‘Frances Murray,’ Helen told her. ‘Your lawyer, remember? And we’ll most certainly have a party when Jan gets home. That’s a lovely idea.’
‘Champagne,’ said Beatrice.
Jan was coming on the first Wednesday in April, so Helen planned their little party for the next day, when Wendy would have come to clean. Reminded of it from time to time, Beatrice showed signs of actually looking forward to the party, and Frances had accepted enthusiastically. ‘Just what we all need, specially Jan.’
Thinking it over afterwards, Helen was puzzled by this remark, but it was partly explained by a furious telephone call from her brother. He and Marika had confidently expected Jan home for the vacation, despite everything she had said to the contrary, and were only just beginning to take in the fact that she meant to drive straight down to Leyning. ‘Her mother was counting on her,’ he ended furiously.
‘So am I,’ said Helen. And then, going to the heart of the matter. ‘But not because of the car, Frank. If Marika needs that, of course Jan must leave it with you and come down by train.’
‘But Marika hasn’t got her licence back. There are all kinds of things she needs to do. And I’m far too busy. You know how it is.’
‘I certainly do.’ She well remembered the wrench it had been when their mother insisted on selling their little car after becoming bedridden. ‘I’m sorry, Frank, I can only suggest you find a good private taxi.’
‘Marika finds them so disobliging.’ She could well believe this. ‘And besides, just between ourselves, we are having to draw in our horns a little. The house sale fell through, very unreasonable fellow, and that hopeless Barnes is taking for ever to sort Mother’s will. I imagine that’s quite a bore to you too; maybe you should ring up and put some pressure on, Helen. He rather drools about you.’
‘Maybe because I don’t put pressure on. No, we are managing quite nicely down here, and Frances says wills always take for ever to prove.’
‘Who the hell is Frances?’
‘Sorry. Mrs Tresikker’s solicitor. She was a bit doubtful about trying to sell the house so soon.’
‘None of her damn business. Or yours. Mind you, your carrying off those two bookcases in that high-handed way was the start of the trouble. Now, you tell Jan from me that she owes it to her mother to come up next week and run her about town for a few days.’
‘I’ll ask her to phone you, Frank. When she gets here. Now I have to go. Goodbye.’
‘Her memory’s a bit worse,’ she greeted Hugh Braddock when he arrived the next evening. ‘Try to cheer her up, Hugh. She’s frightened, I think. So am I. It’s so sad. Can you stay for a sherry?’
‘Make it apple juice. I’ve got to go on to the hospital.’
‘Right. I’ll give you ten minutes, then bring it up.’
‘The patient’s ration! Either not long enough, or too long.’ But he said it cheerfully.
‘Hugh says I’m a fraud,’ Beatrice greeted her when she went up with three glasses on a tray and some bits of cheese for Hugh who was always hungry. ‘Just because I know the date of the Battle of Hastings. And 1492. But what use is that, when I don’t know whether it’s Tuesday or Friday?’
‘You do, you know,’ Hugh told her. ‘I’m here, so it’s Friday.’
‘And next Thursday we’re having Jan’s welcome home party,’ Helen said. ‘Do try and keep that evening clear, Hugh. We’re counting on you.’
‘I’ll do my best. It will be good to see your Jan. She’ll cheer us all up. And is Frances coming?’
‘Of course. I asked Peter, but he can’t, alas.’
‘He’s a very busy man. And a useful one. And I’m busy too.’ He got up. ‘Be good, Beatrice. Don’t bother to come down and see me out, Helen. I’ll drop the key back. You do these stairs quite often enough as it is.’
‘Good for me.’
‘When did you last go out for a proper walk?’
‘I’ve been gardening,’ she said defensively. ‘There’s a terrible lot to do still and the weather’s been just right for it.’
‘But not the same as a walk.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘If it’s too wet underfoot out the back way, you could try downriver past the sewage farm; that lane is tarred.’
‘The hemlock used to grow there,’ said Beatrice. But Hugh was already running down the stairs and Helen pretended not to hear.
