by Jane Bailey
‘So . . .’ I tucked into my cod, trying to picture this and too distracted now to enjoy the food. ‘What was Dora’s reaction when you said it wasn’t true?’
‘Well, you can imagine. I was worried she was going to try and bring me up for murder or something, so I had to be pretty firm with her.’
I held a succulent piece of fish in mid-air on my fork. ‘Crikey. It’s no wonder there was so much tension between the two of you.’
‘Did it show?’ She was in her stride.
‘But . . . why did you never mention it to me?’
She banged her fork slightly on the table and rolled her eyes. ‘That’s the whole point, isn’t it? I bottled everything up. Why would I want to go around saying someone had accused me of murder? Of battering someone over the head until . . . Why?’ I watched her and wondered why, when she wasn’t being indifferent to me, she was always so angry. She picked up the bottle of tomato ketchup and shook it wildly over her chips. Nothing came out.
‘Let me.’ I wanted more than anything to be useful to her. I wanted to protect her and do the manly things that a bit of extra testosterone came in handy for: putting up shelves, mowing the lawn, carrying her shopping, staying calm in a crisis, wiping away her tears, opening her jars. But somehow I always felt so useless around her. I slapped the ketchup bottle firmly on its base and the red sauce started to flow.
She snatched it back from me, beat it furiously with the palm of her hand, showering her plate with great splashes of red gloop.
50
DORA
I waited until after Christmas, but then I could wait no longer.
Our Mam told me not to be so foolish. I had to tell someone, and she and I had grown very close. She was tamping mad about Pippa and what she had done, but, she said, ‘It’s shutting the door after the horse has bolted. You should’ve given her a piece of your mind years ago. It’s too late now.’
I was not going to be deterred, though. There was something about hearing Pippa’s voice so coolly lying at my expense to extricate herself from any future accusations of murder, and on the national airwaves, that made my blood boil. I lost all reason. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say to Pippa when I found her, but find her I would, and no one was going to stop me.
In January of 1955 I set out on the train to Bristol. I’d just started doing an office job in Newport, so it had to be a Saturday when Our Mam could look after Helen while I was away. I knew this could be tricky and that I might well find Arthur at home as well as his wife, but I had to take my chances. Frankly, I didn’t really care whether I saw Arthur or not (although I think I did put on a bit of lipstick and made sure I’d just washed my hair).
Looking back, it’s hard to imagine where I found the courage to confront Pippa by turning up at their house with no idea who would answer the front door. All I can say is that it’s a testament to how enraged I was. Not a single phrase came to mind as I stood on the doorstep. Not an opening line, not even a word.
I rang the doorbell, then I knocked hard on the knocker as well to relieve a bit of my tension.
A woman I hadn’t seen before answered the door.
‘Er . . . is Pippa in?’
‘Pippa?’
‘Philippa – Philippa Fielding.’
The woman, a pretty young woman in slippers, looked bewildered for a moment. Then she said, ‘Oh, you mean the Fieldings! They moved out some time ago. They don’t live here any more.’
I hadn’t thought of this. So soon? Why had they moved? Were they living in another part of the country? Had they moved abroad? I could hardly catch my breath.
‘Do you have their forwarding address?’
‘I’m sorry. We did have it, but I haven’t sent on any mail for ages.’
I could hear my pulse in my head. Primed for a confrontation, all lipsticked and coiffed and straight-backed, I felt as though someone had let the air out of me and I was slowly sagging to the ground. I must have looked devastated, for the woman said kindly, ‘I’ll see if my husband can find it, if you like.’
I waited a full five minutes in their hallway. I looked at the stairs that I had once walked up with such awe and anticipation, the same stairs that Arthur had stood on when I discovered his treachery. There was a faint, heart-rending scent of the hallway it once had been (from the same carpet? From the wallpaper?) and I was grateful for the overlying new aroma of dog and fried egg.
