Liddy, I shall be beside the Albert Memorial on 28th November, that is two days’ time, at noon. I write to ask you if you will meet me there? My love, I am certain I am with child and am to be confined, perhaps in June. I long to see you. One more time. We are the only two left. I will understand if you are not able to do so, but I will be there and very much hope to see you, dearest.
Your loving sister
Mary Helena Dysart
‘She uses her own name still!’ Liddy had said, waving the letter at Ned, who was pulling his black tie from his neck. She bit her nail, staring out at the frozen street through a tiny chink in the heavy silk brocade curtains. ‘A child. You don’t – you haven’t heard from Dalbeattie, have you?’
Ned shrugged out of his waistcoat. ‘I’ve heard nothing since that last letter when I wrote to tell him to send no more, my love. Will you meet her?’
Liddy looked down. ‘I don’t know that I can. I want to return to Nightingale House as soon as I may,’ she said, sliding a comb from her hair and laying it on the dressing table. ‘You know John may be back on leave, at any time. To miss him—’
‘She asks nothing of you other than one meeting.’ Ned dropped a kiss on to her loosened tresses.
‘You don’t understand. I –’ Her heart ached; it was tired, she thought, tired of all this.
‘My dearest.’ Ned stood in front of her and took her hand. ‘You should meet her. She is your sister, after all. When you think what we endured, all of us . . .’
Liddy closed her eyes. ‘She is the only one alive now who knew how I suffered as a child. She is the one person who understood. I cannot escape the conviction she betrayed me. I know it is foolish, but it is a conviction.’ She bowed her head, overwhelmed. ‘I must get home, tomorrow, anyway.’
‘This is your first trip from home for – what is it? For three years. You must learn to enjoy yourself, just a little, Liddy darling. I want you to stay tomorrow, for a special reason.’ His smiling eyes danced; he caught hold of the iron bedstead and rocked backwards and forwards, with excitement. It was infectious: she leaned into him, and suddenly they were teenagers again, twining towards each other. He said, ‘John wouldn’t want you to be chewing your nails and sitting anxiously by the door, waiting for him to come back, would he?’
‘No . . . Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘My love.’
‘Oh, Liddy. How lovely you are tonight,’ he said softly in her ear, and she took his head in her hands and looked up into his face, warm in the gaslight. She could see every wrinkle and line, and, about the eyes, a spark. He had, since their arrival in London, been on edge, twitchy; she was glad the dinner had gone well, that he seemed more content than he had been for a while.
The war had been good for Ned. The Lilac Hours had been greeted with enormous enthusiasm. He had not received the same amount for the painting as he had for The Garden of Lost and Found, but thousands had come to see it, first at the Royal Academy, for the first wartime Summer Exhibition, then at Galveston’s gallery. The soldier, added at the last minute, was a shadowy, noble symbol in the doorway bidding the central female figure goodbye, the black outline of his officer’s cap and rifle throwing into relief the soft, anguished, yet stoical smile on the woman’s face. The hint through the open door of an English garden in full beauty, the ideal for which the boys at the Front were fighting – all these artful details meant the painting was an unqualified success, his first in years. It was not to everyone’s taste, but it was a beautiful piece of work. And he had done a panel series too – four paintings, shown in sequence, called Tommy Atkins is Off.
Tommy Atkins is Off was the story of a young soldier. In reality he had been modelled by a grumbling and arthritic Darling, dressed in the garb of a young private on leave. The Graphic magazine had bought the copyright and printed a different episode each week, designed to be clipped from the paper; later they produced high-quality reproductions which they gave away during the first two Christmases of the war: thousands, perhaps millions, of homes now had a Tommy on their wall: Tommy and his friends in a cheery group walking towards the recruiting office; Tommy bidding goodbye to his sweetheart, chastely, over a cottage garden wall, their hands touching, kitbag slung over his shoulder; Tommy now one of hundreds of men aboard a great train bound for the coast filled with excited, freshly minted soldiers, and finally Tommy in uniform, walking along a country lane towards – what? It wasn’t made clear, but his jaunty step left one in no doubt Tommy would be home shortly, victory achieved.
