Aunt Letitia

by Dominic Luke

  I have never stayed put, I have always moved on, she reflected. Looking back at her nomadic existence, she wondered if, at her age, it was time to take root, to find a place that she could call home. She had never had a real home. Her mother’s jobs had taken them from country house to country house until, taking the position with Lady Mereton, Bridget O’Connor had been compelled to palm Megan off on unsuspecting hosts such as Mrs Lambton.

  After living in splendour as the guest of well-to-do families, Megan had found it difficult to get used to sleeping on Aunt Eileen’s bare boards again, listening to rats scrabbling beneath her. But even that had been luxury compared to what came next: huddling in doorways and dark alleys, living from hand to mouth, begging on street corners, until she and Jack found work and a tiny room of their own. Things had looked up until Jack was arrested and sent to prison. Alone, Megan had taken rooms where she could, one near Victoria Station, another in Limehouse, waiting for the day that Jack was released; but he had not been a free man for long. Unable to kick his bad habits, he had found himself in court again. It had been then that Julian Lambton had unexpectedly reappeared in her life after a gap of more than ten years.

  Julian had been posh, a man from a different class, brusque and interfering, like his mother. Megan had resented him, resented the names he called her, but even in the earliest days of their acquaintance, the attraction between them had been indisputable. There might have been a pang of regret for Hugh – more than a pang – but she had crushed it. Hugh, after all, had abandoned her without a word.

  Julian had known nothing of Megan’s meeting with Hugh in 1912. Megan had never mentioned it. All the same, Hugh had cropped up. It was Julian himself who had first spoken of him. Julian had accused her of being in love with Hugh. That was what the row had been about as they left the theatre that the bus had just passed.

  ‘What you are saying is ridiculous!’ she had shouted at him at the top of her voice, taking no notice of more refined theatregoers who had looked askance at this uncouth couple airing their dirty laundry in public. ‘I was seven years old! One knows nothing of love at that age!’

  Julian had shouted back at her, waving the theatre programme in her face. ‘I knew about love at that age. I knew, because I was in love with you!’

  ‘Balderdash! Poppycock! How can you stand there and say—’

  ‘How can I? How dare you, in that tatty dress—’

  ‘Tatty dress? You bought this frock!’

  ‘You chose it. If you don’t like it, you can—’

  ‘I like it, but I don’t want it. I don’t want your money and I don’t want you. This is madness. What we are doing is madness. I have had enough.’

  ‘I don’t give a fig about money, you can have every last penny. I just want to know why you gave that doll to Hugh bloody Benham. Why didn’t you give it to me?’

  ‘Because I hated you. You were rude and arrogant and nasty to poor Hugh—’

  ‘Poor Hugh! Poor Hugh!’

  ‘I felt sorry for him.’

  ‘Aha! So you admit it! You did love him! You see, I was right! And now you must also admit— Hey, where are you going? Come back here this instant! Don’t expect me to come running after you…. That’s it. This is as far as I’ll follow you…. Look at me, you bloody woman, when I’m talking to you….’

  They had often argued in those early days. It had been wonderful, exhilarating, firing their passion for one another; but Megan had never been under any illusions about their relationship. Julian was married. She could never be anything other than his mistress. Nor could she entirely forget Hugh, however much she tried. He had been so different to Julian: quiet, sensitive, would never have dreamt of raising his voice to her. And so, unable to get him out of her head, she had written to The Firs in 1915 hoping for news of him. She had not admitted to wanting more than that. Just news. But all the same she had been bitterly disappointed when no reply came. She had taken that as his final answer. He didn’t want her. And so the chapter of Hugh Benham was finally closed – or so she’d thought.

  By then, her relationship with Julian had changed. War had altered him. In his letters and when on leave, he had talked of giving up Law, going off somewhere remote and rural, taking up pig farming – or sheep, he could never decide which. He made plans, what he was going to do after the war. It had still been possible, in 1915, to make plans. No one had imagined how the nightmare would all drag on, how the world would change. Julian had become dissatisfied with second best, had decided from then on that he would squeeze out of life everything that he possibly could. And what he had wanted more than anything was to take up farming and to marry Megan.

