Death and the Dutiful Daughter

by Anne Morice

  ‘Sad about old Maudie, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not particularly. She must have been a hundred and five.’

  ‘Only eighty-two.’

  ‘We all have to go some time,’ he reminded me.

  ‘Still, it’s the end of an era, as you might say. A great international prima donna . . . last link with Melba and Caruso . . . all that.’

  ‘Stop playing the fool, Tessa. You don’t know the first thing about opera. You’ve been getting your information from the obituaries and they omit to mention that she was a vindictive old harridan, with a grossly inflated reputation, who went on inflicting herself on audiences long after she’d lost what voice she’d ever had.’

  Since Maud had not sung a note in public for twenty years and had been acclaimed by slightly more qualified judges than himself as one of the great sopranos of the century, he had no justification whatever for these remarks. However, it reminded me that very early in his career he had written the libretto for a contemporary opera which Maud, already past her peak, had misguidedly consented to appear in. The whole enterprise had been a flop from start to finish but Maud had come out of it with a reputation considerably less tarnished than Toby’s and the scarifying reviews which his contribution had received had no doubt left their indelible mark. It had been my intention to proceed in tactful stages to the proposal of his accompanying Robin to the funeral, but these recollections stayed my hand and, when I had bludgeoned him into putting a reserve of five pounds on the teapot, I told him I would be down in time for dinner and rang off.

  II

  Driving down to Storhampton was like flicking back through the early chapters of a favourite novel, for the town and its surrounding hills had formed the backdrop for my first meetings with Robin and memories of those romantic days came flooding back. Moreover, it was at Storhampton, before Robin’s promotion and transfer to Scotland Yard, that we had spent the first year of our marriage and this had come about through the generosity of Maud Stirling.

  Soon after the war she had acquired, among other residences scattered around in various parts of the world, an immense Victorian riverside house, originally the Rectory, and had insisted on turning over the gardener’s cottage to Robin and me. The garden by then had become the sole charge of a blond and well-scrubbed Belgian named Albert, who was also Maudie’s chauffeur and butler. He and a nameless individual referred to as Albert’s wife, who was also the cook, were housed on the top floor of the Rectory, which had been made into a self-contained flat.

  Under Maudie’s lavish and indefatigable supervision, the gardener’s cottage had been transformed into a bijou residence of reasonable comfort and abundant quaint charm, which we enjoyed rent free with a regular supply of Albert’s wife’s hot dinners thrown in. All she asked in return was unquestioning devotion, unstinted time, and a fair amount of errand running which, in my veneration for one of the world’s foremost operatic stars, I was only too happy to contribute. Luckily Robin was so overworked at this period and so rarely at home that his occasional reluctance to worship at the Stirling shrine usually passed unnoticed.

  On Friday afternoon I was affectionately greeted at the front door by Betsy Craig, Maudie’s daughter by her first husband, who was reputed to have been killed in the 1914 war. She was a dumpy, dowdy-looking woman, who had inherited none of her mother’s fabulous looks except her beautiful auburn hair; though unlike Maudie’s, which had stayed beautifully auburn until the day of her death, Betsy’s had faded to a dull biscuit colour, effortlessly merging through her sandy complexion down to the shapeless fawn skirt and cardigan in which she was habitually dressed.

  Her full name was Elisabeth, her birth having occurred not many months after Maud’s triumphant debut in Roberto Devereux, but Betsy was infinitely more suited to her cosy, rather old-maidish charm. Toby had once told me that she had suffered a tormented childhood in which periods of banishment to the attic, with a succession of cruel nurses, had alternated with passing fancies on her mother’s part to bring her downstairs, dressed as a Reynolds angel, to dance and recite to the assembled guests. If true, it might well be a pattern of upbringing which should be more generally adopted, for no one could have outclassed the adult Betsy in filial devotion. She had willingly dedicated most of her life to the care of her mother, even to the extent of prevailing on her husband Jasper Craig, who was a documentary film director specialising in rather arty films about English landscape, to forsake his chosen world and make his home in the converted stables of the Rectory.

