A Habit of Dying

by D J Wiseman

  Taking something of Gloria’s simpler approach but without, she hoped, too much of the selfish aspect, Lydia anticipated the weekend with the pleasure of new discoveries. Discoveries which she would accept for whatever they might turn out to be. She had decided there would be no shocks, no unwelcome surprises, no introspection as to her right to be there, whatever the weekend had in store she would take it all in her stride. If Stephen were to turn out to be married or divorced or even homosexual, she’d discounted each possibility; if the house was a bachelor’s grubby mess or the height of chic, she would still find her space in it; if it was cold with noisy plumbing or over heated with a log fire, she would adjust accordingly.

  To underline her openness to any eventuality, she had shopped for what she hoped were the smart-casual clothes to suit any course the weekend might take. After agonising over the choice, she had finally selected a dress in graphite grey, shot through with a hint of sparkle in a silk fabric that slipped through the fingers like water. It was probably the most expensive dress she had ever bought and she earnestly hoped it would be suitable for a cocktail party or the finest of restaurants. To this she’d added sensible black trousers for any occasion and two tailored blouses, crushed raspberry and navy blue. To complete her weekend ensemble she bought flat shoes for a walk round the village and a pair with a little more heel to go with the sparkling dress. After a slight hesitation, this shopping had also included new underwear, justified by need but decided by the moment.

  It was late in the morning when the little red Nisan crunched to a halt on the gravel of The Old Rectory drive. Barely had she opened the door to stretch out her legs before Stephen emerged from the side of the house, sun hat in hand, the same easy flowing stride that she’d first noted at Loweswater.

  ‘Lydia, I am so glad that you’ve made it.’ One arm round her back, a gentle pressure from his hand between her shoulder blades, a touch of cheeks that she might have made into a kiss if her name had been Gloria.

  ‘Thank you. I’m very glad to be here.’ She stood back half a step and took in the house before her and was immediately reminded of the photograph of the old Joslin house, Longlands. Rectories were built for big families and this was no exception. Perhaps older than Longlands by a century or so and stone rather than brick, but the same solidity, the same weight, the same statement of importance. The Old Rectory still made that statement with an ease and assurance that the aspiring classes who had built Longlands never quite mastered. Two storeys with a crenellated roof line, an elegant square of a house. Stephen led her not through the front door, but round to the side from which he had emerged. The gravel drive, the neat lawns and pruned shrubs already indicated she would not be entering a bachelor’s mess. He took her in through French windows to a comfortable sitting room, the kind you would want to find in an expensive country hotel, but rarely do.

  ‘Let me take you up to your room and show you where things are. While you’re doing that I’ll see about some drinks.’

  Her room was large and bright, a soft stream of air gently billowing net curtains across the open window. Beyond was a croquet lawn, gravel paths, currant bushes in their cages, a few fruit trees sheltered by the deep orange of an old brick wall. To one side were flourishing vegetable beds, to the other a little-used tennis court. It was, thought Lydia, exactly what she might have expected, exactly what might have intimidated her not long ago.

  She turned from the window to see Stephen still standing by the doorway and almost involuntarily her eye moved to the bed beside him. A great heavy double bed, which, like the rest of the furniture in the room, spoke more of arts-and-crafts than high street superstore. He followed her gaze. ‘Don’t worry, it has a good new mattress. I’m told that it’s extremely comfortable.’ The question of who had told him hung briefly in the air, but they both chose to ignore it. ‘I’ll go and get those drinks. When you are ready just come back down the way we came in. Oh, there’s a bathroom opposite, no en-suite here, I’m afraid.’ And with that he was gone to the drinks. Not asked what she might like to drink, noted Lydia, but an assumption made that she would like what he would prepare for her.

  As soon as he was gone, she tried the bed. A firm modern mattress met her bounce. She stretched out on the covers and every aspect of it met with her approval, especially the size. The house could so easily have been cold and impersonal, but it was not, it was much more a home than she had expected, despite its apparently solitary inhabitant. She guessed that it might be home to more than just Stephen and that a female hand had left its mark.

