by Dominic Luke
‘I never thought to question it,’ said Letitia. ‘I never thought to wonder what had happened to her.’
She paused, gazing round the room, seeing it as if from a great distance, the window small and remote, the sunshine outside like a glimpse of another world. There was a web of memories like a mist around her – or was it tears in her eyes? Doctor Kramer had moved closer, was holding her hand, and it felt entirely natural, as if she was a little girl walking with her nurse in the garden at Chanderton long ago.
‘You haven’t told me what you overheard,’ Doctor Kramer prompted gently. ‘In Selfridge’s that day.’
Selfridge’s, thought Letitia. And yet, having come so far, why not finish telling Angelica’s story? She was not ashamed of her sister. It was the others who should be ashamed, for what they had done to Angelica.
Letitia took a breath. ‘I was in Selfridge’s, last autumn, listening to someone else’s conversation: a bad habit of mine.’
‘We all do it from time to time.’
‘I wish I hadn’t that day. It was when the scales fell from my eyes. I understood at last what had happened to Angelica.’
There had been a pushy, brassy-faced girl, the type one saw more and more of these days. She had been wearing a WAAF uniform, talking to a hopeful-looking Guards captain. Letitia, looking through a rack of skirts, had felt rather sorry for the soldier who was, she’d surmised, doomed to disappointment if he expected any change from the fast and ambitious WAAF girl. Her sights were no doubt set on higher ranks. Rubbing material between her fingers, Letitia had suddenly frozen as the girl was speaking.
‘Of course, in the old days, in the big houses, rather than lock their retarded daughters in an asylum, they often used to keep them up in the attic. They came in useful,’ she’d added, sotto voce, just the other side of the skirts, ‘if there were male guests who wanted certain … comforts.’
She hadn’t given a knowing wink, thought Letitia: that was just imagination, embellishing after the fact; but the effect had been the same, the WAAF girl indicating that she was a woman of the world, a modern girl, and nothing could shock her.
Letitia remembered feeling dizzy, stumbling into the rack, dropping her umbrella, grabbing hold of the skirts to keep her balance. An assistant had come bustling up. Was madam unwell? Would madam like to sit down for a moment? It had been just what Letitia would have liked: to sit down, to catch her breath, to put her thoughts in order. But the WAAF girl had been watching by then – quite a crowd had gathered, in fact – and it had seemed essential not to appear weak and fragile in front of such a slip of a girl. Declining any help, waving the assistant aside, Letitia had swept out into the noise and bustle of the street where, leaning against a wall, she had opened her bottle of black market cognac and taken a surreptitious swig or two to settle her nerves. But her nerves hadn’t settled and she had wanted to escape: get away from Selfridge’s, get away from the terrible realization taking shape in her mind. It had been then that, hurrying to cross the road in a state of agitation, she had tripped up the far kerb and gone sprawling over the pavement, to be rescued by that very gallant if somewhat lugubrious policeman.
‘Gallant and rather handsome,’ said Letitia lightly, glossing over the turmoil of the event. ‘I never did thank him properly.’
‘But Mrs Warner …’ – Doctor Kramer was gripping her hand still, earnest green eyes searching her face – ‘surely you can’t believe that…?’
‘I think there can be little doubt that something of the sort went on.’ What other explanation could there be? Angelica as an adult had been a pale shadow of her laughing, happy childhood self: a thin and desolate waif who flinched at the sound of a voice, recoiled if anyone tried to touch her; who was particularly terrified of men. Letitia had seen little of her in those years, married as she’d been and preoccupied with her own problems. She had hardly been aware as Angelica slowly faded away into an early grave.
‘I can’t believe that such awful things really happened,’ said Doctor Kramer.
‘That is how they got away with it. Nobody believed it was possible. Nobody suspected. Suspicions of that nature were brushed under the carpet.’
‘But your father was a bishop, a man of God, beyond reproach. I have been reading about him, there’s a new book. He did good works, helped the poor, was a missionary in his youth.’
