The big woman’s eyes popped with surprise and delight, and she dipped into her mug.
After a bit, her head bobbed up and she looked at the sleeping child. ‘The poor little mite. He must of been bored stiff in here, all day long. And you both poorly.’
‘Ah,’ grinned Lily, ‘seasickness seemed to be the best excuse to keep us tucked out of sight. We’re actually as fit as fiddles. But poor old Nickie, he’s had a miserable time of it. It’s not the best place for a ten-year-old to be cooped up.’
‘I don’t think he’ll be wanting another game of chess in a fair while,’ remarked Johnnie.
Mrs Webb shook her head. ‘Well I never, what a tale.’ He could hear the wonder in her voice and he topped up her mug; she didn’t demur. Her face had taken on a not unbecoming flush as she now settled back. ‘And talking of tales, Mrs Valley, Billy Bottle had a bit more to tell us after you left. Seems that young nurse who was accused had a bad turn and collapsed. They had to get a doctor to her. Serious, by all accounts.’
‘No, please don’t say that!’ There was a desperation in Lily’s voice as she rose to her feet in a sudden movement. ‘I knew it, I knew it.’ She stood leaning back against the door, her eyes closed.
‘My God, Lily, are you all right?’
‘No, of course I’m not!’ she snapped.
No one spoke. The silence hung awkwardly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said after a moment. ‘The strain. Oh Gawd.’ She pulled a face. ‘These things are sent to try us but why now?’
‘You’re talking about Lavinia, aren’t you?’ he said hesitantly.
Lily sighed.
‘I think you’d better explain.’ He nodded at Mrs Webb.
Lily sank down onto the bunk again. ‘As you guessed earlier, Mrs Webb, I do know this woman, Lavinia Slocombe. She’s a particularly nasty piece of work who I’ve had the misfortune to know for more years than I care to remember.’ Johnnie could hear the deep weariness in her voice. ‘You can take it from me, if she’s picked this young woman as her prey, she won’t be satisfied until the girl’s reputation is utterly destroyed. She’ll ruin her life.’
‘No!’ gasped Mrs Webb.
Lily turned to the large woman, her face still and serious. ‘I’m not exaggerating. This woman takes a delight in destroying people’s lives – she seems to relish the challenge in making as much mischief as possible, causing terrible misery and then getting away with it absolutely scot-free.’ She looked down. ‘I do, however, know something about this woman that would immediately exonerate the nurse.’
‘Well, we must tell the girl at once,’ burst out Mrs Webb.
‘If only it were that simple.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Johnnie and I are doing everything in our power to remain hidden away down here.’
‘You’re talking about her police record, aren’t you?’ Johnnie cut in.
The question remained unanswered for suddenly the little boy, as if to remind them of the importance of secrecy, turned in his bunk and rootled once more in the sheets. After a moment, he settled.
It was when Lily started talking again – a new firmness in her voice – that Johnnie knew she’d made a decision. ‘You’re right, Mrs Webb, I must talk to this girl. I just need to see her for five minutes, after all.’
‘Lily, you must be out of your mind to even consider it!’ He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to him. ‘If you go up to first class, it’d be just our luck you’d run into a whole string of people you know.’ He was thoroughly exasperated. ‘I thought secrecy was what this whole ruddy trip was all about!’
She looked defeated. ‘I know, I know.’
Suddenly, Mrs Webb spoke in tiny excited whisper. ‘What if we could get you up to first class? And you were invisible!’
They both turned to her.
‘After all, what the eye doesn’t look for, the eye doesn’t see. And no one knows you’re aboard. Except for yours truly.’
Lady Lavinia sat at her dressing table softening her hands with a lotion of her own making; glycerine and rose-water in equal parts with four or five drops of benzoin.
She was extremely proud of her hands. For such a big-boned woman they were surprisingly small and youthful and to make sure they would always remain that way, every night she religiously rubbed into them a little olive oil followed by a soupçon of her fragrant lotion.
