Devil's Work

by Margaret Yorke

  Louise smiled at this liberal view. She could happily have spent the rest of the day with Mrs Tremayne, but they had to get back to the hotel with their shopping.

  ‘Dick will be in touch,’ Mrs Tremayne had promised, and he was.

  Louise and Tessa went out in his boat, the Voyager, several times. They caught mackerel, and picked up his lobster pots. Dick talked very little and asked no questions. He showed Tessa each detail of the boat and let her take the tiller; and they went for a picnic on the last day of the visit, lighting a camp fire on a lonely beach and frying fish they had caught.

  That was the night Louise found the photograph. A week later she had her first gremlin attack.

  7

  Lately, in the mornings, Mrs Cox had thought she was back in the nightmare time. She would wake to the dim glow from her blue bulb long before light showed at the top of the barred basement windows, and would listen for the clatter of pails and mops and shrill female voices. Her heart would flutter up into her throat with panic, and moments would pass before she remembered that those days were gone and she could walk out freely whenever she wished. No one here knew anything about it.

  Mavis had saved her then. Hers was the only friendly hand extended to Mrs Cox. She’d been attacked more than once, because of her crime. There was no tolerance, in the prison, towards those who harmed children.

  But she hadn’t harmed Grace; she’d saved her from an immoral mother and a life of adult sin, only no one understood that, except Mavis.

  Planning their fresh start, they’d decided against the country, though both would have preferred a small cottage with a garden after being confined so long. Neither was young; they’d have problems adjusting to the changed world outside, though Mavis had money waiting, her payment for services rendered. In a rural area there would be inquisitive neighbours, wanting to know all about them and perhaps, despite assumed names, somehow ferreting out the truth. Mavis, released first, had found and prepared the flat. Then, so soon, she had died, leaving Mrs Cox without the only one who had understood.

  Though it was such a long time ago, Mrs Cox could remember Grace quite clearly. She was four years old, a dainty little girl with flaxen hair held back by an Alice band from her high, pure brow. She had large blue eyes. Mrs Cox had been engaged to look after the new baby, Grace’s brother, when the previous nanny left to get married.

  The father was in business in London, where the parents had a flat. Weekends were spent at their country house by the Thames, and in summer the children stayed all the time in the country. Not long after Mrs Cox arrived the father went on a long business trip abroad, and the mother remained in the country. She had nothing to do, and from boredom (her own explanation afterwards) or because of her own wanton nature (Mrs Cox’s understanding of events) began an affair with a much younger man who lived in a boat moored further down the river. She would chug downstream in their cabin cruiser, The Happy Maid, and tie up alongside for their meetings. Mrs Cox had found out what was going on when she’d walked that way with the pram to feed the swans at the lock with Grace, while the baby, now sitting up, looked on.

  Mrs Cox had been thoroughly shocked but had known at once where her duty lay. The mother must be taught a lesson and the child’s innocence saved.

  At normal times in the country, Mrs Cox’s day off was at the weekend when the parents came down, but while the mother was there she went out on Thursdays, and usually took the bus to Reading. Now, Mrs Cox began to watch the mother’s methods in her absence, setting out towards the bus stop as usual but returning, unseen, to the house when the cleaning woman had gone. She found that the young man spent these afternoons with the children’s mother, his boat tied up at the bank beyond the lawn. The baby would be put in his cot for his nap, and Grace would play in the garden with her dolls or her tricycle. She had been taught to keep away from the river and stayed near the house.

  Mrs Cox led Grace away quite easily one Thursday afternoon, taking her by the hand when she was wheeling her doll’s pram through the shrubbery and leading her down to the boathouse where The Happy Maid was berthed. Mrs Cox had given her a Mars Bar to eat, into which she had put the contents of several sleeping pills prescribed for the child’s mother. Grace had been surprised by the Mars Bar, for Nanny was strict about sweets and allowed her only two after lunch each day, followed by a toothbrushing session, but she accepted that it was a special treat and surprise.