  He had talked of divorce. Megan had counselled against it. They were happy as they were, why create a scandal and turn society against him?

  ‘I don’t give a damn about society. Why should I care a fig what those people think, the same people who have got us into this god awful mess? I love you, Megan, and I want to be with you. I do not love Eleanor; Eleanor does not love me. A divorce would be best all round, best for little Jimmy, too.’

  Julian had made his moves, prepared the way for divorce, found a smallholding he wished to buy. He had made ready for life after the war, a life that would at last be of his own choosing.

  Fate, however, had made other plans for him and snatched that life away early one sunny morning in July 1916. Megan, the secret mistress, had not received a telegram, had not known he was dead until she saw the notice in The Times. She had panicked, imagining that the family would somehow find out about her, come looking for her, seek revenge. She had fled Julian’s London flat as quickly as she could.

  Twenty-eight years later, Megan got to her feet, rang the bell, picked up her basket, edged down the stairs as the bus slowed and stopped. Stepping down onto the pavement, Megan heard the conductress call out, ‘Mind how you go!’ Turning to wave, Megan watched the red bus pull out into the road and gather speed, its engine coughing and rattling.

  As she started walking, she found herself, from force of habit, listening out for the menacing buzz-buzz of flying bombs. Relaxing again as she remembered that the days of the doodlebugs were over, she let her mind drift back to a notice in The Times: not Julian’s death, but her own name in black and white in the first weeks of 1919. There had been a message, asking her to contact a certain solicitor who would tell her something to her advantage.

  The solicitor had told her that Mrs Lambton wished to meet her. For a moment, Megan had thought he was referring to the meddlesome Connie and felt sure that the message in the newspaper had been an elaborate plan to trap her. The solicitor said no, it was Mrs Eleanor Lambton who wanted to speak to her. But that had seemed just as sinister. By then, however, she’d had nothing to lose, so she’d agreed to a meeting.

  She had been crippled with nerves, going to lunch with her dead lover’s wife in the winter of 1919. They had met in a restaurant on the Strand whose name now eluded her and which, later on, had been bombed flat in the early days of the Blitz. It had been neither too posh nor too common, as if Eleanor Lambton had chosen to meet on neutral ground; but Megan had been on her uppers by then, had been tattered and shabby. She remembered the grating condescension of the elderly waiter, the way he had let the word madam linger on his tongue as he saw her to the table. She remembered Eleanor Lambton pale and thin in black, wearing one of those tube-like dresses which had been the fashion back then, and a cloche hat.

  The food had been delicious, her fish flaking off the bone, the sauce piquant and creamy, but she had barely touched it, her stomach clenched with nerves. She had been terribly conscious of the waste in those hungry days. She could not now remember what sort of fish it had been or what the sauce was called; she just knew that, when the waiter came to clear her plate, he had rolled his eyes at her, disdainful, before turning to fawn over Eleanor Lambton.

  ‘Will you have coffee? I always have coffee. Where has that waiter gone?’

  Megan agreed to coffee,
her heart sinking, and watched as Eleanor Lambton summoned the waiter with an imperious, brusque little gesture. She wished the terrible meal was over. As a refined form of torture, it was particularly effective. Perhaps that was what Eleanor intended.

  Eleanor, dabbing her mouth with her napkin, said, ‘I’m sorry if the food was not to your liking.’

  ‘I am afraid I have lost my appetite. I was rather terrified at the prospect of meeting you.’ Megan had learned that honesty was often disarming, but Eleanor’s expression remained blank.