Behind her, Timms busied herself softly around the lavish suite. With no outfit to be worn twice on the voyage by her mistress, she efficiently took each of the day’s discarded garments and placed those not in need of either dry-cleaning or pressing between sheets of tissue-paper, stuffing each sleeve in readiness for re-packing. Then, pulling out a needle stowed behind the lapel of her navy jacket, she threaded it and carefully started to tack down the pleats of the tea-dress Lady Slocombe had worn earlier that afternoon. She had news but it could wait, her mistress’s hand-softening ritual was sacrosanct and never to be interrupted. She watched her Ladyship as, with closed eyes, she lightly rocked back and forth, softening the ridiculous child-like hands. Thirty years in the service of this woman had taught Timms patience and endurance. Oh yes, she could wait.
Silently, the two women went about their nightly rituals, their lives plaited together with secrets, each with an extraordinary hold over the other, each needing the other’s silence. Strangely, it gave them a perverse sense of relaxation in the other’s company. They didn’t have to pretend; they knew each other too well.
Her hand-softening ritual at an end, Lady Slocombe drew on a pair of white cotton gloves and replaced the ornate silver top on the lotion’s small cut-glass bottle. She looked at Timms behind her, reflected in the mirror.
Timms raised her head from her sewing and met her mistress’s eye. ‘If I am not very much mistaken, my lady, I think I have just seen Lady Sutton.’
There was a crash of glass. Lady Slocombe had turned with such speed that the sleeve of her dressing gown had caught the glass powder-dish and sent it scudding across the table-top and onto the floor. The carpet looked as though it had been flour-bombed. Timms leant forward to clear it up.
‘Leave it!’ hissed her Ladyship. ‘Lady Lily Sutton?’ She had gone very still. She looked unmasked and dangerous.
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Where?’
‘In steerage, my lady.’
‘What on earth—? With Sir Charles?’
‘I didn’t see him. She spent the evening talking to a loud common-looking fat woman,’ stated Miss Timms, who prided herself both on the spareness of her figure and the gentility of her voice, its accent scrubbed clean of a south London childhood. ‘I have enquired of a steward if they have a passenger in the name of Sutton and, for the exchange of a coin, he consulted his lists. She appears not to be on it. Not under that name, anyway.’
Lady Slocombe stared at her maid then looked away. ‘Well, well, well, what’s that nosey little Lily Sutton up to?’ Her maid waited. ‘Find out what name she’s travelling under, Timms, we have to know. And anything else about her, anything else at all.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
Lady Slocombe’s eyes closed. Miss Timms knew her mistress was thinking, planning. ‘Talk to that steward again. Go through those lists with a fine-tooth comb. Money, on this occasion, is no object. But do not make yourself a subject for any loose talk.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘And while you’re about it, you had better read this.’ Lady Slocombe leant into her capacious handbag and withdrew a folded copy of the day’s Poseidon Post. ‘According to this, Lady Sutton has managed to contract some kind of memory loss.’ She handed the newspaper to her maid. ‘You have much to do; you’d better get started.’
With a wave of her hand, she dismissed the hovering maid.
Chapter Twelve
SS Etoile. Saturday morning, the small hours
Mrs Webb had departed their cabin at one-thirty. A plan of action in place, the two women had arra
nged to meet in the Webb cabin a few hours later at half-past six. ‘Hardly worth going to bed,’ Johnnie had muttered but neither woman chose to hear.
This plan bodes ill, he thought, but said nothing. Instead, he poured himself another whisky, removed the pipe from his lips and tapped it on his shoe. He didn’t refill it – the space was too confined to smoke more than one – but looked across at Lily trying to compose a letter.
Through the black night, the ship sailed on and slowly he began to realise that, although at first she’d asked his advice as to what to write, for the last half-hour she hadn’t spoken. Hunched over her writing case she sat silent, occasionally scribbling a line. Otherwise she was completely motionless, staring into space.
He felt a mounting sense of unease. It was the middle of the night and he knew she was at her lowest ebb. After the shock of Lady Slocombe’s presence on board, he wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
Suddenly he sat up. Deep within himself, he’d felt his body turn ice-cold. Oh Christ, no – not now!
He waited with mounting panic.