  She had fallen asleep quite quickly, and Mrs Cox had hidden her limp body in the boat. She had lifted the hinged base of one of the bunks and placed the child inside the locker, comfortably arranged on a padded life-jacket. Then she had walked away along the river bank and caught the bus to Reading, where she went to the cinema, as she told the police later.

  Grace was not found in time to save her. It was thought, at first, that she had wandered off and climbed into the locker, suffocating because the air in her coffin-like prison was soon used up, but the post-mortem had revealed a quantity of barbiturates in the body; enough to kill. Mrs Cox’s fingerprints were found on the bottle of sleeping pills in the bathroom cupboard, and in vain did she protest that indeed, she had taken just one – without asking, true – for her own use. Witnesses agreed that she had been in the Reading cinema on the fatal day, but a bus conductor testified that she travelled on a later bus than the one she had said she had caught. She was convicted of murder.

  The marriage of Grace’s parents broke up soon after the hearing, and three years later the mother committed suicide, using the same brand of barbiturate that had killed her own daughter.

  Mrs Cox was unrepentant. Such women did not deserve to be mothers. The world was full of women who wanted children and were denied them for one reason or another perhaps their own natures, because to embrace a man was, to them, abhorrent. Those who misused their privilege must be punished. All small girls were potential sinners and some could be saved.

  Now Mrs Cox had found another loose-living mother, and a neglectful one, too, for until lately Tessa had been left to go to and from school alone.

  From behind the barred windows, Mrs Cox watched the man’s legs pass as every morning Alan called at 51 Oak Way to take Tessa to school. Her mother went too, in the car. After the first week, Mrs Cox saw that the car had changed and instead of the large white one, there was a small green one that looked rather old to Mrs Cox. She would see Louise Waring and the man return, soon after nine. The man would leave, then, on foot, while the car remained parked outside. He would come back in the afternoon and spend time upstairs in the flat before he and Louise went off to meet Tessa from school. Once, walking along Oak Way pushing her wheeled shopping basket, Mrs Cox saw that Louise was driving the car.

  It was really quite shameless, carrying on like that, and in broad daylight, too.

  It would have to be stopped: and soon.

  Now Alan had a sense of purpose again. He had plenty of time to spare from his job-hunting – all too much, in fact, since no one seemed interested enough even to interview him. He would help Louise Waring overcome her nervous attacks. You did not have to be a psychiatrist to see that she spent too much time alone, and it was certainly only natural for her to have some reaction after what she had been through. He understood her humiliation when she found out about her husband’s business debts and mismanagement; Alan felt humiliated too, at being rejected by Biggs and Cooper.

  He soon discovered that she held a driving licence, and after a week of taking both her and Tessa to school and dropping Louise back at the flat before he went off to the library, he suggested that she should drive the green Escort with which he had replaced the Cortina. He had made quite a bit on the deal, and the Escort used far less petrol. He’d had to find some explanation for Daphne, and had told her that the Cortina was being temporarily used by one of the firm’s representatives who’d piled his own car up; he’d volunteered to help out, Alan said, and Daphne believed him. It was easy to deceive someone who trusted you.

  Louise t
ook a bit of persuading to try.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘No, Alan.’

  ‘Well – you needn’t drive. Just sit in the driver’s seat and see how it feels,’ he said, getting out on the pavement so that she could slide straight across herself.

  He’d been so kind; she couldn’t refuse this, at least.

  Louise settled down behind the steering wheel. He helped her adjust the seat so that she could reach the controls.

  ‘Start the engine,’ he said then. ‘We needn’t go anywhere.’

  Louise obeyed, and after they had sat there for a few minutes with the engine ticking over, Alan had looked round.

  ‘There isn’t a thing in sight,’ he said. ‘Why not move off? You needn’t go far. Just to the next lamp post over there,’ and he pointed a short distance ahead.

  Louise bit her lip, put her foot down on the clutch and engaged bottom gear. With a minor jerk, they moved off. She reached the first lamp post and drove beyond it. That first day, she drove slowly along Oak Way and turned down Shippham Avenue towards the recreation ground. Then she stopped, stalling the engine, amazed at what she had managed to do but more amazed because she felt calm and as if she could do it again. Alan got her to drive round the neighbouring streets for ten minutes after that, and when he left her to do her typing while he went to the library, she was quite flushed and excited.