She lay awake a long time that night, anxious thoughts revolving around the problem of Beatrice and that mad promise she had made her. When her own mother had first got ill she had talked a little about the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and a quick, elegant exit. But the more helpless she had become, the more she had seemed to cling to life, and to Helen. Was it just talk with Beatrice too? She did not think so. And she had promised. But how did one do it? Who could one ask? She slept at last, fitfully, with nightmares about plastic bags, and smothering pillows, and finally of drowning in a dark and bitter sea that she knew was hemlock.
Jan arrived in a rage. Her father had managed to find out the number of her mobile phone and had rung her when she was doing eighty in heavy traffic on the M25. ‘It was damned dangerous.’ She dropped her bag on a chair. ‘You need all your wits about you on that fast road. I’m sure you didn’t give him the number, Helen.’
‘Of course I didn’t. He probably told a lot of convincing lies; he’s good at that. Oh, I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. He is your father after all.’
‘Unfortunately. How’s Beatrice?’
‘Looking forward to seeing you. You’d better go right up, Jan dear. She hates it if she thinks we are talking about her down here. Do you mind?’
‘Course not. Here, will you put this in the fridge for later, and these in water for me?’ She handed Helen a bottle of champagne and a bunch of violets and ran lightly up the stairs.
‘Oh dear.’ Jan joined Helen in the kitchen ten minutes later. ‘She’s a lot frailer, isn’t she? Her memory is awful, Helen.’
‘I know. And so does she, which is the worst of it.’
‘Yes. Does she think about dying all the time?’
‘A good deal.’
‘Part of the time she thought I was you. Helen, have you really promised to help her?’
‘Right at the start I did. I don’t know what to do.’ It was a relief to talk about it.
‘Have you talked to Hugh Braddock?’
‘Jan, I can’t do that. It would involve him, don’t you see, and he can’t be. Mustn’t. They can’t do it, doctors, it’s against the law, and that oath of theirs. There was one got shopped by a catholic nurse a while ago; had to stand trial. I can’t remember whether it was for murder or manslaughter. He got off in the end, but it must have taken years out of his life. Just imagine picking up the pieces after that. So if she is going to be helped, I’ve got to do it. On my own. I’m sorry she told you, Jan, try to forget it?’
‘How can I? What about Frances?’
‘She mustn’t know either. Think what the Finch brothers would do to her if there was the slightest hint of her being involved. No, it’s got to look like an accident, Jan, and I’ve got to do it, and I wish to God I knew how.’
‘Pray for a good ending for her.’
‘If I was a praying woman, I would.’ High time to change the subject. ‘What are you going to do about your parents?’
‘Absolutely damn all. I told my father so before I rang off. I’ve got work to do this vacation, for one thing. I won’t be blackmailed for another, and I reckon our first priority is to keep Beatrice cheerful. She’s really looking forward to the party tomorrow; she told me all about it. Smoked salmon and champagne. She remembered that. Peter can’t come. Who’s Peter?’
‘A splendid man. He’s vicar of the little church out back. Comes in to read to her. It’s wonderful she has got such a grip on the idea of the party.’
‘Long may it last.’
Jan’s coming did Beatrice visible good. She recognized Wendy when she came next morning, and even seemed to real
ize there might have been something wrong the last time she came.
‘She kind of apologized,’ Wendy told Helen. ‘I nearly cried.’
But next day, Beatrice refused to dress for the party and sit in her big chair. ‘I feel safer in bed,’ she told Helen. ‘And anyway, that way there will be more room for the rest of you.’ It was so obviously true that Helen did not waste time and strength in argument. Besides, Beatrice was noticeably less steady on her feet these days. She could still get to the bathroom by herself by clinging to furniture on the way, but it wore her out. Helen had given up all thought of trying to get her to the optician for new glasses. She would just have to go on seeing people as blurs.
‘I do hope the party won’t be too much for her,’ she told Hugh Braddock, who had dropped in before his hospital round, promising to come back later.
‘I don’t think so. Might do her good; she really seems to be looking forward to it.’ He was putting on his shabby windcheater. ‘And so am I,’ he added surprisingly, and was gone.
Hugh was the last to arrive, late and apologetic, for the party, and Helen was just pouring his champagne when the doorbell rang. ‘Who on earth?’ She put down the bottle.