She came out of the living room with a smile on her face and a piece of paper in her hand. ‘We think this is it: Four Acres. It’s just north of Bristol, near Chipping Sodbury.’
I thanked her, and wandered back out into the street. It was chilly. I had no idea how to catch a bus to the place on the paper. I stood aimlessly for a while and then began to get cold, a few thin flakes of snow drifting in the air. I saw a telephone box on the corner of the street and decided to phone for a taxi. I resolved that, when the taxi arrived, I would ask the price of the journey in advance. If it was too expensive, I would catch the train home.
It took ten minutes to arrive, and by then I was shivering and my fingers were numb. I showed the driver the address and simply asked him to take me there. It was a twenty-minute journey and cost seven shillings! I was put down outside a tall hedge on the side of a village road. I looked wistfully after the taxi as it disappeared around the corner of the lane, but it was too late to turn back now.
There was a gate and a path up to a whitewashed detached house. To the side I could see a swing rigged up in a tree, and on the ground a child’s red spade with a little seaside bucket. I was an intruder on happy family life. I was uninvited. I was going to sweep in and upset this applecart, and suddenly it felt all wrong. I stood in the porch like a burglar. There was a push-along toy dog off to the side and two pairs of sturdy shoes. One of the pairs was for tiny feet and was stuffed with grubby white socks, and the other pair, standing protectively, was for giant feet. There was mud on them both, and the intimacy of that mud and those socks made me tremble. Cold feet? I swallowed hard and tapped tentatively on the door.
Eventually the front door opened. A girl looked startled when she saw me, and I could see that she was clearly just going out and hadn’t answered my knock at all.
‘Oh, sorry, did you want . . . ?’
‘Is Pippa there?’
‘Yes! I’m just off out – I’ll get her. Come on in.’ She held on to the bannister and called up the stairs: ‘Mrs Fielding? Someone at the door for you!’
‘Tell Arthur to get it,’ a lethargic voice said.
‘He’s out.’
‘Who is it?’
‘A woman . . .’
I mouthed that I was a friend.
‘. . . A friend!’
‘Oh, that’s okay,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve got no make-up on or anything.’
As soon as there were sounds of footsteps from upstairs, the girl smiled at me and left, and I stood in the hallway waiting for my nemesis to appear.
She wore a red dressing gown, and her hair stood up a little at the back. Her lips, without lipstick, were extraordinarily pale. She stared at me from the middle of the staircase, supporting herself on the bannister as the full horror of my presence set in.
‘Dora!’
‘Pippa!’
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
What was I doing there? I looked up and down the passageway for clues.
‘I just thought I’d call by to let you know that I heard your broadcast on the wireless.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes. I expect you do.’ She looked a little stunned at my rejoinder, and I was pleased, able to gather my strength. And I certainly needed to, as my heart was thumping so hard that I had to steady my words. She looked away from my face to the bottom of the stairs, then pulled her dressing gown around her and walked down towards me. I stood my ground. ‘You’ll know why I’ve come.’
She looked at me again as if she might try to stare me out, but she couldn’t hold my g
aze. I could see from the set of her mouth and the shifting of her eyes that she was angry and afraid at the same time, torn between throwing me out and cajoling me. There was a pause. She retied her dressing gown and put her chin up.
‘You’d better come into the kitchen. I was just going to make some tea.’
I followed her into the kitchen. She didn’t ask if I would like to have a cup of tea myself, but she silently poured me one, and I took it, glad of the first refreshment since six o’clock that morning.
‘So . . .’ She leant with her back against the kitchen counter, not offering me a seat. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘Well, first I’d like an apology.’
‘An apology?’
‘You lied about me – publicly.’
‘I didn’t mention your name.’
‘I was the only little girl on that boat – apart from you.’
She rolled her eyes and closed them in exasperation. ‘Okay, I’m sorry!’ Then she met my eyes and ventured a truly challenging look, turning to walk from the kitchen into an adjoining living room. ‘All right? You’ve had your apology. Can I get on with my day now?’
