by Barbara Vine
The first time this happened, Hope was relieved that her mother, as she saw it, had at last had a friend to tea.
“No, I’ve been quite alone. Can’t you see there’s only one cup?”
But in the late summer of 1941 Maud had a visitor, unexpected of course, as anyone coming to The Larches must be. Maud’s first thought on seeing her sister Sybil on the doorstep, even before either of them spoke, was how much Sybil had aged. Still a couple of years under forty, she had the lined face and round shoulders of an elderly woman. Quite a lot of grey was in her hair.
Maud was wearing the pink dress and the high heels, and this she thought a lucky chance. “What brings you here?” she said, but, because she was pleased with her appearance in contrast to Sybil’s, rather more graciously than usual.
“It’s so long since I was last here. Mother would have come with me but she’s not well. She wanted to know how you were getting on. But I see you’re expecting company.”
“Oh, no. I hope I don’t only dress properly for visitors.”
“You always were one for nice clothes,” said Sybil, and then, her gaze travelling from Maud’s hair, done in fashionable “victory rolls,” down across the pink silk to her feet in black patent shoes, “You look lovely, Maud, really beautiful.”
Enormously pleased, Maud said an enthusiastic “Well, thank you, Sybil. One has to do one’s best, don’t you think, hard though it is.”
Tea was over and the seedcake, homemade but not expected ever to be cut, had been half-eaten when Hope arrived home. Sybil made the requisite remarks about how she had grown and how was she getting on at school. Youngish people ought to remember how much they hated this comment and this enquiry when they were themselves young only a few years before, but it never deters them from forcing such challenges on adolescents. As Maud knew Sybil would as soon as she saw her, Sybil asked Maud to come to see their mother.
“I suppose you’ve forgotten what happened when I did come.”
“Can’t you be more tolerant? Can’t you be more forgiving?”
“I never forget and I never forgive,” said Maud.
She had forgotten Hope was within earshot. “You’ve never forgiven Mrs. Imber, have you, Mother?”
Maud said, “Go upstairs, Hope, and get on with your homework.”
“Okay, I will. I just want to say that I’ll be going to the wedding. Elspeth says I can go with them.”
“We’ll see about that, and don’t say okay.”
In the evening, after Sybil had gone to catch her train back to Bristol, Maud went upstairs and changed out of the pink frock, not for some other daytime garment, but into nightdress and dressing gown. She walked into Hope’s bedroom and told her that if she went to “that woman’s” wedding, she need not think she could come back to The Larches. This turned out to be an empty threat, even though Hope passed an almost sleepless night worrying about it. Where was she to go? What was she to do? Elspeth told her it wouldn’t happen, and Elspeth was right. She told Hope that if that happened, she always had a bed at River House. Hope had a lovely time at the wedding in a dress of Elspeth’s, as her own wardrobe was rather sparse. She particularly enjoyed seeing Christian take his mother up the aisle and give her away to Mr. Brown. England was passing through one of its food-deprived times of the war, and despite plenty of spirits, sherry, and wine at the reception, little was available to eat, skimpy brown-bread-and-tomato sandwiches—there was a bumper crop of tomatoes that summer—hard-boiled eggs, and gooseberry fool.
Guy drove Hope home to The Larches and waited ten minutes outside in case Maud turned her out. But Maud was in high good humour. A young farmer who had been bringing her eggs and cream and an occasional chicken unasked had called and asked her to marry him. After enquiring how he dared, Maud answered him with a bald no. Young Mr. Greystock was unwise enough to ask why not, and Maud said she would never marry. The truth was, she knew that if she said yes to him or to anyone else, in the banns she would be called “a spinster” instead of “a widow of this parish,” as if it were still possible to deceive the village as to her status. Jack Greystock said she didn’t mean that and he would try again. The following week he brought the eggs and cream as usual and a rabbit too and a guinea fowl. It thrilled Maud that she had given the man what she called his “comeuppance” and she even asked Hope how the wedding had gone.