  ‘I thought we might both enjoy a glass of this on a hot summer’s day. We had some at the Lemon Tree.’ Stephen drew the bottle of Prosecco from the ice bucket. Lydia nodded in appreciation. For a few minutes they sat in smiling silence in the shade of the awning, sipping the wine, absorbing the place and the moment.

  ‘How’s the googling?’

  ‘Oh, very informative, very educational, very useful if you want to know about Sir Stephen Kellaway, forensic archaeologist, author of papers, man of science, advisor to government and prized committee member.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But, as I think you well know, not much use for anything else.’ Far more easily than she had imagined, Lydia had asked all the unasked questions in one simple statement.

  ‘I can tell you whatever you wish to know, unless it is too private, in which case it might wait until . . .’ the pause was not made for effect, whatever he had been going to say, he altered to ‘until another time.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He really was the easiest of men to be with. Lydia had not even finished her glass and she felt a light headedness and a dryness of mouth that required another sip.

  ‘Well, Lydia, the essential facts. I am not married, but I was. Elspeth, my wife, died twelve years ago. I have a daughter Jacqueline who is in her thirties, and we get along very well. She works in London but I see her quite often, and there are no grandchildren. It was Jacqueline who commented on the quality of the mattress. Oh, and I’m a little older than you. Sixty-three. One sister, Felicity, who I mentioned once before. Happy childhood, minor public school then Cambridge.’ He paused a moment, surprised at how quickly he had summarised his life, then added with a smile, ‘I expect you know the rest.’

  She had sought answers and now she had them, sparse as they were. To Lydia he seemed glad to have the awkward business of the day completed, as if he had rehearsed his answer in readiness for the question and was relieved to have the exam over.

  ‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ Lydia said, looking straight into his eyes, searching for some hint as to his feelings for Elspeth, ‘but glad about your daughter.’

  ‘It’s not fresh any more, it was another life.’ It was not so much the door slammed on further enquiry, but for once he did not leave it open.

  For a while they watched the bubbles rise in their glasses, and let the soft hum of an English summer enfold their thoughts.

  ‘And you Lydia, tell me about you.’

  Tell him about her? There was nothing to tell, she hadn’t given a single thought to the idea that he would have any interest in her. He was the enigma requiring a solution, not she.

  ‘Me? Nothing to tell really, beyond what you know. I’m very ordinary.’ Then she realised stupidly what he meant. ‘Ah, yes, well, I was also married, but Michael is alive and well as far as I know. We were divorced about ten or eleven years ago. No drama, more a withering on the vine until we just went our separate ways when he found someone else. As you just said, it was another life. And no children.’

  ‘And you’ve been alone since then.’ It should have been a question but Stephen made a statement of it, more as if he turned it over in his mind and spoke the thought aloud.

  Lydia answered anyway. ‘Yes, and for the most part, not unhappy about that.’

  Then they spoke of living single lives, spoke in the way that old friends comfortably do, even though they spoke of things old friends would already know. St
ephen talked of the gardener from the village, Roger, who came in a couple of days a week in the season and made sure that he had all the produce from the garden that he needed and took the rest for himself and his family. He told her about Mrs Webb who kept the house clean and tidy and cooked him a meal or two each week and made sure the fridge was cleaned out when it needed to be, just as she had for years since soon after his daughter Jacqueline had been born. She came and stayed with him once a week, sometimes for a few days at a time, which in itself told Lydia all that anyone could want to know about father and daughter.

  In return Lydia had little to offer him, a potted history of life since divorce took no more than a few sentences. She had no son to match his daughter, a house that, for all it was often neglected, could never justify hired help, and a garden that hardly deserved the same name as the grounds she now sat in. But as much as she did say, she said without apology. In contrast to that day at Magdalen, she did not feel out of place in these grand and unfamiliar surroundings, no demons of doubt circled to pounce. She offered no false token of resistance as Stephen refilled her glass and then his own to empty the bottle. When he suggested they bring out the lunch that the loyal Mrs Webb had prepared for them, Lydia went with him to the kitchen as if she had done it may times before.

