I kept my eyes on the road. ‘The myth?’
‘The myth of Grace. The absolute bloody myth!’
I glanced across at him again, trying to read his expression in the reflection of the lights. I said softly, ‘What sort of myth?’
‘Oh, the idea people have about her! The image of her, the one she always wants them to have!’
One word came instantly to mind. ‘Perfect.’
‘Perfect—yes! And generous! And warm!’ He didn’t attempt to hide the bitterness in his voice. ‘It’s her great talent, you see. Playing Grace, the Grace that she wants the world to admire, the great, beautiful, generous Grace!’
I gripped the wheel, a quiet dread knocking at my heart. ‘And she’s…something else?’ I breathed.
‘Something else? That’s one way of putting it! She’s—’ He struggled for the words in a kind of fury. Then, calming himself, said flatly, ‘She’s cold, Ali. The coldest, most determined person I’ve ever known.’
I drove on until I found a gateway. Pulling in, I switched off the engine. The silence closed in around us until there was only the rushing of the wind.
‘She’s incapable of love or tenderness,’ Will went on in the same bleak voice. ‘Incapable of real generosity or warmth. She’s without any feeling at all. She’s never loved anyone in her life. Except herself, of course. She’s very good at that.’
Absorbing this, I felt no shock, not even surprise, just an odd sense of affirmation, as if a part of me had known this all along. ‘But she loved you?’
‘Me? Oh, she never loved me! Not even at the beginning. Wasn’t capable of it. I couldn’t see it, of course, not for a year or so. Thought she was just…just deep. I was in love with the idea of her, you see. The mystery, the sweetness. I fell for the myth, just like everyone else.’ The wind roared against the car, he inhaled sharply, and the two sounds merged. ‘And when I realized…Well, I closed my mind to it, thought we’d muddle through somehow, thought she’d change, thought I’d change…But Grace didn’t want to change—didn’t see the need! She was quite happy in her own bizarre way. She had what she wanted—or at least enough to keep her going—the house, the dinner parties, the big social life. Quite a simple person in many ways, you see.’ He gave a sardonic laugh.
I watched his face in the glow of the dash-board, I tried to read the darkness in it, whether it was the darkness of pain or of guilt.
‘Am I sounding bitter, Ali?’ he asked harshly. ‘Am I sounding angry? The thing is, she killed everything in me! She killed any love.’ His voice had risen, his words almost choked him. ‘In the end I hated her for it, Ali. Hated her for making me like her, so cold and unfeeling.’
Hate was a strong word, I wished he hadn’t used it.
‘Hated myself for hating her. Hated everything, God…’
To stop him, I said: ‘You didn’t think of separating?’
‘Separating? If only it had been that simple!’
‘What was the problem?’
‘The problem!’ he exclaimed, as though this should have been obvious. ‘The problem was that she would have gone for half the house and the farm and Charlie! She told me so. She was perfectly blunt about it. I might have survived losing the farm—just. I might have survived going and doing something else. But giving up Charlie—never that! Never. I couldn’t have borne that!’ The emotion broke in his voice, he twisted his head sharply away, only to rush on again, as if, now that he had voiced the worsts he wanted to air every last grievance. ‘I might have stood it for longer,’ he said in a steadier voice, ‘might have put up with the endless little humiliations and the vast extravagances and the continual hunting around, but she started to make Charlie unhappy as well. Charlie.’ He clenched his jaw, and his fist. ‘She couldn’t resist, you see. Just couldn’t resist! She was used to Charlie fitting in around her because that was the way he’d always been. When Charlie was little he was lovely…You know, quiet and easy, always smiling. He was just the most undemanding kid you can imagine. But when he began to get a mind of his own, started to answer back, to have the normal sort of moods, then she couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t take it, because she couldn’t control him any more. Always on about his dyslexia, nagging him to do well at school, making him feel bad about himself—it never stopped. She couldn’t leave him alone, just couldn’t leave him in peace! I couldn’t stand it! Couldn’t forgive her for what she was doing to Charlie.’ He pushed his head back against the seat for a moment. His voice dropped abruptly. ‘That was the last bloody straw. That was why it had to end. I didn’t care any more after that.’