Hope said quietly that it was nice. She often used this phrase to her mother, about anything. It could be applied to How was school? How was Elspeth? What did you have to eat? Was it cold? Was it hot? But Maud questioned her less and less. Maud wasn’t interested in the answers she might get for she never made an enquiry of any importance.
As to Jack Greystock, she wouldn’t say she liked him, but she tolerated him because he seemed never to have heard the gossip about her in the village, or if he had, he didn’t care. She put everyone she knew to this test: Did they look down on her because of her ruined reputation?
25
READING AN account of Bertie Webber’s trial in the morning paper, Guy walked down to The Larches to tell Maud the outcome, that Bertie had been condemned to death for the murder of John Goodwin. Guy and his wife were strongly opposed to capital punishment, but both felt Maud would be in favour of it, would rejoice at the verdict.
She wasn’t pleased to see Guy. She was never pleased to see anyone. Hope let him in and called out to her mother that Guy was downstairs.
“You should call him Mr. Harding,” Maud replied, but she came downstairs, stood a yard or two from Guy, and said, “Hallo,” and that most frosty of greetings, “What brings you here?”
“Perhaps we could sit down.”
He didn’t know Maud well if he expected some transport of joy or excitement at what he was about to tell her. Her joyous days, her excited days, were past. Their passing had begun with those two episodes in the fields with Ronnie Clifford. She was capable of rage, petulance, or sullenness but not of spontaneous pleasure. She listened to Guy in silence, asked no questions, said when he came to the end, “Well, I suppose that’s something to be thankful for.”
Elspeth had told him to invite Maud to lunch. He had shot a rabbit that morning and they always had vegetables. Apparently, his wife thought Maud would need the comfort of company when reminded of her brother’s dreadful death. Elspeth should have known Maud better, but, like her husband, she did not. Of course Maud wouldn’t come to lunch, she had too much to do at home, though what that too much was she didn’t specify. The house appeared clean and tidy, the sewing machine, which she had brought with her from Dartcombe, hidden as always under its cover.
Maud was never heard to speak of her brother again. How her mother and Sybil and Ethel reacted to his murderer’s conviction she never enquired. Hope was never told about it, though John had been her uncle and for years she believed him to be her father, but of course she found out. She was an inveterate reader of newspapers and, denied one at home, often bought a newspaper on her way to school. If she never mentioned the trial or its consequence to Maud, Bertie’s fate marked a watershed in her relations with her mother. The days when she sat in her mother’s bedroom to do her homework, when she sat and listened to the wireless with Maud, when she confided in her mother about her friends at school, all those were over. Too many subjects were banned by Maud as topics of conversation, Christian and Julian Imber as well as their mother, grandmother and aunts in Bristol, young Mr. Greystock, and, it seemed, the entire population of Dartcombe. John had joined the list, and when Hope told Maud what she had read in the papers, Maud rounded on her, shouting that Bertie must never be mentioned.
“I never want to hear that man’s name in this house again, do you hear me?”
Hope started spending even more time with the Hardings. She was always welcome, and not only because of the help she gave with the children. In the autumn it seemed that there was to be no more serious bombing of Plymouth, and Pauline Moran and her son and daughter went home to the house that had needed only t
he glass in three of its windows replaced. Hope had made one good friend at school, a serious “best friend” called Rosemary Langley. Before the deep rift caused by Maud’s taking exception to Hope’s reading about Bertie, Hope had told her mother about Rosemary, unwisely asking if she could ask her to tea. Maud, of course, had a previous Rosemary in her life, and one she now hated for no reason she could even have given to herself, but it was enough for her to forbid Hope ever to see this new friend again and not to answer her if she spoke to her at school.
Though Hope was sometimes saddened by what she saw as losing her mother when she had already lost the man she thought of as her father, she was (as she put it to herself, laughing rather bitterly) a big girl now. Ronnie Clifford had been over six feet tall, a Nordic god of a young man, and his daughter was the tallest girl in her class, blond and beautiful. If it isn’t true that suffering refines the nature, hardship and neglect may build character, and those particular kinds of adversity had done so for Hope. Thinking it over carefully, she had concluded that she could defy her mother if her mother was unreasonable, and what could Maud do about it? Turn her out of the house? Bar the door against her? Hope doubted if Maud would never go as far as that. Besides, Hope always had her refuge at River House.