  While they broke bread still warm from the oven and washed down smoked salmon with a fresh bottle, they spoke more of children and the lack of them, and how each of them could imagine the other’s feelings. They talked of nieces and nephews and how they could become surrogate children. Mention of Stephen’s niece Fiona inevitably brought Phoebe Joslin to Lydia’s mind and Phoebe brought memories of Loweswater and Cockermouth for them both to share again.

  ‘And did you bring your Joslin treasures with you?’

  Until the moment of her arrival Lydia had been bursting to tell him the news of her great discoveries, but in the pleasure of seeing him, the warmth of the summer garden, the bubbles in the creamy wine, the Joslins and their affairs had slipped from her mind. ‘Oh, yes, I did. I have everything in one of my cases.’

  ‘I wondered if two cases might be a little much for a single night,’ he smiled at her.

  ‘Stephen, I know who the journal writer is, I know who his wife is. I think that I know everyone in the albums.’

  ‘That’s wonderful! Not just wonderful but amazing too, you have put so much into it. Does Dorothy, was it Dorothy, does she know all this?’

  ‘No, I haven’t told her but I’m going to see her in September. There’s one thing I don’t know, I don’t know what happened to Susan, she is the SDI in the journal, the writer’s wife. The story just stops, I can find no trace of anything.’ Then in a moment of confidence only partly supplied by the Prosecco, she added, ‘Maybe you can see where I’ve missed something or where I should go next. Maybe you can see the answer, maybe it is staring me in the face all the time.’

  He looked at her for a moment before answering, recognising the honour that she was offering him, giving up sole ownership of her precious project. ‘Are you sure? You know I am interested to look, but to contribute something at this stage when you have come so far? Thank you, of course I’ll help. Well, that does rather assume that I have some help to give. So tell me, who is this journal writer and how did you find him.’

  ‘He is, or was, Andrew Stephen Myers. And here’s the thing, Susan, his wife who is a child in sandcastles, is . . .’

  ‘Sandcastles?’ he interrupted her.

  ‘That’s what I call the album with all the holiday pictures, sandcastles. There’s that one, the oldest one which is Longlands, and the RAF album. The empty one I called the VE Day album. But Susan was a Joslin, or rather her mother was, and Andrew was a Myers or a Dix Myers, and they were related. To be precise, they were fourth cousins twice removed,’ she concluded triumphantly

  ‘All right, I can see it’s somehow important, but you may have lost me somewhere. What does that mean, fourth cousin twice removed?’

  ‘Well, it means that Susan’s five times great grandfather, or five-g grandfather, who was John Jolly, was also Andrew’s three times great grandfather.’

  ‘Right.’ Stephen paused before adding, ‘And the significance of that is?’

  ‘First it is unusual, but second it explains how the RAF album and the other two could have come to be together. Andrew would have had the RAF album from his family and Susan would have had the others from hers.’

  ‘I think you’d better tell me the whole thing.’

  ‘Shall I get the albums and my notes?’

  ‘No, just take me on from where we were in Oxford.’

  So as the afternoon drifted lazily on, Lydia told Stephen how she had found that Susan was an Ingleby from the photo of the two girls under the road sign. From there she had found the family, found her mother was Ethel Joslin, and that Susan was Papa’s great great granddaughter, and how Susan had married Andrew in Abingdon in 1976. Stephen let her run on through the discoveries, the certificates, the births and the deaths. He learnt how Andrew was the elusive Bertie’s son and Lydia guessed he might have been born in Rhodesia or South Africa, which was why she couldn’t find any trace of him until he popped up on Bertie’s death registration with an address in South Africa in 1971. Then in 1975 when his mother died he appeared again, only by that time he was living in Chesham, at the same address as his mother. It all tumbled out as she laid each new revelation before him to be wondered at. Try as he might, he still couldn’t quite share her enthusiasm, her passion for the subject, but he enjoyed seeing the life and excitement it brought to her face. She was so animated that he stopped trying to take in all the details of her discoveries and settled for catching the gist while enjoying her pleasure. Even when she came to an abrupt halt, saying that was as far as she could go, she knew who they were, she knew so much about them, but could find no trace of either of them dead or alive in the years after the journal, even then Lydia spoke with an intensity that Stephen found quite captivating.

