by Jessica Mann
Viola had learnt a lesson from which she did not need to profit until many years later: should it become necessary to get rid of people, better to do so from afar.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Measured in distance, not time, it took thirteen miles of twisting Border roads to track down C.K.Isbister. Tamara finally got through to her at a traffic light in Moffat, and gathered a little group of surprised voyeurs by the time it turned green. She hoped that none of them could lip-read.
Old as she was, Miss Isbister caught on fast. In London herself, she knew that a contingent from the feminist Left had made arrangements to be at the session of Truth or Dare in Edinburgh.
‘But I don’t know why you ask, Dr Hoyland. You did not seem particularly keen on the cause when we met.’
‘I have changed my mind.’
‘Yes? Why was that?’
Plunging on across the dark moors, Tamara enumerated details and spelled out names, and told C.K.Isbister what had changed her mind. Tamara provided the material for briefing the troops.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Viola Hutber pinned on the brooch that was a miniature portrait set in pearls and put aside the niggling anxiety about its reappearance in her house. It had been a message, but she would deal with the messenger once she knew who it was and the method of doing so would come to her as quickly as it always did when necessary. She had known at once what she must do about Allan Cory when he called on her the day she was to leave for America. An errand to the cellar, down to which she, an elderly woman, found it hard to climb, and the bang of the closed trap and the deed was done. Viola had gone outside to break the glass in the back door, to make the slivers fall where they should; she had hidden some suitable loot and was waiting outside, composed and confident, when her assistants arrived to collect her. The only difficulty had been with Basil. She had rung him to insist that he send the letter to explain why Allan Cory had called on Dame Viola Hutber. ‘You must. It is as much for your own sake as mine.’ Old age had weakened him. He had argued, wasting time, and she had had to remind him that he could still face a murder charge for leaving the tramp, whose body was identified as Rex’s, in a stupor, and setting the fire that killed him.
‘But I had such good motives in sending Allan to you,’ the weak, tired voice had complained. ‘Once he knew who he really was . . .’
‘He’s dead anyway,’ she had said, proleptically, listening to the shouting and banging from the cellar. He was as good as dead; and it was a pity that Basil hadn’t died from his stroke after writing the necessary letter. It would have saved a lot of trouble later.
Allan Cory: a trouble-maker. And he had no justification. He had been all right. He’d been looked after. Viola had a right to her own life. She would not be cheated of it now, not by Allan Cory with his sentimental demands, not by Chantal Digby’s trouble-making, not by her brother Basil himself.
Chantal Digby had lived away from the real world for so long that she could not think straight when she came back to it, Viola thought, as she tucked and rolled her white hair into its formal style. If it had not been for her hints and boasts, her threats, her unredeemed vanity . . . damn the woman, Viola thought literally, I hope she’s burning in hell. Once Watchwomen were in power such creatures would not be able to drip their poison into the nation’s ear.
Chantal had been so stupid. Stupid and offensive. When Viola called on her that first time she had been patronising, as she had been with a frightened girl all those years before. She dropped hints about mother-and-baby homes, about Maxton, about what she would tell the Corys’ foster son. That ancient favour gave her no right to speak like that to a Dame of the British Empire. But Viola had smiled and deferred, making sure that the woman would welcome another visit. ‘Let’s keep each other company for Christmas, two old survivors together. London can be lonely then. No need to cook, I’ll bring something with me.’ And on the way out, scooping up the spare set of keys while Chantal fiddled with the locks, a foolproof plan already fully formulated, so that she thought to wrap herself unrecognisably in scarves and a plastic rain cape to prevent anyone knowing that Viola Hutber had ever visited that building.
Who notices a time-expired bundle of rags entering Simpson’s at the Jermyn Street entrance, hustled by a crowd of last-minute shoppers? Dame Viola Hutber, nodded to on many sides, emerged into Piccadilly and strolled along to the hotel where a suite was kept for the President of Watchwomen’s use at the expense of a well-wisher. Nobody noticed her arriving on Christmas Day, a bundle of dingy wrappings over her own clothes, to share the home poisoned, commercially packaged meal with Lady Digby. She had eaten her own container full of innocent stew with relish, watching Chantal Digby greedily swallowing her meal. The woman’s manners were disgusting, as they always had been. When Viola went into the bedroom to hide the telephone handset she saw that cigarettes had been put out in pots of face cream. The room smelt of unwashed clothes. Well, it would soon smell of worse than that, she had thought, letting herself out, double locking the door. She dropped the set of keys into the basement area as she went by. She met a couple of young do-gooders in Jermyn Street who invited her to a Christmas meal in the Church crypt, but she cursed them drunkenly and hurried away. The perfect crime.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The producer of Truth or Dare had been unwilling to bring her programme to the Watchwomen Festival but the Controller had overruled her.
‘But they might all fall down and worship,’ she argued, and he said, ‘It will be entertainment.’