Privately, Liddy disliked the jingoism of it, and thought Tommy Atkins would be, in real life, the most tedious type of rascal. Liddy wondered if she was the only one who looked quizzically at him, at the role he – and by extension Ned – was playing in convincing the nation this war was to the good. But of this, as with so much else, she had said nothing to Ned and so, despite her constant fear John would be given leave and go to Nightingale House only to find them absent, they had come to town this glittering, ice-cold November for a dinner Galveston and the critic la Touche were hosting together in Ned’s honour.
Though she had tried to plead for her absence, once she was in London again Liddy had enjoyed herself at first. There were old, and dear, friends who exclaimed over her, said that they never saw her. She was dressed in black chiffon trimmed with cream lace, her shoulders bare, wearing the diamond earrings Ned had given her when she gave him their son. Her hair had been dressed by Laura Galveston’s lady’s maid, and Liddy knew, as she descended the stairs, that she was quite elegant, still, despite being now a lady of forty-two and quite, she assumed, beyond the gaze of men. Galveston had seated himself next to her at supper. La Touche had whispered across the table to her that she was still a great beauty, and Sir Augustus Carnforth, the great industrialist who had bought so many of Ned’s paintings over the years, had calmed her fears greatly over John, and the current situation.
‘I have it on good authority from a dear friend of mine, a major, you see. It’s a great fight. The boys love the “scrapping”, they call it, Mrs Horner. It’s an adventure, out there. Your boy is with . . .?’
‘The Worcestershire Regiment. Fourth Battalion.’ Liddy looked over at Ned, who was standing in a corner, whispering with Galveston. Some new plan afoot, she knew it; Ned was wild-eyed at the moment, particularly on edge.
‘Ah.’ A slight pause, and incline of the head. ‘A good regiment. He’ll be having a terrific go, you’ll see. Not that he’ll tell his mama about it! Hah!’ He had raised his glass to her.
He tells me everything, she had wanted to say, but he was being kind and she did not want to be rude. And what he doesn’t tell me, I know, oh, I know it very well. Even if he doesn’t suspect I know it.
‘He was at the Somme,’ she said and she could not but help let pride creep into her voice for the news of the eventual victory there and the huge, catastrophic casualties sustained by the French and British had lately been received back in London. ‘He was very lucky. He was involved in capturing—’
Panic gripped her, as so often when she thought of him, and she could not remember the name of the village. And she didn’t want to be here, suddenly. She wanted to be back at Nightingale House, near Eliza, and waiting for sweet gentle John, alone with her own unhappiness, for the truth, real truth, was she could only tolerate company for a short time now. The words of John’s last letter swam before her eyes:
I should be getting leave soon – please don’t go too far from Nightingale House in case I can come home – please do write as often as you can. Please do. It is sometimes very hard here. I am awfully well but I have seen some rather upsetting things and letters do make a difference. Tell me about home. Tell me what is on the trees and whether the apples were good this autumn and who Zipporah is going to marry this week and what you found on the roof. Please do write, Mama, as often as you can.
It was a slow agony that ate away at you, every day, this business. Knowing your one surviving child was suffering, was cryin
g out for you, that he was far away and you could not help him . . . Sometimes, the words of his letters would burn into her memory and it was all she could see. Please do write, as often as you can.
After she had combed her hair, Liddy climbed into bed. Ned was already asleep, lying on his back, snoring. She shook him a little, very gently, for she would not disturb him. She picked up Mary’s letter again, her eyes scanning the words, looking for a sign and then, unable to read properly in the dim light, turned down her lamp. The heavy curtains utterly blocked out the street lamps and she lay blinking in the inky blackness. Thoughts scrabbled in her head. John’s face. Mary’s handwriting. Ned’s hand, writing something on Galveston’s gold and marble Heppelwhite side table that evening, watched by Galveston. And the pulsing beat of her conscience, what she knew to be true.
If you had been there . . . you would have taken them to see Hannah, too. They would always have been at risk. She would always have given diphtheria to one of them. It was ordained.