  ‘And what have you brought with you?’

  ‘Nearly everything. The albums and the journal obviously, and all the notes I have made, all the certificates and my laptop. You can look at the Joslin family tree on that.’

  ‘Well, I think if you show me what you have, then allow me a while to read it all and try and understand it, then it is possible some new avenue might suggest itself.’

  Stephen brought the second suitcase down from Lydia’s room and together they arranged its contents in his study. She explained each of her treasures, showed him how she’d filed the certificates, explained how the Joslin family could be viewed and how their sometimes confusing relationships came about by the marriage of cousins. Finally Lydia presented him with the precious journal, both the original which she now kept in a plastic document bag, and her transcript.

  ‘Ah, the journal itself,’ he said with not entirely false deference. ‘Funny to think that I now have it in my hand. Remember talking about it as we walked in Loweswater?’

  ‘Yes I do.’ Lydia let the scene take shape in her mind again, just as she had several times before. ‘Where do you want to start?’

  ‘Lydia, if it is alright with you, I’ll roughly follow your course, spend time with the albums, look at your notes about them, see how you’ve fitted the family together, then read the journal. I want to have some sense of the people that is beyond the facts you’ve discovered and see if I find a similar picture is formed.’

  He seemed to have no doubt as to how to go about the task, a new and interesting case, but a procedure he was familiar with. And he seemed ready to undertake it without her. Lydia imagined how he might have overseen some junior’s investigations when the conclusions were open to question, how he would have taken all the papers, shut himself away until the job was done.

  ‘Shall I leave you to it? It might take you quite a while.’

  ‘Is that alright? Not the best of hosts perhaps, to leave you to your own devices. I thought you would want . .
.’ His voice trailed off and Lydia saw uncertainty in him for the first time.

  ‘I can amuse myself. I’m practised at it, remember? I’ll do a little exploring if that’s ok.’

  ‘Good, yes, please do. Oh and I had planned that we would eat out tonight, there is a taxi from the village booked for seven thirty. A place in Cambridge.’

  ‘That will be lovely, thank you. I’ll leave you to it.’ ‘I’ll come and find you if I’m stuck,’ he called after her, delighted she’d instantly understood his need to look at her puzzle in his own way, how easy it was for her to simply let him do so.

  The heat of the day had abated as Lydia strolled round the grounds. They stretched further than she had realised, and all was tidiness and order. Beyond the little orchard and the roses clambering over the brick behind it, lay a paddock, occupied by a solitary horse that came to investigate her but quickly lost interest. Had Jacqueline had a pony she wondered, maybe Elspeth had ridden? Was it Elspeth’s framed picture on Stephen’s desk? Surely it must be, a golden haired young woman with a pageboy cut last fashionable in the seventies, posed in a black and white studio portrait. Another life, yes, but the echoes remained. After a while she took herself back to the seats under the awning and retrieved the bottle from the ice bucket. It was still cool enough although the ice was long gone. She was greatly tempted to explore the rest of the house, to see who else was important enough for Stephen to have their photographs displayed, but she contented herself with sitting in the peace of the garden. She should be feeling like a fish out of water, should be tempted to run home to West Street. Instead she felt as relaxed as she had anywhere since, well, she was not sure since when. Maybe since a day in the Lakes.

  When Lydia woke she was unsure for a few moments if she were awake or still dreaming. Nothing around her was familiar, in fact it hardly seemed real at all. She was in someone else’s room, the morning sun angled in through white net curtains stirring softly across an open window. She felt sure that she would recognize the scene beyond the window and yet she could not quite say what it would be. The room was silent and beyond the room, the house was silent.