Cruel as the Grave

by Meg Elizabeth Atkins

  Liz said stubbornly, ‘They don’t question everyone they have to have a reason, surely. Look, when did all this happen?’

  ‘Um — Thursday night — her body wasn’t found till the Friday morning. The town was agog. I mean, a murder in Hambling. My dear, how common. You should have been here. You were away last weekend, weren’t you? Where did you go?’

  ‘Dorset,’ Liz said at random. Where she had been and why was none of Paula’s business. ‘But, about Reggie — ’

  ‘Yes, well. The police wanted to know his movements on the Thursday night the day before her body was found. He didn’t have to go to the police station to make a statement, that “voluntary” business is all crap. I mean, your average, law-abiding citizen is far from clear about his rights — not to mention someone as generally hopeless as Reggie. Anyway, I want you to go round in the morning, it’s essential you let Helen know where you stand.’

  ‘Where I what?’

  ‘There’s a tremendous amount of talk — insinuations. I can dismiss it, but Helen and Reggie are so concerned for the good name of — ’

  ‘Insinuations?’

  ‘Don’t be dense. You know the sort of thing... no smoke without a fire. Ridiculous, I know. But it’s how people react, human nature being what it is, pretty ghastly on the whole. I’ve been as positive and supportive as I can but it’s about time Helen and Reggie had a little input from you. It’s just unfortunate you chose to be away when you’d have been more use at home.’

  ‘I could scarcely anticipate something like this.’

  ‘My point exactly. So you’ll go round to Woodside first thing, won’t you? They need one of us and I shall be away for a couple of days.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Liz said, responding to the genuine note of concern in Paula’s voice.

  ‘Good. I have to be in Eastbourne. I should have gone this afternoon but I hung on till you got back. As it is I’ll leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow. It’s Bess and Alfred’s golden wedding, they’re having a full gathering of the clans... ’

  And it was unthinkable Paula should not be there. Bess and Alfred Warner — distant relatives of the Willoughbys — had taken care of Paula after her mother’s early death — a temporary arrangement that became permanent. At that time they lived near Hambling and had young children of their own.

  Their tribalism engulfed Paula, providing her with what she once described to Liz as ‘the rough and tumble of family life, the loving and sharing, the lessons of give and take. Something you never had, Liz, and Helen doesn’t even know about.’ The Warners made much of rituals: weddings, christenings, anniversaries. As the junior Warners proliferated there were many such occasions and Paula was conscientious about attending them, even after her foster-parents moved to Eastbourne.

  ‘... I was supposed to help with the arrangements, it’s a lot for Bess and Alfred, but it means so much to them to have everyone there. Michael’s coming over from Brussels with his new wife and his two and her two, and Gloria’s over from Canada with Bob and the twins... ’

  Shoals of names surged past Liz, meaning little or nothing. She made the occasional automatic response, all that was necessary when Paula was in full throat. But at last, the catalogue of unknowable people marrying, divorcing, breeding, travelling had its usual mind-stunning effect and when it was finally concluded she could put down the receiver and go to bed in a calmer frame of mind. Before she did so, she looked in the two copies of the free papers that had been delivered during her absence and in the recent one read the report of the discovery of the woman’s body. No name was given and the description meant nothing to her.

  Her descent into sleep was tangled with thoughts of Reggie, what to do about him and his... what? Assignations? Then she came upon a solution. She would hide the key in another place, where he wouldn’t find it. Of course — warn him what she had done, to spare him any last minute embarrassment.

  She woke with a start, in darkness, with the desperate feeling: somethings happened somethings happened...

  Then she realised it was merely that the rain had stopped at last.

  Three

  The Willoughby house, built in the Edwardian age to accommodate a large family and necessary servants, stood on Woodside — a winding road of spinneys and grass clearings. When Mrs Willoughby died shortly after Paula’s birth, Helen took on the duties of housekeeper, hostess for her father, nurse to her father’s invalid parents, mother to Reggie. The infant Paula’s noisy and unremitting demands for attention proved too much for everyone — it was then she was sent to the Warners. Mr Willoughby had an aversion to children; Helen and Reggie had been kept out of his way until they were rational enough to meet his standards of correct behaviour. He cultivated the image of a refined, successful man; domestic life was shaped to his requirements, which were of unyielding selfishness. He never laid a hand on his children in anger or affection; his cruelties were verbal, his disdain annihilating.