That book again, thought Letitia: coming back to haunt her. She looked at Doctor Kramer with sudden suspicion. Why had she been reading it? Coincidence?
But even without the book, no one would believe her father capable of cruelty – of evil. I would not believe it myself, thought Letitia, if I did not know: know what he did to Jocelyn, what he did to me….
‘In his public life he appeared a great man,’ said Letitia warily, watching the doctor closely. ‘Possibly he was. Possibly he did do good works. But I only ever knew him as a father; and as a father he failed us.’
‘Us?’
‘His children. And our mother, too. He failed her.’ Killed her…. ‘He was warned that another confinement would weaken her, perhaps fatally; but he took the chance because he wanted a second son: the spare.’
‘That was a typical attitude of the time!’ cried Doctor Kramer, getting up and pacing the room. ‘A son meant everything, was given every advantage, whereas a girl was merely decorative, a possession, something to bargain over, to sell in marriage to the highest bidder. And once they were married, women lost everything: their name, their belongings, their freedom – even their lives, as your mother’s story shows!’
The room – which had seemed tranquil, moiled in the past, weighed down with memories – was suddenly swirling with emotion, Doctor Kramer’s passion whipping up like a sudden squall. And in the midst of it Letitia suddenly heard a voice from long ago, clipped, crabbed, precise: … those suffragettes … dreadful unnatural women … Connie Lambton, in the blue drawing-room at the Manor, talking about her duplicitous guest. We were most dreadfully deceived in that whole business … it was quite unforgivable….
‘Megan O’Connor,’ said Letitia.
Doctor Kramer stopped her pacing, turned, her expression circumspect, eyes veiled, the passionate depths that for a moment had broken through now hidden again.
‘Megan Kramer, now, of course,’ she said slowly, ‘but, yes, that’s me. How clever of you to remember. It must be nearly forty years. I recognized you at once, of course. You haven’t changed at all. But I didn’t think you’d know me.’
Megan O’Connor, Letitia repeated to herself. The girl who had so fascinated Hugh and the Lambton boys – bewitched them; Connie, too, for that matter: because it was only in hindsight that she had taken against the red-haired Irish girl.
And now, all these years later, I too have been bewitched, thought Letitia. She has put me at my ease, wormed it out of me, things I have never told anyone. But at least she knew she was still sharp. She had felt there was something familiar about Doctor Kramer: she had been right.
‘… and I will pop in again in a day or two….’ Doctor Kramer was getting ready to leave, seemed in a hurry suddenly, gathering her bag and coat. ‘You are well on the way to recovery now, Mrs Warner, fall or no fall. It takes time at your age, that is all.’ She paused at the door. ‘Try not to dwell too much on the past. It doesn’t do any good, I find. We can’t change what happened.’
She was gone, and Letitia lay back, closed her eyes, feeling suddenly drained. Why had she let her tongue run away with her like that? Yes, it had come as a relief to be able to talk about Angelica at last; but talking to a stranger – an anonymous professional – was one thing; it was quite another when that stranger turned out to be someone one knew.
Yet what did she actually know about Megan O’Connor? Letitia searched her memory for a picture of Megan as she’d been in 1902 when staying at the Manor, but all she could come up with was the lopsided face of that dreadful doll. Hugh had been quite taken with the ugly thing. What had become of it in the end?
Megan O’Connor…. There was a twinge of guilt associated with the name. It came back to her. The letter, of course. The letter from 1915 which she had never answered, never passed on to Hugh; which she had still, bundled up with Hugh’s letters from the front: a disturbing reminder of how easy it was to fall into the trap of interfering, of playing God, something she had always promised herself never to do.
Would she have to confess all to Hugh now? Why oh why hadn’t she just passed the letter on at the time, like she should have done? Connie Lambton was to blame. It had been something Connie had said that had raised doubts, led one to question whether Megan O’Connor was a suitable acquaintance for Hugh.
