by Mary Gibson
Nora looked serenely on, but Kate knew that, like the swan she so often resembled, underneath that calm she was ferociously paddling. Her unruffled veneer slipped only once, when she noticed Stan, seemingly for the first time. She leaned close to Kate. ‘I believe I’ve seen that man at the house.’
‘My cousin Stan? Yes, I saw him there once too – he was strong-arming Dad to pay back Mr Smith.’
‘And who is Mr Smith?’
Kate clutched her own hand protectively, remembering that agony of crushed fingers. ‘Oh, Mr Smith is someone you always pay back – one way or another.’
Stan must have sensed he was the subject of their conversation, for he started towards them.
‘Oh no, he’s coming over – don’t look at him, Nora. Talk about something else!’
But it was too late. Her cousin stood in front of her, a glass of whisky in his hand. He stared at Nora and eventually gave her one of his vile grins. Kate turned to face him, pulling him to one side, blocking his view of Nora, as if his gaze alone could sully her, like a patch of Thames oil ruining a swan’s down.
‘She don’t look much like a grieving wife, does she?’ he said.
‘Piss off and leave her alone, Stan.’
He giggled. ‘She should be thanking me, she should.’ Kate could smell that he’d had more than one whisky. ‘And so should you,’ he whispered, putting two fingers to his head and splashing her dress with whisky as he did so.
She hoped Nora hadn’t seen the gesture and as he fixed her with a fuzzy gaze, she turned back to Nora, explaining, ‘He could never hold his drink!’
She hustled him out to the scullery. ‘Oooh, where ya taking me, Noss? All them years you wouldn’t look at me!’
Aunt Sylvie cast a disapproving look in their direction and Janey smirked. She heard her mutter ‘slut’ as they passed.
Grim-faced, she shoved Stan through the scullery and into the backyard. When he tried to paw her, she slapped him hard. ‘You idiot! You don’t go around making up stupid stories about shooting someone, just to make yourself look big!’ She didn’t like Stan, but neither would she see him hanged.
His fuzzy gaze hardened. ‘Who says it’s a story? And don’t you talk to me like I’m a kid. I done a man’s job out in that wood!’
‘You?’
He smirked. ‘My boss got fed up waiting for your dad to pay him back. I’m Mr Smith’s right-hand man, me,’ he boasted. ‘He says I’m like the son he never had. Mr Smith wants something done – I do it.’
She was cold to her bones. ‘Even murder?’
‘Murder runs in the family. Didn’t you bash Archie’s head in with an iron? Don’t tell me you wanted him to get up and walk away…’
*
A week later Kate stood on East Lane Stairs and scattered Archie’s ashes into the swift-flowing Thames. It was a blustery day and the wash of the tide caught and crashed against the river wall, splashing up to where she stood. As the pale ash was torn apart on the wind, then caught in the eddying current, she pondered Stan’s accusation. The remains of Archie Goss were finally claimed by the river and, borne rapidly downstream, they disappeared from her sight. No. She was not another murdering Goss. She’d never wanted to kill him. She’d loved him – just not enough to let him kill her.
24
The Whitesmith
1925–1926
The house in Belgravia seemed to be inhabited by ghosts. White sheets covered tables, chairs, clocks and bookshelves. Nora had arranged the sale of the house, with all its contents, shortly after the funeral. But she’d wanted Kate to have the rest of her whitesmithing tools and the metals she’d left behind. Nora had arranged for a packing crate and now Kate was fitting in all the heavy equipment and materials, stuffing newspaper around them.
‘Why don’t you come and stay with me in Sussex?’ Nora asked as Kate finalized the packing. ‘You’ve said yourself you can’t go back to your garret. Martin can motor down to see us… It would be perfect.’
But the pretty cottage beyond the tunnel of trees no longer seemed a welcoming prospect. Surely the woodland would be as haunted as this house was by the ghost of her father. Nora had chosen to return to Sussex until the money from the house sale came through. Beyond that, she said, her only plan was to bring Paul home.
‘I’m not sure I can live there, Nora. I’d be seeing his face through every window. But can I come with you when you fetch Paul?’
