‘There seemed no need.’
‘Indeed. Mrs. Lean has written to me. I’ll let you read her letter in a minute before you open yours. Are you sure there’s nothing to tell?’
He was not angry. There was a peevish note in his voice which Delia found difficult to explain.
‘What has Dorothy Lean said?’
‘I’d like to hear what you have to say.’
‘How can I… ?’
‘“How can you give me a convincing tale when you don’t know how much has been told me already?” Is that what you were going to say? Have some integrity, Delia. I really do not think I deserve to be treated in this way. I need to know what has happened.’
No one had a right to her secret. Had Dorothy Lean been snooping? Had the deliberately dismissive explanation which Delia had given for her unexpected arrival only whetted her appetite to know more? Delia found herself girded by rising anger but she would not trust herself yet to reply.
‘Very well,’ her father continued, ‘just as you like. Read this and then come and explain. I shall be in the study.’
He threw his napkin petulantly on the table besides the letter and walked out. Delia’s taut senses took some reassurance from the fact that he seemed to be more conscious of some perceived slight to himself than any grievance against her. She read the letter to him first.
20 February 1919
Dear Mr. Simmonds,
I hope you will forgive me, when you have read this letter, for not having written more promptly. I have been struggling over the morality of breaking the confidence of a friend, for so I regard your daughter Delia, when I should perhaps have been acting more spontaneously to secure her well-being.
Delia came to my home, Joachim Place, last Friday. I had not expected her but I was so very pleased she felt able to call although I suspect she hoped initially for my niece Anstace Catchpool’s company. Please let me say at this point how very sorry I was to hear of your son’s death, the news coming at such a joyful time for the nation.
Delia had come from Ipswich where I understand she had made an assignation—a little foolishly no doubt—to meet Geoffrey Cordingley. He is a young man I felt I knew quite well, supporting him in his pacific stand some years ago, but I have not communicated with him since his arrest, at his own insistence.
I do believe, Mr. Simmonds, that something happened at Ipswich between Geoffrey Cordingley and Delia. She was staying at his lodgings I believe but it was something that Delia in all innocence, I am sure, had not solicited and was unprepared for. She has told me that she believes Geoffrey Cordingley is now beneath her notice, that she can never see him again after what occurred.
I know young people can fall out over the most trivial of matters but I thought at the time that what occurred was more than the tiff she implied. I did press her gently to furnish me with details as a woman and a friend but she resolutely declined so to do. It is important I now feel that she has the counsel of a parent to support her.
Though sadly childless myself, I can imagine how much I should long to know if a daughter of mine were in any difficulty of a private nature.
I have enclosed a letter to Delia, explaining why I have written to you. Knowing something of your poor wife’s collapse, I decided not to do anything to exacerbate her suffering. I trust that, though a man, you can find within your heart something of a mother’s tenderness for her girl.
I do hope sincerely that I have imagined the worst and that all will be for the best. If I can be of any help, I shall of course be only too pleased to assist: my home shall always welcome Delia. I know too that dear Anstace will not let anything stop her from coming to a friend’s need.
I remain, sincerely,
Dorothy Lean
Delia finished the letter, scorched with humiliation that the airy subterfuge she had practised had been so feeble it had not even fooled Dorothy Lean. She tore open her own letter with something of the violence she would have dealt its writer. It was a more rambling version of her father’s, justifying what Dorothy Lean truly, truly hoped Delia would not regard as betrayal: ‘I cannot think of you as a girl who would wish to separate herself from her parents’ compassion in such a weighty matter.’ There was a great deal about Dorothy Lean’s own sensitivity to Delia’s troubled spirit: ‘You cried out repeatedly in your sleep, my dear, and then, once my suspicions had been triggered, the signs were all too easy to read, however bravely you thought you were concealing them.’ Most disturbing of all, however, was the way the older woman’s imagination has conjured up a hideously frightening future for Delia: ‘My dear, if he did subject you to a married woman’s experience you must watch the signs and pray that your menses fall as expected. Should this not be the case, you must of course put nicer scruples aside and, for your sake and the child’s, marry Geoffrey Cordingley without delay. He is—this single lapse aside—I am sure a man of integrity.’
