The Shortest Journey

by Hazel Holt

  ‘Please sit down, Mrs Malory.’

  Trying to look relaxed and unconcerned, I sat down in one of the small chintz-covered armchairs on either side of the fireplace. The room was pleasantly furnished in a cottagey sort of way and there were several beautifully arranged bowls of flowers set on small tables or on the broad window-sills. These I found somehow reassuring. People, I told myself, who had committed unspeakable crimes would not, surely, spend time arranging flowers.

  ‘Can I get you some tea, or coffee, perhaps?’ the man asked politely.

  ‘No. No, thank you. I’ve just had lunch, really.’

  There was a silence while I tried to think how to put the questions I had to ask. Suddenly the man smiled. His rather austere face was transformed; it was a warm, open, friendly smile and I found myself instinctively smiling back.

  ‘So you’re Sheila,’ he said. ‘I’m really glad to meet you at last. My name’s Christian Vanderlinden.’

  ‘Christian...’ All sorts of bells were ringing in my head.

  ‘Edie always calls – called – me Chris.’

  ‘You’re South African?’ I asked.

  ‘Born and brought up there. I worked there until just after the war, then I went to Canada. I’ve lived there ever since.’

  That explained his strange accent. My eye was suddenly caught by an object on one of the small tables, something I recognised.

  ‘The gazelle!’ I exclaimed. I went and picked it up, holding it in my hand as I had done many times since I was a child, feeling the smoothness, the warmth, almost, of the ivory. ‘So she did take it with her!’

  ‘I gave it to Edie on her eighteenth birthday.’

  ‘Then you—’ I broke off and sat down. ‘Please, will you explain what has happened? I’m so confused.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll explain, but first I will pour us both a glass of wine. Yes, I know it’s the wrong time of day,’ he smiled again, ‘but we will both feel more at ease with glasses in our hands.’

  He went into the kitchen and I got up and looked out of the window. From the cottage, high on the top of the hill, the view was magnificent, hills and valleys rolling away into the distance. The sun had come out from behind the clouds now, bathing the landscape in soft autumnal light, so that it looked like a painting by Richard Wilson. Christian Vanderlinden came back with two glasses and a bottle on a tray and poured us each a glass of white wine. He was right; we both relaxed, almost like old acquaintances.

  ‘Edie’s father,’ Christian said, ‘was a rich man. He didn’t think I was a good enough catch’ – here his voice grated harshly – ‘for his daughter. He was right, I suppose, in worldly terms. I was a young engineer, just starting to make my way. But I loved Edie and she loved me. For another father that might have been enough, but not for him.’

  ‘What about her mother?’ I asked.

  ‘She wouldn’t have stopped us getting married, but she had nothing to do with it. The poor wretched little creature couldn’t call her soul her own, didn’t like South Africa, just wanted to go back to England to live like they used to in the old days before he made his money. She was frightened of him – they were all frightened of him, her and both the girls. He used to fly into these terrible rages, there was no reasoning with him.’

  I thought of Alan.

  ‘He flew into a rage with me when I went to tell him that Edie and I wanted to get married. Shouted the place down, said we must never see each other again, turned me out of the house – called the servants to say that they must never let me in if I called. It was brutal and humiliating.’

  His eyes were cold and I saw that he was unconsciously clenching his hands as he remembered. After a moment he continued.

  ‘We managed to meet secretly a few times. Poor little Edie, she was so terrified that he’d find out. I begged her to come away with me, but she wouldn’t. It wasn’t because of the money.’ He gazed at me earnestly. ‘She never cared anything for that; she would have happily starved with me. She was afraid that he’d come after us – she wasn’t twenty-one – and she couldn’t bear the scenes and his violent temper. Not just for her, but the old man would have taken it out on her mother and her sister, too. She said their lives wouldn’t be worth living.’

  He got up and went over to the window, leaning on the sill. His back was to me and his voice was muffled.

  ‘I was young, too, and I was very bitter. I said that if she wouldn’t come with me then she didn’t love me, that she only cared for wealth and position. I said a lot of stupid things. And she cried. I remember how she cried.’

  He turned round and faced me.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘I went away. Off to Rhodesia, to the Copper Belt. I did well, made quite a bit of money, quite a name for myself as an engineer. When I got back to Durban they’d gone. He’d taken them back to England. I asked around and found their address and wrote to her. The letter came back, marked “Return to Sender”.’

  ‘How cruel!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘He was an expert. Not violence – he never hit them – but worse, he ruined their lives and destroyed their spirit. I didn’t give up, though. The next year I had to go to England on business, so I went to find her. They were living in this great old house in the country, and I put up at the hotel in the nearest village – Dulverton, it was called, I remember – and made some enquiries. It wasn’t difficult to find out; people down there seemed to like a bit of gossip and it was all still fairly fresh in their minds. Edie had been married just a few months before. From what I gathered she hadn’t wanted to marry the man. He had a bad reputation, another evil-tempered man – everything she dreaded. He was one of those newly poor landed gentry, so they said, who only married her for her father’s money.’

  ‘He was a horrible man,’ I said. ‘I hated him.’

