‘You…’ She looked horrified, as the meaning of this sunk in. ‘Alec!’
‘Gerald tells me that you still have the one that was sent to you. I wondered if I might have a look at it.’
‘Of course, Gerald said I had to keep it, otherwise I’d have burned the horrible thing.’ She went to her desk. ‘It’s here somewhere.’ She opened a drawer, took it out, handed it to him.
He drew, from the brown envelope, the sheet of paper. Brought from his pocket the second one, which had been addressed to him. He held them, fanned like a pair of playing cards.
‘But they’re exactly the same! A child’s writing paper.’
‘So is this,’ said Alec.
It was the charred scrap that he had found. Pink, and lined, with the sickly little fairy only half burned away.
‘What’s that?’ Her voice was sharp, almost indignant.
‘I found it at the edge of your bonfire. I saw it when I emptied your wheelbarrow.’
‘I didn’t ask you to empty the wheelbarrow.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘It’s the same paper, Silvia.’
‘So what?’ All this time, she had been wringing her hands, rubbing in the cream. Now she suddenly stopped doing this and went to the mantelpiece to find a cigarette. She lit it and flung the matchstick into the empty grate. Her hands were shaking. She took a long drag on the cigarette, blew out a plume of smoke. Then she turned to face him, her arms folded across her chest, as though she were trying to hold herself together.
‘So what,’ she said again. ‘I don’t know where it came from.’
He said, ‘I think you sent that first letter to yourself. So that you could send the second letter to me, and nobody would even think of suspecting you.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You must have bought a packet of the child’s writing paper. You’d only have needed two sheets. So you burned the rest.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You wanted everybody to think it was May. You posted the first letter locally. But the second time, you drove to Truro and posted that one there. On a Wednesday. That’s the day that May always goes to Truro. It arrived in London the following day, but by then I’d already left for New York. So I never saw it. It was Gabriel who found it. Gabriel opened it, because she wanted to find out where Laura was staying, and she thought some clue might be in the letter. As it happens, you told her everything she wanted to know, but it wasn’t a very nice way for her to find out.’
‘You can’t prove anything.’
‘I don’t think I have to. I just have to try to find out why. I thought we were friends. Why send me this sort of malevolent rubbish?’
‘Rubbish? How do you know it’s rubbish? You haven’t been here, watching them, seeing them. Carrying on together.’
She sounded like May at her most disagreeable.
‘But why should you want to come between me and my wife? She’s done nothing to harm you.’
Silvia had finished her cigarette. She stubbed it out viciously, flung it into the hearth, fumbled for another.
She said, ‘She has everything.’
‘Laura?’
She lit the cigarette.
‘Yes. Laura.’ She began to pace up and down the small room, still holding herself as though she were icy cold, up and down, like a tigress in a cage.
‘You were part of my life, Alec, part of growing up. Do you remember, when we were all children, you and I and Brian, playing cricket on the beach, and climbing the cliffs and swimming together? Do you remember, once, you kissed me? It was the first time a man ever kissed me.’
‘I wasn’t a man. I was a boy.’
‘And then I didn’t see you for years and years. But then you came back to Tremenheere, and your first marriage was finished and I saw you all over again. Do you remember, we all went out for dinner. You and Eve and Gerald and Tom and I … And Tom got drunker than usual, and you came back with me and helped me get him to bed.…’
He did remember, and it was not an occasion that he enjoyed remembering. But he had come because it was obvious that Silvia could not cope on her own with a totally inebriated husband, six feet tall, sodden with alcohol and likely at any moment to pass out or be violently sick. Between them, he and Silvia had somehow got him into the house, upstairs, onto his bed. Afterwards, they had sat in this room, and she had given him a drink, and he—feeling pitifully sorry for her—had sat and talked for a little.
‘… you were so sweet to me that night. And that was the first time I thought about Tom dying. That was the first time I faced the fact that he would never get better, never dry out. He didn’t want to. Death was all that was left for him. And I thought then, “If Tom dies—when Tom dies—then Alec will be there, and Alec will take care of me.” Just a fantasy, but when you left me that night, you kissed me with such tenderness that all at once it seemed perfectly reasonable and possible.’