  They sat in silence until the coffee came. Megan stirred in sugar, tapped her spoon on the side of the cup to get the drips off – and immediately wondered if that was a vulgar thing to do. She looked around to see if the elderly waiter had noticed, but he was not there. The lunchtime rush was over, the place emptying. Through the steamed-up windows she could see indistinct figures hurrying along the Strand, huddled against a whipping wind. She wondered if she had ever, during the course of her career as a suffragette, broken those particular windows. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to do so right then and there.

  ‘You must understand,’ Eleanor Lambton began suddenly, biting off her words, ‘that I was not interested in Julian’s will. I neither knew nor cared what was in it. I didn’t even read it.’

  Megan stirred her coffee again, watching the brown liquid whirling in the cup. She was at a loss to explain this meeting. It seemed pointless. What did she care if Eleanor had read Julian’s will or not?

  ‘It was the Lambtons’ family solicitor who suggested that Julian had not been of sound mind when he made the latest changes to it. It was his opinion, he said, that Julian had become unhinged by the war. He said we should destroy the last version of the will and replace it with an earlier copy. No one need ever know. My mother-in-law agreed. Indeed, I think it may have been her idea in the first place. I didn’t think to question it. It never occurred to me that it might be against the law. You must think I was awfully naïve.’

  Eleanor’s voice was clipped, precise; but it betrayed her every so often. It suddenly struck Megan that this was as hard for Eleanor as it was for her; perhaps harder. Why?

  Eleanor had not even looked at her coffee yet.

  ‘We knew of your existence, of course, even before Julian’s death. At least, I knew. I thought I was the only one who did. I didn’t realize until afterwards that his mother knew too. Nothing much gets past Mrs Lambton. When Julian was killed, she was quite determined that not a penny of his money would be handed over to a trollop.’ Eleanor looked at Megan, meeting her eyes for the first time. ‘That was her word, not mine.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d used it.’

  Eleanor looked away. ‘I am afraid I have always been slow on the uptake. It is only now that I have come to realize the injustice of what they did, Mrs Lambton and the family solicitor: the injustice that I connived in.’

  Megan shifted in her seat. This absurd conversation – or monologue – had gone on long enough. ‘I’m sorry, I really don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about.’

  Eleanor reached for her bag. ‘Perhaps this will explain.’ She took out a piece of paper, unfolded it, flattened it against the tablecloth, then handed it across. ‘My solicitor prepared this document. You could, of course go to the police, but I don’t think there will be any incriminating evidence. They would have been careful about that. So I have made my own arrangements, in lieu.’

  Megan read what was written on the paper. It was impossible to take it in all at once. She was aware of Eleanor, with a sudden jerky movement, spooning sugar into her coffee: one spoonful, two spoonfuls; a third remained poised above the cup. She was aware, too, of every single waiter in the background, clearing tables of napkins and cutlery and glasses and bottles, sweeping away tablecloths, placing chairs neatly. It was not just the waiter who’d served them who was elderly: none of the others was less than middle-aged. She wondered if perhaps there were no young waiters left. Maybe they had all been killed in the war.

  Even as she was noticing all this – even as her thoughts jolted round in her head – the meaning of the note was slowly sinking in.

  Abruptly, she put the paper aside. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t want his money. I never did. It belongs to you.’

  ‘It belonged to Julian. It was up to him whom he gave it to.’ Eleanor looked down, noticed as if for the first time the sugar poised above her coffee. With a slow, smooth motion she withdrew the spoon and tipped the sugar back into the bowl.

  Megan picked up the paper and read it again. ‘It’s so much.’

  ‘He obviously felt you were worth it.’ She spoke flatly, no hint of irony.

  ‘But what does Mrs Lambton say – your mother-in-law, I mean?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with her.’ Eleanor took a sip of coffee (it must be cold by now, thought Megan) and then wiped her lips. ‘She no longer takes an interest in such matters, in any case. They are all dead, you see. Her sons, I mean. They are all—’ Eleanor broke off, pursed her lips, turned away, blinking.