‘Integrity’: her father had used the word as a taunt while Dorothy Lean sought to serve it as a compliment to Geoffrey. Integrity, neither carrot nor stick, held no sway over Delia. To be self-sufficient, to be dependent upon no one, that was now her sole ambition. To stand or fall simply by dint of her own exertions, her own resourcefulness and strength, was the only code she would follow. Why would anyone seek support from her parents’ or Dorothy Lean’s generation? They had been purveyors of global calamity. But though Delia had made up her mind that she alone could be relied upon, it did not lessen the enormity of what she might have to confront. Something was massing on the horizon; and she knew neither what it might be nor how to confront it. It made her tremble not from fear or anxiety but from an acute awareness that she was engaging with forces quite outside her previous experience. Her world had been a parochial one, with occasional glances over the hedgerows, such as one might have when hoisted onto another’s shoulders. Now it was as if she were standing on some vantage point, staring out over vast tracts of wilderness. Everything was alien. Nothing conformed to the old patterns. Decisions would have to be made outside any familiar points of reference. It was exhilarating. It was terrifying.
First, there was her physical condition to consider. Her understanding of human reproduction was perfunctory. Was once all it took? Could the base use to which she had been put really lead to conception? Surely, she could not be so unlucky. Secondly, there were the various relationships with other individuals and with society at large which were all dependent upon this physical condition. Lacking any certainty over this critical matter, she would have to prevaricate; it would buy her time and enable her to consider the various paths that she might need to explore.
Twisted inwardly by uncertainty, she was relieved that, when she joined her father in his study, he was clearly desperate to believe—with as much certainty as she could feed him—that, if there had been a lamentable indiscretion, there had been nothing more, and certainly nothing that could not be stifled by a judiciously phrased reply to Dorothy Lean’s letter.
He sought repeated assurances from Delia that his life was not about to be knotted into some vicious entanglement with the Cordingleys. And then he wanted to know she was unharmed.
‘I cannot understand why you went to him in Ipswich. The man has been in prison. He is a pariah. Even his own mother, apparently, disowns him. What has Geoffrey Cordingley ever been to you?’
‘He was Hubert’s friend. You know that. He wrote to me from France when I was at college in Cheltenham. I thought he would be pleased to see me.’ And then, with deliberate conviction because this was the explanation which she would now put out, she added, ‘But I really wanted to talk to someone who knew Hubert.’
She knew that her father would not be able to ignore the implication that there was no one at home with whom his daughter could talk, that he and his wife had failed to consider her grieving and, therefore, were subtly to blame for her flight to Ipswich. He would not be able to hector her in the same way.
‘Why not tell me where you were going?’ he as
ked, less roughly. ‘Why let me believe you were visiting Anstace?’
‘I don’t know. It seemed unnecessary. I didn’t think you would be interested.’ She decided to push her advantage further and added, ‘You haven’t been interested in anything I have been doing since Hubert died.’
He did not flinch at this. If he felt any guilt, he had it bound and gagged.
‘Let us hope this is the end of the matter,’ was all he said. Delia was confident she had control.
The second letter, two days later, only shook that confidence momentarily; her resourcefulness was sufficient. Her father had already read the letter and had left it protruding from its torn envelope on Delia’s breakfast plate before she had come down.
‘What’s this father?’
‘An interesting development, Delia.’
She read it. The letter was to the point.
‘Have you met this Pollard woman?’
‘As she says, she is Geoffrey Cordingley’s landlady. Her letter implies things about my behaviour which are false.’
‘That’s as may be. It does not preclude a most unpleasant scandal. There remains the fact that you spent a sordid night in a seedy boardinghouse with a disgraced convict.’
She was stung to reply.