‘And secondly,’ I said, following her into the room, ‘I’d like you to confess to Arthur – about killing his brother.’
She glared at me. I noticed that her cheeks, without make-up, were covered in tiny, thread veins, as though she drank a lot of alcohol or strong coffee. Her eyes were still dazzling and her teeth still perfect, but she had a drained, bloodless look to her, and I felt a sudden, brief pity for her.
‘How dare you! Get out of my house!’
So this was the tack she was going to take. I stood my ground, taking in the cushiony sofa and the dull mix of modern and antique furniture. On the arm of one of the chairs was a copy of her book.
‘Survivor’s Guilt,’ I said, trying to sound calm. ‘That was a good ruse, wasn’t it? Did you think you could protect yourself by telling the world I was bonkers?’
‘I did not tell the world you were bonkers!’ She was shouting now, unashamedly. ‘Get out!’
‘I’ll go when you promise to tell Arthur what happened. You know what happened as well as I do, and I won’t leave until you tell him.’
‘Get . . . out!’ Her rage was terrifying, but mine was worse. Her reddening face and clenched jaw were exactly the sort of thing that would have once made me cower before her, but for once in my life I refused to buckle. I knew control was mine if I could just stay calm and cling on to my mission.
‘Or what, Pippa? You’ll call the police? I don’t think that would be very wise, do you? You see, I’m not here to claim back my dignity. I’m here to see justice for what you’ve done. You lied to Arthur. Let’s face it, Pippa, the only reason you seduced him was to get him on side, just in case I ever spoke out about what I saw. And yes, I did see it. I saw you beat Philip over and over and I know why. I know why! For the sake of some “diamonds” on a concertina!’
‘Why would I do that, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Because you were a child and you thought they were real – we all did to start with. Because you were never as wealthy as you pretended, were you? Far wealthier than the rest of us, of course, but nowhere near as wealthy as you wanted to be. And don’t deny it. I’ve heard it all from Ralph.’
‘Even if I did think the diamonds were real – which I didn’t – why on earth would I want to kill . . . ?’
‘You can stop the charade. Philip told me you’d threatened to kill him if he told on you about stealing the concertina. And you were so afraid that he would. But you see, he already had. You killed that poor little boy for nothing. Well, for fake diamonds – fake!’
She picked up a heavy bottle with a ship inside it and waved it threateningly. It had crossed my mind that she could do with getting me out of the way permanently, but I hadn’t expected such raw physical rage.
‘I’m not interested in putting you away. I only want you to tell Arthur the truth.’
She screamed at me now: ‘GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!’
Her screaming must have masked the sound of the back door opening, because now I saw Arthur standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. I tried not to look at him, but I couldn’t help taking him in. His presence changed everything. All sense of danger fell apart, and even the light in the room seemed different and livened up the colours. I’d forgotten quite how handsome he could be. His face was bright with the freshness of the outdoors, and his expression was bafflement. Pippa had her back to him and hadn’t noticed he was there. She continued to shout: ‘You just want him for yourself! That’s what all this is about!’
‘Tell Arthur yourself, now, or I will.’
‘Tell Arthur what? What must I be told?’
She spun around in shock and seemed to start trembling as soon as she saw him. ‘I thought you were out!’
‘I was – out in the garden. Hello, Dora.’ Bewildered, but smiling.
‘Hello.’ I don’t think I managed a smile.
‘Don’t listen to anything she says – she’s a liar!’ Pippa started to wail. I swear she could just turn on the tears. As soon as she saw him, she turned them on like a tap. She hurled her weapon on to the floor. But then there was another sound: a child crying. I looked over and saw that a little girl was clinging on to Arthur’s leg and howling. ‘Stop Mummy shouting!’
‘For God’s sake get that child to shut up!’ cried Pippa.
Arthur picked up the little girl and held her close. Something in the tenderness with which he did so reminded me – against all my will – of why I had loved him so much. She must’ve been about two years old. Now everything changed again. It was impossible to continue with the child listening. Who could tell what damage it might do in the long term?