The routine for these ‘live’ outside broadcasts was always tense and exhausting, but the producer had to bound exuberantly on stage to jolly the audience into liveliness so that they would punctuate the proceedings with laughter and applause and queue to get their own questions in, producing the sparkle that Truth or Dare achieved at least in its reviewers’ eyes.
Tonight the budget had been stretched to provide a comic for the ‘warm-up’. He stood and made jokes about and to the committed women who sat in rows before him. Soon he would start to wind them up. His job was to sharpen their wits, excite them, give them knots in their stomachs, so as to make the programme tense and unpredictable.
Outside the Usher Hall the pavement was obstructed by vans full of television equipment, with wires snaking across the flagstones in a scientific tangle. Ticket-holders had been warned to arrive early, and went in looking pleased and excited, many of them stepping from buses that were labelled with their provenance: Lothian Watchwomen, Strathclyde Watchwomen, Watchwomen from the Orkneys. The police were in dutiful attendance. Traffic had been diverted. Television cameras filming outside as well as inside the hall added dramatic punctuation to the street scene.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
No, Viola Hutber thought as she checked her appearance in the glass before setting off to her next triumph, nobody would recognise Stella under these swathes of flesh. Even her face had swollen in useful disguise. The only identifying mark on her was the birthmark on her thigh, the star after which Basil had nicknamed his baby sister Stella.
On the day he came back to Carmell for their mother’s funeral he had asked to see it again. That was the first move in her seduction; not that she had been unwilling. Basil, the thirteen-year-old girl’s adult brother, was her legal guardian. His method of guarding her was illegal.
Incest.
Child molestation.
She had loved it. Who would not have welcomed the change from Carmell and school to London and adult life?
She should have been protected. Basil had been a criminal. He had ruined her life.
If she had not done things that had to be concealed, she would not have done what made Georg Kaminski able to blackmail her. But to be truthful, she thought, she had wanted to marry him then, she had scuttled into marriage with another frightened, dispossessed victim.
Viola had just enough left of her inheritance from her mother to buy an ugly cottage in the middle of nowhere. Georg said he
needed peace and quiet to write.
Write! That was a joke. Painful paragraphs in a language that nobody could read, equally painfully translated into a prose that nobody would read. How angry Georg had been when Viola wrote books that sold; how angry, and how quick to spend her money. He thought that Viola owed him a compensation for being barren, and at the time she had regretted the difficult childbirth that made later pregnancies impossible. Now she was only too relieved not to be the mother of children with a Central European name who would probably take drugs as their father took drink; or fight, for Georg was a violent man, both drunk and sober. No, the President of Watchwomen’s image was better served by her name’s association with the Headmaster of St Uny’s, though Basil had been so careful to keep his notoriety local that Viola only recently learnt of it. There had been no contact between them in Nell’s lifetime, and he had behaved like a prisoner in Carmell, for fear of being recognised elsewhere. Wise, no doubt; for Rex had known more people than Stella ever did, and in appearance changed less.
In old age, Viola had forgiven him. She could feel again the fatal charm he had once exerted over her – at least, until he lay in that hospital bed and said he planned to confess everything.
‘I needn’t bring you into it,’ he had said. ‘But I must look after Lawrence. You must understand that.’
‘I can’t risk it,’ she had hissed. ‘People will make the connection.’
‘I should have done it before. I’m not ashamed of anything. It would be good for people to realise that one can redeem oneself. Anyway, I did nothing that would not seem quite normal now. Sexual peccadilloes . . .’
‘Murder.’
‘Oh no, dear, not murder. I’m sure that poor young man was already dead when we lit his funeral pyre. You couldn’t prove murder now, I have been thinking about it lying here. It was all a series of accidents. An accident that people in London called me Rex and never knew my real name. We all had our little affectations in those days, do you remember? When I went there after the war I was so anxious to be myself, and not the local doctor’s son. The anonymity was intoxicating.’
‘Were you drunk when you committed child assault and incest?’
‘Don’t say such things. You know Rex loved his Stella. But we were different people then. It’s all old history. And you know I always say it’s results that matter, not motives.’
‘You ruined my life once. I won’t let you do it again.’
‘Our lives are over.’
‘Mine isn’t,’ she had whispered; but his was. So easy it had been, she thought, looking in wonder at her own plump hands, so easy to grasp the pillow and press it down on to her brother’s unresisting face.
I was entirely justified, she told herself. All very well for him to talk. He had gone senile. If there was no need to preserve their secret to the grave, why had he spent the whole of his life immured in Carmell? Why had he married Nell St Uny and said goodbye to Viola for ever? Why was his whole life and career a monument of hypocrisy? Many men outgrow and forget a riotous youth; but none has the right to boast of it at the expense of his victim’s successful old age.
*
The psychedelic colours of Truth or Dare’s logo looked horrible beside the Watchwomen colours both inside and outside the Usher Hall. The place was packed and the stewards would let nobody in without a ticket.
