Deathline

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Ten

  Entranced with the snowdrops, Beatrice greeted the news of her proposed visitor with less enthusiasm, muttering something about bloody do-gooders, but Helen’s description of Peter and his bare little church with its red plastic chairs caught her imagination, and she agreed to ‘give him a trial’, as she put it.

  He arrived on Wednesday, prompt to his time, looking only marginally clerical in dark jeans and a roll-necked pullover. ‘At least she didn’t refuse point blank.’ He smiled at Helen and handed her a tiny bunch of snowdrops.

  ‘Not quite, but she’s tired this morning, a bad night, I couldn’t get her up for you, I’m afraid. And don’t worry if she just drops off to sleep; she often does, in mid-sentence.’

  ‘No problem. I always have a paperback in my pocket. It’s a fine morning; don’t hurry back from your shopping, I promise I won’t wear her out. If all else fails I’ll read aloud to her. Does she like that?’

  ‘I’m ashamed to say that I don’t know.’ She opened the bedroom door. ‘Here’s your visitor, Beatrice; he wants to know if you like being read aloud to.’

  ‘Very much,’ said Beatrice. ‘Poetry for choice.’

  Returning from her quick trip to the public library, Helen saw at once that the visit had been a success. Beatrice was sitting very upright in bed, her eyes sparkling. ‘Guess what,’ she said. ‘He knows about Paul. Found him in a footnote of Leonard Woolf’s diary.’

  ‘Not entirely complimentary, I’m afraid. Something about his gatecrashing a visit from Vanessa Bell. The name stuck of course; it’s unusual. I’ll look it up for you if you like, lend you the volume.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Helen. ‘Did Beatrice tell you we are trying to put together something about her husband?’

  ‘He says he’d like to help.’ Beatrice took over. ‘He seems to be a Woolf expert.’

  ‘Not an expert, just a fan. I discovered the Bloomsbury group at university. I was at Sussex, you see, reading English among a lot of other things, you know how it is there. Naturally I ran into them, got hooked. You won’t believe how strange, how exciting they seemed to someone with my background.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Forgive me, I must run. I’ve a date up the other hill.’

  ‘Come again,’ said Helen, seeing him out. ‘You’ve done her good.’

  ‘I’m glad. I’d like to. And I meant it about the research. I’ve reading rights at the university still. Anything you want looked up.’

  ‘Wonderful.’ She watched with approval as he straddled a battered old bicycle and rode off down the hill.

  Upstairs, Beatrice was fast asleep.

  ‘I liked him,’ she said, waking for lunch. ‘Clever of you to find him, Helen. I think we should show him the portrait, don’t you?’

  ‘Portrait?’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’ve never shown it to you!’ As always when her memory failed, her face fell into a net of wrinkles that made her look a hundred years old. ‘It’s all I’ve got left of Paul. He hated having his photograph taken; felt it stole a bit of him or something. Fetch it out, Helen, quick, it’s time you met him.’ And then, impatiently, ‘It’s in the closet, tucked away at the side. It used to hang where the Blue Mountains are.’ She pointed at the Japanese print facing the bed. ‘So I could see him first thing every morning when I woke up. And then one day I realized he wasn’t coming back, couldn’t stand it and took him down. Couldn’t face him any more, too painful. Funny; I think I can now. I wonder why. Fetch him, quick, Helen. Right at the end on the left.’

  The portrait was leaning against the wall of the closet, masked behind a black velvet evening dress that smelled of pot-pourri. Helen propped the large canvas against a chair and stood back to look at it. ‘Lord, he was handsome,’ she said. Obviously unfinished, done with broad, impatient strokes of the brush, it gave a vivid impression of a fair-haired young man who knew he was somebody. He was looking past the artist at something only he could see. Something that absorbed him. ‘It’s brilliant,’ Helen said. ‘Who did it, Beatrice?’

  ‘Vanessa Bell. I always thought something happened between those two, way back. God knows what. She was old enough to be his mother. Anyway, she never finished it, never signed it, but it’s him to the essence. Shall we hang it again while we’re working on him?’

  ‘Could you face it? All the time, across the room from you?’

  ‘Good question. I’m not sure. Put him on the chest of drawers for the time being, and let’s think about it. I rather believe I prefer my Blue Mountains to wake up to. There was always something disturbing about Paul.’