He did not remember kissing her, but he supposed that he had.
‘But Tom didn’t die. Not for a year. By the end it was like living with a shadow, a nonentity. A sort of wraith, whose only aim in life was to get his hand around the neck of a whisky bottle. And by the time he did die, you’d married again. And when I saw Laura I knew why. She had everything,’ she repeated, and this time the word came out through teeth clenched with envious rage. ‘She’s younger and she’s beautiful. She has an expensive car, and expensive clothes and jewellery that any woman would give her eyes for. She can afford to buy expensive presents. Presents for Eve, and Eve is my friend. I can never give Eve presents like that, Tom left me so broke, I can scarcely make ends meet, let alone buy presents. And everybody went on and on about her, as though she were some sort of saint. Even Ivan. Especially Ivan. Before, Ivan used to come and see me sometimes, ask me up for a drink if I was feeling blue, but once Laura arrived, that was it; he had time for no one but her. They used to go off together, did you know that, Alec? God knows what they were up to, but they’d get back to Tremenheere all secret and laughing, and your wife looking sleek and smug as a cat. It was true, what I told you. It was true … they had to be lovers. Fulfilled … that’s how she looked, I know. I can tell. Fulfilled.’
Alec said nothing. Filled with sadness and pity he listened, watching the tireless figure pacing to and fro, hearing the voice, which was deep and husky no longer, but shrill with desperation.
‘… do you know what it’s like to be alone. Alec? Really alone? You were without Erica for five years, but you can’t know what it’s like to be truly alone. It’s as though your unhappiness is contagious, and people keep away from you. When Tom was alive there were always people coming around, friends of his, even at the end when he was so impossible. They came to see me. But after he died, they didn’t come anymore. They left me alone. They were afraid of involvements, afraid of a woman on her own. The last few years of his life Tom was no use to me, but I … managed. And I wasn’t ashamed of it either, because I had to have some sort of love, some sort of physical stimulus to keep me going. But after he died … Everyone was so sorry for me. They talked about the empty house, the empty chair by the fire, but they were all too delicate to mention the empty bed. That was the worst nightmare of all.’
He began to wonder if, possibly, she were a little mad. He said, ‘Why did you kill Laura’s dog?’
‘She has everything.… She has you and now she has Gabriel. When she told me about Gabriel, I knew that I’d lost you forever. You might have chucked her over, but you’d never leave your daughter.…’
‘But why the little dog?’
‘The dog was ill. It died.’
‘She was poisoned.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘I found a Gordon’s gin bottle in your toolshed.’
She almost laughed. ‘That would be one of Tom’s. He used to keep them hidden everywhere. After a year I’m still finding bottles sta
shed away.’
‘This one didn’t have gin in it. It was labelled. It’s Paraquat.’
‘What’s Paraquat?’
‘A weed killer. Just about the most deadly poison there is. You can’t buy it in a shop. You have to sign for it.’
‘Tom must have got it. I never use weed killer. I don’t know anything about it.’
‘I think you do.’
‘I don’t know anything.’ She flung her cigarette out through the open garden door. ‘I tell you I don’t know anything.’ She seemed about to turn on him. He caught her by the elbows, but she jerked herself away, and in doing this, her hand caught her sunglasses and knocked them off. Revealed, unprotected, her strange-coloured eyes stared into his. The dark pupils were hugely distended, but there was no life, no expression there. Not even anger. It was disturbing. Like looking into a mirror and finding no reflection.
‘You killed the dog. Yesterday, when they were all at Gwenvoe. You walked up the road and into the open house. May was in her bedroom, Drusilla and her baby out at the back. There was nobody there to see you. You simply walked up the stairs and into our bedroom. You put probably just the smallest drop of Paraquat into Lucy’s milk. That’s all it would have needed. She didn’t die at once, but she was dead by the time Laura found her. Did you really think, Silvia, did you honestly imagine that May would be blamed?’