‘I do hope it’s not the Fanshaws,’ said Frances.
‘I’ll get it.’ Jan got up from her stool.
She returned in a few minutes, looking both amused and surprised. ‘It’s the most beautiful young American you ever saw, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘Asking for you.’
‘American? What’s her name?’
‘His. Ben Norton. Says you’re his great-aunt.’
‘Good God! Benedicta’s grandson?’ She reached a shaking hand for her glass and took a strong swig. ‘You’d better bring him up, Jan, and another glass.’
‘Are you sure, Beatrice?’ Helen asked anxiously. ‘I do think he might have given you some warning.’
‘Never mind. Better like this perhaps? And if he’s so beautiful… Go on, Jan, fetch him and let’s have a look.’
Ben Norton was indeed beautiful, and, Helen thought, he knew it. Everything was handsome about him, from his carefully windswept yellow curls to his designer jeans and trainers. A very expensive young man. And he was charming too. He had Jan in a glow already, and now he was bending over Beatrice making all the right apologies for his surprise appearance in a melodiously mild North American accent. ‘And what luck to find you partying with your friends.’ His appreciative gaze travelled round the little group and settled on Jan.
It was Helen’s cue to pour him champagne and introduce him all round. He refused food. ‘I ate at the hotel, didn’t want to be a bore. But it took for ever, made me later than I meant – I’m sorry, Aunt Beatrice. May I call you Aunt Beatrice?’
‘Of course you may.’ She was charmed too, Helen thought. ‘But tell me about the family, Ben, I don’t know anything. It’s been for ever.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Nutty. All those years of no speak. So sad, and too late now. That’s why I came, see. Last of the line, I am, it’s a lonesome feeling. I reckoned you and I might cheer each other up a bit, be family. I could do with some.’
‘You mean, Benedicta … ?’
‘Died a while back. February fill grave. Spunky old bird she was, my granma. Like you, I can see, only maybe not so lucky. Not exactly surrounded by friends at the end. Well, she’d outlived all the family, my pa and ma and both my aunts.’
‘And her husband – your grandfather?’ Beatrice leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the young man, oblivious to the rest of them.
‘Oh, Granpa vamoosed early on. Not a marriage made in heaven that one. Pa was the only child. And as for the Norton millions, they went right back to the Nortons. Lucky thing for Gran that she was pretty well fixed in her own right. She lived like a queen, up there in her Hudson river palace. But we’re boring the company,’ with an endearingly apologetic smile for the group of fascinated listeners.
‘Nonsense,’ Beatrice said. ‘They’re lapping it up, and so am I. You don’t get a long-lost great-nephew every day. But if your father was an only child, what do you mean about aunts?’
‘Not Pa’s sisters, Ma’s,’ he explained. ‘When Pa plucked Ma from the family vine down in Virginia, her two older sisters decided to tag along. Not actually on the honeymoon, I don’t think, but pretty damn soon after. I reckon they hoped there might be more where Pa had come from, but if there were, they never got their paws on them. So they settled down to help Ma raise me. And I reckon that’s likely why I’m the only one. Pa got kind of busy at work after Lucy and Lavinia moved in. Opened up an office branch in Boston and, funny thing, when he died – quite young – there turned out to be a whole other family up there, large as life and twice as natural. Ma was not pleased. And Granpa was livid.’
‘I thought he’d – what was your nice word? – vamoosed?’ Beatrice was sitting up straight, sparkling with interest.
‘Only to the west coast. He still kept an eye on things – and a close fist on the purse strings. When he finally drank himself to death he had tied things up so tight that not a red cent came our way – nor to the Boston family either, mind you. He’d left the whole kit and caboodle to the Republican Party, would you believe it? Granma seethed. Said it was all my fault, but I never could see why. But then, sweet reason was never Granma’s line so you would notice. You must remember that, surely, even after all the years.’
‘I sure do.’ Helen noticed with amusement that Beatrice’s speech had modified slightly towards American. ‘But, poor Benedicta, do you really mean to tell me that sad sack Dick Norton walked out on her? I didn’t think much of him the one time I met him, that’s for sure, but that’s no way for a Norton to behave.’