  ‘I should just about think so. Dangerous for anyone to be so handsome. Was he charming with it?’

  ‘Oh, the birds off the trees. Irresistible, he was. I used to enjoy watching it happen, at first, when I was so cocksure of him. And that’s the right word, for sure. Oh, what a long time ago.’ Her eyes were beginning to close, snapped open again. ‘What colour did she make his eyes, Helen?’

  ‘Blue,’ said Helen, surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘Then he was happy, sitting for her. Blue when he was happy, green when he got into one of his rages. I wish I could see better, Helen. People’s faces tell you so much, and I can hardly make them out any more. That nice Peter, just a dark blur …’

  ‘Have you glasses tucked away somewhere?’ Helen had wondered about this.

  ‘Years old. Totally useless. My optician retired and I couldn’t be bothered to find another. It’s all such hard work, being old, Helen.’

  ‘We’ll get you some glasses. Frances will know an optician. Or Hugh Braddock, come to that. So, what we have to do is get you walking well enough for the stairs, then Frances would drive you, I’m sure. Or Jan, at Easter. Hugh Braddock’s been saying he thought it was time you were moving about a bit more.’

  ‘He’ll have me doing press-ups if I’m not careful. Bullies and tyrants, the lot of you.’ But she said it quite cheerfully and might even have been smiling as she fell asleep.

  Helen was with Beatrice when the front doorbell rang next morning. ‘I’ll get it,’ Wendy called, turning off the Hoover in the downstairs hall.

  Helen heard the front door open and then an outburst of furious, incomprehensible speech from Wendy.

  ‘What on earth … ?’ She hurried to the top of the stairs as a man’s voice replied, equally incomprehensible, but sonorously calm. Peter. Of course. She hurried down to find him standing in the doorway, still trying to get Wendy to take the book he was holding out to her.

  ‘Here’s Miss Westley,’ he interrupted as Wendy began another unintelligible tirade. ‘We don’t want to inflict our little local difficulties on her, do we? We’re in England now, remember.’ And, to Helen, ‘Forgive us, please. We go rather a long way back.’

  ‘You’ve met before?’

  ‘No way. We don’t need to have. Our tribal difference is built into our bones. But this is neutral ground,’ to Wendy. ‘Doubly so, both as England and Mrs Tresikker’s house.’ The bell, ringing upstairs, confirmed this.

  ‘You’d better go up and explain to her,’ said Helen, seeing this as the best way of separating them. ‘Come into the kitchen a minute, Wendy?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Wendy spoke first, to Helen’s relief. ‘I lost my cool when I saw him there, looking just like those others … the ones who …’ She burst into tears and Helen found herself hugging her.

  ‘Don’t,’ Helen said presently. ‘It’s over now—’ She recognized her mistake as she spoke.

  ‘But it’s not! It’s still going on. Killing and killing and killing.’

  ‘And you think it will make things any better if you start up the same kind of feud here?’

  ‘No.’ This brought Wendy up short. ‘I’m ashamed. I’m truly sorry, Miss Westley. And I’ll say so to him, too, if you like.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be pleased. Mrs Tresikker’s taken a fancy to him, so he’ll be coming a bit, I hope. Easier if you are speaking to him. I’m just surprised you hadn’t met him.�
�� This was another mistake.

  ‘Like calling to like, you mean,’ said Wendy. ‘You think we’re all the same, don’t you? All so different from you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Now it was Helen’s turn to be ashamed. ‘You’re absolutely right, and I do deeply apologize.’

  ‘Then we’re all square,’ said Wendy, and went back to her Hoover. ‘There’s her bell. Tell them I’m sorry. Please?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ said Beatrice. ‘I don’t think I could stand tribal warfare in the house. Do look, Helen, Peter has brought me the volume of Leonard Woolf’s diary. He doesn’t seem to have liked poor Paul a bit.’ She handed Helen the book.

  ‘And nor did Virginia, by the sound of it. I wonder what was really going on.’

  ‘I think I’d rather not know.’ Beatrice closed the subject. ‘Mind you treat Wendy gently on the way out, Peter. I think something dreadful happened to her family; I’ve never dared ask.’