  ‘You can imagine how I felt. I had to see her. I went off for a walk through the woods, trying to work out what to do for the best, how to rescue her. I walked a long way. It was about this time of the year, but cold and misty. I heard a dog barking; it sounded in trouble so I went towards where the sound was coming from.

  ‘He was lying on the ground, his gun half underneath him and his poor dog – a spaniel – standing beside him, barking its head off. It was him, Edie’s father. I just stood there looking down at him. There was a lot of blood and not much left of his face, but I knew it was him; it was a face that had been in my mind’s eye for too long for me to be mistaken. He was dead. I’m sure he was dead.’

  He looked away from me again and repeated, ‘I’m sure he was dead.’

  Abruptly he left the window and sat down in his chair.

  ‘I thought I heard noises and I ran away. I thought – well – that if anyone found me standing by his body, they would think I’d killed him. God knows I had good cause. But, you see, the awful thing was, I ran right away, I didn’t try to find Edie. I didn’t beg her to leave that man and come away with me. I just ran, right the way back to Durban. I let her down.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘She wouldn’t have gone with you, however much she wanted to. She wouldn’t have broken her marriage vows. That wasn’t her way. It would just have been more anguish for her.’

  ‘I guess you’re right. She’s – she was that sort of person. So,’ he continued, ‘I stayed in South Africa and then after the war I moved to Canada. My sister Olive had lost her husband in the war so she came to keep house for me.’

  ‘You never married?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It was only Edie for me. If I couldn’t have her, then I didn’t want anyone else. Does that sound silly?’

  ‘No,’ I said warmly. ‘It sounds splendid.’

  He smiled. ‘Olive and I travelled quite a bit – never to England, I couldn’t face that. And last year – now here’s a very strange thing – last year, when we were in Paris in some café, I picked up a copy of The Times and there, what should catch my eye but an announcement of his death. “Colonel Julian Rossiter, The Manor House, Stone Down, Somerset
”.’

  I remembered Thelma had taken over all the arrangements. It was she who had decided on cremation and on the precise charity to which donations should be sent.

  Christian Vanderlinden continued, ‘I wrote to Edie, quite a formal letter, just saying that I’d seen the announcement and asking how she was. They forwarded the letter to that Home.’ There was a world of scorn in the last word. ‘Fancy putting Edie in a Home, as if she was an old woman!’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘it shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘That bitch of a daughter.’

  His vehemence shocked me and then I thought for a moment and said, ‘Yes, you’re right. Thelma is a bitch, she always has been. I’m so used to thinking about her as a comic sort of character – Horrible Thelma, which is what my friend Rosemary and I always used to call her when we were young. But one should really look at her dispassionately and see just what a vilely manipulative person she is. She fools so many people with that saccharine manner ... And Alan’s not much better.’

  He gave me a grateful look and said, ‘Edie said that she didn’t know how she would have got through, if it hadn’t been for you and your mother.’

  ‘She asked for so little,’ I said, ‘just someone to love and be loved by.’

  ‘Is that so little?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps, sometimes, it is a lot to ask. Certainly it is the greatest gift that anyone can give – I know that.’

  ‘Did she reply to your letter?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We wrote to each other several times. Then I went down to see her. I left Olive in London and went on my own. It was wonderful. After all she’d been through she was still my Edie, just as sweet and loving as she’d been all those years ago. I wanted her to leave that place there and then, but she wouldn’t. She was afraid that daughter of hers would come after us ... So I made a little plan. She would pretend to go shopping, let them think that she’d be back, and then meet me and Olive and we’d come down here, where no one would find her. So that’s what we did. She felt badly, though, about you, knowing that you’d worry, but she didn’t tell you because she knew her daughter would be on to you straight away and she didn’t want you to have to lie for her.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘If I’d known, I might have broken under Thelma’s cross-examination! But,’ I asked, ‘why here? I mean, I know it’s remote, but why this particular spot?’

  ‘You’ll laugh. It was a silly, sentimental sort of thing. When we were young, back in Durban, we used to read poetry together – Wordsworth in particular – and one of our favourites was his poem written near Tintern Abbey. We always said that one day we’d go to England and read the poem there, where he wrote it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yes, just before…

  ‘I’m so glad. “Little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love” – yes, that was dear Mrs Rossiter. So what happened? Was it a heart attack?’

  ‘Yes. Quite sudden – thank God. The doctor came at once but it was all over.’

  ‘I’m sorry...’

  ‘These last few months have been wonderful. She’s ... she felt it too, she said so over and over. It could never make up for all the years we lost, but we found something at the end...’

  ‘And now you’re going back to Canada, you and your sister?’

  ‘Yes, next week. I’m sorry Olive can’t meet you – she would have liked to very much, after hearing all the things that Edie told her. They got on so well, almost like sisters. But she’s not very well at the moment, some sort of virus, the doctor says, and she’s stuck in bed. Not a good patient.’

  ‘I’m so sorry – and I’m very sorry to miss seeing her.’

  We chatted for a little while longer and then, as I gathered up my bag and prepared to go, he asked, ‘How did you find me?’