  She was also a saint, in my opinion, unable to see ill in anyone; although Robin, no slur caster by nature, took a sterner view, holding her unvarying benevolence to be largely a pretence. Perhaps it was mainly her affection for myself and the fact that she alone of all her family had never shown resentment or suspicion of Maudie’s patronage of us which chiefly endeared her to me, but I would gladly have plied her with any amount of unquestioning devotion, errand running, etcetera if it had ever occurred to her to ask for them.

  ‘Come in, my duck,’ she said, giving me a friendly hug, and then led the way to the morning-room. This, along with the office next door and the two principal bedrooms and bathrooms above, was a relatively new addition to the house and, unlike the original Victorian structure, had windows facing towards the river. The morning-room windows gave on to a flagged terrace and beyond it was a gently sloping lawn, with the bobbed tops of the willow trees in the distance, curving away from the churchyard wall, which was just visible on the right of this picture.

  Betsy explained that she was not using any of the other downstairs rooms at present because there was no one to look after them. Poor Albert was so grief-stricken as to be hardly fit for work and, to crown everything, his wife had taken advantage of the general confusion to gather up Maud’s best mink coat and elope to Devonshire with the local tobacconist. This was the kind of improbable situation which was always occurring in that household and I could think of nothing more pertinent to ask than:

  ‘Why Devonshire?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, my pet,’ Betsy replied. ‘Perhaps she thought it would be more sheltered there. I daresay she found this very damp and chilly after Belgium. I can quite sympathise. Poor darling Mamma could fill and warm the whole house just with her presence, but it feels like such a gloomy old barracks now. Still, we’re nice and cosy here, aren’t we, chick? And it’s lovely to see you. Sit down and we’ll have a cup of tea together. Would you like that?’

  At the mention of tea, a silent and monumental cat descended from the writing desk, where it had been posed like one of Landseer’s lions on the blotter, and took up a slightly more alert stance by Betsy’s legs. There were always several of these four-legged bolsters dozing or prowling about in various parts of the house although with the fine Stirling disregard for names as a means of identification they were all known as Puss, with some roughly distinguished prefix: Ginger Puss, Wicked Puss, Young Puss, etcetera. They reminded me of characters from the Forsyte Saga.

  ‘Tea would be lovely,’ I said. ‘But why don’t we go and talk in the kitchen while you make it?’

  ‘No, no, my dove, we’ve got everything here,’ she explained, bringing out an electric kettle and battery of tea things from a cupboard by the fireplace. ‘All except milk, but you won’t mind lemon for once, will you? I can’t face milk just at present. It goes off so quickly in this weather, doesn’t it? But you can have some delicious bread and honey. Kind old Mr New used to send us such a lot when Mamma was ill. It’s from his own bees. I felt like throwing it all away, to be frank with you,’ she added, pausing at this point to mop her eyes with a large brown and white handkerchief, ‘but one mustn’t be sentimental, must one? Waste not, want not is my motto, whatever Margot may say.’

  ‘What does Margot say?’ I asked in some astonishment, for the phrase was one which hitherto I had particularly associated with her.

  Margot Roche was Betsy’s half sister, some ten years younger, and she had been name
d after the Faust heroine. She was the offspring of Maudie’s second, more publicised marriage to Richard Travers, the actor, with whom, despite a fair number of intervening husbands and lovers, Maudie had remained close friends and who was a frequent visitor at The Rectory.

  I had never much cared for Margot, who was an autocratic snob as well as cheese paring, with all the Stirling looks but little of the charm. She was a widow with two sons, of whom Digby, the younger and unmarried one, lived with her in a rather stylish flat in Lowndes Square, for which it was generally assumed that Maudie paid most of the rent and upkeep. Certainly the boys could have contributed nothing, because Digby, having recently left school, had joined a folk music group which nobody had ever heard of except a few other folk music groups; and Piers, the elder son, besides being married to a demanding and extravagant wife, eked out a modest living as one of numerous contributors to a popular daily gossip column.