I felt the cold calm of profound alarm. I didn’t want to imagine where this was leading, I certainly didn’t want to ask. While there was the smallest risk of a charge and a trials the last thing I wanted was a private confession that contradicted what we were going to say in the witness box. Ethically, it would put me in a difficult situation; personally, it would tear me apart. Wanting to deflect him, needing to prevent him from saying anything irretrievable, I said hastily, ‘Couldn’t you have kept Charlie? Wouldn’t Grace have given him up?’
‘What, and look bad? Oh, no! Not good for the image. Proper mothers don’t give up their children. Looks bad.’ He gave a ragged sigh, a further descent into misery. ‘No, she wouldn’t consider leaving without Charlie. Although…’ He lost momentum suddenly. ‘Perhaps if the deal had been sufficiently tempting…If there’d been a man with enough money to whisk her away to an earthly paradise full of credit cards and grand parties. I was sort of hoping, actually,’ he said with an attempt at flippancy. ‘But she never seemed to find anyone rich enough.’
‘There were lovers?’
He lifted his shoulders. ‘No idea.’ His tone was studiously offhand. ‘I didn’t want to know, frankly. Never looked too closely. But she was hunting, I could see that. On the look-out. Not for passion—she wasn’t interested in anything as dull, as unrewarding as that—no, it was things she wanted, things that I couldn’t give her.’
‘Did she talk of leaving?’
‘No. But, then, I’d be the last to know! You have to understand that Grace was a planner. She made plans for everything, most of all her own life. She was obsessive, thorough, secretive. No…she would never tell me.’
In the pause that followed, I realized that the information I had gathered on Grace had been drawn from selected sources, a diary and address book that everyone at Marsh House had been free to read, that I had seen no more of Grace than the side she had chosen to show to the local community. Housewife, organizer, social star. There was little to suggest a secret life; or little to betray it.
‘So!’ Will gave a raw laugh, he spread an upturned palm. ‘There we are, Ali! The real Grace! The amazing Grace!’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
He bit hard on his lip, not comfortable with sympathy. ‘And now they’re going to think I’ve done something terrible to her.’ He turned to me and said with attempted lightness, ‘Well, they are, aren’t they?’
I was careful to show nothing in my face. I said, ‘It very much depends on what you tell them.’
‘So what do I tell them, Ali?’
‘I would suggest, as much as they ask for but no more. A little economy never did any harm, especially with the truth.’
He almost laughed. ‘The truth…Yes, the truth is the last thing we need!’
I felt the cold creep of dread again. ‘You must be careful. You must think about everything you say.’
Sounding flippant again, he said, ‘Tell them I loved her, you mean? Tell them I cared?’ He gave a sharp sigh.
As I restarted the engine, he reached across suddenly and, taking my hand, clasped it emotionally in both of his in a gesture of gratitude or solidarity.
Chapter Six
I had forgotten my sleeping pills, but for once it didn’t matter. I slept for six hours without waking. Perhaps it was being under Maggie’s roof, perhaps it was the battering of the wind against the dormer window
, but I felt oddly safe, like a passenger in a warm train, insulated from the realities of the landscape beyond the glass.
I woke as Maggie put a mug of tea on the table beside me. A reluctant grey light glimmered in the dormer, more dusk than dawn, and the two of us could have been ghosts.
‘Still blowing?’ I asked.
Maggie turned her eyes towards the window, and the drumming panes, the roaring wind gave their answer. ‘This country…This climate…’ She lifted her shoulders stoically, an exile who had been away too long ever to consider returning. ‘They have a warning out for tonight,’ she said.
‘They think it’ll get worse?’ I propped myself up on one elbow.
‘It’s the tide. It will be very high tonight…’
‘What about the furniture? Will it need to be moved?’
‘Moved?’ She seemed surprised at the idea. ‘No, no. They have warnings every year…it means nothing. They do it just so we cannot say they didn’t tell us. No, no—we will wait. If the water gets too high, then…’ She vaguely indicated some sort of action.