  ‘Something dreadful happened to mine too,’ Peter said sombrely. ‘But I’m a man of God now, more or less. Don’t worry, Mrs Tresikker, we’ve got a lot in common really, Wendy and I.’

  Helen raised the question of new glasses for Beatrice with Hugh Braddock when he dropped in after surgery the next night. ‘She can read all right, but her distant vision is terrible,’ she told him. ‘I hadn’t realized until she mentioned it the other day; she just sees us all as blurs. It must be wretched for her. She was showing me her husband’s portrait. Have you seen it?’

  ‘No. I had no idea.’

  ‘She used to have it hanging in her bedroom, couldn’t face it after she realized he had gone for good. We got it out the other day and she couldn’t tell whether the eyes were blue or green. I rather hoped she would keep it out, come to terms with him a bit, but she made me put it away again. Don’t mention it, please, she might not like it.’ She changed the subject. ‘We really do need to think about getting some glasses for her. That nice unpronounceable Peter from St Mary’s came up to see her, that’s how it came up.’

  ‘I’m glad he came. He’s a splendid fellow. How did he and Wendy get on?’

  ‘Quick of you. She opened the door to him and exploded. I hate to think what she was saying to him. But it’s OK now. She apologized. She’s a honey, that Wendy.’

  ‘She is indeed.’

  Something stirred at the back of Helen’s mind. ‘You’ve known her for long?’

  ‘Ages. You never know where she is going to turn up next, but I am always pleased when I find her working for one of my patients. She’s pure gold, Wendy. Really thinks about people. Look how she went to work and found you for Beatrice.’

  ‘That’s quite true; I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Back to Beatrice,’ he said. ‘Before we can get her to the optician, she’s got to be a lot more mobile. Try and persuade her to walk a little more every day. Down the hall and back when she gets up to go to the loo. That sort of thing.’

  ‘She says she can’t be bothered. She doesn’t want her body strong, if her mind is going. And it’s no good pretending that it’s not. There are great holes in her memory now, and it upsets her dreadfully when she recognizes one of them.’

  ‘I know. The recent past. And I’m afraid there’s no way we can be hopeful about that. Just pray to God and keep her interested and working on the memoir. That really is being a lifeline in every possible sense.’

  ‘Just so long as nothing grisly turns up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just have a feeling.’ The bell, rung furiously, interrupted them.

  ‘What are you two conspiring about down there?’ Beatrice asked angrily when they joined her. And when Helen explained about the glasses she reacted furiously. ‘Why bother working on my wretched body when my mind is going? Walking down the hall! What’s the use? Unless we could arrange a strategic fall downstairs?’

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Hugh. ‘You’d probably just break a leg and find yourself immobilized in hospital. The thing you fear most, isn’t it?’

  ‘Brute,’ she said, but she said it almost cheerfully. ‘Don’t look so anxious, the two of you,’ she went on. ‘I’m not sending Helen down to the marsh to pick me a hemlock cocktail. Not yet, anyway. Not while we’re busy with the memoir and Jan is due home so soon.’

  ‘Now that is good news.’ Hugh Braddock looked at his watch. ‘I must be off. No sherry tonight, alas. I’ve a round to do at the hospital still.’

  ‘They overwork you.’ Beatrice was sounding sleepy again.

  ‘Try and get her walking,’ Hugh said downstairs as he shrugged into his raincoat. ‘But don’t worry too much if you can’t. Does it matter so much that she only sees us as blurs?’

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t really. And it’s lovely she is looking forward to Jan coming. Home, she said, did you notice?’

  ‘I most certainly did. That Jan of yours is quite a girl.’ He picked up his bag. ‘What’s all this about hemlock then?’

  ‘Oh dear, I did hope you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Don’t pretend you’re stupid. And I’m not either. Of course I noticed. She’s been at you too, has she?’

  ‘Yes, right at the start. When she was so wretched. I’m afraid I promised her …’

  ‘Idiotic.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I have to go. Raining again.’ And he was gone.

  Frances Murray dropped in soon after he had left, and it crossed Helen’s mind that she might have hoped to meet him there, as so often on a Friday evening. But she was looking worried, a most unusual thing for her. ‘Hang on a mo,’ she said as Helen turned to lead the way upstairs. ‘I wanted a quick word.’