Letitia’s eyes roved behind paper-thin lids as she tried to recall what it was that Connie had said; some hint or information that the Irish girl was no better than she should be. Something to do with Julian. But surely Connie had got her wires crossed – if she hadn’t simply made the whole thing up. One was reminded of those atrocity stories she had repeated so avidly in the war: it was only later that one realized they were compete bunkum. One had begun then to wonder if one could believe even half of what Connie said. Not that one would have said as much to her face: not then, after the war, when the poor thing had been at death’s door. It was the war that had killed her in the end: less directly but just as surely as it had killed her three sons, Julian, Justin and … and the other one….
What had the other one been called? The things one forgot in old age, the simplest things, a name one had known for forty years.
Trying to recall the name of Connie’s middle son, Letitia’s head slowly tilted on one side and she drifted into sleep.
‘I can’t leave you alone for a moment, Aunt, without you getting into a scrape of one kind or another.’
‘Hugh!’ Letitia surfaced from her afternoon nap to find the room bright with sunshine and her great-nephew standing by the bed with his hat in his hand. ‘I didn’t know you were coming!’
‘I wasn’t so sure myself, and as it is I can only manage one night. I have to be back tomorrow.’
‘All the same, it is good to see you.’ She reached for his hand – those long, pale fingers; smiled up at him. His old grey suit looked decidedly shabby hanging off his wiry frame; in fact, he looked shabby all round, flecks of grey in his hair and lines under his eyes and a hint of that hangdog expression which took her back nearly forty years, to a boy fresh from India staring moodily out at the rain. Since that day, she reflected, she had been ever-present in Hugh’s life, sometimes stepping forward, often retreating into the background. Getting the balance right was like walking a tightrope. By luck or judgement, she had not often put a foot wrong; but now she had another decision to make, another tricky passage to negotiate. Should she tell Hugh about Doctor Kramer? About the letter in 1915? Why rake over the past? Was it not best to let sleeping dogs lie? Yet in a way she felt she had no choice. Confession was inevitable. She had interfered in something she did not fully understand, and now she had to pay the price.
Hugh had been anxious about Letitia since hearing of her dizzy spell and fall. He had made a dash to London at the earliest opportunity. Arriving at the house, he had been accosted by Mrs Mansell: he was not to tire the old lady with too much talk, he was not to get her over-excited, she needed peace and quiet and plenty of rest. The doctor said it was a touch of flu, but doctors didn’t know everything, women doctors least of all. Hugh had been irritated by Mrs Mansell’s peremptory manner, bossing him about like she owned the place: why did Aunt Letitia put up with her? But he’d also been alarmed, wondering if things were more serious than he’d realized. A touch of flu might mean anything, could be significant at Letitia’s age. He’d half expected to come up and find her at death’s door. His heart had been in his mouth as he entered the room and saw her lying there apparently unconscious. But she’d been asleep, not unconscious and, waking, she’d greeted him in her usual indomitable style.
He nodded and smiled, felt her hand squeezing his, watching her all the time from behind his façade. She was not at death’s door, that much was obvious, but didn’t she seem a little frailer than normal? And she was rambling, rather, something about a letter: he was not really listening, his mind still a jumble of codes and ciphers and train times.
He made an effort to concentrate. Somebody had sent a letter, Letitia had not replied, she seemed to think it remiss of her. It had happened, it seemed, during the last war – years ago: one would have thought she’d have forgotten about it by now. But wasn’t it typical of Aunt Letitia, the embodiment of rectitude? No doubt it was all down to her Victorian upbringing, doing one’s duty and so on and so forth….
It took some time for Letitia’s meaning to penetrate the miasma in Hugh’s head, and even then he couldn’t piece it all together: the letter, Megan O’Connor, something about a doctor…. He was still struggling with it when the doctor herself walked in. Then, suddenly, he understood.
He recognized her instantly – would have known her anywhere; but he couldn’t work out if she recognized him. His senses were reeling and he could hear a voice in his head, a Cockney voice: the long dead tommy in no-man’s land. I like to collect souvenirs, to remind me of the places I’ve been, the girls I’ve had….