The wind boomed against the cottage, something loose tapped against metal or glass, and we were once again enveloped in sound. I had stayed the night partly to keep Maggie company, partly because I didn’t want to go to Wick-ham Lodge and get a rerun of Edward’s grievances.
‘I never wanted this house,’ Maggie announced now with sudden feeling. ‘I hate being so close to the water, Alex. I hate being so low down. I feel I am under the sea here.’
‘There wasn’t anywhere else?’
She sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. ‘Not at the price.’ I didn’t remember her mentioning money in this way before; she had always seemed unconcerned.
‘Not even in the village?’
‘That would have been too far away.’
I assumed she meant from Will and Charlie.
‘Something couldn’t have been converted for you at Marsh House? Some of the outbuildings?’
She turned to me and shook her head. ‘Too close, Alex. That would have been too close.’
‘But a separate entrance. Separate phone. Separate life?’
‘For a mother-in-law, I was already too close.’ The feeble light sculpted the side of her face in shades of grey, her eyes were shrouded and I couldn’t read her expression. ‘Oh, it was nothing anyone said, Alex,’ she added crisply. ‘But I felt it, you know.’
‘I’m sorry.’
A slight shrug, a movement of her fingers. People have their reasons.’ And her tone contained a significance I could only guess at. Before I could ask more, she was saying with old affection, ‘I always wanted it to be you, Alex.’
I gave a short awkward laugh. ‘Me?’
‘With Will. I always thought it would be you.’
‘Me? No! I was too young.’
‘Three years? It’s nothing.’
‘But I was too young then.’
She gestured mystification. ‘But, then, these things never happen as we thinks do they? People don’t love the people you want for them.’
I reached for the mug of tea and-, sipping too hastily, burnt my mouth.
Maggie turned her face back to the window and murmured reflectively, ‘Nor even the people they want for themselves…It’s chance. You love someone and you cannot have them. You are loved by someone else and you don’t know what is really being offered to you. The true nature of their offering, Alex. What is really there.’
It seemed to me she was talking about her own past. ‘Were you happy, Maggie? You always seemed happy to us.’
Above the boom of the wind, rain rat-tatted against the windows, and the sound seemed to detain her. ‘Me?’ She smiled faintly. ‘Oh, I was happy. Yes, yes, don’t you worry, Alex—I was happy.’
‘Your marriage…?’
‘John? Oh, he was a good man. Not someone to set the world on fire, you understand. But good. Kind.’
‘But afterwards…you were alone for so long.’
‘Alone, but not lonely, Alex. No…I had many happy things in my life. Many, many. Ah!’ Her eyes fired with a brief and brilliant light. ‘But now…’ The light left her face as rapidly as it had come. ‘Now I am lonely.’
Before I could speak, she had waved this aside.
‘Not a reason for sorrow. It is a fact of age. You think about dying. You cannot help it.’ She stood up slowly. ‘You think of getting the whole business over and done with.’
‘Maggie…you’re not even—what?—sixty-five. You make it all sound so…hopeless.’
‘Not hopeless. Practical.’ She went to the window to check the latch before starting for the door.
‘Maggie?’
She paused in the doorway.
‘The other day you said that Grace had her life as she wished it.’
‘Did I?’
‘You said she wasn’t a person to be defeated in any way.’
Maggie shrugged.
‘I was wondering what you meant exactly.’
She turned away slightly, her profile in darkness. Twice she began to speak, twice she hesitated. ‘I meant she was very…sure. Very determined when she set her mind to something.’ She glanced over her shoulder at me, and her eyes were unreadable. ‘That is all.’ She went out swiftly then reappeared in the shadows beyond the door. ‘Oh, your husband phoned for you. He said your mobile phone is turned off, and could you please put it on again.’ She raised her eyebrows, an affectionate comment on the demands of my life.
My phone was recharging on a small table, next to a battered television set rigged to a computer-game console. The walls, too, had been appropriated by Charlie, with Batman posters and pictures of football teams and a scarf pinned above the door.
