by Nicola Upson
‘Oh?’ There was a long pause at the other end, and Josephine wondered if it was childish of her to enjoy her own sense of one-upmanship. ‘Would you like me to give him some details of how to get in touch with her?’ Miss Peck asked, recovering quickly.
‘No, it can wait until I speak to him. She’s not in any hurry.’ She rang off without a goodbye, and asked the operator for Inverness 195, only to be told by her daily woman that her father had insisted on going to the shop, even though he really wasn’t well enough; there followed a list of other things that clearly could not be dealt with in her absence, and in the end she just gave in. ‘I’ll be home by the end of the week,’ she said when Morag finally drew breath. ‘Please tell my father I called. I’ll try him again tomorrow.’ It was a timely reminder, she told herself as she replaced the receiver. What on earth was she thinking of, hiding away down here when she had responsibilities elsewhere, caught up in everyone’s life but her own and obsessed now with not one dead woman but two? It was madness, and she needed to put it in perspective before she had something more serious than a sprained wrist to worry about.
Beattie seemed to have mastered the bacon at last, and a hearty breakfast put Josephine in better spirits. In any case, it was impossible to be downbeat in Hilary’s company. The issue of Lucy Kyte was discussed enthusiastically from every angle, and Josephine shared a few of the facts without explaining how she knew them or mentioning the diary; it was dishonest, and she regretted having to hold things back, but she wasn’t ready to share Hester’s precious secret with anyone yet, and certainly not before she had spoken to Archie. ‘Go and look at the register,’ Hilary said, nudging Stephen excitedly as soon as he put his knife and fork down. ‘Let’s see what we can find out.’
He left the room and returned a few minutes later with an enormous ledger, which he placed in front of Josephine, open at the right page. ‘Here’s the marriage,’ he said, pointing to an entry for 26 December, 1828. ‘There were two babies as well, but they both died. One was a month old, the other only a week.’
Josephine looked sadly at the entries for Lucy’s little girls, Maria and Daisy, and wondered if there had been any surviving children. ‘They’re buried in the churchyard?’
‘Yes, but their graves aren’t marked. Babies’ often weren’t. Molly’s death is recorded here,’ he said, turning several pages, ‘and Samuel’s shortly afterwards.’ There was no indication in the book of how they had died, and the lack of information frustrated Josephine. ‘I can’t find any mention of another marriage for Lucy – not in this parish, anyway, and she’s not buried in the churchyard. She must have moved away, just as you thought.’ He saw Josephine’s disappointment, and added: ‘In those days, if people left a village, they didn’t go far. It might be worth your trying the records in Stoke and Boxford if you have time.’
She thanked him, and he left her and Hilary to talk. ‘So – how is the cottage shaping up?’ Hilary asked, pushing the toast rack across the table. ‘Are you settling in?’
‘Something like that. I suppose you could say we’re still circling round each other, and I’m not entirely sure I’ve got the upper hand yet.’
Hilary raised her eyes. ‘It gets easier once you stop fighting back. We made a pact, Stephen and I, when we first moved here. He’d worry about the church and I’d get to grips with the house, and I’m still not entirely sure about my side of the bargain. At least you haven’t got children to worry about. Has your friend gone back to London?’
‘Yes. On Sunday.’
‘It must have been nice to have her here.’
Josephine reached for the marmalade and diligently spread some on her toast. She had no idea what Hilary knew or thought she knew about her relationship with Marta, or even if she cared, but it felt safer to change the subject back to the cottage. ‘Do you know a good builder? There’s a room upstairs in the cottage that I can’t get on with, and I know I’ll never use it if it stays as it is. And I don’t need more than two bedrooms,’ she added casually.
‘You want Deaves over in Stoke. He practically lived here with us when we first moved in, and he’s very reliable. Well, it’s his son now, but you’d never know the difference. ’
It was the same name that Jenny Willis had given her. ‘He doesn’t just do odd jobs, then?’
‘Oh no. He can turn his hand to anything. Building or funerals – they do both.’
