Broken Music

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Then how about the one which takes in that famous view from Broughton Hill that Matron’s been telling me about?’

  ‘Very well, if you must,’ she said at last, then smiled, the quick smile that had always turned his heart over. ‘But I’ll warn you, it’s a stiff climb, and unless you’re prepared for a fourteen-mile tramp, we shall have to turn round and come back. It’s a much better walk in the opposite direction, up to the holy well. That way you can make a circular tour, and besides, it’s prettier.’

  ‘I don’t mind turning round. The view never looks the same on the way back.’

  For a long moment they looked at each other. ‘We’ll see. If we can manage to get time off together.’ She lifted the fob watch pinned to her apron. ‘Now I must go.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Reardon could see it in the distance, the place where the Raffertys lived, as he walked down Hoggins Lane, a little-used track which, until a new road into the works had been built, had been the main entrance to the small brickworks situated a mile further along the lane. Sam Noakes had told him where to find it – ‘It’s known as Rafferty’s Cottage, but don’t expect to find a cottage.’

  The building ahead, a large, low-roofed, brick-built edifice, was certainly not a cottage, and whatever it had once been, it had seen better days. Its paintwork was peeling and one of the window shutters was hanging loose, giving it a decidedly lopsided appearance, but it had to be the place he was looking for. Sam had said one half of it used to be the old brickworks’ counting house, the other half a storage place for light materials, until the distance of both from the main works came to be seen as a disadvantage by the owner and a newer, more convenient building was erected at the same time as the new entrance to the works was created. Joel Rafferty had rented the disused property when he and his wife arrived from London, had built his kiln in the storage side and converted the counting house to a domestic dwelling. Behind it were several smaller, almost derelict buildings. Again according to Sam, the Raffertys had originally envisaged these as housing for other artisans who might make up his proposed community, but that was a hope destined never to be fulfilled.

  Reardon was almost at the end of the lane when he came across a woman, dressed very oddly and gathering what looked like dandelion leaves to add to the watercress already in her basket.

  ‘Good afternoon. I’m looking for the pottery and Mrs Rafferty.’

  ‘Well, this is the pottery, or used to be, and I’m Amarantha Rafferty. What can I do for you?’

  Despite looking like nothing but a bundle of old clothes, she spoke with a quick, educated accent and looked searchingly at him as she waited for an answer. Sam had warned him she was ‘one o’ them bluestockings’, and outlandish into the bargain, a term that served for anything or anyone the village didn’t understand, but she didn’t seem at all intimidating. Rather the opposite: under a bright-orange hat crocheted in chenille, from which wisps of grey hair escaped, she had a humorous mouth and kind eyes; the fact that she wore umpteen layers of clothing of various kinds and a pair of men’s boots certainly made her look peculiar in the extreme; on the other hand, it was a cold, raw afternoon and the boots must have been a distinct advantage when scrabbling in streams and ditches for watercress and dandelion leaves. He put her at first at around sixty but that may have been because of her weatherbeaten complexion. She could have been a lot younger.

  ‘You’d better come into the house,’ she said when he told her his business. A trodden path led directly off the lane to what seemed to be the only door, through a vegetable plot almost bare at this season except for a few old Brussels sprouts’ stalks. A pump with a water butt next to it stood outside the door, which opened directly into a huge living space, the kitchen being at one end, he saw as they entered. It was magnificently untidy. But the initial impression was immediately superseded by one of life, warmth and colour, from the warm terracotta of the wash on the walls, to the cushions and brightly patterned shawls and covers thrown carelessly over the haphazardly scattered chairs and sofas. Large, vibrantly painted pottery plates (which he assumed were the work of Mrs Rafferty, and about which there seemed to be a great deal of eye-rolling in the village) hung amongst a varied selection of prints and paintings. But above all it was a room of books. He marvelled at the quantity, completely filling the shelves which had been erected on one long wall, and spilling over onto every other available surface, including the floor, much to the detriment of the housekeeping. But what would a bit of dust matter to a person like Mrs Rafferty, with a mind above such mundane things?