‘What a pretty dress!’ I said, meeting her tear-filled eyes. ‘Are you a princess?’
She gazed at me and I smiled. She buried her head in her father’s shoulder.
‘Don’t you talk to my child!’ Pippa hissed.
‘Please, Pippa. Calm down. Let’s have a bit of calm here. What’s all this about? Tell Arthur what?’
He was searching my face, and I knew I could say nothing damning about Pippa in front of the child. But I couldn’t leave things where they were. Pippa was still shaking. She was a grenade I had detonated, and I knew there would be consequences. I would have to circumnavigate the new obstacle, but there was no turning back on my mission.
‘Pippa told you I had hallucinated. What she didn’t tell you was who I saw.’ I swallowed. ‘It was Philip.’ My lips tingled with his name. Arthur’s lips were ajar and motionless. ‘And I didn’t hallucinate.’
He stood there holding his daughter and staring at me. His composure collapsed. He rested his mouth on his daughter’s head and stroked her hair. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he fixed them incredulously on his wife. There was a split second of terror, and then Pippa covered her face with her hands and bawled. ‘How can you believe such twaddle? Can’t you see what she’s trying to do? She’s just trying to wreck our marriage!’
‘Oh, Pippa! Please! Tell the truth for once. Arthur deserves to hear it from you, not me.’ I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I made my way past Arthur, through the kitchen and out into the hallway. I opened the front door and strode down the path, my heart racing, my breathing frantic. He had looked so . . . Had I done the right thing? Had I destroyed him? Was she right about my wanting to wreck their marriage? He was so . . . And yet, she always twisted things. There was no justice with Pippa. She managed to make you feel unworthy, when all you were trying to do was establish the truth, right a wrong.
‘Dora!’
I heard him call after me, but I couldn’t look back. I couldn’t bear to see the face that I had hurt, the damage I had done, the man that I still loved.
I marched out of the gate and into the road, with no money and absolutely no idea how to get to where I needed to be.
51
I heard the word ‘fake’ quite clearly, and then we were opening the back door, and there was something about ‘telling Arthur the truth’, and then I was distracted by Fliss taking off her coat and wellingtons, and then the screaming: ‘GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!’
I was right there for my wife then, ready to throw out the intruder, only what I saw over Pippa’s shoulder – apart from the ship in a bottle she was brandishing – was Dora. There was a rush of forgotten pleasure – a little like the rush I’d felt when she used to run her fingers down the side of my ribs and whisper into my neck on a Welsh mountainside – and then confusion.
Pippa was screaming. ‘You just want him to yourself – that’s what this is all about!’
I flattered myself that this was a showdown between two women who wanted me. I could hardly believe it. There was no doubt they were referring to me, though, because Dora looked directly at me and said, ‘Tell Arthur yourself, now, or I will.’
She was stunning. She stood there, confronting my wife, her cheeks ablaze and her eyes – her eyes were alight with rage. I’d never seen her like that before. She was electric. She was beautiful. I could feel this energy coming off her.
‘Tell Arthur what? What must I be told?’
Pippa turned round and seemed terrified to see me. I swear she was practically trembling, and since I’d never had that impact on her, I knew it was Dora. She was a force to be reckoned with that day.
‘I thought you were out!’ It was like an accusation.
‘I was – out in the garden.’ I couldn’t take my eyes off Dora’s determined face. ‘Hello, Dora.’
‘Hello.’ There was no smile, no sign of any feeling towards me.
‘Don’t listen to anything she says – she’s a liar!’ Pippa howled, threw the bottle on to the carpet, and then proceeded to break down in tears. Dora was looking not at me, but at Fliss, who, with all the shouting and now the crying, had started to cry herself. I picked her up, and Dora’s face softened. She said something gently to Fliss, and Fliss calmed down a little but continued to cling on to me. She was clearly very frightened, and that was only made worse when Pippa forbade Dora from talking to her child.