‘She hated the dog. It had been sick in her room.’
‘Have you any conception of the agony of mind you’ve put Eve through? No woman could have a better, kinder friend than Eve, but if this had gone the way you meant it to go, there wouldn’t have been a thing Eve could do to help May. You were prepared to crucify the pair of them, just to satisfy a fantasy that could never have been more than a shred of your imagination.…’
‘That’s not true.… You and I…’
‘Never!’
‘But I love you … I did it for you, Alec … you…’
Now she was screaming the words at him, trying to get her thin arms around his neck, turning up her blank-eyed face in a travesty of passion, her mouth open and hungry for some physical assuagement of her pathetic and unbearable need. ‘Can’t you see, you fool, I did it for you…?’
The force of her assault on him was manic, but he was a good deal stronger than she, and the distasteful struggle was over almost as soon as it began. In his arms, he felt her go limp. As he held her, she sagged against him and began, horribly, to cry. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the sofa, and laid her down, arranging a cushion beneath her head. She went on weeping, a dreadful sound, choking and gasping, her head turned away from him. He drew forward a chair, and sat and watched her, waiting until hysteria was spent. At last, she lay still, exhausted, her breathing heavy and deep, her eyes closed. She looked like a person who had suffered a devastating fit, as though she were slowly coming out of a coma.
He reached out and took her hand. ‘Silvia.’
Her hand in his was lifeless. She gave no indication that she had heard him speak.
‘Silvia. You must see a doctor. Who is your doctor?’
Presently she sighed deeply and turned her tear-ravaged face towards him, but she did not open her eyes.
‘I’ll call him. What’s his name?’
‘Doctor Williams.’ It was no more than a whisper.
He laid down her hand and left her there, and went out to the hall where the telephone stood. He looked up the number in her own private book, found it written in her neat hand. He dialled, praying that the doctor would be in.
He was, and answered the call himself. Alec, as clearly and simply as he could, explained what had happened. The doctor listened.
When Alec had finished, ‘What’s she doing now?’ he asked.
‘She’s quiet. She’s lying down. But I think she’s a very sick woman.’
‘Yes,’ said the doctor. And then, ‘I’ve been afraid something like this might happen. I’ve been seeing her, on and off, since her husband died. She’s been under great stress. It wouldn’t have taken much to trigger this off.’
‘Will you come?’
‘Yes. I’ll come. I’ll come now. Will you stay there with her until I arrive? I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Of course.’
He went back to Silvia. She seemed to be sleeping. Grateful for this, he took a rug from the back of a chair and covered her, tucking the soft wool around her shoulders and over her feet. Looking down into her lined, unconscious face, racked with tension and spent despair, she seemed to him as old as May. Older, for May had never lost her innocence.
When at last he heard the doctor’s car, he left Silvia and went out to meet him. He saw that the doctor had brought a nurse with him, a bustling woman in a white apron.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ said Alec.
‘I’m sorry too. Good of you to call. Good of you to stay with her. If I want to get hold of you, where will you be?’
‘I’m staying at Tremenheere. But I have to go back to London tomorrow morning.’
‘If I need to, I can always get in touch with the Admiral. I don’t think you can do any more. We’ll take over now.’
‘Will she be all right?’
‘There’s an ambulance on the way. Like I said, it’s out of your hands now.’
Walking slowly back up the road to Tremenheere, Alec found himself recalling, not the shattering confrontation that had just taken place, but that long-ago time when he and Brian had been boys, staying with their dashing young uncle Gerald, and tasting the first heady sip of adulthood. Perhaps this was what happened to very old people. This was why May could remember in minute detail the Sunday School picnics and snowy Christmases of her childhood, and yet had no recollection of what she had done the day before. Hardening of the arteries, the medical profession called it, but perhaps the causes lay deeper than the physical disintegration of the extremely elderly. Perhaps it was simply a withdrawal, a rejection of the reality of failing sight, failing hearing, unsteady legs, and hands that fumbled, crippled with arthritis.