‘Oh—’ she cried out softly, pushing her hands into her eye sockets. Ned muttered in his sleep, and was silent again, but Liddy did not sleep.
The following morning, she sat in the great liver-and-white-marbled breakfast room, pushing a plate of uneaten kidneys and toast around her plate and staring out of the window. It was deliciously, luxuriantly warm inside, but outside it was a cold, clear day, the sky a piercing royal-blue. Liddy longed to open the french windows, to inhale the fresh air, feel its bite in her lungs. She realised she hated London, and now only wanted to go home.
Out in the hall of this great, echoing house someone was delivering something, and the doors were being opened, men shouting to each other. Liddy swallowed some coffee, her stomach churning. She had not slept. Mary was somewhere – how? Where? What was she doing? Was she well? Mary was small, like Liddy, but not tough; she had been so ill as a child. She should not be having a child herself.
I will go to meet her. Yes. Liddy speared a kidney, then put it down. She felt sick. I can’t.
She thought of brisk, bustling, glamorous Laura Galveston, who had casually revealed yesterday after dinner that she had cut ties with all her family for many years now. ‘It became too hard to maintain relations with them. There were difficulties about expectations, money, unfortunate incidents of a kind we could not find acceptable . . . I found it easier to slice the trouble out, root ball and all.’
As if one were dismissing a servant, or cutting down a diseased climber. She bowed her head, alone in the room, thoughts jostling for space, just as the door opened and Ned came in, tugging at his waistcoat.
‘Ah. My love,’ he said. ‘I have a surprise for you.’
Liddy looked up, in a daze. ‘What’s that, dearest?’
‘Come with me,’ he said, taking her hand, and with the other smoothing a finger across her forehead. ‘This will take your sadness away. Yes! I promise you it will,’ he said, laughing at her querying face. ‘Come!’
He pulled her into the hallway, lined with its cabinets and sideboards and ormolu vases. There was a Rococo mirror from a king’s palace in France; Liddy knew because Laura had told her this yesterday, as well as what it cost. Her heart was beating – what surprise could it be?
Galveston was standing in the vast hall, next to a painting on a wooden stand. He was rubbing his hands. ‘Good morning, my dear Liddy,’ he said. ‘Your husband has, yet again, made a gesture of ridiculous generosity towards you – I tried to stop him – he wouldn’t hear of it!’ He raised his hands now, disclaiming involvement, eyes twinkling.
‘I wanted you to have it back,’ said Ned, almost shyly, in her ear. ‘I – look, here it is.’
Liddy didn’t understand. He led her around to the other side of the easel. She gazed at the painting before her. She had not set eyes on it since they had left London on that dreadful day sixteen years earlier.
There were the children, running into the garden; there were Eliza’s wings. Eliza’s strong, slender foot. Her golden hair. The window up above Liddy’s study open; a creeper twining towards it. The glinting stars on the ceiling in the Birdsnest. She had never noticed that detail before.
Liddy stared at herself, a hazy small figure, straight-backed and calm, precisely at the very centre of the painting, and of that world. She had never really noticed that before, either.
‘Ned,’ she said, slowly. ‘What have you done?’
‘I’ve bought it from Galveston,’ he said, softly, as if they were alone. ‘Got a fair price, I promise you. I wanted him to stop making reproductions of it, selling it everywhere. I wanted it at home again.’
‘No,’ Liddy said again. She tore her eyes from the painting. ‘I don’t want it, Ned. I don’t ever want to see it again.’
He gave her a small, mechanical smile, as if she were a cross child. ‘But it’s ours, dearest. I leave at lunchtime, I’m taking it back to the house again. I thought we could hang it in the hall—’
‘No!’ Liddy said, raising her voice. She turned away from Galveston towards her husband. ‘Ned, how much did you pay for it?’
Ned glanced at Galveston, whose expression was more fixed than ever.
‘I’ll leave you, dear Liddy, to discuss this with your husband. Excuse me,’ he said, melting away and she saw him folding a piece of paper smoothly into his waistcoat, like a magician.
