in the direction of the lighthouse if you arrived before she got back, or you’re welcome to wait here if you prefer.”

  “I’ll go and look for her. I could do with a walk myself after the journey. Is George with her?”

  He paused, ill at ease for the first time since she’d arrived. “I’ll let Harry explain. It was nice to see you again, though.”

  “And you.” She watched him disappear into the house, trying to guess why he had avoided the subject of George when he had been so open about everything else; the obvious answer was to prevent himself from saying more than Harriet wanted her to know. Intrigued, she left the houses behind and started the steady climb toward Belle Tout, the disused lighthouse that graced the cliff at Beachy Head. She had only been to this part of Sussex two or three times before, but each time she had found the wildness of the place exhilarating, and today was no different. There was a stiff breeze on the headland, with the air pure from the sea, and she walked as close to the cliff edge as she dared to enjoy the graceful sweep of coastline and the flocks of birds that seemed to hover and dance on the wind.

  Up ahead of her, Josephine saw Harriet standing a few yards from the old lighthouse, and her solitary, silhouetted figure seemed to emphasize the headland’s sense of loneliness and desolation. As she walked across the soft, salt-sprayed turf, Harriet turned and raised her hand in greeting. She was wearing an old raincoat as protection against the wind, and as she removed its hood, Josephine was shocked to see how much she had aged; somehow, whenever she had thought of Harriet during the past couple of weeks, she had seen in her mind’s eye the attractive, youthful woman with the laughing eyes who had welcomed her to Charleston. Her greeting was as warm as ever, in spite of the circumstances, but now Harriet looked every moment of her sixty years, weary and defeated by the world, and somehow Josephine knew that—for whatever reason—the woman who was standing in front of her no longer had the companionship of the person she loved.

  “That photograph in the paper doesn’t do you justice,” she said, releasing Josephine from a hug and holding her at arms’ length to take a good look at her face.

  “I’m not sure justice is the Daily Mirror’s main objective.” Josephine returned the appraisal, concerned by a vulnerability that she hadn’t expected to see, and all her old loyalties returned in an instant, no matter how determined she had been to remain open to the possibility that Harriet and George were involved in Dorothy’s death. “Has it caused trouble for you? Other than bringing it all back, of course.”

  “I’ve never needed Betty Norwood’s help to relive that night.”

  “And what about George?”

  Something in her tone gave away her suspicions. “Peter didn’t tell you?”

  “No. He said you would.”

  “He still doesn’t trust himself to hide his relief, I suppose, although he’s been very good about it. George took her own life—three years ago now, just before we moved back here. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried it, but one of us always managed to stop her. She was determined to do it, though, and I always knew she’d manage it somehow. Her life was too much to bear.”

  The emotions that Harriet managed to keep out of her voice were written all over her face,
and Josephine could only imagine how much self-possession it took to talk about the suicide. “What couldn’t George bear?” she asked, although she thought she already knew the answer.

  Harriet was silent, staring down at the turf, which was dotted with pieces of chalk from the cliff. “Shall we walk for a bit?” she suggested eventually. “There’s a lot I’d like to tell you, and it helps me to think more clearly. I need to be honest with someone after all the lies, and your letter came at just the right moment.” They turned inland, past the redundant lighthouse, then picked up the route along the cliff. “I don’t know how much you know about what happened after we left Charleston.”

  “I know that Dorothy’s parents took you to court for negligence, and you won. And I know you were in Devon for a while.”

  “Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire—we couldn’t settle anywhere because sooner or later someone always found out that a young girl in our care had died. Or they guessed that we were lovers. We even tried changing our names a couple of times, but once the Norwoods had lost in court, they were determined to make our lives miserable in other ways, and they always found us in the end. I don’t blame them. If anyone hurt Vera or her children, I’d be exactly the same.”

  Perhaps she was reading too much into it, but there seemed to be an unconscious acknowledgment in the phrase that Dorothy’s death was no accident. “Has Vera been with you since Charleston?” she asked, interested to hear that Harriet thought of their former assistant as a daughter.

  “Yes. She stuck by us when we left, and I don’t know what we would have done without her.”

  “She’s obviously made Peter very happy. I have to admit, that was a surprise.”

  “To all of us, I think, although she told me that she’d always been fond of him. When the war ended, he came to live with us, and they fell in love. He was angry and bitter and damaged, but somehow Vera knew how to cope with that in a way that even I didn’t. I was worried at first that he’d hurt her—he’d always been restless and volatile, even before the army—but she was so patient with him, and by the time Rose came along, he was a different man.” She smiled to herself, and just for a moment there was a glimpse of a different time. “It reminded me of how George and I were when we first met, if I’m honest, although that’s the last thing he’d want to hear.”

  “How did George feel about their marriage?”

  “It reconciled her with Peter to a certain extent, I think. There was what you might call a truce of convenience once it became obvious that our lives were always going to be linked. She would have preferred it to be just the two of us, like it had always been—George had too many problems with her own family to want to be part of anybody else’s—but she knew how much it meant to me. And she always felt that what our life had become was her fault.”

  “Is that why she killed herself?” Josephine asked quietly. “Because she felt guilty about something?”

  “She felt that she was a burden,” Harriet said, avoiding a direct answer. “She had a stroke, you see, and she found it impossible to come to terms with her incapacity—you knew her well enough to appreciate that. She never regained the strength on her left side, and speech was difficult. She had no stamina, and it made her clumsy. A George who couldn’t rant and rave or stride about like she used to, a George who couldn’t garden properly or manage her share of the business—that was no life. She endured it for my sake, but that’s all.”