‘Of course! I wouldn’t think of going without you, Kate. Apart from anything else, he’d never forgive me!’
*
After arranging with Nora to travel down to Sussex early next morning, she went straight to the Bermondsey Bookshop. Ethel had sent flowers and cards, asking Martin daily for updates on Kate’s progress, and Kate didn’t want to leave without saying thank you. The woman had been in ill health herself and often absent from the shop, Martin told her, so her concern for Kate had been even more touching. Nothing had changed, except that there seemed to be even more people than usual browsing the shelves. Kate walked to the back of the shop. No, nothing had changed; there was Ethel filling a couple of small vases with snowdrops. And when she noticed Kate approaching, she gasped, ‘Oh, my poor, dear girl, what has the brute done to you!’, embracing Kate and then holding her at arm’s length, her expression of concern telling Kate truthfully the toll her injuries had taken on her appearance. Everyone else had obviously lied when they said she was looking so much better. But Kate knew how thin she was, how wasted her muscles, how all her quick movements had slowed to a frustrating crawl.
‘Well, today I definitely haven’t run, so I suppose I can’t read neither, can I?’
Ethel laughed. ‘Ah, he never managed to crush your spirit!’ And then she dropped her voice. ‘Not as he did our poor Nora.’
‘She turned out stronger than I could have imagined, Ethel. She stayed with him for the chance of getting her child back, and that’s just what we’re going to do tomorrow!’
Ethel went to the back kitchen to make tea and, once they were seated at the long table together, Kate asked Ethel about her own illness, which had left her paler and thinner. The woman brushed the question off, obviously more eager to talk about Kate’s future. ‘Might I suggest you carry on with your smithing?’ She put a hand over Kate’s. ‘I want you to know that whatever happens in the future, you will always have a gallery at the Bermondsey Bookshop.’ She looked at Kate with such sweet intensity it almost felt as if she were making a solemn vow. Then the bright smile returned. ‘In fact, you need to start making more things for us; I sold the last of your pieces a week ago.’
‘Really, which one was that?’
‘The pewter Welsh love spoon.’
Kate smiled. She’d been proud of the intricate interlacing knotwork of the spoon handle, topped with two linked hearts.
‘I hope it went to a good home. Do you know who bought it?’
Ethel’s bright gaze dimmed slightly. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘It was John Bacon.’
Kate left the bookshop with a sense of sadness. It had felt as if Ethel were saying farewell, even though Kate had promised she would return. However, she suspected that Johnny would not. He’d told Ethel that he was going away, but he hadn’t said where and he hadn’t said for how long. She walked back to East Lane, intending to see Longbonnet, but with a lingering hope that perhaps Johnny hadn’t yet left.
They sat in Longbonnet’s backyard, in a square of early-evening sunshine. It had been a foggy day and patches lingered above the river, but now a rose-gold brightness made an oasis of the yard, where foggy dewdrops shone like jewels on furry-leaved herbs.
Her great-aunt Rosina puffed on the clay pipe. ‘So, what you going to do now, darlin’?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Everyone seems to be asking me that.’
It had been Martin’s first question after Archie’s death. Nora had asked her, then Conny and Miss Dane had asked her: What was she going to do? Was she coming back to East Lane? To Boutle’s? Even
her aunts had been interested enough to ask. Only one person hadn’t asked her.
‘Do you know where he’s gone?’
Longbonnet leaned forward to pick a sprig of rosemary. She chewed on it, shaking her head. ‘No. But he didn’t look well. He come to me before he left, said he was going away for a bit, needed a rest.’
The news was like a blow to the stomach. ‘Not well? Was it his lungs?’ She’d never forgive herself if he’d caught pneumonia because of all those damp nights standing guard over her.
Longbonnet gave her a long look and said, ‘It’s my opinion there’s not much wrong with that boy’s lungs – it’s his heart needs mending.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Wake up, gel… he’ll never get over you.’ She picked another sprig of rosemary and handed it to Kate. The sweet, sharp aroma clung to her fingers.