  I explained about Michael seeing the name of the solicitor in the London Gazette and how I’d come upon the old man in the graveyard.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘that you had that dreadful shock. It must have been really bad. But I’m so glad that you came here and that we’ve had this talk. I was going to write to you when I got back to Ontario, but this is so much better.’

  He came with me to the door and, as we stood looking out over the valley, he quoted, smiling,

  “These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines

  Of sportive wood run wild.”

  ‘I’ll never forget this place.”

  I held out my hand. ‘Goodbye, and thank you for giving her those last months.’

  He took my hand in both of his and clasped it warmly. As I went down the path I could feel his eyes upon me, but when I got to the car and turned to wave goodbye he had closed the door and was gone.

  I drove across the Meend and took a winding road that led me down to the river. I went on, through Llandogo until, across the Wye, I could see the outline of the abbey ruins silhouetted against a pink and gold sky. It was breathtakingly beautiful and I hoped that Mrs Rossiter and Christian Vanderlinden had seen it at such a moment. I pulled into a lay-by and sat for a while looking across at Wordsworth’s steep woods and lofty cliffs and hearing his words echoing in my head:

  For I have learned

  To look on nature, not as in the hour

  Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

  The still, sad music of humanity,

  Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

  To chasten and subdue.

  And there I said a last goodbye to my old friend. Then, as I started on the long drive home, I put the car radio on and tried to lose myself in the ordinary, commonplace things that make up our real life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Next morning I went to see Mrs Jankiewicz. As I told her about my journey and what I had discovered she sat silently, her hands in her lap. She was so unresponsive that I suddenly looked at her and exclaimed, ‘You knew! You knew where she’d gone all the time! That’s why you would never talk about it!’

  She leaned forward and took my hand in a rare gesture of affection.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sheila, but I could tell no one. I promise not to tell anyone, even you. She would not have told me, but I go into her room that day he was there and she have to explain who he is, and, well, I am not a stupid. I can see how happy she is, she has to go with him. Was a miracle.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But oh, how I wish she’d had just a little longer.’

  ‘The length of time, it does not matter. Enough that it came.’

  ‘You’re right, I suppose. It’s just that I’m greedy for her...’

  ‘Her time had come. Time to make that final journey – is the shortest one we make, from this world to the next. Soon, I too will make it.’

  ‘No,’ I protested, ‘not you. You’re so strong, you won’t leave us all yet!’

  But, as I looked at her, I saw that she too was frail and old.

  Life went on. I began research on another book and, with the horrid imminence of the festive season, found myself submerged in arrangements about Christmas Fayres, baking endless trays of mince pies for the freezer against the day when they would be demanded of me by the organisers of events for various good causes. I had just returned from a morning of pricing Fancy Goods for one of the stalls – always a delicate matter when the maker of the object to be priced is standing at one’s elbow, ready to take offence if she (it is usually a she) considers it has been undervalued. Rosemary and I had also been putting up the trestle tables, borrowed from the boy scouts and always a source of friction.

  ‘Honestly,’ Rosemary said, ‘you’d think they were inlaid with gold leaf the way George Hood goes on about them. Anyone would think we were going to dance on them, not just cover them with woolly bedsocks and matinee coats. “You will take care of them, won’t you?’” She mimicked the Scoutmaster’s voice. ‘He really is a terrible old woman.’

  ‘Well, he does have a mother,’ I said.

  Rosemary sighed. ‘Haven’t we all!’

  ‘O
h dear,’ I said. ‘What’s she up to now?’

  ‘It’s Christmas. Jilly wants Jack and me to go to them for the baby’s first Christmas – you know how silly one is – a tree and all those little presents – although Delia is far too young to know what’s going on. Do you know, Roger’s making her a doll’s house?’

  ‘Bless him,’ I said. ‘Peter bought Michael a train set for his first Christmas. So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Well, Jilly and Roger have very sweetly invited Mother too – though goodness knows she’d only cast a blight on the proceedings – and she won’t go. What she wants is for me to do the whole thing for everyone, as I do it every year, so that she can criticise everything. She couldn’t do that if we went to Jilly’s because she’s just a little in awe of Roger. It’s something to do with him being the son of a bishop.’

  ‘Oh, but you must go to Jilly’s,’ I said. ‘Apart from everything else, you really do deserve to have your Christmas dinner cooked by someone else for a change!’

  ‘Jack agrees with you, says we must go. But what can I do about Mother? I can’t leave her to have Christmas on her own.’

  ‘Serve her right. Anyway, she’s got Elsie to look after her.’

  ‘Oh I know, but still ... She keeps saying that this might be her last Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, she’s as strong as a horse!’

  ‘Yes, well ... but she is old and you never know. I’d feel so awful. Anyway, what would people think!’

  I imagined Mrs Dudley’s plaintive voice: ‘No, never mind me, I shall do very well on my own – I do feel that young people like to lead their own lives ... Ah well, they’ll be old themselves one day...’

  ‘You mustn’t let her blackmail you like this,’ I said. But I knew that it was a lost cause and that Rosemary and Jack would be having Mrs Dudley for Christmas as they had always done. Blessed are the meek, I suppose, but it seems to me that they have an awfully long time to wait for their inheritance.