  “When was this?”

  “Fifteen years ago. I blame the stress of what happened and the constant moving from place to place. She’d always been so fit until then.”

  “And you cared for her all that time?”

  “Of course I cared for her. I loved her. What else would I have done?” Josephine had only meant to sympathize with how hard it must have been, and Harriet acknowledged her abruptness. “I’m sorry, and you’re right—it was a struggle. I could have coped with the physical strain of it, and Vera was a tremendous help, but it was George’s depression that I found so difficult. She was utterly broken, and I don’t blame her for it, but I couldn’t find the person I’d fallen in love with, as selfish as that sounds.”

  “It doesn’t sound selfish at all. Devastating, yes, but not selfish.”

  “Somehow I thought you’d understand.” She glanced gratefully at Josephine, and then said, “I did my best to be brave about it for Vera, but it got harder when I could see how badly George wanted to die. She found the most amazing strength from somewhere once she’d made up her mind. I stopped her every time because I didn’t want to lose her, but whenever it happened, I could feel her daring me to prove how much I really loved her by letting her go.” Josephine wanted to ask if she had helped George to end her life, but it felt too intrusive, and that wasn’t the truth she was here to discover. “In the end, she waited for the one weekend of the year that I had to go away. Vera found her, and I wish to God it had been me. She shouldn’t have had to suffer that.”

  “Why do you consider Vera’s feelings so much more than your own?” Josephine asked. “I know Vera always admired George, and I know how loyal she’s been to you both, but you loved George for years—and she, you. You went through so much together. Surely there can be no doubt about who really suffered?”

  Harriet took a long time to respond, and Josephine wondered if she was having second thoughts about the conversation. “Vera is George’s daughter,” Harriet said eventually. “George never knew that, but Vera did. That’s why—when you first met us—Vera was so desperate to have a relationship with her. It wasn’t at all what everyone thought, but it was love all the same. Unrequited love, with all the pain and rejection that involves.”

  Josephine looked out across the multi-colored fields stretching inland, trying to make sense of what she had just heard. “I don’t understand,” she admitted.

  “Why would you? You don’t know anything about us—not before that summer, anyway.”

  “So tell me. How did George come to have a child? Was it before you met?”

  “No, afterward. I suppose you could say one was a direct consequence of the other.” She saw Josephine’s bemused expression and tried to explain. “George came from a good family in Oxfordshire. Good in the sense of traditional and respectable rather than any true sense of the word—well-off, with houses all over the place, distinguished naval careers going back generations. You know the sort of thing I mean.”

  Josephine nodded. “Money and breeding. I suppose I always assumed that.”

  “Quite. We were worlds apart when it came to class, although that never mattered to either of us. When I was eighteen, I got a job as housekeeper in their London home.”

  “That’s how you met?”

  “Yes, although not straightaway. George hated the city and very rarely left their main residence. That’s where she loved to be and where she learnt everything she knew about horticulture. They had an old gardener there, apparently, who took her under his wing from when she was a little girl, and she never looked back. I didn’t see the gardens she created there, but I gather they were beautiful.

  “Yes, I imagine they were.”

  “Her father was on his second marriage by the time I joined them, and his new wife was much younger, so they spent more time in London—and that was another good reason for George to avoid it. She and her father hated each other, and she could never reconcile herself to the fact that he had started another family so soon after her mother died. They had a young son, and I used to look after him as well—by choice rather than expectation. He was a nice child, a bit like Peter when he was a boy. Then George came to stay for the first time, and everything changed. I’d never met anyone like her. I still haven’t.” Josephine heard the warmth in her voice and envied her the simplicity of loving one person her whole life, no matter how testing the circumstances; the closer she and Marta became, the more she resented how long it had taken them to find each other. “From then on, George spent a lot of her time in London. We hated being apart
.”

  “Did her family know what was going on?”

  “Good God, no. Not at first, anyway, although I suppose it was inevitable that they’d find out. Her little brother must have seen us together because he said something to her father—something perfectly innocent as far as he was concerned, but enough to have us watched. We were caught together, and all hell broke loose. I could never work out which they objected to more—my being a woman or a servant, but the combination of the two was as bad as it could get. They sacked me on the spot, of course, and turned me out of the house without a penny, and George came with me. I think that’s what really provoked her father in the end—the fact that she wouldn’t give me up. If she’d stayed and toed the family line, he could have blamed it all on me—the wicked commoner, leading his daughter astray. But she made that impossible, and the shame was unbearable once word got out. He was never going to allow a daughter of his to show him up like that.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Small things at first. I tried to get another position, but wherever I went, someone seemed to have a discreet word in the right ear, and I was shown the door. We had no money, so in the end George went back and asked for what was hers from her mother’s trust fund. I didn’t want her to go anywhere near her father, but she said she had a right to the money, and I couldn’t argue. He agreed on the condition that she stay under his roof until her twenty-first birthday. It was only a few weeks away, so she thought she could put up with it. At least then we’d have enough to make a start on our own. She already had plans to set up the college, and I knew I could help her make it work. It seemed like the perfect future.”

  They had walked a long way, and whether from the distance or the effort of reliving painful memories, Harriet seemed suddenly weary. Josephine took her arm and changed their course toward a bench overlooking the lighthouse at Beachy Head, which stood small and forlorn by day. “I’m guessing that something terrible happened during those few weeks,” she said, hoping to make the story a little easier for Harriet to tell. “Something that led to George having a child she didn’t want.”