  His own spirits fell as he wrote yet more applications for jobs. He had had only a few answers. Daphne was never curious about his mail and the formal replies he received looked to her to be simply dull business letters, which indeed they were, since almost all were to say that the posts were filled.

  He went to two interviews, both for jobs that were no more than clerks’ positions, and was offered one of them, but the salary was so much lower than what he had been earning, and the duties so pedestrian, with no prospects for advancement, that he turned it down. It was too soon, he thought, to settle for such a downward step, and Louise, when he told her, agreed.

  It was such a relief to talk about it. She listened sympathetically to his account, each day, of the advertisements he had answered and what the employment agency had said to him – not much, as a rule – and she encouraged him not to despair. One day the right job would turn up, she assured him.

  The day came when she drove Tessa to school by herself, just like so many other mothers who took their ability to do so for granted. Eyes shining, cheeks pink, delighted with her success, she pulled up outside 51 Oak Way, where Alan was waiting for her return.

  He had been sure she would manage. She’d already driven around on her own several times. He’d leave the spare key with her, he told her, and then she could use the car to fetch her typing instead of taking a taxi, which she’d had to do, she confessed, because she couldn’t cope with the bus. She’d tried, but had bad attacks each time.

  He whistled cheerfully to himself, that day, walking off to the library, and stayed in good spirits until he returned in the afternoon in time to go with her to fetch Tessa from school.

  But when she opened the door to his ring, he found her in tears. He had rung several times, in fact, before she answered the bell, and he had begun to wonder if she had felt brave enough to walk on ahead, for it was a lovely day with thin sunlight filtering through the bare branches of the high trees in the gardens.

  ‘Whatever’s wrong?’ he asked, and hurried inside the flat where at once he put his arms around her.

  Louise clung to him, shaking with sobs.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he repeated. ‘There, there,’ and he stroked her soft hair, as he would if the weeper had been his daughter Pauline.

  Louise could not answer at first, but at last she sniffed, blew her nose on the clean handkerchief Alan gave her, as so recently he had given another to Tessa, and wiped her eyes.

  ‘I went out this afternoon – it was such a lovely day,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d walk round the block on my own. But I couldn’t. I got the gremlins again. I had to come back.’ She’d clung to a gate, heart pounding, dizzy and sick, and had thought she would not manage to get herself home, but she had succeeded in moving just as two women, passing on the further pavement, had stopped to stare at her curiously.

  ‘Well, never mind, Louise,’ he said, though he felt deep disappointment. ‘Perhaps you were bound to have some sort of set-back,’ he told her, as much to reassure himself as to console her.

  ‘It seems so silly, now, telling you,’ Louise said. ‘Everything’s all right when you’re here. I feel I could tackle anything then. You’re always so calm.’

  But at this moment Alan did not feel at all calm. He was still holding her, but his hands moved to her shoulders and this was not in the least like the manner in which he would comfort his daughter. It seemed, to Alan, that it was someone else, not he, who now bent his head and kissed her pale, parted lips, very gently.

  She did not move, though he felt a tremor run through her. She just stood there, quietly, her eyes still full of tears.

  He kissed her again, brushing her mouth softly. She stiffened within his arms, and then, lightly, he caught her upper lip between his own lips, holding it gently. The effect on Louise astonished him; she moved tight against him and her hands moved up to hold him. By the time they drew apart, gazing at each other in wonderment, Alan knew that there was more to his wish to help Louise than simple compassion.

  On that sunny late winter’s day, Daphne had enjoyed her game of golf in the morning. She and her partner had done quite well in their medal round, but one of their opponents, Kitty Gibson, was hitting air shots and missing easy putts and altogether having a bad time. Over lunch in the clubhouse, Kitty revealed that her husband had lost his job.

  ‘On the scrap heap at forty-five,’ she said, downing her second gin and tonic.