  ‘Oh?’ Helen turned and led the way to the kitchen. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s those Fanshaws, I’m afraid. I do wish I knew just what is going on.’

  ‘What seems to be?’

  ‘I don’t know, dammit! They’ve been to see Finch junior a couple of times. I only discovered this morning when I had to check a back date in his diary. I’d been out both times you see, on a regular weekly date. Well, what I would like to know is whether this is just a coincidence, or if something is going on. Usually we all know a bit about what the others are doing, just enough so we can take over at a pinch. I don’t like the feel of this, Helen.’

  ‘No more do I. Oh, there’s Beatrice’s bell.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Frances.

  Eleven

  ‘The old witch is at her front window again.’ Wendy dropped her jacket on the hall chair. ‘Do you think she keeps a diary of our comings and goings?’

  ‘Miss Fanshaw?’ Why pretend not to understand? ‘Not mine anyway,’ Helen went on. ‘One of the advantages of having no car is that I walk down by the lanes so I don’t pass their house and feel them watching me. Poor things, what a dull life if they’ve got nothing better to do than sit and keep tabs on their neighbours.’ But she must ask Frances if there had been any more visits to Finch & Finch. She was faintly anxious about those.

  ‘How’s Beatrice?’ Wendy was fetching the Hoover from its cupboard.

  ‘Her memory’s worse. Try not to ask her questions, Wendy. It upsets her when she can’t get a name.’

  ‘I know. I thought you looked a bit hag-ridden. What does the doctor say?’

  ‘What can he say? But he manages to cheer her up just the same.’

  ‘I’m sure. I’ll have a go. She likes to hear about Clive.’

  Returning to the breakfast dishes, Helen wondered why Wendy never referred to Hugh Braddock by name. It was always ‘the doctor’.

  She took advantage of Wendy’s presence to go out and do her shopping, enjoying, as she always did, the friendliness of the little market by the river. Steve the butcher had saved her some kidneys in the fat, because she had mentioned that Beatrice liked them, and they had her favourite kind of yoghurt at the cheese stall.

  ‘How is the old lady?’ asked Pat, who ran it.

  ‘Not too bad in her
self, but her memory is getting awful.’

  ‘She’d mind that.’

  ‘She does.’

  The river was high and the sun shining. Shopping finished, Helen sat for a few minutes on a bench to gaze at the distant view of hills and try not to worry about Beatrice and what the future held for them both. Useless … stupid … And Jan was coming next week.

  In the end, she had to hurry up the steep lanes and arrived, breathless, to find Wendy looking anxious.

  ‘She just rang. I don’t know what she wanted. It was horrid. Frightening, a little. She didn’t know who I was. She was quite strange …’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Helen wondered what form the strangeness had taken. ‘I’ll go right up. Lucky thing, I bought her some violets, she loves them. Off you go, Wendy. I’m sorry, I almost made you late. It was so nice by the river …’

  ‘I don’t much like to leave you.’ But Wendy already had her jacket on. They both knew how tight her timing was. ‘Mind you ring the doctor if she doesn’t know you either.’

  ‘I certainly will.’ Beatrice’s bell was ringing. ‘She’s heard us talking. Mind how you go, Wendy.’ She worried sometimes about the speed at which Wendy swept round corners on her high, old-fashioned, unreliable bicycle.

  Beatrice was sitting bolt upright in bed, red alarm signals flying in her cheeks. ‘Where have you been? Who’s that you were talking to? What’s that black woman doing in my house?’

  ‘Beatrice, that’s Wendy who cleans for you. You remember, she’s got a little boy called Clive.’

  ‘Clive? But he’s … there’s something … I don’t remember. Helen, you are Helen, aren’t you?’

  ‘Indeed I am, and I brought you some violets from the shop in the market, and Steven and Pat both asked how you are.’

  ‘Dying,’ said Beatrice. ‘But taking too long about it. You are Helen, aren’t you, and you promised me—’

  ‘Not that, Beatrice. Not now. Please … Jan’s coming home next week. You remember Jan, don’t you? She was here at Christmas. You liked her; we all did. She’s my niece.’

  ‘With a dreadful father,’ said Beatrice on a note of triumph. ‘Yes, I do remember Jan. We must have a party when she gets here. Smoked salmon, and Hugh, and there’s someone else …’