‘I spent the night alone in my own room. There is nothing I can be accused of.’
And she retold her story, slicing it down to as much of the truth as she would ever admit. After her correspondence with Geoffrey while he has been in France had lapsed, following his imprisonment, there had been another letter from him, inviting her to Ipswich. She was miserable at home and leapt at the chance of talking to him about Hubert; he was one of the few people she knew who had really known him. Perhaps it had been a rash response on her part, and perhaps she should have been explicit as to where she was going, but she travelled to Ipswich, met Geoffrey and took a room in the boardinghouse where he was staying (isn’t that what one does when staying overnight in a strange town?). It was only for a night. Her single meeting with Geoffrey Cordingley had been a disappointment; he was in a pitiful condition after his imprisonment and seemed to have forgotten Hubert. She had to admit that it had been distressing but no more and so, not wanting to return home while her thoughts were still so muddled, she decided quite spontaneously to visit Joachim Place. She arrived on Saturday morning only to discover that Anstace was not staying there after all. Dorothy Lean was kindness itself; she at least was pleased to see her but, in her fussy way—it would be endearing if it were not so intrusive—had invented a rather sordidly romantic explanation for Delia’s presence in Suffolk.
Delia did not mention Jessop or Pollard. If she could, she would obliterate them both, but she knew it would be foolish to deny their existence. So she mentioned in passing that the landlady had members of her family, helping run the boardinghouse, but made it clear that they were incidental, of no more significance to one’s journey than a porter at a railway station or the waitress who might serve tea when one met a friend in town. As she reassured her father that she was innocent of all that Mrs. Pollard implied in her smug circumlocution, she became increasingly confident that she would be able to make telling counter-assertions against anything that others might claim. Delia suspected Jessop and Pollard were both in the habit of assaulting the vulnerable. The one preyed on former inmates—there might be others in that house at his mercy. The other was a practised seducer. She would never admit to what had been done to her but she guessed that an accusation that it had been attempted would bring forward, if it came to it, other victims who could testify that this was what the men were known for.
Mrs. Pollard’s attempt at extortion was crude. The letter merely stated that, unless a sum of several hundreds were forthcoming, Miss Simmonds’ name would be made known to ‘certain persons what could do her harm, Lady Cordingley for one’. The money ‘only being my dues for Mr. Cordingley’s board and lodgings for which I have not had a penny since his release nor one word from any persons (Miss Simmonds amongst them) what might naturally be concerned as to his well-being seeing as he had served his time and was an English gentleman notwithstanding’.
Delia knew that her father could not respond to such demands; the sum was ridiculous and more likely to prompt derision rather than consternation in a man on a schoolmaster’s stipend. Perhaps the most Mrs. Pollard and Jessop had originally hoped to gain from getting Geoffrey to lure her to Ipswich was the settlement of a long unpaid bill with either an undertaking from Delia to meet Geoffrey’s future expenses or his removal from the boardinghouse. Blackmail may never have been the plan. Even now, she wondered if Mrs. Pollard knew the whole truth or whether her brother and son had seized an opportunity and schemed to mask their own crimes by casting Geoffrey as her seducer.
‘So your defence,’ said her father, ‘is that you are merely a featherbrained chit, lured by a single siren call from the degenerate gentry. You would rather enjoy the company of a wreck of a man, unpatriotic and cowardly, than maintain your own respectable position. And,’ he added, ‘that you are innocent of every charge.’
‘If you will.’
‘Do you have the letter which worked on you with such compulsion?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘It may help in your defence,’ he continued, ‘especially if this redoubtable Pollard woman chooses to inform Lady Margery of her son’s indiscretions, as she promises.’ He sighed more, she felt, with self-pity than disappointment with her. When he continued, there was again that peevish note to his voice. ‘I hope I shall never have to speak of this tedious business again. That is probably a vain hope. I shall not reply to Mrs. Pollard; she and her sort are beneath my contempt. But I shall take the time to inform Lady Margery to disregard any malicious allegations linking her son to my daughter. That is all I shall do, Delia. I shall then disregard the whole, mean business. I sincerely hope that lessons have been learned.’