Girls such as Megan O’Connor?
Except she was Megan Kramer, now. Married.
Married.
‘Hello, Hugh.’ She was greeted him coolly, guarded.
‘Megan.’
He was as tongue-tied as that boy in Southampton Street twenty-one years ago, sweat running down his back, mouth dry, hand trembling. He took a deep breath.
‘Broken any windows lately?’
It was an absurd thing to say – absolutely ridiculous. He could see out of the corner of his eye Aunt Letitia looking at him in amazement. But he had not known what he was going to say until it was too late to stop himself.
There was a pause then Megan – Doctor Kramer – said, ‘I’ve rather gone off breaking windows. I was in Soho last June, when the Italians declared war. It was not an edifying sight, all those restaurants wrecked.’
That puts me in my place, thought Hugh, watching as Megan turned away, busied herself with her patient.
He retreated to the window, feeling like a flunky dancing attendance, ignored, unwanted. Megan was brisk and efficient, took Letitia’s temperature, felt her pulse, asked pertinent questions. Was this really her – really Megan O’Connor – or was it just another dream? There had been a time when he couldn’t sleep without dreaming of her. She had appeared anywhere and everywhere, in all manner of guises; for her to turn up now as a doctor seemed at once incredible and yet strangely inevitable.
He stole glances at her, convincing himself that she was real, that there was no mistake. There were lines around her mouth and eyes, her cheeks seemed slightly sunken, she was thinner; but her hair was still a fiery red, her eyes still bright with possibility just as they’d been when she ran into him in Southampton Street all those years ago. A judicious and sparing use of make-up gave to her face a mature and incisive beauty. Next to her he felt rather old, rather worn, the years having taken their toll.
She was already getting ready to leave, snapping her bag shut, exchanging a few last words with Letitia. Hugh was both relieved and disappointed. He had imagined this moment so many times, meeting her again; but it had turned out to be a damp squib. The years had driven them apart; they were strangers to each other.
In the doorway Megan paused, looked back at him. ‘We must catch up sometime.’
‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘Yes.’
He struggled for something else to say but it was too late, she had gone. He turned to the window, looked out, but saw nothing except a golden haze, tears blurring his vision.
Well, he said to himself, so that’s over.
Later he helped Letitia downstairs. She insisted on getting up for dinner.
‘I’m quite all right, just a little shaky on my legs still. It will pass,
Doctor Kramer assures me.’ She looked at him, her arm threaded through his. ‘Why the long face?’
Hugh sighed. ‘I feel old.’
‘Oh, Hugh!’ Letitia laughed. ‘Next to me you are a spring chicken!’
‘Why must we go all the way down to the kitchen? What is wrong with the dining-room?’
‘We eat in the kitchen in case there is an alert – although, saying that, there have been no raids for over a week now.’
‘Ominous, I call it,’ said Mrs Mansell, appearing at the foot of the stairs, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Yes, that’s just what it is: ominous,’ said Letitia. ‘I feel that they are saving something really big for us.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Hugh shortly.
Mrs Mansell looked at him, pursed her lips; but all she said was, ‘Dinner is ready.’
Next morning, sitting on a crowded train making unsteady progress out of bomb-damaged London, Hugh recalled Aunt Letitia’s sense of foreboding. She was not the only one. The question was on everyone’s lips: when will the Luftwaffe be back? But there were other questions crowding Hugh’s mind: questions about Megan Kramer. Married now – well, so was he, technically – a doctor, a changed woman. For all he knew she might not even remember those April days in 1912. He’d sometimes wondered since if that time had been a mirage, his feelings unreal. But now he knew beyond doubt that he’d loved her back then – because he loved her still. It had all come flooding back the moment she walked into the room. All the same, a part of him wished he could have gone on as he’d been, not knowing. If their situation in April 1912 had been hopeless, then now it was beyond recovery. He was losing her all over again, but this time it was final.