  ‘What does Margot say?’ I asked again, when Betsy had finished mopping up.

  ‘You’d be surprised, my darling, I’m sure you would. I confess it shook me too, but Margot has a lot more feeling than people give her credit for. She was absolutely broken up by Mamma’s death. I’m sure I shall never forget her face when I have to break the news. And then, you know what she did? She went round Mamma’s bedroom like some demented creature, gathering up all the little personal things she’d been using and threw them away. It was so odd, but she said she couldn’t bear to set eyes on them with Mamma gone.’

  ‘You amaze me.’

  ‘I know, it was strange, wasn’t it? But she said it was like when the boys went back to school, only worse of course. She even threw away the book which I’d been reading aloud to Mamma when she felt well enough and the empty tumbler which had had her milk in it. She simply couldn’t tolerate it being washed up and used again by someone else. She even took away Mamma’s spectacles. “Whatever are you doing?” I said to her. “Some old person might be glad of those. The frames, anyway,” but she wouldn’t listen. She just whipped them all up and threw them in the dustbin. It just shows that grief takes different people different ways, I suppose.’

  ‘So Margot was here when Maud died?’

  ‘Yes, they’d all arrived that evening. All five of them, even Sophie. It was lucky really, because we weren’t expecting it to happen so soon. I mean, Dr Macintosh had warned us that the end might come at any moment, but we hadn’t any reason to think she was worse, if you see what I mean. Quite lucid and cheerful all that day, Wednesday it was. In fact I went off to my Family Planning meeting just as usual, never dreaming the end was so near. And later on she was so thrilled to see Margot and the others. They’d been racing at Newbury, so it quite suited them to come on here for dinner afterwards.’

  ‘And they all stayed the night?’

  ‘Oh no, darling, only Margot. Dickie and the boys and Sophie drove back to London as soon as they’d had their dinner. Sophie said she wasn’t feeling very well, I remember, and Piers thought he’d better get her home nice and early. But Margot decided to spend the night and you can just imagine what a blessing it was to have her here the next morning. All those ghastly arrangements that have to be made! Dear old Jas did his best, of course, but it’s not really in his line and I can’t imagine how we’d ever have got through without Margot.’

  She was sniffling into the handkerchief again and, in an attempt to lead her on to happier themes, I said:

  ‘Imagine Digby going to a race-meeting! Doesn’t it rather reek of the dreaded establishment?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it does, my duck, but he didn’t go, you see. There’s a group of young people all living on rice and doing their own weaving somewhere in the Cotswolds, and Digby and his friends went down there to take part in some music festival. The others picked him up in Reading, on their way over here. Poor Digby, he means well, I’m sure, but it must be a rather trying phase for Margot. Still, he’s a dear, sweet boy and utterly devoted to his mother, so he’s sure to snap out of it and get a proper job soon. Piers is a darling too. He was wonderful to Mamma during those last weeks, and often found time to come down and see her, which I thought was really unselfish of him. She got so cross sometimes, you know, about being ill and having to stay in bed. All that sort of thing was so foreign to her, and she couldn’t even read for very long without getting tired. But Piers was so clever about thinking up little ways to amuse her. Once when he came he brought a tape-recorder and he said that whenever she felt in a reminiscent mood she was to switch it on and just talk about anything that came into her head. It was so perceptive of him because the iller she got the more she used to dwell on the past. Of course some of it got mixed up with the present too, but never mind. It kept her happy for hours.’

  ‘What became of all the tapes?’ I asked, for it had occurred to me that dear, kind Piers might have had a secondary motive in mind.

  Betsy bent down and applied herself to the teapot. When she had refilled it with hot water and fussed and fiddled about for a bit she straightened up, handing me my cup and saying:

  ‘To tell you the truth, my love, I’ve put them away in a safe place. You’ll say I’m an old silly, but I was a bit worried about anyone outside the family . . . Well, the fact is, darling, there were times when poor Mamma wasn’t perfectly clear in her head and she said some rather outrageous things. Just rambling on, you know, but some of it was, well . . . you know, what certain unkind people might call libellous. Piers shall have all the tapes back if he wants them, naturally, but I wouldn’t care for anyone else to get their hands on them, and if he forgets all about it, well so much the better.’