  Reared in the tradition of obedience, Helen never made the least gesture of subversion. When the long-lived Willoughby grandparents eventually obliged everyone by dying within a few months of one another she was free — as her father saw it — to devote herself to his ever more fastidious needs. If she wept for the years running away with her youth and her life, the essence of her individual self, she did so in private. Paula, visiting, urged rebellion. Growing up in the freedom of education and opportunity, she despised Helen’s effacement. ‘You’re turning into a dried up old maid. You want to fulfil yourself. Get away.’ But where? Helen was a superb housekeeper but her accomplishments did not equip her to provide for herself.

  After retirement, Mr Willoughby suffered a stroke, declined physically and mentally, the peevishness of age uncovering seams of malice in his unpleasant nature. ‘He’s a vicious bastard. How can you stand it? You know he’s going ga-ga. Put him in a nursing home,’ Paula said to Helen. ‘I couldn’t, he’d make a frightful fuss. Paula, it’s sweet of you to try to help but, truly, I think it best if you didn’t see him again. It makes him so — confused, and difficult to handle.’ ‘Confused? What in God’s name is he drivelling about? I just pretend to listen, I’ve more than enough trouble of my own at the moment.’ Paula was distracted by the break-up of her marriage and the exercise of using her daughters as weapons. She suggested Reggie make himself useful — ‘Father’s only got to set eyes on him to have a seizure. With any luck it might be fatal.’

  But Helen bore the burden alone, to the limit of her endurance. When the time came and she stood at her father’s graveside her neat little body was skin and bone, her face haunted. Liz’s mother — Helen’s cousin — was at the funeral. She said, ‘Imagine her taking it so badly. Anyone would think she cared for the old brute.’ Liz snapped back that Helen was worn out — ‘None of us helped her enough.’ ‘Well, she can help herself now. You know she’s got the lot.’ Liz’s mother, an unhappy woman with a distraught personal life, could never forgive Helen for stealing Liz’s affection; it never occurred to her that if she’d had any to give, her daughter wouldn’t have sought it elsewhere. ‘Anyway, you stupid girl, how could you have helped? Eh? He couldn’t stand the sight of you, you’d only have made things worse. Not that that ever stops you. Do you know what Helen says about you?’ With spiteful mimicry, Liz’s mother spoke in Helen’s caressing tones — ‘Dear Liz always does the wrong thing for the right reasons.’

  *

  And that morning, holding Helen in a firm hug, Liz said, ‘I could have rushed here last night but it was so late when Paula phoned. That would have been the wrong thing for the right reasons, wouldn’t it?’

  Helen emerged from Liz’s embrace: slim, with a small-boned, intelligent face; eyes that were still beautiful; her make-up was careful, her hair dyed a becoming, almost natural brown. Her composure, reassuringly intact, indicated that whatever happened, she would deal with it. ‘I was up with Reggie in his room, so glad to see it was your car in the drive. My sensible Liz. You appreciate I ref
use to make much of this.’

  ‘Of course... ’ Talking together, they crossed the shining parquet of the wide hall with its beautiful Chinese rugs. The wide staircase went up on shallow treads to turn on a graceful half landing. Helen had made no concessions to modernity here: the centre-placed floral carpet snapped down at each tread by brass stair-rods, gleaming, fleur-de-lis shaped; on either side the expanses of mahogany, every grain, every polished surface announcing its quality. On the half landing, beneath a wide sash window, velvet curtained — a carved oak blanket chest; a gilded rococo pot spilling an exuberant fern; an enormous dinner gong... Aunt Helen, its lunch time, please may I bang the gongy please...

  They went into the kitchen, where Helen made coffee. She said, ‘It’s so hard on Reggie. So unfair. And he’s been awfully brave.’