Father and daughter surveyed one another in silence. He was the first to drop his gaze. Some other matter of greater moment seemed to draw his attention. He cleared his throat.
‘I have been thinking,’ he said after a long pause, ‘that your mother would benefit from time away from home. She needs a complete change of scene. I think you should accompany her. It will be convenient; for any unpleasantness or any awkwardness with Lady Margery will have little impact if you are absent.’
If a week or two’s vacation were the only restitution she had to make, Delia would be content.
‘For how long, father?’
‘Your mother will need to rest until the summer.’
‘But I was due to take over a class after Easter.’
‘I shall extend Miss Lindley’s contract. There are not many licensed teachers with her experience and she will be glad of the position.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘There is no reason you should.’
‘It is all so out of proportion.’
‘It’s no use arguing with me, Delia. My mind is made up.’ His voice slid into a deeper register. ‘Whatever idiocy you have fallen into recently, you will oblige me and your mother by now acting dutifully and supporting her through the coming months.’
As a child, she had been unable to distinguish between father and schoolmaster. He had been as stern and dictatorial at home as in the schoolroom. Perhaps he assumed this magisterial tone out of habit but it spoke of implacability and it compelled Delia to acquiescence. She was conditioned by a childhood shaped by his tyranny and had no ability to resist his authority when he used that voice. She knew it and resented it. One day, she would have to find ways to manoeuvre around him so he could not exploit this advantage but now she had to obey him. There was a logic too to what he said. Her mother might benefit from a change of scene to help shake off the shroud of despair which had cloaked her since the news of Hubert’s death. Although Delia chafed at the assumption that this was a natural filial duty, there really was no one else who could accompany her mother. And
it might be that, after some weeks away, her mother made a recovery and they would be able to return home sooner than her father planned.
A third letter arrived with the second post that same day. It was from Anstace to Delia. Its hesitant tone made Delia aware of how their friendship had altered. She knew that it was more of her doing and she realised that her decision to seek strength from isolation had begun before the events of Ipswich. She had pushed Anstace away when they had heard that Hubert had died, excluding her from any part in the family’s mourning. Partly, she knew, this had sprung from a jealous possessiveness but there had also been embarrassment: her parents’ response to the loss of their son had been so peculiarly distracted. The war years, with Delia away in Cheltenham for so much of them, had done nothing to help their youthful friendship, shaped by their shared schooldays, make its transition into adulthood. The summer of 1914, with Geoffrey and Hubert as companions, had diluted their bond; each girl had had her own distractions. Then, when Hubert had been killed, Delia had not wanted to expose her own emotions to anyone else’s scrutiny, not even Anstace’s.
Since then, their few letters to each other had been little more than an exchange of thin platitudes, feebly spiced by an occasional anecdote or a facile recollection from their schooldays. They needed to meet and touch and open up to one another, letting the coldness thaw and genuine feeling, once again, to run between them.
Perhaps, thought Delia, this is what Anstace is trying to do. ‘Shall I come to you?’ she had written. ‘There is nothing to keep me in Saffron Walden. I wish I’d been there when you came. If I can help, I wish you’d let me but I only have what my aunt has told me and I am uncertain as to whether to hope or fear.’
It was the reference to Dorothy Lean which hardened Delia’s resolve. Whatever the motive behind Anstace’s letter, it proved to Delia that she had been weak in fleeing to Joachim Place that Saturday. She had carelessly allowed Dorothy Lean to glimpse the quick beneath the thickening hide. There had already been her letters and now there was undoubtedly gossip. Who could tell if Anstace were the only person she had been talking to? What might have begun as sympathy was rapidly becoming interference. This prurient interest had to be checked. If that meant rebuffing Anstace again, so be it. Sacrificing their friendship was a price worth paying.
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