  Her husband had held a good position in a well-established business and the Gibsons had a large house with a swimming pool. Because of the recession some hoped-for contracts had been lost and several lines of production had been cut. The axe had fallen on a number of workers, and several members of the executive staff.

  A little shiver ran round the assembly of comfortably off, middle-aged middle-class women. They’d all read about cut-backs and closures, of course, but this was their first direct experience of such action. If it could happen to the Gibsons, could it not happen, also, to any of them? They did their best to put such alarming thoughts out of their minds as they tried to console Kitty.

  After their good lunch, they forgot about it, settling down to the bridge tables. Kitty made it easier for them by leaving, saying she was too upset to play, and though it threw out their numbers, everyone understood.

  Daphne told Alan about the Gibsons that evening. He seemed in a cheerful mood; he’d been rather quiet for the last week or two, and lately she’d wondered if he was going down with flu.

  ‘I felt so sorry for Kitty,’ said Daphne. ‘Yet what can one say? I suppose there was some reason why he was sacked and not somebody else.’

  ‘His age, I expect,’ said Alan.

  Here was his chance. He had only to say, ‘Well, as a matter of fact it’s happened to me too, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ Daphne said. ‘He’s like you – loyal, experienced, in his prime.’ She bent to kiss his forehead, a rare gesture. ‘I’m off now,’ she said.

  She usually stayed at home on Tuesday evenings, after a day of golf and bridge.

  ‘Where are you going tonight?’ Alan asked.

  ‘Oh darling, I did tell you this morning, you can’t have been listening,’ said Daphne. ‘I’m making up a four at the Manders – they always play on Tuesday and Bea Pearce can’t go, she’s got flu.’

  ‘I see,’ said Alan. ‘Well, enjoy yourself.’

  When she had gone, he went into his study and put a pile of records on – Tchaikovsky tonight, he felt in a mood for sensuous melody. While they played, he settled down to a book he had borrowed from Berbridge Central Li
brary, about the problems of bereavement. He hoped it would help him to guide Louise along the right road to recovery. Often, while he read, his attention wandered from the book and he thought again of the kisses they had exchanged. He knew that there would be more.

  Alan and Daphne had bought their old stone cottage in Lower Holtbury when Pauline was tiny. It had latticed windows, low ceilings, and sturdy beams holding the original part of the building together.

  During the years, they had added to it, building an extension in matching old stone which provided a large sitting-room and a cloakroom on the ground floor, and a new bedroom and second bathroom above. What had been the old kitchen and the dining-room had been knocked into one and was now a big kitchen, where they usually ate at a round pine table. The former sitting-room was now Alan’s study, his favourite room in the house. Daphne had no musical ear, and preferred television; if they were both at home in the evening he would often retreat to his den, as Daphne called it, rather than sit through some situation comedy she wanted to watch, although he had long since developed the ability to read through almost any exterior sound.

  Alan had trained a climbing Allgold rose against the front wall of the cottage, and on the lawn grew the cherry tree which gave it its name. He had laid a stone pathway round the building, and made a patio outside the French window that opened into the garden. He grew soft fruit in a cage wired against predatory birds, and in a small greenhouse he brought on seedlings and early tomatoes. He enjoyed tending the ground that he owned and saw himself as its custodian, entrusted with the duty to make it productive.

  Lower Holtbury, now, was a diminishing village. The school had been closed; there was no shop, not even a post office; no inn; and no doctor, either. One of the partners in the group practice in High Holtbury held a surgery once a week in part of the former school, which was also used for occasional jumble sales, whist drives and meetings. Daphne’s bridge game, that evening, was at the Manor House, the home of Gregory and Nina Manders. Gregory, until recently, had been profitably something in the city, travelling up each day in a chauffeur-driven Rolls. Now he had retired, and he and Nina had just returned from a holiday in the Bahamas. So new a recruit to the game, Daphne had not played bridge at the Manor before, but she had often been to the house when Nina Manders was chairing some charitable committee. The Manor grounds were used for various functions such as fêtes and the annual horticultural show, still held despite falling entries.