A STRANGE thing happened in the early spring. A parcel arrived for Maud, postmarked Dartcombe. A past mistress of the art of avoiding anything that might prove unpleasant, she considered simply not opening it. But leaving it alone and then throwing it away was beyond her. She handled it, turning it over and over, trying to feel what its contents might be through the thick, brown-paper wrapping, shaking it and holding it to her ear to find out if it rattled. Finally, curiosity got the better of her and she tore off string, sealing wax, and paper.
Inside was a battered and stained cardboard box. Again Maud hesitated, waited, looked at it, and felt it. She shook the box. Something inside it slid an inch or two, then shifted back again. The box was a little too big for its contents. She left it on the table while she took the brown-paper wrapping to the rubbish bin. As if the box had eyes, these seemed to follow her round the room as she came back, sat down, got up again, pushed the box so that it was almost hidden behind the bowl of hyacinths. Hours passed before she opened it.
When she did, it was on an impulse, a sudden burst of energy typical of her. She had the power to briefly suspend all thought and all fear, though both would quickly return. She had had her lunch, a single egg scrambled and served on toast, which she ate seated alone at the dining table, accompanying it with a glass of water. The table was cleared of plate and glass, the utensils washed up. It was time to change for the afternoon. She put on the latest new dress, high heels, powdered her nose and applied bright red lipstick, returned to the living-room, and sat down, her eyes now fixed on what almost hid the parcel, the hyacinth bowl. The impulse came then. She jumped up with a spurt so fierce that it wrenched from her a cry of “Ah!” and grabbed the box, a blow from her elbow snapping off the stem of one of the hyacinths.
Now she had the box in her hands again, hesitation was past. She pulled off the lid and clenched her hands. Inside was what looked like a large piece of yellowish folded cloth. She touched it, then lifted it out and shook it. It was a bedsheet. Single-bed size, once white, hemstitched at both ends, it was stained with brownish patches and green streaks. She looked at the cloth label attached to one of the shorter sides and recognised the maker’s name. It was one of Mrs. Tremlett’s, left for their use in the house in Bury Row. Underneath it, still in the box, was a note written on lined paper torn from a notebook. The signature was G. Tranter. There was no Dear Maud but only the words This was dug up out of the garden by Mr. Hoddle of 2, Bury Row. Mother says she does not want it.
This was a sheet, Maud now understood, from the single bed John had slept in all the time the people of Dartcombe had thought he was sharing her bed. Mother, of course, was Mrs. Tremlett, and the sheet was marked with her initials. So she knew, had perhaps always known. Bertie had slept there too, lying beside John after he got up from the sofa and crept up the stairs. Now Bertie was going to be hanged and she was glad. She would have liked to see capital punishment extended to Ronnie Clifford and his wife, to Mrs. Tremlett and her daughter, Mrs. Imber now Brown and all the Imbers. The sheet was too big to go in the boiler and be burnt up. Maud would make a bonfire in the garden tomorrow or the next day or the next and watch the flames consume it.
TEN DAYS before he was to be executed, Bertie Webber killed himself in his cell. In American prisons a condemned man on death row is watched night and day, but no such careful watch was kept on Bertie. He made a rope and noose out of his trousers and shirt, placed the noose round his neck, and hanged himself from the bars on the small window high up in the wall, but not too high for John Goodwin’s killer to reach when standing on the stool that was the only piece of furniture apart from the pallet bed and a bucket. When he had checked with his hands that the noose was in place, he stood for a moment or two with his head resting on the rope and thought about John. What a fool! What a soppy fool! The way his mouth went slack and his eyes went swimmy. Good riddance to bad rubbish, thought Bertie, and he kicked away the stool.
No one associated with Bertie—the prison governor, the warders who had most to do with him, the two prison visitors who saw him—suspected his intention. He always seemed a cheerful, happy-go-lucky man and indifferent to his fate.