Beattie came in to clear the plates, and it reminded Josephine of something else she had been meaning to ask. ‘Hester had a girl who worked for her for a while – you don’t happen to know her name, do you? I think she lives in Stoke.’
‘You mean Rose,’ Hilary said through gritted teeth. ‘Rose Boreham.’
Josephine laughed. ‘Why do you say it like that?’
‘I shouldn’t say this, and it’s petty of me even to think it when she’s no longer with us, but I’ll never forgive Hester for that. Rose was the best girl we’d had since we got here, an absolute bloody godsend and a breath of fresh air, and Hester came to dinner one night and stole her from under our noses. I was absolutely livid. Even Stephen frowned.’ She smiled at her own indignation. ‘Mind you, it was a damned neat manoeuvre. If I hadn’t been on the receiving end of it, I’d have taken my hat off to her.’
‘I think you can be forgiven your pettiness. She sounds worth fighting for. I have the opposite problem with mine in Inverness – I can’t seem to get rid of her. Is Rose still in Stoke?’
‘Yes. Her parents run a pub there – the Black Horse. She asked to come back when Hester let her go, but we’d got Beattie by then and it didn’t seem fair.’
‘Why did Hester let her go?’
‘Rose wouldn’t say, but I could tell she was cross about it. She’s a girl who doesn’t suit disappointment. If you want to talk to her, I can run you over now. You’re halfway there already.’
‘Thank you, but no. If she’s as lively as you say she is, I think I need some sleep first.’
‘What are you working on?’ Hilary asked.
‘A biography of Claverhouse.’ It wasn’t a lie, but only because of the way the question had been phrased and Josephine felt guilty for implying a diligence that she could not in truth claim. She saw Hilary’s eyes glaze over at the name, and gave her the truncated version of the soldier’s life. ‘In fact, I’d better get back to him now.’
‘Get some sleep first,’ Hilary said, walking her to the door. ‘Very few living men are worth staying up all night for, let alone a dead one.’ She passed Josephine her coat and kissed her goodbye. ‘It’s been lovely to see you again. You know where we are if there’s anything you need.’
17
The cottage seemed dreary and depressing when Josephine got back, partly because the heavy skies refused to let in the streams of light that she had come to love, and partly because of her own mood. Her brief conversation with Jane Peck had rankled more than she cared to admit. All the way back from the rectory, she had imagined what was going on in Inverness. Her absence would be the talk of that bloody little town, and she didn’t need to be there to know what they were saying: she’d been away down south when her mother needed her, and here was history repeating itself; she always was a selfish little madam, putting her own life first, thinking she was too good for them with her plays and her books and her London friends – nothing like her father, who’d do anything for anyone, you only had to ask; in fact, now they thought about it, there always had been something a little queer about her – a bit too aloof, nothing much to like. She knew exactly what they were like because she had seen them do it to others, and she knew, too, that all the gossip in the world would not bother her unless, in her heart, she believed them to be right. Her father was seventy-three, for God’s sake; something like this was bound to happen, and she had been fooling herself to think that she could ever make the cottage work, so far away from all she was tied to. More than ever, she missed Marta, but there was no time now to spend in London and the uncertainty of when the
y would see each other, combined with the memory of Lydia’s voice on the telephone, brought back all the doubts that threatened their love. In the space of a couple of hours, Josephine felt her life tighten around her, and no matter how many times she told herself that it was her tiredness talking, the future filled her with a despair that would not go away.