I lay in bed a moment longer, enjoying the strange tranquillity of the storm before getting up and switching on the phone. There were several messages waiting: from Paul, Corinthia, Ray.
‘I can barely hear you,’ Ray complained when I called. ‘You sound as though you’re in a hailstorm.’
I raised my voice. ‘I am, sort of.’ I moved to the window and, shivering, looked out at a cold luminous maelstrom in which all perspective and distance were lost. ‘Is that better?’
‘A bit. More like a rainstorm now.’ His own voice was broken up and shot through with crackles. ‘Listen, I finally managed to trace that Knightsbridge number, the one used for the restaurant booking. It’s a flat in Hans Place, behind Harrods…’
I missed the next bit, but ventured, ‘Well done.’
‘What? No…what I’m saying is that I can’t get a name for it. Checked the electoral roll and no one’s registered as a voting resident at that address, certainly no one named Gordon.’ His voice cut out for an instant, then broke up. ‘…the planning department had an application six years ago for some alterations…seems the flat was owned by a family trust, based in Guernsey…details untraceable. I took some neighbours’ names off the electoral roll. One’s in the book…I’ll keep trying him in case he knows who uses the place. But I wouldn’t rate the chances. People with money are usually too…’ His voice faded completely for a moment. ‘Hello? Did you get that?’
‘Just missed the end.’ I was transfixed by the glimmering white aurora which hovered above the marshes like some ghostly radiance—spray or reflected light, it was hard to tell—and the way the wind chased across the grass in ripples, making it quiver and shift. ‘People with money…?’
‘Are usually too busy to get nosy.’
‘Ah.’
Checked those schoolfriends of Grace Dearden,’ Ray continued faintly. ‘One hasn’t been in touch with Grace since they were twenty, another is in Africa somewhere, the third said…’ I lost him again. “…and they’d never been terribly close anyway. So not much there, I’m afraid. And nothing on the suppliers and tradespeople up there. Most done long service…no form…no one new or unreliable. Clean as a whistle.’
‘Oh, well.’
‘You’re breaking up.’
‘What about the flat in Regent’s Park?’ He asked me to repeat the question, and then I missed his reply except for the end, something about trying a porter again tonight.
Abandoning the call, I stepped closer to the window. The cold seemed to leap through the glass, while an icy draught crept around my feet.
When I was a child my father had talked about the harshness of the north wind. He used to say it came direct from Siberia. But it was Will who made me understand its nature. He taught me that a northerly wind has its own cadence, its own signature; that it’s nothing like the westerlies, which are wet and sinuous, or the southerlies, which are light and fickle. The northerly, he used to explain, is a far steadier wind, unbroken by the turbulence of weather fronts, a wind that absorbs the air from the frozen Arctic and blows untempered across the North Sea.
It was Will who explained the disaster of ’53 to me. Local wisdom had always maintained that the greatest risk of flooding came in spring and autumn, at the equinoxes, when the winds were fierce and the tides frequently at their highest. Then, so it was said, the sea was most likely to breach the defences or even—the thought used to bring terror to my childish heart—to pour straight over the top.
But theory isn’t everything. Will had explained. Theory tends to get ignored by nature and the law of averages, which allows for the greatest of extremes on either side of the mean. At twelve I was no mathematician, but I grasped the concept, I took care to memorize the expression: allows for the greatest of extremes on either side of the mean.
Most of all. Will told me, the theory didn’t allow for the sheer persistence of the north wind, didn’t allow for the fact that, when two weather systems collide and interlock, the north wind can blow for days on end at storm force, funnelling water down the North Sea, preventing the ebb tide from making its retreat, piling the sea higher and higher until the force of the waves seeks out the smallest weakness in the sea-defences.
Looking out into the gale, I remembered him explaining all this to me. It had been summer, an afternoon of shimmering heat, we were sitting among tall reeds, the only sound the plopping of the mud and his voice as he said, allows for the greatest of extremes.
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