  Liz took this to mean he had squared his jaw and gone out to face the world. Why should he not? He worked at something dull in a large complex of Government buildings known as Little Whitehall. His father had insisted he go into the Civil Service — it being the ideal institution to absorb Reggie’s inefficiency and limit his capacity for getting into messes. She asked if they were giving him plenty of support at work — she could hardly say they must be overjoyed to have something interesting to talk about at last, and thanked heaven she’d saved herself from such crassness when Helen murmured, ‘Poor lamb. He’s not cut out to be the object of sensational curiosity. There’s a great deal of unpleasantness about something like this. People make jokes. They whisper. He really did try, but it was too awful. Now he won’t even leave the house. He feels he can’t walk around town without being pointed out.’

  ‘Helen — this is awful.’

  ‘It is essential that we keep things in proportion. All this will blow over, we must just stay calm.’

  ‘Calm — yes. But, Helen, I do find it confusing. I mean, that woman’s body at Miller’s Bridge — what on earth has it got to do with Reggie?’

  ‘Nothing, of course, it was all a misunderstanding. Bring the tray, darling,’ Helen said briskly.

  Obediently, Liz carried the tray into the garden room. Helen’s father, enraged by the prospect of death extinguishing his dictatorship, made Helen promise never to change anything in the house. She promised. After his death, a decent interlude, she began work.

  The house had beautiful proportions but it was gloomy, inconveniently old-fashioned, stifled by the air of sickness, old age, outworn memories. Helen let in the light, filled it with comfort and colour. The garden room, her favourite, was entirely her creation. Long, low-ceilinged, panelled in white wood; one wall entirely floor to ceiling windows; she had chosen the most delicate furniture, sweet-pea colours of tender clarity, so that even in winter the room breathed the air of lost summers, of summers to come. The view of the garden was a gauze of autumn sunlight, shimmering away to a curtain of willows.

  The two women sat close together. In a house so spacious and solidly built, conversations could not be overheard, yet they spoke softly — Helen would allow nothing to disrupt the serenity she had created. She said, ‘Now, before we go into this tiresome business, tell me about last weekend. Did you... ’ A pause of perfect discretion. ‘Did you call it all off?’

  ‘Yes. We walked miles in a kind of ferocious silence, then went back to the hotel, and he’d make this dreadful fuss... ’ Liz talked, feeling now nothing but relief, glad to unburden herself about the difficulty of getting rid of a lover who didn’t want to go. Helen listened, murmured. Her sympathy was enveloping, her understanding remarkable in that she had never — as far as Liz knew — had anything beyond mere friendship with a man in her life. Her father would never have permitted anything of the kind; but after his death...

  Liz guarded hopes. Helen was still beautiful — and last summer had brought Wilfred — with all the sexiness and wit and looks of a man half his seventy years. But the summer ended, and he went back to Hampshire... Liz spared a regretful thought for Wilfred before saying firmly, ‘Enough about me. It’s over. I’m available again. Come along. Tell.’

  ‘Where shall I begin? The police enquiries. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in when they called, or I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened. You see, Reggie kept getting mixed up about where he’d been that particular Thursday night. He went over to Robert’s at Midham but Robert wasn’t in so he’d driven around. Then he said — no, that was another evening. Then he said he’d been here all the time.’

  ‘What a mess. Were you at home?’

  ‘No, it was my turn to keep old Martha Riggs company. Reggie and I went out more or less together — immediately after dinner — and he didn’t come home till quite late. I heard him, I can’t be sure what the time was — past midnight. Liz, we’re used to him, we know he’s easily confused, and he gets intimidated and rather silly if he thinks he’s being accused of something.’

  ‘Yes. But anyone who doesn’t know him would think the worst.’

  ‘Quite. He had absolutely nothing to do with that unfortunate person. No one even knows who she is, or what she was doing round here — she certainly wasn’t local. But he got into such a tangle the officer asked him to go along to the police station and make a statement.’

  ‘Asked him? Paula gave me the impression he’d been frogmarched.’

  ‘Well, Paula. She has tried to help.’

  ‘Oh, God... ’

  ‘Yes.’

  The short silence brimmed with perfect understanding as together they contemplated the seething nature of Paula’s helpfulness.