She threw on some old clothes and spent the rest of the day in the garden, determined to work until she dropped to guarantee some sleep when she finally went to bed. The spade stood against the wall where Marta had left it, and Josephine dug over the rest of the vegetable patch, trying not to think of how precious and full of hope those few days together had been. The fields around the cottage were busier than ever as the farming year began again; ploughing was well under way, and in the meadow where the barn once stood, a handful of men cut back the hedges along Marten’s Lane, marking their progress with a series of tiny bonfires that passed their flames along the edge of the field like medieval beacons. She was glad of the undemanding company, and sorry when dusk began to fall and the men drifted home to their firesides. The onset of darkness was less dramatic in a day that had never truly been light, and Josephine went reluctantly back inside. She lit a lamp in every room but the one she hated, then put some Benny Carter on the gramophone and made an elaborate supper, more to give herself something to do than because she was hungry. While it was cooking, she opened her suitcase on the bed in the spare room and began to fill it, ready to go home. She packed as much as she could, leaving only the clothes she would need for the next couple of days, and tried to decide what to do about the diary; there was no choice really but to take it with her – it was far too valuable to leave in the cottage, and she still didn’t know anyone here well enough to entrust it to them while she was away. After supper, she settled down in front of the fire with a pile of her mother’s letters. She wanted nothing more of Lucy or even Hester at the moment; she had too much darkness of her own to invite theirs in as well. Her resentment had faded as the day went on, leaving only the guilt and a complex longing for something familiar – for the home that pulled simultaneously at her conscience, and at her heart.
Exhaustion soon got the better of her, and she returned to the dead in her dreams – not in the quiet, contained Polstead churchyard this time, but among the vast, sprawling darkness of Tomnahurich Hill where for centuries the people of Inverness had laid their dead to rest. She was walking up and down a long avenue of graves, looking for her mother’s simple headstone, but it wasn’t where she expected it to be. Her search grew more frantic, and she blamed herself for refusing to go with her father each weekend as he took flowers to his wife: if she had visited more often, she would know where to look now, when it seemed so important that she find it. In the distance, framed by a sliver of blue from the Moray Firth, she could see a funeral party gathered around a grave. Out of respect, she tried to stay away, but whichever path she took brought her closer and closer to the mourners. The crowd seemed to grow by the second, as if the whole town had come to pay tribute, and when she was almost upon them, the faces that she knew turned towards her. Her grandparents were there, and friends she had lost during the war, but it was Hester who beckoned her forward. One by one they moved aside to let her through, and she looked down in horror and disbelief at the brass plate that bore her father’s name. Her mother stood with her hand on the coffin, wearing the dress she was buried in, pale and wasted from her illness but reminding Josephine of the final promise she had made, and broken. Josephine tried to explain that she didn’t know, that her father had been well when she left him, that he had told her to go, but her words were lost in the babble of voices from the crowd, and she broke down in tears of sorrow and shame.
The sobs were violent and raw, and they woke her. A pile of letters had fallen from her lap into the grate, one perilously close to the fire, and she caught it just as it began to smoulder. Wide awake now, she wiped the tears away, but the image of her mother’s face continued to haunt her – that, and the knowledge that what she had felt in the dream, along with the shock and the grief and the guilt, was relief. When she heard a noise upstairs – a soft thud that came from the guest room directly above her – it was almost a welcome distraction. She went up to see what it was, too numbed by tiredness now to fear any tricks that the cottage cared to play, and found her suitcase upturned on the floor, its contents sprawled at her feet. It must have slipped off the bed, and she bent down to repack it. As she fastened the case to avoid it happening again, a movement caught her eye through the open doorway between the two rooms, and she watched as the door to the boxroom swung softly back, revealing the dark recesses beyond. That was all – a door slipping from its latch as it had done many times before, and yet Josephine was seized by a sudden, overwhelming dread. She stood rooted to the spot, staring hard into the shadows, all sense of time now lost to her. After what might have been seconds or hours, she moved slowly forward, if only to prove to herself that she could, listening all the time for a sound other than her footsteps. She took the lamp from her bedside table and shone it into the blackness, but there was nothing – no one – there. The room was exactly as it always was – cold and desolate, guilty of nothing more than suggestion. The draught coming through the window seemed worse than usual, and she put the lamp down for a moment to tighten the fastening, which had still not been properly fixed. After the figure she had seen in the early morning, the ordinariness of her own reflection in the glass was welcome. She leaned forward to look down into the garden, resting her hands on the window seat. To her horror, the wood was warm, as if someone had just been sitting there.