  As soon as they entered she pulled off her shapeless hat and threw it onto a chair, causing an affronted marmalade cat to jump up and stalk off, tail in air, and a quantity of dishevelled, greying dark hair to tumble around her face. She threw off her outer garments and tossed them over a sofa, revealing underneath them a brown dress decorated with black Assisi work, covered with a long green tabard, fringed at the hem. She lifted a big kettle standing to one side of the great stone fireplace onto the glowing embers at the heart of the fire, where it immediately began to sing. She turned and spoke, and he was disconcerted when she said, looking directly at his face, ‘I take it your injuries are a result of this last disgraceful affair?’

  ‘They are, ma’am.’ He had heard the war referred to in other terms.

  ‘Then I am sorry for you.’ With a brown, work-worn hand she touched his, warmly and unselfconsciously. ‘My husband died in the war. It was not a heroic death, he caught pneumonia during his field training. He was too old to have volunteered to fight in the first place, but he died believing what he had done was right.’ For a brief moment she was silent, then she went on briskly, ‘Well, there we are. And now, Mr Reardon, I’m going to offer you tea and some of the cake I’ve just made. It should be cool enough to cut by now. Will you take some? Don’t say no, there’s plenty. Much can be contrived,’ she observed, fetching tea things and the cake from the kitchen end and cutting a large slice, ‘by the use of carrots for sugar, and fruits from the hedgerows.’

  ‘Er, quite.’

  He tried the cake and found it very good indeed, though the tea was another matter. He preferred not to speculate what it was made from: dried hay, perhaps. He took a long swig to get rid of it. ‘Very good cake.’

  He couldn’t keep his eye from straying to the books.

  ‘You like to read?’ she asked, noticing his interest.

  ‘When I have the opportunity, and the wherewithal to get hold of books,’ he answered, getting up to read the titles. ‘You have an interesting collection, Mrs Rafferty.’

  ‘They are here to be borrowed at any time. Which ones interest you most?’ He mentioned a few and she nodded approvingly. Suddenly, he knew what it was about her: the way she talked brought to mind Miss Calder, Ellen Calder, the young schoolteacher who had conducted the WEA French classes he had attended in the days before the war, when he had been filled with a burning desire to better himself. She had written warmly to him throughout his time in France. A young lady of serious bent, she had always ended her letters to him with a paragraph or two in French, to which she had expected him to reply likewise. It had made him smile, but it had kept him on his toes, a reminder that there was still something else out there. He hadn’t yet found the courage to renew his acquaintance with Miss Calder.

  ‘I can see you have a questing mind,’ Mrs Rafferty went on. ‘What are you searching for?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know.’ He rubbed his nose. She had glowing, intelligent brown eyes, and he knew she understood exactly what he meant when he went on, ‘I suppose I’ve only one question, really, ma’am: why?’

  ‘We’re all asking that. There aren’t enough books in the world to answer it.’

  Books, and a few generalities, kept them going through another slice of the cake, and the polite refusal of more tea, until he felt able to broach the subject of his visit.

  ‘I can’t tell you anything about what happened, but I can
tell you about Marianne herself. She was a strange girl in many ways, not much like the rest of her family. Have they told you she had an ambition to write novels?’

  No, he said, that was news to him.

  ‘Hmm, well. I have been very sorry since she died to think that I might have been unnecessarily unkind to her on the subject.’

  ‘In what way?’ He could not, for the life of him, imagine Mrs Rafferty being unkind to anyone.

  She got up to stir the fire and throw on a big log. Flames crackled and sparks flew up the chimney. He found it very agreeable, sitting in this strange room with the old, comfortably worn chairs drawn up to the hearth, with the fire lighting the darkening afternoon and the tea table between them, the old cat reclaiming a place by the blaze. ‘She came to me for instruction. No, I am not a writer myself, not a writer of fiction, at any rate. Pamphlets and so on are more in my line. For the Cause, you know.’