That Johnny should have left without a word to her felt like a betrayal, and yet he had no obligation to tell her anything. Kate dropped her gaze and picked off the blue-green spines. ‘He didn’t have to lose me, it was just he always seemed to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. It never worked.’
‘Wasn’t the wrong thing when he searched half London for that murdering Goss, then stood outside Guy’s making sure he didn’t come near you, was it?’
Kate breathed a deep sigh. ‘I’m not saying I wasn’t just as much to blame. When Dad came along… I put him first.’
‘Your father was a cold bastard,’ Longbonnet said, returning to her pipe, and Kate shifted uncomfortably on the old wooden bench. ‘He had ice in his veins, your father, and believe me, you don’t want to go that way too.’
‘I’m not cold-hearted! I’m just promised to someone else. And Johnny’s made his own choices – he took up with another girl pretty quickly, now he’s chosen to go away without telling me. I wanted to stay friends.’
Longbonnet rose with an audible crack of her joints and Kate realized she had no idea how old her great-aunt was. ‘When you decide what you’re going to do, you let me know. Don’t forget old Longbonnet,’ she said, kissing Kate, who was enveloped in the smell of rosemary and pipe tobacco. ‘And don’t forget that boy.’
*
Nora hadn’t yet told Paul about his father’s death. She’d arranged for a special visit, but hadn’t explained to Mr Woolf the reason. Paul was in the common room, alone, and when they walked in, he greeted them with his dazzling smile.
‘Mummy!’ He used all his strength to shove the heavy wooden chair into action, but Nora already had her arms around him before he had moved a few inches.
‘They didn’t tell me you were coming until this morning. And they never said Kate was coming too!’ He put his arms out for Kate, who hugged him, so that they formed a tangled trio.
‘We wanted to surprise you,’ Kate said. ‘We knew you’d make yourself sick with excitement and then you wouldn’t fancy these.’ She got out a bag of his favourite toffees.
‘Thanks, Kate! They’ve been letting me have your parcels since your last visit,’ he said, dipping in and giving her a toffee along with a conspiratorial look. He knew it had been she who’d made his life better, though how the fees had been paid he had no idea.
‘Well, you look as if you’ve put on some weight and you seem stronger!’ Nora said, holding his hand and sitting near him.
‘The food’s been better,’ the little boy said vaguely, and Kate took his other hand.
‘It’s all right, Paul. Your mother knows why you weren’t happy here. But she’s got something to tell you.’ And she gave Nora an encouraging nod.
After the news about his father had been broken, Paul cried. Kate wanted to tell him to save his tears, angry that the little boy’s love had been so despised. And in the same instant, she remembered her own tears at the morgue. Deserved or undeserved, love didn’t seem to discriminate, and she kept silent as Nora dried Paul’s eyes and told him she had other, better news.
His smile burst from a tear-stained face. ‘Today?’ He looked from one to the other. ‘I can come home today?’ This time, when he gripped the hard rubber wheels, he found the strength to propel himself forward rapidly. ‘Come on, Kate. Help me pack!’ And she found herself hurrying to keep up with him.
Mr Woolf had wanted to delay things. It was a hasty decision, Mrs Grainger’s mind was confused by grief, surely she could see Paul was flourishing under his care?
But Nora was implacable. ‘You see, Mr Woolf, I have always thought that I am the one who can best care for my son. My husband and I were always at odds over the care Paul received here. And to a mother’s eyes and a mother’s heart, what you have offered has been no care at all. I will be taking my son home today.’
Nora swept out of his office with a regal assurance and Kate followed admiringly in her wake. Later, they walked out of the school, Kate pushing Paul in the clumsy chair, and as they left, her brother kept looking over his shoulder, just to be sure that the walls of his benevolent-seeming prison were truly receding forever.