So now, Silvia was, in his memory, fourteen again. A child, but, for the first time, patently aware of the potential heady excitement of the opposite sex. Her legs and arms were long and skinny and brown, but her tiny breasts belied this childishness, and her red-gold mop of hair framed a face filled with a promise of great beauty. The three of them had played cricket and climbed cliffs, with the innocence of all youngsters of their age, but swimming together, as though the cold salt sea washed away the timid inhibitions of puberty, was a different matter altogether. Tumbling in the surf, their bodies touched. Diving, they came together underwater, hand met hand, cheek brushed against cheek. When, finally, Alec plucked up the courage to kiss her, a boy’s first fumbling kiss, she had moved her face so that her open mouth touched his lips, and after that, the kiss wasn’t such a fumbling affair after all. So much she had taught him. She had so much to give.
In all his life he could not remember feeling so tired. Never a man to yearn for the comfort of alcohol, he found himself, now, deeply in need of an enormous drink. But that would have to wait. Reaching Tremenheere, he went indoors through the open front door and stood for a moment in the empty hall, listening. There were no voices, no sound. He climbed the great, polished oak staircase, went along the passage to their bedroom, gently opened the door. The curtains were still drawn against the sunlight, and in the great double bed, Laura slept. For a moment he watched her, her dark hair spread on the white pillow, and was overwhelmed by tenderness and love. His marriage to her was the most important thing in his life, and the thought of losing her, for any reason, filled him with anguish. Perhaps they had both made mistakes, been too reserved, too respectful of the other’s privacy, but he promised himself that from now on they would share everything fate flung their way, good or bad.
Her face, in sleep, was untroubled and innocent, so that she looked much younger than her years. And it occurred to him then, with a sort of amazed gratitude, that
she was innocent.
She, of all of them, knew nothing of the malevolent letters. She did not know that Lucy had died because she had been poisoned. It was important that she should never know. She stirred, but did not wake. Quietly, he went from the room, closing the door behind him.
Eve and Gerald were nowhere in the house. Searching for them, Alec made his way through the deserted kitchen and out into the courtyard. Here, he saw that Drusilla and her friend had returned from their outing. His car, resembling nothing so much as a very old sewing machine on wheels, stood parked, apparently held together with knots of string and bits of wire. He and Drusilla and Joshua were outside her cottage. A rocking chair had been carried out, and in this the friend sat, looking like some ancient prophet, with Joshua squatting at his feet. Drusilla sat on the doorstep and was playing her flute.
Alec, diverted from his intent by the charming scene they presented, stopped to look and listen. Drusilla’s music pierced the air with all the clarity and precision of water dropping into a fountain. He recognized ‘The Lark in the Clear Air,’ an old North Country song, which she probably carried with her from her childhood. It was the perfect accompaniment for a summer evening. Her friend, rocking gently in his chair, sat and watched her. Joshua, bored with playing on the ground, all at once struggled to his feet, hauling himself upright against the man’s knees. He leaned forward and lifted the child into his lap, bare bottom and all, and held him, cradled in the curve of his massive arm.
So maybe Ivan had been wrong. Maybe Drusilla and her friend were going to make more than beautiful music together. He looked a nice sort of fellow, and Alec, silently, wished them well.
The last note died away. Drusilla lowered her flute and looked up and saw him standing there.
He said, ‘Well done. That was beautiful.’
‘Are you looking for Eve?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re up in the garden picking raspberries.’
He found himself comforted by this little encounter. Tremenheere had not lost its magic, its gift of soothing the spirit. But even so, as he went through the door in the wall and up the path between the box hedges, his heart was heavy as that of a man about to break the news of a tragic family bereavement. As he approached, they stopped their picking, their faces turned towards him. It seemed an eternity since Alec had last seen them, and yet it took only moments to relate the sombre details of the afternoon. They stood there, in the sunshine, in the scented, tranquil walled garden, and it was all told in a few bare, painful sentences. It was finished. Over. They were still together. Relationships had survived, undamaged. It seemed to Alec nothing short of a miracle.
Voices in the Summer Page 24