  He might have guessed. Votes for Women. Before the war he’d been as much against the idea as anyone, but the work women had unstintingly done during the war, men’s work, much of it heavy, had changed his opinion about that – and many other men’s, including some in the government. Ellen Calder herself had delivered mail, wearing breeches and riding a two-stroke motorcycle they called the Baby Triumph. At any rate the women had got the vote at last – at least, if they were over thirty, or a property owner.

  ‘Poor Marianne,’ Mrs Rafferty went on. ‘She’d been writing fairy stories and so on since she was a child but she was confused as to how to begin writing what she considered ‘proper stories’ and when her father came to me and asked me to help, I told him to send her to college, to learn from people better qualified than I, but she shrank from the idea. Well, I have read a good deal, as you can see, and I studied literature when I was at Oxford, so I agreed. It was not, I fear, a success. She came to me for two or three years and at the end of it we were really not much further. She would not apply herself, you see, and at last, I’m sorry to say, I told her in no uncertain terms that she liked the idea of being a writer rather than actually being one, if you know what I mean? It was as if she were simply writing out her own daydreams – and we all know where daydreams lead, don’t we? In Marianne’s case, to a lot of romantic slush,’ she said forthrightly. ‘And she was too dreamy or disinclined to work at it and put it together properly, not even into a form where it could be shown to someone else who might well, I admit, have had more encouraging opinions than mine. I lost patience. Those early stories of hers – fairytale romances and so on – had been quite charming, but she had come to be influenced by too many of the sort of books I regard as trash, and for that I blame that silly young woman who is Lady Sybil’s maid for lending them to her.’ She bent her head over the teapot and her grey tresses fell either side of her face. ‘There now, I’ve said more than I should.’

  A friendship between Marianne Wentworth, who had been, he knew, more or less related to Lady Sybil, and her lady’s maid, seemed quite an odd notion to Reardon, and the idea that she should need to borrow books from her even odder, and he said as much to Mrs Rafferty.

  ‘Oh, but I don’t think they were friends at all, or not in the way one usually thinks of friends. I suppose the loan of the books had brought them together, and I don’t know how that came about – except that they were unlikely in the extreme to have appeared on her father’s bookshelves – but I doubt they could have been much more than acquaintances. I suppose they liked each other well enough, and Lady Sybil is very liberal-minded in that way, but it would never have done for her maid to…well, get ideas. Remember, it was before the war stamped out that sort of thing.’

  The war had certainly done a great deal to smooth out social inequalities, but there was a long road to go yet and Mrs Rafferty was a great deal more naive than he had given her credit for, if she believed to the contrary, which he did not think she did. ‘You’re being ironic, Mrs Rafferty.’ She smiled.

  He knew he need not beat about the bush with this lady. ‘Mrs Rafferty. Did you ever entertain the idea that Marianne’s death might not have been an accident?’

  She gave him a level glance. She knew what he meant. ‘She did not leave a letter behind, as far as I’m aware. Don’t suicides always do that?’

  ‘Usually, but not invariably.’

  She thought this over for some time. ‘To be honest, yes, the notion did cross my mind, and that was what made me feel so guilty. But on reflection, I ceased to blame myself. She had not been upset at what I told her, it was almost as if she didn’t care. I think the writing itself had come to satisfy her, that it ceased to matter that she might never be published. Poor, dear Marianne! She had such an unrealistic view of life, not at all like the real world we live in. But to answer your question – yes, I believe that given the right circumstances…if, say, she fell in love and it turned out wrongly, she could – well, she could have taken her life.’

  ‘Is that possible? That she had a disastrous love affair?’

  ‘I knew little of that side of her life. You’d have to ask my son, Steven. Just before she died, they were both part of a crowd of young people who used to be together all the time. He’ll be in shortly, he’s gone fishing and I hope he’ll bring something back for our supper…He goes back to Cambridge in a couple of days. Will you stay and join us?’

  Much as he would have liked to – he had begun to think he might have found a friend in Mrs Rafferty – he declined the offer. It never did to mix work with pleasure. But he would stay until he had seen Steven Rafferty.