Josephine grabbed the lamp and half-ran from the room, slamming the door behind her and tearing the belt from a coat to wind around the latch. She sat on the bed, her heart racing, and stared at the closed door, daring it to defy her, but nothing else happened. The house was calm and quiet, and as it lulled her with its peace, she began to find other reasons for what had disturbed her: the heat from the range, perhaps, or cold hands that made anything she touched seem warmer than it really was. None of them made much sense, and in the end, she blamed everything on her state of mind and a lack of sleep. She looked at her watch. It was still only ten o’clock, and she could not bear another restless night. In her bedside drawer, there was a sleeping draught that Marta had left in case she needed it. She had been sceptical at the time, as she was of any drug that dulled her senses. Tonight was different, though; she would take her oblivion wherever she could find it.
18
Archie’s telegram arrived the next morning, and made Josephine’s mind up for her. He was in Felixstowe – the clipped nature of the medium added to the mystery of why – and suggested they meet there for lunch the following day if that suited her. It did. She needed to talk to him more than ever, but had given up hope of being able to see him before she went back up north; now, she could use today to call on Rose Boreham, drive to Felixstowe tomorrow, and still keep her promise to Morag to be home by the end of the week. Energised by a new sense of purpose – and by eight hours of dreamless sleep, courtesy of Marta’s miracle powder – Josephine walked briskly into the village to send Archie his reply; while at the post office, she telephoned her father again and managed to catch him before he left for the shop. He seemed bemused by her concern, dismissing his injury as ‘a wee bit of a bruise’, and told her to come home when she was good and ready; there were, apparently, enough women making a fuss over nothing already. His gruffness reassured her about his health, but not about her reputation, and she promised to see him on Friday. There was no answer from Stewart, Rule & Co., which was a shame because she was more than ready for Jane Peck, but she could always call later from Stoke. As she walked back to the cottage, yesterday’s despair seemed a long way away, the product of tiredness and an overwrought imagination, and she was pleased to put it behind her.
The morning air was cold, but sweet with the scent of autumn. Rather than test Chummy’s temperament by driving he
r out on consecutive days, Josephine decided to get Hester’s old bike out of the garage and cycle to Stoke instead. She set out, her tyres crackling over fallen acorns in the road, and was pleased with the choice she had made. The October day had dragged a rich, warm yellow from the sun, and small flocks of fluffy white cloud blew about the sky, making it a pleasure to be out in the open with time to notice the beauty of the season. Hedgerows on either side were covered with hundreds of tiny webs, and blackbirds busied themselves in stripping fruit from the brambles. In fact, all of nature seemed to be preparing itself for the long, dark months ahead.
The road was kind to her, rising and falling gently all the way until a clutch of houses told her that she had reached the outskirts of the village. She dismounted near the top of Scotland Street, careful not to step in a trickle of blood that ran down the side of the road from the backyard of a butcher’s shop, giving the impression that Sweeney Todd had abandoned Fleet Street and retired to rural Suffolk. It was a grisly introduction to an otherwise beautiful village whose streets were lined with medieval houses, unspoilt and full of character. Stoke was considerably bigger than Polstead, boasting several shops and pubs as well as a truly magnificent church. She remembered seeing its pinnacle from the graveyard yesterday, dominating the horizon with a quiet dignity. Up close, there was nothing quiet about it at all: the mighty brick, stone and flint tower stood tall and proud as the glory of the village, and Josephine had little doubt that when the bells rang from here, the whole county would know about it.
The sign for the Black Horse was further down the main street. It was too early for the pub to be open, so she left her bicycle by the village hall and did some shopping. The general stores, next to the rectory, seemed to stock everything under the sun, including a top-up of sleeping powders – just to have in, she told herself – and Josephine bought as many supplies as the bicycle basket would carry. She added a chop from the butcher’s for dinner, then spent half an hour in the bookshop next door, buying presents for Marta and Archie. In the end, she chose two volumes by Virginia Woolf: a signed collection of short stories for Marta, including one called ‘A Haunted House’; and a first edition of Mrs Dalloway for Archie, who – she knew – would be desperately missing London. She could never quite see the point of Woolf herself, but the devotion was strong enough in both of her friends to suggest that the problem lay with her.