Only the prison chaplain had reason to be apprehensive. Bertie had no religious faith and had no interest in acquiring any. But he seemed to understand shame and regret at the last. “He loved me like a woman,” Bertie said. “What a fool! I wish I never done it.”
Young, innocent, and shocked, the chaplain passed these words on to Guy, who knew him. “I can tell you what he said. We’re not Romans, it wasn’t like the confessional.”
Nothing appeared in the papers but two lines about the inquest, where a verdict was returned of suicide or felo-de-se.
Guy and Elspeth were debating whether to tell Maud, fearing that she would shut her ears to them—literally perhaps covering her ears with her hands as she sometimes did—but Detective Inspector Goshawk forestalled them. He made the train journey to Ashburton and took the bus to Ottery St. Jude specially to bring her the news.
The front door of The Larches was opened by Enid Biddle, the sixteen-year-old who had taken Mrs. Newcombe’s place and whom Maud, in time-honoured Goodwin fashion, called “the maid.” Small, thin, and perpetually frightened, Enid showed George Goshawk into the living-room and told him, in a Devon accent so thick that he barely understood her, to sit on the sofa. Maud wasn’t in bed. Dressed in her best new frock, covered by a voluminous white apron, she was in the kitchen, using her sugar ration and eggs from Jack Greystock to make a Victoria sponge that she would eat herself, a single slice a day for the next week. In pink, high-heeled shoes, she had just opened the oven door and inserted the tin of almost liquid yellow mixture when Edith came to the kitchen and timidly told her a gentleman had come. Maud took off her apron.
Telling herself, but in silence, that a policeman wasn’t a gentleman, Maud nodded to him and used that phrase which was becoming habitual with her and would do for anyone. “What brings you here?”
Goshawk asked if he might sit down and suggested that she should too. Maud did so with an ill grace, and using euphemistic terms and a gentle tone because she was a woman, he told her what Bertie Webber had done. She said nothing for a moment, then, “I can’t say I’m sorry.”
“I don’t suppose you are, Mrs. Goodwin.” He gave her that courtesy title, the kind of honorific given to a cook or a housekeeper because the work she did merited respect. Not that this applied to John Goodwin’s sister, whom he had previously called miss.
He had come a long way, spending hours on the journey and paying his own fare, but she offered him no tea or even a glass of water. “Is that all then?”
“Quite all.”
“Then if you don’t mind, I’ve g
ot things to do.”
He had thought he could no longer be affected by rudeness, but this time he was. He had brought her brother’s killer to justice and been considerate enough to tell her the news of his death before, he hoped, anyone else could. But he said nothing of any of that.
“I’ll say good day, then,” he said. Before he had gone three steps from the front door, she had shut it behind him. He set off on the long journey back to London.
The things Maud told Inspector Goshawk she had to do were look once more at the letters which kept coming for her, or rather, the envelopes that she often didn’t open. Her name and address were in capital letters and sometimes misspelt, and according to their postmarks, all came from towns and villages in South Devon. The people who wrote the insults and what Maud called “bad words” knew all about Bertie’s staying with her and about his suicide. After Goshawk had gone, she opened one of the envelopes she had so far only looked at in the vain hope perhaps that its contents were kind and favourable to her, but this one too was abusive.
How many “fancy men” had she had? it enquired. Maybe it didn’t matter to her once she had fornicated with her own brother, but this one, a murderer, was what the anonymous letter writer called “the last straw.” Up till then Maud had kept all the letters with a vague brave resolve to show them to a policeman one day. But this one really was the last straw. None of the others had accused her of sexual relations with John. It was his fault, she thought, he started it. Everything that was bad began with that. If she could no longer see the letters, she might forget them. She opened the door on the kitchen range and pushed all the letters inside.
Enid Biddle was given the afternoon off, and after Maud had watched her depart, she took the sheet out into the garden, piled firewood on top of the newspapers Hope had left in the house, and deposited the sheet on top. Then she poured on paraffin and threw in a lighted match. It was so satisfying to see the sheet burn that she wished she had saved all the anonymous letters and their envelopes and watched them burn too.