  Her brisk tone had made him think she wished the subject changed, but it was she, while they were waiting, who returned to it. ‘As I said, after poor Marianne died, I began to question myself, to wonder if I might not have been wrong. None of us is infallible, after all. I asked if they would let me have her notebooks to go through, thinking I might perhaps salvage something, you know, that although it couldn’t do her much good, then her hopes might not all have been in vain…’ She broke off. ‘No, I am not being altogether truthful. I was more inclined to think there might be some clue in them as to why she had died. I had been rather harsh…’ Her face was troubled.

  ‘And was there?’ he asked gently.

  ‘They could not be found. No one knew what had become of them, or seemed to care particularly. Her family, I think, never understood her ambitions, much as they loved her. In fact, they suggested she must have destroyed them before her…accident.’

  ‘Which seems to strengthen the idea it wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘Indeed. I refuse to believe she would ever have destroyed them otherwise, not Marianne. To me, what she wrote seemed mostly rubbish, but of course, she didn’t believe that, Marianne herself.’ Her eyes, bright and alert, regarded him steadily, then she said, as if coming to a decision, ‘If I were you, I should ask her family about them.’

  ‘Ask which family?’

  In the long, shadowy room the arrival of the young man had gone unnoticed. He walked to the far end and threw a large fish on to the draining board where it slithered into the sink. ‘Roach,’ he said, coming back. ‘Not much else doing this afternoon, Ma, except tiddlers.’

  He was lanky, bespectacled and quietly spoken. His mother was, she had told Reardon, pinning her faith on his hopes for a junior fellowship at Cambridge; he had a brilliant degree, he had worked hard during the war, it was only what he deserved. Steven Rafferty himself appeared to be an unassuming young man for such accolades to be heaped upon him; but that was a mother’s privilege.

  ‘Steven, how quietly you came in. This is Mr Reardon, who used to be with the police. He was wondering what we can remember about poor Marianne’s drowning.’

  ‘Oh?’ He regarded Reardon owlishly through his spectacles. Then he smiled pleasantly but waved away Reardon’s extended hand. ‘Sorry, I’m filthy. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and tidy myself up a little.’ He was wearing fisherman’s waders and a disreputable old jacket, patently outgrown, presumably donned
for fishing.

  ‘Don’t go to any trouble for me,’ Reardon said.

  ‘Oh, it’s no trouble. Can’t spoil your tea, and mine, smelling of fish.’ He went outside again to wash his hands at the pump, returned and took the wooden flight of stairs in the corner in several easy strides. Mrs Rafferty went to make fresh tea. A few minutes later Steven presented himself, changed, combed and tidied, and accepted cake and tea from his mother. ‘Well now.’

  He listened with grave attention while Reardon outlined the position, seemingly as incurious as his mother had been about his motives in starting up enquiries again.

  ‘I have spoken to Miss Wentworth and she seemed to think I should speak to the Gypsies.’

  ‘Nella did? I wonder why?’

  ‘Wasn’t one of them making a nuisance of himself? Hanging around you and your friends and…er…having his eye on Marianne?’

  ‘Good Lord, only Rupert – the Austrian, von Kessel – thought that, or pretended to. He made the excuse that Danny Boswell seemed to be paying too much attention to Marianne, but I think he just felt a Gypsy should keep his distance from people whom he thought were not quite the same standing, so to speak. Which wasn’t the case at all. They’re well known around here, the Boswells. As long as they keep their hands off other people’s property, nobody minds them. All the same, it wasn’t usual to do what Grev did one day.’

  Reardon lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘He went over to Danny and suggested he join us.’

  ‘Join you?’

  ‘I know, I know. Ludicrous, wasn’t it? Especially as there was no danger of him doing so. Grev knew perfectly well Daniel would run a mile rather than join us. To be honest, I wondered if he had actually put the question to him at all, simply pretended he had. They’re proud people you know, the Romanies, they value their independence and rightly resent condescension. Grev only did what he did to annoy Rupert.’