And, sure enough, he recognised all his old symptoms leaping into life, one by one. There – there was the deep sense of unease uncontrollably turning to terror and, in response, his body breaking – immediately – into a wretched drenching sweat. Damn! He closed his eyes. His heart was beating terribly – and suddenly behind his eyes, the blinding frightening flashes. Dear God, after all these years could the neurasthenia still bite so quickly? Then it had been the memory of a bloody battle, triggered by a motor car back-firing, a balloon popping…
He looked across at Lily and desperately tried to even his breath, terrified she would hear him – or worse, he would call out. His heart was racing out of control and the adrenalin was rushing through his body. He must get out; the cabin walls were beginning to close in on him. Oh dear God, no! His heart was starting to pound again. With every bit of effort he could muster, he managed to say quite casually, ‘Going for a spot of air.’ Lily nodded, her head down in concentration.
He shot into the passageway. Holding onto a bulkhead, he stood, space whirling, lights flashing, trying to catch ragged breaths. The pain was flowering behind his eyes and he willed himself to count. The old training. The old training to counteract the fear. Breathe. And two and three. Breathe. And two and three. He could hear Doctor Addenbrooke counting him down, his riding crop slapping time against his army gaiters.
But now Johnnie’s heart wouldn’t stop racing, he couldn’t rein in the terror. Sweat poured down his back. Air. He must reach the air. He stumbled along the passageway and pushed through a door.
On deck, the wind was so cold and hard, so unexpected, it banged the breath from him. He battled with all his remaining strength to the railings and stood holding tight, staring out at the black sea, urging his mind to nothing, fighting the fear, counting the breaths, counting…and felt the peak and the panic start to ebb away down the other side. But now, wretched and wrung out, he began to cry, the despair terrible, monumental. Dear God, what was he doing on this boat? What was he doing with this woman he didn’t really know – and her pale cowed son?
Alone, he sobbed into the roaring wind until at last the need to cry left him. But the desolation remained, black, sightless. What was he doing here? Did he need – did he want – all these complications? His life was fine, no emotions. Why tamper with it? Perhaps a bit lonely but he had his books, his pigs. Above all, his life was calm and he’d kept the neurasthenia at bay.
He stared out at the sea. He couldn’t face another onset of the illness; the thought terrified and depressed him. The dreary weeks of constant anxiety, the tremors and, worse, the bouts of unstaunchable tears. And Lily didn’t know; he’d chosen not to tell her – he’d thought himself free, having suffered no attack for over three years. He felt utterly shocked that he was still so easily in its thrall. ‘In my considered opinion,’ Addenbrooke had intoned the last time, ‘your condition, if it arises again, will be expedited by the removal to a nursing home where worries and too sympathetic friends can be excluded.’ Johnnie remembered suppressing an enormous desire to laugh at the pompous old cove – until he remembered he was paying 10 guineas for this ‘considered opinion’. ‘Complete change, rest and tonics, Captain Sturridge, are the only cure for a sane and manageable life; the only way to escape this inner migration to madness…’
So, what was he doing here on a ship, turning his life upside down? Complete change certainly but hardly rest and tonics.
Lancashire. Christmas 1931
‘Uncle Johnnie—’
‘Good Lord, don’t call me that. It makes me feel ancient.’
‘What should I call you then, sir?’
‘Certainly not “sir” either. Just Johnnie. How about it?’
‘All right. Johnnie.’
He glanced at the boy beside him. They were driving into Preston to get Lily a Christmas present, her son very dismissive of the goods on offer at Uncle Hugh’s local village shop.
‘Johnnie.’ The boy rolled this new grown-up name around, feeling its weight on his tongue, testing it for approval. He sat hunched in his seat, all ears and knobbly knees, freckles and sleepy eyes, unbelievably grown since Johnnie had last seen him – four months ago already – though the boy was still pale and small for his age. Now the Christmas holidays, they were all spending it on Hugh’s farm in the Trough of Bowland. Charles Sutton remained far away in London.
‘Johnnie?’
‘Yes, old man.’