  Without expecting to, Megan felt a sudden compassion for the woman. Eleanor was not being remote and off-hand because of some snobbish sense of superiority, she realized. She was simply being herself. And there was nothing there. She was just a shell. There was grief – for Julian? for someone else? – but even that seemed little more than an echo. It was, Megan felt, a terrible waste.

  ‘Mrs Lambton, I can’t possibly take your money.’

  ‘Oh, but you must, I insist.’

  ‘But your boy …’

  ‘Jimmy inherits the estate: the Manor, the land, everything. He doesn’t need this money.’

  Megan smiled. It seemed little enough, but she wanted desperately to give Eleanor something and a smile was all she had. Eleanor blinked again, as if in acknowledgement. It was impossible to imagine that she would ever smile. ‘You needn’t have done this, Mrs Lambton. I would never have known.’

  ‘I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t at least tried to put things right. It was wrong of me to let myself be pushed into a corner by Mrs Lambton over the will. It was wrong of me, for that matter, to let them push me into marrying Julian. I didn’t love him. I loved somebody else. But … it was impossible….’

  ‘Perhaps….’

  ‘It’s too late.’ Eleanor picked up her cup, put it down again. ‘It’s too late now.’ Her lips snapped shut and the conversation was over.

  As they parted, shivering in the bitter wind blowing along the Strand, Megan suddenly turned back.

  ‘Mrs Lambton, I should like to write to you, if I may.’

  Eleanor pulled her stole closer. ‘Write to me? Why should you want to write to me?’

  ‘To tell you how I spend the money. I don’t intend to waste it, you see.’

  Eleanor digested this, nodded slowly. ‘If that is what you want, Miss O’Connor, I should look forward to hearing from you.’

  And then she was gone, walking rapidly along the Strand towards Charing Cross Station, a thin black figure rapidly swallowed by the crowds.

  Walking through the balmy streets in September 1944, Megan had reason to be grateful for Julian’s legacy. Without that money, she would never have been able to train as a doctor; but it had also come as a timely moment, when she was not only destitute but demoralized too, thinking that life had nothing left to offer. She had lost everyone she had ever cared about: her mother, Hugh, Julian and finally Jack – for Jack had been released from prison just as conscription was being introduced and had been swallowed up by the army. She had seen him only once after that, when he came on leave in the bitter cold of January 1917. She had done all she could to make him feel at home, to give him every comfort, pawning or selling what few relics she had left of her time with Julian, clothes and bits of jewellery. They had not spoken of the war. He had told her nothing of what life was like at the front. Nor had Julian for that matter, but he had always wanted to look forward, to life w
hen peace came; Jack never looked beyond the next meal. Her only glimpse of what was going through his mind, how he was feeling, had come at the end, when she was seeing him off. He’d suddenly leant out of the train and caught her hand, staring into her eyes. She remembered the feel of his calloused fingers. He had knocked his cap against the window frame and it had fallen off, fallen back into the carriage. His hair – black, so different to hers – had stuck up in unruly tufts as it always did.

  ‘I don’t want to go, Meggie. I shan’t come back. I know that I shan’t come back.’

  ‘Yes you will. You must. You have to.’

  There had been a terrible crush on the platform, people dashing last minute to catch the train, steam hissing, smoke billowing, noise reverberating round the high roof. And at that moment the whistle had blown – when he was holding her hand as if they were children again. He was asking her to protect him as a big sister should – begging her.

  She had reached into her pocket for something to give him, some token to represent everything she did not have time to say: money, anything – and her hand had closed round the cigarette lighter that Hugh had given her five years before, that she had kept as a memento, a reminder, clinging to the nostalgia of those brief few days. It was almost the only thing of any value that she had left.

  She had given Jack the lighter as the train pulled away, passed it from her outstretched hand to his: an amulet, a lucky charm; had watched as he disappeared in clouds of steam, swept away from her into the cold and dark of the winter evening.

  She had never seen him again. The lucky charm had failed. A telegram had come: missing, believed killed. And that had marked the end. She’d had nothing left.