  I was privately of the opinion that it was most unlikely that he would, but the conversation was brought to an end by the telephone ringing. Betsy picked it up and said in cautious, noncommittal tones:

  ‘Storhampton one three nine . . . Yes. Oh, hallo darling, yes thank you, and you?’

  She looked up and mouthed the word ‘Margot’ at me, and I nodded and stood up. Whereupon she flapped her free hand frantically to indicate that I should sit down again but I ignored it and wandered over to the window. Sure enough, the voice inside the telephone went crackling on without pause for another four or five minutes. I strolled out on to the terrace, noticing that the vine, which was a twenty-year-old offshoot of the one at Hampton Court, had grown another twelve or fifteen feet since I had last seen it and was now spreading sideways along the balcony above. I stood for a few more minutes, admiring the empty, placid view and nibbling from a bunch of grapes just within reach and, when I turned and went back inside, Betsy was saying:

  ‘Yes, darling, I do understand, but could we leave it for a moment? Dear little Tessa’s here, keeping me company, but she has to go now, so would it be all right if I called you back in just a tick? Yes, of course I will, I’m only going to see her off . . . Yes, promise . . . yes, I will. Goodbye for the moment then. Yes, Margot . . . goodbye.’

  ‘Poor Margot,’ she said, taking my arm as we walked out to the vast and hideous mock-Jacobean hall, ‘she gets in such a stew over trifles. Now she’s complaining about being snowed under with letters. Well, we all are, of course. I can’t bring myself to open half of them, but Margot wants to put some kind of announcement in the Times about answering them all personally in due course, and so on. I can’t see that it matters, myself. People are bound to realise what the situation is. But you know Margot! It relieves her feelings a bit to run about getting everything cut and dried.’

  Albert was crossing the hall, with a red thermos in his hand, making for the staircase. When he saw us he paused with his foot on the bottom step. His imperturbable manner and crisp white jacket had both wilted considerably under the strain of his double loss and he looked crumpled, red-eyed and faintly seedy.

  Betsy, glancing up at him, instantly tightened her grip on my arm and stumbled up against me. Caught unawares, I temporarily lost my own balance and lurched sideways. We must have presented a ludicrous spectacle but there was no
mirth in Betsy’s voice as she called out:

  ‘Where are you going, Albert?’

  ‘Just taking this up to your bedroom, madam.’

  He withdrew his foot from the stair and moved hesitantly towards us. ‘It’s rather early, I know, madam, but I’ve made it nice and hot for you, and I was hoping I might have the evening to myself, if you’ve no objection. I’ve left some dinner for you and Mr Craig on trays in the kitchen. I hope that will be all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course, my dear, but where did you find the thermos? I thought it was missing?’

  ‘No, only rolled under the bed, madam. No damage and I’ve given it a good wash. Did I do something wrong?’ he stammered, for Betsy was still staring at him in rather a demented fashion and her arm within mine had begun to tremble. Then, evidently making a supreme effort to sound natural, she drew in her breath and said:

  ‘No, nothing wrong, Albert. It was sweet of you to go to all that trouble. I’m sorry if I sounded sharp but we’re all a little bit upset, aren’t we? You go along upstairs now and try to get a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.’ Instead of obeying, Albert moved nearer to us, a puzzled, slightly apprehensive expression on his face, but before he could speak Betsy stretched out her hand and patted his arm.

  ‘Run along and do as I say, Albert, there’s a good boy. I’m going to have an early night myself, and there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll see you in the morning,’ she said again, turning her back on him and steering me firmly towards the front door.

  She stood beside my car, which had the hood down, and commented on the amount of luggage on the back seat.

  ‘Yes, I know, Betsy, but one never knows what one may be in for in the country.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘What time would you like me here tomorrow?’