‘That’s what everyone said, which can’t have made it any easier for poor old Gran. Not that she was poor old Gran, mind you. From all I’ve heard she was the world’s dizziest grass widow. Cut quite a swathe did my granma in her day. When she realized that Granpa was gone for good she shut up the Norton house in Boston, moved back to that gothic palace on the upper Hudson and turned her life into one long weekend.’
‘Oh, poor Ben,’ said Beatrice.
‘Not a bit of it. Very rich Ben, she was. Nobody knows what she got out of Norton at the time he left, but it was plenty, and then when the old man died – your father – of course she was richer still. That’s when she moved to New York to that penthouse flat of his, and started really living it up. Pearl Harbor sobered her up a bit, but she found something pretty glitzy that she called war work, rushing to and fro between New York and Washington, holding important hands. “Best years of my life”, she used to say. She talked to me a lot when I was a kid. I used to get sent there for vacations when Ma and the aunts were travelling. They went on husband-hunting to their dying day, my aunts Lucy and Lavinia.’
‘You stayed with Benedicta in New York?’ Beatrice was beginning to tire, Helen thought. Her words were slurring a little.
‘Oh, no, worse luck. That would have been something. No, she’d sold up in New York by the time I was into my teens, after she had her first little stroke. She was back in the Hudson river castle, with a whole train of servants and some interesting company.’
‘I think that’s enough for now.’ Hugh Braddock came across from his chair in the corner to pick up Beatrice’s hand and check her pulse. ‘Time we all went home and left Mrs Tresikker in peace.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’ Helen joined him by the bed, relieved at the intervention.
‘Sleepy,’ said Beatrice, lying back. ‘Come again in the morning, Paul. Glad you came.’
Downstairs, Hugh looked at his watch. ‘I must be on my way. There’s someone I need to check on at the hospital. Can I give you a lift?’ he asked Ben Norton. ‘If it’s the Black Swan it’s on my way.’
‘Thanks, yes. Terrible place; service like treacle and stinks of old gravy. Kind of you, it’s further than I thought. Unless I can give a hand with the clearing up?’ With a hopeful look at Helen. ‘I’m
quite house-trained.’
‘Thanks.’ Helen could see that he wanted to stay, but felt oddly reluctant to have him. ‘But we tend to leave it till the morning. Come for a drink before lunch? I know Beatrice will wake up asking for you. Stay for soup and a sandwich? I’m afraid we live a pretty quiet life; she has to take things very easily, but she will want to make the most of you while you are here. Trouble is, she tires so quickly.’
‘Yes.’ Hugh had donned his shabby mackintosh. ‘Sorry I broke it up back there, but that was long enough. And you’re right about tomorrow, Helen. Lunch downstairs, and keep an eye on things.’
‘Right.’ She was glad of the support.
‘Great.’ Ben pulled on a sky-blue windcheater. ‘Twelve o’clock suit you? Anything I can fetch for you on the way over? It looks a great little town, Leyning. I’m looking forward to exploring it.’ He held the front door solicitously for Hugh, as for an old person, smiled brilliantly and impartially at the three of them, and was gone.
‘That was a fine upstanding lie of yours.’ Frances Murray rolled up her sleeves and began washing glasses. ‘Why didn’t you want him to stay on, Helen?’
‘I don’t know, can’t think. I just knew I didn’t.’
‘Beatrice is fast asleep.’ Jan joined them with a tray of plates and glasses. ‘I turned the light out. That wasn’t very friendly of you, Helen, turning the poor boy out in the cold at what must seem like the beginning of the evening to him.’
‘I know. I feel a pig now.’
‘Did you notice that Beatrice called him Paul?’ asked Jan.
‘Yes, wasn’t it odd? I suppose all that talk of the old days made her think of her husband.’
‘What a tale,’ said Frances. ‘Not a very nice family by the sound of them.’
‘But he’s a proper charmer,’ said Jan.
‘Isn’t he just? And doesn’t he know it?’
‘That’s not fair, Helen,’ Jan protested. ‘He was only trying to make himself agreeable to a bunch of surprise strangers. He must have expected to find Beatrice all on her own, like his grandmother.’
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