They were alone. Around them, the sounds of the house in the morning: tradesmen on the street, a maid banging a carpet somewhere, Laura Galveston talking upstairs. Liddy turned to Ned and in a low voice hissed:
‘Tell me, Ned, damn you. How much was it?’
He looked at her, utterly surprised; she’d never spoken to him like that before.
‘Well – five thousand guineas, my love. It’s a lot, I know, but with The Lilac Hours and Tommy Atkins and my work now—’
‘Five thousand guineas!’ Liddy’s hand flew to the tight lace collar at her throat. ‘He let you – how could he?’
‘It’s a good price – dear, I wanted you to—’
‘You’ve paid five thousand guineas to buy back something you painted, you painted with love . . .’ Her mouth was full of bile. She swallowed. ‘Ned, dearest – we do not have that money.’
He looked around, furiously. ‘Don’t discuss our finances in the damned hallway of our host,’ he said, pulling her back into the breakfast room, glancing at the painting, standing alone in the hall. ‘Liddy, I thought you’d be as pleased as I am.’
She shut the door, breathing fast. ‘I don’t understand how you could do this. Don’t you see? How – how can you ask me to look at this painting every day? How can you!’
‘We were happy! We – we are still, of sorts, are we not?’
She took his hand. ‘You won’t ever speak of her. You don’t ever let me mention her – her name. Eliza.’
He turned his head, closing one eye, wincing. ‘I – do. I can.’
‘Her name was Eliza, and she was seven.’
‘I say – don’t.’
‘Eliza!’ Liddy heard herself shout. ‘That was her name! It is inconceivable to me that you won’t name her! She was our daughter, and you—’
He cut in.
‘It was inconceivable to me that you wouldn’t let Carritt perform the operation,’ he said quietly, and he lifted his eyes to hers, and she saw the coldness in them. ‘It might have saved her.’
She stared at him. ‘You blame me, then, for what happened?’
‘I do not.’
But she didn’t believe him. Liddy’s throat hurt, as it always did when she thought of Eliza. ‘Then that at least is why you think I am wrong to be angry with Mary.’
He pulled his hands away from her. There was something desolate in the way he said, ‘I don’t care any more, Liddy, dearest. I did it to try and make something right again. I wanted it to make you happy.’
‘Happy!’ She gazed around her. ‘Happy . . . oh, Ned. Do you not understand? When I walked behind her coffin I saw the rest of my life
, my dear. I saw it stretching ahead of me: I knew I could never be happy again. It’s not something you can bandage up, make better, dearest. We lost her. She—’ She shook her head, and whispered, ‘How can you have believed that I would have wanted you to spend our money on this? It will ruin us.’
‘It’s my money,’ he said, flatly, and she stared at him, teeth gritted. ‘I wanted to do it, Liddy, to remind us both, we had it, we had this life, we are these people! I think we’ve forgotten it, over the years, with everything that’s happened. But we were awfully happy, and we did . . . the children . . .’ He trailed off. ‘I love you so very much, my dearest. I—’
She knew, then, of course, that his very reasons for doing it and hers for hating the gesture were the same, but the breach was too wide.
‘Can you tell Galveston to sell it to a museum, instead?’
‘The deal is done,’ said Ned, drawing himself up. ‘I wouldn’t try to go back on it. I will take the painting home, today. Will you join me?’
She could not stand to look at him, suddenly. To be near him. Rage suffused her.
‘No,’ said Liddy, her jaw set. ‘I will not. I will come tomorrow.’
As if they were discussing the weather he said, ‘Will you meet Mary?’
‘I don’t know yet. I – I don’t know.’ She pressed her fingers to her mouth, wanting to be sick, wanting to get away from him. ‘But I won’t come with you today.’
Mary unwound her scarf from around her red, frozen fingers; she had no gloves and had left her muffler in Bloomsbury. Shaking, she pulled at the door pull.
‘Is that you? Oh, it’s you, isn’t it! Hooray!’
She could hear his lanky legs, tumbling down the stairs from the top floor. Behind her, the traffic on the road thrummed in her tired ears – horse and cart, carriage, motor cars, bicycles. He flung open the door, clasping her cheeks in his warm hands.
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 37