*
Kate was concentrating hard. She had burnished the pewter loving cup till it shone like silver. She’d added a copper rim and handles, which she’d chased with a Celtic knot design of two intertwined swans. Now she was engraving the inside of the bowl with a message. It was for the wedding. She stood up to stretch, and breathed in the salt-tinged breeze that drifted through the open window. She never tired of the view. Today, a cornflower sky rested above an aquamarine sea, white-ruffled surf fringing creamy sand in the cove below. Her workshop was on a cliff top. It was sheltered by a crescent hedge of wind-sculpted thorns and separated from the cliff edge by a slope of emerald turf. She could not be further from her garret in East Lane and sometimes she felt the dizzying need to remind herself that this was her life now.
And yet there were some things that were much the same as in East Lane. The small-paned window she could lean out of to see sky resting above water, and that same sense of a haven that she’d had in her garret. But now the vividness of the colours and the beauty for as far as the eye could see made this seem like a dream version of her life.
It had taken a long time to fit out her workshop exactly as she’d wanted it. She worked at a wooden bench that was beginning to acquire the smooth, worn feel of constant use. It wrapped around her so that, from her tall stool, she could easily reach spikes, vices, forming pads. Beneath it she stored her metals: tin, pewter, copper and a small amount of silver. From the ceiling, coils of wire and objects she’d made hung from low beams. Her bench was nothing like those at Boutle’s. She had a gas canister to fuel a clean oven and blow torch, so the days of soot and ash were over. In front of her, a row of tools hung neatly on a wooden rack – there were chasing and engraving tools, hammers of several sizes, some leather-wrapped. She picked up a hammer now, very like the one her father had used against her. She rarely thought of that day, but sometimes the heft of a soldering iron in her hand would bring it all back. And at those times she would put down her tool and look through the window, reminding herself that this was now who she was: Kate the whitesmith, not Kate the tin basher.
Martin had brought her to this place to continue her convalescence. There was no question of going back to the garret with its memory of Archie’s attack, nor of staying for long in Sussex, scene of his suicide. And suicide it still was in everyone’s eyes. She’d told no one about Stan’s confession. If she had done he would simply have denied it, and besides, whatever Mr Smith’s reasons might have been, justice of a sort had been meted out.
Martin knew of this place on the north Cornwall coast because he’d once lived here, spending two years in a community of artists, who’d bought up some houses and cottages dotted along the cliffs above the small harbour. The place would be perfect, he’d explained. She could rest and benefit from the sea air, and he would have the much-needed peace and beautiful light to help him return to painting. After Archie’s attack on Kate, he’d found working almost impossible, and she’d been as worrie
d about him as he was about her for a while. He was anchorless without his work and so she’d agreed to come here. She’d imagined they would stay the month or so necessary for her recovery, then return to London for their wedding. But things hadn’t gone according to plan.
She blamed the tin mine. It had caught her eye as they first drove along the cliff road to the village. Its tall, narrow engine house and sky-piercing chimney perched on the very edge of the cliff, a stark and dramatic connection to every part of her life since she’d escaped Janey and walked into Boutle’s on that first day.
‘Is the cottage far from here?’ she asked, her eye on the mine.
‘No,’ he said, squinting at the road ahead. ‘The cottage isn’t far now. Why?’
She laughed. ‘Why? We’ll be living near a tin mine!’
‘Oh! Tin! Yes, of course. I suppose it’s like taking a sculptor to live in Carrara!’
‘If you say so. But I’d like to go and see it.’
‘Carrara?’
‘No! Idiot. The tin mine.’
And they had done, not long after settling in to the cottage. And as she’d walked around the mine she’d felt something settle in her. As if she’d been here before, as if it might once have been home. She liked to think that her roaming ancestors might have passed this way in the distant past. So, the tin mine, oddly enough, became the symbol that held her steady, and helped her heal, and instead of a month, they had stayed more than a year.
*
It had been more than a year. A year in which everything had changed. A year in which he’d grown stronger, fitter, browner, and one in which – the doctors assured him – the cure of freezing high mountain air had worked its magic. His lungs were clear. He’d never expected to return from Leysin, the Swiss sanatorium which Bermondsey Borough Council paid for locals to attend – if, of course, the medical officer thought the case was serious enough. Others were given a green wooden hut with louvre windows and ordered to sleep in their backyards – well away from spouses and children.