‘Can I tell you the biggest secret in all the world?’ Johnnie braced himself. ‘I don’t think there’s a Father Christmas.’ He could feel the boy staring at him, needing confirmation. Johnnie looked ahead, finding himself torn across this bridge between childhood and beyond.
‘Really. What makes you say that?’
‘A boy at my school says there isn’t. But we’ve still got to pretend ’cos Mummy thinks there is.’
Late, late that night, Lily and he sat across from one another in a sea of wrapping paper, packing the boy’s presents. The log fire cracked and popped. As he tackled the intricacies of string and paper round a Hornby train and engine, he said, ‘Thank you for asking me here. It’s the nicest Christmas I can remember in years.’
‘Well, even such a recluse as my brother rather likes company at this time of year. And Mary and Sam seem more than happy to keep an eye on your farm.’
He watched as she picked up a box of Pop the Beacon and measured it against a sheet of paper awash with snowflakes and reindeer. She looked up and grinned at him. ‘What’s more, Hugh can talk politics with you to his heart’s content.’
She started to cut the paper, her head down, concentrating. ‘It’s dreadful, I feel such a fool the minute he starts. I get completely tangled in knots.’
‘Speaking of knots, would you be good enough to loan me a finger?’
She leant across and placed her finger on the string; he looped the knot. He caught her scent of lemons.
When she looked up at him, he asked, ‘May I kiss you?’
‘Please, oh please,’ she said.
Christmas 1931. The first kiss. And ever after, he never knew how he had lived without her, this woman, the completion of his life.
SS Etoile. Saturday, early
The ship dipped and rose. A cluster of clouds tore across the moon and on every surface the sparkle of ice momentarily dulled. Johnnie realised he was shivering, the sweat clammy and cold on his back. But he remained sitting on the bench; he couldn’t face the cabin yet.
His empty cold kitchen. And the memory of the dripping pipes in need of lagging those first three winters after the war. That was what he was leaving behind. Even last winter there’d been no kitchen fire going all through the day – and no warmth in his chilly damp bed either, at night. Until Lily had started visiting the farm.
He lifted his face to the wind. His mind had calmed; the attack had been mercifully brief. And now – as ever – it was the thought
of Lily that warmed him.
Was he crazy to even think of leaving this woman? What were a farm and pigs – even dear old Marie Antoinette, a sturdy porker in her old age – if there was no reason for one’s heart to beat?
No, it wasn’t the moment to retire from the battle. The farm was in Sam’s good hands and, once in America, he’d tell Lily of the illness. There, there would be time enough for ‘rest and tonics’. For now he’d been entrusted with the safety of these two people, this woman and her son. An adventure, no less. Quite unexpectedly, out of the blue, at his ripe old age. And in many ways he knew he was loving it; because of her, God dammit, and her pale cowed child. At last, life had some reason.
Lancashire. New Year 1931
Hugh looked up as the man stepped into the tack-room and stopped in the doorway. Johnnie stood in the dingy light, breathing in. ‘Mmm, smell of leather and saddle-soap; nothing to beat it.’
Hugh said, ‘Come on in and join us.’
By the light of a hurricane lamp, Nickie and he carried on cleaning a saddle and bridle, heads down. In the corner, a small wood-burning stove clicked and creaked, otherwise there was a completely concentrated silence. It was Twelfth Night.
‘Sorry to disturb you two. Nickie, Mummy says its time for tea.’
On the wind, a horse whinnied. Hugh saw the little boy carry on cleaning. Then silent expectancy proving too much, he looked up at Hugh, hope in his eyes; perhaps his uncle could delay the arrival of bath and bedtime.
But all Hugh said was, ‘I’ll be over in a bit. We’ll have a quick chat before Ma tucks you in. Promise.’ The boy stood motionless. ‘Go on, off you go. And thanks again for all your help today, old man, Whirlwind really enjoyed the exercise.’ Still nothing. ‘Fun, wasn’t it?’
The boy nodded and left, sullen and silent. The two men listened as his steps dragged across the stable-yard, leaving the noise to comment loudly on the unfairness of his life.
The Hidden Dance Page 18