  Liz said optimistically, ‘She’ll lose interest when the drama goes out of it. But I still don’t understand. Why pick on Reggie in the first place?’

  ‘Apparently they had some reason to believe he was near Miller’s Bridge that night, at the time it happened. I suppose really they wanted to know if he’d seen anyone about or seen... her.’

  For the first time, Helen wavered. The reality of the dead woman, a drowned woman, unknown, unclaimed, invaded the lovely room. Liz, driving over Miller’s Bridge scarcely half an hour before, had felt curiosity, nothing more. Now it was as if this woman had suddenly acquired a personal significance, was capable of wrenching their lives out of shape.

  A frisson. Liz would have dismissed it, had not Helen continued to sit, tense, gazing out at the garden. Liz thought, she’s hiding so much distress. Helen moved, self-possession regained, spoke with genteel emphasis. ‘It was nonsense. He was nowhere near there. He did go to Robert’s, and that’s miles away, as you know. And because Robert wasn’t in he went for a drink at the Feathers, then that pretty place by the village pond at Crale. He wasn’t exactly with anyone but he was seen by people who recognised him.’

  As Liz asked questions and Helen explained in more detail, a picture emerged of Reggie spending an aimless evening, drinking alone. He would not have been over the limit, he was conscientious about drinking and driving, but he was a social creature, hating his own company. All his adult life he had applied himself to leisure with the tenacity of the empty-headed; he had any number of places to go to be with friends.

  ‘I take it Robert wasn’t expecting him?’

  ‘No. If he had been, this disagreeable business would have been avoided. If I hadn’t gone out to sit with poor old Martha Riggs, Reggie could have come home — but he knew the house would be empty, and he does so hate being alone. If... ’

  Liz was about to say, dreadfully, that it was all water under the bridge, when Helen forestalled her by saying firmly, ‘However, we can’t turn back the clock, we must be sensible and let everything return to normal.’

  Liz was wondering if Reggie really had just taken it into his head to drive out to Robert’s or if he might have been expecting to meet someone at her cottage and there’d been a mix-up. His life was ambushed by mix-ups — present him with the unexpected and he dithered. There was nothing she dare say to Helen about it — after all, Helen had been deceived by them both and the only relief for guilt Liz could find was the sillines
s of the whole business. In the midst of her worry about Reggie, this trivial business was the last thing Helen needed to know.

  But, Liz considered, Reggie could be in need of a little reassurance — if his conscience was troubling him, or he was afraid she might let something slip. Just a word, not to make an issue of it — never fear; old chap, your secret is safe with me. She put her hand on Helens, an encouraging pat. ‘I’ll go up and have a chat with him, shall I?’

  ‘No.’ Helens thin fingers curved, clutching. ‘No, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.’

  Liz was so shocked she could only say, stupidly, ‘But — it’s me — ’

  ‘Oh, darling, how could I be so tactless. Don’t be hurt. Let me explain. It was frightful for him — taken away in a police car, held in an interview room, which he said was ghastly. Questioned — nothing like it has ever happened to him in his life. It’s knocked the stuffing out of him completely.’

  Cruel to point out there was hardly any stuffing to begin with. Instead, Liz said gently, ‘But this is serious. He can’t shut himself away, he’ll make himself ill. Has he seen the doctor?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I made sure of that. Tranquillisers, advice to take things easy. But, we’ve had a good talk. What I think is important at the moment is for him to do what he wants to do. He needs a breathing space. So we’ve arranged he’ll go to Cheltenham and stay with Uncle William.’

  ‘The old sea-dog... ’ A retired naval chaplain, surreally absent-minded, Uncle William was adored by everyone. ‘Well, yes, he should be able to put Reggie together again. But, Helen, are you sure it’s a good thing?’ Reggie was running away. They would not say it but they both knew it.

  ‘No, darling, but at the moment it’s the only thing. I shall drive him this afternoon and stay over and come back tomorrow or Monday. You do understand, don’t you? Just a short time away will do him so much good. A week, perhaps, while all this blows over. He needs to — steady himself.’