‘It’s all right. I’ll go round to the back.’ At the stage door Tamara sent a message in, and waited with the autograph hunters to be admitted. One of them had a battery operated television set turned up loud. The producer’s voice filled the alley, extrovert, enthusiastic, what she would call up-beat. She said the audience was marvellous, the town was marvellous, the programme would be marvellous. The applause increased with each phrase, and became louder still as the names of individual contingents were read out. Welcome to the chapters of Watchwomen from all over Scotland and the North of England, and to the few husbands who had been brave enough to come with them. Cheers and laughs. Welcome to the groups from the order of Goodfellows, from the political parties, from the Women’s Rural Institutes. Welcome to the representative of the City Council. Welcome, one and all.
Tamara was let in at the stage door, and an excited woman official led her to the green room. ‘The President says you’re to be brought in.’
Dame Viola was sitting in perfect calm, her ankles crossed, her hands clasped, while a make-up girl dabbed at her face with a powder puff. The professional journalists, her inquisitors, had been nervous, and made numerous trips to the lavatory, and began, without finishing, inconsequential remarks.
The noise from the hall filtered through, and Noelle Stephenson murmured her satisfaction. ‘You can always tell. If it sounds too quiet you know it won’t go well.’
‘Two minutes please.’ The professionals at once grew calm, almost magisterial, and began to behave as though the cameras were already on them. They were too grand and experienced to wish each other luck, but stood in the order the producer had dictated to file on and meet their audience.
Dame Viola went last. Annie followed her star, and stood in the wings. Noelle flung herself into a chair. ‘Gosh, I’m whacked.’
Tamara fiddled with the television set. ‘Brighter,’ Noelle commanded. ‘Her dress is pinker than that.’
The subject, sometimes the victim, in Truth or Dare sat enthroned, facing the audience while her questioners sat half-sideways to it. The opening shot was of their silhouettes, a symmetrical pattern, with portentous drum music. The moderator of this risky confrontation, his reputation – the only one he cared about – to make or lose on a phrase, stood like the conductor of an orchestra in a rostrum. He alone wore white tie and a tail coat, and to complete the analogy used a baton to indicate each speaker’s turn.
The applause did not die down to the moderator’s gesture, but only when Dame Viola herself flapped her hands for silence. She could have answered the first questions in her sleep.
‘Does she rehearse?’ Tamara asked Noelle, who looked shocked and put a finger before her mouth to demand silence.
If the platform party were the soloists, playing an introductory theme, the audience provided choir and orchestra. The conductor began to bring them in, sending the sound assistants scuttling along the aisles with the microphones. The first questions from the floor were as predictable and innocuous as those from the platform. What were Dame Viola’s hopes, fears, aims, ambitions, what was her programme, her policy for peace, her principles, what would she vote in the next election? What would she do if asked to serve in the next government? Might Watchwomen field its own candidates?
The producer murmured, for the moderator’s ears alone, that the programme lacked sparkle.
Noelle watched the television with pride. From time to time she muttered, ‘That’s telling them.’
The baton indicated first one side of the hall, then another, upstairs and downstairs, left and right. Hands waved, eager questioners leapt to their feet competing for attention.
‘What about abortion?’
‘What about illegitimacy?’
‘What’s your view of incest?’
‘That’s a new one,’ Noelle exclaimed, reaching for her notebook.
‘Move on to another,’ the producer commanded, and the moderator aimed his baton at a different part of the hall, but several voices called, ‘Answer,’ and Dame Viola said, ‘Nobody could condone it, surely?’
‘The lady in the front row,’ the moderator said.
‘Who was Stella?’
‘Can we please keep questions general? The lady in the gallery.’
‘Where were you in 1928?’
‘Really, really,’ the moderator spluttered. ‘Can we try to stick to the point?’
‘I’d have been at school. I was only thirteen.’
‘She left school at twelve,’ the voice shouted.
‘Next question, please. The gentleman at the back of the stalls.’ Something harmless about nuclear disarmament. Dame Viola
answered at length, but she could hardly make the subject last until the end of the programme.
‘Who killed Chantal Digby?’
In widely separated parts of the Usher Hall red and yellow banners proclaiming the feminist Left were being unfurled.
‘What on earth’s going on?’ Noelle said, and Annie came running in, gabbling, ‘They are all over the place. Infiltrators. It’s chaos.’
Burly men moved through the audience pulling the hostile feminists away from their seats. The producer appealed to the moderator who winced at the tone of her voice and crossly pulled the earphone back. He raised his arms, soothing, harmonising.
A decorous question about capital punishment. Another about hobbies. Which character in history would Dame Viola most like to have met? Predictably, she chose Elizabeth the First.
‘Who was Allan Cory’s mother?’ a shrill voice interrupted, and another woman, injudiciously chosen to ask the next question, called, ‘Who killed Basil Hutber?’